USA > Connecticut > The Connecticut River and the valley of the Connecticut, three hundred and fifty miles from mountain to sea; historical and descriptive > Part 28
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In Lancaster and in Guildhall and Lunenburg on the Vermont side are found rare combinations of scenic charms. Crossed by Israel's River at its fall to the Connecticut, with great intervals bordering both rivers, with terraces sloping gradually up to low-browed hills, and the whole completely encircled by mountains, Lancaster's natural features are exceptional even in this beautiful region. Add to these attractions of situation the neat town itself, its broad streets shaded by elms, some of which were set out by early settlers gifted with an unusual eye for beauty
The Little Ox Bow-Haverhill, New Hampshire Side.
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united with utility, and the engaging picture is complete. The principal part of the town lies back on the first terrace above the Connecticut's deep intervals. The encircling mountain scenery, in view from the village, or seen to greater advantage from the easily accessible Mount Pleasant, one of its three hills, embraces the range of the White Mountains ; the Percy Peaks in Stratford, with the other northwest heights, in earlier days called the " land pilot hills" because of their service in guiding cross-country hunters to the Connecticut ; westward the Green Mountains; and in the near neighborhood, the Lunenburg range.
Lancaster occupies the " Upper Coos Meadows," upon the richness of which Rogers's Rangers dwelt so elo- quently in their accounts of the north Valley country. The first-comers, about 1763, were an uncommon band of strong characters. At their head was the promoter, David Page, from Petersham, earlier of Lancaster in Massachu- setts. His lieutenants were two stalwart young men, also from Petersham, Emmons Stockwell and Edwards Buck- nam, both in their early twenties, who had previously roamed the country, one as a ranger in Rogers's company, the other as a hunter. The others were David Page's son and his daughter Ruth, a girl of eighteen, the only woman in the band, and a few heads of families from the Massa- chusetts Lancaster and Lunenburg. Stockwell and the younger Page came up ahead to take possession of the grant. Blazing a track through the forest all the way from Haverhill, forty miles below, for the guidance of those who were to follow, they arrived in the autumn and subsisted through the winter on hunting and fishing. The site of their "pitch " is yet shown in an old cellar-hole. In the spring "Governor " Page arrived with the rest, and a drove of twenty head of cattle. Before a year
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had passed Emmons Stockwell and Ruth Page made a pre-wedding journey of fifty miles down the Valley on horseback to find a minister to solemnize their marriage. Later Edwards Bucknam married Page's other daughter, Susanna. The Stockwells and the Bucknams for years led in the material and social progress of the settlement, and both reared large families, the Stockwells fifteen children, the Bucknams ten. Ruth Stockwell was the perfected woman pioneer. She was "a woman of action, full of courage and hope." She could handle a gun as easily as a broom, was a good shot as well as a good cook, more than once bringing down her bear. Lancaster has long been a shire town, and a highly cultivated community. The fine influences of the days when the old Lancaster Academy was at the height of its prosperity still remain, while the busy mills give the town importance as a manu- facturing centre.
Lunenburg and Guildhall were begun at the same time as Lancaster, the first comers and their followers making clearings on both sides of the River. The intervals were then heavily wooded and millions of feet of magnificent pine timber were rolled into the river to get rid of it. Splendid material also for masts for the king's navy was here, but none apparently was reserved for this purpose as the town charters required. At all events his Majesty never got any of it. The settlers must have fared well despite their remoteness from bases of supplies. The woods were rich in game, and the River teemed with salmon. At the head of the Fifteen-Miles Falls, south of Lancaster, salmon, some weighing forty pounds, were easily caught at night with torch and spear. Lunenberg and Guildhill are now fruitful agricultural towns, with well tilled farms and rich creameries.
" Dartmouth College Bridge "-Between Norwich, Vermont side, and the College Town.
