History of Bedford, New Hampshire, from 1737 : being statistics compiled on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 15, 1900, Part 2

Author: Bedford (N.H. : Town)
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Concord, N. H. : The Rumford Printing Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Bedford > History of Bedford, New Hampshire, from 1737 : being statistics compiled on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 15, 1900 > Part 2

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

A hundred years ago Washington was a youth, just old enough to be enrolled in a military train-band; the elder Adams was not enough of a boy to labor in his father's shop; Jefferson was a mere child, and Madison and Monroe were unborn. A hundred years ago and Wolfe and Montcalm were yet to fall in deadly strife before Quebec ; the French were to be routed, to lose the mastery of the Canadas and Louisiana, and, finally, a footing upon the Western continent.

A hundred years ago and Louis XVI and the hapless Marie Antoinette were yet to fall under the axe of the guillotine. Robes- pierre, Marat, and Danton were yet guiltless of the blood of their countrymen. Napoleon and Wellington were not yet; the fields of Marengo, of Austerlitz, and Waterloo had no bloody celebrity.

A hundred years since, and our colonies had not felt the oppres- sion and encountered the hatred of the mother country. The battles of Lexington, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Trenton, and Yorktown were yet to be fought. Our own Stark had not yet won immortality at

CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

Bennington; nor had our Langdon, Pierce, Poor, Cilley, Sullivan, and last, though not least, our own townsman, John Orr, and hosts of others, yet earned the meed of praise which is, and ever will con- tinue to be, awarded to their patriotism and their valor. And less than half a hundred years since, this county of Hillsborough could not boast of the heroic achievements of the gallant but now lamented McNeil, nor the fearless Miller. Nor could we speak of the fresher laurels which have just been gathered by the younger Pierce, and by another son, as brave and as chivalrous as the best of them, Bowers, of Nashua.

But to come to the subject which to-day more particularly claims our attention.

A hundred years ago there were residing within the limits of this town, then known as Narragansett, No. 5, some fifty familes, com- prising from two hundred to two hundred and fifty souls.

These families were scattered along the hillside, hid away in the sunny nook, by the meadow patch, or buried among the dark pines on the border of the great river which forms our eastern boundary. They were an honest, industrious, frugal, faithful, and pious people. Principally foreigners, or of immediate foreign extraction, they came here for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty. In their own country, they could not lift up their voices in praise and thanksgiv- ing to that Omnipotent Being from whose boundless beneficence comes every good and perfect gift; they could not bow down in humble adoration of their Creator, unless these acts were performed after the strict formulas of the Church of England. They must have suffered here for many years, all the privations incident to a frontier life, and yet finding out as they did gradually the resources and capabilities of the country, they must have cherished strong hopes for the future. Alas! such is the inevitable fate of man that no one of them can be here to-day to see their anticipations confirmed or their hopes justified. No living soul of all who rejoiced together when the civil authorities granted the prayer of their petition for an act of incorporation, giving them a new name and enlarged powers and importance as a people,-not one living soul of all of them is left to join with us this day in mutual congratulations for the suc- cessful issue of that embryo effort at self-government. The prime- val rocks indeed remain ; here and there a sturdy oak of the olden time still stretches forth the same branches which sheltered our fathers from the summer's sun, and which have so far defied the wintry blast. The placid Merrimack still glides gently by us, but no man, no woman, no animated being that had ever floated on its sur- face or laved in its waters, is alive to-day to render thanks for this, among the thousands of Heaven's blessings, which have been be- stowed upon us.

"Where are the birds that sweetly sang, A hundred years ago? The flowers, that all in beauty sprang, A hundred years ago?

HISTORY OF BEDFORD.

The lip that smiled, The eyes that wild In flashes shone Soft eyes upon,- Where, oh, where, are lips and eyes,

The maiden's smile, the lover's sighs, That were so long ago?

"Who peopled all the city's streets A hundred years ago? Who filled the church with faces meek, A hundred years ago? The sneering tale Of sister frail, The plot that worked Another's hurt,- Where, oh, where, are the plots and sneers,

The poor man's hopes, the rich man's fears, That were so long ago?

" Where are the graves where dead men slept A hundred years ago? Who, whilst living, ofttimes wept, A hundred years ago? By other men, They knew not then, Their lands are tilled, Their homes are filled,- Yet nature then was just as gay, And bright the sun shone as to-day, A hundred years ago."

