USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Lancaster > History of Lancaster, New Hampshire > Part 11
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The first settlements of the town were made at the extreme ends of the intervale. The Pages and Stockwells settled at the north end on account of the splendid meadow-lands found there; and it is thought that Edwards Bucknam located at the mouth of Beaver Brook on account of the extensive beaver meadows there, which afforded a supply of grass for his cattle until he could clear the lands and raise the domesticated grasses. We know that the beaver meadows on Indian brook were mown by David Page for the same reason ; and that Thomas Burnside sought the beaver meadows on what is now known as Burnside brook for hay to feed his cattle for some years until he cleared and cultivated his lands.
The vast level section along Isreals river had lain uncultivated and waiting settlement for twenty years before any one located on it.
About the year 1786 Stephen Wilson put up a log house on the intervale, on the site of which Henry Hilliard now lives, and after- wards sold it to Stevenson and moved into the village. A village plot, consisting of a houselot for each and every grantee of the town, had been surveyed on what is now the meeting-house common, and along Pleasant street; but for some reason, unknown to us, the proposed village of the charter was never built, but instead every man built his house upon his farm lands.
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
The village was slow to develop, and until within the recollection of men still living consisted of only a few shopkeepers and their shops, with a few impecunious laborers lacking the ambition or ex- perience to carry on enterprises of their own. There was nothing to encourage the growth of a village, as the earliest settlers all lived on farms. It was many years before any other industry than farm- ing existed in Lancaster. Until near the beginning of the present century the only stocks of goods kept for sale were kept in the dwelling houses of the settlers.
In the year 1786, and for several years following, there came to town such men as Capt. John Weeks, Joseph Brackett, William Moore, Phineas Hodgdon, Walter and Samuel Philbrook, all from the older and more advanced settlements of this state. From Mas- sachusetts and Connecticut came Titus O. Brown, Jonas Baker, Jonathan Cram, Humphrey Cram, Joseph Wilder, Benjamin Board- man, Elisha Wilder. Some of these men possessed considerable means, and all of them brought new and larger experiences into the new community. They infused new life into it, and greatly stimu- lated the older settlers to renewed efforts. They either had bought lands before coming or did shortly after their arrival. As the lands had all been divided into even portions and were known and treated as rights descending from the original grantees to these later pur- chasers, these men got pretty evenly distributed over the township. The new arrivals of families pushed the settlement throughout the whole length of the river valleys and up over the first highlands, . which forced upon the attention of the town the question of build- ing roads to reach these new homes that were everywhere springing up. For more than twenty years following the close of the war the town enjoyed the advantage of an expansion of its settlements. The little group of homes in the north end was added to until they began to push eastward over Page hill; and in the south end the settle- ment surrounding Bucknam grew so large as to push its way up Stebben's hill, and well up to where the village now is.
The larger bodies of land, that had been bought up by the few men of ampler fortunes than the original settlers possessed, began to be broken up into smaller holdings to accommodate the new famil- ies that were seeking to locate here.
