USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Historical sketches of the discovery, settlement, and progress of events in the Coos country and vicinity, principally included between the years 1754 and 1785 > Part 3
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These two Chamberlains were not in the interest of Hazen or Bailey, but were employed to come on and take possession for one Oliver Willard, of Northfield, Mass., who was endeavoring to supplant Bailey and Hazen. But the latter being united in their peti-
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tions for grants ; being also in favor with the Gov- ernor, and having taken possession by their agents prior to Willard, succeeded, and Willard failed. Willard's disappointment was great, and his anger violent. He gave out vaunting threats that if he could catch Hazen out of the settlement, he would flog him to his heart's content. Hazen, however, had seen too many tomahawks and bristling bayonets around the walls of Quebec to be greatly disquieted by a threat of this kind. But these two men after- ward met in Charlestown, and upon Willard's at- tempting to execute his promise, he caught the severest flogging that any man need receive, and this terminated the matter.
This same year, 1762, John Hazleton, from Hamp- stead, N. H., moved into Newbury, and first lived at the foot of the hill, south of the Johnson village, but afterward settled in the south part of the town, where Col. Moody Chamberlain now lives, near the south bridge. In this family, in 1763, before they moved from the Ox Bow, the first English child was born in this town- Betsey Hazleton, now the Widow Lovewell, of the north parish in Haverhill, in her 77th year.
The same year, the first inale child of English descent was born in the family of Thomas Chamber-
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lain, and was called Jacob Bailey Chamberlain. The parents of this son received a hundred acres of land, as a bounty, according to a promise of the original proprietor, that the first mother of a son born in that settlement should receive one hundred acres of land.
I now return to Hazen and his party. I have said he came on in the spring of 1762, with men and ma- terials for building a saw-mill and grist-mill where the Swazey mills now stand. With Hazen came Col. Joshua Howard, of Haverhill, Mass., born April 24, 1740. He was then 22 years of age, and lived in Haverhill until January 7th, 1839, almost 99 years of age. He was a man of strict veracity, and at the time when he gave his narration of events in the early settlement of these towns (July 27, 1824), he was of sound mind and good memory. I am much indebted to him for materials in these sketches.
Howard labored that first season in preparing the timbers for the mills, and was present at the raising of them. He relates one providential escape from death at the raising of those mills, which deserves notice. One of their company, John Hughs, an Irishman, fell from the frame, sixteen feet, and struck perpendicularly upon the mud-sill, head down- wards, without any thing to abate the force of the
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fall. He was taken up without signs of life ; but Glazier Wheeler, from Newbury, found a penknife with the company, and opened a vein, and after the loss of blood, he revived, and soon recovered from the tremendous blow. Physicians and surgeons, those comfortable adjuncts to an improved state of society, were then out of the question, and every mind, in such an emergency, was put upon its own resources. But I have a tale more melancholy to relate.
Johnson and Pettie, who had spent the winter in solitariness, now thought of visiting their friends at the east ; and preparing themselves a canoe, they took their departure in June, intending to descend the river to Charlestown. They made their way pleasantly until they came near the mouth of White River, in Lebanon. Here they were drawn into a whirlpool ; their canoe was upset, and they were plunged into the river. Johnston made every effort to reach the shore, but sunk into the arms of death. Pettie, being the better swimmer, gained the shore, and was enabled to bear the melancholy tidings of Johnston's death to his friends.
Some time after this event, a stranger, passing up the river in a boat, discovered the body of a man lying upon the shore of a small island in the river
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between Lebanon, N. H., and Hartford, Vt. Not knowing anything of Johnston or of his fate, and being far from any settlement, he performed the kindest office to a stranger corpse which remained in his power. He digged a grave in the best manner he could, interred the body, and left it the sole proprietor of the island. It now bears his name, " Johnston's Island." He is still the only occupant, and will probably remain such, until the Great Pro- prietor of the world shall assert his claim, recall the dead, and extinguish all earthly titles. Col. Charles Johnston, brother of Michael Johnston, after he came to Haverhill, and learned the resting place of his brother, went down to the island, found the lonely grave, bedewed it with his tears, erected a monument to his brother's memory, and resigned all into the keeping of him who had given and taken. Capt. Michael Johnston, now of Haverhill, was so called to bear up and perpetuate the name of that uncle who found this early grave.
