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 39
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The Farrington-Fuller House.
Many substantial houses of the eighteenth century were built in the following manner : A great chimney, sometimes twelve feet square, built of stone or brick laid in clay, formed the central feature. There were two " fore " rooms with a square entry between them, and huddled up against the chimney, a narrow staircase with three turnings. In later times the staircase sometimes wound around a pole, and the stairs were cut pie fashion. Back of the chimney extended a long kitchen with big fireplace and a brick oven on one side. At either end of the kitchen was a bedroom, one for the old people and one for the parents with the last new baby. Opening from the kitchen was a wash-room, sink-room, or shed. These appendages formed a connecting link between the house and barn. In the second story of the house there might be two finished chambers, but the part over the kitchen was often a rough, open loft. Until 1880 or later the old Jacob Hoyt house on the " Mountain " in East Concord was a good specimen of this type. The heavy oak frame of this house, dating from 1748, is considered the oldest on the east side of the river. The house itself has been several times built over, and was lately occupied by Hugh Tallant, who accommodated summer boarders.
In the early houses there was no plastering, but the walls were
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finished in boards. The chimney side of the room was usually pan- eled over its entire surface, and there were delightful little closets and cupboards tucked in about the fireplace. The mantelpiece appears to have been an after-thought. Some of the oldest houses had none. When it came, it was first known as the mantel-tree; it was built only about a foot lower than the ceiling that it might be a safe place on which to lay things out of reach. It subsequently developed into the high-shouldered, ornamental mantelpiece, whose ancient, hand-wrought mouldings are often copied for modern houses. The paneled work of the " fore " rooms was frequently very hand- some, but after people were rich enough to have it painted white, there were vast areas to clean. The ceilings of these old houses were crossed by heavy beams. The rooms were always low. The first story of the Walker parsonage was originally but seven feet high, a height sufficient for the tallest man in the days when there were no chandeliers or other ornaments dangling overhead. In the second story of the Albert Saltmarsh house, west of Long pond, so long occupied by Nathan K. Abbot and his sisters, the height is but a little over six feet.
Domestic customs in the old houses were very unlike those in a modern dwelling with its ramifications of steam coils, water-pipes, and electric wires. Our ancestors knew what it was to bring water from the well with the thermometer below zero, only they had no thermometer. They scorched their faces and froze their backs before a great fireplace, where two thirds of the heat went up the chimney, and a thousand windy draughts circulated about their feet ; they knit and tinkered in the evenings by the feeble light of a tallow dip, one of the limited store they made whenever they killed a " beef critter."
Although wood was cut down to get rid of it, many houses, even those of some pretension, kept but one fire, and that in the kitchen, except on state occasions, when one of the "fore " rooms was opened. These " fore " rooms were theoretically parlor and " settin'-room "; but sometimes only one would be furnished and available for com- pany. The other was frequently used for storage. The best room, if furnished, was kept tightly slut, and this custom continued even to recent times. The children gazed with awe through the rarely opened door, but they were seldom allowed to cross its sacred portal. This shrine probably contained nothing more valuable than a few painted, wooden-bottomed chairs, set closely against the wall, a look- ing-glass, a lightstand with the family Bible, and a brass fire set. Sometimes there was a corner cupboard or buffet holding the best china and other valuables. Such a buffet still remains in the old Clifford house at Sugar Ball. Well-to-do families had a mahogany
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card table or two, perhaps a few foreign shells or a turkey or peacock feather fan for ornament. In later years, the crowning glory was a decoration of landscape paper on the walls, which served both for tapestry and pictures; then the room became the pride of its owners and the envy of the neighbors ; and when the family could compass an enormous, uncomfortable, hair-cloth sofa, it was thought that the pomp of elegance could no further go.
In the fifties and sixties " stuffed " furniture became common, and the parlors of the best houses had a hair-cloth " suite or set,"-sofa, big rocking-chair, little rocking-chair, and four plain, armless chairs, ranged with mathematical regularity against the walls. In the seven- ties and eighties the hair-cloth covering had been superseded by terry or plush, usually red or green in hue. A big marble-topped center table and a whatnot always accompanied these " sets." A chandelier and picture frames of gilt, and a Brussels carpet with enormous fes- toons of roses completed the vivid color scheme. The rising genera- tion may find it difficult to believe that the floor of the halls in many of the prominent houses was covered with oil-cloth.
