USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Chester > History of Chester, New Hampshire, including Auburn : a supplement to the History of old Chester, published in 1869 > Part 7
USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Auburn > History of Chester, New Hampshire, including Auburn : a supplement to the History of old Chester, published in 1869 > Part 7
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THE PRESIDENT .- Some thirty years after the old town received its charter, which, by the way, was made to cover an area about fifty per cent larger than the grant called for, disintegration began and one- sixth of the territory was cut off to become a part of a new township to be known as Derryfield, now an important part of the city of Manchester. To respond for it today we have the Rev. Burton W. Lockhart, D. D., for many years pastor of one of the leading churches of the city.
REV. DR. LOCKHART.
Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen: I esteem it an honor to be invited among these distinguished and able men to add my note to this occasion, and particularly because I was invited to preach the sermon on Sunday, which I considered a still greater honor, and nothing but a previous engagement which I could not break kept me from doing that service.
I am glad to say a word on this occasion because I have a very high appreciation of such celebrations as this. I believe in a civic celebration, I believe in celebrating the greatness and history of our New England country towns, and I want to emphasize even more than my friend, Mr. Burroughs did, the contribution of the country towns to our nation, the New England country towns to our nation.
I want to call your attention to what seems to me a historic fact, that never before in the history of the world did a country town representing a farming population, embody so much character, so much education, so true and great a religion, and express that in such powerful national wars, as the country town of New England, owing to the peculiar qualities of the men and women who settled here. I believe it is literally true and not poetry to say that every one of those
*Mr. Burroughs died after a brief illness January 27, 1923.
+Mrs. Williams died April 7, 1923, in her 84th year.
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CELEBRATION OF 200TH ANNIVERSARY
hill towns of New Hampshire, those country towns of New England, were like the City of Delphi in Ancient Greece where the oracles of God were born. And they sent for us in time of need,- able men and women, educators, lawyers, judges, orators, statesmen, politicians, men that made this nation great. I certainly cannot forget that when it is my privilege every week to stand by the grave of John Stark where he sleeps on his own farm under the shadow of the hills he loved. Wherever we tread in New England it is hallowed ground. I went to Boston recently and passed through the City of Chelsea and went over the farm of Benjamin Pierce, the father of our New Hampshire President of the United States. Do you know the story that when the shot was fired by the farmers of Lexington Benjamin Pierce was plowing on his farm. He heard that shot and left his cattle in the furrow and struck the trail for Cambridge. That is the kind of men the country towns of New England produce. Often I have seen the house where Webster was born up there under the shadow of the White Mountains. Webster was one of the greatest of the people that the Anglo-Saxon race has produced. Whenever I look upon his mighty face I think of those great hills and I remember that scripture phrase : "The strength of the hills is His."
We cannot say too much about the New England country towns, we cannot say too much about the importance of those towns in the history of this country, and I want to call your attention to the economic law that it is only in so far as the just equilibrium is preserved between the country town and the city that we have, or can have, social prosperity, political prosperity, or financial prosperity; that when the city has become overgrown and like some great wind as it were draws into its shadow these country villages, that is a sign of certain disaster, you will always find it as in the days when first the country towns and then Imperial Rome were destroyed. So the celebration of the country town is a great event, a thing that ought to be emphasized, and therefore I am glad to add my word on this occasion.
Before I came here I looked through my history of New Hamp- shire-I believe it is six volumes more or less-and I cannot say that I found as much about Chester as I should like to find. Nevertheless, among the interesting items I did find was this: "Men of Chester fought in Battle of Bunker Hill." To be sure they have fought in all the great wars of America,-the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, the Spanish War and the World War-your sons have fought every- where, but it is fine to think that they fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. I have been reading lately of the great glory of New Hampshire at the Battle of Bunker Hill. New Hampshire sent one thousand men to that battle and Massachusetts only five hundred; and greater than that, New Hampshire sent John Stark. There were two battles at Bunker Hill; one fought at the stone wall by the New Hampshire men, led by John Stark; and another fought by the roadway where the Massachusetts men were, and which was lost technically because they didn't have ammunition. There is plenty of glory for New Hampshire.