Col. Howard relates that he and two others were the first among the settlers who came from Salisbury in a straight course to Haverhill. They came on in April, 1762. Howard, Jesse Harriman, and Simeon Stevens employed an old hunter at Concord to guide them through. They came west of Newfound Pond,
ยท
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in Hebron, followed up the north-west branch of Baker's River into Coventry, and down the Oliverian to the Connecticut. They performed the journey in four days from Concord.
In June, of this year, the first family moved into Haverhill. Uriah Morse, and Hannah, his wife, came from Northfield, Mass., and settled upon the bank of Poole Brook, west of the bridge on the main road, and a little south-west of the house where David Merrill lived for many years. They boarded Capt. Hazen's men, while they were building the mills, and other adventurers as they came into the settlement. The first child of English descent had its birth in this family, in the spring of 1763 ; but we hear of no bounty bestowed upon the parents, as in Newbury, the same year, nor do we learn whether it was male or female. Indeed, it survived its birth but a few days. The first death of an adult occurred in this family, also - Polly Harriman died of con- sumption, aged 18 years. She was buried a little south-west of the present meeting-house in the north parish of Haverhill, between the meeting-house and the Southards. Her death was much lamented.
Poole Brook derived its name from a man whose name was Poole, who lived fifty or sixty rods north of Uriah Morse's house. Poole was drowned one
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mile above the Narrows, in Connecticut River, above Wells' River. Glazier Wheeler and his son Charles found the body of Poole, seven days after drowning, and it was brought down to the great Ox Bow and interred. Polly, the only child of Mr. Poole, mar- ried John Johnson, of Newbury, and was drowned in the Connecticut, near where her father was buried.
Thomas Johnson, Timothy Bedel, Capt. Hazen, and Jesse Harriman boarded in the family of Uriah Morse in the autumn of 1762. Johnson was now in his 21st year. He was born March 22, 1742, and came into the settlement in the service of General Bailey ; but the first season he boarded on the east side of the river. He originated in Haverhill, Mass. Thomas Johnson's first purchase in Newbury bears
date October 6, 1763. It is the united testimony of the first settlers, that at that early period, moose, bear, deer, beaver, otter, mink and sables were nu- merous, and that salmon enriched and adorned the river. Trout was not so abundant in the streams as salmon in the river, and shad never appeared above Bellows' Falls, in Walpole.
We now come to speak of the events of 1763, in those settlements. This was the year of charters with them. Newbury's charter bears date March 18, 1763, signed by Benning Wentworth, and I think Haverhill charter bears the same date.
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The first town meeting under the charter was held by the freemen of Newbury, June 13, 1763, and not less than 100 miles from the location of their grant, viz., at Plaistow, N. H. And before this meeting was adjourned, they voted to unite with Haverhill in paying a preacher for the term of two or three months, "this fall or winter,"- a very worthy ex- ample, while they were yet so few and feeble.
This was a year of enlargement with Haverhill and Newbury. Benjamin Hall, from Massachusetts, came in and settled near the Porter place, where the Southards now live. Jonathan Saunders and Sarah Rowell, both from Hampton, N. H., came and settled near the present house of Dr. Carleton, late deceased. Jacob Hall, from Northfield, Mass., came and settled on the Dow farm, so called. Hon. James Woodward, of Hampstead, N. H., came and settled on his place at the age of twenty-two years. He purchased his farm at twenty cents per acre. Mr. John Page, father of the present governor of New Hampshire, came into Haverhill this year from Lunenburg, Mass. He was employed by his uncle, David Page, to assist in driving up his cattle to Lan- caster, and this was the beginning of the settlement of that town -David Page's son having been up in the preceding June of that year, and marked out a
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way for them from Haverhill. John Page returned from Lancaster, and bought his farm in Haverhill, but spent the subsequent winter in taking care of Gen. Bailey's stock in Newbury, which arrived that season, and not in 1762, as many have supposed. This was Mr. Page's account, Captain Howard's, and Col. Joshua Bailey's, who came with his father to Newbury in 1764, at eleven years of age. Page con- tinued to labor for Gen. Bailey until he was able to pay for his farm. He then came to Haverhill, mar- ried Abigail Saunders, daughter of the first settler south of him, and lived to the age of eighty-two, and departed this life in 1823.