The Philadelphia Centennial was a great educator of public taste throughout the country. Till after 1876 I think there was not an oriental rug in Concord. Few good houses are without them now. Closed parlors have passed away ; and the family live in their front- rooms. Chairs and tables are of every shape and pattern ; rattan fur- niture is very popular, and fine old mahogany frames are covered with leather, tapestry, or brocade. Sofas have been replaced by couches, divans, and window-seats, and the whole room is billowy with pillows of silk or embroidered linen.
To return to old times : In our grandmothers' day all the domestic processes were carried on in the kitchen. Here spinning and weav- ing were done; the meals were cooked and eaten ; babies tended and neighborly visits received. There were no servants in the sense of a separate caste. Bouton's History mentions by name a dozen or more negroes who were owned by different Concord families in the eigh- teenth century ; but slavery never did flourish in Northern air, and these colored people were considered freed when the state constitu- tion was adopted in 1783, though most of them continued to live in the same families as before. These were practically the only foreign- ers in town until the Irish famine of 1845 sent great numbers of immigrants to this country. In the early history of Massachusetts, some families of wealth and importance, in despair of getting any other kind of help, introduced Indians to their kitchens, but there is no record that any Concord household ever tried to domesticate a Penacook squaw or brave.
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Although there were no servants, many homes had extra members who were not regular hired help. It was quite the custom to take a child to " bring up," that is, to give it its board and clothes and training until it had arrived at adult age. Sometimes these children were regularly "bound out," especially if taken from the poor-house.
Theoretically they were supposed to have the same treatment as the children of the family, and perhaps in many cases they did, though tradition says some of the bound ones were literally bond- men. But it must be remembered that conditions were hard in those days. Money in a farming community was scarce, and nobody han- dled any except the man of the house. Women and children were expected to be grateful for their board and clothes, produced from materials raised and manufactured on the farm. People worked from dawn until dark, and boys went barefoot until the snow fell.
Hired help were treated with consideration. They worked with, rather than for, their employers. The whole household ate at one board and slept under patchwork quilts, on the same kind of husk mattresses and rope bedsteads. The girls who went out spinning and weaving for two shillings and sixpence a week came from neigh- boring farms, and were welcomed as members of the family, and the yearly visit of the shoemaker who made and repaired the footgear for the whole household was looked forward to with pleasure.
Even when business and manufactures on a small scale began to appear, as they did in the early part of the nineteenth century, the friendly conditions were little changed. There was no separation of labor and capital. Ladies, who in their later years filled conspicuous positions in Washington and other cities, have spoken of boarding their husbands' apprentices who worked in the printing-office or shop of earlier days. If a man kept a tavern, his wife was chief cook. Every woman was expected to be a good housekeeper, which meant that she not only knew how to do all kinds of work, but that she did them every day with or without assistance. Manual labor occupied the foreground of nearly every person's life.
The late Simeon Abbott of West Concord (1807-'95), thus de- scribed the way people dressed in his boyhood : Clothes in those days in the country were always home-made, not only as regards the fashioning of the garments, but also in respect to the manufacture of the cloth. On Thanksgiving morning, boys used to be presented with a suit of winter clothes which must last the season, and a pair of shoes made of tough cowhide. Boys had one pair of shoes a year, and the rest of the time they went barefoot. Summer clothes werc given to the boys just before Election. The suit consisted of a shirt, usually of tow, a vest, spencer or short coat, and tronsers. The
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three latter garments were woven of linen and cotton for best, and of linen and tow for every day.
As everybody raised flax in those times, linen and tow were plen- tiful enough. Cotton, on the other hand, was dear. It was bought in bags at the stores, and the seeds were all picked out by hand at home. Eli Whitney's wonderful invention had not yet come into such general use as to benefit the farmers of the North. Clothes were colored with home-made dyes from the bark of the butternut, walnut, or yellow oak. These barks were steeped, and alone or with a slight admixture of alum or copperas provided a variety of yellow and brown shades.
