USA > New Hampshire > Sullivan County > Goshen > History of Goshen, New Hampshire : settled, 1769, incorporated, 1791 > Part 13
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He modestly states that he entered the service before he was twelve years of age and was not absent one day from the army, by furlough, or any other way, during his entire enlistment.
The First Chaise
The late summer of 1801 apparently witnessed the entry of the first chaise seen in town. It was driven up from Kingston, or from the neighboring town of Hampstead, by Judge Calfe - the name was later spelled as now, Calef - who was on a visit to his daughter Lois, Mrs. Samuel Stevens, in the Center district. That the visit was occasioned by Mrs. Stevens' failing health is intimated by her death March 27, 1802.
A laughable story is told that, somewhere in North Goshen, the judge and his "shay" suddenly appeared to a family of small children playing by the roadside. Incredulous, the children stared at the strange vehicle and then, with a common impulse, broke for the nearby cabin door crying, "Marm! Marm! Some- thin's coming, somethin's coming - and we guess it's Hell on wheels!"
The Drocks
When the James Rogers family moved from Kittery, Me., to Goshen in 1821 - he was then twenty seven - they came to what was afterward known as the old Russell place, on the Province Road. Mrs. Louise (Rogers) Lewis, a daughter, b. 1845, recalled playing in the cellar-hole of the old home after
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the new brick house had been built. They found, upon arrival, a quantity of cherry trees that had been planted by the previous owner, who was a colored man, and in some favorable seasons the orchard yielded as many as fifteen bushels of tame cherries.
The name of their colored benefactor was forgotten. Succeed- ing years, however, have pieced together the story of Simon Drock, supposed to be a free negro, although not a voter. He was properly listed in Newport in the 1790 Census, with a family numbering four. The distinction was his of being the only Drock in the New Hampshire Census list and about the only negro to ever make a permanent home in Goshen, the possible exception being Veterand, or "Vet," Lyman, circa 1860.
His farm, which was pressed against the one-time Saville line, was crossed at its southern corner by the Province Road, in size and shape corresponding to Saville plotting, rather than that of Newport. By a perplexing procedure of Newport surveyors, his lot, No. 24 in the 3rd division, was carved out of a larger lot, owned by Jared Lane, in the 5th division. The location was favorable and Drock proceeded to annex abutting property. March 9, 1804, he purchased from Enos and Joanna Chellis of Goshen, fifty acres of the north end of Lot No. 25 in the 3rd division, for which he paid $550. The following year he further increased his acreage by the purchase of Lot No. 1, in the 2nd range of 75-acre lots in Saville; this bordered his farm to the east. John Wendell, Esq., grantor, specified that Drock's land began "at the northwest corner of that lot which I formerly gave to Daniel Grindle, as a settler."
It will be observed by the foregoing that Drock was not the penniless-vagrant type. When making his first purchase of land in the west part of Newport, in Feb., 1788, (Lot No. 15, in the 4th division, including a pond of 10 or 12 acres, Isaac Tracy, Jr., of New London, grantor) he paid for it £15 "Lawful Silver Money." He was at this time described "a blacksmith," the place of his origin being given as Preston, presumably Connecticut. He was also simultaneously bargaining with Capt. Aaron Elliott of Killingsworth, Conn., for Lot No. 11 in the 3rd division, but owing to the ensuing sickness and death of Capt. Elliott, the
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completion of this transaction was delayed until Feb. 3, 1790, when his title to the property was confirmed by order of the Court, at Saybrook, Conn. (Cheshire County Deeds, Vol. 28, p. 221; Vol. 83, p. 280). Drock sold the Tracy lot to Uriah Wilcox, 1790.
In Nov., 1816, sale of the Chellis and Wendell lots was made to Samuel Gunnison, Jr., Simon's wife, Susanna Drock, relin- quishing her right of dower. However, April 23, 1819, he pur- chased from Mr. Gunnison a small tract of land containing 16 acres and 13 rods, "on the South side of Corey's Road, so called, beginning about two rods from the east line of Lot No. 20 in the 3rd division . .. and running to William Pike's land." It could not have been far from the original homestead and there is reason to believe that here the family was living for some time subsequent to the arrival of Rogers, for in the N. H. Spec- tator of Aug. 17, 1825, there is recorded the death, "In Goshen, of Mr. John Drock, aged about 23, an intelligent and industrious colored man." A paragraph appended gave details as follows:
"He was attacked by typhus fever - was attended by a regular physician and his disease wore the most favorable aspect until a quack was consulted, who set aside the prescriptions of the regular physician, and administered red pepper and lobelia, the consequences of which were immediately fatal.
