USA > New Hampshire > Colony, province, state, 1623-1888: history of New Hampshire > Part 45
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1 H. H. Metcalf.
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a provision giving full liberty to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience. But this liberty was not then granted, nor, on the other hand, could the opponents of it carry a provision to tighten the principles of the constitution of 1784. He did succeed in that convention in getting a motion carried to abolish the religious test for office-holders, but this failed in the vote of the people on it. But so great had become the pres- sure from the increase of other persuasions, and the spirit of deeper insight, that the legislature of 1804 granted the right to Freewill Baptists to be considered a distinct religious sect or denomination, with all the privileges of such agreeable to the constitution. The next year the Universalists obtained a sim- ilar recognition, and in 1807 the Methodists shared the same favor.1
In 1816 the legislature passed an Act that the property of ministers, which before had been exempted, should be taxed. The same year Rev. Dan. Young, of Lisbon, a located Methodist minister, having been elected a member of the State Senate, brought in a bill repealing the old obnoxious laws by which a town could vote to settle a minister and then pay his salary by taxes ; and in place of that law offered a bill " by which all per- sons voluntarily associating to build a house of worship, or hire a minister of the Gospel, should be held to the fulfilment of their contract, but no person should be compelled to go into such a contract." That year he was able to secure only three votes besides his own for the bill. The next year the same bill re- ceived exactly one half of the votes of the Senate. The third year it went through by a large majority, but was tied in the House. In 1819, having been sent up again from the Senate, the House by a majority vote carried it, and thus the power was taken from the towns to assess taxes on all to support the min- istry, and relegated to such as voluntarily entered the church or society.
Dr. Whipple, of Wentworth, in the House, seems to have had much to do in framing the bill and in its final success ; so it is known in some authorities as the Whipple bill. By the bill any I William Plumer, Jr.
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one, also, could separate himself from any such society or organ- ization, or from obligations of the town, by leaving a written certificate with the clerk of such a purpose, and that he was of another persuasion. Men of the old régime deemed it all a re- peal of the Christian religion, thinking it meant also an abolition of the Bible, and that they might as well burn that book. But experience soon convinced them of the great worth to both state and church to have them separate. Some slight changes were made a few years later in this Act, but none affecting its purpose of completest religious freedom.
SQUAM LAKE AND MOUNT CHOCORUA.
1
CHAPTER XVI.
ERA OF GOOD-WILL, 1819-1828.
POWER-LOOM AT AMOSKEAG -SHELBURNE - NEW HAMPTON HURRICANE - LEVI WOODBURY - DAVID L. MORRIL -GREAT FRESHET - MILI- TIA - GENERAL LAFAYETTE'S VISIT -THE FARMER -- GOVERNOR BEN- JAMIN PIERCE AND FAMILY - JOHN BELL - FRANKLIN.
Nº. s O single invention, perhaps, has ever wrought such wonders
in the civilized world as the power-loom. Strange to say, it was the work of an English clergyman, Rev. Dr. Cartwright, who invented it in 1787. The use of the power-loom was com- menced at Amoskeag Falls in 1819. .
The Scotch-Irish at Nutfield, afterwards Londonderry, and the English at Penacook, now Concord, pressed their claims for the possession of the falls as a fishing place. No doubt it was a prize worthy of an earnest struggle. Concord claimed it under their grant from Massachusetts; while the Scotch- Irish founded their claim on the authority of the New Hamp- shire Province. The advantage, however, was on the part of the Irish. Their settlement was nearer, in numbers much larger, and they had possession. The first settlers in the neighborhood came from Londonderry in 1731. No doubt the fishing interest was the principal attraction. The shad, the salmon, and the lam- prey eel, the last of which the late William Stark so poetically eulogized, were the fish there caught. If Stark has not very greatly exceeded even poctical licence, we may realize the mag- nitude of the fishing interest at that day. He says : -
" From the eels they formed their food in chief. And eels were called the Derryfield beef; It was often said that their only care,
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And their only wish, and their only prayer, For the present world, and the world to come, Was a string of eels and a jug of rum."
If all this could be said of the eel, we leave some future poet to extol the value of the shad and the salmon.