I abstain at this time, purposely, from attempting anything like an outline even of a history of this town, because that task has been appropriately assigned to a committee of your citizens, and we all anticipate great pleasure in soon being able to avail ourselves of the result of their labor and research.

I may be permitted, however, to say as much as this, that the ter- ritory was granted by the "Great and General Court" of Massachu- setts, not far from one hundred and twenty years ago. Included in the same grant was land enough for six other townships. This grant was made to the soldiers who had served in King Philip's, or the Narragansett, War, and to their surviving heirs-at-law. In June, 1733, it seems, these grantees, in number about eight hundred and forty, met on the town common in Boston for the purpose of divid- ing equitably the property thus given to them. They formed them- selves into seven separate societies, and each society organized and chose an executive committee to look after its interests. One of these societies was composed of such of the grantees as resided prin- cipally in Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, and in that neighborhood. These executive committees afterwards, namely, on the 17th of October, 1733, met by appointment in Boston. The numbers of the several townships, from number one to number seven, were placed in a hat, and Colonel Thomas Tileston of Dorchester, one of our committee, drew No. 5, known as Souhegan-East before that time.

CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

It embraced all the land now within the limits of Bedford, and also that part of Merrimack north of the Souhegan river.

If this grant was the price of patriotism, it was an act of tardy justice to the parties to be rewarded, for the Narragansett War had long since ended. The treacherous and vindictive Philip, of Mount Hope, had been hunted down and destroyed sixty years before. The dreadful massacre of the young men at Bloody Brook, and the ter- rible penalty afterwards inflicted upon the savages at Turner's Falls, were even then tales of other times. But whatever was the motive or the cause of this grant from Massachusetts, this was the origin of Bedford. With very few exceptions the original proprietors of this town sold out their interest in it at an early period. They never came here to reside permanently. And I believe it would be diffi- cult to find to-day more than two or three families in the whole town who are directly descended from any of the grantees of Nar- ragansett, No. 5. I know of but two. One is the Chandler family, who are the lineal descendants of Zachariah Chandler, Esq., of Roxbury, Mass .; and the other, the family of Gardner Nevins, who are the descendants, by the mother's side, from John Barnes of Hingham, Mass. The town was named by Governor Wentworth, no doubt, in honor of His Grace, the fourth Duke of Bedford, then secretary of state in the government of His Majesty, George II.1

Who were its first inhabitants? What was their origin ? And what, if any, were the peculiarities of their character and condition ?

I have preferred that a general answer to these inquiries should occupy much of the space assigned to me upon this occasion, rather than to enter upon the discussion of topics which, however they may befit the time and place, belong much more appropriately to others.

In the first place, then, almost the entire population of Bedford was, at the time of its incorporation, of Scottish descent. There were a few, and but very few, families from the colony of Massachu- setts, and, of course, of English extraction. There may have been also one or two Irish families of pure Milesian blood. And there were some African slaves. Of this last description of persons there were in this town, as shown by the official records at the commence-

1 For the gratification of persons curious in such matters, it may be stated that the name Bedford is said by certain very early authorities to be derived from a Saxon word signifying " beds, or inns upon a ford." The situation of the very ancient and important town of the same name in England, on both sides of the river Ouse, prob- ably contributed to this interpretation of the word. Later writers say it was de- rived from "Buda," or " Beda," which means a petty king. The people of Bedford, in England, adopt the latter as the true origin of the name of their town. It may be added that, although Governer Wentworth may have given the name to this town, yet it is altogether probable that the inhabitants themselves first suggested it, in honor of the noble Duke who had for a long time most faithfully and honorably ad- ministered the government of the island from which their immediate ancestors had emigrated. The Duke of Bedford held the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for many years. The Bedford family, or, perhaps we should say, the Russell family, is one of the oldest, and ever has been, and is now, one of the first families among the English nobility. The present Duke Francis has never been very actively engaged in political affairs, yet he is a man of great energy of character and enterprise, and will leave to his descendants vast and valuable estates, redeemed and improved by his industry and his genius, as well as a name worthy his noble ancestry. His son and only child, William, Marquis of Tavistock, is now heir to the Dukedom. Lord John Russell, the present prime minister of England, is a younger brother of the Duke of Bedford.

