Rules of the Club

These rules, adopted in 1869, are still in force, although many of the formalities are no longer observed.  In particular the "two cubes" blackball rule is no longer observed — new members are accepted by consensus following discussion.

Rules of the Monday Evening Club, Pittsfield, Mass. 1869

I.  This Club shall consist of not more than twenty members.

II. Members shall be elected by secret ballot, by balls and cubes; two cubes shall reject.  Every member shall vote upon proposals.  No person who has been rejected as a member of the Club, under this rule, shall be eligible for membership during six months next succeeding his rejection, and shall not be balloted for as a member during that period.

III.  The Officers of the Club shall be a Chairman, Secretary, and an Executive Committee of three.
The Chairman for the time being shall be the member at whose house the session is held.

Father Knows Best: The Railroad Street Youth Project

Presented to the Club by Erik Bruun on December 14, 2009

1. Still Learning

The topic of this paper is the Railroad Street Youth Project of Great Barrington, Massachuetts, the youth empowerment organization that I have devoted more passion and energy than any other enterprise in my life other than parenting. As the title implies, the meaning is about fatherhood, something I learned a lot about in my role at RR Street. As my 16-year-old daughter is only too eager to tell me, fathers don't know best. In fact, according to her, we know virtually nothing at all. This, however, does not stop her from turning to me for support on an almost daily basis.

My experience is that as fathers we are called upon to know what is right and carry ourselves in certainty, but in reality our job is to prepare our children to trust their own judgments even in the face of our own doubts. In short, this paper is about love.

It comes from the place of having two teenage children who are starting to experience life’s joys, pains and disappointments as they embark upon independence. It also comes from a place of watching young people with virtually no credentials or privileges accomplish greatness that I would have never predicted through courage and determination. To leap to the conclusion, I am still learning and I imagine I always will be.

2. Why Don’t You Ask the Kids?

Ten years ago this fall community leaders and adults formed the South Berkshire Heroin Task Force to confront the increasingly visible and dangerous problem of drug addiction and substance abuse in downtown Great Barrington. Over the previous year, more than a dozen young people in South County died of drug overdoses, suicide, and alcohol-related car accidents. Many people were understandably freaked out. They gathered on a regular basis to try and do something about it. Amanda Root was one of those people.

A rose among thorns: The legacy of Dutch rule in America

Presented to the Club by Albert E. Easton on November 23, 2009

The First Church in Albany was founded in 1642. The chancel of that church contains the seventeenth century pulpit and the hour glass that the pastors, who were called “Dominies” used to time their sermons. On the wall there appears a seal with these words: “Like a rose among thorns is my love among the daughters.” Those words, from what seventeenth century Calvinists called the book of Canticles, were chosen as a motto because Albany, in those days, was a tiny enclave of European civilization in what was perceived as a vast wilderness. The words, of course, are not in English, but in Dutch, a reminder that Albany was part of a Dutch colony, which made New York different in important ways from the other twelve original colonies. That fact had consequences for the state, and even for the nation that it became a part of. My purpose tonight is to explore those differences and how they came about.

The first step in understanding this is to review the history of England and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. The political and religious aspects of that history were so deeply intertwined as to be almost the same thing. Elizabeth I, who had restored the Anglican church in England, died in 1603, and her successor, James I continued this tradition. The Anglican church in those days followed most of the rite and ritual of the Roman Catholic church, rejecting only the authority of the pope.

The Netherlands, along with a good deal of the rest of western Europe, were a part of the Hapsburg empire in the sixteenth century, ruled from Spain. In 1568, a revolt led by William of Orange broke out, and by 1579, the seven northern provinces, of which Holland was the largest, formed a union called the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The government of this new nation was a republic, an unusual form in the sixteenth century. This republic, while nominally Roman Catholic was tolerant of all religions, and this resulted in a huge influx of Calvinist and Lutheran believers, who were generally not welcome in those provinces that remained under Spanish rule.

Church and State: The wall of separation

Presented to the Club by Harold I. Salzmann on June 8, 2009. Illustration: Statue of Roger Williams in the U. S. Capitol Building.

