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 II > Part 20
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82
CHAPTER XXI. CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
HENRY MCFARLAND.
During the most active period of navigation on the Merrimack, which lasted twenty-seven years (1815-'42), Concord doubled in population, and it is possible that the town might have been as large as it now is if it had remained merely the head of navigation on the Merrimack. Larger ancient hopes might have been realized if the water-power of that river and its tributary, the Contoocook, had been set to turning mill-wheels in methods then contemplated ; but what- ever expectations the railroad undid, it has made various compensa- tions.
Certain annals of the railroads relate to town history. Reviewing such in this connection, it will be reasonable to give most space to the oldest of the existing companies. The earliest railroad charter in New Hampshire was that of the Boston & Ontario Railroad corpora- tion, granted January 1, 1833. It named thirty-four grantees, all, or nearly all, citizens of Massachusetts. They were empowered to build a railway from the Massachusetts line, through New Hampshire, to the Connecticut river, as part of a projected road from Boston to Lake Ontario. This charter expired by limitation.
The Concord Railroad corporation obtained its charter June 27, 1835, the day on which the Boston & Lowell Railroad was opened to travel. The grantees named in the charter were eighteen, namely, Isaac Hill, Richard Hazen Ayer, Charles H. Peaslce, Joseph Low, Francis N. Fiske, George Kent, Robert Davis, Abiel Walker, Richard Bradley, John K. Simpson, Horatio Hill, William Gault, Joseph P. Stickney, Arlond Carroll, John R. Reding, John Nesmith, Samuel Coffin, and Samuel Herbert, of whom all but four were citizens of Concord.
Richard Hazen Ayer was a native of Concord, then residing in Hooksett. John K. Simpson, born in New Hampton, was residing in Boston, where he kept the quaint old furniture and feather store which stood in Dock square bearing " 1680" on its gable. John R. Reding, a native of Portsmouth, learned the printing business in the office of the New Hampshire Patriot at Concord, and at the date of the charter was editor of the Democratic Republican at Haverhill. John Nesmith was a manufacturer at Lowell,
867
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
There were family ties between Isaac and Horatio Hill, Richard Hazen Ayer, Richard Bradley, and John R. Reding. At least twelve of the grantees were of the Democratic party, then dominant in the state. John R. Reding was probably the youngest, and
Abiel Wal_ ker the old- est, of the group. The most force- ful man may have been Isaac Hill, small of stature, intense, impatient of opposition. He had ceased to be editor of the Patriot, was then United States senator, but was destined to be governor of the state the following year. Joseph Low, Charles H. Peaslee, and Richard Bradley were, in the affairs of the railroad, scarcely less active than he. Peaslee and Reding were to Present Passenger Station. go to congress ; Carroll was high sheriff of the county; Low was adjutant-general of the state. Seven of the grantees were among the larger real-estate owners of Concord. Some of these gentlemen had more enthusiasm than endurance, and did not remain long in the enterprise. There were among them farmers, tradesmen, lawyers, and bankers. Some of them had been interested in Merrimack river boating companies and canals.
It was the original purpose of these grantees and their associates to construct a railroad direct from Lowell to Concord, and the char- ter empowered them to build from a convenient point on the state line (to which point from Lowell it was then expected that Massa- chusetts would grant a charter), provided a route should be chosen lying on the east side of the Merrimack as far as Amoskeag, or, as
200000
868
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
an alternative, they might build from Nashua, beginning at some point of junction with the Nashua & Lowell Railroad.
The grantees of the corporation assembled at the Eagle Coffee House in Concord, July 14, 1835, and appointed Joseph Low and Richard Bradley to reconnoitre routes to Lowell, especially the Mam- moth road. Isaac Hill, William Gault, and Horatio Hill were to col- lect information in regard to travel and traffic. These gentlemen were termed commissioners. The Patriot of July 27 following re- ported the project to be going ahead "in finc style "; books had been opened, and subscriptions made for almost all the needed stock,-a statement that may be open to a grain of doubt. It said further:
"The effect has already been to raise the value of real estate in this village from fifty to two hundred per cent., and every hour in the day we hear of extensive transactions in house lots and lands."