During this whole period of rapid growth of population, condi- tions of domestic life remained in pretty nearly the primitive sim- plicity and scantiness that they had been from the very first, owing chiefly to the fact of well-nigh impassable roads. Those who had the wherewithal of furnishing their homes could not bring much of it with them on account of the poor roads, which were little more than passable for horseback riders in many places. The first houses were but cabins, and their furnishings must have been of the most
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scanty kind. Upon the arrival of a new family a cabin was built, and around it a clearing was begun, which grew from year to year into a farm. The first cleared patch was a garden, and afforded the family a supply of vegetables for the table, while a good share of the meat that was eaten was taken from the streams that then swarmed with fish of the choicest kinds, especially salmon and trout, and game from the great forests that surrounded them. The do- mestic animals were few for a long time. The best, and so far as we know the only accurate, description of one of those early homes is that preserved in a letter written by Capt. John Weeks to his wife in Greenland, N. H., from which place he had emigrated to Lan- caster with his son John, then a lad of not more than six years old, and built his first house near General Bucknam on the road to South Lancaster, on the lands now owned by Sam F. McNally. In this interesting missive he says :
" We shall move into our log house this week. It will be a very comfortable one. The logs, all peeled, are smooth and clean. The house is eighteen feet wide and twenty feet long. We shall have one comfortable room and two bed rooms. Our family now con- sists, besides myself, of one hired man, one girl (Patty), one boy (John), one cow, one heifer, one sheep, one hog, one pig, one dog, one cat, one hen, and one chicken. We also have a pair of geese at Coll. Bucknam's, which we shall take home in the fall. You would be pleased to see our little family and Patty's management of it." This letter was written early in the season of 1787, for in another written the 17th of June, 1787, Mr. Weeks informs his wife that the teacher of the school to which his son John was going, a Mr. Bergin, boarded with them the week previous. Those little houses were like the proverbial " stage-coach;" there was always room in them for another person. When it came Captain Weeks's turn to take the schoolmaster for a week I presume there was no complaint that his 18x20 house with three rooms, only two of which were bed rooms, was too small. They were a hospitable class of pioneers, and if their accommodations were not ample they did not hesitate to extend them to the sojourner among them. Captain Weeks had moved nothing here to furnish his house with except what could be carried on the backs of two horses ridden by his son John Wingate, and his daughter Patty (Martha who married Edward Spaulding), while he drove his cattle. This was in the early spring of 1787, and his wife and other children followed in the fall of that year through the Notch of the White Mountains. Mrs. Weeks made the journey on horseback carrying her seven months' old child (after- ward Mrs. A. N. Brackett) in her arms, and her youngest son, James Brackett Weeks, on the horse behind her.
These newcomers were welcomed by the original settlers, and as
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they were generally men of wider experience they rose to prom- inence in the management of local and state affairs. Captain Weeks was chosen as the delegate of the district (consisting of Lancaster, Northumberland, Stratford, Dartmouth, Cockburne, Colburne and Percy) to the convention that ratified the Federal constitution. He was one of the fifty-seven delegates voting in favor of the constitu- tion as against forty-six voting in the negative. In 1792 he repre- sented the town in the general court, and held many other offices in the town. Those were days when a man was considered for his worth and abilities rather than the length of his residence in the town, or the fact that he was born in it. So all these newcomers fitted into some useful relation to the new community in which they had cast their lot, and the lapse of time made them a homogeneous community.
Midway between General Bucknam's place and Isreals river Bry- ant Stevenson had taken up his residence at an earlier day, on lands formerly owned by Col. Stephen Wilson, and now owned by Capt. H. S. Hilliard. Capt. Stevenson was interested in the schools of the town, and was for many years clerk of District No. 2.
So rapid had been the increase of families in town that the num- ber of taxpayers had increased from ten in 1783 to fifty-nine in 1795, and there were ninety-one voters in 1799; and a year later the entire population had reached four hundred and forty.
About 1790 the settlement began to push up toward the higher lands around Mts. Pleasant and Prospect. John McIntire, a man of remarkable powers of body and mind, though not as well educated as his fellow townsmen, settled on the northerly slope of Mt. Pleas- ant. Here he developed a productive farm, and reared a large family of sixteen children. Mr. McIntire was born in York, Me., Jan 1, 1765, and at the early age of sixteen volunteered as a soldier in the Revo- lutionary army. His education was thus neglected, but he developed a ruggedness of body and mind that, in a large part, made up for the deficiency of his schooling. He was a man of sterling moral in- tegrity and patriotism. It is said that he came into Lancaster at the age of twenty-five with a yoke of oxen, an axe, and a bushel of salt as his entire capital of worldly goods. He at once set to work and carved a home out of the forest. Few men were held in higher es- teem than he was. He married Sally Stockwell, second daughter of Ruth Page and Emmons Stockwell. To them were born eleven children-John, Sallie, William, Mary, Mercy, Silas, Samuel, Susan, Emmons, Dorothy, and Eben.
