History of the Land – 101 Red Gate Lane

prehistoric:

Connecticut River Valley – glaciation

Native American / pre-European:

Nipmuc, probably a bit east of us … and Pocumtuc, or maybe Abenaki, or close to the borders? Wikipedia map thinks Pocumtuc, but here’s an Abenaki map of 17th century that suggests this land may have been in Abenaki hands. Of course they could be of different times! or wrong.

Native Histories:

Nonotuck
https://amherststudent.com/article/tracing-indigenous-lives-through-around-and-at-amherst-college/
https://www.tribalnationsmaps.com/
https://www.amherstma.gov/229/History

UMass land acknowledgement – very close, so probably applicable! https://www.umass.edu/diversity/about/land-acknowledgement

The University of Massachusetts Amherst acknowledges that it was founded and built on the unceded homelands of the Pocumtuc Nation on the land of the Norrwutuck community.

We begin with gratitude for nearby waters and lands, including the Kwinitekw — the southern portion of what’s now called the Connecticut River. We recognize these lands and waters as important Relations with which we are all interconnected and depend on to sustain life and wellbeing.

The Norrwutuck community was one of many Pocumtuc Indian towns, including the Tribal seat at Pocumtuc (in present day Deerfield), Agawam (Springfield), and Woronoco (Westfield) to name just a few. The Pocumtuc, who had connections with these lands for millennia, are part of a vast expanse of Algonqiuan relations. Over 400 years of colonization, Pocumtuc Peoples were displaced. Many joined their Algonquian relatives to the east, south, west and north— extant communities of Wampanoag, including Aquinnah, Herring Pond, and Mashpee, Massachusetts; the Nipmuc with a reservation at Grafton/Hassanamisco, Massachusetts; the Narragansett in Kingstown, Rhode Island; Schagticoke, Mohegan and Pequot Peoples in Connecticut; the Abenaki and other Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy extending northward into Canada; and the Stockbridge Munsee Mohican of New York and Massachusetts, who were removed to Wisconsin in the 19th century. Over hundreds of years of removal, members of Southern New England Tribes would make the journey home to tend important places and renew their connections to their ancestral lands. Such care and connection to land and waters continues to the present day.

?? re colonial period

1730s – European settlers farming in the area

1759 – Amherst recognized as its own town; who “owned” this property?

1800s-1950s

1833 map (“A map of Amherst with a view of the college and Mount Pleasant Institution”): Shows woodlands where 101 Red Gate Lane is currently. This map is digitized and made available at the Norman Leventhal Map & Education Center of the Boston Public Library.

1860 – Henry Francis Walling; visualization at Amherst College – covers only a little north of Main Street

1873 map (at “Old-Maps.com”) – Shows all of the town; Strong Street marked; property still undivided.

1886 map by Lucien R. Burleigh (Library of Congress) – Shows Gray Street, High Street, Whitney. Whitney Street is shown, up to Clifton, and you can just see the edge of Harvard Avenue (unlabeled). Strong Street and the future Red Gate Lane are off the right edge of the map. One house is shown on North Whitney, possibly 119 North Whitney, built in 1885.

per Jonathon Tucker:

“North Whitney Street – The section north from Main Street to Clifton Avenue existed by 1873, and was accepted as a Town Way in 1876. That same section became a County way (was accepted by the Hampshire County Commissioners) in 1884. The section between Clifton and Harvard Avenue was built circa 1885 and was accepted as a Town way in 1886. The final section from Harvard Avenue north to the beginning of Red Gate Lane became a Town way in 1904.
“Known as Whitney Street from 1876 through 1936, when it became North Whitney Street. Full length about 2,500 linear feet.
“Red Gate Lane – Originally a gravel farm road on the farm of Susan Hills Skillings. Named for the color of the access gate to the farm at that point. About 830 feet of the southernmost stretch accepted as a Town way in 1952. The section north to Hill Road was accepted as a Town way three years later in 1955. The remainder to Strong Street was accepted as a Town way in 1959.”

LQ notes:

Hills – Skillings family owned the land – ??

1950s: Subdivision of land. “Red Gate Lane” so named because subdivided property had previously been entered by a red gate, at a location now marked at Skillings Path.

HILLS ROAD (a Town Way) A street running Southeasterly from Strong Street about 1100 feet to Red Gate Lane. A lane existed here about 1910 named “Hills Road” by Susan Hills Skillings, who owned the farm at that location. ca 1951 it was known as “Red Gate Lane (West)” ref PBV 37 Pgs 8 & 9. Accepted as a Town Way March 1955 ATM Art 33. – (“Amherst Street History”)