USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > Concord > History of Concord, New Hampshire, from the original grant in seventeen hundred and twenty-five to the opening of the twentieth century, Volume I > Part 23
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1 Prov. Papers, Vol. VI, 476.
2 Court Records, Dec. 6, 1750, et seq .; Rumford Proprietors' Records, Vol. III (manuscript), April 25, 1751.
8 Prov. Papers, Vol. VI, 475-6-7,
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THE BOW CONTROVERSY.
every year, for several years past, by disturbances from the Indians ; and particularly for the two last years past about a quarter of our inhabitants have been driven from their settlement during the busy season of the year, and the whole of them obliged to divert from their husbandry, in order to repair their garrisons and provide for the safety of their families. Wherefore your petitioners most humbly pray that their circumstances may be considered, so that they and the inhabitants aforesaid may be relieved against the penalties and rigor of said Act ; also, that a proper method may be prescribed to have a true list of polls and estates laid before the General Assembly, so that they may pay no more than their proportion, considering their situation ; also that they may be incorporated to all the purposes of a town; and that the assessors may have a further time allowed to per- forin the business assigned in assessing, and the collectors, in levying, the sum that," it " shall be finally determined, must be paid by said inhabitants."
This petition, doubtless, helped to put off indefinitely the issuance of any warrant of distress against the assessors, and to make the Bow act a failure : but its prayer for a town charter fell on deaf ears, as did also that prayer repeated in another petition presented by Ezra Carter, later in the year.
In course of the year 1756, a committee of the Bow proprietors came to some accommodation and agreement with the proprietors of Suncook. The terms of the compromise are not known further than that the Suncook proprietors were to pay a certain fixed price per acre for the land in dispute.1 Rumford had no part in this transac- tion, and Suncook did not thereby avoid future disputes and law- suits.1 In 1739, however, the part of Suncook territory lying east of the Merrimack and between the Suncook and Soucook rivers, was, despite the opposition of the Bow proprietors, incorporated as the parish of Pembroke, and thus, in the matter of public taxation, was to have no further trouble with the province authorities. But Rum- ford was not to be free from that trouble for six years yet, as will be seen in the natural course of narration. Thus, in the spring of 1761, the government of New Hampshire ordered an inventory of the polls and ratable estates in the province to be taken. The order for Bow was delivered to Colonel Jeremiah Stickney of Rumford, who declined to perform, under the incorporation of Bow, the duty thus assigned. Soon after, in April, Ezekiel Morrill and Thomas Clough, selectmen of Canterbury, were assigned the duty, which they performed, returning to the general court an invoice of the polls, stocks, and improved lands in the township of Bow, as they expressed it. But the return pertained
1 History of Pembroke, 45,
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HISTORY OF CONCORD.
to Rumford, except seven of the one hundred and sixty-four persons rated, a fact denoting how little had been done, in more than the third of a century, towards settling the township of Bow, under its charter. This invoice yielded no taxes to the province treasury.1
Meanwhile, in the course of ten years' litigation, the adversaries of Rumford brought, instead of their usual piecemeal suits, an action of ejectment for lands of sufficient value to allow direct appeal to the king in council. Early in November, 1759, Benjamin Rolfe, Daniel Car- ter, Timothy Simonds, John Evans, John Chandler, Abraham Colby, and Abraham Kimball,2 all of Rumford, were sued, and their goods and estates were attached by the sheriff of the province, to the value of one thousand pounds, " to answer unto the proprietors of the com- mon and undivided lands lying within the township of Bow," who demanded possession of about one thousand acres of land with appur- tenances.2 The land in question was described as, "beginning at a stake on the southwest of the great river in Bow, one hundred and sixteen rods below John Merrill's ferry ; thence running west to Tur- key river until it comes to within twenty rods of Nathaniel Smith's grist-mill ; thence south to said river ; thence on said river to where it empties into the great river ; thence up the great river to the first-mentioned bound." This was a second test case, involving the same principles, as the first,-or that of John Merrill,-and was prosecuted and defended with the same allegations and arguments. It was brought to trial in the inferior court of common pleas, on the second day of September, 1760, when the jury, as usual, gave a verdict for the plaintiffs, and judgment was entered up accordingly with costs. From this judgment, the defendants were allowed an appeal to the superior court, where on the second Tuesday of Novem- ber, 1760, the cause was again tried, and with the same result. Whereupon, the defendants took appeal to His Majesty in council, as, this time, they could not be prevented from doing.
