USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Stark > Some recollections of the upper Ammonoosuc Valley > Part 1
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GEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 02963 6278
Gc 974.201 C78ka Kauffmann, R. M. Some recollections of the upper Ammonoosuc Valley
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019
https://archive.org/details/somerecollection00kauf
SOME RECOLLECTIONS
THE UPPER AMMONOOSUC of
VALLEY
To my old and valued friend and one - tune fellow camper, Polly Jones,
who appreciated this remote and secluded little valley, with the compliments of "the author"
R. M. Kaufmann
R. M. Kauffmann
1948
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 . Fort Wayne, h. 46001-2270
الله
SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF
THE UPPER AMMONOOSUC VALLEY
The writer of these random recollections of more than six decades sets them forth in printed form not because he thinks they have any literary merit but because he is their possessor. It is unusual for a man to have summered so constantly for such a length of years in one spot. His remembrances are factual and are likely to be of interest to his immediate family. It may be that they will have a wider appeal among the group whose good fortune it has been to summer in the same place. Many of the items have been heard before throughout the years, but here they are put together for whatever they may be worth.
The writer has used the phrase "The Upper Ammonoosuc Valley" because Camp Percy on Christine Lake in the town of Stark is in that valley and the acquaintance of all the campers has run some distance up and down it. It is in that part of New Hampshire called "The North Country" and for the first half of the writer's life was rather isolated, primitive and generally "back-woodsy". In the year 1888, when he first came there, it was exceedingly so, although in sixty years a gradual and steady change has occurred.
To begin: It is not the better known Ammonoosuc which flows through the towns of Bath, Lisbon and Littleton into the Connecticut. Early residents of New Hampshire had no hesitancy in giving the same name to two different streams, mountains or villages. The stream rises in the town of Ran- dolph and flows through wild parts of Berlin, Milan and Stark in Coos County. From West Milan on it flows through farming country and past the settlements of Crystal, Percy and Stark to Groveton, a small mill town where it empties into the Connecticut. Its course traces, roughly, a large semi- circle. Although it is near the famous White Mountains and their resorts, it is on the unstylish side and in many ways far removed from the White Mountain country and even today is a sort of backwater. With the Androscoggin it forms a
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valley throughfare between the level lands of Maine and those of the Connecticut River and through all of its course is flanked by high hills and even high mountains.
Roughly speaking, it bisects the town of Stark, the majority of whose settlements run alongside it. At the village of Percy the outlet of Christine Lake (formerly called North Pond) enters it. About a half mile to the North of Percy and up- wards about 220 feet lie the lake and camp, which are well- known to most of the readers of this and so will not be de- scribed except incidentally.
The Percy Summer Club of New Hampshire, which owns all of the land surrounding this lake, was founded in 1882. The writer's grandfather, S. H. Kauffmann, was one of the original members and the first lodge that he occupied was Waterside. Next the writer's father, Rudolph Kauffmann, owned it. Now it is the property of the writer and it will, it is hoped, become the property and the summer home of his sons and grandchildren. This lodge was built originally by George P. Rowell in 1884 and shortly thereafterwards he sold it to S. H. Kauffmann.
Starting in with Camp Percy, and before considering the valley at all, the writer first came to camp with his younger sister in 1888. The place was generally as it is now, although much more simple and primitive and with but five summer lodges. The writer will not expatiate on its beauty and pleas- ures, which have continued for so many years. All this goes without saying, and also the sentiment which surrounds the cottage where he has lived longer than in any one place during a long life. The lodge is peopled to the mental eyes of the writer with five generations: three living, two passed on-he being in the middle of the list. The writer can close his eyes and see his loved grandparents and parents in Waterside as plainly as he can his dear wife who has shared all his pleasures since 1911, as well as his tall sons and daughters and grand- children.
The town of Stark was named Percy until the 1830's when its name was changed to honor the hero of The Battle of Bennington. The whole tract was granted by George III to the then Earl (now Duke) of Northumberland whose family name was Percy. The next town to the northwest is called Northumberland after his earldom. Percy was settled rather
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late; was incorporated in 1791, and life in this small town was always hard and still is not easy. Its land is poor and its in- dustries few. It was settled largely from Lancaster way by hardy pioneers with such typically English names as Cole, Powell, Pike, Smith, Leavitt, Jackson, and with here and there a French-Canadian name like Massuere.