Whatever the appearance of these clothes may have been, there was no doubt about their wearing qualities. The tow shirts were untearable, though they were often so rough from the shives or particles of woody fibre that could not be wholly separated from the thread as to make their wearing a penance. A summer and a winter suit were expected to be sufficient for a whole year; the spring and fall styles were made by patches on these garments. There are men now living in or near Concord who never had a suit of "store " clothes till they were twenty-five or thirty years old.
It is not so easy to describe the dress of the women. Virgil's famous line, " Varium et mutabile semper femina," might be quoted in sober earnest, if the last word could be translated feminine apparel. The wonder is that the women of early days did not freeze. Warm woolen underwear and closely-fitting outside garments were unknown till the present generation. Loose skirts, shawls, and mantles were in vogue in our grandmothers' day. A noticeable feature of little girls' attire, as we can see by the old portraits, was the stiff, starched cylinders known as pantalets, which reached to the ankles. Certain appendages of dress like bonnets, combs, muffs, fans, and the like attained enormous proportions. Mrs. Ann Abbott Parker, now liv- ing at 238 North Main street, born in 1813, the granddaughter of Captain Joshua Abbott of Bunker Hill fame, says that when a baby she was carried in her mother's muff on a winter visit to her grandmother in East Concord.
The hood seems to have been a favorite form of headgear. Some were called calashes or "shay tops," because they could be folded back. The pumpkin hood was quilted in thick rolls. The sunbon- net was a summer hood made of gingham or calico, with a deep cape to cover the wearer's bare neck. The log-cabin sunbonnet was stif- fened with strips of pasteboard. Our grandmothers must have thought much of their complexions, for the deep tube of the sun- bonnet is an effectual protection against the sun's rays. The dress
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bonnet or bonnet proper seems to have been built upon the principle of the hood. It was as steep as the roof of a house, with projecting eaves that shaded the face and a deep frill in the back. A whole wreath of roses could be tucked under the brim of such a head cover- ing. Such a piece of millinery was not to be lightly bought or casu- ally cast aside. It was often made of Leghorn or other fine imported straw, which was as good an investment in those days as a Turkish rug is now. Such bonnets were worn, summer and winter, for many years, and, thanks to their indestructiblety, a good collection of these old-time relics can now be seen in the antiquarian room of the Long Memorial building at Hopkinton.
Caps were an important article of dress. Women put them on before they were forty, as can be seen by the portrait of Mrs. Eliza- beth McFarland, painted by S. F. B. Morse when she was thirty- eight. When Mrs. Peter Renton came to town, in 1822, she wore a noticeable cap, having three full puffs on top. This immediately became the vogue, and was widely copied as the Renton cap. Asso- ciated with the caps were the hideous "false fronts." Gray hair was not to be tolerated in old times, and upon the first approach of the enemy women tied about their heads bands of dark brown or black hair sewed on a white kid foundation. A middle-aged woman might go bareheaded about her house, but she could not be consid- ered dressed for company unless protected by her cap and false front. A small figure was much esteemed in those days, and to be called " slim" was the desire of every girl ; hence the waists laced to the measure of a bedpost, the iron cuirasses known as "stays," and the instrument of torture called a busk, a thin, smooth wooden board, three or four inches wide, worn under the front of the gown.
Though people worked hard a century ago, good times were not unknown. There was a neighborliness then that we do not under- stand now, and much informal social visiting. When women went out to spend the afternoon, they took their work and their babies. A " quiltin'" was a great social gathering, followed by a supper of hot biscuit, doughnuts and cider, roast pork, pies, and cake. The most elaborate social function closed at nine o'clock. Dancing and romping games were popular at the young people's parties. Mrs. Stowe, in one of her books, says that she has never been able to determine just when the prejudice against dancing crept into New England. There was no such feeling against it in Revolutionary times or for many years later. Old ladies in Concord used to speak of their mothers as famous dancers at Sugar Ball or Pottertown or the Iron Works, but when they, the daughters, wanted to learn, church sentiment was against it. Perhaps the dancing was approved
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, so long as it remained in private houses. The growth of the settle- ment may have brought the amusement into public and questionable associations.
