SHEFFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS After the merger of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, the people living out on the western “frontier” were sort of ignored and given only a passing nod from those living farther east, until traffic across the Berkshire area became unavoidable. This area lay on the direct route between Boston and Albany, but there were no roads, only the Indian Trail which ran more or less along what is now Route 23. At the time of King Philip’s War, it was called “ye old path”, and was used by the original inhabitants, an occasional band of soldiers, and occasionally by provincial officials on inter-colony business. But people had begun to move west, and no wilderness was going to stop them. To the east of this area were villages of Hampshire County – Springfield, Westfield, and Northampton; filling up with burgeoning families needing more land. The region was dangerous, and the government was anxious for settlement. People wanted inexpensive land, and it was there – on the other side of the mountains. And so without hesitation, enterprising pioneers advanced westward to the ever-extending frontier. Massachusetts had been rechartered in 1691 as a royal province with a representative council and assembly. Voting privileges under the new charter were no longer restricted to members of the established church, but were granted to all property-owners. Beginnings of Sheffield Eager to become landowners, in 1722 two different groups of Hampshire County men petitioned the General Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay for two tracts of land along the Housatonic River. The king had instructed that township-size grants be made to groups of 50 or more families who intended to settle the land themselves. Governor Shute called an investigating committee, who approved the grants, and he signed them on June 30th, 1722. The adjacent tracts would each be seven miles square. One grant was contiguous with the Massachusetts-Connecticut boundary line and was conveyed to Joseph Parsons and 115 others. The second grant was northward along the river, and went to Thomas Nash and 60 others. All this land became two townships. A court-appointed committee was authorized to admit settlers, grant lots, and take charge of the business affairs of the newcomers. This committee consisted of John Stoddard and Henry Dwight of Northampton, Luke Hitchcock of Springfield, Samuel Porter of Hadley, and Captain John Ashley of Westfield. The stipulations made by the court were customary for pioneers of that day. They were to settle their land in a compact, regular, and defensible manner. They were to choose among the petitioners the 120 whom they judged most likely to establish a permanent settlement. They were to allow the settler no more than three years to build and occupy a suitable dwelling and to cultivate the prescribed amount of land (12 acres) in order to be entitled to their grants. Another requirement was the setting aside of lots for the first settled minister, for the support of the ministry, and for schools. For each 100 acres assigned, the grantee would pay the state 30 shillings. That money was to be used for reimbursing the Indians for their land, for paying the expenses of the settling committee, and for building meetinghouses in the townships. The committee met on March 19th, 1723, in Springfield, and accepted the petitions of 55 proposed settlers and allocated lands to them. Title to the land was given to the committee on April 25 in 1724 at Westfield by Konkapot and 20 other Indians in return for “Four Hundred and Sixty Pounds three Barrels of Sider & thirty quarts of rum.” The lands included all of the present towns of Sheffield, Great Barrington, Egremont, and Mount Washington and much of Alford, Stockbridge, West Stockbridge, and Lee. The tract covered an area about 18 miles long and 12 miles wide, much more territory than the General Court had intended. Out of this were carved the Upper and Lower Housatonic townships. The southern boundary was the line between the province of Massachusetts Bay and the colony of Connecticut in New England. To the west was “ye patten or colony of New York.” That boundary line between Massachusetts and New York was still a matter of controversy. The western border of this land could not be demarcated and would be a source of trouble for decades. Finally Progress So few records between 1723 and 1726 exist that no one can learn why there was apparently no progress in settling the townships during those years. While the committee lagged, Matthew Noble took a giant step forward by crossing the formidable mountains to explore “Housatonack allias Westonook.” Matthew Noble was the enterprising son of a pioneering Westfield family. His father, Thomas, had crossed the Atlantic as a young man and became one of the early settlers of Springfield. With a large and growing family, he found himself falling ever deeper in debt, so he turned westward once again and took his family to the new settlement at Westfield. There he prospered, became a constable and county surveyor, and left his family of ten children “a respectable estate” when he died in 1704. Matthew’s older brother, John, became the first