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 43
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On the 30th of January, 1837, seventeen days after the passage of the deposit act, it was voted at a special town-meeting held in Concord, to "receive from the treasurer of the State," the town's allotted "portion of the public money of the United States, deposited with the State." Isaac Hill was appointed agent in behalf of the town, to receive the money as it should become due; to receipt for it, and to pledge the faith of the town for the safe-keeping and repayment thereof when demanded by the state treasurer. Three quarterly instalments of a little more than two hundred twenty-three thousand dollars each were, during the year 1837, received into the state treasury ; but the fourth instalment never came; congress hav- ing wisely decided, in view of the condition of the national treasury, that "money should not be borrowed by the government for the sake of making a deposit with the States." Of the sum received by the state, Concord's share was nearly fourteen thousand five hundred dollars.1
1 Bouton's Concord, 426.
400
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
At the time of accepting the deposit, the town directed its railroad investing committee, William A. Kent, Robert Davis, and Joseph Low, to borrow from the agent of the surplus revenue the town's allotment of the same, as it should become due, " for the pay- ment of assessments on railroad shares;" and the agent was author- ized to loan the money to the committee, upon certificate that it had been received for investment in Concord Railroad stock. At the fol- lowing annual meeting in March, the committee reported that they had received from the agent the town's first instalment of the sur- plus revenue, amounting to four thousand two hundred eighty-seven dollars. It was with nine hundred dollars of this first instalment, that the partial payment of an assessment upon railroad shares, as already mentioned, was made; but it does not appear that any further drafts for such a purpose were afterwards made upon the three instalments. In 1840, however, was made the appropriation- before alluded to-in favor of the Asylum for the Insane, whereby the sum of nine thousand five hundred dollars1 of the surplus revenue was secured to that institution. The same year "the poll tax of the town " was ordered to be paid from the surplus revenue,- or its "interest"; and a sum not exceeding five thousand dollars was also appropriated therefrom "to pay the debts of the town."2 The auditors of 1841 reported nearly six thousand three hundred dollars of surplus revenue "available for other purposes," after deducting the asylum appropriation.1 After 1841, when legislation authorized towns to make such disposition of the public money deposited with them as by a major vote they might determine, the surplus revenue, as a town fund, was placed in the hands of the committee having in charge the parsonage and school funds. Like these, it was largely loaned to the town on certificates of the select- men. The available surplus revenue fund was reported in March, 1852, to be seven thousand nine hundred eighty-five dollars and thirty cents, principal and interest. In 1853, Asa Fowler, for "the committee having in charge the various funds belonging to the town of Concord," reported of the surplus revenue fund, as follows: "By a vote of the town passed March 13, 1852, the committee having this fund in charge were instructed to cancel the certificates of the fund. As this fund was peculiarly the property of the town, and at its disposal, the effect of this vote may well be considered to be the extinguishment of the fund, and the discharge of the town from indebtedness to the extent of its amount." 3
The agricultural interests of Concord had not for many years
1 Bouton's Concord, 427.
2 Ibid, 428.
3 Proceedings of Town Meeting, 1853, pp. 23-4.
401
STATE FAIR GROUND.
lacked the stimulus to advancement afforded by organized effort. The Merrimack County Agricultural Society, organized about 1820, and holding its annual fairs in various towns, always found welcome reception in Concord. When, after thirty-nine years of existence, it was, in 1859, incorporated, Concord became its permanent home. That year the Duncklee ground at the south end of the city was fitted up for the society's first fair under incorporation, held on the last three days of September. This was a complete success, and en- couraged the directors to take measures in December for purchasing a Fair Ground. They visited certain pine-covered grounds on the east side of the Merrimack, about a mile from the junction of Bridge street with Main, and resolved to purchase them for the contemplated purpose if three thousand dollars could be raised by subscription and life membership. Moses Humphrey was appointed at that time to solicit subscriptions. He thus collected eighteen hundred dollars. Nathaniel White, Moses Humphrey, and Joseph P. Stickney having been selected as trustees, bought of James Holton, of Massachusetts, on the 28th of March, 1860, thirty acres of land in the locality spoken of, at sixteen dollars per acre ; and, a few days later, of Enos Blake and Isaac Emery, four adjoining acres for one hundred and twenty- five dollars. The land, the clearing of the same, the construction of the track, the fencing, and the erection of suitable buildings cost the society about thirty-two hundred dollars. The first fair was held there September 26, 27, and 28, 1861. Moses Humphrey had already been instructed to cause a deed, or lease, to be made, conveying the premises in perpetual trust to the city of Concord : to be held for the use of the society, and subject at all times to its occupation and con- trol ; it being also provided that the New Hampshire State Agri- cultural Society should have the use of the premises for its annual fairs without charge or expense; that the city of Concord should also have the use of the grounds for fairs and military and other pur- poses ; and that, if at any time the Merrimack County Agricultural Society should be dissolved, or otherwise become inoperative, the city of Concord should retain its rights in the premises. The society, having held eight annual fairs, became inoperative; and the city of Concord, on the 16th of June, 1885, deeded, or leased, to the state of New Hampshire, for ninety-nine years, the aforesaid premises, for "military reviews, musters, and inspection," and for other public pur- poses. This was done with the consent of the County Society, whose last meeting had been held on the second day of July, 1883.1
The New Hampshire State Agricultural Society had held its first fair in Concord in October, 1850; finding accommodation in Depot
