Williams family story
At one time Hampden and Hampshire Counties of Massachusetts were principally farmland. Towns like Westfield, Southampton, Worthington, and Granville still have farming characteristics but have changed into highly residential. They were settled as farming towns by the late 1680s by colonial Americans but as emigrants moved into the area in the 1700s and early 1800s, more and more farms were being settled. New settlers were coming from England, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Scotland. These patterns are seen in the Williams quarter. The Williams family itself came from England in about 1830, but the families they married into were all different from one another. They were the Loomis of Connecticut, the Strong of Southampton, the Dubian of Dalton, the Bill of Southwick, the McDonald of New Brunswick, and the Wingate of Scotland.
These families would change occupations as America would develop. They would enter into the manufacturing jobs that booming Westfield would have by the era from 1880 to 1930. They would keep their family farms but take on other occupations like retail and police work. These early immigrants to America are called the Yankees since they were of British extraction. The wave from 1880 to 1920 were from Quebec and Ireland. These immigrants had lower education but were still hard workers.
The Lamontagne family of Holyoke came to work in the mills of Holyoke by the 1880s. Some of them worked farms in Agawam and West Springfield but mostly they were mill workers. In Holyoke, they would marry into the Beauchesne, Monaghan, Cavanaugh, and Gorman families. This new wave of settlers were Catholic compared to the Yankee farmers who were Protestant. Families were much larger and education slight. Virtually all Irish that came to Holyoke were from County Mayo or County Kerry and most of those were from only a few farm towns in Ireland. Entire villages in Ireland were abandoned especially along the western seacoast. Most of the Irish would work in paper or fiber mills in Holyoke like the Parsons Paper Mill, Farr Alpaca Company, and the Skinner Silk Mill.