USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > New London > A centennial history, 1837-1937, Colby Academy, Colby Junior College > Part 2
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Preachers were as scarce as hard dollars in the hill country, but Reverend Mr. Ambrose of Plymouth settled at Sutton and New London agreed to pay him
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twenty-five dollars as a year's salary if he would preach in town part of the time. The next year the town must have felt poorer or the sermons were not popular, and the appropriation was reduced to twenty dollars.
The selection of a resident minister was determined mainly by those who had come from Attleboro. There they had been parishioners of Reverend Job Seamans, a Baptist minister from Swansea who for fifteen years had led his Attleboro flock along the way to Zion. Soon after the Attleboro emigrants had left for New London Sea- mans was commissioned by the Warren Association of Baptist churches in southeastern New England to visit the outlying settlements in the northern part of the re- gion in order to preach the Gospel. He itinerated up the Connecticut Valley, stopping on both sides of the river as opportunity offered. He was induced to pay a visit to New London in the summer of 1787, that historic summer when the delegates of the enfranchised states were meeting in constitutional convention in Philadel- phia. The next spring Seamans returned and preached from house to house until the people had time enough to judge his homiletical abilities. He was liked so well that an official call was voted by the town inviting him to become its minister. It was agreed that he should be paid a salary of forty pounds a year, three of them to be in cash and the other thirty-seven in labor and food products, besides the use of the farm set aside for the first minister whom the town should call. Payments of corn were to be reckoned as worth three shillings a bushel and rye as worth four.
It was not long before the minister was able to organ- ize a church of those who gave evidence that they were qualified by a work of grace in their hearts. Eleven men and women thus qualified. According to Baptist pro- cedure a council of neighboring churches was called,
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THE PIONEERS OF NEW LONDON
and after careful examination ecclesiastical sanction was given.
The coming of a minister to an eighteenth century New England town was a notable event. He was tested thoroughly as a candidate, and when he accepted a call it was expected that he would remain for a long time, if not for life. If there was only one church in town he was responsible for the whole community, and the town might give him an official call, as in the New London case. No man in the community as a rule surpassed the minister in education, in dignity, and in importance. His opinions on all subjects were respected, he usually was a member of the local school committee, and at times he acted as the spokesman of the community in public affairs as well as in religion.
Elder Seamans, to give him the title that ministers usually had in those days, was a man of no commanding height, but he had distinctive features and in later life was looked upon as of distinguished appearance. He was diligent in business, thinking out his sermons as he turned the furrows in his field, and preaching without manuscript twice on Sunday and often during the week besides. Baptists were believers in the separation of church and state and it was not enough that the town had called the minister. The church itself went through the form of giving Seamans a call, and then the town rati- fied the action of the church and the minister was in- stalled properly with an impressive service in the half-built church, at which neighboring ministers were present and took part. There were only temporary seats in the meeting-house and the floor was only partly laid, but the people were accustomed to hardships and the occasion was all that it should have been.
The town was dilatory about completing the meeting- house, which was a plain building without a steeple or a bell. It was a rather nice question whether the town
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should build it, if religion was a voluntary affair, as the Baptists held. It would seem as if the church members should make that their own obligation. A revival of re- ligion swept the hill, absorbing the attention even of the children. The membership of the church increased to one hundred and fifteen members, among whom were thirty-seven men and their wives. It was not beyond their ability to complete the building of the meeting-house. Yet it was a town institution, the only religious organiza- tion in town, and the town had taken the initiative in calling the minister. In 1793 the town voted to build the pulpit and pews of the meeting-house and to finish the aisles, but the singing pew must be built by subscription, and if Lieutenant Hutchins wanted a window near his pew he must meet the expense himself. By such com- promises the construction of the church went on slowly.
