USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Windham > History and proceedings of the celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the settlement of Windham in New Hampshire held June 9, 1892 > Part 6
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"It was 10 o'clock before the ship arrived at the quay. The whole population able to move was there to welcome them ; a screen made of casks filled with earth was hastily thrown up to protect the landing place from the batteries on the other side of the river, and then the work of unloading began. First were rolled on shore barrels which contained six thousand bushels of meal. Then came great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter, sacks of pease and bis- cuit, and ankers of brandy.
" A few hours before this, half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of salted hides had been weighed out, with scrupulous care, to every fighting man in the garrison. The ration that each now received was three pounds of flour, two pounds of beef, and a pint of pease. The Irish guns roared all night, and all night the bells of the rescued city answered them with peals of joyous defiance.
" Through the whole of July 31st the batteries of the besiegers continued to play, but soon after sunset flames were seen arising from all their camps, and on the morning of the first of August, a line of smoking ruins marked the site they had lately occupied, and far off was seen the long column of pikes and standards, retreating up the left bank of the Foyle. Thus ended the siege of Londonderry. Of the seven thousand effective men in the garrison when the siege began, only about three thousand remained. The loss of the besiegers is not known."
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
Thus we see that the little city of Londonderry in Ireland, then a dependency of the crown of England-fortified not by military skill, nor naval armaments, but by heroic, Protestant, Christian hearts,- devoted to the cause of religious freedom, became the arena upon which the fate of the liberties, not only of Great Britain but of America, was to be decided. The defence of Londonderry, by arresting the onward march of King James toward Scotland, whither it was his intention to go, after the Protestants of Ulster had been subdued, contributed largely to his ultimate overthrow, the establish- ment of the revolution which secured William and Mary on the throne of England, and gave Protestantism to Great Britain.
So important did King William and the British Parliament con- sider this defence, and so highly did they appreciate the heroic valor, endurance, and moral worth of the defenders, that in addition to all other acknowledgments, an act was passed exempting from taxation throughout the British dominions, all who had borne arms in that city during the siege. Of this act, those of the defenders who settled in Lon- donderry, N. H., availed themselves until the American Revolution ; and their farms were marked exempt on the assessment rolls. From the loins of the heroes of Londonderry sprang our fathers. Of the six- teen families that first settled in our town when it was called Lon- derry, James McKeen, John Barnet, James Anderson, Randal Alex- ander, James Clark, James Nesmith, John Stuart, John Morrison, Archibald Clendenin, Samuel Allison, by themselves or their immedi- ate descendants, helped to people that part of Londonderry of which our town of Windham was made. The emigration of the Scotch- Irish to America did not proceed entirely from the siege of London- derry, and the war of James the Second. For, as early as 1631, hav- ing heard of the success of the Independents, who had settled at Plymouth eleven years before, and another settlement at Salem, the Presbyterians of Ulster, anxious to escape, if possible, from the injus- tice of the perfidious Charles the First, whose reign had just com- menced, began to make preparations to remove to America. Agents were appointed who proceeded to London to procure a passage to New England. Soon after this they sent over an agent who pitched upon a tract of land near the mouth of the Merrimack whither they intended to transport themselves, and in pursuance of this, in 1636, the Eagle Wing, a vessel of one hundred and fifty tons burthen, sailed from Loch Fergus with one hundred and forty emigrant pas- sengers, bound for New England, following directly in the track of the Mayflower. Four of her passengers were distinguished Pres-
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
byterian preachers, Blair, Livingston, Hamilton, and McClelland. Her passengers were to have settled on the Merrimack river, but the vessel encountered storms off the coast, and was so badly damaged that the master felt it unsafe to cross the ocean, and put back into the same harbor. "This company of men," Dr. Foote says, " were subsequently the efficient agents in the hands of God of embodying the Presbyterianism in Ireland, of spreading their principles far and wide, and marshaling congregation after congregation, whose industry made Ulster blossom as the rose." "It was better," says he, " that God's wise providence sent them back to Ireland and shut them up to their work, and it was best of all that they laid the foundation of that church which may claim to be the mother of the American Presby- terian church." And while that attempt of the Ulster men, made in 1636, was unsuccessful, yet it is more than probable that it was the cause of our ancestors coming to Londonderry nearly a century after- wards. For we find them in 1718, when they landed, immediately inquiring for lands on the Merrimack river. Another well authenti- cated fact in this connection deserves our consideration, as a century and a half stone, to be looked at, to see whether, in a humanitarian view, we of this age and generation have advanced or retrograded since 1718. No less than five vessels of emigrants from Ulster arrived on the coast of New England, but, forbidden to land at Boston, the immigrants moved up the Kennebec and landed. But the winter of 1718-19 being one of unusual severity, the great majority of these settlers left the Kennebec and went overland to Pennsylvania, and settled in Northampton county. My authority did not state positively why the Ulster people were not permitted to land in Boston harbor, but intimates that it was because they were not Puritans.
