USA > New Hampshire > Colony, province, state, 1623-1888: history of New Hampshire > Part 48
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The canal dividends had been kept up to their highest mark by the sale of its townships in Maine and other real estate, but now they began to drop. The year the Lowell road went into full operation the receipts of the canal were reduced one-third; and when the' Nashua & Lowell road went into full operation, in 1840, they were reduced another third. The board of directors waged a plucky warfare with the railroads, reducing the tariff on all articles, and almost abolishing it on some, till the expenditures of the canal outran its income; but steam came out triumphant.
Concord, Piscataquog, Litchfield, and Nashua each had its lines of boats, making in the aggregate quite a little fleet. The broad reaches of the river below Nashua were at times rendered especially picturesque by the bellying sails as the boats drove before the wind.
This part of the river had also upon it, for three or four years subsequent to 1834, a fair-sized steamboat, plying for passengers and freight between Nashua and Lowell. She was commanded one season by Captain Jacob Van- derbilt of Staten Island, New York, brother to the late Commodore Vander- bilt. In the early part of the season, while the water of the river was at its highest stages, it was also thronged with logs and lumber being taken down for market.
The first agent appointed by the canal company, " to superintend the said canals, to collect tolls," at Amoskeag, was Samuel P. Kidder, who had for many years been assistant and confidential secretary of Judge Blodgett, the leading proprietor of the Amoskeag Canal. He held the appointment until his decease in 1822, when Frederick G. Stark, a grandson of General John Stark, was appointed his successor. Mr. Stark held the position continuously about fifteen years until 1837. During this period his correspondence shows him to have been in active communication with the Boston agents of the proprietors of the Middlesex Canal, who also owned or controlled the river canals, and he appears to have at all times enjoyed their full confidence.
The Merrimack river canals were blotted out by the railroads. The open- ing of the railroad to Lowell in 1835, to Nashua in 1838, and to Concord in 1842 were successive steps of destruction to the whole system of river naviga-
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tion, and culminated in a total abandonment of the canals soon after the Concord Railroad was put in operation.
A hardy race of boatmen, pilots, and raftsmen -men of uncommon strength and endurance, skilful in their calling but unfamiliar with other labor -were suddenly and permanently thrown out of employment. The wooden dams and locks went to decay, the embankments were cut and ploughed down, and successive spring freshets have hurled their icy batteries against the stone abutments and lock walls until they are nearly obliterated, and the next generation will know not of them.
In 1831 Samuel Dinsmoor of Keene was elected governor, defeating Ichabod Bartlett.
Hon. Samuel Dinsmoor was a native of Windham, born in July, 1766. He was of the Londonderry Scotch-Irish descent, great-grandson of John Dinsmoor, one of the first settlers, grandson of Robert Dinsmoor, and son of William Dinsmoor. He graduated at Dartmouth College, 1789; read law, and settled in Keene in 1792. As a young man he was especially interested in military affairs, and organized the Keene light infantry - one of the finest drilled and best equipped corps known under the
old militia laws. In 1808 he was appointed postmaster. In 18II he was elected to Congress, and distinguished himself by favoring the war with Great Britain. On his return he was appointed collector of the direct tax, and afterwards was judge of Probate. In 1821 he was elected a councillor. In 1823 he was the regular nominee for governor, but was defeated by Levi Woodbury on an independent ticket. He died in March, 1835.
Governor Samuel Dinsmoor was re-elected in 1832, again defeating Mr. Ichabod Bartlett.
Governor Samuel Dinsmoor was elected for a third term in 1833, defeating the Whig candidate Arthur Livermore.
General Andrew Jackson, then president of the United States, visited New Hampshire, by invitation of the legislature. The occasion brought a vast company into Concord, and the 28th of June, 1833, became distinguished as one of the " great days " at the capital of New Hampshire. It was anterior to the construc- tion of railways in the State, hence conveyance thither was by wheel carriages or personal locomotion. The occasion differed from the visit of General Lafayette to Concord, eight years
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before, spoken of on a preceding page, in that the former brought out men without regard to any political preferences, while the visit of President Jackson was during a season of much partisan strife. Nevertheless the number of people in town, June 28, 1833, was very great, and their demonstrations of delight were of the most emphatic character. To thousands of Democrats it was the happiest day of their lives, if outward appearances be taken as proof of joys within.