By 1795 the meeting-house had reached the stage of construction when it was feasible to hold the regular church services there, but the town was in arrears with the salary of the minister. It was a delicate matter to hint that he might resign or to the church that it might as- sume the responsibility of the salary, but Seamans took the initiative in the matter. He offered the town three options. First, he would move away from town, if de- sired. Second, he was willing to depend on voluntary contributions. Third, he would be willing to have a council of neighboring churches to advise in the matter. The town accepted the second choice, which relieved it of the responsibility and retained the minister. The church did not object and from that time Seamans had no legal claim on the town and the church supported him.
Since the town had built the meeting-house it was under obligation to provide a janitor. Jesse Dow, who had a blacksmith shop near the meeting-house and was poundkeeper, received the appointment to be janitor
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THE PIONEERS OF NEW LONDON
with a salary of eight shillings a year, to be forfeited if he did not "open and shut the doors." Later on the canny voters decided to give the appointment to the lowest bid- der. Captain John Woodman by that time was keeping store nearby and it was an easy matter for him to keep the key and open and shut the door, so that he obtained the job at a salary of thirty-five cents a year. Some years later he agreed to do it for nothing if his sheep might graze in the unused part of the graveyard.
Thus in the central highlands the town of New London prospered, Thus the pioneers fared as their acres broadened and bourgeoned.
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II IN THE DAYS OF THE DISTRICT SCHOOL
B Y THE time New London was eleven years old it was as vigorous as one of the boys who walked a mile or two to school and did the chores morning and night. The first census of the United States taken in 1790 gave the official population of New London as three hundred and eleven. The time had come when it was profitable to open a general store. Woodman and Mac- farland were the proprietors, throwing open their doors close by the meeting-house. The stock was not large but it presented a great variety of goods. The proprietors sold tea and molasses and rum, pins and stationery and sheeting. They took in exchange butter and eggs, meats and potatoes, and carried the balance on their books. They charged the blacksmith one dollar and thirty-four cents for a pair of shoes, while they gave him credit for only one dollar and twenty cents for shoeing two horses. Before the store came the shoes were a town product. The tannery down Pleasant Street, or elsewhere in town, produced all but the sole leather, the shoemaker took orders from the customer and ascertained his measure, and then the shoes were made. It was a convenience to patronize the store, even if it cost a little more. It took thirty-three pounds of chicken to pay for one pound of green tea and a pocket handkerchief. It was much cheaper to drink brandy at five cents a glass. A woman must weave twenty yards of cloth to pay for two gallons of molasses. It cost the better part of a day's labor for a man to buy two pounds of wrought nails. A bushel of
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salt was valued at nearly four days of unskilled labor. Truly if a man would be worth his salt he must be a worker.
It was some time before there was much hay to cut, but when that time came a man would have to work ten days to make five dollars. It is easy to understand that a family must raise its own food and provide for most of its other necessities. The hard manual labor on the farm made men hungry and thirsty. They ate heartily of corn bread and pork, potatoes and cabbages. They drank quantities of cider and hard liquor. As soon as they had apple orchards it was easy to get cider but brandy and rum they must buy. The sale of liquor was the most profitable part of the trade of the general store, and it drew men to its precincts for sociability and good cheer. Woodman and Macfarland had a license to sell liquors and they were well patronized. The cracker barrel has a reputation in American history as a public forum, but it is reasonable to suppose that if the men munched crackers at the expense of the firm, they washed them down to the profit of the proprietors.
The time came when a road was needed from Kear- sarge Gore over Colby Hill to Springfield, and the town voted ten gallons of rum for the workmen. Rum was the lubricant for every kind of social action before the days of prohibition and the motor car, when oxen were the gear shifts and men must sweat and swear. It was on tap at barn raisings and log rollings. It was indispen- sable at church conventions and ordinations. Liquid re- freshment was offered to the minister when he went about among his people, and when Reverend Oren Tracy, the second minister of the church, refused such hospitality and preached against the evil of intemperance his popularity waned.