One of the four of the same surname who signed the peti- tion for incorporation of the town was Clafford Cole, who was the great-grandfather of Charles Alvah Cole, of whom more later.
The people of Stark were; and still are, typical north coun- trymen, sometimes hard externally, but generally fine people underneath. They were industrious and used to hardship and privations and these traits persist, only slightly diminished, until today. There has been some infiltration of foreign people, French and Irish, but not a great deal.
The village of Percy was called Starkwater until the 1880's, for then it was rather a suburb of Stark village, two miles to the west and the largest settlement in the town. It was es- tablished and exists until today because of its unfailing flow of water from the Lake. This was used first for a very small mill and later as a watering tank for the Grand Trunk Railroad, which in 1853 replaced stage coaches. At that time the old drivers were employed as conductors and the writer can recall one or two of these as white-bearded veterans. In the 1870's lumbering operations began on quite a large scale and Percy became a busy mill town. At one time it had a bobbin mill and a saw-mill; two boarding houses, two stores, a blacksmith shop, and a number of houses, long since dis- appeared, and a population of perhaps 300 people. The mills had ceased operating by 1909 and the village shrank and be- came what it is today, literally only a water-tank town. At this writing it has a population of perhaps 65 persons and no store. However, the trains still stop there. Once there were four each day and two each night between Portland and the Province of Quebec, but now there are only two, one each way.
The lumber companies were several and the writer has never been able to get them entirely straight. There are the Percy Lumber Company, Baldwin Brothers, the Paris Realty Com- pany, the Groveton Paper Company, and there may have been others. However, between them they owned much of the
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town which is largely wooded. The writer has seen Percy Village piled high with hundreds of cords of hardwood cut during the winter on the mountains; perhaps thirty horses and many cows in the enormous company-owned barn. The residents were mostly mill hands and lumberjacks. Then, as now, mail and supplies came to camp via Percy, although only rowboats were in use for many years. It was customary for campers, especially the young ones, to go to the village often over the then rough trail and in that way the writer became well acquainted with a number of families of Percy and its vicinity, and at this writing he knows many of their grand- children and great-grandchildren. Some of these were the Greens, O'Connors, Rogers, Emerys, Abbotts, Pikes, Mont- gomerys, Potters and Jacksons.
When the writer first came to Camp he naturally went out into the countryside very little. His acquaintance with the natives was first limited to those who worked at the Lake. Each lodge had a country cook and a hired man and the whole colony was under the superintendency of Stephen M. Crawford.
Stephen Meserve Crawford was one of the several sons of the famous pioneer, Ethan Allen Crawford, whose name and history need no further identification. He was a veteran of the Civil War and had been a carpenter, tin-smith and stage driver, but was particularly noted as a woodsman. George P. Rowell brought him up from Lancaster as Camp Percy's first superintendent in 1882 and there he stayed until his resigna- tion in 1901; he died two years later. He was a "grass widower" and rather enjoyed a solitary life. He lived alone in what is the nucleus of the present Crawford Lodge during the winter, and during the summer he would usually have some young male relative help him with the work. One was Fred Crawford, a nephew. Another was a grandson, Fred Hutchin- son, and still another was a grandnephew, Rollin Webb, who is now a physician in Lancaster. During the writer's very early days he met two brothers of Mr. Crawford, Ethan Allen, Jr., and William, and several of his sisters, so that he can say that he knew almost every child of Ethan Allen Crawford, who died about 1850 and whose name is now legendary.
Steve, as most campers called him, was a unique character. He had his good points and his bad ones, but in his prime he was vastly entertaining. He was nothing whatever like his
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large and enormously powerful father in physique. He was slight and wiry and was an extremely handsome man with gray beard, red cheeks and snapping blue eyes.