In the eighteenth century the few public occasions were made the scenes of social merriment. The account of Reverend Asa McFar- land's ordination, March 7, 1798, is so unlike our preconceived no- tions of such things that I copy it entire from Bouton's History : "The ordination was an occasion of great interest. Tradition assures us that people came together from neighboring towns at the distance of twenty miles and more ; that near and around the meeting-house were stands for the sale of refreshments, and, among other necessary articles, spirituous liquors. The procession of the ordaining council from the town house to the meeting-house, was attended by a band of music ; and, to crown the solemnity of the occasion, there was a splendid ball in the evening at Stickney's celebrated tavern!" That sounds much more like an Election than an ordination, and the excla- mation point printed at the end of the paragraph looks like a hand held up in horror at the extraordinary manners of the preceding gen- eration.
The sports of that time were rough. A " raising " was a great event for the men. No wonder that houses were low-storied when the heavy timbers composing the walls and roof had to be lifted into position by main strength. After the raising had been successfully accomplished and a hearty lunch eaten, a wrestling match was often indulged in. " Raslin'" seems to have been the favorite trial of strength when several men were gathered together with time on their hands. The "rasle " (wrestle) often ended in a general fight.
It was well into the first third of the nineteenth century before there was much separation between village and farm life in the town- ship. So long as the Old North church continued to minister to the spiritual wants of the whole community, everybody had interests in common. It was a wide parish which listened to the preaching of Parson Walker, Israel Evans, and Dr. McFarland. The people came from Snaptown, Appletown and the Mountain (in East Concord), Horsehill, the Mast Yard and the Borough (near Penacook), District No. 5 (back of Long pond), the Carter district and Buzzelltown (in No. 4), the Little Pond road, Rattlesnake Plain (now West Concord), the Eleven Lots and the Iron Works (south of the town), Dimond's hill, Stickney hill, Sugar Ball, and Garvin's falls.
Our old residents could recall when there were not more than twenty houses in the whole length of Main street. Beside the houses there were some shops and public buildings and five cider mills. As showing the sparseness of landmarks, the following fact may be
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instructive. When Woodbridge Odlin's grandfather, in 1784, bought . of the descendants of Ephraim Farnum, one of the original proprie- tors, the property where Mr. Odlin's grandson, Herbert G., now lives, nearly opposite the court house, the deed specified "a tract of land situate on the highway between Butters's ferry and the meeting- house." These localities are nearly two miles apart, Butters's ferry being near the present lower bridge and the meeting-house being located on the Walker schoolhouse lot, and the only way of desig- nating Main street then was to call it the highway between these two places.
Main street was slow in making, but there were early indications that it was to be the spinal column of the future town ; it was for- mally laid out June 23, 1785. As originally planned, it would have been ten rods wide, but it was finally de- cided to contract it to its present dimen- sions, six rods, or about one hundred feet, which makes an ample thoroughfare. There is a tradition that the spacious Roby house, 207 North Main street (built by Benjamin Kimball, and now occupied by his grand- daughters, Mrs. Cyrus M. Murdock and Miss Lucy H. Kimball), and the Herbert house, 224 North Main, opposite the North church, both of which stand well back from the street, were intended to be set near the line of the proposed road. If Main street had been built to these boundaries, few avenues or boulevards in the country would have surpassed its generous breadth.
The Benjamin Kimball and Roby House.
The site of the Old North church, which for a century occupied the Walker schoolhouse lot, was literally the center of the town. It was natural that the North end should become the business and social head. Since the location of the Concord railroad station in 1842, business has moved so far to the south that the present generation finds it hard to understand that the quaint brick building, now occu- pied by the New Hampshire Historical society, was originally the North End bank, that many of the old houses standing on the edge of the sidewalk-notably those on the Herbert property near Ferry lane-were built for stores and shops, that the principal taverns were located in this region, and that Fiske's store was once a central mart. When the village began to segregate itself from the rest of the town- ship, people spoke of it simply as "the Street," and this name holds even now among old residents who live outside the city proper and come here merely to "do their trading."
