USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Lancaster > History of Lancaster, New Hampshire > Part 13
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PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.
Sundays or for schools etc .- 3rd. To see if the Town will agree to and sign a Petition to send to the General Court of the State of New Hampshire for a tax of 3 pence on each acre of Land on the whole Town of Lancaster for the purpose of making a Bridge over Isreals River & repairing roads etc. 4th. To chose some Person to attend on the General Court at Charlestown the 2nd Wednesday of Sept. next to carry in said Petition to said Court & also to raise some money for the Purpose of Gitting said Petition through Court or for the expense of any Person that may undertake the Business in Behalf of the town. Therefore we the sub- scribers do hereby notify and warn all the male inhabitants and voters of the Town of Lancaster to meet at the Dwelling House of Major Jonas Wilder on Friday the 31, Day of this instant August, 1787.
Edwd. Bucknam Saml. Johnson Jonas Wilder
Selectmen."
The citizens answered that call, and after deliberating upon the proposition to petition for a tax on all lands, appointed a committee consisting of Jonas Wilder, Edwards Bucknam and Emmons Stock- well, to draw up a petition and sign it on behalf of the town. This duty they performed on September 4, 1787; and the petition was duly presented to the legislature and carried through by Col. Joseph Whipple, for which service the town voted him seven pounds and ten shillings at the March meeting in 1788. This petition the reader will find in Chapter VII, on roads.
This tax proved to be a radical measure that drew from the selfish non-residents a portion of the aid they should have gladly rendered to assist in the development of the roads and other public improve- ments that enhance the value of landed estates more than anything else. They yielded grudgingly to the calls of the tax-collector ; and in many instances they suffered their lands to be sold for the taxes. This the town officers did promptly, for they had become aroused and determined that every man holding lands should do his duty by the struggling town.
The act passed by the legislature was just what the petitioners asked for, the right to tax all lands not comprehended in what were . known as " public rights." The church, school, and glebe rights were regarded as public grants.
Dartmouth college had acquired something over fifteen hundred acres of land in town in the year 1782, and as there was, at some previous time, an act passed by the legislature exempting the lands of this college from public taxes, the institution undertook to evade this 3-penny tax in 1788. Although the legislature did not intend to repeal the act exempting the college lands from taxes this last act virtually did do so. At all events that was the interpretation the town officers put upon it; and they went ahead to collect it by a sale of the lands. The Rev. John Wheelock, president of the college, wrote several times to the selectmen to stay proceedings ; but it was of no avail. One of his letters to the selectmen throws some
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
light on the early disposal of some of the original rights, and I deem it of sufficient interest to insert here. It is as follows :
" Dartmouth College, Oct. 28, 1788.
" Gentlemen,
" You are doubtless acquainted that by a particular Act of our General Assem- bly the lands belonging to this College are all freed and exempted from public taxes-of this and of the lands belonging to the College in the town of Lancas- ter I have written & sent several times to the Selectmen of said town, and once sent them a copy of the act of the Assembly concerning the same-You have probably seen the copy & the act can be seen at any time in the Secretary's office.
I am informed that there is a grant of a tax to be levied on the lands, and as taxes may arise from time to time on the lands, tho' I suppose you are already sufficiently acquainted with the lands of the College there and of their exemption from taxes, Yet, for fear any difficulties & disadvantages may possible arise I have embraced the present opportunity to write the folowing, being the lands which belong to the College in your town-
" Two hundred & twenty acres to the right of Jonathan Grant-
Two hundred & twenty acres to the right of Joseph Marble
-
Two hundred & twenty acres to the right of Thomas Rogers Two hundred & twenty acres to the right of Joshua Tolford- ----- and about Two hundred & thirty acres in each of the rights of
Daniel Warner Esq. & Nath. Bartlett Esq. exclusive of their house and meadow lots.