Saw and grist mills were built at Amoskeag at a very early date, but the first interest of sufficient importance to demand much notice was the digging of the canal. This was substantially the work of one man, Samuel Blodget, an officer under Governor Wentworth, a keeper of the King's woods, and collector of duties on spirituous liquors. He came to the neighborhood in 1751, and bought a farm on Black brook, two miles from Amoskeag. He was a man of great versatility of talent : farmer, merchant, manufacturer of potash, lumber-dealer, sutler in the army in the French and Indian war. He went to Europe, and there was engaged in raising sunken ships, and finally, after having accu- mulated quite a fortune for that day, returned, and in May, 1794, when seventy years of age, commenced the great work of his life, what is known in history as the Blodget canal, around Amoskeag Falls. The work, however, was attended with many difficulties, and his whole fortune of thirty or forty thousand dollars was all expended before it was completed. He then solicited assistance from his friends, and applied to the legis- latures of New Hampshire and Massachusetts for grants of lot- teries to raise funds ; but as late as 1803 he wrote : "It is very painful indeed to me to reflect on a ten years' ardent exertione at this stage of my life, sparing no pains in my power, with the utmost stretch of invention to finish this canal, the expense of $60,000 already having been devoted to it, and the work not yet completed."
By continued exertions, however, the canal was completed in 1807, about the time of Mr. Blodget's death. This work, when we take into view all the difficulties connected with the prose- cution of a new enterprise, stands almost unrivalled in the his- tory of New England.
It is, however, the manufacture of cloth which now distin- guishes, and will for a long time to come, Amoskeag. The
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river here falls fifty feet, and the power is immense. As in the case of the canal, it was a single mind that led the way in the development of this great enterprise. Benjamin Pritchard was here the moving power. We first hear of him as a resident of New Ipswich, and engaged in manufacturing there. Machinery was used in that town for spinning cotton by water power in 1803, and was the first in the State.
Mr. Pritchard paid his last tax in New Ipswich in 1807, and in March, 1810, we find his mill in operation at Amoskeag. The property was then owned by a joint-stock company, divided into one hundred shares. At the first meeting fifty-five shares were sold, of which Mr. Pritchard took twenty-five. The building which was then erected was about forty feet square and two stories high. The only machinery placed in it was for spinning, and the only machine then used for that purpose was the jenny. This machine was first put in operation in England in 1767, and was the earliest improvement in spinning after the one- thread wheel, doing its work substantially on the same plan, only instead of one it drew out several threads at the same time.
The water to carry this machinery at Amoskeag was taken from the mill-dam of Ephraim and Robert Stevens. They gave bonds to the amount of two thousand dollars, as the obligation reads, to furnish " so much water as shall be sufficient for carry- ing an old-fashioned undershot corn-mill at all seasons of the year and at all days in the year, so long as water is needed for carrying on the manufacturing of cotton and wool at that place." For this, they were to receive ten dollars annually. Five years later twelve dollars per annum were paid for furnish- ing water sufficient to run the Amoskeag cotton and woollen mill.
From 1810 to 1819 spinning was the only work done there. It is interesting to learn how this now simple operation was then performed. After the cotton was received, it was given out into families, in lots of from fifty to one hundred pounds, to be picked. This was done by first whipping the cotton in a rude frame. This whipping machine was a unique article, per-
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haps thirty inches square, across which common cod line was woven at right angles, leaving spaces of half an inch; on three sides were placed boards, and the whole raised on posts breast high. On this the cotton was placed and whipped with two sticks like the common ox-gourd. This old whipping machine, operated by a boy, has given place to the picker of our day.
