History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, Part 74

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis
Number of Pages: 1168

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George Kingsbury, Sr., died October 14, 1869, aged seventy-four years, eight months and fourteen days.

HISTORY OF GOFFSTOWN.

BY A. F. CARR, M.P.

CHAPTER I.

Geographical-The First Settlements-Names of Pioneers-Original Grant-Narragansett No. 4-The Masonian Claim-Grant of Goffs- town-Conditions of Grant-The Masting Business-The Masting Troubles-The King's Sheriff-Incident.

THE town of Goffstown lies in the northeastern part of the county, and is bounded as follows: North by Merrimack County, east by Merrimack County and Manchester, south by Bedford, and west by Weare and New Boston.

Edmund Burke, the great English statesman, once remarked that "they who never look back to their ancestors will never look forward to posterity," and there is great appositeness in the remark. He who never suffers his mind to revert to the past, its actors or its story will care little for the welfare of the fu- ture. He is supremely selfish who gathers the har- vest without one thought of him who plowed the sward and sowed the seed, or upward unto Him whose sun warmed and whose rains watered it, and whose care watched it through each successive stage of its growth.

It is natural and commendable to look to those who have gone before us ; they toiled through the sum- mer's heat, winter's cold, and we are reaping the benefit of their labors; they hewed the ancient woods away and left us these cleared fields, ready for the plow, the seed and the harvest. They were ready to do all and to suffer all that they might plant a garden here in the wilderness. They called no man master, and the germ of freedom which they planted here became the noble liberty tree of the Revolution.

It is natural that we should wish to know some- thing of these pioneers of civilization, of their toils, of their privations, of the courage with which they braved the perils of the wilderness, of wild beasts and of wilder men ; for from them is derived all that is peculiar to the New England character, its energy, its perseverance, its ingenuity, its hatred of tyranny in all its forms and manifestations.

How valuable would we esteem a diary of one of the earliest settlers of the town! We would like to know what were the thoughts of Job Kidder, when

clearing the poor-house farm, when warned by his faithful dog of the approach of Indians, who fre- qnently passed his clearing in crossing from Amos- keag Falls to Goram Pond, when, as was his custom, he retreated to his log shanty and there, with his three guns and no other companion, he was ready to let them pass or fight as they chose; or Matthew Kennedy, hauling hay upon a hand-sled from the bog in New Boston, to keep his cow and three sheep from starving during the long winter, with no other companion but the howling wolf; or of Mrs. Gil- christ, a widow, who lived solitary and alone near where Charles Hadley now lives, who, when returning from a visit at a neighbor's living near the old Cum- mings Butterfield house, being upon horseback, with her youngest child in her arms, heard the screams of two catamounts in pursuit. Casting away the child's blanket to attract the attention of the beasts and de- lay pursuit, she clapped one foot npon either side of the horse and run him home, just entering the log stable and closing the door as two large-sized cata- mounts sprang upon the hemlock trees which formed the corner-posts of the stable, tearing away the bark in their efforts to reach the horse, which they were unable to do, though they persevered until nearly morning.

An insight into their every-day life and thoughts would be most valuable; but they have passed away, and the story of the early settlers of Goffstown, with its startling romance and stern realities, has nearly per- ished with them. Few materials only exist, scattered and imperfect, in musty records and uncertain tradi. tion, gathered only by great labor and antiquarian zeal and patience, and these, though nnattended by im- portant consequences, nevertheless possess peenliar interest. Go back a little more than a hundred years. We are looking out from beneath the topmost branches of a tree upon the summit of the Uncanoonucks; far as the eye can reach stands the primeval forest ; through the interlacing branches of the trees we catch glimpses of the waters of the Piscataquog.

