USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > Northfield > Bygones. Some things not generally known in the history of Northfield, New Hampshire > Part 2
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Sally Thornton was the first female teacher. She used also to preach.
It was a long established custom for the big boys to sell the ashes and buy rum for the last day of school. Good Mother Winslow being present, once, when forestick, backlog, and all came
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rolling out on the hearth and nearly suffocated them all before they could be righted, spoke right out, and said, "It were better to sell the ashes for shovel and tongs than to buy rum for the scholars." She was silenced at once by a voter present, who said, " Let 'um have their rum-let 'um have it. It'll do them as much good as salt does sheep once in a while." And so the ashes did not go for shovel and tongs.
I should not wish to say that North- field people were worse than others in using spirituous liquor, but the first traders all kept it, and Saturday nights, men, boys, and all were in the habit of going with their jugs for a large or small quantity of it. No public gathering was in order without it. Mr. Jeremiah Kimball, who traded at the Centre many years, used to say, "He had sold rum enough there to fill the whole valley, so that a vessel could float above the treetops, straight from Sanbornton Bridge to the Canterbury line."
Let it be said to the credit of the good people, however, that right there the temperance reform began in this wise. There was to be a quarterly meeting at the Old Meeting House, and Squire Samuel Forrest, who often went with his team to Portsmouth for supplies for the merchants and others, was charged with the duty of deliver- ing a barrel of New England rum in . season for the anticipated gathering.
No reason was given for the delay, but the good cheer did not arrive un- til time for the afternoon service. The meeting was postponed, and the bar- rel tapped without being unloaded from the wagon, and all drank their
fill. Elder Mahew Clark was to preach the afternoon sermon. As he ascended the long stairs to the little pulpit beneath the sounding board, he looked down on the elders and peo- ple half asleep from the effects of their libations.
He took for his text, " Woe to drunkards of Ephraim." Nothing like that sermon was ever heard before, either in manner, matter, or effect.
Rum began at once to be excluded from religious gatherings, funerals, and weddings, and Mr. Forrest is said then to have declared that he would never haul another drop of rum from Portsmouth or elsewhere. Rev. Liba Conant, who long preached there used to relate that he once at- tended an ordination at Loudon, where liquor was furnished and a fife and drum were used to call the people to the afternoon service.
Mr. Moses Winslow says that while the town was hesitating over the building and location of the Old Meeting House, Mr. Peter Wadleigh and others began one on the plain, just above Kendegeda brook, but it was burned, perhaps purposely. There is no record of it.
The Old Meeting House was built by the town and money appropriated for some years to pay for preaching, and a committee chosen to see to the supply at each annual town-meeting.
The first bridge over the Winnipis- eogee river was a few rods east of the present structure, by the Firth mill, and was made of birch logs in 1763. 'The town voted $300 " old tenner," to help build it, and it was used for
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horses as well as pedestrians. It was by the mill, over the bridge, and as over this bridge that Mr. Runnels far south as the Colony road, was on his own land and was never a high- way until Park street was laid out, in 1857. and extended across the plain to the Kendegeda bridge. says the Burleys passed on their way to their new home in Sanbornton. Let us imagine we are in sight. First comes Mrs. Burley on horseback, with the two youngest children in her An old sawmill stood at the east end of this bridge, which was built in old Colonial times, no one knows when. It was purchased by the rail- road and in course of time demolished. The bridge, too, was not a very sub- stantial structure. One end fell into the river, and the other was pulled down. arms. Behind her was a bag contain- ing a bushel and a half of meal. In a bed tick, thrown over the horse, was the barnyard poultry. There were holes cut in the lower portions, on either side, for, breathing places for the birds, out of which their heads protruded. Mr. Burley followed on foot, with the two older boys and two COWS.
A better bridge was built with the assistance of Canterbury, in 1784, which was carried away by an ice freshet in 1824. Another took its place at once. This one fell in 1839, with a six-horse stage full of passen- gers on it. None of them lost their lives, but several were thrown into the water and otherwise injured, and later recovered damages of the town. But one of the horses was rescued.