" The whole of the aforesaid lands amounting to about fifteen hundred and sixty acres of land-Recorded in Grafton ss 23 Augst. 1782-
I have given this notification to prevent any damage that might arise to those, who should sell them-and pursuant to the Act of assembly, and in behalf of the trustes desire you would attend to the matter, that there be no sale of any of said lots for taxes, they being the property of College-
I am with truest esteem, Gentlemen, Signed in behalf of J Wheelock, President.
the Trustees of Dart : College --
To the Selectmen of the town of Lancaster."
The people of Lancaster were doubtless well acquainted with the college's holdings of lands in the town and its liability for taxes under their special act, as is shown above. The taxes were laid and collected as the town officers meant they should be-without favor to anyone.
After the Dartmouth college lands had been sold for delinquent taxes, the selectmen gave the institution the following notice :
" Lancaster Sept. 9th. 1789.
" Sir-
We have received one or two letters from you respecting your lands in Lancas- ter that they are free from Taxes by an Act of the Genl. Court of the state of New Hampshire the said Court has also laid a Tax of two pence Pr acre for the year 1788 & I P Pr acre for three years following on all the lands in Lancaster to re- pair roads and to build Bridges in said town, Publick Rights only Excepted, the Lands that you own are not out of Publick Rights and as the act for the tax above mentioned was Passed some time after the Court had Passed the act to Clear your
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PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.
lands of Taxes and our act says on all the Lands in Lancaster saving Publick Rights therefore we conseave of it that your Lands are as liable to be calld upon for the afore sd tax as any of the lands in said Town and we have given the same Notice in the New Hampshire Gazette for owners of the land to Do the work and have advertised your lands with other Delinquents for sale and all of your Lands were sold at Publick Vendue last March to Pay the 2d Tax, Therefore we thought it no more than reasonable to acquaint you of it seasonably-
We are Sir
Your most Obedient Humble Servants
Edwds. Bucknam Selectmen
Jonas Wilder
John Weeks Lancaster."
The tone of this letter indicates the public sentiment on the ques- tion of taxing non-residents. The people were determined that these should pay their taxes as well as residents. The resident tax- payer had this advantage over the non-resident, he could work out the road tax, while the non-resident had either to pay it in money or see his lands sold. The matter was a vexatious one, but the peo- ple were fully aroused by the inequality and injustice that had pre- vailed so long, and were determined to make every landholder do his duty. The beginning of the end was in sight, though it took fully twenty years to entirely eradicate the evil. A general law, passed by the legislature early in the present century, established a uniformity of procedure that settled all the conflicts over the non- resident's taxes.
In all new settlements land constitutes the first wealth of the peo- ple, and for a certain period they have little other wealth. A por- tion of that wealth is always required to construct roads and bridges, to establish communication with older settlements in which they must find their markets, both to buy and sell in. It was so with Lancaster. One feature of the situation was rather exaggerated ; the distance from the older settlements was very great-more than eighty miles. Much of that distance was an unbroken forest, making it a great undertaking for a mere handful of pioneers to build roads and at the same time make a living for their families. That every land- holder should have been called upon to do his proportional share of that work was just and honest.
The Revolutionary struggle had kept the settlement back in its development, so that at the end of twenty years it was little farther advanced than it should have been at the end of the first ten years. We have seen that soon after the close of that period there were only ten taxable men in town. The people had lost rather than gained ground in that time. They had spent much of their time and sub- stance in watching the frontier from attacks by a dangerous foe. They had reached a point when their families were increasing, new wants were confronting them, and they even had some commodities
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
to carry to market to exchange for the necessities of life; but their roads were almost impassable and the streams without bridges. The state was forced to leave the people to their own resources in the matter. We cannot wonder at their resolute determination to call everyone who was to profit by better roads to help to make them.
