WILLARD'S

HISTORY OF GREENFIELD.

Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit.

Perhaps the time may come, when the recollection,
even of these things, will be pleasing.

VIRGIL.

1

Entered according to act of Congress, in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of Massachusetts,

in 1838, by D. WILLARD.

ENOX LIBRANT

NEW YORK

Reader, please to read the preface.

This work was prepared for publication more than a year since, (in July 1837,) and its delay has been owing to circumstances beyond my power to control. If my short purse had been more frequently honored with the visits of the glittering coin, (or even despised bank bills,) which have been too much like those of angels, few, &c. the case would have been different. The establishment of a new press afforded the opportunity of offering it to my fellow townsmen, the publishers volunteering its publication on fair terms, requiring no security, (which means entangling one's friends,) beyond the subscription list.

The humble and unpretending character of compilations of this kind, generally ensures to them a protection against criticism were it not so, the circumstances under which this has been put together, will to every ingenuous -mind, excuse its defects and disarm criticism. It has been prepared while visited with severe family sickness, and suffering under many privations-almost sufficient to paralyze exertion; surrounded by a little flock of roistering urchins -mere striplings, incessantly shouting and throwing up their caps in irrepressible and boisterous glee, and viewing every object on the sunny side. Little know they of the corroding cares of a parent's heart; "of the load of life which we are doomed to bear :" the anxieties which are continually draining the well springs of life. Happy, if age shall con

firm the promises of youth: if the future shall realize to them a moiety of its visions, and if one of a thousand of the painted bubbles which now float in their imaginations, shall live, while others burst and fade away in darkness -and "happy, in my mind, was he that died."

I am indebted to Dr. S. W. Williams, Geo. T. Davis and J. C. Alvord, Esqrs. for valuable papers, and to them and others for liberal patronage and encouragement in my humble labors, which have cheated life of hours otherwise given to care and despondency. What I regret more than any thing except the indiscretions and imprudence of some years of life, is, that the same leanness of purse before alluded to, prevents my placing in this Book, a plate of Turner's Falls. Non possum.

وو

If after a candid examination, the purchaser is dissatisfied because the work does not come up to his ideas, or contain all promised in the prospectus (some articles have been omitted) and finds no redeeming portions, he may as Yankees do, contrive by "a swop,' or other means, to get as much out of the next man he meets, as he deems himself to have lost in this outlay, and I assure him that "with honest intention I've taken him in." As for the censorious, and those who always are, and delight in, finding fault, having no desire to suit them, I have no expectation that I shall do so.

Oct. 22, 1838.