"We understand that a red pepper Doctor from Portsmouth has com- menced his operations in the environs of this town, and that he has got a number of patients in a hopeful way - to die! We also understand that a coat of tar and feathers is in preparation for his quackship, which will probably be administered in the course of the present week - and that he will be able to take his departure from town in much better style than he came in - that is - on a rail! When will our Legislature interpose its authority to protect the ignorant from themselves?"
The Rainy Summer of 1816
Excessive rainfall and cool weather made the summer of 1816 very trying; few crops ripened and there was little money in circulation with which to buy foodstuffs. Milly Hudson, Ezekiel Tandy's wife, and Polly (Barney) Farr, Nathan's wife, made molasses from pumpkins and sweet apples, being a some- what common practise of the time. Being unable to obtain baking-soda, Mrs. Tandy found by experimenting that the smooth, white ashes of burned corn-cobs yielded enough alkali for her culinary needs.
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Marston's Measures
Nathaniel Marston, a soldier of the War of 1812, lived on one of the Baker places, below the lead mine. He was a master- carpenter and framer and engaged to build a barn one fall for a Newbury man who lived on what was later known as the Brown place, on the road "between the mountains." This place was practically due east from Mr. Marston's farm, but on the other side of Sunapee Mountain, here a single ridge. The dis- tance over the mountain can be no less than five miles - it is three miles on the flat plane of a map - while around by the road it was fully twelve. Having taken this fact into considera- tion, Mr. Marston went afoot up over the ridge and down it on the farther side every fair day all that fall, returning at night after his long day's work. With the coming of snow and cold weather, the framing was discontinued until spring. During this enforced interval some jealous neighborhood carpenter surreptitiously clipped an inch from each of Mr. Marston's several measuring-poles, expecting thus to later hold him up to ridicule for errors committed. When Mr. Marston resumed work his quick eye detected the mischief and without even picking up the defective measures, made himself new ones.
A Mowing Story
Apropos of the universal application of farm-machinery, a feat of hand-mowing cannot fail to be of interest to the present generation, with whom the old-fashioned art is in bad favor, to say the least. Sometime in the early 1840's Levi Pierce mowed four measured acres of grass in one day! It was the result of a wager and details were rigidly laid down. The day began at sunrise and the last clip of grass fell just six o'clock that evening.
By mutual consent of the parties, Mr. Pierce was allowed an assistant to keep his scythes in order, but old-timers were in- clined to the belief that the momentary pause and change of muscles afforded a man while sharpening his own scythe was of greater advantage to him than the assistant's help. He was a strong, stockily-built man, possessed of great endurance, without which he could hardly have made this unusual, though not un- paralleled, performance.
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Tom Hook's Contract
Samuel White, from whom Gen. Benjamin Pierce bought the leadmine lot, lived on what is now known as the Alexander, or John Jones place. At length he decided to lease the farm to Thomas Hook and a proper "writing" came under discussion. Hook proposed the following:
"I, Tom Hook, have took Sam White's farm for (specified) years. I am to have one-half and he the other half."
For brevity and conciseness it still stands as a model. Both men signed their names thereto. Contested later by Mr. White, the court ruled that it constituted a legal and valid contract.
