USA > New Hampshire > Colony, province, state, 1623-1888: history of New Hampshire > Part 30
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Not far from the mansion is the family cemetery of the Sulli- vans. It is a dreamy, deserted old place, enclosed by a stone wall and shadowed by rows of apple-trees. There are about a dozen graves therein, each marked by a cheap, oblong marble tombstone. Most of them show signs of dilapidation and age. One of the plain marble slabs, though moss-grown and defaced by time, still preserves its inscription intact : -
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN SULLIVAN, WHO WAS BORN FEBRUARY 17th, 1740, AND DIED JANUARY 23rd, 1795.
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Underneath rests all that remains of the great lawyer, the brave soldier of our war for independence, the worthy chief magistrate of New Hampshire. On the foot-stone is simply engraved the initials of his name, J. S. His wife Lydia lies buried beside him. She died in 1820, at the age of eighty-two.
At a little distance sleep the elder John Sullivan and Margery his wife. The dates upon their tombstones show that they both died at a good old age, after outliving their most illustrious son. The old man died in 1796, at the remarkable age of one hun- dred and four years. His wife died at the age of eighty-five, in ISO1. They were buried first at Berwick, but were removed to Durham.1
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In the convention which met in May, 1775, and continued sitting with but little interruption till November, one hundred. and two towns were represented by one hundred and thirty- three members. Their first care was to establish post offices ; to appoint a committee of supplies for the army, and a Com- mittee of Safety. This latter committee became the chief executive power of the colony. By order of the convention the former secretary, Theodore Atkinson, delivered the province records to Ebenezer Thompson, and they were removed to Exeter. George Jaffrey, the former treasurer, turned over funds in his hands, amounting to £1516, to Nicholas Gilman. The
1 Fred Myron Colby.
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people became intensely hostile to all suspected of not being in full sympathy with the popular party. Many were imprisoned ; some escaped from the Province.
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Old commissions were annulled, the courts were closed, and the magistrates were powerless. Good order was maintained by a cheerful obedience to appointed committees.
HOUSE IN NEWCASTLE, N. H.
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Aside from the forces about Boston, and the garrison along the coast, a company of Rangers was posted on the Connecticut river, and two companies were held in reserve. Out of the militia four regiments of minute-men were enlisted, who were constantly trained in military duties.
A census taken during the year gave the number of inhabi- tants in the Province as 82,200, nearly half of whom were in Rockingham county.
Upon advice received from the Continental Congress, the convention called for the election of a new Assembly of eighty- nine members, to whom the carc of government should be en- trusted. The representatives to the new convention met near the close of December, 1775, and assumed the name and authority of the House of Representatives. They immediately chose twelve persons as a distinct branch of the legislature, to whom was given the name of Council, and who elected their own president.1
2 The camps, redoubts, and trenches which engirdled Boston during its siege were so many appliances in the practical train- ing school of war, which Washington promptly seized, appropri- ated, and developed. The capture of Boston was not the chief aim of Washington when he established his headquarters at Cambridge. Boston was, indeed, the immediate objective point of active operations, and the issue at arms had been boldly made at Lexington and Concord. Bunker Hill had practically eman- cipated the American yeomanry from the dread of British arms.
Without waiting for reports from distant colonies as to the effect of the skirmish at Lexington and the more instructive and stimulating experience at Breed's Hill, the Americans penned the British in Boston, and determined to drive them from the land.
THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL EQUALIZED THE OPPOSING FORCES. The issue changed from that of a struggle of legiti- mate authority to suppress rebellion, and became a contest between Englishmen for the suppression or the perpetuation of the rights of Magna Charta.
I Belknap.
2 Gen. H. B. Carrington, LL. D.
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The siege of Boston assumed a new character as soon as it became a part of the national undertaking to emancipate the colonies, one and all, and thereby establish one great Republic.
From the 3rd of July, 1775, until the 17th of March, 1776, there was gradually developed a military policy, with an army system, which shaped the whole war.
During the siege Washington sent forth privateers to scour the coast and search for vessels conveying powder to the garri- son ; and soon no British transport or supply-vessel was secure, unless under convoy of a ship-of-war.
