I did indeed field many interesting questions and comments over the weekend after two straight weeks of discussion in this space about the Sugarloaf shelf-caves. And, although I do intend to change subjects this week and address another geographically related topic, please allow me to briefly digress. Enough is enough. I must pry an irritating thorn from my paw, one pertaining to the name of the distinctive South Deerfield peak that has stood as a landmark for as long as human beings have walked the trails and paddled the rivers of our Connecticut Valley.
I’m not sure where it came from or when it originated, but in recent years I sometimes see and hear Mount Sugarloaf referred to as South Sugarloaf, a name I honestly never heard as a boy or man growing up in South Deerfield. When I query people much older than me who grew up with Sugarloaf as a prominent reference-point in their daily travels, many claim they’ve still to this day never heard the peak referred to as South Sugarloaf. And when I see mention of the famous ridge in 18th and 19th century narratives, never is it referred to anything other than Sugar Loaf Hill, Sugar Loaf Mountain or Mount Sugarloaf. This new name was borne of biped transplants with no connection to place.
The descriptive name Sugarloaf was often used by English colonials to describe mountains that rose abruptly off flood plains like a lump of sugar, or sugarloaf — that is, a block of refined sugar in the form of a truncated cone that was familiar to Americans well into the 19th century. Like indigenous ancient beaver myths explaining distinctive landscape features, Sugarloaf mountains were ubiquitous on early-American maps. In South Deerfield, the low, rocky peak overlooking Whately and Sunderland has always been called Sugarloaf, which got its name from 17th century explorers before Deerfield was even established in 1673. Then, after Old Deerfield village was settled in the morning shadow of East Mountain and settlers got comfortable in their new abode, the names of North Sugarloaf and the Pocumtuck Range entered local vernacular. But South Sugarloaf? Never. That’s a recent designation created by and for outsiders compelled to put their thumbprint on the Pioneer Valley. The new name is totally unnecessary and, frankly, irritating for folks with Hadley loam and Hartford lineage in the bloodstream.
“When was the first time you heard Mount Sugarloaf referred to as South Sugarloaf?” I asked an old friend who’s looked up at it from the day he was born, and whose uncle Charlie was the then county reservation’s caretaker back in the day.
There was a long pause, then an honest answer.
“I’ve never heard it called that,” he said.
Case closed.
Bloody Brook
With that off my chest, let’s shift gears and focus on downtown South Deerfield, center of the Deerfield village first known as Bloody Brook. There, nestled on a flat western plain situated below the point of North Sugarloaf and traversed by Sugarloaf Brook, an 18th century man from an old Sunderland family staked his claim as one of the village’s earliest settlers.
Lieut. Zebediah Graves (1741-1823) broke ground for his first downtown home before the American Revolution. The estate grew to its massive 20th century proportions over time and generations before meeting the wrecking ball in the mid-1970s to make room for the old Pioneer Bank. Today, Graves’ has an inauspicious presence across the street, where his humble grave rests in Sugarloaf Street Cemetery — the village’s oldest burial ground. Plus, it is after his family that Graves Street was named. Running east/west from the town common’s southeast corner on Sugarloaf Street to the base of North Sugarloaf, much of the residential neighborhood encompasses the original Graves plot laid out during the Deerfield proprietors’ 1688 Long Hill Division.
Rising to the rank of lieutenant in the Revolution, Graves and family has a rich history on Sunderland, Deerfield and Whately. Sunderland brother Samuel, namesake of his father, was never right after surviving a French and Indian War bullet to the mid-forehead on June 26, 1748, while fighting the Hobbs Fight on duty as a soldier stationed at Fort No. 4 in Charlestown, N.H. The round ball exited above his left ear, taking with it two spoonsful of his brain. The wound left the unfortunate man unstable with falling sickness until his Nov. 1753 death in Sunderland.
Zebediah Graves took as his second wife in 1784 Lydia Graves, a distant cousin from a proud hardscrabble farm family on Chestnut Mountain in West Whately. Lydia’s father, Deacon Nathan Graves, and his sons were well known as superior marksmen, soldiers and hunters. Her brother, John Graves, was a great hunter and Revolutionary soldier who settled on a Grass Hill, West Whately farm and had a son Justus, Lydia’s nephew. A noted marksman in Whately’s Rifle Greens during the War of 1812, after his circa 1814 discharge, he went west as a hunting, trapping mountain man before being killed by Indians near the Rocky Mountains.
My guess is that there are few people alive today who have a clue as to why that downtown South Deerfield neighborhood was named Graves Street.
Then again, it’s quite likely that those who accept Mount Sugarloaf as South Sugarloaf don’t give a flying hoot.
Recorder Sports Editor Gary Sanderson is a senior-active member of the outdoor-writers associations of America and New England. Send your questions, stories about our area to him at: gsanderson@recorder.com.