1 From Statement of Moses Humphrey.
27
402
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
hall, in the railroad company's machine shop, and on the grounds east of the station.1 Some of its most successful exhibitions-as that of 1857-took place on the "Duncklee ground."
Amid the varied events of those days in the life of Concord's in- creasing population, facts incident to inevitable mortality come with- in the range of recital. As it had been earlier, and would be later, the living neglected not the sacred duty of providing fit resting- places for the dead. In 1836 the town purchased of General Robert Davis a parcel of land for a burying-ground in the West Parish at a cost of one hundred and ninety-one dollars. The first interment therein was that of Orlando Brown, the well known taverner, who died on the 12th of December of that year.2
Six years later (1842) Josiah Stevens, Jr., Joseph Low, Robert Davis, Luther Roby, and William Restiaux were appointed to pur- chase so much land as might be necessary for a cemetery in connec- tion with the one near the Old North church, and to fence and ornament the same. Five hundred dollars were appropriated. The next year (1843) the committee reported that they had expended for land one hundred twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents ; for lum- ber, one hundred eight dollars and twenty-three cents; for stone posts, iron bolts, building fence, making road, and other labor and services, three hundred twenty-one dollars and ten cents-making in the whole five hundred fifty-six dollars and eighty-three cents. The committee added: " Your committee would state that they deem the quantity of land which they have purchased and enclosed with the old graveyard equal to the public wants for half a century ; that the whole, with the exception of the front, is enclosed with a fence as durable as they could construct of stone, iron, and wood ; that the front, until recently, has been occupied with sheds,3 which have prevented your committee from fencing the same; that a part of the sheds have recently been removed, and consequently the graveyard is at this time entirely unprotected in front; and your committee sincerely hope that immediate measures will be taken to complete this work."
The town accepted the report, continued the committee in service, ordered removal of sheds, and appropriated an additional sum of one hundred fifty dollars to complete the fence. In 1844 the cemetery was laid out in lots for the use of families according to a plan drawn ยท by Captain Benjamin Parker. The title to a lot could be conveyed to an individual by the cemetery committee at a price not exceeding ten dollars ; the name of the individual being entered upon the num-
1 Henry McFarland's " Personal Recollections," 127.
2 Bouton's Concord, 424.
3 See Horse Sheds, in note at close of chapter.
403
BOARD OF HEALTH.
ber of the plan corresponding to his lot, with a certificate given him, and entered upon a special record by the town clerk.1
Other parts of the town were not neglected. In 1843-as men- tioned in a previous chapter-the donation of land from Charles Smart for a burying-ground at the foot of Stickney hill was accepted. In 1847 four hundred dollars were appropriated for a new cemetery in East Concord, and for fencing the same. Land for the purpose was bought from the estate of Jeremiah Pecker, Jr.,2 and Pine Grove cemetery had its beginning. At the annual meeting of 1848 tlie town appropriated three hundred dollars for enlarging and fencing the burying-ground at Millville : and the next year appointed Henry H. Brown, Nathaniel Rolfe, Eldad Tenney, Theodore F. Elliott, and E. F. Brockway a committee to lay out into lots that at Fisher- ville.3
During this period the rate of mortality occasionally rose above the moderate average in the health statistics of the town-one of the healthiest in New England. In 1844 the death list numbered one hundred thirteen, and included more than fifty children under ten years of age-victims of a virulent "summer complaint." In the " sickly " summer of 1849 a type of cholera morbus prevailed, re- sembling, in some cases, the Asiatic cholera. So much alarm was excited that, early in June, the selectmen, upon petition of promi- nent inhabitants, appointed Drs. Ezra Carter, Thomas Chadbourne, and Charles P. Gage to serve with Joseph Low and Asa Fowler as a board of health. Sanitary regulations were adopted. The board, upon examination of premises, ordered offensive and unwhole- some matter of whatever description to be removed from places wherein accumulated ; and recommended "strict temperance in re- gard to food and drink-limiting the diet to the most plain, simple, and easily digested articles ; avoiding all crude vegetables and un- ripe fruit, much fresh animal food, large draughts of cold water, and, above all, ardent spirits in every form."+ That year one hundred and fifty-eight deaths occurred in town. This was a larger number than had ever before occurred in one year, and would doubtless have been still larger but for the wise sanitary precautions taken.