Some years after the manufacture of yarn was commenced, perhaps because the market was more than supplied, the com- pany introduced the weaving of cloth. This was done on hand- looms in the neighborhood. The agent of Amoskeag mills, Jotham Gillis, carried out yarn for this purpose. It was before the days of railroads, even before carriages, if we except the old " one-horse shay," and Mr. Gillis, upon horse-back, would ride six miles away, with bundles of yarn tied about his saddle. This order of things continued till 1819, when the power-loom was introduced, only five years after its introduction into the coun- try. The first was put in operation at Waltham, Mass., by Mr. Adams, the father of Phineas Adams, the late agent of the Stark mills. The loom had then been in operation in England from twenty to twenty-five years.1
In 1820 Jeremiah Mason was a member of the House of Representatives, and as chairman of the judiciary committee drew and secured the passage of a law changing the judiciary system of the State, abolishing the Court of Common Pleas, transferring most of its jurisdiction to the Superior Court, and constituting a Court of Sessions. Early in the June session Governor Bell received from the governor of Virginia "The Vir- ginia Report and Resolutions on the Missouri Question," which he transmitted to the legislature for their action. They set forth in forcible and earnest language the doctrines as to the sovereignty of the States and the limited powers of Congress. The answer of the New Hampshire legislature was written by Mr. Mason, and was a masterly treatment of the constitutional questions involved, ending with the resolution : "That in the opinion of this legislature the Congress of the United States has by the Constitution the right, in admitting new States into
1 Rev. C. W. Wallace, D. D.
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the Union, to prescribe the prohibition of slavery, as one of the conditions on which such State shall be admitted," and that "the existence of slavery within the United States is a great moral as well as political evil, the toleration of which can be justified by necessity alone, and that the further extension of it ought to be prevented by the due exercise of the power vested in the general government."
Hon. Jeremiah Mason was a member of the House of Repre- sentatives in December, 1820, and while standing in the gallery, Judge Nesmith heard him state the proposition that in his ex- perience he knew of no little law cases, that all alike, whatever the amount involved might be, turned upon the same golden hinges of justice. And it was sometimes as difficult to ascertain the true merits of a case, or trace the accurate boundaries of right and wrong, where only five dollars might be involved, as where thousands were at stake. The question then pending before the House referred to the amount of litigated claims of which a certain court should by law have jurisdiction.
Mr. Mason's personal appearance was very imposing. His height was over six feet and six inches. His weight about two hundred and seventy-five pounds. His uncommon size natur- ally attracted the wonder of beholders. His arguments to the jury were never tedious, always commanding their close atten- tion, being remarkable specimens of plain, clear, direct, compre- hensive, logical reasoning, generally addressed to the understand- ing rather than to the passions of the hearer. He presented clear ideas aptly and forcibly expressed. He managed well an unwilling, untruthful witness. In his quiet and easy way he would turn such a witness inside out without letting him know what he was about.1
The township of Shelburne, which lies in Coos county, north- east of the White Mountains, was chartered by George III. to Mark Wentworth, and six others. The date of the grant was 1771, and included Shelburne Addition, now known as Gorham. It was surveyed in the same year by Theodore Atkinson, who spent a number of months in the vicinity of the mountains.
I Hon. George W. Nesmith.
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The population in 1820, when it was incorporated, was 205, while in 1870 it was only 250.
The first permanent settlers were Hope. Austin, Daniel and Benjamin Ingalls, who moved there in 1771. The next year Thomas Wheeler, Nathaniel Porter, and Peter Poor came there, and were afterward killed by the Indians. In 1781 came Moses Messer, Captain Jonathan Rindge, and Jonathan and Simeon Evans. Captain Rindge is well remembered by the old resi- dents in town as one of the most respected of the early settlers.
The early history is filled with incidents of toil and hardships which the pioneers were forced to undergo. Mr. Hope Austin, with his family, consisting of a wife and three children, moved into town at a time when the ground was covered with five feet of snow. All the way from Bethel, a distance of twelve miles, they walked, Mr. Austin and two hired men drawing the furniture on hand sleds, while Mrs. Austin carried her youngest child, an infant of nine months, in her arms, with Judith, aged six, and James, aged four, trudging by her side. When they arrived at their new home they found simply the walls of a log cabin, without roof or floor. To shelter them from the rains and snows they cut poles and laid across the walls. On these they laid shingles, covering a space only large enough for a bed. In this they lived until the next June. At the time of the In- dian massacre in August, - spoken of in Segar's narrative, - they fled to Fryeburg, where they remained until the next March.
Deacon Daniel Ingalls was well known and highly esteemed throughout the mountain region for his piety and benevolence, and his death was received by all with sadness.