This year Noah White came into Newbury, with his family, and settled. Thomas Johnson established himself in the Ox Bow, and Col. Jacob Kent came into Newbury, November 4, 1763, the twelfth family in both towns. There were a number of young men boarding in those families. Col. Kent was born at Chebacco, Mass., June 11, 1726, and Mary White, his wife, was born at Plaistow, N. H., August 14, 1736. Mrs. Kent survived her husband many years, and lived to a great age. She was nearly ninety years of age when I visited her to obtain information relative to the first settlers, and I found her memory good upon subjects of ancient date. In answer to
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the question, " Were there many wild animals in the town when you first came here, such as bears and wolves?" she replied, "O, yes, there were enough of them creatures ! I was once frightened almost out of my wits by them. It was on a Sabbath day. The colonel was gone to meeting, and I was left alone, and there came three great bears to the door, and looked right in upon me ! I expected nothing but they would come in and de- vour me; but after looking at me awhile, they turned away, and trotted off, and glad was I." Ladies of Newbury and Haverhill, how would you like, at this time, to have your devotions interrupted, or your do- mestic concerns thus unceremoniously inspected, by stranger gentlemen, such as these ? Mum !
In this year, says Col. Joshua Bailey, John Fore- man and several others of Pennsylvania, having en- listed into the British army near the commencement of the old French war, and having been retained in Canada after peace was restored, deserted and made through the woods until they came upon the head waters of the Connecticut, and following down the stream, they came into the north part of Haverhill. But here they found themselves famishing through lack of sustenance, and as they knew not that there was an English settlement within a hundred miles of
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them, they were prepared to seize upon any thing which could satisfy the demands of hunger. They unexpectedly came in sight of a horse upon the plain north of the north parish meeting-house, and suppos- ing it to be wild, or one that had gone far astray, they shot it, and fed themselves upon its flesh. Re- plenishing their packs with the residue of the meat, they proceeded south, but soon discovered smokes as- cending from chimneys on the Ox Bow and vicinity. They were alarmed at the idea of falling into the hands of hostile Indians, especially since they had killed one of their horses. But after some consulta- tion, they concluded that one of their number should cross the river, make what discoveries he could, and then return and report. He accordingly swam the river, and, to his great joy, found these were English settlements. The news and a boat were soon carried back to his companions. They were brought on to the Ox Bow, where they found food, a shelter, and sympathizing friends. Col. Bailey says, this fact of their killing the horse on that plain gave the name " Horse Meadow" to that section of the town, and not the traditionary story of horses finding a rush grass there sooner in the spring than elsewhere.
At this time, 1763, we are told, there were no roads in any direction, and that their bread-stuffs were
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brought from Charlestown in boats. It is a little ex- traordinary that none of the first settlers make men- tion of the great drought which prevailed in the Col- onies for the years 1761 and 1762 .* It must have affected them whatever were their seasons at Coos ; for as yet they were depending on foreign supplies.
We now come to speak of the progress of these set- tlements in 1764. This was a year of increase, and they realized an accession which seemed to give char- acter to the settlements for many years. Deacon Jonathan Elkins with his family, from Hampton, N. H., came into Haverhill, and settled near Doctor Carleton's. Deacon Elkins was a valuable acquisi- tion to the town ; but he remained here but little more than ten years, before he removed to Peacham, Vt., and was one of the first settlers, and most effi- cient, in that town. Col. Timothy Beedel, from New-Salem, moved his family to this place, and set- tled on Poole Brook, where David Merrill long lived. Hon. Ezekiel Ladd came in and settled on the place where he lived fifty-four years, and died at the ad- vanced age of eighty years, (1818.) He married Ruth Hutchins. They both belonged to Haverhill, Mass. Mrs. Ladd died 1817, aged seventy-six.
Newbury was enlarged and blessed, also, this year,
* See Belknap, vol. ii. p. 238.