On Tuesday, September 15, 1835, the subscribers to the capital stock of the company met at the Eagle Coffee House, organized, adopted by-laws, and chose as directors, Isaac Hill, William A. Kent, Joseph Low, and Richard Bradley, of Concord, Daniel D. Brodhead, Willard Sayles, and Lyman Tiffany, of Boston. Daniel D. Brodhead was chosen president, Charles H. Peaslee, clerk, and Joseph Low, treasurer. Brodhead was navy agent at Boston ; Sayles was a dealer in domestic goods, having relations with the Amoskcag company, as probably did Tiffany.
The commissioners appointed in July published a report in Sep- tember, which had doubtless been submitted at the last mentioned meeting, treating of routes, traffic (in which copperas from Stafford, Vt., and iron from Franconia cut quite a figure), and costs of construction. The report concluded that a railroad from Nashua could be built for five hundred thousand dollars, and some words were added intended to allay public distrust of monopolies.
There were other railroad projects in sight, and Governor Hill, in a message to the legislature of 1836, suggested loaning the share of United States surplus revenue, which was coming, by an existing plan of division, to New Hampshire, to aid railroad building, but provoked thereby a storm of successful opposition from those who favored distribution of the surplus to the towns.
In 1836, April 4, the Patriot contained the following paragraph :
" We would suggest the propriety of measures to ascertain the practicability of a railroad from Concord to Portsmouth. As there seems to be no disposition on the part of the legislature of Massa- chusetts, or the citizens of Boston, to aid the contemplated route from here to Lowell, the people of this section of the State would do well to turn their attention toward their only seaport."
869
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
At the annual meeting of the Concord corporation, July 14, 1836, Patrick T. Jackson, of Boston, a Milk street merchant, with courage for large enterprises, interested in factories at Lowell, was chosen a director in place of Lyman Tiffany. In the following August, at a meeting of the directors in Nashua, engineers were appointed to locate the route.
There was a citizens' meeting at the court house in Concord in September of 1836, and committees were appointed to solicit sub- scriptions to stock in Andover, Boscawen, Canterbury, Chichester, Dunbarton, Epsom, Franklin, Gilmanton, Hooksett, Henniker, Hop- kinton, Loudon, Northfield, Pembroke, Pittsfield, Salisbury, and Warner. It is doubtful if aid ought to have been expected in outly- ing towns, for the impression had gone forth that if the railroad came hither there would be little use for horses and no markets for hay and oats ; but in some instances stock was taken which remains a family possession to this day.
There were from time to time public meetings to quicken local enthusiasm, the orators being William A. Kent, Joseph Low, Nathan- iel G. Upham, Isaac Hill, Richard Bradley, George Kent, John Whip- ple, and William Gault.
In February, 1837, a year of special trouble, the treasurer of the corporation gave notice that the assessment of ten per cent. (five dollars a share), due and payable September 1, 1836, could be adjusted by paying one dollar and fifty cents in cash, and giving a note or bond for three dollars and fifty cents, payable on demand, with interest from said September 1.
The Nashua & Lowell Railroad, aided by a loan of Massachusetts state scrip to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, was opened to Nashua, October 8, 1838. It had three engines, three passenger cars, and twenty-four freight cars, and earned dividends from the start. The project of building on the direct line from Lowell to Concord, heretofore mentioned, seems to have been henceforth held in abeyance.
By the year 1839, July 3, Richard HI. Ayer had come into the Concord Railroad board of directors, and Patrick T. Jackson was president of the company. Four years had passed since the charter was granted, and timid people began to fear that no engine would cver draw its long white plume up the valley. The zealous friends of the road lost some of their courage. It is not surprising that they did. They reported that no interest was felt in the country above Concord, very little at Boston, and there was opposition at Amoskcag. The times had surely been unpropitious. There had been great financial disturbances, bank failures, and local losses by
870
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
investments in Maine lands. The " Indian Stream War " had con- tributed its share to the general distraction. There had been and continued to be dread of stockholder's personal liability for any and all corporate debts. There was then and thereafter a struggle about the right of way-a contest between private rights and public needs.