HISTORY OF BEDFORD.

ment of the Revolution, ten. But a large majority of the people of those who made the first openings, run the lines, marked the trees, petitioned Governor Wentworth and his council for an act of incor- poration on the 10th of May, 1750, built the first meeting-house and the first schoolhouses, and first dragged a seine in the Merrimack for shad and salmon,-of those, in short, who first came here with a fixed and settled purpose to abide permanently and to make this place their home,-trace their origin to Scotland. They are some- times called Scotch-Irish. The reason for this peculiar designation will soon appear. It is true that nearly all this class of settlers, or their fathers and mothers, came to this country directly from the great northern province of Ulster, in Ireland. Yet they were, nev- ertheless, not Irishmen. No Irish blood ran in their veins. The two races were, and are, entirely distinct; as unlike as it is possible they can be, with the same general features and the same color. They were no more Irishmen than is a Connaught or Munster man, who works upon our railways, a yankee; no more than is the Euro- pean or American missionary or merchant, who takes up his resi- dence at Macao, Hong Kong, or at the factories around Canton, a Chinaman. The Scotch and the Irish are as dissimilar as possible in their manner of life, their habits of thought and action, and espe- cially in their forms of religious worship and in their religious creed. The Scotch are zealous Protestants and Presbyterians; the Irish as zealous Roman Catholics. The Scotch were the besieged and the Irish the besiegers at Londonderry. One party fought desperately at the Boyne, Limerick, and Aithlone for William, and the other as desperately for James II. To this general rule there are, to be sure, some rare exceptions. There were Irishmen who joined the party supporting William and Mary, and they have been denounced as traitors and heretics for it ever since by their countrymen. I sup- pose there were also Roman Catholic Scotchmen, though I think it would have been difficult to have found many of the latter who pro- fessed the faith of St. Peter at or near the time of the last English Revolution. The Protestant Irish are known to this day by the term of "Orangemen." But this name was not applied to them until many years after William, the Prince of Orange, had ceased to govern England and to exist. The bitter prejudices and hatred which have been engendered in the old country between the Orangemen and the Catholic Irish have never abated to this day. And we have frequent occasion to lament the intemperate and foolish broils which so often occur between them, even in this coun- try, where both parties are at full liberty to consult their own tastes and their own consciences, as to the manner of their religious wor- ship or their religious belief.

But the inhabitants of Bedford were neither Orangemen nor Catholic Irishmen. They were Presbyterians and Scotchmen, names which are almost synonymous. Born and educated among these people, if I cannot say exactly with Byron, "I am half a Scot

CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

by birth, and bred a whole one," I can appreciate the sentiment of the generous-hearted Jenny Deans, when she said to her country- man, the Duke of Argyll, referring to her dress, which was the national costume, as she was suing through his influence for the par- don of her unfortunate and condemned sister, "I thought your Grace's heart would warm to the tartan."

I can never forget that my earliest and most intimate friends and associates claim a common fatherland with Bruce and with Burns; that they could speak of the wild highland chiefs as of their own " kith and kin ; " that they could talk of John Knox as the founder of their church ; that the "Cotter's Saturday Night" was their poetry ; that Sir Walter Scott and the authors of " Douglas " and the "Gen- tle Shepherd " were as much their countrymen as if they had lived on the same side of the Atlantic.

I can never forget how readily, in the dreamy days of our youth, we could transport ourselves, in imagination, to that cold but roman- tic region of Britain, "where not a mountain lifts its head unsung ; " that we could climb over the Pentland and Grampian Hills, fly over the "peak of Ben Lomond," take a sail upon Loch Katrine, inspect the ramparts and battlements of Castles Stirling and Dunbar, search the rooms in Holyrood House, find the blood-stains of Rizzio, de- plore the fate of the unfortunate, perhaps the guilty, Mary, and repeat with the poet,-

" She was a woman, and let all Her faults be buried with her."