Deacon Abell's Experiences
Alfred Abell, lay-preacher and active churchman, came to this town from Acworth, presumably by way of Lempster, prior to Sept. 15, 1808, the date of a letter written by him from Goshen to Lydia Abell of Orwell, Vt. In later years he wrote to the Acworth Baptist Church, "In calling to mind the many happy seasons which I have enjoyed in this church in days and years gone by, while I was a member ... and labored among you for many years ... " (Personal memoirs)
Four paper-bound note-books of sermon-topics and religious soliloquies by him have been preserved. They are written in a fine, very legible hand and present the sentiments of a man of deep, evangelical piety. In one of these folios the account is given of a visit to an old and ailing friend, Jabez Youngman, member of the Goshen Baptist church since 1809, who lived on the Lempster Mountain road, and for whom Dea. Abell felt a great sympathy, a feeling evidently shared by Dea. Reuben Willey. The two Goshen deacons accordingly met by appoint- ment April 20, 1839, at S. (Shubael) Hurd's, the present John Wirkkala place, where, as Dea. Abell says, "I put up my horse and went on board Bro. Willey's carriage." He continues:
"This ride proved to me one of the most delightful seasons I ever en- joyed. Our little journey was not charmed with the song of Birds and flowering scenes, yet many pleasing objects presented themselves to our view that afforded matter for our observation and remarks. - By reason of the late snow and rain storm, the streams were much swollen, the Brook and rills in their winding courses, were seen everywhere to overflow their narrow
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channels, spreading their soft, gliding waters over the Meadows and Marshes, presenting to the eye a most delightful appearance. We had a fine, smooth road, that in many places was overshadowed by stately forests and waving Evergreens. as we rode delightfully on our way. After driving something more than a mile from our good friend Hurd, we crossed over a large Marsh, or what in former days was called the Great Bog - a noted place for Wolves, and Monsters of the desert. - Near the Margin or Border of this solitary waste, and on the great road from Charlestown to Hillsboorugh (the Second N. H. Turnpike) stood a beautiful New Meeting House, or Temple for the worship of God - with two other Buildings, neat and elegant, but without an inhabitant to occupy them. These beautiful Buildings, situated upon this solitary spot of Earth, surrounded by youthful pines and tall, waving tamaracks, that so formed a kind of strange contrast well calculated to inspire devotional feelings in the mind of the serious traveler: and what gave the scene a more solemn and lonely cast was, that near at hand and in plain view, was a large pond, or Lake of water, that rolled its gentle waves, silent and solemn as Eternity. - And to deepen devotion in the heart and awaken in the mind a thousand melting sympathies, there stood a grave- yard, with a hundred Beckoning Monitors, to arrest the sober attention of the reflecting mind. ... In this lonely spot, with its sculptured marble monuments, we both had relatives and dear friends, slumbering in Death. At ten o'clock we arrived at the dwelling of our sick friend."
The greetings, the courteous reception given them by the women of the household are all described at length. Mr. Young- man was buried a fortnight after this visit, May 5th, 1839.
An episode in which Deacon Abell played an unwilling part was printed in the pamphlet history of 1903, under the caption "The Haunted House." Source and date were neglected and it has little value save to remind us of a period when spiritualism, so called, had a strong hold upon many in town. Household conversation touched upon the subject, to the terror of sensitive children, and frequent seances were held. At one such meeting of a local group, which was apparently being held with blunder- ing audacity by a hired girl in the deacon's own kitchen, the deacon arrived home unexpectedly and, entering the room, quickly perceived the occupation of the company and said stern- ly, "Devil, be gone!" after which the medium could conjure no further occult manifestations.
The house which became known as haunted has long since gone but at that time stood in the corner formed by the side- road to the Winthrop C. Richmond summer-place and the main road to Keene. Its sole occupant, a woman, died and soon after-
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wards, so the story goes, lights began to appear in the windows at strange hours of the night.
The highway from Deacon Abell's came southerly across the sandhills to the road above the Richmond place, and thus it was that the deacon, on his way to a week-night prayer-meeting at the Village, approached the vacant house and saw the mysterious lights for himself. Thinking some knavery to be at the bottom of it, he resolutely went up the foot-path and rapped. To his great astonishment the door was at once opened - and by this lady whom he had known in life and was now dead. Her appearance was natural and upon her invitation he went inside and closed the door. Very quickly the ghost-woman had delivered a message which he must give her wandering husband and tell to no one else; then she opened the door for his departure and vanished; the light disappeared, never to be seen again.
Stories of like tenor cannot be properly told apart from the atmosphere attending high emotional excitement. Had he been the victim of pranksters? To him the apparition was very real, yet the question must always have remained in the good deacon's mind, making him ever after very reticent concerning the affair.
Of a similar vein and period is the story of the dying spiritual- ist who made a pact with the life-long friend at his bed-side that, if upon death he could bridge the chasm that exists be- tween the dead and the living, he would signify it by ringing the church-bell at the next regular meeting of the society. Shortly thereafter he died and, upon the stipulated night following the funeral, the friend walked his horse slowly past the church, but no sound came from the bell.