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by the arrival of Gen. Jacob Bailey with his family. He had been from the first the principal mover in the settlement. His influence was felt in every proceed- ing, and now he had come to bless himself, and to save much people alive, in the approaching contest between Great Britain and her Colonies. He arrived in Newbury, October, 1764. He lived, at that time, south of the Johnson Village, and north of the hill, on the east side of the road. He was thirty-eight years of age when he came to Newbury, and lived until March, 1815, when he resigned a long life, that had been devoted to his country, to his town, and, for a considerable length of time, to his God. He died at eighty-nine years of age.
This same year came the Rev. Peter Powers, of Hollis, N. H., to labor with this people in holy things. Mr. Powers was born in Dunstable, N. H., November 29, 1728, moved to Hollis with his father, January, 1731, which was the first settlement in that town. He graduated at Harvard College in 1754, the year his father explored the Coos country. He Was first settled in the ministry at Newent, then a parish in Norwich, Conn., now the town of Lisbon, where he labored some years ; but taking a dismission from that charge, he came to Newbury at thirty-six years of age. Through his instrumentality a church
1
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was gathered and organized in Newbury, in the fall of 1764, composed of members from both sides of the river. The two settlements united, also, in form- ing an ecclesiastical society, which union continued nearly twenty years.
We now enter upon the transactions and events of 1765. During this year, the settlements at Coos be- gan to have some neighbors. One or two settlements were made at Bradford, Orford, Lyme, Thetford, Hanover, Lebanon, and Plymouth; but more of these hereafter.
On the 24th of January, 1765, the Rev. Mr. Pow- ers received a call to take the spiritual charge of this newly constituted church and society in the wilder- ness. He gave his answer in the affirmative, Feb- ruary 1, 1765. They then voted that "the install- ment be on the last Wednesday of this instant, and voted, that the Reverend Messrs. Abner Bailey, Dan- iel Emerson, Joseph Emerson, Henry True, and Joseph Goodhue, with their churches, be a council for said installment. Voted, that Jacob Bailey, Esq., shall represent the town of Newbury at the council, which was voted to meet for said installment down country where it is thought best. Jacob Kent, Town Clerk.
There is, to us, some novelty in this vote for in-
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stallment somewhere; but the necessity of the case explains the whole affair. There were no ministers or churches in all the region, and they must go by their delegation until they found them. The minis- ters selected for the council belonged in Hollis and vicinity, and the Rev. Mr. Powers was installed at Hollis, February 27, 1765, as the title page to the sermon that was preached on the occasion showeth, which is as follows : -
" A Sermon preached at Hollis, February 27, 1765, at the Installation of the Rev. Peter Powers, A. M., for the towns of Newbury and Haverhill, at a Place called Coos, in the Province of New-hampshire. By Myself. Published at the desire of many who heard it, to whom it is humbly dedicated by the unworthy author. Then saith he to his servants, the wedding is ready,-Go ye therefore into the high ways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. Matt. xxii : 8, 9. Portsmouth, in New-hampshire. Printed and sold by Daniel and Robert Fowle, 1765."
There is novelty in the circumstance of Mr. Pow- ers' preaching his own installation sermon, but it was nothing uncommon at that day ; and there is room for doubt whether the moderns have made an im- provement in this particular.
Mr. Powers' goods were brought from Charlestown
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to Newbury upon the ice on the river, the last of February, by the people of Newbury and Haverhill ; but the family did not arrive until April of that year.
A circumstance occurred on the journey with the goods, which gave rise to an anecdote which was rife among the old people, down to a late period. It has been related to me by persons belonging to several different towns. There was a man living in New- bury, and a member of the church, by the name of Way. He was an eccentric character, and would on some occasions speak unadvisedly, yet was a very friendly man and was neld in general esteem. He was one who volunteered his services to bring up the goods upon the ice. It was so late in February, that in some places, especially where tributaries came in, the ice was thin and brittle. They, however, made their way without serious difficulty, until they came to the mouth of Ompompanoosuc, at the north-east part of Norwich, where Way's sled broke through, and had like to have gone down, sled, team, Way and all. But by timely effort on the part of his travelling companions, they were all extricated. As soon as Way and his team reached firm footing, he turned around and surveyed the danger he had been in ; and as he saw the waters boiling and eddying with a frightful aspect, he said to his companions, " That is
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a cursed hole." When the party had arrived at Newbury, and they were relating the trials and dan- gers of the way, some one mentioned what Mr. Way said of Ompompanoosuc. It was not long before this came to the ears of Mr. Powers, and he resolved to go, as his custom was in like cases, and have a conversation with Mr. Way, and admonish him, if he should be found to have been delinquent. He ac- cordingly went and told Mr. Way that he had been told he had been speaking unadvisedly and wickedly. " What, what is it ?" said Mr. Way. " Why, they say you said of Ompompanoosuc, that it was a cursed hole." " Well, it is a cursed hole," said Way ; " I say, it is a cursed hole, and I can prove it." " O no, you cannot," said Mr. Powers, "and you have done very wrong-you must repent." " Why," said Way, " did not the Lord curse the earth for man's sin ?" " Yes," said Mr. Powers. "Well," replied Way, " do you think that little divilish Ompompa- noosuc was an exception ?" Mr. Powers turned away, and exclaimed, "O, Mr. Way, Mr. Way, I stand in fear of you," and recording his nolle prosequi, departed.