Antipas Dodge, John Dinsmore, McClary and Sessions have made a little clearing upon thesouth side

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of the mountain. Mr. Todd has toppled down a few trees at the Moore place. Butterfield and Robie have let daylight into the forest a little north of Mr. Todd's clearing. Matthew Kennedy is one of the first settlers, and the first white child born in town was Samuel Kennedy, his son. He lived where B. F. Aiken formerly lived; we see his farm in quite a flourishing condition as compared with his neighbors, and there is Lieutenant Moses Little living half-way up the Robie Hill, with his four acres of cleared ground; Asa Pattee has a clearing, and lives in a smart frame house, the smoke from the chimney of which rises above the trees, and is nearly. if not the identical house, west of Mr. Balcld's; and his neighbor, Job Dow, has a fine house for the time, where Joseph Hadley now lives, while the smoke of John Got's chimney rises from the site now occupied by Mrs. Artemas Whit- ney's house. Alexander Walker, the old town clerk, has quite a large clearing upon what is still called the Walker place, though now owned by Lewis Sargent, where Mrs. Walker, of Irish origin, extracts teeth, and is the obstetrician of the settlement. They have a numerous family, and are regarded wealthy ; but one after another of their sons becomes dissipated and involved in debt, for the payment of which the old gentleman became bonnd, and he ends his days in the poor-house or is supported by the town.

Samuel Blodgett has a large clearing a mile or so from Amoskeag Falls, and is regarded the wealthiest man in town, as he was in many respects the most remarkable one.

These families are scattered along the hillside, hid away in the sunny nook, by the meadow patch or buried among the dark pines on the banks of the river. An honest and, with some few exceptions, a frugal, faithful and pious people, all foreigners or of foreign extraction, who, in common with other settlers of New England, came here for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, which was denied them in the country of their birth. They sought and found it in the country of their adoption, through much tribulation and many perils,-perils to which men of ordinary will would have succumbed ; perils which the brave heart can alone encounter and come off victorious ; perils from which there was no escape by day, and which the night only served to magnify and to fill with more gloomy forebodings. Men toiled and worshiped with their rifles by their side, and the mother, when she laid her children down to sleep, knew not but their shimbers would be disturbed by the war-whoops of the merciless savage. For one hundred and thirty years, including the early settle- ment of this town, the Indian wars, with but brief intervals of peace, had continued.

Professor Sanborn, in his " History of New Hamp- shire," says,

. The prowling Indian lurked near every dwelling ; the farmer at his ted, the worshiper at the altar, the mother beside her cradle and the ofast slumbering in it were the victims of the merciless ravage ; again

and again was every town in New Hampshire visited and the atrocities of former years repeated.

"The men cultivated their fields with arms at their sides or within their reach, the women and children shut themselves up in garrisoned houses and, sometimes, when their Imsbands and sons had been murdered, hero- ically defended themselves. No night passed without posting sentinels ; no day without careful search for concealed foes. It was impossible to enjoy the meagre comforts which fire and slaughter had spared. Their very dreams were terrific, because in them the scalping-knife seemed to flash before their eyes, and the war-whoop resonnd in their ears. To most men a premature death would have been preferred to such a life. It was one long, protracted agony of apprehension, alarm, terror and suffering."

Judge Smith, of Exeter, remarks that, "drawing a circle round this village as a centre, twenty- five miles in diameter, the number killed and made captives by the Indians within it was, during a period of forty years, seven hundred." In 1710 the brave Winthrop Hilton fell while at work in his own woods. He was regarded as the most fearless of the brave, the most venturous of the daring, and his death was universally regretted by his townsmen. His sharp, black eye and long, bright gun struck terror into the hearts of the savages. They thirsted for his blood.

In 1745 the State of New Hampshire suffered from an Indian invasion, when all the horrors of the former Indian wars were revived and renewed. The frontier towns of Keene (then called Upper Ashuelot), Swanzey ( Lower Ashuelot) and Concord (then known as Pennacook) suffered, besides many other towns, which were visited and some murders were committed, houses burned and harvests destroyed. No man walked abroad unarmed; it was unsafe to leave the stockade to milk a cow or feed an animal.

Robert Walker, being in the habit of trapping upon asmall stream in the neighborhood of lliram Tirrell's, noticed upon several occasions that furs had been taken from his traps, and one morning, while passing down this stream, being upon land formerly owned by Hadley Stevens, he espied an Indian taking aim at him with his gun. Walker waited a moment, calcu- lating about the time he would pull the trigger, which he did, and dropping at the critical time, the ball from the Indian's gun passed over his head. The savage gave a whoop, supposing that his shot had been fatal to Walker, and rushed towards him for his scalp ; Walker sprang up, brought his gun to his left shoulder, fired and killed him. Being fearful that other Indians were near, he started for the garrison immediately, but afterwards visited the scene, and found where the Indian's ball had struck, and judged that he did not drop a moment too soon to avoid being hit. Walker's gun was fixed for a person shooting from the left shoulder, a place in the breech being hollowed out for the cheek, and the identical gun is still in existence in that neighborhood.

