Walk with Stan Cevick as he investigates old Hadley, Massachusetts and its massive Town Common and the history that occurred around it. Hadley was one of the original River Settlements founded by William Pynchon in the mid seventeenth century alongside the Native Peoples we today call the River Tribes. This is the first of two videos about the town, that began as a trading and farming community and ultimately had to withstand the fires of King Philip’s War. Click here for a 10-minute video by Fishing Historic Places on April 21, 2024.

Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, decided that the only way that he could have a successful colony would be to maintain good relations with the Native people and thus he sent traders led by himself to visit the Native people here.

In the town meeting house, it was desirable to have your family’s Pew to be in the front where the elect of the community would be closest to the minister, the Interpreter of God’s law.

Thomas Hooker, a guy who wanted to make Connecticut more holy than the Puritans had made Boston, must have been pretty obnoxious. The walk ends at the site of the meeting house in Hadley, built in 1670,