The tavern was soon one of the public institutions of New London. The tavern keeper had a license to sell
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liquor, and he put up travelers overnight, and he some- times kept store in a room of the tavern or of his own house. Before long the town had three taverns. Captain Woodman had tavern as well as store near the cemetery. Benjamin Woodbury, who owned the farm property at Crockett's Corner and paid fourteen dollars and fifty- four cents annual tax, the largest in town, kept another; and after Joseph Colby moved to the summit of Colby Hill he too had a tavern and kept a store in his house.
In view of the prevalence of drinking and the increase in the number of stores and taverns, one wonders if there is any special significance in certain items of town action about that time. Why should it have been necessary to erect green signboards at the junctions of the town roads, well known as they were, unless those who were going home from the store needed to be reminded of the direction in which their homes lay? Why should the town have voted to put a stone wall about the cemetery if it was not to keep out stragglers who might inadvertently wander in there before their time? It was an expensive matter to put a wall of faced stone on the front, of rough stones on the sides, and a fence of logs in the rear, as was voted at first; on reconsideration it was decided with New England thrift to make use of the horse sheds which ad- joined the cemetery for two sides of the fence and to have a stone wall only on the front.
If Harvey's Mills was the first nucleus of the town, Woodman's tavern and store, the meeting-house and the cemetery, and Dow's blacksmith shop, provided a second center. Men might carry their corn to Harvey's Mills on Tuesday and Friday, but they went to store or meeting-house every day in the week, and when they could do neither they were carried to the cemetery. The school at Harvey's Mills was replaced by a school on Cemetery Hill. The large number of children made it necessary to open several schools in different parts of
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the town. The West District schoolhouse provided for those in the West Part, the dame's school of Mary Everett took care of the children of the North District, while those in the east section of the community were grouped in the East District. Each district formed a little com- munity for educational purposes, determining its own policy, usually by the personal force of one man, and vying in friendly rivalry with one another. The teachers were commonly the young men and women of the com- munity, who had enjoyed no more than a district school education themselves. Very soon it became necessary to delimit other districts until there were seven altogether.
The schoolhouses were rude in construction. The teacher was provided with a small platform, and the pupils sat at hand-hewn desks, richly carved by knives, the boys on one side of the room and the girls on the other. A fireplace provided the only heat in the school- house as in the houses of the town. The meeting-house lacked even that provision for the comfort of the people, making it necessary to bring their own foot-stoves. They endured the chill of winter with Puritan stoicism, thaw- ing out between morning and afternoon service in a con- venient house, since they had no nooning house as in the older settlements. It was not until 1809 that the first stove was provided for the New London meeting-house, and then only because Elder Seamans was in impaired health, but it broke the rigorous custom of former days. Enough of that rigor remained so that three days later the minister and seven of his young people broke the ice in the lake to observe the ordinance of baptism.
Elder Seamans continued to preach until 1824 and remained the minister of the church for forty years, liv- ing on his farm on Pleasant Street. He was a faithful shepherd of his flock, encouraging church discipline and expelling backsliders at the same time that he was wel- coming newcomers into the fold. He brought his aged
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mother to his home, where she lived until her death. His wife died and his children married, and he brought Widow Mary Everett to the parsonage as the wife of his declining years.
The Baptists were not the only people in town to use the meeting-house. Since it had been built by the town, it seemed proper that it should be open to all for re- ligious services, and the town voted to permit those who were not regular Baptists to invite preachers of their doctrines to speak in the meeting-house in proportion to their share in its ownership. In 1780 Reverend Ben- jamin Randall of New Durham had reacted against the Calvinism of the Baptist pulpits and had organized the Freewill Baptists. There were less than thirty of these in town. Others in New England had reacted against the customary preaching of eternal punishment and believed in a universal salvation. The Universalists in New Lon- don numbered about the same as the Freewill Baptists. It happened therefore that the same sounding board echoed to quite opposite declamations of religious faith, yet the old meeting-house stood intact. Throughout most of its history New London has been a town of one church, Baptist in faith and polity, but generous enough in spirit to invite all others to worship with its own members.