Titus Salter, of Portsmouth, was specially prominent in the maritime affairs of New Hampshire.
Three nights of mock bombardment kept the garrison on the alert, awaiting an assault. "On the night of the 4th of March, 1776, and through all its hours, from candle-lighting time to the clear light of another day, the same incessant thun- der rolled along over camps and city ; the same quick flashes showed that fire was all along the line, and still both camps and city dragged through the night, waiting for the daylight to test the work of the night, as daylight had done before."
When daylight came,-
" Two strong redoubts capped Dorchester Heights."
By the the 10th of March the Americans had fortified Nook's Hill, and this drove the British from Boston Neck. Eight hundred shot and shell were thrown into the city during that night. On the morning of March 17 the British embarked for Halifax.
On the 18th of March, and before the main army had entered Boston, General Heath was ordered to New York with five regiments of infantry and a part of the field artillery.
On the 27th, the whole army, excepting a garrison of five regiments, was ordered forward, General Sullivan leading the column.
1Colonel John Stark remained at New York until May, 1776, when his regiment, with five others, was ordered to march by
I Gen. George Stark.
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way of Albany to Canada. He joined the army at St. Johns, and advanced to the mouth of the Sorel. Various unsuccessful movements were made by this army in Canada, under the suc- cessive commands of Generals Thomas, Arnold, Thompson, and Sullivan, culminating in a retreat to Crown Point and Ticonderoga. General Gates soon after this assumed the chief command, and assigned a brigade to Colonel Stark, with orders to clear and fortify Mount Independence.
When the British army under Carleton had retired to winter quarters in Canada, Colonel Stark's regiment, with several others, was detached from the Northern army to reinforce General Washington at Newtown, Penn. He arrived a few days before the battle of Trenton, where, leading the van of Sullivan's division, he contributed his share in that fortunate victory. In giving his opinion at the council of war pre- ceding the battle of Trenton, Colonel Stark observed to Wash- ington : " Your men have too long been accustomed to place their dependence for safety upon spades and pickaxes. If you hope to establish the independence of these States, you must teach them to place dependence upon their fire-arms and cour- age." Colonel Stark remained with the commander-in-chief until his winter quarters were established on the heights of Morristown, when, the term of his men's enlistment having ex- pired, he returned to New Hampshire to recruit another regi- ment.
1 Colonel James Reed, a brigadier-general of the Continental army, was appointed by Congress, August 9, 1776, on the re- commendation of General Washington. On the 2nd of Sep- tember General Gates speaks of him as so ill at Fort George that he would probably not be fit for service in that campaign. He received orders from General Washington to join him at headquarters, but on account of sickness was unable to comply. He eventually retired from the army on half pay until the close of the war.
General Reed returned to Fitzwilliam, where he resided until the year 1783, when he moved to Keene.
1 A. J. Blake.
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Hale, in his " Annals of Keene," says that General Reed, whose ordinary residence was Fitzwilliam, is remembered there as an old blind man, and as almost daily seen, after the close of the war, walking up and down Main Street.
About the year 1800 he removed to Fitchburg, where he spent the remain- der of his days. He died at Fitchburg, February 13, 1807, aged eighty-three years, and was buried with military honors. In the old burying ground at Fitchburg stands his monument, quite elaborate for the times.
In all the relations of a long and useful life, General Reed sustained the highest character for honesty and integrity. In the numerous records re- lating to him there is nought found but words of praise. Wherever his name is mentioned by his comrades in arms, from Washington down, it is in terms of commendation and eulogy. He was emphatically a Christian warrior.
1 Exeter, in 1776, had but just assumed the position in the Province to which its size and importance entitled it. Forty years before, the town had become an object of jealousy and dislike to some of the dignitaries under the crown at Ports- mouth, and in consequence thereof had been "left out in the cold," so far as it was in their power to accomplish it. The last royal governor, John Wentworth, however, was too sensible and politic to allow his conduct to be influenced by an old grudge. He took particular pains to conciliate the inhabitants of Exeter ; visited the town repeatedly in much state; formed and com- missioned a company of cadets there, embracing many leading men, as a kind of body-guard to the occupant of the guber- natorial office; and established relations of intimacy with several of the prominent citizens.
