THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WAIT BOSTON ROAD MARKER

Richard Colton, Historian

Springfield Armory NHS

 

Before its temporary removal about 1968 to the tower of the Springfield Armory Museum, the tall and elegantly carved East Longmeadow Redstone road marker stood at the corner of Federal and State Streets of Federal Square for over a century. Originally, it was placed into the ground about 1763 facing south about twenty feet further west near the famous iron fence that now encloses the south east corner of Armory Square. The creation of this fence and that of Federal Street in the mid-1800’s caused the old road marker to be moved from the spot it had occupied since 1763 and reinstalled across the then new Federal Street further east. [CLICK here for detailed information of the Wait marker's original location and several relocations.]

 

After 1968, the City of Springfield took possession of the marker and, by the mid-1980’s, the Masonic Lodge on State Street had been granted the loan of the marker from the city. The old stone marker had been cared for in a room on the first floor of the Masonic Lodge until mid-2006. At that time, it was removed by the City of Springfield and placed in the hands of professional monument reproducers for the purpose of creating a replica. This replica is intended, when completed, to stand in the original location the marker occupied at the time of the storming of the Springfield Arsenal in 1787.

 

This Wait Boston Road marker is monumental in several ways: one deliberate and the other accidental. After losing his way to Brookfield in the area of today’s State and Federal Streets during a blizzard in 1762, at the end of the French and Indian War, former Roger’s Rangers Captain Joseph Wait had the marker carved and erected the following year as a community service in the best traditions of the Masons. Masonic symbols decorate the facade. Wait’s intention was to assure travelers of the location of Boston Road at the point where Chicopee Road branched off it. During the blizzard the previous year, Capt. Wait had become confused and mistook Chicopee Road for Boston Road.

 

The marker reads:

BOSTON ROAD

This Stone is Erected

by Joseph Wait, Esq.

of Brookfield

For the Benefit

of Travelers

AD 1763

 

Twelve years later, the same marker directed the Springfield Minutemen to Boston in April 1775 as well as Col. Knox’s train of artillery on its way to Boston and Dorchester Heights in the winter of 1775-76. Those guns forced the British from Boston in March 1776 for the first American victory of the Revolutionary War. Within a year or two, the arsenal that was to eventually become Springfield Armory began to take shape about this same road marker. And it was in September of the year that William Wait, then a Colonel in the Continental Army, died of wounds sustained in the failed attack on Quebec City lead by General Arnold and Montgomery. He was buried in Vermont.

 

Because of the artillery, muskets, and ammunition stored at the Federal arsenal at Springfield, the first bloodshed of Shays’s Rebellion occurred here a decade later in 1787. While being stormed by about twelve hundred armed rebels arrayed in regiments against nearly an equal number of Massachusetts militia defending the arsenal, artillery fire was directed into the ranks of the charging rebels, killing four and wounding many. Accounts by both the defending militia and the rebels describe a cannon and a single howitzer firing grapeshot from the front ranks and flank of the attacking rebel line. The Wait marker bears grim testimony to this day of the effect of that same grapeshot in the form of a number of deep craters on the carved face and side of the marker. This moment, seemingly “frozen in time” displaying the wounds delivered by one inch diameter iron balls thrown against it and the rebels near it, is vividly recorded and captured for future generations to view.

 

Nearly a hundred yards to the east of the intersection of Federal and State Streets between the sidewalk and State Street along the south edge of Federal Square sits a large boulder on the surface of which is inlet a cast bronze plaque commemorating the battle that occurred near there. Visible only from the street, this plaque reads:

 

THIS TABLET MARKS THE BATTLE PLACE

OF SHAYS’ REBELLION

JANUARY 25, 1787

- -

ERECTED BY THE

GEORGE WASHINGTON CHAPTER

SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

A.D.1900

 

 

Ultimately, the importance of the attack on Springfield Arsenal is not so much in any dramatic retelling of the terrible events of that day in 1787 but, rather, in its importance to the creation of our nation’s Constitution in Philadelphia hardly six months later. Many of those delegates to the Continental Congress who had previously resisted calls for a strengthened Federal government were rudely awakened by the tragic events played out here. Our national history and that of Springfield are forever linked through the Wait Boston Road marker, our most durable and visible reminder of the stirring events of that tragic day in January 1787.