Below is a talk given by Rachel Branch at Clarksburg State Park on Sunday, Sept. 8, for the Clarksburg Historical Commission. It is lightly edited for style and length. 

 

Welcome to the Clarksburg State Park for what we hope will be an enjoyable history-by-the-pond event. I'm Rachel Isbell Branch, and I am going to fill your hearts with "Pond Memories." Some historic facts "Galluping" forward and some backpaddling through the undercurrents. For me this is "The Beach Club," a place of nostalgia, joyful childhood memories and a place I love.

 

First, thank you Max Webbe, the park interpreter who has made "Pond Memories" possible. My presentation will not be a watered-down edition but waves and waves of historical fishing for facts.  

 

It all began in Voluntown, Conn., with Benjamin Gallup "galluping" up to Dalton in 1770. Benjamin was my fifth great-grandfather, a founding Dalton community member and an inventor and manufacturer of plows, spinning wheels and reels, who lived to be 102. He thought one ought to mind one's own business. For those of you who know me, I could never have adhered to that being a nosy child to become an even more curious woman. My fifth, fourth and third great-grandfathers are buried in the historic Dalton Cemetery, right down the road from where I now live.

 

My great-great grandfather, William Witherell Gallup, headed north to Clarksburg to build Mayunsook Farm right up the road from Clarksburg State Park at 161 Henderson Road. He was a farmer and a state representative in 1891. Mausert's Pond, as so many still call this beautiful pond, was also known to some members of my family as "Mayunsook Pond." I only knew it as a child as "The Beach Club."

 

Mayunsook Farm was a huge farm. Harvey Gallup, my great uncle, asked his father to fill out two diaries in 1897 and 1898. I thought you might enjoy the quotes from Sept. 8, 1897, and Sept, 9, 1898:  

 

          1897:  "Up in fair season ... and spend some time deciding whether it 

                     would rain or not ... concluded about 9 1/2 a.m. it would not

                     and started for Middlefield to (a) cattle show. The show of

                     cattle was good ... very good cloudy day."

  

          1898:  "Weather good and harvesting Corn for cilo goes on and the 

                     big meadow is cleared ... C.L. (His Son) goes to look for sheep

                     and finds two 2 year old Halisten heifers dead ... I went

                     to North Adams this pm ... go (get) mail & paper and some steel

                     wedges for splitting logs ... making cider at mill this autumn." 

 

Since this is Grandparents Day, which Max and I chose on purpose, I want to honor both of my grandmothers and connect them to The Beach Club. My grandmother, Rachel Claire Ferguson Isbell — she called me "Her Little Namesake" — was my mother's mother, Vera Vernon Isbell Flood, and grandmother to Marie Briggs, a teacher and my first cousin. Ree married John Henderson from Williamstown and her sister-in-law was Marcia Henderson, a movie and television star. For those of us seasoned citizens, we might remember Marcia starring with Rock Hudson in "Back to God's Country" or in the TV series "Dear Phoebe" with Peter Lawford. I remember meeting Marcia as a young girl who idolized Rock Hudson and was just enamored when she told me that she had had dinner with him. Oh, my heart just throbbed with yearning! I believe Henderson Road was named after this family, and Marcia and her family members are buried in the Clarksburg Cemetery. Our family genealogies carry so many, many stories.

 

Back paddling to the Gallup lineage, my great-grandfather, Arthur Gallup, was treasurer and then president of Arnold Print Works, the largest employer in North Adams. He was born in 1851 and grew up on the farm. This is one of my ancestors I would really love to meet. He loved children, the trees, the moon and the stars. I envision him sitting here by the pond looking out and listening to the trees, looking up at the moon and the stars at night ... maybe here, but definitely up the road at the farm.

 

I did not know growing up the unimaginable wealth in my family, and I believe if you are blessed with great wealth, you have a responsibility to your community and the world. My great grandfather was the epitome of that belief and gave extensively, mostly anonymously, to our community and beyond. And Clarksburg State Park and the conservation it embraces is one of the beneficiaries of his legacy of enormous contributions.  Oh, but wait a minute, on the wall in the Nature Center it gives the credit to my grandfather, George Burnside Flood, and some of that is true — but the undercurrent and backpaddling took me to the Registry of Deeds to find and clarify where this property and its gift to the state actually came from. It was from the Gallup side of my family through my grandmother, Marian Eugenia Gallup Flood.

