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TWENTY DECADES IN
PLYMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1763 - 1963
M. L.
-
MAYHEW
LLEGE ROAD
THURLOW
WALKER
3
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RNES
SARGENT · SCHOOL S.Nº.5
HILL
HILL
ROUTE U. S. 3
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HOYT HILL
GLOVE HOLLOW
CURRIER
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REED HILL LOWER INTERVAL SCHOOL
ES Nº 1
JOHN
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UNION S.
BR.
NICHOLS
SCALE IN MILES
0
1/2
1
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974.202 Gc
P74sp
1838645
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
PLYMOUTH MOUNTAIN 1900 FT.
-
-
CLAY
C. & M. / R. R.
PEM
S Nº 10
ASHLAND
-
+
CUMMINGS
STAGE COACH ROAD
3
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BRIDGEWATER
PLYMOUTH
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RUMNEY
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N. H.
1905
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3
R. R.
FAIRGROUNDS
POTASH PIT
25 N.
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.
ADAMS
CLARK
BAKER RIVER SCHOOL
RIVER
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RIV
TURNPIKE
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RESERVOIRS
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WARD'S HILL
6/H SCHOOL
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DARTMOUTH COLLEGE ROAD
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3 RD CLT
HOLDERNESS
EN
TON
CLAY
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 00056 1024
POTASH / PIT
POND
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CAMPTON
LIVER MORE FALLS
WADING POOL
BAKER
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LIVERMORE SCHOOL
P. V. R.R.
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HUCKINS
WEST PLYMOUTH S
PEABODY BR.
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BEECH HILLY/
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81
CALVIN
-Aria C. Roberts
ELLEN AMELIA WEBSTER ON HER NINETY-NINTH BIRTHDAY, SEPT. 25, 1962.
Miss Webster is the great-granddaughter of David Web- ster, the first settler in Plymouth. She was born in Bridge- water, the daughter of David Moor Webster. She attended school in the small, brick schoolhouse on the River Road and at Abbot Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. She con- ducted a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Now, in retirement at her birthplace, she enjoys reading, knitting, cultivating her houseplants, chatting with friends and her parakeet and pet cat, Smokey.
3
TWENTY DECADES 3
IN
PLYMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1763 - 1963
By Eva A. Speare
Eva a. Speare May 15, 1963
Published by the Bicentennial Commission of Plymouth, New Hampshire
BICENTENNIAL COMMISSION
Suzanne Loizeaux. Chairman Arthur L. Carpenter, Jr .. Vice Chairman Leon M. Huntress. Clerk Eva A. Speare Harold C. Freeman
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE COURIER PRINTING CO., INC. LITTLETON. N. H.
1838645
INTRODUCTION
"The Future Is the Past."
The above maxim is axiomatic in its application to the commemoration of the two hundredth birthday of the Town of Plymouth. Every decade since July 15, 1763 has promoted the future.
Although time does not permit the preparation of a documented history, this two hundredth milestone requires a review of the elements that have distinguished the town.
Accordingly, the Bicentennial Commission has published a narrative of the principal events in each of the twenty decades. How the founders determined the ethical, moral and law-abiding principles of town government. How the early settlers utilized the local resources: water power, forests and clay deposits. How transportation encouraged trade and native genius discov- ered new processes that introduced manufacturing. How the early necessity for higher education resulted in the present honorable status of the town. These are described from decade to decade, the facts derived from records of residents no longer among us.
To the integrity, patriotism and industry of the founders and their descendants, Plymouth owes its growth. To its geographical situation, Ply- mouth is indebted, in part, for its present advancement. To its professional and commercial leaders, Plymouth assigns its widespread reputation.
The story about these achievements is gradually revealed within this small volume, written especially for children, yet of historical significance for adults.
May future decades enjoy an increasing prosperity that evolves from the past two hundred years.
EVA A. SPEARE
5
-G. G. Clark
MEETINGHOUSE IN HOLLIS, 1746
Here the Town of Plymouth and the church were organized on April 16, 1764. Selectmen, a clerk, and tax collectors were elected. Rev. Nathan Ward was chosen as the minister of the town.
Notice the horse block at the left, used by a woman to mount to the saddle. If alone, she hooked her knee around the pommel of her side-saddle, or sat on a pillion behind another rider.
6
1763-1773
To visualize the landscape of Plymouth about 200 years ago requires a creative mind. Where cleared fields, paved streets and modern structures now are seen, then dense forests and glacial boulders covered the soil. Beneath the oaks, elms and evergreens roamed packs of wolves, also bear, moose and deer, lynx and wildcats, with otter and beaver near the streams. Coiled among the undergrowth were reptiles including rattlesnakes.