The proprietors of Rumford had all along carefully guarded their own interests and those of their grantees, and had met the expenses of litigation by judicious measures ; such as, in 1758, the disposal of " Iron Ore," 3 and in June, 1759, the sale " of so much of the com- mon and undivided lands as" should " be sufficient to raise a sum of fifteen hundred Spanish Milled Dollars, for the defense of the pro- prietors' title to their township against any claim " laid "to the same or any part thereof," in any court of the province, " or in forwarding an appeal to His Majesty in Council." 3 Now, in 1761, when the sec-
1 See invoice of 1761 in note at close of chapter.
2 Report of Lords of Council, December 29, 1762; Appendix to Annals of Concord, 99.
3 Proprietors' Records (manuscript), Vol. III,
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THE BOW CONTROVERSY.
ond test case had been appealed home, Rev. Timothy Walker and Benjamin Rolfe, Esq., were appointed agents to receive any money granted to enable the proprietors to defend their claims to the lands in Rumford.1 This agency was a fitting renewal of that which had been conferred eight years before upon the same men, whose abiding faith in the justice of Rumford's cause had since, as before, been amply tested in wise counsel and efficient action, and had been, amid deep popular disheartenment, the light of hope.
In the autumn of 1762 Mr. Walker visited England the third time ; for the appealed case was, at last, after not a little of the law's delay, approaching trial. Already he was favorably known in a circle of valuable acquaintances among ministers of religion, members of parliament, and members of His Majesty's council.2 Sir William Murray, his counselor and advocate in the former case, was now Lord Mansfield, and chief justice of the king's bench. He presided in the special court of the right honorable the lords of the committee of council for hearing appeals from the plantations, to which the king had referred the petition and appeal of Benjamin Rolfe, Esq., and others. The trial came off on the 17th of December, 1762, and re- sulted favorably to the inhabitants of Rumford.
"The Lords of the Committee of Council for hearing Appeals from the Plantations " made a report, bearing date of the same 17th of December. On the 29th of the same month this report was read at the Court of St. James. The report recited at length the history of the grants of Rumford and Suncook, and their settlement; also, of the establishment of the boundary line, whereby those settlements were excluded from the province of Massachusetts Bay in which they had before been thought and reputed to be, and thrown into the province of New Hampshire. The report continued : " Notwithstand- ing His Majesty had been pleased at the time of issuing the commis- sion to fix the boundary, to declare the same was not to affect private property, yet certain persons in New-Hampshire, desirous to make the labors of others an advantage to themselves, and possess them- selves of the towns of Pennicook,-otherwise Rumford,-and Sun- cook, as now improved by the industry of the appellants, and the first settlers thereof, whom they seek to despoil of the benefit of all their labors," had brought " ejectment against them." Having de- scribed the special action in hand, and its progress from institution to appeal, the lords of the committee concluded their report by recom- mending the reversal of the judgment rendered against the appellants in the courts of New Hampshire.
1 Proprietors' Records (manuscript) Vol. III.
2 Bouton's Concord, 220.
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HISTORY OF CONCORD.
The king, on the same day, took the report into consideration, and was pleased, with the advice of his privy council, to approve thereof, and to issue the following order: " It is hereby ordered that the said judgment of the inferior court of common pleas of the province of New-Hampshire, of the second of September, 1760, and also the judgment of the superior court of judicature, of the second Tuesday in November, affirming the same, be both of them reversed, and that the appellants be restored to what they may have lost by means of the said judgments, whereof the Governor or Commander-in-chief of His Majesty's Province of New-Hampshire, for the time being, and all others whom it may concern, are to take notice and govern them- selves accordingly."
" What is done, and what was said in the case," wrote Mr. Walker to Benjamin Rolfe, "if truly represented by anybody whom Bow will believe, will, I am persuaded, effectually discourage from any further attempts, even against Suncook-much more against Rum- ford; yet I suspect their lawyers will urge them on to further trials -with what success, time must discover." The royal decision marked the crisis of the tedious controversy ; not its end, to be sure, but a sure beginning of that end. Indeed, what the faithful agent of Rumford " suspected " seems to have come to pass; for, when, a dozen years later, his son, Timothy Walker, Jr., and more than forty other citizens of Rumford, or Concord, petitioned the Massa- chusetts legislature for a township in Maine, as an equivalent for the Penacook grant, and in consideration of the expenses incurred in defending their title to the same, they said: " We have been enabled to prosecute two appeals to His Majesty, and although in each we obtained a reversal of the judgment that stood against us here, yet the royal order, extending in express terms no farther than the land sued for, the advantage fell far short of the expense, and our adver- saries went on troubling us with suits. Thus exhausted, and seeing no end of our troubles, we have been reduced to the necessity of repurchasing our township of our adversaries at a rate far exceeding its value in its rude state." 1 So it was that the proprietors of Bow, while not succeeding much in their attempts at direct eviction, did, still, by oppressive litigation and compulsory compromise, succeed in getting unjust advantage to themselves. The litigation, however, was not pressed to the point of a third appeal to England ; though this result seems to have been imminent in 1766, when, on the 9th of July, the proprietors of Rumford voted to raise four hundred pounds sterling to support and defend their claims and those of their gran-
1 N. H. State Papers, Vol. XXIV, 61-2. This petition was favorably answered by the grant of the township of Rumford, in Maine, in 1774. See further, Colonization by Concord Settlers, in note at close of chapter.
