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 23
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
895
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
the affair ended exactly in accordance with the design of its projec- tor. There followed extensions of the Boston, Concord & Montreal lines to Belmont, to the Lake Shore, to Berlin, and thereby the per- fection of a symmetrical system tributary to our valley and friendly to Concord.
The public purpose to have a railroad from Concord to Windsor, on the Connecticut river, was manifested as early as 1835, when, on Wednesday, September 9, there assembled at Bradford a deliberative body of citizens from towns lying along the projected line.
Early in the following month Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen H. Long, of the United States topographical engineers, just then residing at Hopkinton, his birthplace, received permission from the war depart- ment to survey one or more routes from Concord to the Connecticut river. He was a graduate of Dartmouth, had been professor of math- ematics at West Point, and an explorer of the Great West, where his name is affixed to Long's Peak. He had a fancy for railroad affairs. In 1827 he was engaged in surveys for the Baltimore & Ohio road ; in 1830-'32 he was in Philadelphia with William Norris, designing and experimenting with locomotives.
Before the winter of 1835-'36 Lieutenants Burnet, Fuller, and Simmons, of the United States army, under the supervision of Col- onel Long, had surveyed a route from Windsor as far eastward as Warner, but were compelled to defer completion of such survey until the following spring.
The intent to build on the route indicated took formal shape when the charter was granted on June 24, 1848. This charter, like those of the Northern and the Boston, Concord & Montreal roads, permitted the starting-point to be in either Concord or Bow.
The early stock subscriptions came largely from people of Concord, Bradford, Boscawen, Hopkinton, and Warner. A meeting of stock- holders was held in the last-named town, August 1, 1848, when seven directors were chosen, four of whom, namely, Joseph Low, Asa Fow- ler, Perley Cleaves, and Joseph Greeley, were citizens of Concord. The stockholders at that meeting instructed the directors to build the first twenty-five miles.
Joseph A. Gilmore was made building agent of the road, for which George Stark had donc some of the engineering, and Jonathan Adams made the final location. The road from Concord to Bradford was estimated to cost, including rolling stock and suitable station buildings, four hundred nineteen thousand eight hundred dollars. It was opened to Warner, October 1, 1849, and to Bradford, July 10, 1850. Here the enterprise rested until, under the corporate name of
896
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
the Sugar River Railroad, an extension was built to Newport, Novem- ber 21, 1871, and to Claremont, September 10, 1872.
It was at one time contemplated to build a railroad up. the valley of the Contoocook from a point on the Northern Railroad at Pena- cook, but the Contoocook Valley Railroad, from Contoocookville to Hillsborough Bridge, at first a fourteen and four tenths miles branch of the Concord & Claremont line, was completed December 17, 1849. Its bonded debt was stated in 1853 at one hundred forty-two thou- sand dollars. That of the Concord & Claremont company itself was at the same period two hundred sixty-five thousand four hundred dollars. The bonded and floating debts of the New Hampshire Cen- tral company (incorporated June 24, 1848, now the Manchester & North Weare, nineteen miles long), then regarded as a rival to the other two, were as much as two hundred seventy-five thousand dol- lars. The Sullivan Railroad, twenty-six miles long, from Bellows Falls to Windsor (which it is suitable to mention here, because it lies, all but its termini, wholly in New Hampshire, and it afterward came into the control of the Northern Railroad company had in 1851 a bonded debt of six hundred seventy-six thousand three hundred dollars ; at a later date, seven hundred fifty thousand dollars. These roads were built at a time when the issuance of mortgage bonds, at discounts from their face value, had become an ordinary resort of promoters, and as the earnings of these bonded railways were in the beginning less than had been expected, they soon underwent fore- closure and reorganization. Stockholders were induced to give away their shares to reorganizing brokers, in order to rid themselves of personal liability. In the case of the New Hampshire Central they not only gave their stock, but sums of money with it. When inves- tors discovered that all railroads did not earn ten per cent. dividends, they sought some channel for an outcry. This gave rise to a news- paper called the Voice of the Stockholders, a sort of gad-fly, published in Concord about 1854, but it had not much endurance and shortly expired.
