Dwight, Massachusetts

The Dwight Chapel, its cornerstone laid October 6, 1886, pictured today

Dwight is an unincorporated, historical village in North Belchertown, Massachusetts, United States, named for the family. It was a railroad destination and farming community in the 19th century with lumber mills, grist mills, schools, a chapel, cemeteries, two railway depots, aquatic gardens, restaurants, ballrooms, inns, a silk mill, a carding mill, a woodturning mill, an apiary, a cider mill, a carriage-maker, wheelwright, gunsmith and blacksmith, a general store and post office. Today the community is known for its natural beauty, scenic waterfalls, wildlife, forests, ponds, lakes, brooks, springs, hiking trails, and bike paths.

Geography

The center of Dwight is in the northwestern region of Belchertown, defined as the intersection of Federal and Goodell Streets. Village boundaries have historically formed a square, approximately 10 mi.² or about 3.2 linear miles east to west and 3.2 linear miles north to south. Pelham is to the north, Amherst and the Lawrence Swamp on the west, Lake Arcadia on the south and Jabish Brook and Pelham on the east.

The center of Dwight lies further from Belchertown’s Common than other towns. It’s about 4.8 road-miles northwest from Belchertown Common (by State Route 9); 4.2 miles southwest from West Pelham; 4.2 miles southeast from East Amherst Common; and 3.5 miles east from the South Amherst Common. It is 2.5 miles from the extinct village in South Amherst called Nuttingville. The southwestern boundary of Dwight is the northwestern corner of Granby, about 1.5 linear miles from the center of Dwight.

The village was developed in the mid to late eighteenth century by third and fourth generation colonists around the intersection of three named brooks: Montague Brook, Scarborough Brook, Hop Brook. Jabish Brook forms on its eastern border.

The Town of Pelham annexed a square mile section on its southern border that incorporated part of North Belchertown and included the village of Packardsville in 1786. Belchertown‘s historical central eastern and northeastern boundary once extended to the Swift River, until 1816, when Enfield was formed. This section later became part of the Quabbin Reservoir.

Dwight encompasses many unnamed historical ponds and several lakes: its present named bodies of water are Lake Holland, about 1 linear mile south of the center of the village, Lake Arcadia, about 1.3 linear miles south, Scarborough (Scarboro) Ponds, about 1.7 linear miles northeast of the center, Two Ponds (seasonal) and Knight's Pond (which includes Gold's Pond), which is 2.4 linear miles northeast of the center.

There are numerous unnamed tributaries, vernal pools, and hundreds of acres of conservation land including Holland Glen, Wentworth Property, Topping Farm, Lashway Property, Warren Wright Road, Holyoke Range, Arcadia Bog, Scarborough Brook, Upper Gulf, Mead's Corner, Reed Property and part of Jabish Brook. The Kestrel Land Trust provides trail maps of Holland Glen, Scarborough Brook and Jabish Brook.

The peak of West Hill, a region of colonial settlement in Dwight known for its panoramic view of the Holyoke Range and the Connecticut River Valley, is 1.6 linear miles northeast of the center, and measures 1,070 feet above sea level.

An unnamed peak to the southeast of West Hill, or immediately south of the Munsell Cemetery, is 1,075 feet, and Juckett Hill, once called “East Hill,” in far northeastern Belchertown, stands at 1,070 feet.

Dwight’s boundary encompasses what were once called the Bridgman Ponds: Lake Holland, or Holland Pond, named for J.G. Holland, and Arcadia Lake.

Lake Metacomet begins what was called the Pond Hill area and is immediately south of Dwight. The Tri-Lakes Watershed Association, or Friends of the Tri-Lakes, is a nonprofit organization that formed in 1988 to help maintain the health of the three lakes.