On September 19, 1812, his wife died. About a year later he married Susanna Bucknam, the sixth daughter of Edwards Buck- nam, and a cousin to his first wife. To them were born five chil- dren-Eunice, Edward, James, Jane, and Laura. His second wife
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died July 23, 1832, and he followed her April 5, 1850. He left an honored memory and a snug fortune to his many children who sur- vived him, and who have been among the best citizens of the town.
About the time that we are now speaking of, Edward Spaulding, a lineal descendant of the noted Mrs. Dustin, settled on the northern slope of Mt. Pleasant, a near neighbor to John McIntire. He was the son of Daniel Spaulding (whose wife was Phebe Dustin), born in Londonderry, N. H., and carried in his mother's arms to North- umberland in May, 1769, where they began life in a log cabin. These young emigrants started for this region, with a few articles for housekeeping, traveling on horseback. They reached Haverhill, from which point there was only a path to their destination in North- umberland. They tarried over night with some family, and in their haste to get ready in the morning Mrs. Spaulding sat her baby down upon the floor for a moment, when he crawled to the fireplace and . pulled a kettle of hot water over upon himself, scalding his feet. In consequence of this accident, it was decided that Mr. Spaulding should go on alone to the north and leave his wife and child, to re- turn for them in a short time. But not returning, as she expected him to do, on a given date, Mrs. Spaulding set out on foot to find her husband, carrying her baby in her arms, with a small copper tea- kettle, in which were packed some parcels of garden seeds to plant when they got to their new home (this teakettle is now in the pos- session of her great-granddaughter, Mrs. Debby A. Kent, in Lan- caster). She traveled all day alone by a path marked by blazed trees. Just as night was settling down upon her she reached what is now known as " Streeter's Pond," which she would have to ford. She decided to wait until morning before making the venture. She looked about her for the best shelter she could find, and having dis- posed of her sleeping child and buried her kettle of priceless seeds, she sank down, tired and lonely, to wait for the coming of the morning light which should enable her to press on to the north to find her husband, whom she feared had met with some misfortune, as he had not returned for her as soon as she had expected. Tired and anx- ious, she thought she would keep a sleepless vigil over her sleeping child to shield it from harm; but her exhausted nature found re- freshment in a sound sleep that continued until the dawn of the morning for which she felt so anxious. She immediately renewed her journey with the determination not to spend another night alone in the forest. Just as the sun was casting its last slanting rays on the hilltops she spied a house in the distance. She had reached Lancaster, where she was made welcome and comfortable over the night. She started the next morning to make the last six miles of her long and lonely journey, not knowing what fate might have be-
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fallen her husband. She found him there just ready to return for her, after having delayed to erect a cabin to receive her.
Here they resided for many years. When Edward was about 21 years of age he married Martha Weeks and began the clearing of the farm we have mentioned. Martha Weeks was born in Green- land, N. H., Dec. 20, 1771, and came to Lancaster with her father and brother, John W. Weeks, in 1786. Mrs. Spaulding was a re- markable woman, well fitted to be the wife of such a sturdy pioneer as was Mr. Spaulding. She was the mother of six children-Edward C., John W., William D., James B., Eliza W. (married William Moore), Martha B. (married Charles D. Stebbins). Mrs. Spauld- ing lived to be nearly a hundred years old, having lived till 1871. She survived her husband some twenty-six years, he having died in 1845, at the age of seventy-nine.
For ten years their first house, a log cabin, was small and without a floor. Then was built the house still standing on the old farm, and now owned and occupied by James S. Peavey. Here Mrs. Spaulding spent eighty-one years of her life, and was at the time of her death the only person who had come to Lancaster as one of its original settlers. The descendants of Mr. and Mrs. Spaulding are numerous, and have always occupied prominent places in the town. John Hubbard Spaulding, a grandson of Edward and Martha Spauld- ing, assisted in building the first hotel on Mount Washington, and for some years conducted both the Summit and the Tip-Top houses. He also wrote a very interesting and valuable " Guide, and Histori- cal Records of the White Mountains," and various other matters of interest.