The problem of taxation is always beset by difficulties; the wis- dom of no generation has been equal to the task of divesting it of all features of inequality. The selfish and dishonest of any commu- nity can shirk their just share of the burden for a time; but the suf- ferers after a while reach a point where endurance of the wrong is unbearable, and they demand a reckoning with the delinquents. It is not any more so in old communities than in new ones; but in the new community the veil that covers the wrong is thinner, and the evil is easier of discovery. It was so with the Lancaster of a hun- dred years ago.
Once the people paid their taxes and ceased to avoid them under any pretexts, the community settled down to a peaceful attitude toward the question of taxation, and we see no signs of dissatisfac- tion for a long time, or until other abuses grew up, and then com- plaint was made against the selfish and dishonest. And so it will always be until men are all honest and generous, actuated by a patri- otic and public spirit.
The town, having gotten its policy of public improvements fully set in motion, entered upon a period of prosperity that has never been equaled since. From the first settlement of the town it was strictly an agricultural community. The people raised their own bread and meat until somewhere about 1832, when through a neg- lect of the farms to engage in land speculations there came to be a shortage of grain to meet the demands of the community. This was due to several causes, as we shall see later; but during the early years grain was exported to a considerable extent. ( I have used the term " export," as I find that the people used it at the time of which I am speaking, due to a sort of provincial spirit that charac- terized the community for many years.) The farms were produc- tive, and the people were economical as well as industrious. To products of their grain fields they soon added those of their herds and dairies. Fat cattle, hogs, sheep and fowl were abundant enough to afford the old-time drovers and merchants prosperous business from about 1790 until quite far into the present century.
In the days of the old turnpike through the White Mountain Notch it was one of the common sights in winter to see trains of teams half a mile in length, loaded down with butter, cheese, dressed hogs, lard, and poultry on the way to Portland. Willey, in his "His- tory of the White Mountains," pp. III, 112, describes such a scene, as follows: "Well can we remember the long train of Coös teams
III
PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.
which used to formerly pass through Conway. In winter, more par- ticularly, we have seen lines of teams half a mile in length; the tough, scrubby, Canadian horses harnessed to 'pungs,' well loaded down with pork, cheese, butter, and lard, the drivers rivaling almost the modern locomotive and its elegant train of carriages in noise and bluster." Such scenes had been common for many years. Near the close of the last century pot and pearl ash were added to this list of commodities, and for many years were one of the staples of trade between the Lancaster merchants and wholesale dealers in Bos- ton and Portland. The merchants here took the article in trade for goods of all descriptions as readily as they did money. They some- times took the ashes and made the pot, or pearl ash, themselves. The commoner name was "salts of lye." This profitable product led the people to make an onslaught upon their timber that, while it tided them over a time of great scarcity, yet wasted a wealth of tim- ber that in later years would have been of much greater value to them. They cannot be blamed, however, of being short sighted. No one then could have foreseen that timber was destined to en- hance in value. It was so abundant that every easy device of get- ting rid of it was counted as a gain to civilization. This destruction of the forest opened an ever-increasing portion of the lands to pas- turage and cultivation, so there was some small gain in even the de- struction of their forests.
As the grass sprung up in the openings made by the conversion of the wood into potash, cattle must have been allowed to run at large, for we note the fact that the town meetings began, about twenty years after the settlement, to elect "hog reves" and "fence viewers." At a town meeting in 1783, it was voted that "hogs properly yoked and ringed may run at large." The yoking of hogs was voted on at several meetings, from which fact we infer that hogs had come to be abundant and unruly.
At an adjourned town meeting, March 15, 1784, it was voted to build a "pound between Maj. Jonas Wilder's and the Bridge place or fordway over Isreals River, and that Maj. Wilder be the Pound Keeper." This order was undoubtedly carried out. The pound must have been located somewhere on the lands of Major Wilder, which extended more than half way from his house to the fordway over Isreals river, although I have been unable to locate it, or even get hold of any traditions of it. There is a tradition that the first pound was built near the old meeting-house common, on Portland street. The pound here referred to was the second one, and was authorized to be built by a committee chosen at the annual meeting March 8, 1791, "To build a Pound on such spot in said town as they think best." The committee saw fit to locate this prison of stray cattle at the southeast corner of meeting-house common. It was a well-con-
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
structed pound of stone walls, capped with hewn logs, and a strong gate. Here the unruly animals were brought to order for many a year; and although this old structure has long since passed away its successors have lingered in that vicinity until the present day.
