10 Fred Wilbur Powell^ A. M.
but the position of the rivers and the configuration of the land fortunately limited his efForts in that direction. True to his New England inheritance, he reserved land for a small com- mon in the center of the village.
The company soon became bankrupt, however, and Kelley lost heavily. At the sale of the company's property, he pur- chased some land, having become enthusiastic about the ulti- mate prosperity of the village ; and early in 1829 he brought his family from Charlestown and established his home there.^
Kelley was now in his fortieth year; yet in the record of his life as, here set forth, there is little that would seem to bear out his early vision of a "lonely, laborious and eventful life." It is a workaday record of a school master and a man of small affairs. We have now to consider the man of dreams — and his all-possessing dream of the settlement of Oregon.
2$ Settlement of Oregon, 23; Templ«, 263-3: Alkn, The Town of Palmer, in Cbpeland. Hist, of Hampden County, II, i44« Temple is authority for the state- ment that Kelley projected a canal from Three Rivers to the Connecticut river for the transportation 01 the supplies and ffoods of the mill and village. This plan was not new, however. The citizens of Brookfield, at a public meetins held on May 23, 1825, had proposed the cotistmction of a canal to Springfield, via the Quaboag and Chicopee rivers. — Sprinrfield Republican^ June i, 1825. The canal- building spirit was at its height in Massachusetts in the twenties.