The board of health just mentioned was the second instituted in Concord; the first being that of 1832, during the cholera alarm. The terrible pestilence that had swept over Europe the year before had now crossed the Atlantic into Canada; and Concord, situated on the direct line of travel between Canada and Boston, seemed especially exposed to its deadly visitation. Amid apprehensions of danger a
1 Bouton's Concord, 428-9-30.
3 Ibid, 465-6.
2 Ibid, 465.
4 Ibid, 416-17.
404
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
special town-meeting was held on the 9th of July, whereat the three selectmen-Richard Bradley, Joseph P. Stickney, and Laban Page- with six physicians-Thomas Chadbourne, Ezra Carter, Peter Ren- ton, Elijah Colby, Samuel Morrill, Thomas Brown, and John T. Gil- man Leach-were constituted a board of health. The board had authority-in the words of the vote-" to make all necessary provi- sion and accommodations for sick strangers, and for the comfort and safety of our own citizens."1 Also, five hundred dollars were appro- priated to meet expenses. Fortunately, however, all this wise pre- caution was taken against what was not to happen; for the scourge of cholera did not fall within the boundaries of New Hampshire.
But as to another dreaded disease which had occasionally ap- peared in town in earlier days, an important precaution was taken- and one that was to become permanent in its application. In the months of August and September, 1835, four cases of smallpox occurred. The patients were isolated in a retired situation on the Bog road, two miles from the main village; and one of them, Abiel E. Thompson, died. The general alarm produced by this sporadic occurrence of the loathsome disease prompted the town to take effec- tive measures for preventing its epidemic spread A+ +ho next annual meeting, in March, 1836, a recent state law enacted for the preven- tion of smallpox was adopted, and Dr. Ezra Carter was appointed agent for vaccinating all the inhabitants of the town.2
In 1830 the population of the town was three thousand seven hundred two (3,702); in 1840, four thousand nine hundred three (4,903) ; in 1850, eight thousand five hundred eighty-four (8,584). To the increase of population Catholic-Irish immigration did not begin materially to contribute until after 1840. Before this, how- ever, Richard Ronan, with his family, had dwelt in Concord for some years. He is supposed to have been the first Catholic-Irish resident in town. He died in 1840; and his remains were taken to Lowell for interment by Thomas Spellman, who was the only professed Catholic left living in Concord at that time. The sons of the latter, James and Henry, were the first children born of Catholic parents in Concord-the former in 1835; the latter in 1839.
About the year 1846 a strong tide of emigration began to flow from famine-stricken Ireland to the shores of America. The wave reached Concord. The immigrants found residence in the main vil- lage and in Fisherville. It is known that Martin Sherlock was the first Catholic-Irish to locate in the latter place ; the date of his arrival being 1846, when the large mill was built. Between that date and
1 Bouton's Concord, 394.
2 Ibid, 424.
8 Facts communicated by William J. Ahern.
405
IRISH IMMIGRATION.