white settler of New Milford, Connecticut in 1706, and our Matthew, who was the third son, became the first white settler of Sheffield. Matthew was about 57 years old when he went to Sheffield in the Fall of 1725. He found the Indians to be friendly and spent the winter with them. He returned to Westfield in the spring to give a report. Come June the next year, his daughter, Hannah, only sixteen at the time, accompanied him back across the mountains to Sheffield, to keep house for him. She carried her own featherbed with her on horseback, and became the first white woman to set foot in Berkshire County. Later on, Matthew’s remaining two daughters and six sons joined them at the frontier. Who Really Was the First – Matthew or Obadiah? There are written statements and personal documentation that it was Obadiah Noble who was the first white settler in Sheffield. By March of 1726, the settling committee was ready to make plans for surveying the tract in order to divide the townships and lay out lots at least in the Lower township. Captains John Ashley and Ebenezer Pomroy had been sent to visit the area, and after they returned with a report, the committee again met in Springfield and decided that “Ye Lower Township shall extend up the Maine River from ye Path yt goeth over ye River by ye Great Wigwam, something above ye middle falls, which is something above half a mile from said path; and if there shall be a mill or mills sett up there in ye Great River, that each town shall have ye privilege of ye stream for yt purpose.” The east-west line dividing the Upper and Lower Townships crossed the Housatonic approximately where US Route 7 crosses the river today. The Lower Township was partitioned into five divisions, two of which were the minister’s right and the school land and reached as far as the Indian reservation. Shares in the other three divisions were sold to 39 prospective setters. A lottery was then conducted to determine impartially where each proprietor’s land would be located, care being taken to ensure that each would receive a fair share of both meadow and upland. Each proprietor was allotted a home lot within easy calling distance of his nearest neighbor in time of need, but he might also have a larger acreage some distance from his home in a less protected part of town. All the undivided land was held in common by the settlers, and committee records indicate that the plans were “well accepted” by the proprietors. By May the next year, “many people were upon the land at Housatunnuck”. Suddenly, The Dutch patentees recalled that title to this desirable land had, indeed, been granted to them by the Indians in 1705. They claimed that they really had planned to settle there all along, as evidenced by their annual quit rent payment of £7 10s. Through their spokesman, they complained to the governor of New York and His Majesty’s council that they had “lately met with great trouble and disturbance from the people of Conecticut and Massatuchets, they both pretending that Westenhook will fall into their boundaries whenever the partition lines between this Province and those Colonys shall be perfected, and doe begin already to settle the same.” The Hampshire County proprietors were also grumbling, saying that “the Dutch people molested them and caused great charge and trouble to ye Committee as well as ye People.” Both groups had pretty good claims to the land. The Westenhook Patent based its authority on New York’s claim to all the territory west of the Connecticut River as the result of discoveries by Henry Hudson and Capt. Adrian Block. The English, however, had an earlier and grander claim – the great patent of James I in 1606 which included all the land extending as far as the Pacific, based on the explorations of John and Sebastian Cabot. Both claimed the land by exploration and by purchase from the Indians. Settlement of the Dispute Plans for moving into the territory were suspended pending arbitration of the dispute. Ebenezer Pomroy, one of the settling committee, received a letter written on 12 May 1727 on behalf of Lt. Gov. William Dummer, acting chief magistrate of Massachusetts Bay, “forbidding ye Inhabitants of ye Province Prosecuting any suite respecting those Lands, or making Further Settelments till ye Line be fixed.” Massachusetts, therefore, was on record as the advocate of due process of law in settling this disagreement. But, there may have been some official eyewinking, for the committee records state that after that order was given, settlement at Housatonic was for a considerable time much hindered, but afterwards many of “ye settlers, by themselfs or others, gott upon the Land, and had ye Encouragement of ye General Assembly.” Officially, however, encouragement was not given until six years later – three years after the allotted three years for building a house and tilling the land had expired. On 22 June 1733, at a meeting, the House of Representatives “ordered yt John Ashley and Ebenezr Pomroy Esqrs and Mr. Thomas Ingersoll be a Committee fully authorized and Impowered to bring forward a settlement of ye upper Township att Housatunnock...the former Committee not having Perfected their work before their Power Determined: the Committee’s Power to extend