As the writer grew older he found himself in camp more than most, staying first with one branch of the family and then another and sometimes in the lodges of friends. There was no one except his sister near his age and he was thrown a good deal into the company of Steve Crawford, who was kind enough to take a little boy with him on foot or in his light buggy on his various business and pleasure trips through- out the valley. In that way the writer slowly got to know many residents of the town and to this day can place their relationships. It is probable that as of this writing he knows more about the people of Stark and their characteristics than has any outsider since Mr. Rowell, who had taught school in the town in the 1850's and was a North Country boy himself. At the time Mr. Rowell taught he was but 16 years of age and he had pupils who were a full 20 years old. In this way he had a great background of acquaintanceship which was useful to him when he conceived the idea of starting the Percy Summer Club. The writer remembers one cold raw September day in 1904. With Mr. Rowell and Myron Cole, now Tax Collector of Stark, he was waiting for the train by the stove in the Percy waiting room. Across the room from Mr. Rowell was a man somewhat older than he, clad for the sort of day it was in a cut-away coat, rubber boots and flannel shirt and white linen yachting cap. Mr. Rowell advanced and said, "Aren't you Woodbury Cole?" The man replied briefly that he was. "Have you ever seen me before?" asked Mr. Rowell. "Not that I know of," was the laconic reply. "Mr. Cole, I boarded at your house in the year 1856 when I was teaching District School here and I can remember yet how good your wife's flapjacks were!" The old farmer beamed and said, "Well you must be George Rowell, but great God, who'd 'a thought it!"
The writer has mentioned Woodbury Cole's costume. He can recall some of the incongruous and almost incredible com- binations that the older residents of Stark affected in the earlier days. Steve, for example, invariably wore a flannel shirt, a vest, but never a coat unless it was really cold, a soft slouch hat and congress gaiters when the weather was good and rubber
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boots when it was bad. Only twice or thrice in his life did the writer ever see him dressed in town style. Woodbury Cole's cut-away coat has been mentioned. Ancient frock coats were also worn. George Smith, "the king of Percy" (he was the local factor of the Lumber Company for many years) nearly always wore a cut-away suit but with any kind of head- gear. The bicycling costume and flowered hat of Aunt Judith Potter (of whom more anon) had to be seen to be believed and it clad a frame weighing 240 pounds. Perhaps the habitual get-up of Benjamin Green, the village constable, is most note- worthy in recollection. Uncle Ben was short and powerful. like his descendants and, although almost pure French, had a Hibernian cast of countenance. His white whiskers formed a "sunflower" fringe under his face. His upper lip was shaven. His mackinaw pants were stuffed into wool sox, often of con- trasting colors. On one suspender was a large silver constable's badge. On his head were the remains of a stove-pipe hat, brim trimmed to a minimum, and a short, clay pipe smoked upside down completed the ensemble.
The farm immediately to the West of the Club land at that time was owned by a very old man named Silas Lunn who was born about 1810 and he lived to be 97 years old and could remember the great fire that denuded the Percy Peaks about 1825. Six weeks before he died he put on his snow- shoes and crossed several fields to visit a neighbor. "Si" or "Sile" had faults, but as a pedestrian he was a marvel. The writer can remember at sixteen trying to keep up with him as he swung through the woods with his long staff. His spare frame was always clad in black and he affected at all times a very wide black Stetson hat. His extremely bony face was graced with a single protruding tuft of white whiskers which jutted from the point of his chin and resembled nothing so much as a whiskbroom. The Lunn farm, later the Wentworth Farm, now belongs to the wife of the writer.
In 1901, as has been stated, the job of Superintendent got beyond Steve and he resigned "by request". He had fulfilled his function, which was to get the place well started. There was no question in the mind of any member as to his successor, provided that man could be obtained. He was obtained. His name was Charles Alvah Cole, fourth in descent from an original incorporator, and he lived about two miles east of
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Percy on a farm on which he was born and where he lived when death overtook him. He had been farmer, lumberjack, and "boss of the woods". He held a number of town offices and later represented Stark in the New Hampshire legislature. He was a man of little education but of tremendous strength of character as well as body, and of great dignity. All in all, no finer type of adult New Englander could easily be found. He served the club until the death of his wife in 1922 when he resigned and became Superintendent Emeritus. Alvah, as all adults called him, was in appearance quite different from Steve. He was larger and although of bony and awkard- appearing frame, his muscular strength was prodigious. The writer has heard Steve, who cordially disliked Alvah, admit that the latter was the strongest man in the town of Stark.