At the end of the eighteenth century two events oc- curred which give glimpses of the place which minister and church occupied in the community. The first was a forest fire. In a wooded country such as New London was then a forest fire was as terrible as a prairie fire in the West. An unprecedented drought had made the woods as dry as tinder by the last of August. Even the minister had to join the fire fighters all day Saturday when ordi- narily he would have been meditating on his Sunday ser- mon. On Sunday the fire had come so near that the Elder's buildings were threatened and the neighbors had
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to plow furrows around the place to protect it while the Elder rode across the valley to the meeting-house and preached from the text: "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants will learn righteousness."
The second event was a memorial service for George Washington soon after his death in December, 1799. Far away as they were from the center of political affairs, the people of New London were lovers of their country. Some of them had served under Washington during the trying years of the Revolutionary conflict. They had followed with interest the fashioning of the federal Con- stitution, and New Hampshire had been the ninth state to ratify it. They had acclaimed Washington as the first president of the republic and sorrowfully they heard the news of his passing. The memorial service in the church was made an occasion of unusual ceremony.
The event furnished an opportunity for a display of the militia. The parade was led by the cavalry with muffled drums and mournful fifes. After them came the infantry, followed by the Masons. When the official bodies had passed the unadorned male part of the popu- lation marched, and the small boys brought up the rear. According to the usual custom of the times this would have completed the procession, but on this occasion after the men and boys had entered the meeting-house in due form, the women approached with music under the direction of Captain Gay and they too entered the portals. When all were seated in their proper places Elder Seamans preached a sermon worthy of the occasion. Doubtless he had the whole town in his audience, and with a subject deserving his highest efforts he must have risen to heights of eloquence. He seems to have had a knack in choosing appropriate texts, as in the case of the forest fire. This time it was: "And he died and was buried in one of the sepulchres of his fathers." He addressed himself in turn to the Masons, the soldiers, and the civil-
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ians, and when he went home and reviewed it all in his diary he wrote: "Everything was performed with decency and solemnity, and I believe everything to satisfaction if my performances were so." Let us hope that they were, since he never had a better opportunity to display his gifts.
One wonders how the people felt when the Federalist administration was overturned and Jefferson entered the White House in the new capital on the Potomac. Were they thrilled at the purchase of Louisiana, which doubled the territory of the republic? Were they as dis- gusted as Massachusetts when the President placed an embargo on all shipping and Madison carried the nation once more into war with England? Or were they ab- sorbed in their own affairs, oblivious to the broader stage on which national events were being played? Oblivious now of both alike they sleep their silent sleep in the graveyard on the farther hill.
As the nineteenth century advanced the community continued to expand. Formerly a single mill served the settlers and one blacksmith could shoe all their horses, but now each section of the town must have these local conveniences. At the outlet of Pleasant Lake a saw mill was built in 1800. Levi Harvey, Junior, and his brother Jonathan constructed a grist mill and a fulling mill on the site of the Elkins post office. Anthony Colby, son of Joseph, bought the property after a time and operated the saw mill, the grist mill, the fulling mill, and the blacksmith shop. There were several dwellings near by when the scythe works were started in 1835.
Pleasant Street had enough Sargents, Everetts, Pin- grees, and others to support two saw mills, a brick kiln, a blacksmith shop, and a cider mill. Though the climb was steep to the top of the hill and ox or horse power was the only means of traction, men built their houses on the side of the hill and plowed their furrows along
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its slope. Morgan Hill did not deter the Morgans, Mes- sers, and Doles from claiming it as their own and working over its acres. At the foot of Morgan Hill Joseph Putney had a tannery and sold leather to the shoemakers of Pleasant Street and Burpee Hill.