Now, when I stood here and watched the procession I saw that Derry was also in that. Derry and Chester are neighboring towns and you might almost say the same town. I want to call your attention to a very interesting thing. The men who settled this town as I under- stand it were very religious followers of Oliver Cromwell, and the men in Derry came from the North of Ireland and were Scotch Presby- terians. I am interested in both as I belong to both, having the blood of both these races in my veins, and you belong to me. All the great
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HISTORY OF CHESTER
migrations up to the time of the migration to this country were for an economic reason. The homeland grew too small for the people, so the surplus moved away to get a living elsewhere. The North of Ireland Presbyterians and the Englishmen of that time who lived along Puritan and Pilgrim lines were moved by the religious idea that they wanted freedom to worship God in their own way. The religious motive is greater than the economic. And the political and social result of that migration was greater than ever before. It was these men and no others that successfully laid the foundation of the only democracy that has ever flourished in the world for these hundred years. That is the creation of the men, your sires, that you represent here today.
Now, I would also say this, because I am a preacher, that if the time comes in America when the secular and selfish methods dominate over the old religious methods of our fathers, what is going to happen to the American democracy ? Can it flourish on selfishness? Can anything but the great religious motive make our great republic prosper and flourish ?
Now to conclude. For two hundred years you men and women of Chester have lived through the greatest period of the world, your fathers and mothers have. What wars, what battles, what tremendous achievements and what dangers you have lived through, and made this desert blossom like a rose. You have built great things in church and state and nation, and now may God grant that for the next two hundred years the sons and daughters of the grand old stock may live here and own these farms and keep on doing the work that the fathers did, and may God forbid that an alien stock should come here and take your place and desecrate the graves of your ancestors. Yes, I hope and I pray that that day will be far distant when the sons of the Pilgrim and the Puritan and the Scotch Presbyterians shall leave in these sacred haunts nothing but a memory and a name ..
THE PRESIDENT .- I regret that Dr. Lockhart did not extend his search far enough to discover that a very complete 700 page history of the old town was published over fifty years ago, very few towns in the state having earlier publications.
The Anniversary Poem is by one of Chester's resident daughters, not unknown in literary circles, and I present to you the author, Miss Isabelle H. Fitz, who will read her contribution.
MY CHESTER !
My Chester, oh my Chester ! The town that gave me birth ; What memories cluster round thy name ! The dearest spot on earth. No maples wear such Autumn tints As those that line our Street ; No sunset glows with deeper rose, No birds sing half so sweet.
My Chester, oh my Chester ! In seventeen twenty-two, Men came from far to call thee "home," Brave, loyal, staunch and true; They plied the axe, they drove the plough, They wrestled with the sod,
With faith and prayer, to do and dare, For country, home, and God.
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CELEBRATION OF 200TH ANNIVERSARY
They met each daily problem With counsels grave and sage, They wrought, to leave to you and me, A worthy heritage: And Ingalls, Emerson and Chase, With Sargent, Dearborn, Hill, Webster and True, and others, too, Are names we honor still.
War burst with loud alarum Of conflict and of strife, And Lexington and Bunker Hill Lost many a noble life; No craven suppliants seeking peace, But scorning England's thrall, They signed "The Test," to give their best, Their lives, their gold, their all.
Peace brought us civic honors ; Where legislators wait, Came none more skilled, or learned, or wise, Throughout our Granite State : For Richardson, French, and Bell Were names that won renown, And Washington claimed many a son, From this dear, honored town.
Once more the war-cloud threatened ! With Sumter's booming gun They sprang to arms, to say with might, "This nation shall be one !" At Gettysburg, at Petersburg, Our gallant boys were found, And women wept for husbands slept On many a battle-ground.