He hoped, no doubt, that his special friends in Exeter might adhere to the cause of the crown, as so many of his connec- tions and dependents in Portsmouth did. But he reckoned without his host. When the tocsin of war was sounded, Exeter might be said to be a unit on the side of liberty ; and the men whom Governor Wentworth had delighted to honor were the first to declare in favor of their oppressed country.
Exeter then became, and remained for many years, the capi- tal of the Province and State. The legislature held its sessions there, and during its adjournments the Committee of Safety took 1 Ex-Governor C. H. Bell.
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its place, and exercised its functions. The courts were again established there, and the town became practically the head- quarters of all military undertakings in which New Hampshire was concerned. And there, on the 5th day of January, 1776, was adopted and put in operation the first written constitu- tion for popular government, of the Revolutionary period. The honor of taking the lead of her sister colonies in this momentous " new departure " belongs to New Hampshire, and Exeter may well be proud to have been the scene of an occurrence so inter- esting and so memorable.
The structure in Exeter which has perhaps retained its old- time appearance most perfectly for the past century is the pow- der-house situated on the point near the river on the east side. It was built about 1760, and has apparently undergone little repair since that time. It probably first held military stores destined for the French and Indian war, which, however, ter- minated before they could have been much needed. A few years later it was opened, no doubt, to receive a part of the powder captured by the provincials in the raid, under Sullivan, upon Fort William and Mary. But as powder without ball hardly met the requirements of the times, the selectmen of Exe- ter purchased lead for the " town stock " from John Emery, and sent for a further supply to Portsmouth by Theodore Carlton ; employed Thomas Gilman to "run it into bullets," and finally stored the leaden missiles in a chest, which Peter Folsom made for the purpose at the cost of three and sixpence. The ammu- nition was dealt out from time to time to other places which stood in greater need,-very sparingly though ; for notwithstand- ing Exeter had a powder-mill in 1776, the explosive dust was too precious to be wasted, through a large part of the Revolu- tionary war.
The court-house, known also as the town-house and state- house, stood at what is now the easterly corner of Front and Court streets, on the site of the dwelling of the late Mr. Joseph Boardman. The building had formerly been the meet- ing-house of the first parish. When it was moved across the street and devoted to judicial purposes, it was flanked by the
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stocks and the whipping-post. Possibly the former instrument of discipline may have disappeared before 1776, but the latter undoubtedly lasted till then.
One of the town schools (for the excellence of which Exeter was early noted) was long kept in this town-house. A " gram- mar school " was likewise maintained at the expense of the · town, in 1775-6, under the charge of Clement Weeks, a room . being hired of Samuel Davis for the purpose.
The town and court house was the place of assembly for the legislature of New Hampshire, whence it received the additional name of state-house. Its halls, in the "time that tried men's souls," continually echoed to the tread of the wisest and bravest of the dwellers among our granite hills. Sullivan and Folsom, Stark and Poor, Cilley and Scammell, Dearborn and Reed, in their military attire of blue and buff, often trailed their swords along its corridors ; while Weare and Langdon, Gilman and Bartlett, Thornton and Whipple, and a host of other patriots in civil life, assembled periodically within its walls to devise the ways and means for keeping an army in the field, until the power of Britain was at length broken, and peace crowned the independence of America.
It may be necessary to remind readers of the present day that houses of worship a hundred years ago contained neither fire-places, stoves, nor other heating apparatus. The congregation, so far as temperature was concerned, were not much more com- fortable, in the winter season, indoors than out. But the gene- ration of that day was brought up to bear hardships without complaint. The good mother, within the remembrance of peo- ple not aged, used to rely upon a few coals in a foot stove to keep up the vital heat, and perhaps the youngest child was bun- dled up so as to be kept comfortable ; but the big boys had to take the severity of the weather, seated on the bare boards, with little protection in the way of extra clothing. It is a ques- tion how large the attendance in our churches would be if the · old fashion of cold rooms were to be resumed. Luckily for the enjoyment as well as for the size of the congregations, in the matter of conveniences and comforts there is no retrogression.