Early Belchertown settlement occurred in the Pond Hill region along the Old Bay Road that ran from Boston to Albany, with brothers Samuel and Benjamin Stebbins and Mary Ashley in 1727, and Ebenezer Bridgman and Mary Strong in 1732. Elijah Coleman Bridgeman and Ethan Smith were born in this region. The Lake Vale Cemetery was established here in 1766, with the first interment as early as 1730. It is 1.8 linear miles south from Dwight Center.

A flag stop on what was then called the Amherst & Belchertown Railroad was erected after 1853, known as the “Federal Street” stop, which was near today’s intersection of Bay Road and the New England Central Railroad tracks.

The center of Dwight is 2.8 linear miles southwest from Mount Lincoln, a 1,240 feet (380 m) high point on the Pelham Dome or Pelham Hills, an upland plateau overlooking the Connecticut River Valley in Pelham, Massachusetts (near Amherst, Massachusetts). It is taller than the more widely known Mount Norwottuck and Mount Holyoke.

Dwight is located on the far eastern end of the Holyoke Range, part of the Metacomet Ridge of Southern New England. It is 2.2 linear miles northeast of Long Mountain, and 3.5 linear miles northeast of the peak of Mount Norwottuck, the highest point in the Range. Part of the Mount Holyoke Range State Park is accessible in the southwest corner of Dwight.

Hiking and biking

The Norwottuck Branch Rail Trail, part of the Mass Central Rail Trail, begins at Dwight village, about where the Montague Brook and Central New England Railroad (formerly the Central Vermont R.R.) cross Warren Wright Road, north of Wilson Road.

The Trail stretches through the Lawrence Swamp in a northerly direction before turning west for 11 miles (18 km) on the former rail bed of the Central Massachusetts Railroad (and later a branch of the Boston & Maine Railroad). It is a combination bicycle/pedestrian paved rail trail running from Northampton, Massachusetts, through Hadley and Amherst, to Belchertown, Massachusetts.

The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail, part of the 215-mile New England National Scenic Trail, crosses through the heart of Dwight on Federal Street and up Gulf Road.

The Robert Frost Trail transverses Dwight, following Warren Wright Road across Hop Brook.

Holland Glen

Holland Glen is a 290-acre conservation forest southeast of the center of Dwight that features hiking trails, waterfalls, small pools and “a deep, narrow chasm with steep sides covered thickly with a growth of pine and hemlock." It was named for Josiah Gilbert Holland and is accessible from State Route 9.

Above the Glen are springs that form the Hop Brook. It flows in a westerly direction and enters the Lawrence Swamp in South Amherst, and empties into the Fort River.

Scarborough Brook begins on the West Hill, north of Holland Glen and the Hop Brook. It runs west and the southerly and created the narrow ravine of Gulf Road. Its mouth is at the Hop Brook, to the west of Federal Street near the Daigle Well.

Montague Brook begins in south Pelham, in a spring-field near the Mountain Goat Loop hiking trail, flowing in a southwesterly direction through Dwight, and enters the Hop Brook in the Lawrence Swamp.

A fourth unnamed brook begins in the unnamed wetland south of North Street and east of Federal Street and empties into the Hop Brook in the Topping Farm Conservation Area, 220 acres that nearly connects Lawrence Swamp and the Mount Holyoke Range.

Lawrence Swamp

To the immediate west of Dwight in South Amherst is the Lawrence Swamp, a thousand acres of forested wetland, scrub-shrub floodplain, and open meadow and habitat for rare species of birds and wildlife. It contains numerous hiking trails and several wells that produce drinking water for Amherst. Its watershed encompasses most of the Dwight area.

The Swamp is most accessible at the Norwottuck Branch Rail Trail entrance on Station Road in South Amherst, which becomes North Street in Dwight.

Geology

Dwight is located in a valley that was covered in water some 15,000 years ago and formed the far eastern shore of the ancient glacial Lake Hitchcock. Lawrence Swamp, to the immediate east of Dwight, is a vestige of this lake. Glaciers deposited sediment-dammed lakes in the Jabish Brook and Broad Brook valleys and an ice-dammed glacial lake in the Knights Pond valley, and coarse- and fine-grained sand deposits along State Route 9, Warren Wright Road, the Lawrence Swamp, and near the Dwight Cemetery.