Fortunately, here was well watered territory. Springs were the sources of a dozen streams that flowed into the Pemigewasset and Baker Rivers, that converged where mile-wide grassy meadows formed treeless flood plains. The soil was the deep accumulation of leafmold, rich in humus. After 200 years, the judgment of those men who selected this grant has proved to have been well-grounded.
THE ABANAKI INDIANS
This valley possessed historical traditions. Proved by the research of scholars in Canadian Universities, around 2000 years ago the Abanaki Indians were invading New Hampshire from the north. They named one river Pemige- wasset in honor of their successful leader against the Iroquois invaders from the Mohawk Valley. The other was Asquamchumauke River. Asquam means a quantity of water whether stream or lake; chu, crooked; auke, a high place: a large, crooked stream from the hills.
At the confluence of these rivers, a village grew beside a trail along the banks. Here was a stopping place between Canada and the seacoast. The first Englishmen who looked upon this landscape were captives, seized at the raid upon Dover in 1689, and tramping their weary way to Montreal to become slaves for the French.
One March morning in 1712, Thomas Baker and thirty scouts surprised this village, burned the wigwams and almost exterminated the Pemigewasset Tribe. Raids by the French and Indians prevented settlements during the following forty years. The valley was explored by Josiah Brown in 1751, also by John Stark with three companions in 1752. One of them, William Stinson, was killed when Indians attacked along the Baker River, and Mount Stinson honors his name to this day. Robert Rogers followed the trails along these
7
rivers during the last of the French and Indian Wars. Certainly this region was not unexplored before 1763.
Meanwhile Governor Benning Wentworth, appointed the first royal gov- ernor by King George III in 1741, was longing for possession of northern New Hampshire and Vermont where the wealth of the colonial shipping mer- chants might be invested in land grants. As early as 1748, Meredith was granted and Holderness in 1751.
Immediately after the fall of Quebec to the English in 1759, Governor Wentworth sent surveyors, Joseph Blanchard, William McDuffee, Hercules Mooney and others, to block out townships, six miles square, along the banks of the lakes and rivers. Soon corporations were organized by Proprietors who received grants of some seventy townships about 1761, among them Rumney and Groton then named Cockermouth.
At Hollis, New Hampshire, a number of energetic men began to plan a corporation to obtain the grant that they named Plymouth in 1762. They were joined by about fifty other men, among them Governor Wentworth who claimed 500 acres in every township, Theodore Atkinson, Secretary of the Colony and other wealthy colonial officials.
In the summer of 1762, a few of these pioneers explored the grant and evidently selected sites for their future homes. As soon as their charter was granted on July 15, 1763 before the lots were surveyed, a few cabins were rolled up. The following winter was given to active preparations to remove their families to Plymouth in the summer of 1764.
THE HOLDERNESS GRANT
Neighbors were then living across the river in Holderness. Samuel Liver- more, Attorney to King George, was acquiring hundreds of acres in Holder- ness which then contained a part of Campton, Ashland and Sandwich. His employees had been sent to his grant to clear fields, erect several houses and construct a saw and a grist mill at the falls on Mill Brook that flowed into the Pemigewasset River, almost opposite the former Plymouth railroad station. Proved by State Papers, a ferry provided a crossing in 1764, possibly to con- nect Holderness with the trail along the west bank of the river that had been tramped by Indians over hundreds of years.
It may be well to observe that this period was disturbed with disputes between the King and Parliament with the Colonies about taxation while mob violence raged in Boston and occasionally in Portsmouth. The safety of a settlement far from such strife was an incentive as well as an investment. Samuel Livermore sympathized with the Colonies. To escape from becoming
8
involved in such politics, he removed his family to a home in Holderness in 1766.
The surveyors for Plymouth prepared three separate tracts for lots to each Proprietor: five and a half acres of grassy meadow, one sixteen acre lot of intervale, and two fifty acre lots of upland. In Parker's Inn at Dunstable, Massachusetts on December 20, 1763 the lots were drawn by one Proprietor removing a card bearing the name of a Proprietor from a receptacle and an- other man drawing a card containing the numbers of the three separate lots that were assigned to each Proprietor. Eighteen of the original list of Proprie- tors came to Plymouth. The limits of the grant were bounded by Rumney on the north, by Cockermouth on the west, by Alexandria and Bridgewater on the south, and Holderness and Campton on the east.