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Fiske's store and the brick building known by that name in the middle of the nineteenth century deserve more than a passing men- tion. Francis Nourse Fiske, a member of the Amherst colony, came to town in 1810, settling in West Concord. In 1813 he married a daughter of Judge Walker and set up house- and store-keeping on the south corner of Main and Church streets, where Mark R. Holt's house now stands. The dwelling and the store were connected, after the fashion of those times, and there were big barns and sheds in the rear. In 1853 Mr. Fiske and his son, Francis Allen Fiske, having previously built the house where William P. Fiske now lives, moved the business across the street into the brick store now occupied by Edward P. Larkin, where F. A. Fiske continued till 1875.
This ancient brick building has an interesting history. It was built about 1830 by Mrs. Anna True, sister of Samuel A. Kimball, grandfather of Dr. G. M. Kimball. Here was carried on the extensive printing and binding business of Roby, Kimball & Merrill. Luther Roby, the head of the firm, had married a daughter of Benjamin Kimball and lived in that house nearly across the way. The firm employed about twenty young men and six or eight girls. The latter were in the binding department. The firm printed "Leavitt's Almanack," The Fiske Store. the " New England Primer," " Webster's Spelling Book," and other noted manuals, but its great achievement was the issue of quarto Bibles, which were sold all over the country. The power for this work was furnished by a large wheel worked by a horse in the north basement, managed by George Arlin.
The North end is probably the only portion of the town where stores and shops have been taken down to make room for more spa- cious grounds and houses,-an exact reversal of the usual course of municipal development. Thus an old resident recalls that in 1840 the west side of Main street, between Franklin and Church, now in the most dignified residential quarter, had no less than five stores, crowded in with other buildings. On the Franklin street corner stood the jewelry shop of General Robert Davis, where he made spoons and other silverware. Next came the brick store of Peeker & Lang, groceries and general supplies. (This building, afterwards made into a double dwelling-house, stood until 1883, when it was torn down to make room for Henry McFarland's house.) Next eame the dry-goods shop of David Davis, a cousin of Robert. All three
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of these buildings stood on the present McFarland lot. The George house and lot were much then as to-day. The tavern sign of earlier times has been taken down, but the house has never lost its reputa- tion for hospitality. The Benjamin Kimball house (Mrs. Murdock's) is unchanged, but a shop stood in the front yard, originally the hat- ter's shop of Mr. Kimball, but in 1840 occupied by other parties for a bakery. The Fiske store and house on the Church street corner have already been mentioned.
It is interesting to note, as illustrating the stable character of the population of Concord, that, at the North end alone, no less than ten families are living to-day on the same land occupied by their grand- fathers and great-grandfathers, and with the exception of Dr. G. M. Kimball, in the identical house built by their ancestors. These fam- ilies are the Bradleys, Walkers, Fiskes, Kimballs, Mrs. Murdock, Georges, Stewarts (J. H.), Herberts, McFarlands (W. K.), and Odlins. Many more are living within a stone's throw of the early homestead. Verily, the children of the early settlers have never lost their love for the ground their fathers tilled and fought for.
No account of our early social life can be written without refer- ence to the Old North church. "Goin' to meetin'" was the chief weekly outing. When books were almost unknown and newspapers were few and far between, the two sermons on Sabbath day formed the staple of the intellectual diet of the people. Rather solid and indigestible it may have been sometimes, but there was the "noonin'," in which we may discern the rudiments of the modern church socia- ble. The "noonin'" gave an opportunity for social intercourse ; people inquired for the health of different neighborhoods; they exchanged news and perhaps, surreptitiously, patchwork patterns ; they made appointments and sent messages ; they stepped into neigh- boring houses to renew the coals for their foot-stoves or to get a drink of cider to go with their lunches ; they even went to the tavern for a mug of flip. The young people were allowed to walk in the grave- yard for recreation. People wore their best clothes to meeting, care- fully taking them off as soon as they reached home, and there must have been many glimpses between the railings and spindles of the old square pews and much mental taking of patterns whenever a new bonnet or stylish cloak appeared. Incipient courtships were carried on through these same spindles, for not even a tythingman can check glances. The spindles were a source of amusement to the children. Elderly men have said that the chief diversion of their youthful Sun- days was to twist these spindles in their sockets when their elders were dozing in the afternoon. If a spindle would squeak, it was good fun.
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