Then came the Titan conflict, Whose war shock rent the world; All life was in the maelstrom Where blood-stained waters swirled; They went,- our lads of promise,- Quite unafraid were they To dare the curse,- ay, even worse- Of Teutons' tyrant sway.
I see thee still, my Chester ! Though through a mist of tears; Thy people brave, unfaltering, Throughout those bygone years; Thy daughters sweet, and fair, and true, And strong in freedom's fight, Thy sons, no less, for righteousness, For justice, truth, and right.
God keep thee pure, my Chester ! From soil or stain of sin,- That selfishness, and greed, and hate, May never enter in!
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HISTORY OF CHESTER
But with a name untarnished, As in those days of yore; Till as a scroll, the heavens roll, And Time endures no more.
THE PRESIDENT .- Among the prominent families of a century ago were the Bells, many of the name holding high official position in the state and nation. We are honored today by the presence of a de- scendant of the family although not a native son.
I have the honor of presenting to you Honorable Charles Upham Bell, LL. D., of Andover, Mass., who has recently retired from a long term of service as a Justice of the Superior Court of that state.
JUDGE BELL.
Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am glad that I am connected with Chester. It was in November, 1847, that as a young boy I first came to this town to visit my grandfather in the house now occupied by Mr. Underhill. And from that time forward I have re- peatedly been here and have always been proud to come to a town of this character and a town which has the memories and which has the honors of this town. I know something of the country towns. It has been my fortune in my present position in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to have met upwards of four thousand jurors in court from every city and town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and we have occasion to size them up to see what sense they have, to see what feeling of justice they have, to see what men they are. And we find that the country towns through the Commonwealth, towns like this, have the men who furnish the real backbone of all courts. And I have no doubt Chester still furnishes those men, men who can be relied upon to do justice, men who cannot be deceived and who are not turned aside by prejudice or favor. Now those men are the very backbone of our state and our commonwealth, upon them we must rely for the future. For there are questions coming up before us, questions that have got to be determined, and which will take those men, those men that we will rely upon, and I believe such men are growing up here in your town. We have one question for instance, the question of liberty and law. Now liberty and law are two things which are the essentials of our commonwealth, but to draw the line between them, to say where the law should stop and where liberty should begin, is a question to be settled. One man says: "I have the right to liberty." That means his own interests. Another man em- phasizes the question of law. Law means restraint upon that liberty for the benefit of others. Law means others, liberty means yourself, and those two must be reconciled. A man says: "I had my liberty, got drunk and beat my wife." The wife says: "The law must protect me." Another man says: "I like whiskey and want to drink it. Let my children go hungry or naked." The woman says: "The law is my protection and will keep me from misfortune." Upon your streets ยท liberty says : "I may run my automobile seventy miles an hour." The law says: "No, others have rights you must respect. You shall not do what you wish when you trample upon the rights and liberties of others." We must reconcile those two things, and you young men, you women, have now got to solve those problems and have got to decide how we shall stand on all these questions and support the law,- that means support the rights of others; and at the same time support liberty, which means your right to develop yourself. And in all this
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
William T. Owen Herbert W. Ray Walter P. Tenney
George D. Rand John H. Robie William B. Underhill
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principle, at the bottom of this whole question is the old text of the scripture : "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."*
THE PRESIDENT .- A very gratifying letter has just been handed to me which I will read.
New York City, N. Y., August 23, 1922.
My Dear Mr. Wilcomb :-
I regret that it will be impossible to have the proper legal papers ready for the gift of the Townsend Homestead to the town of Chester in time for the Bi-centenial celebration on account of the absence of my attorney until after the fourth of September, but you may announce at that time that it is my intention to give the house and land to Chester for a home or for such public purposes as shall inure to the benefit of its citizens, and request only that the house or any house which may be built in the future to replace it shall bear a tablet, subject to my approval, stating the fact, describing the gift and its purpose.
I trust the citizens of the town will be gracious enough to accept this property in the spirit of goodwill in which it is given and may it serve a useful and blessed purpose.
Yours truly,
J. H. TOWNSEND.
(Applause).