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THE BOW CONTROVERSY.
tees, to said township either in this province or Great Britain; appointing a committee of thirteen to proportion said sum upon said proprietors and their grantees ; and, finally, requesting the Reverend Timothy Walker to prepare all papers that he should think necessary for the ends aforesaid.
The proprietors' records, under date of July 29, 1771, show the first provision made for "a final settlement with the proprietors of Bow," by the appointment of "Andrew McMillan, Mr. Abial Chandler, and Captain Thomas Stickney," as a committee to effect that object, and by the vote " that there be six pounds laid on each original right, to defray the charges."1 For the latter vote was substituted, early in 1773,-by legislative sanction, as it seems,-one raising " six hun- dred pounds lawful money, by a just and equal assessment on all the lands within the township to complete the said settlement." 1 Assessors and collectors were appointed, and Mr. William Coffin was chosen proprietors' treasurer, with orders "to pay the money as he received it to the committee formerly chosen to make a settlement with the proprietors of Bow, upon his receiving the deeds of them to the value of the money." 1
The contending parties had, by 1771, come to an agreement that the proprietors of Rumford should have the whole of said township, except one hundred and sixty-two acres of land, which was to be laid out by them in some part of the town; and the proprietors of Rumford were to pay ten pounds to the proprietors of Bow for each hundred-acre lot laid out by said Bow in said Rumford.2 It was one of the duties of the committee of settlement to receive a quitclaim deed from the proprietors of Bow, and give them a bond upon inter- est, for the ten pounds for each hundred-acre lot.2 The assessment of six hundred pounds, in 1773, was supposed to be sufficient to pay the proprietors of Bow, and to give sixty pounds to the Masonian Proprietors for their pretended right to part of said land.2 The last mentioned claim arose from the fact that the quitclaim of Bow, given by the Masonian Proprietors, in 1746, did not cover the part of Rumford without the limits of Bow. This part, however, came within Mason's Patent, which had an extent of "sixty miles from the sea" on the easterly and southerly side of the province, with "a line to cross over from the end of one line of sixty miles to the end of the other." The proprietors pleaded that this cross line, instead of being straight, "should be a curve, because no other would preserve the distance of sixty miles from the sea, in every
1 Proprietors' Records (manuscript), Vol. III.
2 Petition of Thomas Stickney, surviving member of the settlement committee, to the N. H. legislature in 1789; see, also, note at close of chapter.
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HISTORY OF CONCORD.
part of their western boundary."1 Under this claim, the part of Rumford lying outside the vague boundary line of Bow, came within the Mason Patent; and the proprietors of Rumford quieted their title in that direction by the payment of sixty pounds.2
So, at last, the proprietors and occupants of Rumford became quieted in the possession of their twice-bought lands. With painful sacrifice, but with unflinching purpose, wise counsel, and united action, they had held out through the long years of disheartening controversy, and thereby had saved the life itself of New Hampshire's future capital.
NOTES.
Plan of Grant of Bow with Explanations. The annexed Plan of the Township of Bow, which, though not drawn with perfect accu- racy, will help to show, with the following explanations, the grounds of controversy :
1. Rumford-laid out by Massachusetts, seven miles square and one hundred rods on the south, is represented by thick black lines.
2. Suncook-laid out also by Massachusetts, south of Rumford, is on both sides of the river.
3. Bow-laid out by New Hampshire, represented by double lines -nine miles square, and apparent on the plan-covering like a wide sheet nearly the whole territory, both of Rumford and Sun- cook.
4. The dotted line on the east represents the "three miles north of the Merrimack river " claimed by Massachusetts.
5. Canterbury, Chichester, Epsom, and Bow were all granted by New Hampshire, May 20, 1727, as is believed, without previous actual survey.
