Granite pegmatite. Berkshire pegmatite field. (This list also covers Rood Ledge, Taylor Ledge, Manning Ledge, and Lilly Pond Ledges, which are located in the same general area.)
Type location for
goshenite (C. U. Shepard, 1844), now a colorless or white variety of
beryl. Originally, goshenite was cloudy pale pink beryl, but the scarcity of pink beryl at the locality resulted in the name being transfered to the ordinary white beryl that was reasonably available at the locality.
Granite pegmatite occurs as scattered boulders to five meters in maximum dimension. Although there are bedrock occurrences of granite pegmatite in the area, the
tourmaline and
cleavelandite boulders can not be traced to a particular dike. Elijah Weeks [b. August 23, 1764] owned the farm 1784-1789. Elijah sold the farm to his brother-in-law, Cyrus Stearns, in 1789. The tourmaline and other interesting minerals including tourmaline were discovered by or before 1811, when mining of the pegmatite boulders began by Dr. David Hunt of Northampton and Colonel George Gibbs of Newport, RI. After Elijah Weeks' father died in 1817, Elijah Weeks moved to Scipio, New York. In 1819, Gibbs' wrote about the locality and gave credit to "Mr. Weeks of New York" for being the discoverer of the locality. In 1823, Cyrus Stearns sold the farm to Levi Barrus. The farm sold back and forth to various people and Levi Barrus until 1845 and then Levi lived on the farm continuously until his death in 1877. Alvan Barrus, his son, inherited the farm. Although the locality was originally called the Weeks Farm, the subsequent owners, the Barrus family owned the land for such an extended period of time that the Weeks connection was all but forgotten.
References
Gibbs, George (1819). On the Tourmalines and Other Minerals Found at Chesterfield and Goshen, Massachusetts (American Journal of Science & Arts, Vol. 1, pp. 346-351).
Hitchcock, Edward (1825). Notice of Several Localities of Minerals in Massachusetts (American Journal of Science & Arts, Vol. 9, 20-23.)
Shepard, Charles U. (1838). Notice of a Second Locality of Topaz in Connecticut, and of the
Phenakite in Massachusetts (Am. Jour. of Sci. 34:329-331).
Shepard, Charles U. (1842). On
Washingtonite (a New Mineral), the Discovery of
Euclase in Connecticut, and Additional Notices of the Supposed Phenakite of Goshen [MA], and Calstron-baryte of Schoharie, N. Y. (Am Journ. of Sci. 43:364).
Mallet, J. W. (1856). On the Rose-colored Mica of Goshen, Mass. (Am. Jour. of Sci. 23:180).
Plante, Alan R. (1992). Western Massachusetts Mineral Localities (Greenfield MA: Valley Geology Press).
Mineral List
25 entries listed. 14 valid minerals. 3 erroneous literature entries.
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