An act of the legislature, approved January 13, 1837, provided that if a railroad and a landowner were unable to agree as to land damages, application might be made to the court of common pleas to appoint appraisers to fix the amount of such damages, and that if either party were then dissatisfied, they might appeal and be heard by a jury. This was applying the state's right of eminent domain in behalf of a class of corporations the character of which, whether public or private, was in dispute. The advocates of the landowners declared the act to be unconstitutional, and there were until 1844 controversies growing out of it and the principles involved therein.
Another act, which passed June 20, 1840, repealed preceding legislation of this respect, and provided that thereafter it should not be lawful for any corporation to take, use, or occupy any lands without the consent of the owner thereof, except in the case of railroads the construction of which had been commenced. It also repealed the authority theretofore given to the town of Concord to subscribe for stock in the Concord Railroad. Further evidence of unfriendliness was manifested at the winter session of that year.
At the June session of the legislature of 1841, a bill was intro- duced by Thomas Chandler of Bedford, to repeal all laws granting to corporations the right to take land without the owner's consent. This gave rise to a lively discussion, in which, among others, Albert Baker of Hillsborough (who had been a law student of Franklin Pierce's, and was chairman of the judiciary committee), Thomas P. Treadwell of Portsmouth, and Samuel Swazey of Haverhill, enlisted on one side, and Daniel M. Christie of Dover, Joseph Robinson of Concord, and Jonathan Dearborn of Plymouth, on the other. Baker was the leader and chief speaker of those who took the radical view,-a view which made a temporary division in his party. He was a young man, not above thirty-one ; tall, spare, enthusiastic. He died shortly after the close of this legislative session.
To a casual reader of such reports of those debates as the news- ยท papers of that time contain may come a conviction that "populism " is no new idea. The bill failed to pass, being finally allowed to slum- ber on the table.
Common sense prevailed when on December 25, 1844, authority was granted to take needed lands under the sanction and the assess-
871
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
ments of a board of railroad commissioners, for constituting which board the act made provision.
There was an interested landowner at the South end in Concord whose damage case was as conspicuous as any in this region, to wit, William M. Carter, whose tavern stand was so advantageously near the boating company's landing that the incoming of the railroad would make it suffer not only loss of land but loss of business. Carter had something of the spirit of the barons who withstood King John. He made a stout fight. If the radical view held by Albert Baker in the legislature of 1841 had prevailed, any single landowner might have held up the railroad company, but the Carter tavern case was ended in 1842 by sale of the whole property to the railroad for three thousand eight hundred and thirty dollars. Two years later the railroad sold to Carter for three thousand dollars the property on Main street near the station, which he afterward maintained as the Elm House.
Another combatant was Stephen S. Swett. He had an estate fronting on Hall street, where he constructed boats for the naviga- tion of the Merrimack, and proclaimed that he would resort to arms before any railroad should cross lands to which he held title. He made some active resistance to shovellers employed in grading the embankments. Afterward, by one of the gentle revenges that time deals out, his son, James Swett, gained a snug fortune by the inven- tion of a machine for forging railroad spikes.
The situation of the Concord Railroad enterprise at the beginning of the year 1840 was stated in a public letter written by Joseph Low, which was as follows :
CONCORD, January 21, 1840.
In June, 1835, a charter for a railroad from Lowell to Concord was granted to certain individuals therein named, who soon after organized in accordance with the provisions of the charter and pro- ceeded to explore the proposed routes, and subsequently procured, at a heavy expense, a full and accurate survey of a route with a plan and estimates annexed.
The stock of the corporation was offered to the public and imme- diately taken, one half by the Amoskeag Manufacturing company and others interested in that incorporation, and the other half by individ- uals in the country, with a mutual understanding that the road should be immediately commenced and constructed with all prudent despatch, each party furnishing its proportion of the funds requisite to carry forward the enterprise ; by the time, however, that the route was surveyed and the necessary data obtained upon which to predi- cate contracts, etc., the great enterprises of the country were begin- ning to be checked, the practicability of railroads in the North not having been fully tested, and great difficulties being felt in all the
872
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
monetary affairs of the country, doubts were expressed whether pru- dence would dictate immediate action in the construction of our road.