The day was Friday - the weather of auspicious character. The president was accompanied by the vice-president, Martin Van Buren; Hon. Lewis Cass, secretary of war; Hon. Levi Woodbury, secretary of the navy; the private secretary of the president, Major Donaldson, of Nashville, Tenn., and a few others. He was met on the "river-road," so called, in Bow, being there received by a cavalcade, at the head of which was. the town committee, of whom General Robert Davis was chair- man. The military display was of a high order, consisting of eight picked companies, of which was the Keene light infantry, in command of James Wilson-probably the best disciplined, most effective, largest, and most attractive military company ever seen in New Hampshire. The entire body of troops was in charge of Colonel Stephen Peabody of Milford.
The president rode into town on horseback, preceded by the military, and passed up Main street to the North End, down State street to School, thence to the Eagle Hotel, where he remained during his stay in town. The next day (Saturday) the president reviewed the troops, accompanied by Governor Dinsmoor and Adjutant-general Low, -this spectacle being witnessed on State street, immediately west of the Capitol. Succeeding this was the introduction of the president to the civil government and legislature. The press in the House, the passages, and galleries, was probably never greater than on this occasion, there not being a foot of vacant space in the Repre- sentatives' Hall or galleries.
On Saturday the president received the calls of citizens and others, visited the State Prison, and in the evening received a multitude of ladies and gentlemen in the Doric Hall, or ar-a of
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the State House. On Sunday he and his suite attended public worship - in the forenoon at the North church, early in the afternoon at the Unitarian church, and a service at four o'clock at the Baptist church.
The president and his suite left on Monday morning for Washington, being accompanied to the town line by the same committee by whom he was received.
The youngest of the sons of Hon. Isaac Hill was, with another youth named Andrew Jackson, presented to the presi- dent, who gave to each a United States silver coin, saying, " Here, my sons, is the eagle of your country, which I have endeavored to honor and defend. Keep it in remembrance of me, and if it is ever assailed by a foreign or domestic foe, rally under its pinions, and defend it to the last."
The town of Pembroke was shocked, on Sunday, June 23, by the rapidly spread intelligence that Sally, wife of Chauncey Cochran, had been murdered by Abraham Prescott, a boy of eighteen, who had been living with the family.
Prescott accompanied Mrs. Cochran into a field near the house to pick strawberries, and struck her the fatal blow, in a secluded spot, with no motive that was ever known. From the testimony at the trial it was evident that he was of weak mind.
He was lodged in jail at Hopkinton, and was allowed two trials, in which he was ably defended by Hon. Ichabod Bartlett, of Portsmouth, and Charles H. Peaslee, Esq., of Concord, who firmly believed in his moral irresponsibility ; and prosecuted by the attorney-general, George Sullivan, Esq., and the county solicitor, John Whipple, Esq. The court was held by Chief Jus- tice William M. Richardson, Associate Justice Joel Parker, with the Common Pleas justices, Benjamin Wadleigh and Aaron Whittemore, at the first trial, in September, 1834.
The jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and he was sentenced to be hung.
His counsel, feeling a positive conviction that he was irrespon- sible for his acts, either through mental impotency or insanity, sought every possible pretext for a new trial. A new trial was
NEW HAMPSHIRE ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE.
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granted at the December term of the Superior Court, 1834, and the case came on for trial in September, 1835; when Associate Justice Nathaniel G. Upham took the place of Chief Justice Richardson on the bench ; the other justices and the counsel were the same as at the first trial.
Prescott was again found guilty, and his sentence confirmed, to the disappointment of many who did not believe him morally guilty.
On the day fixed for the execution a great crowd assembled at Hopkinton village to witness the event, and when informed that a reprieve had been granted, behaved in a most disgraceful man- ner, and by their demonstrations caused the death of a lady from fright. The reprieve was granted for a final hearing before the governor and Council ; but they refused to interfere, and the sen- tence was carried into effect January 6, 1836.
One trial was held at the Old North meeting-house, in Con- cord. General Peaslee and Mr. Bartlett managed the case with great learning and ability ; and it was largely due to their in- strumentality that the New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane was afterward established.
Prescott was buried in Rumney.
One of the most generous benefactors of the Asylum for he Insane was Moody Kent, a resident of Pembroke.