“Freedom’s a thing that has no ending …”

As all of us know, this Monday Evening Club of ours was founded almost 140 years ago at the home of the grandfather of our recently deceased member, Thomas Plunkett. That founding took place on Wednesday evening, November 11, 1869. By an unrelated coincidence, my own congregation, Temple Anshe Amunim (“People of Faith”) was founded just a few days later, on a Sunday evening, November 14. I have been researching this latter history for some time – not incidental to our congregation’s similar observance this November of its 140th celebratory observance.

One of the intriguing questions that concerned me, at the outset of my inquiry into the beginning of our congregation here in the Berkshires was why our beginnings here were only in the middle of the 19th century. Our congregation is one of the oldest in New England. But American Jewish history goes back actually to the discovery of America itself, beginning with Columbus. Luis Torres, the navigator’s official interpreter, was a converso/marrano, the first white man actually to set foot on the soil of the New World. And there is a school of scholars – non-Jewish and Spanish at that – who have theorized that Columbus himself was of Jewish origins.

The Club's historic membership roster, part IV: Members joining 1885-1900

This is the fourth post in a series on the historic membership roster of the Club. These posts may be updated as additional biographical information on the members is uncovered. Research by Martin C. Langeveld, incorporating research by Harold L. Hutchins for a paper given to the Club in 1993. The photo at left is of William Stanley, Jr., who joined in 1892.

1885

Rev. Isaac Chipman Smart — 1859-1931; born in Shoreham, Vt.; graduated from Amherst College in 1881; editor of the Pittsfield Evening Journal, 1881-1882; graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 1885, ordained 1885 and became pastor of South Congregational Church, Pittsfield and served until 1906; became pastor of College Street Congregational Church, Burlington, Vt. in 1906; died in Burlington.

1886

Harlan Hoge Ballard — 1853-1934; born in Athens, Ohio; graduated from Williams College in 1874 and became principal of the Lenox, Mass. High School; appointed principal of the Lenox Academy in 1880, where he founded the Agassiz Association, a national organization for the study of natural object that eventually had more than 1,000 chapters worldwide; became librarian at the Berkshire Athenaeum; authored books of poetry, novels and translations from Latin. One of his books, The Tiler's Jewel, a Masonic novel, is still in print. His mother, Julia Perkins Pratt Ballard (1824-1894) was a noted nature writer and author of popular science books for children.

Charles Edmund Hibbard — 1844-1922; born in Farmington Falls, Maine; graduated from Amherst College in 1867; studied law in Woodstock, Vt.; admitted to the bar in Boston in 1869; practiced in Tama, Iowa from 1869 to 1873 and in Boston from 1873 to 1881; opened a law practice in Lee in 1881 (lived earlier in Iowa City, Iowa); moved his practice to Pittsfield in 1887; first mayor of Pittsfield (elected 1891); served as district attorney for six years; served as delegate to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1917-1918; died in Pittsfield.

Henry Colt, Jr. — born in Pittsfield in 1856; graduated from Williams College in 1878 and from Harvard Medical School in 1881; physician, associated medical director of the Berkshire Life Insurance Company, medical examiner for Berkshire County, chairman of the medical and surgical board of the House of Mercy Hospital, trustee of the Berkshire Athenaeum, director of the Pittsfield National Bank and the Berkshire Loan and Trust Company; died in Pittsfield in 1931 (193 South Street).

Marcus H. Rogers — born in Mill River (village in New Marlborough) about 1835 (where he published a paper called the Rising Sun as a teenager; publisher and editor of the Berkshire Courier 1865-1879 and later the Berkshire County Eagle 1887-1889; spent more than 60 years in newspaper publishing; retired in Florida; died 1925 at the age of 90.

Rev. Orville Coats — pastor of the First Baptist Church; served later in Somerville and Lowell, Mass.

The Club's historic membership roster, part III: Members joining 1877-1883

This is the third post in a series on the historic membership roster of the Club. These posts may be updated as additional biographical information on the members is uncovered. Research by Martin C. Langeveld, incorporating research by Harold L. Hutchins for a paper given to the Club in 1993.