In all new communities cattle and hogs run at large, and after a time are the source of much annoyance to the people. Many petty conflicts arise over the depredations of jumping cows and horses, and the rooting hogs. Lancaster, no doubt, had its full share of these troubles in early times.
Of the mercantile pursuits before the beginning of the present century we know but very little, and that is quite fragmentary. That Edwards Bucknam and David Page kept small stocks of goods in their own houses for traffic is certain ; but they were not merchants. They were men of almost every sort of occupations that life in a new country called for. Especially was this true of Bucknam, who could turn a hand at anything that needed to be done. The time came, however, when Lancaster had what we may truly call a store, because it was kept in a separate building used for that specific purpose by a man who had no other vocation or avocations. Directly following the French revolution, when there was a change of adminis- tration in France, one John Toscan, who had been the consular agent of his government at Portland, Me., finding his government turned out, and the situation at home one of danger to the officers of the former government, came to Lancaster with a stock of goods, and locating in the neighborhood of Bucknam and Weeks, continued to carry on a store for some years, with reasonable success, until his store was burned, when he returned to Portland, and later returned to his native country when the revolutionary storm had blown over and the old régime was restored. Toscan's store stood on the south side of the road on the farm now owned by Edward Woodward ; on or near the spot where a new house was erected during the present year. As near as we can learn Toscan came here either in 1794, or 1795, and remained probably six or eight years. The neighborhood in which he settled his business was then probably the most densely populated one in the town, as there were some twenty families living in that part of town early in the present century.
The next important mercantile venture was at the north end of Main street by Stephen Willson, in 1799. I have before me his ledger from October 13th, 1799, to 1805. Willson kept his store in the tavern building, then standing where the Benton residence now does on the westerly side of the street. The old building was later moved out to the street and northward, and still stands in a good state of preservation, and doing service as a tenement house. Here Mr. Willson sold dry goods, groceries, hardware, rum, and all sorts of things needed in a new country. He took in payment almost as
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COMING OF NEW INDUSTRIES.
great a variety of things as he sold-lumber, hay, butter, cheese, poultry, pigeons, pork, furs, yarn, socks, flax and the labor of male and female customers. He honored all sorts of orders drawn upon him and his neighbors, and took in payment for his goods a greater variety of evidences of debt than any bank of exchange would accept to-day as collaterals for its advances to its customers.
All those early mercantile ventures were failures, however, to their owners; but without them what an amount of privation there would have been experienced in the community no man can tell. Every man in a new settlement can do almost everything for himself but act as his own merchant at a distance of nearly a hundred miles from the markets. This some of them did for a while; but the time came when they could no longer afford to do this. The division of labor had begun, and the post of trader at a margin on what he sold, and on what he took in exchange for it, had its temptations for men who had never had any training in those pursuits, and con- sequently did not discover the leaks until their ship was ready to sink. They were virtually public benefactors instead of speculators. Sylvanus Chessman was another of those early merchants. His real occupation was that of a blacksmith ; but he had such avocations as tavern-keeping, and store-keeping. Their motive in trading was un- doubtedly gain, but they were always disappointed, unless the con- sciousness of serving their neighbors better than themselves satis- fied them. No merchant ever made trade pay here until Royal Joyslin, a trained merchant of considerable experience, came and brought as his clerk, the late Richard P. Kent. They brought expe- rience to the business and made it pay. That time did not come, however, until the end of the first quarter of the present century. All such ventures before then had brought disaster to those who undertook them. A number of men lost much of their savings in their inexperienced mercantile enterprises, during that period of ex- periment.