Late in the year 1836, or early in 1837, a meeting of the directors was notified to be held at Boston, at which meeting the Boston and Amoskeag portion of the directors proposed to postpone further action in relation to the railroad until June, 1838, which was agreed to by the board, and a vote to that effect passed.
The condition of the vote passed at this meeting not having been fully complied with, subscribers to the capital stock of the incorpora- tion could withdraw by paying the expense which had already been incurred upon each share.
The Amoskeag Manufacturing company availing itself of the con- dition of the vote passed at the Boston meeting of directors, and declining to do anything further under the charter as originally granted, is the main if not the sole reason why the contemplated road is not now either completed or in a course of construction.
An essential change having taken place in the stockholders of the Amoskeag Manufacturing company, a disposition is there manifested to delay the construction of the road until one can be made upon a charter terminating at Amoskeag.
It may therefore be important to the friends and owners of the present charter early to determine whether they will go forward and construct a road from Nashua or Lowell over such a route as they may select, or whether they will surrender their right of way to their neighbors at Amoskeag.
It appears to me that the time is at hand when the Concord Rail- road may be safely commenced, and surely and profitably completed, and my only motive in addressing you is to call public attention to this too long neglected enterprise.
Respectfully yours, JOSEPH LOW.
There was during that year of 1840 some improvement in mone- tary conditions, and the success of the Nashua road had convinced many persons (seven and eight per cent. being very persuasive argu- ments) that the Concord undertaking would be profitable. The names of the directors chosen that year, C. H. Atherton of Amherst, Addison Gilmore and Josiah Stickney of Boston, Peter Clark of Nashua, N. G. Upham, Joseph Low, and C. H. Peaslee of Concord, give proof that new men were disposed to risk money and credit in the enterprisc. Messrs. Low, Upham, and Peaslee were, in October of that year, appointed a committee to publish statistical information in regard to the prospects of the road. They did so in the following . December, and the prophetic pith of their research was that " the profit of the investment will be as great as the stockholders can be permitted to receive by the charter; that to keep it even within these limits the fare for travel and transportation must be greatly reduced." This report of the committee was supplemented by esti-
873
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
mates in detail as to costs of construction, amount of traffic, and date of possible completion, made by Peter Clark, who had gained valua- ble experience in connection with the Nashua Railroad.
The town of Concord came near having an investment in Concord Railroad shares. In 1836 a duly authorized corporate subscription was made for two hundred shares, and in 1837 for six hundred addi- tional shares. There were then certain town resources called parson- age, school, and surplus revenue funds. In 1839 the town resolved to take two thousand more shares. A bill to authorize the execution of the latter purpose passed the house of representatives that year by a vote of one hundred and one to ninety-six, but by a vote of seven to five it was indefinitely postponed in the senate. The town subscriptions which were actually effected were frittered away. There may have been public alarm at the perils of ownership under personal liability, and at the unfriendly attitude of the legislatures of 1840 and 1841. In the latter year six hundred shares, on which partial payment had been made, were voted to the needy Concord Literary institution, whence they shortly found their way to private ownership, and the remaining two hundred shares were sold at a loss. Beside the annual returns that would have come from the ownership of twenty-eight hundred shares, which would have cost one hundred and forty thou- sand dollars, the shares themselves would now be worth about five hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
The surveys for the Concord road were made by Loammi Baldwin, the younger, William Gibbs McNeil, and George Washington Whist- ler, all of them distinguished for professional skill, the two latter being graduates of West Point. With McNeil was E. S. Chesbrough, afterward an eminent hydraulic engineer. Major Whistler went in 1842 into the service of the czar of Russia, for whom he built rail- roads and many things appertaining to them.
The legislature of 1841, in which there was so much debate about eminent domain and the right of way, adjourned on the 3d of July, and on the 7th of the same month proposals from contractors for the grading between Manchester and Concord were invited, construction below Manchester being then in progress. Isaac Spalding, of Nashua, had meanwhile become treasurer of the corporation. The Amoskeag company, which had been cited as unfriendly, granted the right of way through its lands for the nominal consideration of one dollar, being induced thereto by an apprehension that the road might go by them on the west side of the river.