His two sons, Moses and Robert, settled in Shelburne. They were both distinguished as being kind-hearted men, and a valu- able addition to the young colony. Moses was brave and dar- ing, and a keen lover of hunting.
Robert Fletcher Ingalls was undoubtedly the first temperance reformer in New Hampshire. He formed a band known as the " Cold Water Army," embracing the youth of both sexes, and worked for the cause until the day of his death. On the 4th day
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of July before he died he took part in the exercises, delivering an address which is remembered to this day.
After the unsuccessful attempt against Quebec, in which the gallant and lamented Montgomery lost his life, many of the American soldiers deserted, and endeavored to find their way home through the forests of Canada. Twelve of these soldiers succeeded in finding their way to Shelburne late in the fall of 1776, where they were discovered by a negro in the employ of Captain Rindge, nearly exhausted. After becoming recruited they gave an account of their sufferings from the time they left Quebec. They followed the Chaudiere river for a long distance, crossed the highlands, and came to the Magalloway river, down which they passed to its confluence with Clear Stream, at Errol.
Here they left one of their number, named Hall, too weak to proceed farther. Captain Rindge and Moses Ingalls immediately started in quest of him, and after a long search he was found lying across his gun, near where his comrades left him. He had dragged himself to the bank to drink, and, his head hanging over a little descent, he was unable to raise it from weakness, and so drowned. They buried him on the bank, and, as a memorial, changed the river's name from Clear to Hall's Stream.
The New Hampton Institution has a model location in a quiet village, amid New Hampshire hills and rural scenery, and among people who fully appreciate the advantages of hav- ing a college or seminary in their midst. It was established in 1821, and soon became widely known as a theological school for divinity students preparing for the Baptist ministry.
In 1829 a female department was added.
In 1852 the institution came into the hands of the Freewill Baptist denomination ; and for sixteen years, or until it was re- moved to Lewiston, Me., in 1870, it was the seat of a Biblical school. In 1866 a commercial department was added to the school.
The hurricane in the Kearsarge region, in September, 1821, was the most destructive tornado of which there is any record as having swept over any portion of New England, and, in pro-
STOCKIN
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NEW HAMPTON INSTITUTE
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portion to its extent, infinitely more destructive than the "great wind" of September, 1815.
I " About six o'clock, after a warm day, a dark cloud was observed to rise in the north and north-west, illuminated by in- cessant flashes of vivid lightning. Houses and barns, fences and trees, were levelled to the ground and the débris carried long distances. Several lives were lost."
The literary fund, for the benefit of the public schools, was established in 1821, by imposing a tax of one-half of one per cent. upon the banks of the State.
In June, 1822, Hon. Samuel Dinsmoor, senior, of Keene, was nominated for governor by the Democrats or Republicans, in the legislature of that year ; candidates for governor and for Congress being then nominated in June by members of the legislature.
In the winter before the election Levi Woodbury, then one of the justices of the Superior Court, was nominated for governor by an irregularly constituted assemblage of people in attendance upon a term of court in session at Portsmouth. The Patriot sustained the nomination of the legislative convention, and came out in strong rebuke of this procedure at Portsmouth, which really was an open revolt, by so many Democrats as par- ticipated in the nomination of Judge Woodbury, against the regular nomination of the party the preceding June. But the Portsmouth transaction was countenanced, if not shaped, by the Plumers of Epping, Judge Butler of Deerfield, the North End Democrats in Concord, and other equally conspicuous and in- fluential politicians in various parts of the State. Although the Federal party had been disbanded, yet thousands who were members of it naturally sympathized with any procedure in conflict with the Patriot, and, with nearly one accord, went into the support of Judge Woodbury, who was chosen over General Dinsmoor by 4026 majority in 1823.