By a unanimous vote the assemblage expressed their appre- ciation of this generous offer and accepted it.
THE PRESIDENT .- The next speaker, another grand-son of the old town, bears its name coupled with those of his grandfathers, two prominent citizens and business men of fifty years ago. I present to you Chester Noyes Greenough, Ph. D., of Cambridge, Mass., Dean of Harvard College.
PROF. GREENOUGH.
Mr. President and Friends: I thank you, as do the other mem- bers of my family who are here, for this opportunity to come to Chester again and help celebrate this important day. I am interested in another celebration about which I think nothing has been said, a celebration which none of us will see, yet your success in conducting this one will have considerable effect upon the celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of this town. To the success of that celebration nothing that can be done in the final year of preparation for it, by the way of arranging for speaking and music and decoration, will have much more than a superficial relation; although those matters are important and the success with which they have been managed has contributed much to this day. But the really important thing today is the quality of character and achievement shown by the sixth generation of human beings whom we really mean when we say Chester. Now, if at the three hundredth anniversary it becomes necessary to say, or even if it is not said and the fact should be apparent that the glories of Chester are glories of the past; that the extraordinary quality of its human products which we all know and glory in are an ancient story, why then that celebration will not be a success.
The difficult national problem which has been spoken of I am sure must press heavily on our minds. Everybody is on the firing line
*Judge Bell died Nov. 11, 1922.
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HISTORY OF CHESTER
regarding them. No little clean, pure New Hampshire town is exempt from the worries they cause. The country is pretty full of people to whom an old house is merely a thing of no value, to whom the phrase "my family" means nothing that carries any pride or tradition about it, a people to whom the word "neighbor" means little or nothing, a people to whom the words "granite" and "pine" mean merely stone and wood instead of meaning as they do to us all that is strong and straight and clean. Now we must try to teach those who do not know, if we can, and if we cannot we must stubbornly oppose their ideals with others we know are better, and if we can do that then on the three hundredth anniversary it will be possible to say that Chester has kept clean.
THE PRESIDENT .- Our next speaker is a native son who bears the name of a prominent family already mentioned. He is the son of our town's most distinguished soldier in the Civil War who gave up his life at Fort Fisher, N. C., in 1865. He is a scientist of international reputation, the discoverer of a method of signalling by the invisable rays of light being one of his latest achievements. We are more than proud of Louis Bell, Ph. D., of Newton, Mass., whom I now present to you.
DR. BELL.
Mr. Toastmaster and Friends: It is good to come to the old home again. I am one of those who are proud of being born in Chester, who have drifted away from it to come back only at infrequent intervals. This particular one is a joy, to see gathered together not only the old faces of the town whom I can see at any return, but scores of those who have come from afar, moved by the common spirit of coming home to gather here in the old place. But the thing I ask myself above all others is what has given Chester the spirit and the significance which it has had. Other speakers have splendidly shown their feelings that the town has held a great place in the history of the commonwealth, that out from it have gone many men who have brought honor upon it, generation after generation. Why has it been and what has there been in the spirit of the old town that has been a vivifying force for all these years? And I think that we have to look straight back, as has been more than once hinted today, to the character of the men who came here. They were of stern English stock, these men who came and founded Chester, of Puritan stock. Three generations before their motto had been, "Fear God and honor the king." They had changed it to "Fear God and honor His command- ments." And that spirit they brought with them, the spirit of righteousness and fair play, the manly spirit that looked on the essen- tials and not on the non-essentials, that turned to the making of men. That spirit has been all too rare in some of the later history of our country.