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The rapids of the Fifteen-Miles Falls through their long gradual descent, as the River flows, of nearer thirty miles from the start in the "great eddy " to the finish in the romantic " pitch," should be followed along the river roads by carriage, or on horseback as the pioneers followed them. The railroad here winds away from the River to ac- commodate the town-centres which lie back over the hills. From Lancaster, starting at the Lancaster House on "The Street," it is a long summer afternoon's drive or ride through enchanting country. The objective point should be on the Vermont side at East Barnet, where, below the "pitch," the Passumpsic enters, and the River, again widening, is dotted by the " seven islands" to which at low water twice seven and more are added, hindering the great log drives coming down stream, and taxing the skill of the loggers in their passage. Downward from Lancaster the river roads on both the New Hampshire and the Ver- mont sides run for the greater part close beside the rapids ; sometimes crossing an interval fringed with trees and bush, sometimes cutting into small woods through which the tumbling waters sparkle and sing, and constantly in a pan- orama of varying beauty. On the New Hampshire side the way lies through South Lancaster, Dalton with the Dalton mountains rising eastward, and Littleton with the range of low Littleton hills, to a lower village where the River is crossed by the bridge to Lower Waterford. On the Vermont side, crossing from Lancaster by the South Lancaster bridge, it passes through rural parts of South Lunenberg and Concord to the succession of Waterford villages. Through the Waterfords to East Barnet the up- land is taken and then the lower plain, with the River in constant view, and across it the procession of hills, the Gardner range back of Monroe (named for Parson
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Gardner, one of the grantees of Bath in which they rise), and the distant White Mountains. At East Barnet the railroad again comes to the River's side, and follows it down to Wells River Junction and below.
Barnet, its dream of a busy mart at the head of steam- boat navigation long past, enjoys now a life of serenity in the profitable culture of dairy farms, some maple-sugar making, and some prosperous manufactures. From its situation at the turn of the River southward again and at the junction of two tributaries, each making a picturesque approach, the villages of the township look out from their terraces upon a succession of expansive views. The town- ship has its historic landmark in Round Island at the mouth of the Passumpsic in East Barnet, supposed to be the place to which the provisions were brought up from "Number 4" for the relief of Rogers's Rangers on their re- turn from the St. Francis campaign of 1759, and then taken back before Rogers and his starving companions arrived. Something yet remains of the Scotch flavor which the early settlers imparted to the town. For Barnet, like its neighbor Ryegate, was begun by emigrants from Scot- land, in and about 1773, sent out by the "Scotch-American Company of Farmers," composed of farmers living in or about Glasgow.
Haverhill and Newbury, embracing the Lower Coos Meadows, - the rich "Cowass " tract about the "Great Ox-Bow " most beloved by the Indians -rival Lancaster and Lunenburg in beauty of situation. Wells River Junc- tion is a part of Newbury, and alert, citified Woodsville, opposite, of Haverhill. Newbury and Haverhill occupy the sightly terraces back from the River with the meadows about a mile in breadth between. Through the intervals the River flows at an average width of about five hund-
Dartmouth College-The Campus.
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red feet, allotting to Newbury much the larger part of the meadows. In its gentle run the stream takes a straight course for some distance; . then bending and doubling it touches the Newbury terrace; then stretches luxuriously toward the hills of Haverhill. In its enclos- ure of the Ox-bow meadows, not over-described by the local historian as of "wondrous beauty and fertility," it makes a circuit of nearly four miles and returns within half a mile of the starting point. Through the intervals it has repeatedly changed its channel. In more than one place portions of land have been detached from one town and added to the other, and so shifted from Vermont to New Hampshire, and vice versa.
When these towns were begun, only a dozen years be- fore the Revolution, a growth of splendid pine covered the plain where now stands Newbury village, and on the New Hampshire side a " mighty forest " stretched back over the hills from the expansive interval to distant Moosilauke. The River abounded in salmon, the brooks in trout, and the forest in game. Before the townships were actually chartered a few pioneers were already on the ground, the first families coming upon rough river-craft or afoot through the forests along trails marked by blazed trees. The settlements were promoted by four officers of Colonel Goffe's regiment at the conquest of Canada - Colonel Jacob Bailey of Newbury in Massachusetts, Captain John Hazen of the Massachusetts Haverhill, Lieutenant Jacob Kent and Lieutenant Timothy Bedel, - who united in the project when passing through the fertile region on their way home from the war. Both charters were secured in 1763, dated the same day. Colonel Bailey identified him- self with the development of Newbury, Captain Hazen with that of Haverhill.