The territory now known as the town of Goffstown, in connection with six other townships, was granted by the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, in 1728, to the soldiers, or heirs-at-law of the soldiers, of the King Philip or Narragansett War, which ended full fifty years before the grant was made ; so, probably, very few of the soldiers were then living.

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In June, 1733, it seems these grantees, in number about eight hundred and forty, met on the town common in Boston for the purpose of dividing, equitably, the land thus given to them. They formed themselves into seven separate societies, and each society organ- ized and chose an executive committee to look after its interests, who met by appointment in Boston on the 17th of October, 1733. The numbers who of the several townships, from one to seven, were placed in a hat and successively drawn. Goffstown was drawn as Narragansett No. 4, and was thus called for a mm- ber of years.

The territory of New Hampshire was granted to an English naval officer by the name of John Mason, who, after spending large sums of money upon his grant, died in 1635, without realizing any benefit from his investment, leaving his landed estate to Robert Tufton, upon condition that he should take the name of Mason.

Massachusetts unjustly claimed the entire posses- sion of Mason's grant, and in 164I assumed the gov- ernment of New Hampshire, and, finding that she could not make good her claim before the King in Council, she very cunningly adopted the plan of granting townships to actual settlers upon the land thus claimed, so that the fee in the same should be in the people of Massachusetts. Souhegan East (or Bedford), Sonhegan West (or Amherst), Narragansett No. 4 (or Goffstown), Rumford (or Concord), Bakers- town and Tyngstown (or Pembroke), were each char- tered upon this plan.

When the controversy was settled between Massa- chusetts and the heirs of Captain John Mason, com- monly known as the Masonian proprietors, the latter, establishing their claim, made a grant of the town- ship of Goffstown (Goffe is the Celtic for Smith) to Rev. Thomas Parker, of Dracut ; Colonel Sampson Stoddard and John Butterfield, of Chelmsford ; Joseph Blanchard, Robert Davidson, John Coombs and James Karr, of Dunstable ; John Goffe and John Goffe, Jr., James Walker, Matthew Patten, John Moore, Timothy Corlise, Thomas Farmer, Zaccheus Cutting, Samuel Patten, Alexander Walker, all of Souhegan East (or Bedford) ; Thomas Follensbee, Joshua Follens- bee, Caleb Paige (who cleared and settled upon the Abram Buzzel place), Benjamin Richards, (previous to the expedition against Fort William Henry ten sachems had been dispatched by the French as mes- sengers to the northwestern tribes, to invite them to become the allies of the French. In consequence of this summons a tribe, called the Cold Country Indians, appeared at the siege. By these cannibals many of the prisoners were slain and eaten. Two of thein seized a lad named Copp and were leading him away by the shirt-sleeves. His cries caught the attention of Benjamin Richards, who was a bold, athletic man,- one of the Rangers enlisting from Goffstown-who rushed after them and snatched away the boy, leaving the shirt-sleeves in their hands. Colonel

Bailey was pursued by these savages and ran bare- footed through the woods to Fort Edward, a distance of fifteen miles, and thus escaped being roasted. Colonel Rogers' brother, Richard, who was a captain, died of small-pox a few days before the siege of Fort William Henry), Peter Morse and Caleb Emery ; John Dow, Peter Harriman, of Haverhill (afterwards a soldier in the French and Indian War; was at the sacking of Quebec, and subsequently settled upon the place where Stillman Merrill now lives-1883); Abram Merrill, Benjamin Stevens, John Jewell, Ephraim Martin, Nathaniel Martin, Aaron Wells, Caleb Dalton, all of a place called Amoskeag ; James Adams, son of William Adams, William Orr, Job Kidder and John Kidder, of Londonderry; William Read and Robert Read, James McKnight, William Cummings, all of Litchfield ; Samuel Greggs, Edward White, Esq., John White, all of Brooklyn; which grant was made at Portsmouth in the month of De- cember, 1748, upon the following conditions and limi- tations, viz. :

"That the whole tract, saving the particular tracts hereinafter men- tioned, be divided into sixty-eight shares, or rights, and each share or right be laid out into three distinct lots, and numbered with the same number on each of said lots the number begin with one and end will sixty-eight ; that one of the said shares be for the first minister of the Gospel, who shall be settled on said tract of land hereby granted, and shall remain there during his life, or until he shall be regularly dis- missed, to hold to him, his heirs and assigns, and one other lot or share for and toward the support of the Gospel ministry forever ; thal two of the three lots that shall belong to each share shall contain one hun- dred acres each."