These pioneers profited by the experience of their ancestors who settled Dunstable. They realized that the first necessity was a saw and a corn mill. Onesipherus Marsh was authorized to go to "peneycook" to purchase two sets of irons, one for the corn mill, the other for the saw mill. Three men were to agree with "some person to build these mills in the following summer." As often happens, these mills were not completed that year and Plymouth's first crop of corn was ground elsewhere.
On April 16, 1764, a most important meeting gathered in the meeting- house at Hollis where a few men organized a church and accepted a covenant. The names of these members are not preserved, because their records were destroyed in a fire. Two are certain: John Willoughby, the first deacon, and Stephen Webster. To own a covenant was a serious vow that only a devoted, religious person was willing to assume.
By stipulation of the Charter, a minister must be employed by the Pro- prietors, not by a church. His salary was a minister's tax that was paid by each Proprietor or his successor, whether he settled in Plymouth or not.
The first minister was a most wise choice, Rev. Nathan Ward. He was a native of Newton, Massachusetts, well educated and forty-three years of age. At this time he had a wife and ten children. Before he was ordained to the ministry, he was a skilled carpenter at thirty years of age.
A diary by his son, Enoch, states, "Sir," the title for his father, "brother Nathan and I arrived in Plymouth on May 4, 1766." They built a log cabin at the foot of Ward Hill that burned three years later. Then, a framed house was erected upon the minister's lot on the top of the hill.
Mr. Ward was allowed thirty-six pounds for settlement and an annual salary of fifty pounds. His duties were exacting. He was expected to cultivate his farm to produce food for his family. The preparation of two long sermons each week, also the long devotional prayers, required meditation.
9
Rev. Nathan Ward, a self-portrait.
Without a doctor in the settlement, his attention to the ill was most im- portant. Teaching the catechism to the children and writing letters for the illiterate must not be neglected. Often a religious ceremony demanded his presence in another community. Yet this faithful servant of God performed these duties throughout thirty-three years. He died in 1804 and rests in the Pleasant Valley Cemetery.
The town meetinghouse was not constructed until 1768, a log building at the foot of Ward Hill. The furnishings were not completed until 1771, al- though they consisted of rough seats of split logs with pieces of saplings for legs. The men and women sat on either side of the central aisle. The pulpit was a rude desk. Since no fireplace could supply heat for a room that would
10
seat one hundred or more persons no attempt to warm this space was con- sidered. If the winter temperature was too severe, the Sabbath services were omitted.
Probably the first cemetery surrounded the meetinghouse. When the workmen were excavating for the concrete roadway at the foot of Ward Hill about twenty-five years ago, they discovered field stones so arranged that they appeared to mark graves. The historians of Plymouth believed that unknown graves of the early settlers were disturbed at this spot, because the usual cus- tom of those days laid the dead to rest around the meetinghouse.
THE COOS ROAD
The first important event of this first decade was clearing the Coos Road that is the same highway as Highland Street of the present day. When Jacob Bailey of Newburyport and John Hazen of Haverhill, Massachusetts became the owners of the ox-bows in the Connecticut Valley at Newbury, Vermont and Haverhill, New Hampshire, they applied immediately to the Provincial Assembly for an authorized road from Haverhill, New Hampshire to the sea- coast.
This road was authorized in 1764 with every abutting land owner obliged to cut a path within six months or forfeit his right. State Papers record that over one hundred land owners lost their land because they disobeyed this law. This road was opened in Plymouth in 1767 from David Webster's tavern to the "wading place" in West Plymouth which is the bank of the Baker River where a covered bridge washed away in the flood of a few years past. This became the trade route during the following forty years, until other transpor- tation for the products of the farms was provided to the coast and, in return, for importations from England and salt from the sea.
Soon after the meetinghouse was constructed, a new problem appeared. Governor John Wentworth persuaded the Provincial Assembly to grant a charter in 1769 for a college at Hanover named in honor of a generous donor. Lord Dartmouth of England. A class of five students would be prepared to graduate in August, 1771. The Governor and his Councillors desired to be present at this first commencement which presented the problem of access to Hanover.
THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE ROAD
The Assembly authorized a road from Wolfeboro, the summer residence of the Governor, to Hanover, to be constructed by the Proprietors of the towns through which this road would pass. The course was to be the responsi- bility of three men, from Wolfeboro to the property of Samuel Livermore at
11
the Pemigewasset River and another committee of three, from David Web- ster's tavern to Hanover. John House of Hanover, Jonathan Freeman and David Hobart of Plymouth were appointed for this task.