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Improvements once introduced become necessities; and New England will never go back to cold churches.
The meeting-house of the first parish had long been provided with a bell, and the town books inform us that in 1776 it was daily rung by Pompey Peters at one and nine o'clock P. M., according to ancient custom, which has also been continued down to our own day.
The present church was not built till more than twenty years after that date. It has been much admired for its architectural proportions, and is undoubtedly a fine specimen of the eccle- siastical edifices of the last century.
GOVERNOR GILMAN'S HOUSE, EXETER.
As has already been stated, the inhabitants of Exeter were, almost to a man, in favor of resistance to the oppressive meas- ures of the British parliament. Conspicuous among the patriots was Colonel Nicholas Gilman, the father of Governor Gilman. At the commencement of the Revolution he was forty-four years of age, in the very prime of his powers, a man of resolution, firmness, and sound judgment. He was largely engaged in business, and was commanding officer of a regiment of militia. He was a great favorite with Governor Wentworth, who un- doubtedly used all his influence to keep him on the side of his
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royal master, and it is said never ceased to retain his attachment for him. But Colonel Gilman occupied no doubtful ground. Early declaring himself on the side of his country, his counsel and services were eagerly sought for in her behalf, and cheer- fully rendered. Money, the sinews of war, was the thing most needful ; and he was placed at the head of the fiscal department of the State, where he accomplished almost as much for New Hampshire as Robert Morris did for the country. But his efforts were not limited to any narrow sphere. No plan for the public security or advantage was adopted until it received the sanction of his approval. President Weare held the chief exe- cutive office, and Nicholas Gilman was his premier.
Colonel Folsom (for that was his title in the beginning of 1775) was evidently held in the highest estimation as a military commander, for on the 24th day of May in that year, a month after Lexington, and a month before Bunker Hill, he re- ceived the appointment of major-general of "all the forces raised (by New Hampshire) for this and the other American colonies." This Province had then three regiments in the field, -- Stark's, Poor's, and Reed's. General Folsom at once repaired to Cambridge to take the command of the brigade. Stark com- plained (without reason) at Folsom being put over him, and was inclined to despise the authority of this colony, till his native good sense taught him to act more wisely. The misunderstand- ing and rivalry between Folsom and Stark, however, prevented the nomination of either as a general officer on the Continental establishment, and Sullivan was selected as brigadier from New Hampshire. General Folsom remained in command of the New Hampshire troops at Cambridge until the adoption of the army, and the appointment of its commanders, by Congress. He then returned home, but though not again called actively to the field, he was allowed no respite from military or civil employment. He was retained in command of the militia, who were continually kept in readiness for active service in emergencies, and fre- quently called forth. In the course of the war he was four years a member of the Committee of Safety ; was repeatedly chosen to the legislature ; and in 1777 and again in 1779 elected a dele-
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gate to the Continental Congress ; and in addition to all the rest was made a judge of the Court of Common Pieas.
There was evidently an incompatibility, or at least an impro- priety, in a single person exercising such diverse functions at the same time, and some exception was taken to it in the legis- lature ; but a majority were of the opinion that the occasion justified a departure from ordinary rules, and the perfect confi- dence reposed in General Folsom's honesty and patriotism silenced all criticism.
Samuel Adams passed a night at Mr. Joseph Gilman's house in the latter part of 1776, just before the victories at Princeton and Trenton had relieved the feeling of despondency caused by the prior disasters to our arms ; and all Mrs. Gilman's powers of pleasing were said to have been exerted to cheer the droop- ing spirits of the patriot, without effect. A military success was then the only cure for the gloom of the stern king-hater.