also to ye Lower Township, so as to confirme the Settlers in their Property.” This time the committee was to report their “Doings” as to the Lower Township within 12 months. During the year of 1733-34, the new settling committee visited the town several times, admitted colonists, surveyed the land, outlined the plots, and recorded titles. The committee records describing the lots laid out in the Lower township have been preserved and are stored in the town hall in Sheffield. Less durable were the landmarks used to fix the boundaries: a certain birch, pine, chestnut, or ash tree; or a transitory stake, stump, or swamp. Title to many of the proprietary rights changed hands during the eight years between 1726, when the lots were first assigned, and 1734, when the committee certified ownership. Some of the original proprietors had already died; some had sold their shares. Those owning land in 1734 were “confirmed in their Property” as follows: FIRST DIVISION John Ashley, Aaron Ashley, Ezekiel Ashley, Matthew Noble, Nathaniel Leonard, Joseph Taylor, John Pell, Joseph Corbin, Jonathan Westover, Benjamin Sackett, Chileab Smith. SECOND DIVISION Zachariah Walker, James Smith Jr., Thomas Lee and Joshua Boardman, Lt. James Smith, Samuel Goodrich and John Westover, John Smith, Joseph Seger and Lt. Thomas Ingersoll, John Huggins deceased, Joshua Boardman. THIRD DIVISION Japhet Bush, John Ashley, Capt. John Day, Philip Callender, John Huggins deceased, David Clark, Anthony Austin, Nathaniel Austin, Eleazar Stockwell, Noah Phelps, Lt. Thomas Ingersoll, Obadiah and Solomon Noble, Matthew Noble Sr., William Goodrich, Jonathan Root, Daniel Kellogg, Stephen Vanhall, Samuel Ferry, Capt. John Ashley, Minister’s Lot, School Lot. The proprietors, most of whom were by that time settled in their new homes, held an organizational meeting on May 12, 1733. Daniel Kellogg, husband of Hannah Noble, the first female settler, was chosen proprietors’ clerk. No formal survey of the town had yet been competed, but already the residents realized the need for more acreage than the 7-mile-square tract which the legislature had seen fit to grant them. In an attempt to obtain confirmation of the enlarged district, the newly organized group planned to make a chart of the township. As usual, things take longer than we expect. John Ashley’s plan, dated October 24, 1733, was rejected by the General Court, as was an inaccurately drawn map prepared in 1737 by Capt. William Chandler. Impatient for a determination, the proprietors met on November 20, 1738, and chose Nathaniel Austin to represent them before the General Court “to get a Confirmation of the town of Sheffield together with the overplus lands found therein.” He was advised to seek the assistance of Col. John Stoddard of Northampton to bring the matter to a head, but it was not until August 4, 1741, that Chandler’s survey, purged of its most glaring errors, was finally accepted by the legislature and approved by the governor. Sheffield in 1741 extended from the northern boundary of Connecticut to an E-W line crossing the Housatonic River at the so-called Great Bridge in Great Barrington, a distance of about 10 miles. That land reserved in 1724 for the Indian village of Skatekook had been returned to the Lower Township in 1736, when the Indians were given their own town of Stockbridge. Indeed, these two towns – Sheffield and Stockbridge – were the only incorporated towns in the Housatonic valley, two of only fourteen in all of Hampshire County, the largest and most sparsely-settled county in the province. This was truly frontier territory. The frontier environment promoted nationalism, democracy, and individualism, according to the renowned historian of the frontier, Frederick Jackson Turner, when he suggested that the forces molding the national character were inherent not in European genes but in the successive frontiers that rippled across the American continent. In 1893 he startled the American Historical Society by that statement. Sheffield, then, an especially interesting frontier town, displays all three – nationalism, democracy, and individualism. Frontier Becomes Settled: It’s All About Roads and Bridges The direct route from Boston to Albany, New York, passed right through southwestern Massachusetts, but in 1724, the only road was the Indian trail. The mountains contained heavy timber and within the forests dwelt wolves, bears, among all manner of forest dwellers. The Indian trail was narrow, to be sure, and its route was circuitous and complicated. It was on this trail that Matthew Noble made his way to Sheffield in 1725. According to legend, he camped for a time by the “Big Elm” on the Indian trail leading into Connecticut, a trail marked on both sides by apple trees which cropped up from seeds dropped by wandering Indians. It could have been about 200 years old when he enjoyed its protection. It grew to be 82 feet high with and spread out 108 feet. Its circumference measured 20’ 3” at about 3’ from the ground. Under this historic tree, later, were held town meetings and picnics; finally being leveled in 1926. It is forever remembered, however, depicted on the town seal with the inscription, “He who plants a tree plants hope.” The Indian trail on which