The power of the human voice to give force to language was never more apparent than in the case of George Sulli- van. Probably that one of his productions upon which the greatest labor was bestowed was his argument for the gov- ernment in the case of " Abraham Prescott on an indictment for the murder of Mrs Sally Cochran, of Pembroke, before the Court of Common Pleas, holden in Concord, for the county of Merrimack, September, 1834." This production fills `wenty-seven pages of the printed Trial, and was attentively listened to, from beginning to close, by a great assembly ; but, read at the present day, it will be found of far less force than the argument of Hon. Ichabod Bartlett, of counsel for the prisoner, made the same or the preceding day. But pub- lic opinion was with the attorney-general, and, therefore, had the merits of the two arguments been submitted to those who heard
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them to decide by vote, a great preponderance would have been on the side of Sullivan.1
The spot where Mrs. Cochran fell is indicated by a granite block about a foot square and three feet high, bearing the figures " 1833."
William Badger, of Gilmanton, was elected governor in 1834.
Old Gilmanton was formerly one of the largest and most im- portant towns of New Hampshire, and before Belmont was severed from it the value of agricultural products exceeded that of any other town in the State. Among its citizens were num- bered many men of large wealth and usefulness, not a few of whom acquired a name that was known and reverenced beyond the limits of their own neighborhood. Gilmanton citizens, bearing the proud name of Gilman, Cogswell, and Badger, dur- ing more than one generation exercised active influence in the councils of the State. They were militia officers, sheriffs, judges, senators, and governors.2
To the site of the Badger homestead, in 1784, came General Joseph Badger, jr., one of the brave soldiers of the Revolution. But he was not the first Badger who was eminent in the history of Gilmanton. His father, General Joseph Badger, sen., was one of the earlier settlers, and a prominent man in the town and in the State. In 1773, when Governor Wentworth organized three additional regiments in the militia of the State, he placed as colonel at the head of the tenth - the first one organized - his friend, Joseph Badger, then a man a little past fifty. His regiment comprised the towns of Gilmanton, Barnstead, Sanbornton, Meredith, and New Hampton. Colonel Badger was in command of his regiment when the war opened, and took an active part in favor of the patriot cause. For many years he represented the town at the General Assembly, and in 1784 he was councillor for Strafford county. Before the war closed he was appointed brigadier-general of militia, and had a commission signed by Meshech Weare. He was moderator twenty times in twenty-five years, a selectman eleven years, and town treasurer six years. He died in 1803, at the age of eighty-two years, after living one of the most active and useful lives of his generation.
His oldest son, Joseph, jr., followed in the veteran's footsteps. He was a soldier in the Revolution, and fought in several of the battles of that contest. He was a lieutenant of his regiment during the campaign against Burgoyne, and did eminent service under Gates. After the close of the war he returned to Gilmanton, and turned his attention to farming. He owned three hundred acres of land, the nucleus of what became ultimately a magnificent country estate. His residence was a simple, one-story, frame house, but it was the 1 Asa McFarland. Fred Myron Colby.
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home of contentment, prosperity, and happiness. The people knew his worth and honored him from time to time with a testimony of their trust. They sent him several successive years to the legislature as the representa- tive of the town. In 1790 he was chosen councillor for the Strafford district, and was re-elected eight times to that important office. He was prominent in the State militia, passing through various grades of office in the tenth regi- ment to its command in 1795. In 1796 he was appointed by Governor Gil- man brigadier-general of the second brigade. He died at the age of sixty- one, January 14, 1809. Says Judge Chandler E. Potter, in his " Military History of New Hampshire :" " As a brave soldier, earnest patriot, and up- right citizen, few men have better deserved the favor of the public than General Badger."