To deny that Deacon Abell had his detractors would be to deny him a certain degree of virtue that is at once the penalty and reward of the righteous. Some even went to the extreme lengths of hinting the use of poison, a charge so utterly fantastic as to prove its complete falsity.
His wife's death occurred Aug. 22, 1847; Juletta Abell, aged 75 or 76 and seven months (78 is given on her gravestone in the Village cemetery) and of her he wrote in his journal in 1848:
"I have lived 55 years with the wife of my youth, and can truly say, in perfect peace, love and affection. By her I had two sons and eight daughters.
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. . . My companion was a Christian - experienced religion when young - was of a calm spirit and temper .. . and ever proved a soother and com- forter to me in all the trying scenes of Life."
The Dry Year of 1853
Pasturage gave out that summer in August. Simeon Chamber- lain, who lived on the farm now owned by Frank H. Hodgman, had young stock in the "north pasture" as they called it, back of the old Russell place, and every few days would go over there and cut down a green tree for the catttle to browse upon. Look- ing over toward nearby Page Hill, he was alarmed to see the trees upon its east side turning sere and yellow in the heat. The felled trees in his back pasture furnished almost wood enough for household use the following winter.
From the farmer's standpoint the drought was an economic calamity. Hay became so scarce that many sold their cows in the fall rather than attempt to winter them; prices ranged from nine to eleven dollars for a producing cow. Rev. Eleazer Farr, pastor of the Baptist Church on a salary of $100., plus collec- tions, made shift by keeping a small farm. In the emergency he sold the larger portion of his cows at the prevailing prices, de- ciding to purchase in their stead yearling heifers who would require less fodder and care. Taking his eldest son, Oren, then fifteen, he drove around the neighboring towns, buying four nice heifers from Jonas Fletcher of Marlow for $6. apiece and more in Lempster for $4. each. Sixteen good yearlings were picked up in this way and wintered profitably.
Ellen Spaulding was attending New London Academy, now Colby Junior College for Women, that fall of 1853, and years afterward she recounted events with great vividness. One eve- ning, as a group of the students sat on the veranda of the old "Heidelberg," the then girls' dormitory, they counted sixteen fires burning around the circle of the horizon, on Ragged Moun- tain, Cardigan and Sunapee Mountain, all visible in the warm, September night. The great Millerite agitation, with its prophe- cy of the coming of the end of the world, had occurred in 1843 and there were still many erstwhile believers who now saw the possibility that the world was becoming as a bundle of dry sticks to be cast into the fire and burned.
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The fires on Sunapee Mountain burned for weeks, until the summits of Blood Mountain and Signal Peak, as we knew them, were almost entirely denuded of vegetation down to the bare rock. Daily it was marked that the fires were burning lower and lower on the mountainside, nor has that area yet regained a depth of soil sufficient for normal growth; the spruces still re- main stunted and unmarketable.
The First Mowing-Machine in town was bought by James Baker, who lived at the Four Corners, on the old Lowell place where Albert DeRobertis a few years ago built a new house. The date was about 1860. Mr. Baker was a newly-elected selectman and Hiram Sholes, the retiring member, wished to see him on a matter of town-business. Accordingly Mr. Sholes drove up one winter's afternoon, taking his son Hollis along for the ride. The matter of business attended to, Mr. Baker took his visitors out to the wagon-house to show them his new mowing-machine. By the light of a lantern the wonder was inspected. It had only one large driving-wheel and that on the left side. The cutter-bar seemed supported by a much smaller wheel and was probably but 31/2 feet in length. Mr. Baker stooped down and, taking hold of the pitman-rod, sent the serrated knife-bar glittering back and forth in the lantern-light, much to the boy's fascina- tion.
The Wayside Grave
"Sometimes I find hints of tragedies or romances in the quiet up-country lives which have found final peace under these head- stones," mused an eminent author and traveler, as his carriage paused by the Village graveyard years ago. He was making a leisurely drive that had taken him through our town and the gravestone near the north gate engaged his attention.