The Associate Grantees of Bow. His Excellency and Honorable Samuel Shute, Esq., and John Wentworth, Esq., Lieutenant-Gover- nor-each of them five hundred acres of land and a home lot; Col- onel Mark Hunking, Colonel Walton, George Jaffrey, Richard Wibird, Colonel Shad. Westbrook, Archibald McPheadres, John Frost, Jotham Odiorne, Esquires,-members of the Council-each a proprietor's share ; Peter Wear, John Plaisted, James Davis, John Gilman, An- drew Wiggin, Captain John Downing, Captain John Gillman, Samuel Tibbets, Paul Gerrish, Ens. Ephraim Dennet, John Sanburn, Theodore Atkinson, Ebenezer Stevens, Richard Jennes, Captain William Fel- lows, James Jeffery, Joseph Loverin, Daniel Loverin, Zah. Hanahford, Joseph Wiggin, Pierce Long,-members of the Assembly. (Bouton's Concord, 206.)
1 Belknap, 300.
2 See note at close of chapter.
/
THE BOW CONTROVERSY.
Plan Illustrating Bow Controversy.
PENNICHICASSET R.
OGE R.
WINNEPISSE
CANTERBURY
CONTOO COOK RIVER
1
GRANTED MAY 20TH 1727.
·
. .....
CHICHESTER GRANTED MAY 20TH 1727.
'SUNCOOK
BOW
.
E/ P SOM GRANTED MAY 20TH 1727.
217
RUM FORD
218
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
Invoice of 1761. This invoice, mentioned in the text, has historic value, showing, as it does, somewhat the material condition of Rum- ford when it was taken. The items, as therein set down, were : Polls, 154; Horses, 91 ; Planting ground, 341 acres ; Mowing land, 498 do. ; Orcharding, 16 do .; Oxen, 160; Cows, 222; Cattle, three yrs. old, 85; ditto, two yrs. old, 90; ditto, one yr. old, 103; Horses, 77; ditto, three yrs. old, 12; ditto, two yrs. old, 13; ditto, one yr. old, 10; Pasture land, 150 acres; Negroes, 6; Six Mills (yearly income), £125. The valuation for taxing purposes stood as follows : Polls, £2770; Land, £50210s .; Horses, £231; Oxen, £480; Cows, £444; Cattle, three yrs. old, £145 10s. ; ditto, two yrs. old, £103; ditto, one yr. old, £56 10s. ; Slaves, £96-making in all £4,828 10s., and with Doomage £1000 added, £5,828 10s.
Thomas Stickney's Petition in 1789. In answer to this petition an act was passed, authorizing "the proprietors of Rumford, alias Con- cord, to collect a certain tax." This tax was a balance of the assessment of 1773, the collection of which was necessary to the full discharge of the bonds given to the Bow proprietors.
The Masonian Line. In 1788 a committee appointed to run the " straight line " of the Masonian claim, reported to the New Hamp- shire legislature that it crossed "Merrimack river in Concord on Sewall's Falls." [House Journal, February 1, 1788; cited by Otis G. Hammond in paper entitled "Sewall's Falls Historically Con- sidered," published in Granite Monthly, February, 1896.] The Ma- sonian proprietors had, thereupon, bought of the state the disputed segment of land between the arc of the "curved line " and its chord, the "straight line."
COLONIZATION BY CONCORD SETTLERS. [FURNISHED BY JOSEPH B. WALKER.]
Concord, unlike most New Hampshire towns, was colonized, and not formed by gradual accretions from time to time to its population. Some thirty years after its settlement, when the close of the last French and Indian War had opened northwestern New England to settlement, Concord sent considerable numbers of its people to the Pigwacket country, to assist in founding new towns on the Saco at Fryeburg, Maine, and Conway, New Hampshire. .
To the former it sent Moses Ames, James Clemons, Robert Brad- 'ley, John Bradley, Samuel A. Bradley, Abraham Bradley, John Evans, David Evans, Philip Eastman, John L. Eastman, Stephen Farrington, Daniel Farrington, Nathaniel Merrill, Samuel Osgood, David Page, John Webster, Nathaniel Smith, Timothy Walker, and Ezekiel Walker.
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COLONIZATION BY CONCORD SETTLERS.
To the latter it sent Jedediah Spring, Andrew McMillan, Thomas Chadborne, Richard Eastman, Thomas Merrill, Abial Lovejoy, Ben- jamin Osgood, James Osgood, and a Mr. Dolloff.
Further investigation would doubtless show that these lists are far from complete and might be considerably enlarged.