Alvah's father died when he was sixteen and he became the man of the family. He looked after his mother (whose spin- ning wheel, made for her when she was a bride, is in Water- side dining room) and helped raise the younger children; he ran the farm and played the part of the head of the house. On a trip to Nash Stream Pond in the 1870's a younger brother of Alvah's laid his leg open with an axe just after arrival over a hard trail. Realizing the boy's danger Alvah picked up his brother who weighed as much as he did and carried him home four miles straight through the woods and over parts of two mountains, part of the way over no trail, and during that journey setting him down just once. It was an incredible feat and has become a town classic. Undoubtedly he saved his brother's life for it was a terrible cut. This route lay over the foot of Long Mountain and any camper knows what that country is like. The writer recalls in 1912 a float being stranded on rocks near the lower end of the Lake. The rocks had caught in between the logs and there it hung on a slant. Will Emery, the late Dr. John E. Shady and the writer went down one morning to pry it off and tow it home. All were able-bodied men, but could accomplish nothing. Alvah came rowing up, having been to the noon train, and asked "what the boys were up to." He was told; landed his boat on the float and seized a peavey. He peered under the float for a long time; selected a spot, inserted the instrument, and then squatted until he was closed up like a jacknife with the ash handle over the shoulder. He took a deep breath, gave one
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great heave and the float slid free. He laid down the peavey, wiped his hands and surveyed the other three men who were standing open-mounthed. "When I git mad," he remarked, "I am stout." There was not only an example of tremendous muscular power, but the perfect application of it gained through years spent as a lumberjack.
One of the stories of Alvah's early days which the writer has heard him tell in Waterside in late October was of an un- premeditated moose hunt in which he, the late Jim Emerson and Nathaniel Emery, grandfather of Jerry W. Emery, par- ticipated. It is too long to insert in detail in these recollections, but it was a thriller and with a number of comical aspects. They had no intention of hunting moose until they encoun- tered this cow. Cole and Emerson were hunting partridge and Emery was chopping wood. The latter dropped his ax and all went just as they were. They pursued the animal for two days and two nights, sleeping out with no protection and, having finally slain the beast with a 38-caliber pistol, found themselves lost, nor did any of their families have the faintest idea where they were. Where they were was in Columbia Townshop, miles up the Connecticut River. Moose, by the way, of both sexes were strictly protected in the State at that time and they had considerable difficulty in getting the head and meat back to Groveton undiscovered.
Alvah never had but one child, a little boy who died in infancy. A man like him should have had a dozen sons. His wife was extremely quiet and reticent and mixed little with the campers. Her health was always poor and no one knew her very well save the writer and one or two others. Alvah, as has been stated, served in the State legislature with credit. Following his retirement as superintendent, he bought a car and took two long motor trips, each with a companion, in which he covered nearly the whole United States. He was nearing seventy at the time. He remarked that he had had to work hard and stay close to home all his life and he wanted to see. something of his country before he died. As is known to most readers of this characterization, photographs of both Steve and Alvah in their prime hang in the Casino at Camp Percy. In features Alvah resembled a hawk, with aquiline nose and very deep-set eyes. He wore a mustache only. He was a remarkably well-preserved man until he died. He was
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inclined to be reticent at most times but in congenial surround- ings and before a small group he knew well he occasionally would talk freely in a most entertaining manner. He was as modest as he was competent, which is saying a great deal.
To revert to Steve Crawford: As he has said, the writer as a boy was thrown with him a good deal and on occasion boarded at Crawford Lodge. He had read with amazement of the size and strength of the almost-legendary Ethan Crawford, often termed "The Giant of the Hills", namesake of the Notch, the Mountain and the various hotels. In one book, by a well- known author, it was stated that all the sons of Abel Crawford, Steve's grandfather, were giants and that Ethan, the tallest, "towered nearly seven feet in height". One day he asked Steve about this. The old man spat contemptuously and an- swered:
"When I was a boy at the old family farm I saw my mother (Lucy Howe Crawford, a fit helpmeet for her heroic husband) measure father, standing in his stocking-feet against a door jamb."