The inheritor of his wealth, his ability, and his popular favor was his son William Badger, who was the third generation of a family to whom honors came by a sort of natural descent. Born in 1779, William was but a boy of five years when his father settled upon the hill. Thus his youth was passed among the charming influences of this unsurpassed location. Much of what he achieved in life must be ascribed to the environs of his boyhood, and thus is exemplified the helpfulness of lofty surroundings. He did not owe all to his ancestry, nor to his training; the fact that he rose higher than his fathers he owed undoubtedly to the exquisite beauty of the landscape he gazed upon, and to the strengthening breezes that blew around his boyhood home. Wil- liam Badger was elected a State senator from district No. 6. He was twice re-elected, and the last year, 1816, he was president of the Senate. This lat- ter year he was appointed an associate justice of the Court of Common Pleas, an office that he held until 1820. In May of that year Governor Bell ap- pointed him sheriff of the county of Strafford, and he served in that capacity ten years, retiring in 1830.1
Colonel Badger was a Democrat of the Jefferson and Jackson school, and about this time began to be regarded as a sort of prospective candidate for gubernatorial honors. His large wealth, his noble ancestry, his long and meritorious services brought him before all men's eyes. He had moreover those popular democratic manners that endeared him to the people. In 1831 the elder Samuel Dinsmoor, of Keene, was the nominee of the party, and was three times successfully elected. In 1834 Colonel Badger became the candidate, and received a triumphant election. The next year he was re-elected. Governor Badger was a very efficient chief magistrate. He possessed strict in- tegrity, his judgment was sound, and when determined upon a course of action he was not to be swerved from it. During the "Indian Stream territory troubles" his duties were of great
1 Fred Myron Colby.
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responsibility, but he performed them with promptness, and at the same time judiciously. A man with less care and prudence might have greatly increased our border troubles. His course received the hearty commendation of all parties, and doubtless saved us from a war with Great Britain.
Governor Badger was a tall, stately man, strong, six feet in height, and at some periods of his life weighed nearly three hundred pounds. He was active and stirring his whole life. Though a man of few words he was remarkably genial. Hc had a strong will, but his large good sense prevented him from being obstinate. He was generous and hospitable, a friend to the poor, a kind neighbor, and a high-souled, honorable Chris- tian gentleman.
He died September 21, 1852, at the age of seventy-three.1
2 In 1838 Nathaniel P. Rogers removed from Plymouth to Concord, and became the sole editor of the Herald of Freedom. He had, from its establishment in 1834, furnished many most trenchant and brilliant articles for its columns.
He was born in Plymouth, graduated with honors at Dart- mouth College in 1816, studied law with Richard Fletcher, then settled down to its practice in his native town, and continued there through about twenty quite successful years.
As student in books of general literature, especially history and poetry, none were before him. But general reading never detracted in the least from the duties of his profession. At the time of his death, an intimate friend who knew him long and well wrote of him, that "so accurate was his knowledge of law, and so industrious was he in business, that the success of a client was always calculated upon from the moment that his assistance was secured."
The great mission of his life, however, was neither literature nor law. He was subsequently ordained and consecrated as a high priest in the great fellowship of humanity, and most divinely did he magnify his office in the last ten years of his life on earth. In 1835 he espoused the cause of the American slave, and marshalled himself by the side of William Lloyd
I Fred Myron Colby.
2 Parker Pillsbury.
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Garrison and his then hated, hunted, and persecuted discipleship. From that time the anti-slavery enterprise, the temperance and peace causes, and the equal rights of woman had no firmer, braver, and most certainly no abler advocate and champion than was he.
New Hampshire politics were at that time almost unanimously democratic. And Democracy meant a diabolical devotion to slavery. Nor was its rival, the Whig party, but little better. And the clergy, with a few honorable exceptions, were still in full sacramental communion with the churches and pulpits of the South.
Anti-slavery meetings were everywhere mobbed and broken up. Garrison had been seized in broad day by a mob of "gentle- men in broadcloth"-driven from an anti-slavery concert of prayer, then seized, stripped of most of his clothing, and with a rope about his body, was pulled along some of Boston's princi- pal streets until rescued by the mayor and police and shut in the strongest jail to save his life. In Concord, a meeting attended by George Thompson, of England, John G. Whittier, and other eminent abolitionists, was most ignominiously broken up, and Thompson only missed the tar kettle by being spirited away out of the village and concealed by his friends. Whittier narrowly escaped the baptism of tar and feathers by being mistaken for Thompson by the rioters. A Methodist minister, engaged to give an anti-slavery lecture in Northfield, was arrested as a common brawler, and dragged from his knees and the pulpit as he was opening his meeting with prayer.
But such was the popular sentiment towards slavery, when Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, with wife and family of seven young children, removed to Concord and became editor of the Herald of Freedom, 'a small, unpretentious sheet, without capital, or many subscribers, but commissioned to speak with voice to be heard round the world and down the ages.
Rogers had most unshaken faith in the people, never doubt- ing that, wisely taught and led, they would gladly abolish slavery and cease to oppress and enslave one another.