To these, former members of his parish and more or less of them of his church, the first minister of Concord made pastoral visits from time to time, until they had formed local churches and pastors had been settled. Records of such visits are found in some of his diaries which have been preserved. From these it appears that he visited them in the autumns of 1764 and 1766, partaking of their hospitality, preaching to them on Sundays and baptizing their infant children. In the latter year, according to his record, he administered baptism to no less than eleven. The journey thither was by way of Kennebunk and occupied a little more than three days.
Sometimes his son, Timothy Walker, in the ministry at this time, acted as his substitute. By his diary, it appears that he was with them on similar services in 1765 from the nineteenth day of July to the third day of September, a period of some forty-five days. But, loyal to the principles which they had brought with them from their former homes, they soon organized churches and settled permanent pastors at these new homes of their adoption.
Some sixteen years later, a much larger emigration commenced going out from Concord to found a new town upon the Androscoggin, in Maine. Of this movement authentic records have been preserved which give in detail its origin and early progress. From these it appears that a little before the breaking out of the Revolutionary War (January 26, 1774) Timothy Walker, Jr., of Concord, in behalf of himself and his associates, presented a petition to the government of Massachusetts Bay, setting forth the trials and expense of the settlers of Concord in maintaining their rights against the Bow proprietors, and asking consideration therefor in the grant to them of a township in Maine, to lie on each side of the Androscoggin river, of equal extent to that granted by Massachusetts to the settlers of Concord.
In response to this petition the general court of Massachusetts granted to the original proprietors of Concord, who were sufferers by reason of that township's falling into New Hampshire, a township of seven miles square to be laid out in regular form on both sides of the Androscoggin river, easterly of and adjoining Fullerstown, so called, otherwise Sudbury, Canada, provided the grantees within six years settle thirty families in said township and lay out one full share to the first settled minister, one share for the ministry, one share for the school, and one share for Harvard college, and provided the petition-
220
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
ers within one year return a plan thereof to be accepted and con- firmed by the general court.
A committee was also appointed to go to Concord (Pennycook) to inquire into and make out a list of the sufferers. November 8, 1774, in compliance with this resolution the committee made a report of the following list of individuals to whom " Rights " and the number thereof should be assigned, and their action was confirmed by the general court :
To Timothy Walker, Jr., 3 rights ; George Abbot, 2; Thos. Stick- ney, 3; John Chandler, 3; William Coffin, 1; Ebenezer Hall, 1; Jno. Merrill, 1; Amos Abbot, 2; Edward Abbot, 2; Ephraim Far- num, Jr., 1; Benjamin Farnum, 2; Joseph Farnum, 1; Timo. Brad- ley, 1; Rev. Timo. Walker, 2; Joseph Eastman, 1; Aaron Stephens, 2; Moses Hall, 1; Philip Kimball, 1; Ebenezer Eastman, 1; David Hall, 1; Philip Eastman, 2; James Walker, 1; Chas. Walker, 1; Richard Hazeltine, 1; Paul Walker, 1; Jeremiah Bradley, 1; Han- nah Osgood, 2; Asa Kimball, 1; Moses Eastman, 1; John Bradley, 1 ; Jona. Stickney, 1; Reuben Kimball, 1; Benj. Abbot, 1; Joshua Abbot, 1; Abiel Chandler, 5; Timothy Walker, Tertius, 1; Nathaniel Eastman, 2; Heirs of Ebenezer Virgin, 3; Peter Green, 1; Ephraim Carter, 1; Heirs of Jeremiah Dresser, 1; Nath. Rolfe, 1; John Chase, 1; Benja. Thompson, 1; Paul Rolfe, 5; Ebenezer Harnden Goss, 4; Nathan Abbot, 1; Gustavus Adolphus Goss, 1; Robert Davis, 3-4; Anna Stevens, 1-4; Henry Lovejoy, 1-4; Phineas Kimbal, 1-4.
These parties, sixty-six in number, were all of Concord, and the number of rights assigned them was eighty-two and three fourths.
The remaining seventeen and one quarter rights were given to cighteen persons residing in other places. Thus it appears that a little over four fifths were given to residents of Concord.
The distractions of the Revolutionary War prevented a full com- pliance with the terms of the grant within the time specified therein. This, however, was extended in 1779, after which settlements made such progress that on the 21st of February, 1800, the plantation of New Pennycooke became by incorporation the town of Rumford, named from the parent town from which so many of its people had emigrated.
At this time a second generation had been reared upon the farms of Concord, which greatly outnumbered the original occupants and for which they afforded an inadequate support. In short, " the eagle was stirring up her nest " and pushing out her young to careers elsewhere. Naturally many of them, under the rights assigned to
221
COLONIZATION BY CONCORD SETTLERS.
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