A prominent fault, the Triassic Border Fault, passes through Dwight, forming the boundary between the Pelham Hills and the Holyoke Mountain Range.

The center of Dwight, at Federal and Goodell Streets, is today at an elevation of 267 feet, which would have been slightly underwater at the time. The lowest elevation, 170 feet, is east Warren Wright Road as it crosses the Hop Brook through the Topping Farm Conservation Area.

The area's glacial history is also seen in numerous ponds and wetlands and, most notably, in the three kettle-hole lakes – Metacomet, Arcadia, and Holland – immediately south of Dwight. The largest and deepest of these is Lake Metacomet, at 65 acres and about 15 feet deep.

Deglaciation of Belchertown probably occurred in a span of about 100 years between 12,000 and 12,500 years ago.

Water

The Daigle Well is located west of Federal Street near the Hop Brook and the mouth of the Scarborough Brook. The well provides public drinking water for Belchertown, with an approved yield of 1.3 million gallons per day. It utilizes water from a confined sand and gravel aquifer, a bedrock valley that was deepened by advancing glaciers and later filled with sand and gravel overlain by silt and clay from glacial Lake Hitchcock and Lake Lawrence.

There is no Aquifer Protection District for the Daigle Well. The Lashway Property is conservation area set aside for aquifer protection by Belchertown in the Lawrence Swamp.

Most all land in North Belchertown and Dwight is part of the Lawrence Swamp Watershed Protection Zone that supplies the Town of Amherst with drinking water.

The Town of Amherst draws water from an aquifer on Belchertown land that is in Dwight, north of the Daigle Well, between Warren Wright Road and Federal Street, south of North Road, near the Montague Brook.

History

As part of Belchertown, the village is a crossroads of Native trails in the Connecticut River Valley in Western Massachusetts that indigenous people traveled, including the Pocumtuc, Nipmuc and Norwottuck, or Nonotuck and Nolwotogg, among others. Artifacts found in the early 20th century just south of Dwight, near Lake Metacomet, suggest, "evidence of Native American occupations" that began some 7,000 years ago. It is about six miles due east of the bend in the Connecticut River at the former Native American settlement where the Towns of Hadley and Northampton are located today.

The village has been known historically by various names given by colonists including Log Town, Logg-town, Logtown, Union District, Hopetown, Dwight's, Dwight's Station, Dwight Station, Pansy Park and Dwight. It was named for the Dwight family.

Benjamin Stebbins (1674–1778) and Mary Ashley (1682–1736) came from Northampton in 1727. They were "said to have been the first … to make a permanent residence" and "received from Governor Belcher, five hundred acres of land, as an inducement … to settle [Belchertown]. The land bordered the southwest corner of Dwight, near today's Stebbins Street.

The first non-indigenous landowner at what would become the center of Dwight is believed to have been Capt. Nathaniel Dwight Jr. (1712–1784), a surveyor who was deeded one square mile in 1734. He was among the first to settle to the south of Dwight, with Hannah Lyman (1708-1792), in 1731, at what would become Cold Spring, then Belcher's Town, and owned most of the land that today comprises the Common. He led local men on the Crown Point Expedition during the Seven Years' War and served in the American Revolution.

John Ward (1716–1800) and Abigail Heath (1731–1813) settled along the Jabish Brook, near the Pelham boundary, in 1749, perhaps becoming the first colonial settlers within the boundaries of what today is called Dwight. Others followed including Elisha Munsell (1728–1810) and Dorothy Redington (1727–1807), newlyweds who settled on the Great Hill by at least 1759, east of the center of Dwight, where a cemetery bears the family name. Among the earliest burials in that cemetery is Capt. David Pratt (1742-1806), who came from Ware, Mass., with Lucy Coolidge (1753-1844), settling on the Great Hill along the Jabish Brook in about 1769. They had 16 children.