But without quoting further, it goes on to state that the minister's lot shall be as near the meeting- house as possible, and that another of said shares be reserved for the use of the proprietors, the grantors of the said premises and their assigns forever ; that seventeen of said shares be exonerated from paying any charges towards a settlement and not held to the conditions of the other shares until improved by the owners, or some one holding and improving under them ; that within one year from the time of draw- ing each owner of a share shall have a house sixteen feet square, with a chimney and cellar, upon one of his lots, and some person living in said house, and four acres of land inclosed, cleared and fitted for mowing and tillage ; and in two years have four acres more cleared and fitted for mowing and tillage; and in three years have four acres more cleared, making in all twelve acres from the time of drawing.

No small amount of labor with our present facili- ties of doing business, and at that time it must have called forth all of their hardy strength and endurance. And furthermore, "that the settlers, within three years from the time of drawing for shares, build a meeting-house fit for the worship of God, for the use of those who shall then or subsequently dwell within said territory of Goffstown, and after three years from the time of the completion of said house shall constantly maintain public worship of God therein. That each owner of the said forty-eight shares shall, at

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or before the drawing for lots, pay the sum of thirty funds, old tenor, including what they have already paid, towards carrying ou the settlement, to be depos- ited in the hands of such persons as the owners shall choose, to defray the charges of surveying and laying the land out into lots, building a meeting-house, sup- porting the gospel for the first six months, laying out highways, etc.

" That all white pine trees growing on said tract of land, fit for his majesty's use in masting the Royal Navy, be and are hereby reserved to his majesty, his heirs and successors forever." This was likewise a condition of the charter of incorporation, and many a mast has Goffstown furnished for the royal navy. But, luckily, to the conditions herein stated, through the bravery of our forefathers, we are not at this day holden. The event of the Revolution effaced all titles of royalty.

The school lot was near the Samuel Robie farm ; the minister's lot at Deacon E. P. Sargent's, or where William Hopkins now (1883) resides; the lot for the support of preaching near Walker Little's.

Goffstown in former years afforded a vast quantity of lumber, and in the time of royal surveyors, deputy surveyors and agents were always appointed to pre- vent waste in the King's woods. Masts of great size and extra quality were cut upon the Piscataquog and its branches for the royal navy. The stump of a pine-tree is now, or was a few years ago, upon the Jonathan Bell farm, where a yoke of "six-foot " cat- tle were turned around upon its face. The tree was so large that it could not be drawn off, and Captain Eliphalet Richards said " it took about all the rest of the wood growing upon an acre of ground to burn it up." But if they had let it remain until this day, there are those who would have removed it, sawed it into planks, made it into sashes and doors and had them in houses in Australia in about the time they were burning it up,-such now is the excellence of machinery and the power of steam. Yet had we of this generation forests to clear, Indian wars to fight, the Revolution to pass through and a government to establish, it is doubtful whether we should have had the steamboat, railroad, electric telegraph and tele- phone to boast of as the inventions of the nineteenth century. Arts never flourish in time of war, and invention is all directed to the production of more etlicient weapons for the extinction of the human race.

The masting business was so important that troops were repeatedly ordered out to protect the mast-men. The office of surveyor of the King's woods was holden by Governor Wentworth, who had his deputies in all places where the pine grew in plenty. These deputies were the cause of a great deal of vexation and trouble. The owner of the land, before he com- meneed cutting, was under the necessity of employ- ing a deputy surveyor to mark the trees upon the land reserved for the use of the King, and if he ne-

glected to have his land thus surveyed, from inability to pay for surveying, or other cause, and proceeded to out his lumber, the same was forfeited to the King. In this way, whole mill-yards of lumber got out by the settlers for building their houses and barns, were often forfeited. The Governor would ride past the mill in a coach, stop, and order the broad arrow to be marked upon each log, and the same was the King's. After this mark +, the owner or mill- owner dared not touch a log. They were then adver- tised and libeled in a Court of Admiralty, and sold at public auction, and the proceeds over and above ex- penses went into the King's treasury. But, something like official transactions of this day, if the proceeds of sale covered expenses, it was not inquired into very much, especially if the Governor stood well with the King.