"I stopped the horses and read ... an inscription which has given me food for a thousand imaginings since," he wrote in a later-published book, "Along New England Highways." (W. C. Prime, LL.D .; Harper and Bros., 1892.) "I wondered what could have been the story of that life which was thus published on the roadside, manifestly with intent that every passer-by should
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read .* I even had the curiosity to inquire, but found no one who remembered the events alluded to. It was the grave of a girl of seventeen, and the epitaph was this:
'Dearly beloved while on earth Deeply lamented in death Borne down by two cruel oppressors - Distracted and dead.'
"Peace be with the child, whoever she was and whatever her sorrow!" It is a westerly slope, with a river in the distance, "but there was a goodly number of the sleepers near her on the hill- side going up from the road, and she is not alone in her rest, and will not be alone in the morning."
Almost forty years had then passed, of successive winters, springs and summers, since the grave had been fresh with newly- shoveled earth and sprays of garden flowers, yet the bitterness of the hour had not been by all forgotten.
We heard the story from the lips of one who told it only upon entreaty and if the grace be given us to repeat it with the com- passion and sympathy of her narrative, it will be well.
Black-haired, red-cheeked, handsome - this was Mary Rowell, going on eighteen, in colloquial parlance, in the spring of 1854. Her mother's name was also Mary - Mary Lear, daughter of Joseph and Mercy (Woodward) Lear of Revolutionary days, and wife of Levi Rowell.
The girl Mary was working for Mrs. Lois Sholes, earning her own way, but was allowed, and encouraged, to attend the oc- casional meetings of the ladies'-circle in the neighborhood. It was after an occasion of this kind had disbanded that one of the guests missed her black silk mitts. Now black silk mitts were right then all the fashion and to be properly dressed every wom- an felt she must have them. It is not apparent that Mary Rowell was ever seen wearings the mitts in question and why suspicion
*Dr. Prime could not have known that this was one of the first graves in the newly- opened Village cemetery and therefore would naturally have been placed at the front, quite contrary to any wish for notoriety by the family. He errs in another paragraph when lie says, "It was a lonely graveyard, far away from any village, and not near any house." The cemetery is actually at the very outskirts of the village, though hidden from it. It must also be noted that in the years intervening since the good doctor's visit to Goshen, the highway has been lowered here opposite the old north gate, making access to it now impossible at that point. Originally there was a much sharper rise up from the hollow in the bend of the road, so that the highway was then much nearer the level of the cemetery.
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fell upon her has never been satisfactorily explained. Yet there it was, the ugly charge that Mary had stolen them. There were whispers that someone had seen threads of black silk entangled in the rose-bush beneath Mary's chamber-window; of course not one of her critics took into consideration the possibility that the scraps of silk - if such there really were - might have come from Mary's work-basket, from the remodeling of her own ap- parel. They whispered, too, that she was indiscreet in her con- duct - the cruelties of gossip that can sear and kill.
But two "oppressors" are indicated in the tragic epitaph. For- tunately - and we believe, conclusively - the years have erased their names from the records of man. Had they suspected for a moment that they were driving a young girl to her death, they would have come to her with kindness and forgiving love - surely, O surely, they would!
On June 22, 1854, after a sleepless night, tormented with teethache and neuralgia, the distracted girl crossed the hall in the early morning to an unfinished attic-room and there, with a pretty knitted-scarf of her own, she hung herself to one of the overhead beams - thinking thus to silence the hostile tongues.
Mrs. Sholes had administered the home-remedies in common use for teethache during the previous evening, and now waited with real concern for the girl to appear. Finally she called, re- ceiving no answer. With mounting alarm, she climbed the stairs and found the girl's room empty; then she turned and, through the doorway of the attic-chamber, the dread sight met her eyes.
Mary L. daughter of Levi and Mary Rowell
Died June 22, 1854, aged 17 yrs., 10 mos., 16 days.
Report of the N. H. Agricultural Society, for the Year 1855
"Dr. H. G. McIntire says that there is an improvement in the farms in Goshen. More attention is paid to cultivation and to the management of manures. The town contains a great amount of wood which is yearly diminishing. Very little swamp land in the town. Pasture lands are losing their value; no especial pains have been taken to restore them.
Price of labor, from $10 to $12 and $15 per month, through the year; from $15 to $20 for the season; from $1 to $1.25 by the day; $1 to $2 by the week for (female) house work.
Some attention is paid to breeding horses and cattle, most of which is native stock. The sheep and swine are native.
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