There was no manufacturing of any kind during this early period, and very little until about 1830. There were blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tanners, and possibly a few other skilled workmen; but every family had to spin and weave their own cloth, and make their clothes themselves. A few rude articles of furniture were made by the more skilful persons, and that with the rudest implements. There is still in existence among the heirs of Emmons Stockwell a table made of a slab of a log dressed down with an axe, possibly smoothed with a plane, and the legs carved with a pocket knife. Some furni- ture was brought to town at an early date through the White Moun- tain notch; but the majority of the people could not afford much in the way of such luxuries during the first quarter of a century of the town's settlement. The native ingenuity of the first settlers must
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
have reveled in making all sorts of things after there was a sawmill to turn out boards, of which to make tables, benches, chests, boxes, drawers and all sorts of handy things to make life easy in the wilder- ness. These are matters of speculation, however, and I leave it to the reader's fancy to reproduce the scenes of a busy and happy life though full of simplicity and guilelessness.
CHAPTER X.
A TRANSITION PERIOD IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANCASTER FROM 1800 TO 1850.
During the first half of the present century Lancaster was pass- ing through a long, tedious transition from a frontier community to that of a town in touch with the whole state, as the town has since been. For a period covering three generations the town was so isolated that in many respects it was almost a republic by itself. As late as 1791, the general court refused to seat the representative of the class of towns to which Lancaster then belonged, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence that the election returns were sufficiently correct to warrant their acceptance by the court. The means of communication between the extremely northern towns of the " Upper Coos " were so poor that when William Cargill presented himself as the people's representative that year, instead of trying to inform themselves on the question of the regularity of the election the house refused to recognize him as the easiest way of settling the question. His election, however, appears to have been regular, and he was entitled to his seat. The following year when Capt. John Weeks succeeded Mr. Cargill as the representative of the classed towns the same objection was raised; but the captain was not so easily turned down and out. He had gone to the court to represent these towns, and he represented them; but it was not until he had met a vigorous opposition, and defeated it, that he was seated in the court. He at once set about the project of securing a new classing of his town with such other towns as would enable the people to have proper recognition in the legislature. Through the petition of the town that object was attained. The desire to bring the settlements of this northern section into active relations with the machinery of the state did not stop there; a new county was demanded, and the demand was kept up until it was granted. Still this section was so far divided from the older sections of the state, and by nothing so much as by poor roads, that it was at a positive disadvantage during the whole of the period I have desig- nated as that of its transition. The products of the farms were worth but little more than enough to carry them to markets at long
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A TRANSITION PERIOD.
distances over bad roads. The wealth of timber with which the town abounded could not be marketed, save as it was converted into pot and pearl ashes, which reduced their bulk and increased in a considerable measure their marketable condition. The cattle, and other live stock, raised in large quantities were so far from market that they brought only a poor return for the expense of raising and driving to market. It was true the people lacked nothing of the necessities of life; they had plenty to eat, and as for clothing they raised flax and wool in sufficient quantities to dress with comfort. Homes of plenty were multiplying, and the population kept in- creasing at a steady rate from 161 in 1790, to 440 in 1800. The life of these 440 souls in 1800, found no larger scope for activity than the lesser number did in 1790, only that their circumstances were a little better. They were still just as far from the markets of the world as ever. The roads were but little better, and other things were about equal. The state had been appealed to in vain for assistance in several ways that would have very much improved the condition of the people here if they had been granted their re- quests.
Brave ventures had been made by various persons at keeping stores in order to supply the demands of the people; goods were brought through the White Mountain notch, or up the Connecticut river through Haverhill at great cost. Those traders had ventured to take various kinds of produce in exchange for their goods, but not one of them, prior to 1825, ever succeeded in making anything. Most of them lost much, if not all they had, by the ventures. Con- ditions were against them even if they had possessed the requisite experience and training in mercantile pursuits that alone can as- sure success.
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