We know that good Roger Williams was driven out of Massachu- setts, and with like reason good Presbyterians from Ulster might not have been permitted to land. This act, apparently discreditable to the authorities of Boston in 1718, I cannot recite without naming in the same connection the fact, as given by Willis in his History of Portland, that in the autumn of 1718, a vessel arrived in the harbor with twenty families of emigrants from Ireland. They were rigid Presbyterians, They suffered severely in the winter from the failure of their provisions. The inhabitants, not having either food or shelter for so large an increase of population, petitioned the General Court at Boston for relief, and on this application the General Court ordered that one hundred bushels of meal be allowed and paid out of the treasury for the poor Irish people mentioned in the petition. It is
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
subjoined, in a note to this account, that James McKeen, grandfather of the first president of Bowdoin College, was of this company and the agent who selected the land on which they settled. The latter facts make it evident that our ancestors were aided in their settlement by the Great and General Court of Massachusetts.
And while it is not entirely improbable that our ancestors were in one of those five vessels that were turned down to Casco bay to find a harbor, yet I would prefer to think that in lieu of its being done by the authority of the town it was by some one man, for as Shakespeare says :-
" Proud man-
Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep."
What New England lost by the turning away of those five vessels, with their living freight, of sturdy, God-fearing Presbyterians from Ulster, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, nay the whole coun- try and the world at large, gained. Any one who studies the history of the Scotch-Irish race will be forced to believe that in the providence of God there are no accidents.
The skilled metalurgist knows that it is not only necessary to select the desired metal with care but it is as necessary to submit it to fer- vent heat, to expel the dross and slag, and when the pure metal pours from the furnace the fitting mould must be ready to receive it and give the molten mass form and comeliness ; and if the material is designed to receive a polish it must be taken from the mould and with its kindred pieces placed in a revolving cylinder and kept revolving till, by continual contact, the casting is scoured and made ready for the burnisher. Our ancestors were selected in Scotland, the best man-metal the world ever exhibited. They were molten by the wars and persecutions, foreign and domestic, and by the preach- ing of John Knox and his coadjutors moulded into Presbyterians, all right, stiff, and strong. But they must be scoured before they can receive the polish and grace of which they are susceptible. Over in the desolate, poverty-stricken, war-wasted, God-forsaken, priest-ridden, Ireland is just the place to scour the castings ; and there they went in God's providence.
One hundred years of scouring in Ireland made a race of men fit for transplanting to America, of whose superiors history has as yet
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
made no record. When the report from the first emigrants to America reached their friends in Ulster, shipload after shipload followed in quick succession and settled in the immediate vicinity, if possible, of their predecessors.
So we find that the sixteen families that on the 11th of April, 1719, selected the common field on the north side of the brook as the first settlement in Londonderry, on the 23d of September of the same year had increased by immigration from Ulster to seventy families, and had petitioned the General Court of New Hampshire for corporate existence as a " township." There was no Lord Baltimore, no William Penn, no City of London, nor any patron behind this colony to give it aid, place, or power.