Amasa Sargent built a saw and grist mill at Otterville, though after three years it was moved to Hanover. Jede- diah P. Sabin started manufacturing cloth at Harvey's Mills when the embargo and the War of 1812 shut off British goods and stimulated American manufacturing. Eight years after the Otterville mill was moved away Sabin took his factory there and put up a boarding house for the workers. Otterville was a thriving hamlet for a time. In the West Part of the town lived the Knowlton, Davis and Herrick families, and the Bunkers were on Bunker Hill. Benjamin Bunker was the strong man of the town. When he built his house he carried the lumber up the hill on his back, and when it was time to bring home his grist from the mill near Sunapee he slung two hundred pounds over his shoulder and trudged home. There were giants in those days.
The nineteenth century was marked in New London by more than physical prowess and material growth. It was an evidence that pioneer days were past when a few citizens of the community organized the New London Social Library in 1801, and it was incorporated with the Governor's signature. An earlier subscription library had existed in Sutton and several New London men be- longed, but they wished to have a distinctly local institu- tion. The books, which were non-fiction, were kept in the house of Josiah Brown, and could be exchanged once a month on Monday afternoons. The share-holders paid two dollars each for a share and a small annual assess- ment. A century passed before New London had a public library for all its citizens, but the Social Library was an indication of the appreciation of education which has
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characterized the town. The collection is now in the town library.
Josiah Brown, in whose house the Library was kept, became one of the leaders of the community. He came to town when the meeting-house was being constructed, found employment as a carpenter, and was allowed to sleep in the gallery because he was a single man and had no home. He wooed and won Sarah, the daughter of Elder Seamans. She must have stirred his ambition, be- cause by and by he purchased a farm and built a house on the site of the present college buildings on Colby Hill, his farm extending on both sides of the road. After the Academy bought the hilltop for a new building the Brown house was moved to another site, and after renova- tion it was made into the present Rest House. Josiah Brown gained special distinction from the invention of a winnowing mill, which was adopted quickly in town and was sold widely through the country.
The year 1802 was before the days of women's clubs but not of men's fraternal orders. The Freemasons or- ganized a lodge in New London in the old red house. It was a popular fraternity, with many of the prominent townsmen enrolled as members. Unfortunately it was caught in the wave of unpopularity which created the Anti-Masonic Party and its antipathy to secret societies, and after a time the local lodge was transferred to Wil- mot and later to Scytheville.
Through such an organization as the Masons towns- men were brought into touch with the outside world. Politics served as another bond. New London had a representative to the state legislature with Sutton and Newbury, but early in the century the town had become large enough to send its own representative. Joseph Colby was chosen for the honor and played his part for thirteen years to the satisfaction of his fellow townsmen. But the old political party of Federalists to which he
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belonged was losing favor throughout the nation. Out- side of New England it had yielded precedence to the Jeffersonian Republicans, and the time came when the Republicans erected a liberty pole by the meeting-house and a political overturn retired Colby to private life. Still representatives continued to go and come to the state capital at Concord. Once in four years the town was drawn into the excitement of a presidential election and showed itself truly American in its fervor.
The Post Office was still another reminder that the town on the hill had national connections. It was not until fifteen years after the century began that the first New London mail carrier brought up a few letters and newspapers from Andover on the regular mail route, and a Post Office was established in one of the general stores. In the early days of the settlement people had to depend on somebody's going to the city, and the minister an- nounced from the pulpit when such an occasion hap- pened.
Among the innovations of the times were chaises which began to be seen on the streets. The first of these was owned by Joseph Colby, who drove with his family to church in style. The chaise was sent in recent years to Detroit and was repaired by Henry Ford's mechanics. It is preserved for future time in the old carriage house of the Colby mansion. Merino sheep grazed on the hill- sides. Three or four of the progressive men of the com- munity, including Josiah Brown on the hilltop, saw the profit of supplying raw wool of particularly fine quality to the manufacturers and they pastured hundreds of the sheep where now education has supplanted stock raising. While the thrifty farmers were making an hon- est profit from their flocks, certain of the lawless mem- bers of the community dishonestly plundered one of the stores, which provoked "Squire" Colby to denounce the marauders in print. After calling them Jacobins
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