We did more than this. We stole away, again and again, into that fairyland, which the belief in the supernatural has for ages firmly established in Scotland; there we danced with witches and war- locks, and consorted with brownies, kelpies, and water-wraiths, or, under the guidance of the great poet of nature, we hied away to the castle of Macbeth, became familiar with the "weird sisters," "the white spirits and black, red spirits and gray," who first seduced the Scottish Thane, by fair promises and deceitful predictions into mur- dering his kinsman and his sovereign, and then, like the arch fiend they served, left him in his extremity miserably to perish, the vic- tim of his own and his wife's wicked ambition. We could see, as palpably as could the guilty assassin himself, the air-drawn dagger that informed him of the "bloody business " upon which he was intent. We beheld also the ghost of Banquo, whose ugly visage and ill-timed visit so marred the feast and frightened the host from his propriety. We saw "Birnamwood come to Dunsinane," and heard the last agonizing cry of the dying tyrant.

We could scarcely fail to be reminded of the national character of our friends and neighbors by listening to their songs. It is true there was no Wilson, nor Sinclair, nor Dempster to sing them; yet I assure you "John Anderson, my Jo," has been given here with great effect, we being the judges. How often has our boyish patriot- ism been aroused by Bruce's "Farewell;" the sentiment of the

HISTORY OF BEDFORD.

" Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon," has been felt and appreciated here, as well as the "Farewell to Ayershire," and "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton ; " no flower was ever so sweet as the " Flower of Dum- blain," as we have had it, with its sweeter accompaniments. And was there ever sung, or said, a nobler sentiment than "A man's a man for a' that, and a' that."

Need any one be told who composed the church and congregation here, when he, who ministered so many years at the altar, who sol- emnized the marriage contracts, who officiated at the holy rites of baptism, who lifted up his hands in prayer at the bedside of the sick and the dying, was none other than a lineal descendant of that Highland clan, whose name he bore, and who "ever scorned to turn their backs on friend or foe." And of whom the song says,-

" While there's leaves in the forest and Foam on the river, MacGregor, despite them, shall Flourish forever."

Again the Caledonian characteristics appeared as we saw,

" On a winter's night, our granum spinnin', To make a web of good fine linnen."

But, alas! many of us are compelled to acknowledge that these youthful remembrances are fading out, that we have

" Wandered mony a weary foot, Sin' auld lang syne,"

and that we are only too happy to avail ourselves of an occasion like the present, to come home and say, "We cannot but remember that such things were, and that they were most precious to us."

As for myself, I adopt with all my heart, and assume as my own, the answer of the noble Duke to the affectionate Jenny Deans, be- fore referred to, "MacCullum More's heart must be cold as death when it does not warm to the tartan."

Our earliest inhabitants were, then, Scotch in their origin ; but they were called Scotch-Irish. Let us turn back to the written history of this peculiar people and see what we can learn of them. We must commence as early as the reign of James I, in 1603. Elizabeth, his immediate predecessor, had carried out, dur- ing her time, the rigorous and unrelenting policy of her father, Henry VIII, in harassing and persecuting her Catholic subjects, and especially the Irish portion of them. By this means the spirit of rebellion was fostered, not subdued, in that unfortunate island. James had not seen the end of the second year of his reign before he was called upon to crush the conspiracies of Tyrone and Tyrconnel of Ulster, and soon to put down the rebellion of O'Dog- herty and others. These conspirators and rebels, having either fled from their country or having been slain in the several contests in which they were engaged, a very large section of the province of Ulster, covering six counties, equal to a half a million of acres, re- verted to the crown.

CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

It became very important to James to repeople this deserted ter- ritory, not only with loyal subjects, but with those of the Protestant faith.

For the early history of the Scotch-Irish, both while they were at home and since their emigration to America, I am greatly indebted to Dr. William Henry Foote, of Virginia, who has very recently given to the world two large volumes, one entitled “Sketches of North Carolina," and the other "Sketches of Virginia," both of which are filled with highly interesting matter, chiefly touching the history of the Presbyterians, who came to this country at a very early period. He says "that in the fulfilment of this design," that is, in furnishing Ulster province with Protestants, "he [James] planted those colonies from which, more than a century afterwards, those emigrations sprang, by which western Virginia and the Caro- linas were in a great measure peopled." He might have included, also, Londonderry, Bedford, New Boston, Antrim, Peterborough, and portions of the inhabitants of many other towns in this state, as well as of many towns in Massachusetts and Vermont. "The project of James," he goes on to say, " was grand and attractive, and in its progress, to complete success, formed a race of men, law-lov- ing, law-abiding, loyal, enterprising freemen ; whose thoughts and principles have had no less influence in moulding the American mind than their children to make the wilderness blossom as the rose."