An act of the legislature, passed January 8, 1853, permitted the Concord & Claremont and New Hampshire Central roads to unite under the name of the Merrimack & Connecticut Rivers Railroad. They were so united and operated jointly until 1859, when what had been the New Hampshire Central became, by authority of the legis- ture of 1858, the Manchester & North Weare. After a foreclosure sale in 1858, the Contoocook Valley Railroad became the Contoocook River Railroad.
In 1873 the Concord & Claremont, N. H., Railroad company was organized, to combine the properties of the Sugar River, the Contoo-
897
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
eook River, and the old Coneord & Claremont companies, all having become a part of the Northern Railroad system. The bare mention of these changes in style and ownership will convey some idea of the worriment and loss encountered by those who in the early days ventured their money in building these roads.
In July, 1878, the Contooeook River line was extended eighteen and a half miles to Peterborough, by means of the Peterborough & Hillsborough Railroad company. To this extension the eity of Coneord, as a corporation, made, on April 7, 1877, an outright gift of twenty-five thousand dollars, as it had, on October 10, 1868, given fifty thousand dollars, to the Sugar River extension to Claremont.
Under the direction of the Coneord Railroad company, about 1852-'53, James A. Weston and John C. Briggs made surveys for a
One of the First Cars.
The Steam Moter.
railroad from Con- cord to Pittsfield by a line aeross the interval aseending to the elevated plain by the gully next south of Sugar Style of Cars, 1903. Ball or by another east of East Concord village. If Judge Up- ham had remained longer in full control of the Concord company, this idea doubtless would have come to fulfilment.
Opening of Line to Penacook.
The Concord Street Railway was incorporated June 26, 1878, and organized July 12, 1880, with Daniel Holden, John H. George, Moses Humphrey, Lewis Downing, Jr., Samuel C. Eastman, and Josiah B. Sanborn as its first directors; shortly afterward Benja- min A. Kimball was associated with them. Moses Humphrey at the
898
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
age of seventy-three years, brimful of courage, was active in its organization, and became its building agent, afterward its president. The original purpose of the company was to build a narrow gauge railway on the highway, to be run mainly by horse power from the south end of Main street to the village of West Concord, four miles. The first car ran from the Abbot-Downing shops, where it was built, to Fosterville, about 6 p. m., April 21, 1881. Moses Humphrey and an invited party rode on the car. It was drawn by one horse. The bell on the Board of Trade building rang, and people hurried to their doors thinking there was an alarm of fire. The road was . opened to travel April 25, 1881 (when about five hundred passen- gers were carried) ; was extended to Penacook June 1, 1884, and to Contoocook River Park, a place of summer resort with many scenic attractions, July 4, 1893. The West End extension was opened October 15, 1891, the South Street extension July 4, 1894, and the Clinton Street extension August 20, 1901 (Old Home Day). Steam motors were used on the line north of Blossom Hill cemetery until electricity was adopted as motive power for the system in September, 1890. The first annual report of the company showed that its best day had been July 4, 1881, when its receipts were one hundred and eighty-one dollars and eighty-eight cents from two thousand four hundred and twenty-one passengers ; smallest day December 12, twelve dollars and fifty-three cents from two hundred and six passengers. During the year 1882 it had two hundred and three thousand six hundred and sixty-one passengers. The road has now about twelve miles of track, has provided quarter-hourly service on most of its line since June 1, 1894, employs usually more than sev- enty men, and for the year ending December 31, 1900, the fares col- lected numbered one million, two hundred and seventy-nine thousand one hundred and sixty-one. The capital of the company is fifty thou- sand dollars common stock, fifty thousand dollars preferred ; bond- ed indebtedness, one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars. It is thought that the first vestibuled street cars ever built were those constructed here by Benjamin French, and put to use by this com- pany on September 1, 1890. John H. Albin was president of the corporation from July, 1891, to July, 1901. This street railway is to be broadened to standard gauge, when its equipment will be modernized, and electric railway connections established with the Concord & Montreal electric line to Suncook and Manchester,1 and it seems probable that like connections may afterward be made to the northward with Franklin and perhaps Tilton and Laconia. Lucius Tuttle is president ; John F. Webster, treasurer; Frank E. Brown,
1 The electric line to Manchester was opened August 11, 1902.
899
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
passenger agent ; and H. A. Albin, superintendent. These officers were chosen in July, 1901, and their names suggest the fact that the control of the company is held by people who will improve the prop- erty and maintain it in the highest possible state of efficiency. Under a recent act of the legislature this street railway may be con- solidated with the Concord & Montreal, which is itself under lease to the Boston & Maine company.