It was in 1793 that Lancaster hospitably welcomed her first law- yer in the person of Richard Claire Everett. Mr. Everett first came to Lancaster in 1782. He was then a mere youth of eighteen years. He had but recently been discharged from the Revolutionary army, after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Va., and with a Mr. Blake and his wife came to Lancaster in search of a home. It is said that this party came here from Providence, R. I., with all their earthly effects loaded upon the back of one horse, and the three adult persons walked, and carried loads themselves. As Mr. Blake was loaded nearly as heavy as his horse, and his wife less able than young Everett to carry a baby, he brought it in his arms all the way. He was an orphan boy, and having learned to help himself, had also learned to make himself helpful to others; and all through his life this trait was characteristic of the man. It is said that his extreme youthfulness and conditions excited the interest of General Washington in him, and that he assigned the sixteen-year-old boy to some personal service about his headquarters. If he had served the "Father of his country," why not his friends in this menial capacity ?
RICHARD CLAIR EVERETT. The first lawyer and judge in Coos county.
ADINO N. BRACKETT.
SALLY, WIDOW OF GEN. EDWARDS BUCKNAM. (Taken on her rooth birthday.)
MAJ. JOHN W. WEEKS.
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Both young Everett and Blake went to work for Major Wilder soon after coming here, and remained for some time in his service. These two men hauled salt through the White Mountain Notch for Major Wilder in the winter of 1782; and as the road was but a path they had to clear it much of the way in order to allow of a sled passing.
Feeling that his whole dependence was upon himself, young Everett was industrious and economical, for he wanted to improve his education. He went to Hanover in the spring of 1783 to fit himself for college, and by much persistent effort he was making some progress in his undertaking when he suddenly discovered him- self the heir to quite a sum of money, which he secured. He now found his way open for an education, and in due time was graduated from Dartmouth college. He next turned his attention to the study of law as a profession, with the intention of locating in Lancaster. Having completed his law studies, and being admitted to practice, he came to Lancaster in the spring of 1793, and soon was married to Persis, daughter of Maj. Jonas Wilder, to whom he had been engaged for a period of seven or eight years. During the fall and winter of that year he built the house now standing on the corner of Main and High streets, known as the " Cross House," it having been for a long time occupied by Col. Ephraim Cross, his son-in-law.
Mr. Everett at once began to build up a law practice, and for many years was the leading lawyer in town. He was identified with many industries and enterprises in the town, was always public- spirited, and did much to foster the interests of the community. For eleven years he attended the court sessions at Haverhill, the shire town of Grafton county. Tradition says that he exercised a potent influence in securing the erection of the new county of Coös in 1803. He was the first to bear to Lancaster the welcome news that the spring term of the Court of Common Pleas for 1805 would be held in Lancaster, and at once set about getting ready to enter- tain the court officers and lawyers that were expected to attend it. He built an addition to his house which was just large enough for his family. This addition, the north end of the present house above referred to, was to contain the guest-rooms for the distinguished people connected with work of the court. Tradition says that Judge Livermore, Daniel Webster, Levi Woodbury, Ichabod Bartlett, and Joseph Bell, among the old-time distinguished lawyers and jurists, have been entertained in those rooms. There was at that time no public house in Lancaster. Major Wilder kept transient travelers through the town in his spacious dwelling-house, now known as the " Holton Place," at the north end of Main street. This house, the first two-story frame house in town, was built in 1780. Religious services were held in it, and various other public assemblages con-
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vened there until there was a church building, and hotels, and halls erected for their convenience.
This influx of population hastened the opening up of better roads, and established better communication with the outside world. As we have seen elsewhere in speaking particularly of the roads, there was not a passably good road for vehicles of any kind into Lancaster from any of the centres of trade from which the people must be supplied with such articles as they could not produce themselves at home. There was a sled road to Portland soon after 1780, and a poor road to Haverhill, N. H. The river afforded the best road to the lower towns; but that was only passable a few months in mid- winter, with some elements of treachery even in that.