I am reminded of a scene that was enacted in Congress long before our distinguished friend entered it, when a bill for the further building up of West Point was before the House. It was debated pro and con for an hour. Finally up rose a Congressman from somewhere out in the Middle West who had never known the spirit of New England, and asked in somewhat malicious terms what they taught them that was useful at West Point, and the man who jumped up to reply was a little wizened, gray, confederate brigadier, and the answer came back like a flash: "To tell the truth, ride a horse, and not to be afraid." And that was the spirit our ancestors brought to this country,
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and to Chester. Small wonder that the record has been a distinguished one, small wonder the men rushed to Bunker Hill when the call came from Lexington, small wonder that in every fight for righteousness the country has seen Chester sons were there. From the part that Ezekiel Lane took in the Revolution up to the boys for whom the bugle sounded taps yesterday the record of the old town has never been sullied, and please God it never will be. In every fight for the right the sons of Chester I believe will be found ready and unswerving. They will be true in war as they believe that their fellow townsmen down through generations have been and will be in the future. It is that spirit of unswerving manliness, of devotion to fair play, of civic orderliness and obedience to the law, that has made the town and the state what it is. And please God may that go on when the stars and the sun are old and the leaves of the judgment book unfold .*
THE PRESIDENT .- Manchester is also represented by a prominent citizen and business man in the person of Mr. Thomas R. Varick who will now address you.
MR. VARICK.
Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen and Friends: I have listened with great interest to the remarks of the distinguished speakers who have preceeded me and I want to congratulate the committees and all the people of Chester on the splendid success of this two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the town.
What is true of Chester is true of hundreds and hundreds of beautiful towns in the State of New Hampshire; from the cold crags of the White Hills down to the sun-kissed waters of Portsmouth Harbor, New Hampshire with its hills and vales and fertile farms, its forests and swift flowing streams and quiet limpid lakes, and the Old Man fondly looking down upon it all, New Hampshire is the most beautiful spot in the world.
Someone has said that when the Almighty was engaged in fashioning the United States he came to this beautiful spot called New Hampshire and he sent his angel messengers throughout all the realms to gather all there was of beauty and brightness; and when they returned and cast their glittering burden at His feet He started in to fashion New Hampshire, New Hampshire with the shifting glory of the rainbow. He wrought with the pure white snow and the crimson which glows in the fire and the frost from the chilly depths, and then reaching deep He took it, and like some rare pearl 'neath the wind-kissed waves of a summer sea He had placed New Hampshire on the map of Heaven and earth.
And the men and women of New Hampshire are just as patriotic today as the men who went to fight at Bunker Hill and saved the American cause,- the men and boys who tramped down from Exeter, Derry. Chester, Sandown and other towns and villages to the aid of their Massachusetts brothers in 1776. And on August 17, under the leadership of John Stark, with only a comparatively small force of New Hampshire and Vermont troops, the British with a vastly superior force were completely defeated, and British rule totally eliminated forever from that section of the country. And before the battle they gave forth a world famous phrase: "We win today or Molly Stark is a widow."
And in '61 to '65 hundreds of the brave youth of New Hampshire *Dr. Bell died June 14, 1923.
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laid down their lives on the battlefields of the country, as they have done in all the other wars, in order that the dear old stars and stripes might forever wave over the land of the free. And New Hampshire . history will tell you that the Town of Chester furnished the largest percentage of its required quota of any town or city in the entire state.
When the United States actively entered the World War, when the military authorities at Washington were casting around for the best drilled troops in the first contingent, they instinctively turned to New Hampshire and selected Brigadier General Charles A. Doyen, born in Chester, who led five thousand men over there; and their valor formed one of the brightest pages in American history.
I will close with this toast : Here's to the good people of Chester and their families, and here's to all the other good people who are here today and all their families; may you all live long and prosper.
THE PRESIDENT .- It is now time to hear again from the ladies and I present Mrs. Anabel (Wilcomb) Hogan, a daughter of the town, now of Lynn, Mass.
GREETINGS TO CHESTER ON ITS Two HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
Many happy returns of the day dear Chester ! Many happy returns of the day !
Though one of your humblest children of yester, I've dropped in this birthday to say- Many thanks for the gift of my brave, noble sires, To tell of the lives of such, one never tires.
The call came for men to defend Portsmouth harbor, Grandfather Wilcomb was there to aid.
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