There were jealousies between North End Democrats and their down-town political brethren so long ago as fifty years. They at the North End regarded those beneath the shadow
1 N. H. Patriot.
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of the State House as desirous of giving law to the Democratic party. The last-named men were spoken of as " Parliament- corner politicians," a term which included Isaac Hill, William Low, Joseph Low, Richard Bartlett, Jacob B. Moore, and a few other active and influential men south of the present City Hall. Those North End gentlemen of the same party who were be- coming, if not alienated from, at least jealous of their down- town brethren, and who immediately or more remotely partook of this feeling, were John George, Robert Davis, Samuel Coffin, Abiel Walker, Francis N. Fiske, Charles Walker, Samuel Spar- hawk, and other less conspicuous men. There were also Democrats in other portions of New Hampshire who had be- come jealous of the "Parliament corner " leaders, and this, at first, slight misunderstanding or disaffection culminated in the commencement of the journal known as the New Hampshire Statesman, January 6, 1823, a paper that is one of the very few which, growing out of a mere feud among local politicians, became a permanent establishment. Luther Roby, then in business at Amherst, moved to Concord, and became printer and publisher of the Statesman, and Amos A. Parker, then in the practice of law at Epping, was engaged to conduct it.
The Statesman of course advocated the election of Judge Woodbury ; indeed, when it was commenced it was understood that a rebellion was on foot against the nominee of the June convention. But the triumph of the North End gentlemen was transitory, for one of the first important appointments by Gov- ernor Woodbury was that of Hon. Richard H. Ayer, of Hook- sett, to be sheriff of the newly formed county of Merrimack. This was a suitable selection -fitness being the standard - but one which created disappointment, indeed displeasure, through- out the ranks of those by whose votes Judge Woodbury was made governor. Mr. Ayer was brother-in-law of Mr. Hill, and exerted all his power to thwart the election of Governor Wood- bury, who, in fact, by this and other procedures, turned his back upon his supporters, and distinctly indicated to them that he should henceforth seek promotion in another quarter. He was governor only one year.1
1 Asa McFarland.
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Levi Woodbury was the son of the Hon. Peter Woodbury, and was born at Francestown, on the 22d of December, 1789. He was of the oldest Massa- chusetts stock, being descended from John Woodbury, who emigrated from Somersetshire, in England, in the year 1624, and was one of the original set- tlers of Beverly, Mass. Peter Woodbury removed from Beverly to Frances- town in 1773. His son Levi entered Dartmouth College in October, 1805. After his graduation with honor in 1809, in September of that year, he began the study of law at Litchfield, Conn., pursuing it at Boston, Exeter, and Francestown; and in September, 1812, commenced practice in his native vil- lage. He soon obtained a high rank at the bar, with an extensive business. His first public service was upon his election as clerk of the Senate of New Hampshire in June, 1816. In December of the same year he received the ap- pointment of judge of the Supreme Court of the State; and in the discharge of the duties of his position was seen the inherent force of his abilities, aided by his constant and never-ceasing habits of application.
In June, 1819, he married Elizabeth W. Clapp, of Portland, and, re- moving to Portsmouth soon after, except when absent on public duties re- sided in that city. In March, 1823, he was chosen governor of New Hamp- shire, and re-elected in 1824.
In 1825 he was chosen one of the representatives from Portsmouth in the legislature, and elected speaker upon the assembling of the House of Repre- sentatives. This was his first seat in any deliberative assembly; but his knowledge of parliamentary law, aided by his dignity and urbanity of manner, served to enable him to fill the office in a commendable manner.
At the same session he was elected a senator in the Congress of the United States. His senatorial term was completed in March, 1831, and in that month he was chosen State senator from his district ; but before the legislature assembled he was, in May, 1831, appointed secretary of the navy, and re- signed the senatorship June 4th of that year, and served till June 30, 1834, in the secretaryship.
In July, 1834, Governor Woodbury was appointed secretary of the Treas- ury, and served until the election of General Harrison to the Presidency. He was again elected a senator in Congress for the term of six years, com- mencing March 4, 1841. He served until November, 1845. During that year President Polk had tendered Governor Woodbury the embassy to the court of St. James, but the appointment, for domestic reasons, was declined.
Upon the death of Mr. Justice Story, Mr. Woodbury was commissioned an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and after subse- quently entering upon the duties of this high office, continued therein until his death, which occurred September 4, 1851.
Judge Woodbury, in the various public positions he was so constantly called to fill, showed himself abundantly capable for the discharge of their ·duties.
As a legislator he was painstaking and industrious, as a judge studious and indefatigable in his labors, and as a cabinet minister comprehensive and yet exact in his knowledge of details. His life was one of uninterrupted
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