 

I really loved my grandmother and every moment I spent with her was a treasure to behold. I did not remember or ever know about Mayunsook Farm until around 2008, when I identified it through a picture of my step-great-great-grandmother Florence Houghton Gallup, holding a chipmunk in front of the porch with the lattice on it. The only farm I knew of was "The Farm" at 830 East Road with the big red barn. Even to talk about The Farm, I remember hearing my grandmother whistle and can smell in my mind's eye the home-baked bread coming out of the oven with homemade strawberry jam to spread all over the warm bread.  

 

At The Farm up the road, I remember gleefully running down the hill whirling a wrought iron hoop with a wooden stick trying to keep up. Marian Eugenia Gallup Flood was a profound example of contributions to our community. From the time I was a child until the end of her life, we had the best conversations on politics, history, about music, art and life, and after my father passed away, she gave me my very first dog, a beautiful champion line silver poodle named Ragtime Peter Pan.   

 

OK, I know what is on the wall at the Nature Center, that states that my grandfather bought Clarksburg State Park from Arnold Print Works in 1927 for $26,500 and sold it to the state for the same amount in 1954, a few months before his death, purchasing it "for the youth of the North Adams Beach Club," but I now know that that is only part of the truth. This incredible park came into being through the Gallup family — Arnold Print Works — and, in particular, through my grandmother who bought the mortgage from the Mauserts in April1907.  When we research history, I think it is very important to keep digging to get to the core of the story.  

     

My grandfather must be credited with the creation of "The Beach Club." That was all I knew it as a child. What did I know about private clubs, that it was only for family and friends of the family.  My father, George Millard Flood, was president of the North Adams City Council when I was born and also became president of the North Adams Country Club, where I suspect the friends came to be members of The Beach Club.  

 

I was just a little girl who thought this place, The Beach Club, was magical. What did I know about private clubs? To me it was just our family and friends. Summer days were just the best at The Beach Club — swimming and playing and filling jars with pond water to catch polywogs and watch them wiggle around. Of course, we put them back in the water before we left.  Did we know they would become frogs? Probably not!   

 

I do remember the bath house, women on one side and men on the other. I knew about the ice house but cannot remember where it was. I don't think we ever came up here in the winter, but I'll bet it was mystical.

 

It was hard to get us out of the water for lunch. My mother was a physical education teacher, and we all learned to swim early on.  

    

And, oh, my goodness, to have to sit and wait for an hour to go by before we could go back into the water was excruciatingly painful. Is it up yet? Now, is it time? It's almost an hour, can we go in now?! 

 

And the little island over there — you were really a big girl if you could swim to that island and back. Running around, playing hide and seek or other games, I remember the most vivid recollection of real pain, between those trees over there, which is probably pretty close to the scene of my memory. I was going between the trees, and someone had laid their fishing pole against one of the trees, and the hook got caught under my eye. I must have been screaming in fear and pain. Someone quickly cut the line, and I was rushed to Dr. Bianco to have the hook taken out. That is my only painful memory of The Beach Club — except the interminable waits to be able to go back in swimming.

 

Returning to the Berkshires and coming to Clarksburg State Park has been one of the joys of living here again. To walk down to the pond, to gaze out across it, to listen to the gentle rippling of the water touch the sandy shore, to hear the many birds singing and to still peak into the water to see if there are any polywogs, creates such an overwhelming sense of peace and serenity.

 

And to me the preservation of this exquisite park and its conservation are extremely important, especially today, when our environment is so fragile and there is such a climate upheaval worldwide.

 

We are all blessed that this very beautiful park is being preserved, cared for and open to everyone since it became the Clarksburg State Park, and it is humbling to know that my family made this possible.

 

Thank you, and now let's share your stories and memories.

 

Copyright Sept. 8, 2024, by Rachel I. Branch