No tales about objections from the Proprietors of the Plymouth division are remembered, but in Tuftonboro and Moultonboro in the other division two wealthy Proprietors refused to permit the passage of the road through their grants, yet to no avail. Already many miles of bridle paths existed be- tween Wolfeboro and Moultonboro, and men were paid to cut the pathway to Samuel Livermore's river bank.
In August, 1771, the village of Plymouth was without doubt excited, be- cause Governor Wentworth and his Councillors, their servants, and other officials, sixty in all, were to be entertained over night. Samuel Livermore, David Webster and Parson Ward opened their houses. The following morn- ing this company rode to Haverhill, because the college road through dense wilderness could not be made passable until the next year. Down the trail that Indians traveled along the Connecticut River, and military forces to Quebec in 1758 had tramped, this group of distinguished men arrived at Hanover.
By 1772 the boulders had been pried aside, trees cut and underbrush cleared so that this cavalcade rode the entire distance on the Dartmouth Col- lege Road. In 1773, a tradition that Governor Wentworth entered Hanover in his coach seems authentic. Mrs. Dean Currier, a Plymouth resident twenty years ago, related that her great grandparents, then residents of Hanover, saw the Governor riding in his coach. While it seems incredible that the Col- lege Road was passable along its entire course for a coach drawn by horses, possibly the Governor was met near Hanover by a coach and did ride in state into Hanover. Since the History of Dartmouth tells that Mrs. Wheelock, the wife of the President of the college, rode from Connecticut to Hanover in her coach, without doubt this coach was available for the Governor's ride.
Without a stretch of the imagination, one may picture the excitement along the Coos Road, now Highland Street, when sixty horsemen rode through Plymouth those three years that Governor Wentworth remained in office.
FAMILIES TO REMEMBER
The family names of Hobart, Cummings, Huckins and Willoughby were prominent in this first decade. Possibly the Webster Family were the most influential of the pioneers. Abel Webster invested in the greater number of lots that he purchased from the Proprietors who desired to dispose of their rights. His nephew, David, purchased several and Samuel Livermore was another of his customers. He entertained Parson Ward in Hollis when he came there to preach four sermons before Plymouth existed. He probably
12
This is the home of the first settler, Col. David Hobart, on the Fairground Road, 1764 - 1900. Notice that the angle of the roof is steep, and the eaves meet the window frames.
settled upon a farm in West Plymouth with his wife and eleven children in 1765. Over a period of twenty years, he held many official positions in the town, also served as the representative in the Provincial Congress for Grafton County. After 1788 he removed to Kingston but died at the home of his daughter in Chester in 1801.
Among the younger pioneers was Captain David Webster, born in Ches- ter, who grew to the height of six feet at the age of nineteen with the skill to accurately sight his flint-lock rifle which qualified him to become a scout in Rogers Rangers. At the age of twenty-six he returned to Chester, married the daughter of his step-mother, Elizabeth Clough, then went to Hollis to join in the plans for the settlement of Plymouth.
Without doubt, Captain David had tramped the trail along the Pemi- gewasset with the eye of a scout for a favorable spot for a home. He did not become a Proprietor; instead he purchased his lands wisely. He acquired the center of our village of today with boundaries from the river westward along Court Street, southward on Summer and Russell Streets, down Webster Street to the bank of the river. He erected a large log house on the site of our former
13
railroad station beside a brook that was fed by springs in the vicinity of Ward Hill. This he enlarged for a tavern that he maintained until 1800. He died in 1824.
In 1764, he purchased two slaves in Methuen, Massachusetts, Cisco and Dinah, for servants in his tavern. They became a part of the family and now sleep in the same lot in Trinity Cemetery with their master. The tavern was the meetingplace for the Sabbath services and town meetings until the meet- inghouse was ready for use.
In Stearns' History of Plymouth the story is published about his journey from Hollis in the spring of 1764, driving his ox team with the wagon loaded with furniture over a trail that was only a bridle path from Smith River to Plymouth. Also the adventure of Mrs. Webster with Indians as she followed him weeks later, with her baby son.
When the Revolution demanded men to guard the frontier, David en-
-George Feinen
The cliff where Elizabeth Webster stopped for the night about five miles south of Plymouth. A band of Indians held a pow-waw on the top of the cliff during the night. They did not discover Mrs. Webster and her baby David, hiding in the cave, or find her horse down on the bank of the river below. She arrived safely in Plymouth in the morning.