The actual construction of the road occupied not much above a year, although some rails on the way from England were lost by shipwreck. The whole line of rail to Boston is twelve miles longer
874
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
than the distance proclaimed about 1805 on the South end sign-board of the Londonderry turnpike. Probably the turnpike road was not measured so carefully as the railroad, but the detour around the great elbow of the Merrimack at Chelmsford is chargeable with most of the increase in distance. The influence of Richard H. Ayer is said to have kept the road on the west side of the river hence to Hooksett village ; it was the opinion of Isaac Spalding that at that point it should have been on the other side. T-rails weighing fifty- six pounds to the yard were adopted, and laid with iron castings, called chairs, at either end, on chestnut sleepers, which in their turn rested on sub-sills. The spikes that held the rails were forged by hand labor.
The road being ready to undertake business, Hon. Nathaniel G. Upham, a judge of the superior court of judicature, who had been speaking in its behalf, was invited to leave the bench and become its superintendent. This was a prudent choice. Judge Upham had fortunate political connections, and was not wont to do all his think- ing aloud. He was a good manager, enterprising, liberal in provision for the future, and careful in the selection of employees. When there was occasion to be represented at the state house, the charges of his parliamentary solicitors were within figures so small as to bor- der on the ridiculous. The Nashua & Lowell Railroad, following this example, in 1847 took Judge Charles F. Gove, who had been a Concord school teacher in 1816-'19, from the bench of the court of common pleas to be its superintendent.
The pioneer passenger train, drawn by the engine "Amoskeag," in charge of George Clough, conductor, and Leonard Crossman, engi- neer, ran into Concord, Tuesday evening, September 6, 1842, in the presence of a great assembly of rejoicing people. This was one hun- dred and sixteen years after the proprietors of Penacook surveyed the township. It had been, however, only twelve years since the first steam railway, the Liverpool & Manchester, was built; and, looking in the other direction, one may see in how brief a period the railroad has gone everywhere in America, if he remembers that a man until recently an employee of the . Boston & Lowell company (Waterman Brown), tending a gate at a road crossing in Woburn-the gate-house full' of patterns and models of old
Engine of the First Passenger Train to Concord.
875
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
railway furniture and belongings-saw the first engine of that com- pany borne up the Middlesex canal, on a boat bound to the Lowell machine shop, where it was to serve temporarily as a model for others.
The second track of the Concord Railroad was completed in 1848. The whole plateau in Concord now occupied by railway tracks and buildings, which threatens sometime to crowd the Merrimack out of its channel, has been raised above its natural level. For this pur- pose material was once carted across town from Academy hill, but for enlargements in later years larger and more speedy methods have been employed.
The early station buildings were of lowly appearance. That one to which passenger trains came was a wooden structure, only wide enough for a single track, standing where is now the northwestern part of the great iron train shed. There was a bell on its roof which was rung shortly before train departures, and on its northwestern corner hung the sign of Walker & Company's Express, which had come down from the Eagle Coffee House. John H. Elliott sold tickets, Baruch Biddle trundled baggage, and Christopher Hart, whose motto of " Live and let live," was long afterward in evidence over a door on Depot street, kept the station restaurant. The coaches of the American House, Eagle and Phenix hotels, did all the local carrying of passengers, and it was not until about 1853 that the first hack, a venture of John L. Coffin's, made its appearance in town.
There were an engine house which was outgrown in five years, and a machine shop sufficient for but six years. The freight house was at the foot of Freight street, and with enlargements was in use until 1882. Theodore French, who had served the Boston & Concord Boating company, was freight agent.
Passenger cars were housed in a building which adjoined the east side of what had been an old distillery, then a wholesale store, just north of the site of the existing train shed. This ear house had been in its youth the busy storehouse at the lower landing of the boating company. The smell of tar and rum and molasses was scarcely out of it when it was destroyed by fire January 6, 1846.
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.