'There was also a bridge over the river, close by the Holmes, now the " Tilton mills," built by subscription. Squire Nathaniel Holmes was the prime mover. Mr. John Dearborn, father of Joseph P., furnished the lumber and much of the labor. Mr. Holmes wished to use a house stand- ing over the river as a boarding house. He purchased the Philip Clough farm of which this house was the center, embracing the land where the first seminary stood, and as far south as the fair grounds. To improve its value, he laid out a three- rod road, across the farm to the Colony road, buying a strip of land of Mr. Cate.
The route of the Boston, Concord & Montreal railroad, as first surveyed, in 1844, after crossing the brook on the plains, bore to the east, crossing the fields back of Jason Foss's build- ings and B. F. Cofran's, along the side of the hill to a point a little above the "Granite Mills," where the de- pots were to be located. The village people were not thus to be left out, and raised such a clamor that the present course was granted, thus add- ing two long cuts and two bridges to the cost of construction.
The road was opened to Sanborn- ton Bridge, May 22, 1848, with great rejoicing. All day the citizens of Northfield and Sanbornton Bridge were transported to Concord and back free of charge.
Mr. Hunt, in his Centennial ad- dress, tells of a Mrs. Colby who used to warp her webs on the apple trees ; also of the many women and children who used to braid hats and pick berries, sometimes for the entire support of large families, but Mis. [ .... .. .......... ............... ......... ......... ] ... 11 ...
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them all. Her son, Thomas, used to tell of a fine suit of clothes she wove and made for him, using only bear's hair and thistledown, and that they passed for broadcloth when he wore them up to Danville Green to muster.
It was quite the custom for the fe- male teachers, even if they had fifty or sixty scholars and boarded round, to spin and weave a web of cloth each term in some friendly home in the neighborhood.
Mr. Dockham, who had charge of erecting the first seminary building, told me that it was begun without any plans or estimates. They were to erect a house seventy feet long, forty wide, and two stories in height.
Those of you who remember the location of the " United Panoplian " reading-room, and the primary school- room will not wonder at their unsuit- able location. Warren Hill made the bricks for it from the clay bank, back of the Granite mills, Colonel Cofran burned them, and Isaac Bodwell laid the walls.
1 In December, 1835, Rev. Geo. Storrs attempted to deliver an antislavery lecture in the Methodist church, now the town house, but was dragged from his knees while in prayer, preliminary to his address, by a dep- uty sheriff on a warrant charging him with being an idle and disorderly person, going about the town and county disturbing the public peace.
His trial took place the next day and he was acquitted.
Northfield cannot boast of any man of extraordinary fame. We have furnished no president, no governor, 10 Hobson or Dewey, but among the
residents of the olden time was a pre- eminently lazy man and a wonderful story teller. The former, William Glines, was generally known by the attractive name of "Old Cartnap," as were his descendants to the latest generation. The old fellow had met with the men of the neighborhood to. work out the highway tax. He was slow and in everybody's way, and gladly accepted their suggestion to get under a cart by the roadside, and sleep while they worked out his tax. Just how much he slept is not told, as he was pelted from time to time with clods and dirt by the fun-loving men and boys. His mother was a Cartwright, a noble family in Boston, and thus had a right (wright) to the Cart. His wife, Hannah Hancock, was a niece of Jolm Hancock, who signed the Declaration of Independ- ence. Let it be said also that his seeming indolence may have been caused by the hardships of his youth- ful service in the Revolutionary War in which he suffered the privations of prison life. Two of his sons, who went to the West, became prosperous and wealthy men, the one at Findlay, and the other at Marietta, Ohio.
'The story teller, Grandsire Hall, used to sit on winter evenings, in the chimney corner, and tell of the won- derful things that used to happen when he was a boy. He used to tell of a snow storm that came the last day of April. At first, it was only an inch of show and an inch of hail on top of it. Then for years, it was a foot of snow and a foot of hail on top of it, and as time passed on it became a rod of snow and a rod on top of it.
Mr. Simonds, familiarly called
Hurley's a History of the Great Rebellion
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" Uncle Tom," was very weather- wise, and used to go about the neighborhood announcing a storm coming, as his eye, that wasn't there, had pained him all night, and the almanac said the moon was " apodging."