Our fathers brought with them and introduced into North America as an article of diet, the potato, called, and known from that day to this, the Irish potato,-the Scotch being left off for short, I suppose ; as it is well known that the potato was first found by Sir Francis Drake in South America and taken by him to England.
An examination of the town charter of Londonderry shows the first and only evidence I ever saw of an inflation of the currency by the potato. The charter provides, among other things,-" The same men and inhabitants, rendering and paying for the same to us, and to our successors, or to such officers as should be appointed to receive the same, the annual quit-rent of one peck of potatoes, on the first day of October yearly, forever." This shows that the charter was drawn by an Ulster man. It contains the element of thrift and success in life. They wanted to pay their honest debts, and in something they had to sell.
There is another evidence that it was drawn by one of our ances- tors. It contains the unique provision that "on every Wednesday forever, they may hold, keep, and enjoy a market for the buying and selling of goods, wares, and merchandise, and divers kinds of creat- ures, endowed with the usual kinds of privileges, profits, and immun- ities, as other market towns fully hold, possess, and enjoy ; and two fairs annually forever, the first to be held and kept within said town on the 8th day of November next, and so annually forever. The other on the 8th day of May in like manner. Provided, That if either of those days falls on the Lord's day, then said fair shall be held on the day following." Our fathers were linen drapers. They brought over to this country the spinning-wheel and the loom. They were skilled in weaving linen. The apprentice boys who shut and locked the gates of Londonderry, just as the besieging soldiers were about to enter the
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
city, and as Macaulay says " deserved to have their names preserved in letters of gold," were apprentices to the weavers of linen.
With an eye to the sale of their products of the loom, they provided by legislative enactment for a market day every week and two fairs for a similar purpose. The linen manufactured by the early settlers in Londonderry and Windham had an extensive reputation for qual- ity, and to prevent its coming into competition with an inferior arti- cle, foreign or domestic, they had inspectors of linen appointed to ex- amine, seal, and stamp the Londonderry linen, and give the maker a certificate of its genuineness. And Thomas Nesmith, to whose thoughtful generosity the citizens of our town are largely indebted for their library, told me that he got his financial start in life by peddling the linen cloth and thread made then by the women of Windham and Derry.
It is impossible to disconnect Londonderry from Windham, when speaking of the early history of our town. We were part and parcel of the Londonderry of that day, and its history is part of our history. To such an extent had Londonderry increased in population in the first eighteen years of its corporate existence, that forty-nine men liv- ing in the southerly part of said town united in a petition to the Gen- eral Court of the province of New Hampshire for a "town charter." The draft of the petition is scholarly and business-like, and if any one was preparing a book of precedents for similar petitions he could not do better than adopt that.
The charter contains a provision characteristic of our ancestors, and was undoubtedly drawn by them. I desire to call my friends' atten- tion to that proviso. It is of the essence of the grant, and without the observance of it a declaration of forfeiture may some day be de- clared, and the corporate existence of our good old town be wiped out. The whole grant hangs on the last clause,-" Provided, That the inhabitants of said Parish shall from time to time provide, maintain, and support an orthodox minister of the gospel among them." Daniel Webster, in his great argument in the Girard will case, said : "There can be no republican form of government maintained in any country without morality, and there can be no morality maintained without Christianity." Our fathers intended that when Windham ceased to be inhabited by a Christian people it should cease to be. Of the min- isters who, from time to time, preached the gospel to the people in pursuance of the provisions of the charter, I think naught but good can be said. The Rev. Simon Williams, who was settled over the parish in 1766, was, as I have been told by some of those who fitted
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
for college under his tuition, not only a most useful minister, but a fine scholar and a most apt instructor. Soon after his ordination, he en- gaged in teaching the classics and higher mathematics, fitting young men for college. That was before Dartmouth College was founded, and before the organization of the academies which subsequently did so much for education in New England. Our quondam senior part- ner, Derry, since famous for her academies, had not at that time any. Samuel Burnham, who started the first classical school, which eventu- ated in Pinkerton Academy, began his school in 1796. Mr. Williams gathered around him not only the smart boys of Windham, but also those of Londonderry and the neighboring towns. Joseph McKeen, the grandson of Justice McKeen, the pioneer of the first sixteen fam- ilies in the Londonderry settlement, not only fitted for college with Mr. Williams, but came back after graduating, and studied divinity with him.