The king seems, very naturally, to have selected his own country- men, the Scotch, as far as he could, to take possession of these vacant lands which were now desolate, overrun with wood and in- fested with noisome wild beasts. But the Scotch, needy as they were, very reluctantly complied with the wishes of their sovereign ; so forbidding was this Irish province, in all its aspects, that it was deplored as a calamity to be compelled to remove thither ; and it was often sneeringly and reproachfully said of the unfortunate or the guilty, " Ireland will be your latter end." In 1626 it began to improve rapidly; an unusual religious excitement having prevailed throughout the province, attracted the attention of the Presbyte- rians of Scotland, and many ministers and their congregations hastened to Ireland, where, by their labors and unwearied efforts, they ultimately helped to lay the foundation of the Irish Pres- byterian Church. One of the immediate results of this revival was the establishing of the Antrim Monthly Meeting, which after- wards came to be a very interesting and important religious associa- tion. The province of Ulster contrasts very favorably with any other portion of Ireland to this day. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland lately addressed a letter to the Gen- eral Assembly of the same church in the United States, in which they say, "that in Ulster, where their principles are more widely disseminated, the recent visitation of the famine and pestilence was much less severe than in those provinces in which the Roman sys-

HISTORY OF BEDFORD.

tem still unhappily maintains its degrading and paralyzing ascenden- cy." Macaulay says " that whoever passes from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county in Ireland, finds that he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilization;" and this is confirmed by the statements of all observing travelers. In 1631, having heard of the success of their Puritan friends, the Independents, or Separatists, who had settled at Plymouth eleven years before, and learning also that the Salem settlement, then three years old, was prosperous, the Presbyterians of Ulster, anxious to escape, if possible, from the injus- tice of the perfidious Charles II, whose reign had just commenced, began to make preparations to remove to America. Agents were appointed, who proceeded to London to procure a passage to New England ; but for some reasons, unexplained, the project was de- feated for a time. Soon after this "they sent over an agent who pitched upon a tract of land near the mouth of the Merrimack river, whither they intended to transplant themselves." This fact is stated by Cotton Mather. The expedition, which was undertaken in pur- suance of the report of this agent, failed as we shall see; but it is more than probable that this was the cause of the settlement of our Londonderry, nearly a century afterwards, for we find the Ulster emigrants, who landed in Boston and Portland in 1718, immediately inquiring for lands on the Merrimack river, and there they did ulti- mately settle and remain.

But the attempt to reach New England, which was made in 1636, failed. The vessel, which sailed from Loch Fergus, a port very near Belfast, in Ireland, on the 9th of September, was one hundred and fifty tons burthen; she received on board one hundred and forty emigrant passengers, and her name was the Eagle Wing. Four of her passengers were distinguished preachers,-Blair, Livingston, Hamilton, and McClelland. Among others on board there were families of the name of Stuart, Agnew, Campbell, Summerville, and Brown. She was bound to New England. She was following directly and immediately in the track of the Mayflower. Her pas- sengers were to have settled upon the Merrimack, our Merrimack river. The Eagle Wing never reached her port of destination ; but we will allow one of her passengers, the Rev. John Livingston, to give us the reasons for her failure. "We had," he says, "much toil in our preparation, many hindrances in our outsetting, and both sad and glad hearts in taking leave of our friends ; at last we loosed from Loch Fergus, but were detained sometime by contrary winds in Loch Regan, in Scotland, and grounded the ship to look for some leaks in the keel; yet, thereafter, we set to sea, and, for some space, had fair winds, till we were between three and four hundred leagues from Ireland, and no nearer the banks of Newfoundland than any place in Europe. But, if ever the Lord spoke by his winds, and other dispensations, it was made evident to us that it was not his will that we should go to New England, for we met with a mighty heavy rain from the north-west, which did break our rudder, which

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Bedford, New Hampshire, from 1737 : being statistics compiled on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 15, 1900, Part 2

Author: Bedford (N.H. : Town) Publication date: 1903 Publisher: Concord, N. H. : The Rumford Printing Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Bedford (N.H. : Town)
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Concord, N. H. : The Rumford Printing Co.
Number of Pages: 1202