Caleb Cooley Dickinson (a distant relative to Amherst’s Emily Dickinson) was a successful farmer from Hatfield, Massachusetts. In his 1882 will, he left the majority of his estate – $100,000 – to Northampton, a town just south of Hatfield, for the construction of a hospital. His relatives contested the will and managed to pry $13,000 away, but the $87,000 that remained was used to construct the Cooley Dickinson Hospital, completed on January 1, 1886. The terms of Dickinson’s will mandated that the hospital serve the communities neighboring Northampton “either gratuitously or at a moderate charge according to the circumstances.”  The hospital still exists and has remained a nonprofit institution.