'For several years after the first settlers came here there was no mill for grinding breadstuffs nearer than No. 4 (Charlestown), more than one hundred and twenty miles distant. No bulky furniture, or any large implements of industry could be transported for several years as the roads did not admit of the passage of loaded vehicles of transportation. Only the smaller articles that could be packed upon horses or oxen could be brought through the narrow and uneven paths the emigrants were compelled to travel over. These inconveniences were, in a large part, overcome by the inherent genius and determination of the people to succeed. They had evi- dently made up their minds to endure hardships and privations, in short, to make the most of circumstances that were not favorable to comfort. The men made all the implements they used with a few . simple hand-tools they brought with them, such as axes, saws, augurs, and drawing-knife. Every pioneer was probably more or less skilled in the use of these simple tools by which so much has been accomplished in the development of the industries of every civilized country. I have seen, in the Alleghany Mountains, fifty miles beyond where a vehicle had ever penetrated, houses, and their furnishings made by the use of these few tools, and in which there was no metal used at all.
It was not until far into the present century that Lancaster cast aside its simple constructions for the more artistic ones of the fac- tory and machine shops. Every home was a sort of manufactory of the things most essential to pioneer life, and so remained, to a large extent, until about 1825. Much of their clothing was made in the homes from wool and flax of their own production. Their leather was tanned at home by Dennis Stanley and others. Moose skins were dressed and made into moccasins, which they spelled " moga- sheens," at first, and later " mogershins." I find that General Buck- nam was skilled in that kind of work, and that he made moccasins and leather breeches for his neighbors, and for Col. Joseph Whipple, to be taken to other places for barter or sale.
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PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.
Among the first wants of the community that could not be met by every man for himself, were a mill, a blacksmith shop, and a tan- yard.
When the families had grown too large, or the people's time was too valuable for so slow a process as grinding, or rather crushing, their grain in a wooden mortar, a mill became manifestly the great- est need of their times. This, it is said, was sought to be supplied by the erection of some sort of a mill run by horse-power some- where at the north end of Main street; but for some reason it proved to be a failure and was soon abandoned.
David Page tried to meet this urgent want of the settlement by the erection of a small mill on Indian brook, directly north of Bun- ker Hill, taking advantage of an old beaver dam as his supply of water and where a sufficient fall was had to meet the requirements of a tolerable water power. After this mill had been in operation for some time, and no doubt was looked upon as a great blessing and the pride of the town, it took fire one night and all but its name was swept out of existence.
The heart of Governor Page was no doubt heavy at this terrible calamity ; but the people who had come to look upon it as one of the handiest of their institutions must have felt equally, if not more, disappointed than its owner, for they had tired of the wooden pestle and its coarse meal, and had become accustomed to a finer bread produced from the meal made at Governor Page's mill. Their cul- tivated taste that had been catered to by the finer product of this mill, received a shock that appealed to their sympathies and gener- osity, and at the next town-meeting an appropriation of money was voted to David Page to help him rebuild his mill. The appropri- ation was a generous sum for those times, as it amounted to eighty- four pounds. This was voted at a meeting held June 8, 1773, and paid Oct. 19, 1778, as shown by a receipt from Page to Colonel Bucknam who was collector for the proprietors. This tax amounted to four dollars on each of the seventy landholders at that date. Another sum of sixty-six pounds was voted Governor Page at a meeting held Dec. 4, 1774, and paid June 13, 1774, for which I have the receipt given by Page to Bucknam. This last sum seems to have been given because Governor Page abandoned his old site on Indian brook and located his new mill on the south fork of Isreals river, just under the sand hill. To this mill he added a saw- mill, which was, no doubt, the cause of an addition to the sum voted a little less than a year before. From this fact we see that the people had stirred themselves to assist Governor Page in build- ing these mills to meet growing wants in the settlement. They had now given a bonus of one hundred and fifty pounds to Governor Page to encourage his enterprises. At his mills was evidently sawed 8
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
the lumber for the first frame houses in town. Emmons Stockwell erected a small frame building, now standing as the ell part of the dwelling-house on the old Stockwell place. Here at Page's saw- mill Major Wilder must have got the sawed lumber for his two-story house (the Holton house), for his own sawmill and grist-mill on Isreals river, just back of Whitney's Granite Works, was not built until 1781, and his house was built in 1780.
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