But the quaintest of all quaint peo. ple was the family of Sergeant Blanch- ard. His two dwarf sons, stubbing about town, wearing stovepipe hats given them by the fun-loving boys, were, like "Falstaff's recruits," in- teusely comical. Nature had played havoc with them physically, with such wonderful uniformity, that half the well matched yokes of oxen in town, for years, were named for them, "Billy and Jerry." The father had been in the army and was every inch a soldier.
It is said that at his wife's funeral, dazed by his grief, perhaps, and having in mind the long procession as it followed him over the snow, thought he was conducting a dress parade, and called out " Halt !" He then proceeded to tell them that "forty year ago I shot a 'beer' on this very spot." Then calling out " forward march," they proceeded. A few months later his daughter went in haste to a neighbor's and said, "Dad's mighty bad off ! Aint gwine ter live long, want to get something good to read to him. Wont yer lend me yer last year's almanack ! "
Warren H. Smith was for many years preëminently the business man of the town. He began building rail- roads in 1847, more than a half cen- tury ago, when thirty years of age, having previously lor some years
farmed extensively in summer and en- gaged winters in lumbering. His first contract commenced two miles below Sanbornton Bridge and ex- tended to Warren, sixty- four miles. Later from Warren to Wells River, twenty-two miles. Then, in 1848, he built five miles on the Manchester & Lawrence, also from Wells River to St. Johnsbury in 1850. He then went to Connecticut in 1853, for a contract on the Fishkill & Provi- dence, and thence to Tennessee. He built eleven miles on the Suncook and fifteen on the Sugar River road, twenty-five miles from Cohasset to Duxbury, thirty-eight on the Mont- pelier and Wells River, and nine and a half on the Franconia Notch. Nearly all these contracts included grading, track laying, masonry, and bridging, and required a large force of laborers.
Joseph Gerrish was for many years the leading farmer of the town. His farm consisted of many acres of both intervale and upland. He erected spacious barns and a large and com- modious house. He possessed good horses, ample means, and a family of thirteen children. He lived gener- ously and was looked up to and re- spected as one of the most substantial farmers in the town. He died in 1851, leaving three highly cultivated and fruitful farms to his sons, none of whom now live, and scarcely an acre of land still remains in the family name. Mr. Gerrish, in the early part of the Revolutionary War, erected a still and manufactured whiskey from potatoes of his own raising, but abandoned the business after peace was restored.
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1 Hon. Asa P. Cate was perhaps the most eminent public man of the town where he spent the whole of his useful life. He was a lawyer of note, a judge of Probate for Merri- mack county, a senator and president of the senate, a liberal friend of the New Hamp- shire Conference seminary, superintendent of school for many years, county solicitor, railroad commissioner, his party's candidate for governor, and the founder of the Citi- zens' National Bank.
He had also the following military record : He was lieutenant of the Second Company of Light Infantry in the Thirty-eighth Regiment in 1833, promoted to captain the year follow- ing, major in 1837, lieutenant-colonel the next year, and colonel in 1839.
I cannot close without paying due tribute to the natural beauty and at- tractiveness of this my native town, to the dear ones long since passed on before, who watched over my child- hood and the earnest teachers who guided my wayward feet along the often rugged path of knowledge, to the man of God who so earnestly set before us the things that make for peace and right living, to the noble
George H. Moses in GRANITE MONTHLY.
institution which was once the joy and pride of us all, where noble and wise men and women showed us the curious things of nature, art, and sci- ence, which have made so many of our lives rich in thought, feeling, knowledge, and reminiscence.
Coming back after some years' sojourn upon the prairies of the West I appreciate more than ever the charming variety of hill and dale and noble forest. How forcibly does my heart respond to the sentiment ex- pressed by the poet Goldsmith, in his " Deserted Village," a sentiment as- sented to by so many, who, in distant homes, long ever for the dear scenes of childhood :
" In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs-and God has given my share-
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay mne down,
'To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose, And, as an hare, whom hounds and horns pursue
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes my long vexations past Safe to return-and die at home at last.
NOTE-Authorities drawn upon : Rumnell's " History of Sanbornton ; " Potter's " Military History of New Hampshire ; " " Adjutant General's Records ; " Professor Hunt's "Centennial Address ; " " Papers of the Late Judge Nesmith ; " Mrs. Mary A. Jones; Mrs. William Clough ; Mrs. Jason Foss ; Mrs. F. S. Spencer, and others.
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