By Christopher Marcisz
“There is nothing in the world more invisible than a monument,” declared Austrian writer Robert Musil, in 1927, to describe how often statues and memorials blend into their landscape. Over time it can be hard to remember what we are supposed to remember in the first place, let alone who put these things up and why. But, with a little attention, the stories emerge—of passions and conflicts, fortunes won and lost, abuses and injustices too often swept into the background.
Here are a few Berkshire-region monuments hiding in plain sight, on our busiest streets and state highways, as well as dotting our fields, forests, and parks. Some are whimsical, others solemn and serious. Some are of only local curiosity, while others are the manifestation of ideas that have echoed around the world.
The Stockbridge-Munsee Burial Ground Memorial
Stockbridge | South side of Main Street just west of Church Street
This heavily weathered stone and pillar, on a hill overlooking a golf course, marks “the ancient burial place of the Stockbridge Indians, 1734, the friends of our fathers.” It also marks the end of an experiment in which Mohicans who converted to Christianity could live together with English settlers; it didn’t last long. The natives were systematically removed from their land, and forced to move further and further west until they reached their present home in Wisconsin. The monument marks the last piece of land they owned in town, which, in 1809, they handed off to Dr. Oliver Partridge for $10 and the condition that the land remain undisturbed to respect their ancestors.
The Last Battle of Shays’ Rebellion Marker
Sheffield | Sheffield-Egremont Road, just west of Rebellion Road
The settlers who arrived in western Massachusetts lived a hard life, mostly subsistence farming as they increasingly chafed under the rules and restrictions of more affluent easterners, especially in the earliest years of independence when the burden of debts and economic downturns pushed many past their breaking points. It culminated in Daniel Shays’ rebellion in 1786, which included a failed attempt to capture the federal armory in Springfield.
Most of the rebels went home, though some gathered just over the border in New Lebanon and, together with “border ruffians,” returned for looting of merchant shops and homes in the Berkshires in February 1787. They were met on their way back by a coalition of local militias on this spot, where about 30 people were injured and 4 killed in an exchange of gunfire. A simple stone pillar put up in 1904 marks the spot where the uprising finally petered out. It is right next to where the Appalachian Trail passes by.
The Cheese Press Monument
Cheshire | Corner of Church and School Streets, near the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail
The Berkshires was a remarkably contrary place in the early Republic. The original settlers of Cheshire were Baptists from Rhode Island, not the descendants of the Puritans. Elder John Leland, a pastor who had spent time in Virginia and got to know Thomas Jefferson while advocating for freedom of religion, organized all the farmers of Cheshire to contribute milk from their herds for a giant cheese to celebrate Jefferson’s electoral victory over Massachusetts’ own John Adams.
The “Big Cheese”—a 1,235-pound wheel—was delivered to the White House on January 1, 1802. This cast-concrete statue of the press used to make it dates to 1940—and there’s a more recent replica of the enormous fromage itself next to the rail trail.
Elizabeth Freeman Statue
Sheffield | Main Street (Route 7), next to the First Congregational Church
The most recent addition to the Berkshires’ collective memory, unveiled in 2022, is a lifelike depiction of a young Elizabeth Freeman or “Mumbet,” who was born enslaved and sued to win her freedom, setting the legal precedent for the end of slavery in Massachusetts.
In one hand she holds a copy of the legal ruling, in the other a coal shovel that her enslavers had used to beat her, and the scar on her arm that she refused to cover up. Freeman’s story often focuses on her long life working as a free person in the Berkshires, but while the statue captures her strength and humanity, it also centers a grim reality: slavery with all its inhumanity and cruelty was a fact of life in the Berkshires.
The Haystack Monument
Williamstown | Williams College campus, Mission Park Drive off Park Street
The monument marks the spot where, in 1806, five students took shelter from a thunderstorm under a haystack—actually a kind of hay drying rack. Their conversation led to the creation of the overseas mission movement, with its Biblical admonition that “The Field is the World.”
The monument, with its globe atop a pillar and bas relief of the famous haystack, appeared in 1867, and became a beacon of faith and service for many believers. But for others it became a lightning rod for the imperialist and white supremacist message underpinning the project, how missionaries often came with economic exploitation and contempt for local traditions and customs. It has been the target of frequent vandalism in recent years, and a plaque notes the conflicted and ongoing nature of the conversation that began that long-ago summer.
The Soldiers and Sailors Monument
Hillsdale, NY | Route 23 at Anthony Street
John K. Cullin was an immigrant from northern Ireland whose family had moved to this village in upstate New York and volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War. He came home in 1864 and lived a quiet life, mostly as a clerk at a dry goods store, saving every penny he could through the years.
On his death, in 1915, he bequeathed $10,000—nearly $300,000 in today’s dollars—to build this monument to the troops like him “who defended our country and flag.” It was designed by Edwin E. Codman for the Gorham Manufacturing Company of Rhode Island, which was doing a booming business in Civil War monuments, both Union and Confederate. The 13-foot-high statue atop its 15-foot granite base was restored in 2000.
The Newsboy Statue
Great Barrington | Off Maple Avenue (Route 23), on Newsboy Monument Lane at Silver Street
By the late 1800s a different kind of economy had emerged in the Berkshires: the cottages of wealthy New Yorkers who came up from the city on the new rail lines and created a social world. Among them was Col. William Lee Brown, the owner and publisher of the New York Daily News (unrelated to today’s paper), who had a summer estate at Locustwood on Maple Avenue.
His newspaper’s audience was Irish Catholic workers in New York, and it ferociously supported the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine. In 1895, Brown paid homage to the humble newspaper seller who built his fortune on the streets of the big city one penny at a time. The statue of the newsboy strides above a fountain featuring a lion’s head and a devil, and it has survived a lot through the years—including a tornado in 1995. In recent years it was restored by, among others, the New England Association of Circulation Executives.
The William McKinley Statue
Adams | Park Street (Route 8), at the Adams Free Library
For most Americans, the protective tariffs that then-congressman William McKinley pushed through Congress in 1890 were a disaster—raising prices on essential goods, sparking trade wars overseas, and costing the Republican Party the next two elections. But for the Plunkett family of Adams, they were a godsend for their cotton works. They made a fortune, and the politician who enabled them became a close friend.
McKinley visited Adams once as governor of Ohio and twice as President, staying at the Plunkett family’s Park Street home. The statue was commissioned two years after his assassination in 1901 and designed by Augustus Lukeman, a student of Daniel Chester French. It features the man orating, with bas reliefs of scenes from his life, including driving a wagon in the Civil War, his inauguration, and him speaking out for his tariff.
Beckley Furnace
East Canaan, CT | Lower Road, just south of Route 44
Large-scale mining doesn’t immediately leap to mind when thinking about the Berkshire economy, but for much of the 19th century our area was an important source of iron ore mining and smelting. Thanks to the availability of ore and of forests for charcoal, furnaces like Beckley powered local industry, producing everything from pots and pans to cannons and ship anchors.
The Beckley Furnace is the preserved core of a blast furnace that ran from 1847 until 1919. It generated immense heat to melt ore and separate iron from slag, which was piled in giant heaps across the Blackberry River. The river powered turbines that pumped air into the fire. Beckley was one of the last of its type still in operation when it finally shut down.