this elm stood was the westerly one of two coming up from Connecticut and passing through Sheffield. It followed fairly closely what is now Weatogue Road, Rannapo Road, and Main Street. East of the Housatonic River another trail led north through Ashley Falls by way of Lower Hewins Street and then to Boardman Street and on to Great Barrington. The first bridge was built probably about 1731. By 1735 a road, later referred to as the “Great Road,” had been cut through the forest from Westfield to Sheffield. In that year, the Indians were reimbursed by Capt. John Ashley for a strip of land 2 miles wide and 26 miles long. The road ran east by way of Rannapo Road, crossed the Housatonic over the first bridge, ascended Hulett and Brewer Hills, and went from there through New Marlborough to Westfield and Springfield. To protect the road, the General Court in the same year authorized the establishment of four towns “upon the road betwixt Westfield and Sheffield” – Tyringham, New Marlborough, Sandisfield, and Becket. The settlers would be expected to keep the road passable and protected. This was a sturdy military road which was graded, planked, ditched, and provided with bridges rather than fords. Different residents, by spring of 1737, had made a sleigh road out from Sheffield, over which more than 20 well-loaded sleighs passed and repassed from Westfield. Early roads were cleared just enough for pack horses to negotiate. As the settlement expanded, the roads were widened to accommodate oxcarts and later improved so that wagons could travel over them, at least during the dry season. The first road was probably the one built by Derrick Spoor, a member of an early Dutch family which received an easement for land in Mount Washington under the Westenhook Patent, as a pack horse trail. Spoor left his mountain property to avoid paying the exorbitant annual rent demanded by the New York State landlord, and built a cabin on land now owned by Berkshire School. He then made a trail following for the most part an old Indian path to Bash Bish Brook near East Street in Mount Washington where the rest of his family lived. Now called Elbow Trail, this road is used by people going to Guilder Pond and Mount Everett. In the south part of the town on the western bank of the Housatonic River, John Ashley, returning from college to the town he had helped his father survey, built a house which became the showplace of the region. Lawyer-farmer Ashley operated a gristmill, cider mill, sawmill, and ironworks, on the nearby Ironworks River, now called the Konkapot. Captain John Ashley obtained the first sawmill charter in Berkshire County in order to furnish planks for the Great Road begun in 1731. At the foot of the falls on the west side of the river stood the ironworks, iron ore for which was transported from the mines in Salisbury over the shoulder of Miles Mountain, now Cooper Hill, and across the Great Bridge. This bridge, just north of the Cobble, was probably constructed in 1732 and in March 1737 John Ashley and others were appointed to repair it. The third bridge in Sheffield was built across the Wampanikseeport (now the Green River) in 1734, with Joseph Noble and Samuel Dewey designated to get the work done. About four years later a bridge was constructed to cross the Housatonic in the section called Kelloggtown. Ashley’s gristmill was located on the east side of Ironworks River. The Old Red Mill, partly destroyed by fire in 1970, was built about 1835. Colonel Ashley House I include in this chapter the story of Sheffield's Ashley House because it is a very historic house still standing. Col. Ashley was not a direct ancestor of ours, but he was the son of one of our ancestors. The house can be visited in person, as well as on the Internet. The Ashley House The historic Ashley House was built in 1735 by French and Indian War veteran Colonel John Ashley, a founder of Sheffield, when he was only 25 years of age, for his Dutch bride, Hannah Hogeboom. In addition to being a patriotic revolutionary, Ashley was a lawyer and a gentleman of some refinement. Said to be the oldest complete house in the Berkshires, it is exquisitely decorated in Colonial period paneling, has a broad fireplace and staircase, hand carvings, ornaments and decorations and includes many items of pottery and tools, including some of Ashley’s primitive "rod and chain" surveying equipment. The Ashley House was the center of social, economic, and political life in south Berkshire County in the 18th century. The famous Sheffield Declaration, a petition against British tyranny and a manifesto for individual rights, was drafted in the upstairs study of the house and published in 1773, three years before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Elizabeth Freeman, known as Mumbet, was a slave in the Ashley household. The Massachusetts legislature had passed a bill under which slaves could sue their owners for their freedom. After an altercation with Mrs. Ashley, Mumbet went to Theodore Sedgwick, an attorney in Stockbridge who successfully sued the Ashley family for her freedom. This was the first legal freeing of a slave in the nation. The cause for abolishing slavery in America was strengthened in the celebrated 1781 Massachusetts state court battle that freed the Ashleys' slave, Elizabeth Freeman (nicknamed "Mumbet") under the new state constitution. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, the Ashley House exemplifies early 18th century architecture. House furnishings and items date from the 18th and early 19th centuries. The house was owned in 1958 by Edward A. Brewer, who at 80 years of age wanted to ensure the preservation of his treasure. Built on the bank of the Housatonic by Col. John Ashley in 1735, the house was large for those days and solidly built. It was located on what was originally “Town Street,” later to become a back road. After Col. Ashley’s death in 1802, the house passed through several owners before coming into the possession of Harry Hillyer Brigham, a great-great-grandson of the colonel. Having bought the house with the stipulation that it be moved, Mr. Brigham in 1930 carefully relocated the house a quarter of a mile down the road to an open meadow bordering on Stony Brook. Such care was taken in the moving that a pail brimful of water was placed on one of the beams so that its smooth progress could be checked. It was said that no one drop of water was spilled. Lovingly restored by Mr. and Mrs. Brewer, the house has retained most of its original distinctive features: a Greek Revival six-panel door, wrought-iron handle and latch, beautiful paneling and molding, and clapboards and floorboards which were among the earliest products of the first sawmill built in Berkshire County, the saw having been drawn by oxen over the Great Road from Westfield. Aroused by Mr. Brewer’s desire to relinquish the property to a reliable interested group and apprehensive lest it fall into heedless hands, appreciative citizens formed Colonel Ashley House, Inc., in January 1959. A fund-raising campaign to buy the house and preserve it as an historical landmark and museum culminated in its purchase on November 1, 1960. On March 1, 1972, the property was transferred to the Trustees of Public Reservations. Article submitted to the Sheffield Times November 25, 2003 By Will Garrison, Historic Resources Manager, The Trustees of Reservations Based on a report by Myron O. Stachiw In Ashley Falls, not far from the Housatonic River, stands a modest looking Colonial house, its appearance belying the history contained inside. Built in 1735 for John and Hannah Ashley, it was once a center of economic and political power in Sheffield. Colonel John Ashley was the wealthiest and perhaps most influential man in Sheffield. He was a lawyer, businessman, politician, and a leader in drafting the Sheffield Resolves in the Revolutionary era. Ashley owned several slaves, one of whom, Mumbet, successfully sued for her own freedom in 1781. At the time of his death in 1802, Colonel Ashley owned thousands of acres of farm and woodlands, several houses and mills, and a general store. Today, there is little left of this empire. This history is presented to visitors to the Colonel John Ashley House, a historic house museum owned by The Trustees of Reservations. But the study of history is not static, and staff decided that more in-depth study of the Ashley family would improve the interpretation of the house. With a grant from the Bay State Historical League and the Massachusetts Humanities Foundation, The Trustees hired historian Myron O. Stachiw. Stachiw, a historian who worked at Old Sturbridge Village for many years, took on the task of carefully sifting through real estate records, tax records, and account books for data about the Ashley family’s economic, civic and political life. All of the records were useful, but the account books were perhaps the most interesting to read. According to Stachiw, “They are a remarkable record. They provide an extraordinary picture of the material and social world of the Ashleys and their neighbors in Sheffield.” Many of the surviving ledgers and daybooks from the 1760s to the 1840s are owned by J. C. Hurlburt of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who loaned them to The Trustees. Mr. Hurlburt is the descendent of the Hurlburt family that acquired and occupied the William Ashley House in Ashley Falls in the late nineteenth century. When that family sold the property in the twentieth century, they took the Ashley account books with them, preserving them to this day. The surviving books represent only a fraction of the volumes used by four generations of Ashleys to record their financial affairs. These included extensive farmland; the raising, grazing, and slaughter of livestock; potash works; sawmill; gristmill; nail factory; plaster mill; carding mill; ironworks and iron mines; weaving and spinning accounts; records of storekeeping; and labor accounts. The quality of the records varies, from haphazard memoranda about laborers and work to be done, to sophisticated bookkeeping procedures that include daybooks and a series of ledgers with coded entries for purchases in the store. Entries in 1771-1773 helped confirm the construction date of the house of General John Ashley (the Colonel’s son) at the intersection of Rannapo and Cooper Hill Roads. By the late eighteenth century, the Ashley family in Sheffield dominated the town’s social, civic, political, and economic