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listed a company for the county and retired years later with the rank of Colo- nel.
Stephen Webster, father of David and brother of Abel, built his home on a right that he purchased near the Starr King elm, that he opened for the first school in the town. He had been a teacher in earlier towns. In positions that required the keeping of records, his services were in demand. He is buried in an unmarked grave in the Pleasant Valley Cemetery, yet recorded on the original chart that is preserved by the present Association.
Since the Charter stipulated that every grantee should clear five acres for cultivation for every fifty acres in his grant during the first five years, this decade opened the forest for farms on the intervales. The soil was the humus laid down in past centuries. The uplands toward West Plymouth were soon purchased by new settlers. The population in 1773 numbered 345 persons, 57 families with nearly 200 children under sixteen years of age.
SUMMARY
During this first decade the town possessed a meetinghouse, an organized church, a school, tavern, several grist mills, and saw mills, two passable roads for ox-teams and an increasing population.
-
Haying in by-gone years, with a two-wheeled ox cart, an 18th century vehicle. (See pages 64 and 144.)
15
1773-1783
Owing to the fact that the brooks that fell into the Baker River offered sites where dams could be readily erected, the first mills were set up in West Plymouth. The irons for the water wheels were dragged by human energy on the ice in winter from Penacook to Plymouth in 1765.
Many of the Proprietors sold their rights along the Coos Road, now Route 25, to settlers. David Nevins erected the first house on Ward Hill. Rev. Nathan Ward moved into his two story, frame house in 1771 on the minister's lot at the top of this hill, now number 122, Highland Street.
On the west side of this road, William George purchased a farm. His large barn was then built about opposite the Hatch Dairy. Years after, this barn was taken apart, then rebuilt across the road and is at present the Hatch Dairy's barn.
The George Clark farm was purchased by Benjamin Wells from Abel Webster. The small cottage in the west pasture near the woods is the original house on this farm.
The Arnold Spencer land became the home of the wealthy Widow Bridget Snow. A descendant, Mrs. Hattie Harriman Trow, related the story that Widow Snow with her son, Henry, and her four daughters lived in a dug-out until the son built his home along the Dartmouth College Road and the daugh- ters found husbands. Another daughter was then in Hebron and her mother walked through the woods to make visits while the wolves howled in the dense forest. Widow Snow's grave is marked by the oldest headstone in Plymouth in the small cemetery near the Spencer barn.
The farm at the turn of the highway toward the Smith covered bridge became "The Pem Farm," owned by Abel Webster. On the meadow at the curve of the road, a brickyard supplied "water-struck" bricks. The molds were soaked in water before the clay was packed into them which left the surface of the bricks with lines or water marks that gave them this name.
According to the statement of the late George Clark, a brickyard was baking water-struck brick beside the present Yeaton Road, another at the "wading place" by the Baker River and a third near Loon Pond. The Currier Brook at Lower Intervale turned water wheels and a brickyard was located in that valley.
16
a Here lies The Body
of the Widow Bridget Snow (formerly the" Wife of ME Joleph Snow) who departed the life the day of December 1773. in the 73 year d. her Age
Headstone at the grave of Widow Bridget Snow, oldest in Plymouth, at the cemetery on the Spencer Farm on Route 25.
A most valuable product was potash, the basis of gunpowder. An ancient map marks "The Potash Pit" on the line of Rumney near the "Rolling Acres Farm." Another pit was near the line of Groton Hollow. In wide pits, elm wood and other hard woods were burned to ashes. These were leeched with a quantity of water and the resulting lye was evaporated by boiling in cal- drons. The residue was potash or saltpeter. Mrs. Elizabeth Stewart recalls the tradition that "the elms of Rumney saved the Revolution."
With corn meal, bricks, lumber and potash in production in the brief time since forests covered these farms, one does not wonder that the name. "Valley of Industry" was applied to West Plymouth as the years went by.
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GRAFTON COUNTY
The first event of public importance in this second decade was the division of the Colony into counties. The northern section was named Grafton. A court house was erected in Haverhill and another in Plymouth in 1774, the latter on land that was purchased from David Webster, now the corner of Main and Highland Streets. The frame was set up. Then, according to tradi- tion, Mrs. Webster objected because those cruel implements of punishment, the pillory and stocks, were in sight of her windows. Captain Webster ar- ranged to exchange the site for about two acres now at the corner of Pleasant and Russell Streets, "east of the ledge," also to remove and finish the building at his own expense, according to specified size and materials. This building "served for the more easy administration of Justice" until 1823.
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