'"Was he nearly seven feet?"
Again Steve spat and cackled: "He was exactly six feet two inches tall and not a damned inch taller!" Of course that made him a big man, but far from being a giant.
Asked about his father's traditional feats of strength, Steve said some were apocryphal, but plenty were true and the old man could recall seeing his father performing some almost incredible deeds. Once when the two were together they came on a gang of men vainly trying to roll a huge boulder out of the road. Ethan asked the foreman what he would do for him in return if he could move it single-handed. The boss said no man could do it, but he would forgive him his entire year's road tax, then customarily paid in the form of day labor. Seizing a crow-bar, Ethan waved the rest back and alone rolled the boulder down-hill. Steve remembered seeing Ethan come in late one autumn night with a fair-sized bear cub, dead, and with feet trussed, across his shoulders. He had trapped it and clubbed it, but it revived; got a paw loose and tore the captor's vest to shreds. Angered, he had grasped it by fore and hind feet and slammed it overhead to the ground with such force that the impact had killed it.
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The boy remarked that he supposed such a powerful man had lived to be very old. Not so, said Steve; he had died in his fifties, worn out by the strain he had put on the powerful constitution Nature gave him.
No picture, as far as the writer knows, is extant of Ethan, but a drawing, apparently from a daguerreotype, of Abel exists and the resemblance Steve bore to his grandfather is striking. The eldest son of Ethan, Ethan Allen, Jr., was more burly than Steve and was in both youth and old age a remarkably hand- some man. Steve and Ethan were both strong characters and Steve was rather quarrelsome, so that for years they did not speak. Yet Steve would brag about Ethan's ability as an an- gler and as a driver of horses. In the days when outsiders fishing on Christine Lake were regarded as "poachers", nothing pleased Ethan more than to catch a mess of trout right under Steve's nose and Steve would retaliate by finding and hiding Ethan's flat-bottomed scow. The writer can recall the old man, seated in a kitchen chair, chumming the fish liberally, and making great catches of small brook trout in which the lake then abounded. He suffered from a hernia and could do no hard work, but was an inveterate and skillful pickerel fisher- man. He would catch a barrelful from the Connecticut and take them to Lancaster, his home, and sell them. His house, a big square white frame double-house, was afterward the Butterfly Tea Shop, run by his granddaughter, Mrs. Bilodeau.
William Crawford so closely resembled Steve that the first time the writer, as a boy, ever saw him, which was at Jefferson, he thought it was Steve in the flesh. The writer called on him in Lancaster when he was past ninety and the resemblance still was startling,-size, mannerisms, features, beard and all. Both were marked by very large, powerful hands, and small and well-shaped feet.
A Washington artist, friend of the writer's mother, made a water-color sketch of Steve about 1899 when he was old, with a shock of white hair and untrimmed beard. The writer owns it now and it is a fine likeness. He posed in Waterside one rainy day, clad in his blue shirt, vest and rubber boots. As the light waned, the artist remarked she had done all she could and thanked him. Without a word he clapped on his hat and started off to milk. Mrs. Rudolph Kauffmann, then mistress of Waterside, said, "Steve Crawford, aren't you, after
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posing patiently for two hours, going even to look at what Miss Perrie has done?" Steve returned, took a long look and was silent. "Well?", asked his hostess. "Humph; favors Brother William", was his sole comment. It was really a typical Yankee compliment, but of course the artist did not know of the remarkable resemblance.
Stories about Steve and incidents in which he took part are legion. He will recur from time to time in these mental rambles.
To leave the Crawford family for a while, the writer can remember, as has been said, a good many changes in Percy Village and in the town of Stark. Many of their residents were perfectly ordinary people, but a good many were what is known as "characters" in the old days. George Smith, the local Lumber Company's factor, was probably the leading citizen and he wielded, naturally, a good deal of influence. On the whole he was a good friend of the Club but he and Steve never hit it off. Steve once summed him up in the following phrase: "George Smith :- will tell the truth for fifty cents; will tell a lie for nothing." George was a great churchman, at least on Sundays.
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