Place:Tyringham, Berkshire, Massachusetts, United States

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Tyringham is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 427 at the 2020 census.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Founded as Housatonic Township Number 1, the land which became Tyringham and Monterey was first settled in 1735. Tyringham was established in 1739. The two main villages were set up along two waterways, Hop Brook to the north and the Konkapot River to the south.

In 1750, Adonijah Bidwell, a Yale Divinity School graduate from the Hartford region, became the first minister of Township No. 1. When a meetinghouse was founded in the south, it led to a buildup in the north, and by 1762 the town was incorporated. The origins of the town name are somewhat disputed, with some sources claiming it was named for Tyringham, a village in Buckinghamshire, England, and others asserting it was named by Sir Francis Bernard, the former governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, after a woman, Jane Beresford (adopted by John Tyringham), from whom he had inherited an estate.^[1][2] If the latter, it would be the only town in Massachusetts named after a woman.

The town was home to the Tyringham Shaker Settlement Historic District, with the Shaker holy name of "Jerusalem", which lay just south of the town center. The town of Monterey was set off and incorporated as its own town in 1847.

Tyringham celebrated its bicentennial in August, 1939 with a two day celebration and a 31 unit parade.

The Stedman Rake Factory located in town made rakes for several American Presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.

The town was the site of several small country estates for notable wealthy families. Today, Tyringham is a small, rural community.

Economy

The town of Tyringham began with an agricultural economy which soon shifted to include cottage industries and manufacturing. In 1786, the town had 182 dwelling houses, forty shops, two tanneries, four potash works, two iron works, and four grist and saw mills. The townspeople made 1185 barrels of cider that year. More than ten thousand acres of the uplands were woodlands or unimproved land, but about 2500 acres had been improved for tillage. About two thousand acres were mowed for hay, and more than three thousand acres were used as pasturage for the townspeople's five hundred horses, eight hundred swine, 178 oxen, five hundred cattle, and 541 milk cows.

By 1837, Tyringham farmers had incorporated sheep into their economy and owned 1678 Merino sheep as well as 598 sheep of other breeds, and produced more than 6500 pounds of wool. One tannery was still in operation. Their manufactories made boots, shoes, iron castings, forks, wooden ware, palm-leaf hats, rakes, chairs, and corn brooms. The biggest business, a paper mill, employed seven men and nineteen women, and made fifty tons of paper valued at $21,000.

Over the next three decades, Tyringham farmers diversified further, though they maintained about 1800 acres for making hay. In 1865, 63 farms employed 200, and their tillage produced Indian corn, rye, barley, buckwheat, oats, and corn. Vegetable crops included potatoes, turnips, onions, carrots, and cabbage. Most of their crops were suited to the chilly climate and short growing season of a hilltown. The Shakers raised garden seeds, devoting only three acres to those crops but selling the seeds for $2,000. Someone devoted five acres to tobacco and raised nine thousand pounds valued at $1,800. Tyringham farmers had also brought 1800 apple trees and fifty pear trees into production. Their livestock had declined in numbers, but their 317 milk cows gave enough milk to make 8,000 pounds of butter and 40,000 pounds of cheese which sold for $8,000. Tyringham farmers also sold more than a hundred thousand pounds of dressed beef, pork, mutton, veal, and pork. They also made five thousand pounds of maple sugar and four hundred gallons of maple molasses valued at $1,500. This was a cash crop for the Shakers as well as many upland farmers with slopes too steep to plow and covered with the maple trees which are a significant part of Massachusetts forests.

Manufacturing continued to grow. The Shakers' rake factory employed nine men and made thirty thousand rakes in 1865. Two paper mills employing 22 men and 41 women made more than $110,000 worth of paper. In addition, Tyringham townspeople worked in two blacksmith shops, a boot and shoe factory, and five sawmills.

After the Tyringham Shakers left in 1875, their businesses closed and their farms were sold. One Shaker family's buildings on Jerusalem Road became a summer resort known as Fernside.^[2]

Although far fewer in number than in the past, Tyringham remains an agricultural community that includes working farms. Woven Roots Farm is a "hand scale farm" that uses traditional farming practices in community-supported agriculture program. It also offers educational programming and community partnerships.^[3] Hav's Farm is a working dairy farm.

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