life. Col. Ashley, the reigning patriarch of the clan, had been the leading taxpayer in the community for nearly half a century. By the 1760s, probably his most prosperous decade, it appears that he was operating a store, sawmill, gristmill, potash works, cider mill, tanneries, and the ironworks. By the time of his death in 1802, he owned more than 3000 acres with sixteen dwelling houses. Ashley’s lands produced large quantities of hay, corn, rye, oats, flax, fruit for cider, wheat, and tobacco; the extensive meadows provided forage for herds of cattle and sheep; his woodlands yielded charcoal for the ironworks. Colonel John and Hannah Ashley had four children. Son John (later referred to as General John Ashley) was born in 1736; a daughter, Jane, in 1738. Two more daughters followed in 1740 (Mary) and 1744 (Hannah). John Ashley was a leader in the local militia, ending his active career with the rank of Colonel. Col. Ashley played an important role in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary history of the region. In January, 1773, Ashley was one of the authors of the "Sheffield Resolves", a series of resolutions proclaiming the rights of Englishmen in relation to the English Crown. The Resolves were a statement of the rights Americans had and grievances under which they labored, including the familiar revolutionary-era cry: “No taxation without representation!” The Ashleys were among the main participants in a drama that contributed to the end of slavery in Massachusetts. Col. Ashley owned African men, women, and children as slaves, who labored in his household as servants and on his farms and in his mills. The 1771 Massachusetts Tax Valuation listed five slaves in the Ashley household. At that time fourteen households in Sheffield owned slaves. In 1781, one of the slaves, a woman known as Mumbet who had been purchased from Mrs. Ashley’s family in Claverack, New York, was upset with what she felt was unnecessary violence and the unfairness of human bondage. She, together with another slave named Brom, brought suit against Col. Ashley in the County Court of Common Pleas. Represented by Col. Ashley’s friend and colleague, Theodore Sedgwick, Mumbet and Brom won their freedom when the jury found that they were freemen illegally detained in servitude by the Ashleys. This case was one of several in Massachusetts during the early 1780s brought by slaves and challenging the institution of slavery in the Commonwealth. Eventually the cumulative effect of these cases was the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. Visitors to the Ashley House in the 21st century notice evidence of several renovations. It is likely that Col. Ashley improved the interior of his own house sometime during the 1760s or early 1770s. The improvements included the installation of elaborate paneling and a fireplace in the study, plastering of ceilings, and re-trimming the exterior of the house. It is likely that the kitchen at this time was still in the southwest room or what is now the southwest parlor. The rooms at the rear of the house (present kitchen, pantry and southeast bedroom) were unheated and in a different configuration. In 1790, Hannah Ashley passed away in her seventy-eighth year. Col. John Ashley remained alone in his house with three elderly African men – former slaves, now servants - who remained after the 1781 lawsuit. Joining him in the house during the latter part of the decade and until his death in 1802 as a housekeeper, nurse, and companion was a widow, Mrs. Jane Steel. Another blow came in November 1799, when the heir-apparent to the Ashley wealth and status, Gen. John Ashley, died unexpectedly. This divided the holdings prematurely and diluted the wealth of the family. By 1838 both the Col. Ashley House and General Ashley House, and most of the lands once held by Col. John Ashley had been sold out of the family. A grandson, William Ashley, retained control of the mills, store, and ironworks until his death in 1849, but did little to expand and pass on the Ashley wealth. With his demise, the Ashley presence in Sheffield largely disappeared. The story of the Ashleys in Sheffield is a remarkable one. They rose to dominate the town for nearly a century, and then as a result of death and other circumstances the wealth and status could not be sustained. Stachiw’s research answers many questions, but raises others: How could such wealth and prominence be lost? What was the lasting impact of the Ashleys on the town? Visitors are encouraged to visit the Ashley House (opening Memorial Day weekend) to learn how history continues to evolve. Our Sheffield Ancestors Matthew Noble Col. John Ashley is not one of our ancestors. His own forebears, however, are. PRIMARY REFERENCE Preiss, Lillian E. Sheffield Frontiertown. Sheffield, MA: Sheffield Bicentennial Committee, 1976. In the Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah: Call No. 974.41/S3 H2p. The Trustees of Reservations, Home Page. SOME SHEFFIELD LINKS The Ashley House, Sheffield, Mass Map of Berkshire County, showing Sheffield A History of the County of Berkshire, Mass., on Google The Trustees of Reservations, feature The Ashley House. Click your Back button to return to the page you just left to get here.