1850, John Linehan,1 Patrick Cody, Patrick Doyle, John Driscoll, and John Gahagan had come to Fisherville ; and by 1854 such names as Pendergast, Keenan, Kelly, Dolan, O'Brien, O'Neill, Thornton, McArdle, Brennan, Maher, Kenny, Taylor, Barry, Griffin, Bolger, and Lawrence Gahagan had been added to the list of the Irish colony there.2 Of the considerable number of immigrants located in the main village before 1852 were Martin Lawler, Patrick Dooning, Michael Arnold, Thomas McGrath, and John Gienty ; 3 the last hav- ing become a resident in 1848, and worked at first upon a canal at Fisherville.4
A son of one of those Concord pioneers thus describes the toils, hardships, and intents of the Irish immigrants of those days : 5 "Their first employment was on the railroads, in the canals, and in every place where their muscles could be used to the best advantage. Wherever hard labor was required in the ditch, the cut, the mines, laying track, building roads, shoveling, and spike driving, the ser- vices of the Irish were in demand. Very often the work was of the hardest description, the hours long, and the pay small ; but severe as the labor was, and long as the days were, and small as the wages might be, their wit or humor never left them. . The sacri- fices made by those faithful pioneers God alone knows. Day and night their thoughts were constantly with the dear ones at home ; and the aim of all was to work and save enough to bring them across that ocean which furnished graves for so many thousands."
Through such trials and efforts as just described many a family became reunited on the hither shore of the Atlantic; while other exiles of Erin came to dwell amid new and more propitious surround- ings, and where honest labor received better wages than abject want or absolute destitution. In some places racial and religious preju- dices wrought more or less to the disadvantage of an element of pop- ulation that disturbed long-existing homogeneity; but in no Amer- ican Protestant community was the Catholic-Irish stranger more kindly received and considerately treated than in Concord. The opportunities for worthy and successful living, the birthright of the American, were from the first accorded to the Irishman. Nor were these opportunities lost upon him. They were to prove replete with inspiring and elevating influences, whereby in the coming years his descendant would successfully compete as the skilled mechanic, the enterprising merchant, the able lawyer, or the excellent physician ; whereby, too, the son would become worthily endowed with all the
1 See An Early Irish Immigrant, in note at close of chapter.
2 Facts communicated by John C. Linehan.
3 See Meagher's Lecture, in note at close of chapter.
" Facts communicated by William J. Ahern.
" John C. Linehan in Mcclintock's New Hampshire, 611-2.
406
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
rights, privileges, and honors of true American manhood ; the daugh- ter, with all those of true American womanhood. And all the while would the law of religious tolerance permit Protestant and Catholic alike to cherish each his faith, but both to practice Christian charity.1
In 1847 Concord manifested a generous sympathy with the fam- ished people of Ireland by aiding in their relief. At a meeting of citizens held on the 23d of February of that year a committee was appointed consisting of Joseph B. Walker, Nathan Stickney, George Minot, Joseph A. Gilmore, Stephen Brown, Ebenezer S. Towle, Mitchell Gilmore, Jr., and Samuel G. Berry, "to receive and transmit to Ireland such contributions of money, provisions, and clothing as " might "be made for those suffering from famine in that country." The committee issued notice two days later " that they " would " receive and transmit contributions for " that "purpose, made by the citizens of Concord and other towns, to Boston, free of expense, whence they " would " be transmitted, by the committees in Boston, to Ireland. Persons making donations in provisions or clothing " were "requested to forward them to the care of Gilmore & Clapp, in Concord, and donations in money to the care of Ebenezer S. Towle or George Minot, cashiers." The effort resulted in the following contributions of money : One thousand two hundred ninety-three dol- lars and two cents from Concord ; five dollars and twenty-five cents from Pembroke ; five dollars and sixty-two cents from Gilmanton ; and fourteen dollars from the sixth school district of Canterbury-a total of one thousand three hundred seventeen dollars and eighty- nine cents. The citizens of Concord also gave one hundred bushels of grain, and those of Pembroke one hundred sixty-eight.2 The con- tributions, transmitted to the New England committee in Boston, made up the valued amount of one hundred fifty-one thousand nine dollars and five cents. "Seven vessels,-among them two United States warships, the frigate Macedonian and the sloop-of-war James- town, granted by congress for that purpose,-bore these gifts to their destination," where "they were received with the warmest grati- tude." 3
Political subjects prominently occupied the public mind during the period under review. Concord, as the capital, focused as usual the political interest of New Hampshire. It was the convenient center where the party leaders of the state consulted; whither they sum- moned important conventions, and called together the people in extraordinary assemblies and celebrations. Here, too, the newspaper
1 The spiritual care and culture of the new element of population are specially treated in the ecclesiastical chapter.
" Bouton's Concord, 480.
3 George S. Hale in The Memorial History of Boston, Vol. IV, p. 667.
407
FIRST CONCORD GOVERNOR.
press caught the fire and vigor of leadership from the warm concen- tration of partisan influences.