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Both towns early became important points on the River. Haverhill was foremost among the numerous bid- ders (which included nearly all of the young and ambitious Upper Valley towns) for Dartmouth College in 1769 when Eleazar Wheelock was casting about for a situation. The town offered him a generous domain in North Haverhill overlooking the interval ; and so assured of its acceptance were the subscribers that they had a surveyor employed to lay it out for college purposes, when to their astonishment and dismay the prize went to Hanover. It was a hard blow ; but a quarter of a century after, in lieu of a college the Haverhill Academy appeared and shortly developed into a feeder of the lost Dartmouth. When stage-coaching was at its prime, Haverhill Corner, the chief village of the township, had become a bustling centre, for The Corner was a place where the stages of the great "through lines " between the seaboard and the north " laid up " over night. Then big cheery taverns were here and life was animated with the comings and goings of many travellers. Some- times the nabobs of that day, travelling the road in their grand private equipages, added a dash of gaiety to the scene about the taverns. The road, too, was enlivened by the passage up and down of great merchandise wagons. New- bury also enjoyed a period of animation as a centre of the River transportation before the competition of the rail- roads. It, too, had its day of cheerful taverns, and the now quiet village thoroughfare bustled with life. Educa- tional institutions of importance were then here, among them the Newbury Seminary. The old seminary building yet remains, an example of the plainer type of the New England academy of the early nineteenth century.
Picturesqueness is the prevailing note of these towns as they appear to-day. Along the serene streets here and
Dartmouth College-Dartmouth Hall.
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there, fronted by graceful elms, the visitor comes agreeably upon fine specimens of those spacious mansions, survivals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which characterize and dignify the older River towns throughout the long Valley. Especially fine is the "Col- onel Thomas Johnson house " on the Ox-Bow, Newbury side, the white oak frame of which was raised on the day that the news of the Battle of Lexington reached Newbury, whereupon the workmen immediately left to join the army at Cambridge. Most interesting, also, is the white group about the square at Haverhill Corner. One of these houses is an old-time inn remodelled, the "Bliss Tavern" of genial memory. In Newbury the present-day inn is an enlargement of another old tavern dating from soon after the Revolution. Both towns, with their fine interval and upland farms, their dairying, maple sugar making, and manufacturing concerns, continue to be comfortably prosperous. Several of the larger farms have descended from father to son through the generations from the first settlement.
Of the towns along the remaining reach of thirty miles to White River Junction, each has its own distinct charm either in setting or environment. The villages and farms of Piermont, next below Haverhill, and Bradford below Newbury, spread picturesquely over terraces in the heart of tranquil landscape. Orford and Fairlee next below occupy beautiful openings, with sweeps of green interval broadening on the Orford side, the River flowing gently between in a graceful curve. The Street of Orford, over- looking the interval, is dignified by a succession of old white mansion-houses bespeaking the quiet elegance of former days. Fairlee's Street, backed by a rugged cliff at the upper end, is markedly neat. From the bridge connecting
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the two towns one may look down upon the scene of the trials of Morey's steamboat in the seventeen-nineties. Lyme and Thetford, adjoining Hanover and Norwich, are larger villages than their neighbors above, having some manufacturing in parts, but an outlying pastoral country.
The Hanover of to-day, though small in population outside the college colony, has an urban air and a distinc- tion finer and rarer than would have been conferred upon it had those seventeenth century "Dresden statesmen " won their play for a state and transformed the college- town into a capital, only to mix politics with learning. As it is, Hanover is the college town preeminent in the Valley, its classic shades undefiled by distracting elements. Lying half a mile back fromand above the River, and a mile distant from the railroad on the Vermont side, the town is approached most agreeably by the regular stage- a genuine old-time Concord coach, - which meets all trains at the Norwich- Hanover station. The way from the station crosses an old stout-timbered covered bridge, mounts an abrupt rise from the River-bank, winds along college-flavored streets, and on to the finish with a grand swing of the coach up to the portal of the Wheelock Inn on the College Plain.
The assemblage of college buildings of varied dates and architecture around and about the deep elm-shaded Green, constitutes a dignified and inspiriting spectacle. Among the stately structures the sites of Eleazar Wheelock's hum- ble beginnings are definitely traced. Here is the place of his first log hut in which the college was started by the moving up of the Indian school from old Lebanon in Con- necticut ; here the second and ampler president's house, still preserved in the frame of the Howe Library; here the spot where the first Commencement was held, in August, 1771, in the open air. There were on that memorable
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Dartmouth College- The College Inn and the College Club, from the Campus.