He and his immediate associates relied solely on the power of
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moral and spiritual truth. They formed no political party. They abjured the ballot altogether as a reforming agency ; and still more essentially the bullet, the only specie redemption of the ballot.
And Rogers lived to see the downfall of that old Democratic dynasty in his native State, and in many other States, and the rending in twain of the Methodist General Conference and some other powerful ecclesiastical associations, and a revolution in ecclesiastical, especially clerical, control and leadership.
He died in October, 1846, and was buried in Concord, where no monument commemorates his last resting-place.1
Nathaniel P. Rogers, in October, 1842, soon after he entered the lecture field, wrote as follows : -
"The abolitionists of the country ought to know Parker Pillsbury better than they do. I know him in all that is noble in soul, and powerful in talent and eloquence. The remote district school-house, in New Hampshire, and the old granite county of Essex, Massachusetts, where he was born, would bear me witness to all I could say. He is one of the strong men of our age. We passed the solitary school-house a few days since, where he was allowed the few weeks' schooling of his childhood; but thanks they were so few! He was educating all the better for humanity's service on the rugged farm. He there taught himself to be a man. A great lesson he had effectually learned before he came in contact with seminaries and a priest- hood. These proved unequal, on that account, to overmatch and cower down his homespun nobility of soul. They tied their fetters round his manly limbs, but he snapped them as Samson did the withes, and went out an abol- itionist, carrying off the very theological gates with him upon his manly shoulders."
The importance of railroads to the people of New Hamp- shire can hardly be estimated. Probably no section of this country is benefited and its material interests so largely and directly aided in a general manner as this State, while in some localities the development of every important enterprise is al- most entirely dependent upon railroad facilities.
At the June session, in 1835, the Nashua and Lowell, Con- cord, and Boston and Maine Railroads were chartered. The Eastern Railroad was chartered in 1836; the Dover and Winni- pisiogee, in 1839: the Northern, Great Falls, and Conway, Bos- ton, Concord and Montreal, and Cheshire Railroads, in 1844;
1 Parker Pillsbury.
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the Portsmouth, Newmarket, and Concord Railroad, the Frank- lin and Bristol, the Ashuelot, and the Sullivan Railroads, in 1846; the Manchester and Lawrence, and the Atlantic and St. Lawrence, in 1847; the Connecticut River Railroad, and the Contoocook Valley Railroad, the Concord and Claremont, the Monadnock, the White Mountains (to Littleton), and the Nash- ua and Epping Railroads, in 1848 ; the Suncook Valley, the Manchester and Candia, in 1849; the Ammonoosuc Railroad (to buy and extend White Mountain Railroad to Lancaster), in 1855 ; the White Mountains Railroad, in 1859; the Dover and Winnipisiogee Railroad, in 1862; the Manchester and Keene Railroad, in 1864; the Portland and Rochester and the Ports- mouth and Dover Railroad, in 1866; the Ogdensburg, in 1867; the Wolfeborough Railroad, in 1868; the Hillsborough and Peterborough Railroad, in 1869; the Nashua, Acton, and Bos- ton Railroad, in 1872; the Pemigewasset Valley Railroad, in 1874; the Farmington and Rochester, in 1877 ; the Profile and Franconia Notch Railroad, the Whitefield and Jefferson Rail- road, and the New Zealand River Railroad, in 1878; the Kil- kenny Railroad, in 1879. The Upper Coos Railroad was completed in 1887.
In 1836 Isaac Hill was elected governor of the State. Few have rendered their names more conspicuous in the affairs of the town of Concord and of the State of New Hampshire. Born in Cambridge in April, 1788, he was apprenticed to the pub- lisher of the Amherst Cabinet; and in April, 1809, he issued the first number of the New Hampshire Patriot. He was elected to the State Senate in 1820, 1821, 1822, 1827; and in 1828 he was the candidate of his party for United States senator. In 1829 he was appointed by General Andrew Jackson second compt- roller of the Treasury department. His nomination was rejected by the Senate in April, 1830, when he returned to New Hamp- shire and obtained the election as United States senator, and took his seat in the body which had sought to humble him. He resigned his seat in the Senate, when he was elected governor, and he was re-elected in 1837, and again in 1838. In 1840 he was appointed sub-treasurer at Boston. He exerted great influ-
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