There have been at times controversies-commercial, legal, or legislative-interesting to the greater railroad companies within the scope of this chapter, such as that in 1851, in regard to division of through fares and freight earnings which was adjusted by arbitra- tors; or that in the legislature of 1887 over the Hazen and the Atherton bills which was ended by a veto of the governor; or that in the courts of 1887-'95 between the Concord and the Manchester & Lawrence companies, when the subject of contention was the sum of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but such do not concern all readers, and details thereof may be sought elsewhere.
Returning now for a parting glance at material properties (what one can see of the railway in our own town), it may be said, first, that of a score of the larger local personal estates more than half have been derived in whole or in great part from the business of transportation by rail ; several came entirely by that way. The names of eleven hundred and eighty-nine railway employees are in the city directory for 1900, and there may be others whose occupa- tion is not defined therein with sufficient exactness to so identify them. There were fifty-four such names in the 'directory for 1844. The average number of railway employees at Concord is now thirteen hundred and forty-six, and the yearly pay-rolls aggregate eight hun- dred and eighty-one thousand one hundred and seventy dollars.
Peter Clark, in his early forecast of what the Concord Railroad ought to construct here, estimated that it would be necessary to expend for station buildings the sum of ten thousand dollars. There are now within the city limits twenty-nine and two tenths miles of main tracks, and thirty-six and eight tenths miles of side tracks, almost enough to build a single track road on an air line to Boston. The steam and electric car tracks within the city limits aggregate over cighty-three miles. Existing station buildings cover ten and a half acres of ground, and, including the right of way, are valued for taxation at seven hundred and nineteen thousand three hundred and twelve dollars and thirty-four cents, not much less than half of the taxable valuation of the whole town as published in the
Boston & Maine Railroad Shops from the East.
901
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
Journal of the Legislature of 1840. The chief of these buildings is the passenger station and train shed, covering one hundred thousand square feet of area, the fourth to occupy the site. It was built in 1885, at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, from designs made by Bradford L. Gilbert of New York, and its excel- lencies have been so apparent to railroad men that the same architect was afterward employed to plan the reconstruction of the Grand Cen- tral station in New York. The pictured views in the early part of this chapter give a better idea of this station than mere words can. Its entire cost was borne by the Concord Railroad, the traditional policy of that company being to own the stations at each end of its line.
The railway shops at the South end, constructed in 1897 and since enlarged, occupy six and fifteen one hundredths acres of a seventy-acre tract. A full-page view of them accompanies this chapter. They are fully equipped with titanic machinery for the repair of locomotives and the construction and repair of steam and electric cars. The electric division car barns are also adjacent and an electric storage battery is held in reserve against accident or flood.
The great freight yard east of the passenger station occupies an area of fifty acres and cost about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It requires twelve switching crews (one hundred and six- teen men) and has been regarded as the best similar yard in the country.
Counting each arrival and departure, there are above one hundred daily passenger and freight trains in the summer season, and the remark of an editorial wag years ago that our railway facilities were such that a man could start from here to go anywhere is abundantly justified.
Freight can now be sent to points almost world-wide apart, by land or water routes, at through rates. Three thousand tons of granite is the average monthly shipment. The old boating company's last and lowest rate of four dollars a ton for general downward freight to Boston, and three dollars and fifty cents a ton for granite, has given place to various classifications for traffic at three dollars and forty cents, three dollars and twenty cents, two dollars and eighty cents, two dollars, and one dollar and eighty cents a ton, and granite goes by car-loads at eighty cents a ton.
The average monthly movement of freight cars to and from the station is forty thousand. Some of these cars are marked with devices and letterings that carry the mind away to the old Santa Fe trail, to mountains which slope toward the Saskatchawan, and to
.
902
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
rivers which water the Pacific. The saintly name of Father Mar- quette, the intrepid missionary and explorer of the Mississippi, who died more than two centuries ago on the lonely shore of Lake Mich- igan, is now spread on the vans of trains loaded with wheat or corn from prairies which his weary feet once trod.