The following became members of the Club from 1877 through 1883:

1877

Rev. O. P. Gifford — born in Montague, Mass. in 1847; graduated from Brown University in 1874 and the Baptist Theological Seminary in Rochester, N. Y. in 1877; ordained pastor at First Baptist Church in Pittsfield and served from 1877 to 1879; became pastor of Warren Avenue Baptist Church in Boston in 1879; from there he went to Brookline, Mass., then to Chicago's Immanuel Baptist Church; in Chicago he was active in the anti-sweatshop and other civic movements; in 1894 he became pastor of the Delaware Avenue Baptist Church in Buffalo, N. Y.

Rev. Jonathan Leavitt Jenkins — born in Portland, Maine in 1830, the son of a preacher; graduated from Yale College in 1851; became pastor of the First Church of Lowell, and then the Pearl Street Church in Hartford and the Congregational Church of Amherst, Mass., before coming to Pittsfield, where he served for 15 years as pastor of the First Church of Christ. He presided over a major redecoration of the church's sanctuary in 1882, the installation of stained glass windows including the Tiffany-designed Allen window, and the 125th anniversary celebration of the church in 1889. In 1892, he left to become pastor of the State Street Congregational Church in Portland. Later he moved on to a pastorate in Jamaica Plain, Mass., and died while visiting Pittsfield (?) in 1913.

Earl Grey Baldwin — 1847-1922; born in Coventry, Vt.; attended Amherst College, member of the class of 1876 but did not graduate; served as principal of Pittsfield High School from 1877 to 1883; also as principal at Wendall Hall School for Boys, Norwalk, Conn., and again at Pittsfield 1888 to 1892; was correspondent for Springfield, New York and Boston papers and editorial writer for The Berkshire Eagle; died in Pittsfield.

The Club's historic membership roster, part II: Members joining 1870-1876

This is the second post in a series on the historic membership roster of the Club. These posts may be updated as additional biographical information on the members is uncovered. Research by Martin C. Langeveld, incorporating research by Harold L. Hutchins for a paper given to the Club in 1993.

The following became members of the Club from 1870 through 1876:

1870

James Madison Barker — (see image) 1839-1905; graduated from Williams College in 1856 and from Harvard Law School in 1863; lawyer, became a partner of fellow Club member Thomas B. Pingree in 1865; member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives 1872-1873; Superior Court judge 1882-1891; justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court 1891-1905; served as director and later vice-president of the Berkshire Life Insurance Company, director of the Pittsfield National Bank, and director of the Pontoosuc Woolen Company, president of the Berkshire Athenaeum 1903-1905, trustee of Williams College 1882-1905; author of "Shire Town Stories" and other unpublished historical and biographical narratives; member of the Massachusets Historical Society. (Additional information here.)

Thaddeus Clapp Jr. — 1821-1890; born in Pittsfield; discontinued his schooling in order to begin work at the Pontoosuc Woolen Mill where his father, Thaddeus Clapp, was manager; became president of the company in 1882 succeeding Ensign H. Kellogg, fellow member of the Club; married in 1845 Lucy Goodrich; died in Pittsfield 1890.

Edward Boltwood — 1839-1878; graduate of Yale College, 1860; born Amherst, Mass.; studied law at Harvard and admitted to the bar in Boston; practiced in Detroit beginning 1863; married in 1865 to Sarah E. Plunkett, daughter of Thomas F. Plunkett; returned to Berkshire County in 1871 to become treasurer of Berkshire Life Insurance Company; became president of the company in 1876 (succeeding fellow Club member Thomas F. Plunkett upon his death); died of tuberculosis (consumption) in Cairo, Egypt in 1878 at the age of 39 after various travels to mitigate the disease; father of Edward Boltwood Jr., who wrote the "History of Pittsfield 1876-1916."

1871

Robert W. Adam — 1825-1911; born in Canaan, Conn.; graduated from Williams College in 1845; admitted to the bar in Pittsfield, 1849; practiced law in Pittsfield until 1865; elected treasurer of Berkshire County Savings Bank in 1865, an office he held until his death in Pittsfield in 1911; served as director of the Pittsfield Coal Gas Company at its organization in 1853; was elected to the city council for the first two years of city government beginning in 1891, serving as president of the council the second year; married in 1852 Sarah P. Brewster; their one son, William L. Adam, a member of the Club, succeeded him as treasurer of the Berkshire County Savings Bank.