Among the first structures erected near what would become the center of Dwight was the homestead of Nathaniel Goodell (1740-1814) and Abigail Chaffee (1737-1811), in about 1765. It was torn down about 1875. Today, the Dwight Station Mini Mart stands about where the structure once stood.

Capt. Justus Dwight (1739-1824), Sarah Lamb (1737-1832) and their two children—Elihu and Clarissa—settled in Fall 1769 at what would become the center of Dwight. Their son Jonathan was born the following January though Sarah may have returned to their home on the Belchertown Common to give birth. Their son Nathaniel, born in 1772, was said to be the first non-indigenous child born at Dwight. [Though John Ward, Jr., was born on the eastern edge of Dwight in about 1749.]

Justus was the third born son of Capt. Nathaniel Dwight Jr., and Hannah Lyman, of Northampton, Mass., mentioned previously. Their son Elijah—Justus' brother—was said to be the first non-Indigenous male child born in all of Belchertown in 1735. [The Dwight family, among the so-called “River Gods” of the Connecticut River Valley, appear to capture much of the Town’s historical narrative.] Justus became Nathaniel and Hannah's eldest surviving son in 1760 after which his father, in 1765, deeded Justus land in North Belchertown for "love and affection." Families including Knowlton, Chapman, Arnold, Wilson and Thayer soon followed.

Three schools existed historically in the region, including near the center (Union), in the northeast (West Hill) and in the southeast (Prospect). The Union School is today incorporated into a home near the intersection of Federal Street and Gulf Road. A fourth school, Lake Vale, was existent to the southeast at Pond Hill.

Josiah Gilbert Holland was born in Dwight near the intersection of Orchard Road and Federal Street in 1819.

Henry Ward Beecher gave his first sermon at the schoolhouse at Dwight in 1831.

Railroads

Dwight Station (right) & Water Tower (left) in North Belchertown (Dwight), Massachusetts. From an undated postcard. Erected by the railroad agent H. D. Dwight about 1857 on what became the Central Vermont Railroad, at Federal Street, immediately north of Goodell Street. A sawmill beyond the tower (on the Scarborough Brook) supplied wood for locomotives. W. M. Goodell was the agent from 1885 until 1933 when passenger service ceased. The structures were removed by the late 1940s. Dwight at MP 103.7; Belchertown at MP 108.4.

Harrison Dunbar Dwight, great-grandson of Capt. Nathaniel Dwight, was born here, the fourth generation of the family to be associated with the place. He became the first railroad agent on the Amherst & Belchertown Railroad, which began service in May 1853 and connected the region with the Atlantic Ocean seaport at New London, Connecticut, and markets in New York and further west.

Harrison Dwight donated land upon which he erected the train station and water tower for the locomotives, and owned the adjacent sawmill on the Scarborough Brook where he made carriages as well. The village afterward became known as “Dwight's Station” in his honor and of the noted family. Dwight Chapel is said to be named for him. The tradition of mills supplying timbers for shipbuilding continued.

Pansy Park

Lafayette Washington Goodell (1851–1920) began a flower seed business on his father's "rundown" farm at Dwight in 1868 with a $25 investment. He erected greenhouses and ponds for aquatic plants and called the place Pansy Park, which "drew summertime travelers intent on witnessing the gorgeous floral displays.” It featured a wide array of thousands of popular and exotic plants like pansies, petunias, pinks and asters. These included Emperor William's blue corn-flower, and in the aquatic gardens on the site, the world's second largest water lily, the Victoria Regia, from the Amazon. The original Goodell home at Pansy Park, erected in 1833, remains at Dwight, north of the Dwight Station Mini Mart. It was sold out of the family in 1928.

In film

In the 2018 film Wild Nights with Emily, the character playing the Springfield Daily Republican Editor Samuel Bowles asks Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, poet Emily Dickinson's sister-in-law, whether she is still teaching Sunday school to the "poor children" in "Logtown," which is today known as Dwight.