It may serve some good purpose to mention here the dates when various contrivances that make railway traveling safer and pleas- anter came into local use. The telegraph (Vermont and Boston line) came in 1849, and located its office where is now the south store of the Columbian building, with Ira F. Chase as the first operator. It was on this wire that George Brackett, a citizen of color, declared that he often saw messages passing to and fro. Brass checks for bag- gage were adopted about 1850, the signal bell cord to passenger train engineers about 1853, steel rails and fish plates in 1868, safety switches and frogs in 1888, coal-burning engines and the Miller platform and coupling in 1871, the Westinghouse brake in 1876. The parlor car came in 1874, the telephone for general use in 1880, and heating by steam from the engine in 1891. Wire fencing began in 1885, and the first iron bridge was built over the Nashua river in 1884. The road-bed between Concord and Boston was oiled in 1899 to free the trains from dust, and the use of coke for fuel was begun the same year. The end of the century sees the automatic coupler in general use.
Among those people-citizens of Concord once, some of them citi- zens still-who have served in various capacities on the railways that we call our own, gained some success here or elsewhere, and yet have had little or no mention in this chapter, are H. J. Lombaert, after- ward second vice-president of the Pennsylvania Central, and presi- dent of the American Steamship company ; John Crombie, afterward superintendent of the Vermont Central ; James A. Weston, whose portrait hangs in the gallery of the governors of New Hampshire ; Harvey Rice, afterward superintendent, of motive power of the Erie ; James Sedgley, afterward superintendent of motive power of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern ; Reuben Sherburne (1842),1 afterward superintendent of the Vermont Central; William M. Parker, after- ward superintendent of the Boston & Lowell ; Levi P. Wright (1848), afterward lieutenant-colonel First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, . and superintendent of military railroads at Nashville, Tenn. ; Henry C. Sherburne (1850), afterward president of the Northern; George E. Todd, who began with the Northern in 1848, became its superin- tendent, and remained with it until his death in 1892; James R.
1 Mr. Sherburne began service with the Boston & Concord Boating company in 1838.
903
CONCORD AS A RAILROAD CENTER.
Kendrick, afterward general manager of the Old Colony ; Charles H. Ham, afterward of the United States board of general appraisers, New York ; George G. Sanborn (1848), afterward local treasurer of the Northern Pacific ; James N. Lauder, afterward superintendent of motive power of the Old Colony; John Kimball (1848), the most trusted man in Concord; Benjamin A. Kimball (1854), president of the Concord & Montreal, who left to himself would have gathered together a New Hampshire railway system of excellent proportions, with Concord as its focus ; Henry McFarland (1850), afterward sec- retary and treasurer of the Union Pacific; James M. Foss (1846), afterward superintendent of the Vermont Central ; Charles S. Mellen, president of the Northern Pacific; Lyman Wallace, afterward an engineer in Farragut's fleet, now a master mechanic of the Mexican Central ; George F. Evans, vice-president and general manager of the Maine Central; W. G. Bean, a division superintendent of the Boston & Maine; M. T. Donovan, freight traffic manager of the Boston & Maine ; John F. Webster (1857), treasurer of the Concord & Mon- treal; Horace E. Chamberlin (1858), recently superintendent of Concord division, Boston & Maine; James T. Gordon (1865), gen- eral foreman of car department in the Concord shops; G. E. Cum- mings, superintendent of White Mountains division, Boston & Maine; Frank E. Brown, assistant general passenger agent, Boston & Maine ; and James M. Jones, general baggage agent, who had continuous service with the Concord company for forty-eight years.
Although he did not have, as did those above mentioned, a pre- liminary railway connection here, Edward H. Rollins should be men- tioned as a railway man of Concord, as he was secretary and treas- urer of the Union Pacific, 1869-'77, and so should Josiah F. Hill, recently secretary of the Great Southern.
The names of the survivors among the foregoing who were railway men as early as 1850 are shown in italic, and the figures in parenthe- ses following names indicate when the service of individuals began. Other living railway men of that time who have been so fortunate as to find contentment and appreciation here, are John Gienty (1846), B. F. Wolcott (1847), Charles E. Twombly (1848), C. M. Templeton (1849), Edson C. Eastman (1850), and Charles F. Webster (1845), the last of whom had probably longer continuous service than any other employee.