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occasion four candidates for the degree in arts, the stage was a platform of rough-hewn boards ascended by an inclined hemlock plank. The histories tell of Governor John Went- worth's presence with a retinue of forty fine gentlemen from Portsmouth, and how an ox was roasted whole on the Green and served to the populace with a barrel of rum, at the governor's expense. Notwithstanding this magnif- icent outlay, at the commencement dinner next day at the president's house some of the governor's fastidious friends were shocked at the crudeness of the feast for the lack of proper table furnishings, and because the college cook lay asleep from over-indulgence in the holiday bottle. Moor Hall marks the site of the first building for the Moor's Indian Charity School, the nucleus of the college. The colonial College Church dates from 1796. The new Dartmouth Hall of 1905-06 reproduces the Old Dartmouth Hall, begun in 1784, from timbers hewn from great trees on its site, and the centre of the cherished old-time college group, till its lamentable burning in 1904. In Wilson Hall are seen portraits of Eleazar Wheelock and his suc- cessors in the college presidency ; of Samson Occum, the Mohegan, Wheelock's first pupil in the old Lebanon school, that wonderful Indian who, sent to England in the interest of Wheelock's work, aroused such enthusiasm among the clergy and nobility by his preaching, and raised the English and Scotch funds of twelve thousand pounds, headed with the king's subscription ; the Earl of Dartmouth, for whom the college was named in compliment to his headship of the London trustees of the English fund ; of Daniel Webster, the "re-founder "; and of other worthies identified with the college's growth. In College Hall, the most elegant of the modern buildings, with its grand semi-circular porch and terrace, commanding a full view over the Campus, its
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tastefully embellished interior, with great dining-hall, club- rooms, billiard and pool rooms, is seen the modern college club-house in perfection. In a favored spot east of the central grounds is found the fine athletic field. Beyond, in the College Park of sylvan charm, is the classic tower, near which the seniors on class-day gather to smoke the "pipe of peace " after the old Indian fashion. On the River bank are the boat-houses for the college men's fleet of canoes. On the crest of the bank, north of the bridge, and near " Webster's Vale," stood the pine from which in 1773 John Ledyard fashioned his canoe, a "dugout " fifty feet long and three feet wide, for that pioneer voyage of his down the River's length to old Hartford, with a bearskin for covering, a shelter of willow twigs at one end of the craft, dried venison for provisions, and Ovid and the Greek Testament for companionship : one of the first navigators of the Upper Connecticut of the Caucasian race, and one of the most romantic and original manifesta- tions of the Dartmouth spirit, which has since so conspic- uously pervaded Dartmouth men, as this epitome of his extraordinary career, contributed by a distinguished alum- nus, strikingly exhibits : -
John Ledyard, born at Groton, Connecticut, 1751. Enters Dartmouth College 1772. While a freshman absents himself for three months without leave in rambling among the Indians of Can- ada and the Six Nations. Leaves the college in a canoe made with his own hands and descends the Connecticut alone to Hartford. A sailor before the mast, goes to Gibraltar and the Barbary Coast, returning by the West Indies. Appears in London and there meets Captain Cook, then about to sail on his voyage round the world, who appoints him corporal of marines. On this expedition is absent for four years, visiting the South Sea Islands, China, Siberia, the western coast of North America, twice entering the Arctic Seas in quest of the Northwest passage. Returns to America, publishes his travels,
Dartmouth College-Looking down from the Tower in the College Park.
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and endeavors to enlist merchants in commerce with the East. Is next seen in Spain and in Paris, there meeting Thomas Jefferson, then American minister at the Court of France, whom he impresses with his project for the exploration of the territory between the Pacific and the Mississippi which twenty years later was traversed by Lewis and Clark, under the auspices of Mr. Jefferson, then Pre- sident. Unites with John Paul Jones in an undertaking to establish trading-posts on the Northwest Coast, there to traffic in furs, which fails for want of adequate capital. Determined to explore western North America, presents himself at St. Petersburg, and from the Empress Catherine secures a passport across her dominions to Beh- ring Strait. Reaches Yakutsk on the Lena, when he is recalled because of the jealousy of Russian fur traders and under guard sent back to the confines of Poland where he is dismissed with the com- mand never again to enter the Empire. Resolves to explore Africa and while fitting out his caravan dies at Cairo, 1788, at the age of thirty-seven.