It was certainly a high compliment that the future president of Bowdoin College paid Mr. Williams, to come back from college and take another preparatory course with the scholar who, single handed and alone, in a country town, remote from libraries and from cities, had taught him the rudiments of a then college education. Simon Williams was no ordinary man. The incidents of his early life, told by our most pains-taking and reliable historian, Leonard A. Mor- rison, show that he possessed most winning manners and that tact which commands success.
He was born in the province of Leicester, Ireland, in 1729, and when sixteen years of age, became engaged to be married to a young lady whose parents forbade the banns. Nothing daunted by this, they both ran away to England, and, boylike, he laid his case in per- son before King George the Second. The king became interested in the loving couple, educated them for four years, then married them in London, and sent them to the island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies, where Mr. Williams taught for several years, then removed to Philadelphia, and taught there, and then afterwards was so connected with Princeton College as to take a degree from that institution.
Of the Windham students, whose names occur to me, and all of whom I knew as a boy knows men whom he sees and hears converse, were Samuel Armour, Samuel Dinsmoor, the elder governor, Col. Silas Dinsmoor, superintendent of the Cherokee Indians under the appoint- ment of President Washington, and Dr. John Park. I recollect the anecdote Col. Silas used to tell connecting Mr. Williams with the doctor. Dr. John Park was said to be, in his day, a literary prodigy.
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
He took to books as a duck takes to water. It was the practice of Mr. Williams to open the exercises of school in the morning with prayer, and no uncommon occurrence to particularize any student whom he thought specially needed Divine assistance. Dr. J. was the youngest in the school; the distance he had to walk to reach the school was great, and the facility with which he acquired the les- sons was so great that less absolute attendance on school by him was necessary than with the rest of his class. But punctuality was one of the cardinal virtues with Parson Williams, and he prayed one morning for poor little Johnnie Park, who comes to school one day and stays at home the next, thinking to keep up with his class.
He was succeeded in the ministry by Mr. Harris, who kept up the good old Scotch-Irish Presbyterian custom of calling his people to- gether in neighborhoods on week days for religious conversation and instruction, and who was in the habit of giving out on the Sabbath the names of the families he intended to visit during the ensuing week. On one occasion, when he had exchanged with a neighboring minister, the list of families to be announced was read by the latter, and the mispronunciation of the name Hughes fixed in my mind the fact of Mr. Harris visiting his flock. He said Mr. Harris would visit the family of Mr. Barnet Huge, Mr. John Huge, and Mr. Huge Wilson.
It will be kept in mind that Mr. Harris's flock embraced the whole town, and they all attended meeting on the Sabbath,-men, women, and children. There was no hunting or fishing in Windham on the Sabbath, in his day, unless some outside barbarian broke into the town for that purpose. He lost the command of his vocal powers to such an extent that he could not be heard by his audience, and his people waited on him a year or more with the hope that the great restorer, Time, would enable him to resume his duties. The deacons used to take turns in reading sermons when it was not possible to get an Andover student, or some member of the Presbytery did not volun- teer to preach for them. I remember that Mr. Bradford, of New Bos- ton, came and preached one bright summer day. His text was taken from that matchless composition, the book of Job : " Hast thou an arm like God, and canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?" And when he preached, people might well listen, for they must listen.