John H. Pearson, Augustine C. Pierce, Josiah Minot, J. Stephens Abbot, Edson Hill, Samuel S. Kimball, John A. White, Edward H. Rollins, and Joseph B. Walker have been active directors in railroads herein treated, and Franklin Pierce, Ira Perley, John H. George, Josiah Minot, William L. Foster, Mason W. Tappan, William H.
904
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
Bartlett, William E. Chandler, John Y. Mugridge, Anson S. Marshall, William M. Chase, Frank S. Streeter, Samuel C. Eastman, John M. Mitchell, and Jolin H. Albin have been the counselors whose advice and service the railways have chiefly sought.
The local railway belongings which interested the people of 1842 have passed out of existence. One thing remains,-the station mar- tin house. Whenever an employee of the olden time returns from his wanderings, which in some cases have been far and wide, he knows he has come home again when from the incoming train his eye falls on the colony of purple martins that for half a century have dwelt each season where kindly forethought so long ago provided a place for them.
The roll of the railroad men of half a century ago yet living is short. Their old associates vanished with the antiquated ways and the ancient machinery. Fifty years hence, when this History of Concord shall be a battered old book, some one may write a chapter like this-like in purport, better in manner-in regard to the men of to-day, and the things now deemed the best things.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.
JACOB H. GALLINGER. 1
The first settlers of Coneord were more eoneerned about their spiritual than about their physical welfare, and no physician aeeom- panied them to what was then a frontier settlement. For about fourteen years the community was without a family doctor. Such ailments as afflicted the settlers-and their hardy out-of-door life made them few-and such aceidents as oeeurred, were treated with the simple remedies of the fireside. If there was consultation it was with the neighbors, who bestowed kindly sympathy if they could not suggest a medicine to give relief from pain or stay the waste of dis- ease. In those early days the practice of obstetrics was wholly in the hands of women ; and it was not until the beginning of the pres- ent eentury that it became a regular branch of the medieal profession. In this community, as in others, some experienced woman attended at ehild-birth, and aeted as nurse and doetor when illness eame upon the family ; and her ministrations and advice were the neighborly aets of kindness which the settlers freely gave to one another.
There is a tradition that the first physician on the soil of Coneord was a Dr. Henry Rolfe, who came here in the summer or autumn of 1726 and spent the winter with one David Uran in a bloek-house built by them on the spot where Captain Benjamin Emery afterward resided. Bouton, in his history, refers to Henry Rolfe and Riehard Uran as spending the winter here and suffering from the cold and want of suitable provisions, and that they were relieved by friendly Indians. It is supposed that he returned to Massachusetts in the spring, and there is no evidence that he ever came back. The same tradition reports him to have been the father of Benjamin Rolfe, who took so conspicuous a part among the first settlers.
Dr. Ezra Carter, the elder, was the first physician to settle in Con- cord. He came here from Salisbury, Mass., where he studied medi- cine with Dr. Ordway, and he was at that time about twenty-one years of age. Concord then had a population of about two hundred and fifty inhabitants, and as there were settlements in Bow and Can- terbury it is quite likely his practice extended to these towns. Like
1 I am indebted to James O. Lyford for the gathering of data for this article. J. H. G.
906
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
other physicians of the early settlements of New England he com- bined farming with the practice of medicine, and shared with the pioneers the hardships and deprivations of their isolated life. A summons to the sick-room found him cultivating the fields, planting or harvesting his crops, gathering from the adjacent forest his fire- wood, collecting the indigenous plants of the neighborhood, from which, with the productions of his botanical garden, he compounded many of his medicines. Every physician of those days was his own pharmacist, and his botanical garden was as much a part of his equip- ment as the drugs he brought from the centers of trade in the colo- nies. The late Dr. A. H. Crosby of Concord, in speaking of the environments which surrounded the physician of the eighteenth cen- tury in the frontier settlements, says that " many of the indigenous plants were very easily gathered, and were so carefully prepared that not even the extracts, tinctures, and elixirs of the same plants from the hands of the manufacturing pharmacists equaled them in thera- peutic effect." . Even as late as the time of Dr. Peter Renton, who came to Concord in 1822 and remained here until 1845, the botanical garden was a part of the country doctor's outfit.
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.