In college he was a favorite with his fellow students, not unduly diligent in study, facile in acquisition, impatient of discipline. Else- where he was distinguished for his kind and lovable disposition, his unselfishness and philanthropy. He foresaw and foretold the com- mercial future of western North America and the East. His was the Dartmouth spirit.
In the country about Hanover are delightful drives. Across the River in Norwich the roads out from that village lead to pleasant parts with fair off-reaching prospects. In the centre of Norwich was long the seat of Norwich Uni- versity, developed from Captain Alden Partridge's military school in 1834, whence graduated some famous men-of- arms in their day. Below in the Vermont Hartford town- ship are the beautiful Olcott Falls; and Lebanon, on the New Hampshire side, is replete with charms.
These two towns, marking the south bound of the Lower Coos region, are the largest in population of all the towns in the Valley's sweep from the north, yet of rural
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proportions ; Hartford counting about four thousand and Lebanon five thousand inhabitants.
Within the twenty-five miles' reach between White River Junction and the old frontier post of "Number 4," Charlestown, in the last French war, the four Vermont towns of Hartland, Windsor, Wethersfield, and Spring- field, and the New Hampshire Plainfield, Cornish, and Claremont, lie placid and prosperous all, while Ascutney rises in its noble outlines, the central landscape feature of this part of the Valley.
Windsor remains the historic town of this group. Along its broad elm-lined older streets is retained not a little of the architecture of the period when Windsor was the first town in Vermont in importance and wealth. That was through the first third of its history from the closing eighteenth century, when it was distinguished as a town of learning and refinement (a distinction it has never lost), eminent for its bar, and for men of leading noted for their high public character. The principal dwellings then erected were of the commodious colonial type, often square and white, set in ample grounds, amid large and handsome gardens, an example of which is seen in the old Evarts mansion on the main street. The principal inn was then a hospitable public house with spacious pillared porch and a great arched ballroom the grand feature within. The old inn has gone and the traveller must lament its passing in the absence of an adequate tavern in the town of to-day. The historic landmarks, besides the old " Con- stitution house " in which Vermont was born, include the South Church, remodelled from the meeting-house where the state-making convention first met. Various literary institutions flourish in the town unharmed by the sombre
John Ledyard, the Traveller. "One of the most romantic and original manifestations of the Dartmouth spirit."
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influence of the Vermont State Prison in its fairest part. Cornish and Plainfield, on the hills across the River, are now distinguished as summer seats of art and literature. For scattered about the neighborhood of fascinating Blow- me-down Brook, which separates these towns on its run to the River, is planted the summer colony of metropolitan artists and writers, the Nestor of which, as the first comer, is Augustus St. Gaudens. Sculptors, painters, etchers, decorators, principally of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, constitute this colony, together with a few pen- men, as Norman Hapgood and Winston Churchill, and some members of the other professions. Their dwellings are of gaily varying fashions : some modelled after Italian and Spanish villas; some, old farm-houses made over - Augustus St. Gaudens's was a tavern ; others, quite stately country seats, being the residences of the more plutocratic penmen ; all in beautiful natural settings. The plantation lies secluded five miles off by the river roads from the cov- ered bridge connecting Cornish with Windsor, whence the Cornish stage makes its one trip a day.
Claremont and Springfield, the latter opposite Charles- town and connected by an electric-car line (the northern- most yet in the Valley) with the railroad, now on the east side, crossing the River at Windsor, are both manufactur- ing centres of note, with deep farms fringing on their intervals and terraces. Claremont utilizes the water-power of Sugar River ; Springfield's principal establishments are about the falls of the beautiful Black River. While both towns have lovely natural attractions, the chief one of Springfield, comprised in the deep narrow valley back of the main village through which the Black River makes approach to the Connecticut, is unique. Owing to Gov- ernor Benning Wentworth's fondness for complimenting
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