Mr. Powers lived in a house a little north of the house of Gen. Bailey, and south of Thomas John- son's. He preached for a time at Gen. Bailey's 3*
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house, and in the mean time, they built a log meet- ing-house, south of Gen. Bailey's, and north of the hill, where they worshipped some years. This was the house voted to be built, 28 feet by 25 feet, in October, 1764, as stated by the Rev. Mr. Perry in his manuscript of 1831, but which he concludes never was builded (pp. 14 and 16, in manuscript). The truth is, Mr. Perry was laboring under a mistake in regard to meeting-houses. The first meeting-house stood where I have located it. A framed meeting- house was some years afterward erected near where the present Congregational meeting-house stands ; but as there was dissatisfaction in regard to its loca- tion, it was pulled down, and re-erected on the spot where Mr. Perry speaks of the first meeting-house standing, viz., "west of the burying ground ;" but it was not for a meeting- house that it was erected there, but for a court-house and jail ; still, divine service might have been maintained there after the first house had become too small to accommodate the congregation, and before the present meeting-house was erected in 1790.
I wish here to be indulged with a single remark in respect to Brother Perry's manuscript. It was a very laudable undertaking. I am not altogether unaided by it ; but he was in too much haste in preparing it ;
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depended too much on common report, and did not compare notes sufficiently. It will not guide us safely through the labyrinth of the twenty-five first years in these settlements. But as I have said, they worshipped at the Ox Bow some years, and Haverhill people assembled with them, with great punctuality. There was a foot-path leading from Judge James Woodward's late residence, north-westerly, to the river, where was a log canoe to set them across, and from the point of landing a serpentine path through tall grass, bushes, and sometimes towering trees, led them to the place of worship. They had another ca- noe at the Dow farm, and another at the Porter place.
At that day it was a sin and disreputable in the view of all, for persons to absent themselves from the place of worship without valid cause ; and parents were seen uniformly carrying their children in their arms from Dr. Carleton's place to the Johnson Vil- lage and back again, the same day, and sometimes when the grass and bushes were wet, and the trees from above dropped upon them their dewy blessings ; and all this, that they might hear the word of life dispensed. Going and returning in their meandering course could not have been a less distance than twelve miles, and sometimes each parent had one to carry.
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Nor was the attendance at worship less uniform and punctual with those on the west side of the river. Some females walked from Moretown, now Bradford, and others from Ryegate, a distance of ten miles. Those from the latter place, when they came to Well's River, (there being no canoe, ) would bare their feet, and "trip it along as nimbly as the deer." The men generally went bare-footed ; the ladies, certainly, wore shoes.
The wife of Judge Ladd related to me her extreme mortification on the first Sabbath she attended meet- ing at the Ox Bow. She and her husband had been recently married. They came from Haverhill, Mass., and had seen and tasted some of the refinements of life. She thought she must appear as well as any of them, and put on her wedding silks, with muffled cuffs, extending from the shoulder to the elbow, and there made fast by brilliant sleeve-buttons. (Ladies of the toilet of eighty years' experience will under- stand all this.) She wore silk hose and florid shoes. Her husband, appeared, also, in his best, and they took their seats on benches early in the sanctuary. But she remarked that " they went alone, sat alone, and returned alone ; for it was not possible for her to get near enough to any one of the females to hold conversation with them ; and she was so home-sick,
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