In the New Hampshire Gazette of February 7, 1772, a large lot of lumber was advertised as being seized in this way at Richard's, Pattee's, Dow's and Rowle's mills, in Goffstown, and Clement's mills, in Weare (at the Oil-Mill village, at the mill formerly owned by Christopher Simons). Such seizures made a great many patriots ready, by revolution or any other way, to change a government so annoying.

On the 13th of April, 1772, Mr. Whiting, King's surveyor or sheriff of Hillsborough County, and a Mr. Quigly, his deputy, of New Boston, proceeded to Clement's Mill to serve an Admiralty writ upon one Mudgett, who lived at the Oil-Mill village. Mr. Whiting made the arrest, but Mr. Mudgett suggesting that he would furnish the necessary bail in the morn- ing, the sheriff and his deputy went to Mr. Quigly's tavern to put up for the night. Meantime the fact of the arrest got noised about and a most remarkable bail was got up. In the morning some twenty or thirty men, with their faces blackened, rushed into Whiting's room, who, seeing their intention, seized his pistol and would have fired had he not been seized himself and disarmed, and most gloriously pummeled by the incensed lumbermen, two on a side holding him up by the arms and legs, while others crossed out their accounts of certain logs, hauled and forfeited, upon his naked back. Quigly, his assistant, showed more fight, and was secured only by taking up the ceiling over his head and beating him with a long pole thrust down from the garret. After stirring him up with the aforesaid long pole and beating him to their heart's content, he was secured, their horses were led to the door, and amid jokes and jeers of the populace (their horses' tails, manes and ears having been ent off) the woe-begone officers were assisted upon their backs in no gentle manner and sent off. This was a high-handed outrage and ill-brooked by the sheriff, who was disposed to have things his own way. He proceeded to Colonel Goffe, of Bedford, and Lutwiche, of Merrimack, who, at his request, ordered out the posse comitatus, and armed with muskets marched to the scene of the outrage, but the rioters

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had fled to the woods. One of them was subsequently found and committed to jail. The War of the Revo- Intion soon after coming on, Mndgett and " his bail" escaped punishment, and the affair in a few years was looked upon as meritorious rather than otherwise. The old meeting-camp was a little way from Joseph Hadley's house, or between Hamilton Campbell's and Mr. Grant's. One hundred oxen were kept there. There was another camp about a mile from this. A man, by the name of McAfee, once, in the spring of the year, crawled upon his hands and knees from one camp to the other, for which he was to receive a beaver hat, which was not paid. Alfred Story's grandfather once saw a monstrous mast drawn down the Piscata- quog River by one hundred oxen, and when near where the Dow bridge now stands the sled cut through the ice, but was pulled out and taken down the Mast road to the Merrimack and probably went down the river to Boston, and so on to London for the royal navy.

Old Captain Eliphalet Richards said "that he bought the timber upon ten acres of Parker's inter- vale for one hundred dollars, and the masts and timber were so thick upon it that he was obliged to haul a large portion away before felling the whole. There was not room enough for them all to lay without lying upon each other, which would make it inconvenient to get them off."

Another condition in this grant was (and it would have been well if it had never been annulled, or rather that it had been revived after the Revolution and continued to our day), viz.,-"That no hindrance to the free passage of the fish be placed below the crotch of the river, so called, or where the stream branches off to New Boston and Weare."

It is a shame that a few mill and factory-owners, by not being compelled to build fish-ways, should keep back from our streams so much excellent and healthy food as the sea-fish, which were accustomed to come up here and spawn, afford. The salmon, shad and alewife ought still to inhabit our streams a part of each year. During the early settlement of our town they constituted an important source of food. One of the oldest inhabitants of this town, who died a few years ago (Captain E. Richards), said that the salmon collected together in such numbers in the Squog opposite Mr. Whitney's, in what was and now is called the Deep Hole, that the noise they made by slapping their tails upon the water as they were forced above the surface by the pressure of those beneath, that some men who were working near the river thought that the Indians were crossing, and only discovered the real cause when reconnoitering more closely, to make certain before spreading the alarm of "In- dians!"

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History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, Part 74

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1885 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis Number of Pages: 1168

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis
Number of Pages: 1168