Left: Pleasant Street.
away, on the extreme western and northern boundaries of the province, in the township of East Hoosuck, within the present city limits of North Adams. These defences were rather poorly constructed and very indifferently garrisoned. Captain, afterwards Colonel, Ephraim Williams, who became the founder of Williams College, was assigned to the command of these frontier forts, with headquarters at Fort Shirley, and afterwards at Fort Massachusetts. Fort Massachusetts was located in what is now the first ward of the city of North Adams, at a point on the road to Williamstown, something over a mile west of the centre of the city. The man who located the fort cannot be said to have been of consummate military genius; he placed it at a point on a plain over- looked by hills but a few rods distant, and at the same time not near enough to the neighboring river to make that an easy source of water supply. The fort was a wooden enclosure, formed by logs placed one upon the other and interlocked at the corners. At one corner, the northwestern, was a watch tower, and inside the enclosure were several buildings used as quarters for the garrison, and on the eastern side a well with the long well-sweep so familiar in old New England.
Such was the condition of affairs in western Massachusetts in August, 1746, when the French, who were expecting an attack on Canada by the English, ordered Rigaud de Vandreuil, town major of Three Rivers, to repair to Lake Champlain to repel the expected attack, or if no such attack
Church Street.
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