The year 1830 was the second of Andrew Jackson's first presiden- tial term, with the Democratic party supporting his administration and the National Republican party opposing it. The former was ascendant in the state, but not yet in its capital. That year the leg- islature of New Hampshire elected Isaac Hill to the senate of the United States. Thus Concord citizenship became represented for the second time in the upper house of congress ; and thus, too, was re- buked the personal and partisan feeling of a small majority of the senate that had prevented the confirmation of Mr. Hill's appointment as second comptroller of the treasury.
The twelfth presidential election, in 1832, triumphantly re- tained General Jackson in the chief magistracy of the nation. Early in the summer of 1833 he visited some of the northern states, includ- ing New Hampshire. He closed his tour at Concord, where, with his suite, prominently comprising Martin Van Buren, vice-president, Lewis Cass, secretary of war, and Levi Woodbury, secretary of the navy, he arrived on Friday, the 28th of June, and remained over the Sabbath. His reception was, in all its features, civic, military, and social, most cordial, and all unmarred by partisan hostility or indiffer- ence. Nor did the unanimity of welcome-rivaling that accorded to Lafayette-result merely from a decent respect felt for the recipient's high office, but as well from a grateful sense of his courageous devo- tion to the Union. For within six months he had dealt State Rights Nullification a death blow, and had thus practically enforced his ear- lier and immortal toast of warning to Calhoun and other disunion malcontents : "Our Federal Union-It must be preserved." 1
In March, 1833,-three months before the president's visit,-there had come a political overturn in Concord, wherein a Democratic majority of eighty-five replaced the National Republican majority of fifty-five given at the presidential election in November, 1832; the capital thus coming into party accord with the state in supporting the administration of Jackson.
In 1836 Isaac Hill resigned his seat in the United States senate to assume the governorship of the state-being the first citizen of Con- cord to hold this position. He was thrice chosen to the office ; receiving at his first election more than three fourths, and at his second more than nine tenths, of all the votes cast for governor. At those two elections the Whigs-as the opponents of the state and national administration had called themselves since 1834-did not rally in combined force. But at the election of 1838 both parties
1 See particulars of Jackson's visit in a special chapter; also, see The Precious Coin, in note at close of this chapter.
408
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
mustered in full strength, and with a reduced though decisive Dem- ocratic preponderance, as manifested in Governor Hill's three thou- sand majority-won in that political conflict of almost unexampled severity-and which had been for him a fiery furnace seven times heated. The result indicated what subsequent years verified, that upon the old issues between the two parties-bank and sub-treasury, tariff and internal improvements-the Democratic position of Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and Isaac Hill was impregnably the stronger in New Hampshire.
But Concord did not go in that election as went the state. It went over to the Whig side, and there remained until 1840. In March of this fourteenth presidential year the town again became Democratic ; and in the following November it cast five hundred and forty-five votes for Van Buren, against five hundred and twenty- three for Harrison. This preponderance of twenty-two at the ballot box was the town's contribution to the state's six thousand Demo- cratic majority, given in face of a sweeping national defeat of the Democracy, and the election of Harrison and Tyler.
The capital had been the lively center of political interest during the exciting canvass. It had been, on the 17th of June, 1840, the scene of a mass Whig convention-a " Log Cabin and Hard Cider" pageant of Western device. It was a larger gathering than any that had hitherto convened in Concord for any purpose. The prevalence of high political excitement was evinced in the assembling of more than ten thousand people from far and near, without the facilities afforded two years later by the opening of railroad communication. The occasion was a successful display of party enthusiasm. It had its trundling log cabin and other symbolic paraphernalia in crowded procession, headed by the Concord " Tippecanoe Club," marching with shouts, music, and banners, through the town, and along School street to the eastern brow of Kent's, or Holt's, hill, where an im- mense mass meeting was held in the open air, beneath the pleasant June sky. There occurred the platform exercises, with Ichabod Bartlett, of Portsmouth, as president of the day, and Joseph Low, of Concord, one of the vice-presidents. Of the speakers, the chief was James Wilson of Keene, the gifted Whig orator who, in 1838 and 1839, had eloquently pleaded his party's cause throughout the state, but without gaining the governorship for which he was a candidate. As the exercises of the memorable day drew to a close, two sons of New Hampshire, yet young and comparatively unknown, spoke briefly. But no one in that listening crowd once thought what proud fame future high achievement would win for them : for Horace Gree- ley, the peerless journalist ; for Henry Wilson, the able and honest
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