The sainted Calvin Cutler succeeded Mr. Harris. He was a think- ing, studious, aggressive man, and active in the cause of temperance. He made it his practice to visit every school in town, and had the best conducted and most intelligent Sunday school it was ever my
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pleasure to see. As early as 1831 he preached on Fast day an anti- slavery sermon from this text : "The days of ignorance God winked at, but now He commands all men to repent." The congregation in Windham was very critical; they knew a good sermon when they heard it. The daily newspaper had not at that time absorbed the at- tention of the people. No man then could buy his opinions on almost every subject, as he can now, for two cents. Each man had to make his own, and the critical process of doing this made him a careful hearer of the sermon. I recollect an incident of our neighbor, Jonathan Parker, who, while not a member of Mr. Cutler's church, was a most constant attendant on his preaching, and, while he never had the ad- vantage of a scholastic education, few men excelled him in good sense. He had occasion to visit a brother who resided in Reading, spent the Sabbath there, and went to meeting with him. On his return home, he came into our house, and was speaking of his visit to his native town; and, among other things related, he spoke of the preaching, and wound up by saying, "I asked Sam if he paid for such preaching as that." His mental model was, no doubt, Mr. Cutler.
Rev. Loren Thayer, the successor of Mr. Cutler, I knew slightly in college. He was two years my senior, and his college life justified his selection, as filling the provisions of the "Town Charter." I cannot forbear to speak of my classmate, Nathaniel Hills. He worked on the home farm, till he was nineteen years old, most labori- ously, with his brothers. I remember how his mother filled her pew in church with her family. The boys were hard worked through the week, and nature would assert her demands for rest and sleep on the Sabbath, but she brought her boys to meeting to listen to what the minister said, and if one was overcome with sleep, she had him get up and stand, so that he could hear. All the way through life Nathan- iel adhered to the same inflexible rule with himself. His stern and unyielding observance of duty, and his gentle disposition fitted him for the position of teacher. I recollect his telling me, when I visited him in 1875, that in the course of his thirty-four years of teaching he had never been absent one half day, and only once had been tardy, and that was occasioned by an accident to the cars.
I have thought that Samuel Armour was not duly appreciated by his fellow-townsmen ; but of this, being only a boy when my observa- tions were made, and he a man, past the prime of life, perhaps I was wrong in my estimate ; for I find by the record that he was town clerk seventeen years, a selectman six years, represented the town in the legislature fifteen years, was the standing justice of the peace, and an
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
unobtrusive man, whose opinion was sought and taken by his fellow- townsmen,-as a balance wheel is used to regulate the motion of machinery. He was a man of commanding presence, and of exem- plary manners. I recollect, when the church choir had dwindled to small proportions, after the benediction had been pronounced, stand- ing in his pew, he asked all those interested in having good music in the church, to stop and take measures to secure a teacher of music. The result was that Mr. Griffin from abroad was hired to come and teach a singing school for a month, every day and evening. A new singing book was obtained, the singing talent of the whole town was called out, and that most necessary accompaniment received such an accession of home talent that it was a fitting accompaniment to the preaching of Mr. Cutler.
I should do the occasion, the town, and myself an injustice if I did not speak of that most worthy yet extinct family, that succeeded Es- quire Armour on his farm in the range. Jacob Abbot had been a minister at Hampton Falls, but resigned his pastoral charge there in 1826, and purchased what was then the best equipped farm in that still beautiful range. He brought with him seven daughters and three sons, and engaged in farming. The whole family engaged in every good word and work in the town. Their deeds of charity and kind- ness to the sick and distressed were innumerable, and, although Mr. Abbot had been a Unitarian minister in his settlement at Hampton Falls, he and his family attended the meeting at Windham till the senseless vote of the town was taken, in 1833, which resulted in the Presbyterian church vacating the old meeting-house ; after which Mr. Abbot (who had in no manner aided the crusade against the Presby- terians) occasionally preached in the old church, and on the day of his death had preached there. He had walked down to the pond, in connection with some of his neighbors, in the morning, and had been rowed over that, and walked thence to the meeting-house. At the close of the afternoon service, in attempting to return by the same means, the boat, which was old and unsafe, filled with water, and he and Capt. John Dinsmoor were drowned. His daughters all married gentlemen out of the town, and each reflected credit on their parents and the town. Ebenezer, one son, married the only daughter of Col. Jacob Nesmith, and was an estimable citizen on the farm till his death, when the farm passed out of the family name. George J., a brother, graduated at Harvard College, and was induced by Abbot Lawrence of Boston, then a representative in Congress, to go to Wash- ington and establish a private school, which he continued a number of
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