The dwelling-place of Major Jonathan Cass, one of the vet- erans of the Revolution, was where the house of Mrs. J. L. Robinson now is. At the outbreak of the war he was twenty- two years of age, and, according to description, was an erect, handsome man, with keen black eyes. He enlisted in the army as a private soldier, and served until peace was established, hav- ing taken part in most of the principal battles. As early as 1777 his merits procured him promotion to an ensigncy, and at the close of the war he was a captain. He then resumed his resi- dence in Exeter for a few years, and his distinguished son, Lewis Cass, was born there in 1782. About 1790 the father re-entered the army, in command of a company raised for the defence of the western frontier, and subsequently received the commission of major. He was so much pleased with the appearance of the Western country, that he established his home in Ohio, where he died in 1830.
Lewis Cass remained in Exeter till he finished his studies at the academy, and received a diploma, signed by the principal and president of the board of trustees, certifying his proficiency and good conduct ; a copy of which, in his own youthful hand- writing, is still preserved.
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Colonel Samuel Folsom, a brother of General Nathaniel Fol- som, was a well-known and respected citizen in 1776. His house was at the easterly corner of Court square and Water street, and is now occupied by Mr. George W. Dearborn. It is believed to have been built a year or two before the date mentioned, probably to replace a former edifice removed or destroyed. Colonel Folsom kept a public-house, as his widow continued to do many years after his death. He was lieutenant-colonel of the Exeter corps of Independent Cadets, commanded by Colonel John Phillips. He was entrusted with much important busi- ness, during the Revolution, requiring sound and tried capacity and devotion to his country's interests.
After John Langdon, in the midst of the apprehensions excited by the triumphant incursion of Burgoyne, inspirited the people of New Hampshire by the offer of his private property to or- ganize an expedition under General Stark, with the purpose of turning back the invader, Colonel Folsom was designated by President Weare, chairman of the Committee of Safety, to visit General Stark, to convey him money for contingent ex- penses, to learn how his expedition was progressing, what art- icles it stood in need of, and to " advise with all persons in the service of this State on such things as he thought needful to forward the business they are engaged in." His confidential and discretionary mission appears to have been executed to the satisfaction of all parties ; and we know how thoroughly Stark was enabled to perform the part required of him when he met the enemy at Bennington.
A couple of years afterwards Colonel Folsom was selected by the General Court to discharge the agreeable duty of present- ing, in behalf of the State, to Colonel Joseph Cilley, a pair of pistols which had been the property of Colonel Stephen Hol- land, the Tory absentee; and the receipt of Colonel Cilley re- mains to testify that the commission was duly accomplished.
It was at the house of Colonel Folsom that President George Washington stopped and partook of a collation when he visited Exeter in his tour through the Eastern States in the autumn of 1789.
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Colonel James Hackett, in 1776, had been for some time en- gaged in shipbuilding at Exeter, and was a man of enterprise and determination. He was no laggard in evincing his willingness to enlist in his country's cause, for he was one of the first to march to the scene of hostilities on the morning after the Con- cord fight.
Colonel Hackett appears to have passed much of his time, at a later period, in Portsmouth, where he pursued the business of shipbuilding ; and on the occasion of Washington's visit to New Hampshire, in 1789, commanded a battalion of artillery which received his Excellency, on his arrival in Portsmouth, with a grand salute.
The Hackett house was afterwards tenanted by another person who filled during the Revolution a still more conspicuous public position. This was General Nathaniel Peabody, who was, in 1774, a physician in Atkinson, practising his profession with great success. He was popular, and aspiring. He de- nounced the usurpation of Britain at the outset, and is said to have been the first man in the Province to resign the king's commission from political motives. He was repeatedly chosen to the legislature and upon the Committee of Safety, and was in 1779 and 1780 a delegate to Congress. Besides these, he held numerous other offices, civil and military, of dignity and importance. As adjutant-general of the State his only active service, by a singular coincidence, was in the same Rhode Island campaign in which his predecessor in the habitation, Colonel Hackett, first heard the sounds of actual conflict. After the war, General Peabody's popularity was undiminished, and he received frequent testimony of the confidence of his fellow-citi- zens, in the shape of elections to office. He afterwards re- moved his residence to Exeter, where he passed the remainder of his life. Toward the close of his career he was annoyed by pecuniary troubles, and is said to have become petulant and rough in his manners. Many stories are yet current of his sharp speeches and harsh conduct.
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