A cascade of bells rang out Thursday afternoon in memory of more than one hundred people killed in a flood 150 years ago.
They rang first at the Williamsburg Congregational Church, about three miles from the old Williamsburg Reservoir Dam, which had powered dozens of mills on the Mill River.
The mills made brass, buttons and brushes as well as cotton, wool and silk thread. But the dam was poorly constructed. On May 16, 1874, it burst. Water plunged through the valley, rising 20 feet at times, carrying trees, houses and people.
"I find myself pretty choked up here," said Nancy Meagher, who stood with others sheltering under umbrellas, waiting for the bells to ring.
Meagher wrote a children's book about the flood, called "Millicent and the Day it Rained Buttons." She said none of the mill owners were held responsible.
"The reservoir was not structurally sound and people knew it, and it leaked for eight years. And so when it collapsed, it destroyed 139 people [who] would have contributed to the world in different ways," she said.
Historian Elizabeth Sharpe, author of "In the Shadow of the Dam: The Aftermath of the Mill River Flood of 1874," said, about one third of those who died were less than ten years old.
"It unleashed this tidal wave all the way down the valley," she said. "Four mill villages were pretty much destroyed."
Williamsburg, Haydenville and Leeds were able to recover, but not Skinnerville, named after William Skinner who ran a silk mill there. Skinner moved his home and his mill to Holyoke, where it flourished.
Sharpe, who is also co-director of Historic Northampton, said the flood—the first major dam disaster in the country, made national and international news. She said it eventually led to new laws.
"The legislation on the the regulation on dam safety was strengthened a little bit in Massachusetts, but it was also strengthened in some of the other New England states who had very similar situations," she said.
The bell ringing on Thursday was part of a series of events held in May and June commemorating the flood. Organized by several groups, including The Mill River Greenway Initiative and Historic Northampton, it includes a theater presentation about the coroner's inquest into the cause of the disaster and a reading of the names of the 51 victims in Leeds.
After the bells rang out in Williamsburg, a cascade of sound flowed down the valley — in the direction of the flood. Two churches in Haydenville were next, including Our Lady of the Hills, which doesn't have bells. It used an organ with bell and chime sounds, instead.
In Leeds, resident Heidi Stevens climbed three ladders into the tall bell tower of the former St. Catherine's Church in Leeds. She rang the bell with a metal mallet. The church is now a private home, but the owners opened up the bell tower to be part of the remembrance.
Churches in Florence and Northampton rang bells, along with the Smith College Mendenhall bell tower. The United Congregational Church in Holyoke also joined in.
The bell ringing concluded in front of the First Churches in Northampton, where the Smith College hand bell choir played an original composition remembering the victims.
