USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Lancaster > History of Lancaster, New Hampshire > Part 15
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This northern section of the state was looked upon as a poor country by the people of the state generally. John Farmer, in his " Gazetteer of New Hampshire for 1823," said of the people of Coös county : "They are poor, and for aught that appears to the contrary, must always remain so, as they may be deemed actual trespassers on that part of creation, destined by its author for the residence of bears, wolves, moose, and other animals of the forest."
So it may have appeared to people at the distance from which Mr. Farmer studied the situation in this northern country ; but those sturdy men had a way of converting the "bears, wolves, moose, and other wild animals of the forest" into means of no small amount of comfort. If crops failed for a season or two, as they frequently did, those men could procure their meat from the forests and clothe their families in the skins and furs of the wild animals in a way to make them comfortable for a time. It seemed almost providential, that during the period of failure of their crops deer should have become extremely plenty; and even the un- welcome wolf was a valuable animal, as there was a good bounty on his scalp, and many of those animals were killed at a time when a little money derived from the bounty helped wonderfully to tide the hardy pioneers over hard times.
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There was a persevering hardiness in the character of the people of those days that saved them from failure; they could accommo- date themselves to adverse circumstances and await the coming of better times, as they confidently expected such times would come again. The traditions of the town were full of recitals of hardships and the surmounting of difficulties. Why should the children and grandchildren of those sturdy first settlers fail? Conditions were a hundredfold better in 1820 than they were in 1776. The people had the necessities of life in reasonable quantities nearly all the time, sometimes in abundance, aud only rarely were they in want of anything necessary to their comfort. Their houses were commo- dious and comfortable; they had church and schools to enlighten and train them in the higher graces and refinements of life. It is true they were not making money, but there is something to live for besides wealth as counted in dollars. Against a happy home in which comfort and virtue abound, where healthy and intelligent children are being trained to good citizenship, where the human heart finds that response of love and sympathy for which it hungers, wealth is as the " dust in the balance." The citizens of the town have won, and long held the recognition from the other sections of the state as being law-abiding, and public-spirited citizens of the old Granite state. Few towns in the state have been so conspicu- ous for the number of responsible positions filled by its citizens in county, state, and national services, both in civil and military capaci- ties.
Like all rural and agricultural communities the town has sent forth her young, richest, and most ambitious life. She has nurtured scores of men and women who have been mighty among the num- bers who have won eminent success in various business and profes- sional callings.
In spite of all the prophesies and signs against this northern sec- tion this town was not destined to remain poor and hampered : though the seasons for many years were unfavorable, and crop after crop failed, the people held on to their farms. They learned to adapt themselves to the changed conditions, and raised such crops as would grow during short and cool seasons. These they exchanged for the things they could not produce. When they could no longer depend on a crop of wheat they raised grass and gave their attention to the production of cattle and butter and cheese, for all of which they found good prices and a ready market in Portland.
As the crops became less certain more attention was given to making potash, which in turn opened up a larger area of pasture lands and made the grazing interests of the town more reliable. The people could convert the timber of many acres into potash to
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tide them over the hard times, and at the same time were opening up their farms for pasturage.
In all of this there was a sort of compensation for the misfortune of losing crops. The increased volume of potash made, called the cooper's trade into requisition; and for many years the making of barrels in which to ship that product was a profitable business, fol- lowed by several persons. This furnished profitable employment to a number of men located mostly in the village, as that sort of busi- ness could be most profitably conducted near the " potasheries " as they were called.
Another compensation for the suffering due to the poor crops of those unfavorable seasons was the increased interest which people began to take in agriculture as an industry. In 1820 an agricultural society was organized in town; and for some years it was of the greatest service in gaining and diffusing knowledge upon the subject of agriculture. The leading men of the town read books and gleaned among the newspapers of the times for information on their calling as tillers of the soil. They conducted intelligent exper- ments, and as a result agriculture was very much improved. In nothing did the town profit more by this revived calling, upon which life depended more than on anything else, than the attention paid to the improvement of their stock. Hitherto their flocks and herds had been of rather an inferior grade, though possibly none the less fitted to the primitive conditions of life for being of the " scrub " stock. Conditions had now become so changed that with a better grade of stock the farms could be made to pay better returns. If the crops were less certain than in former times there was an abund- ance of pasturage that could easily sustain a large number of cattle and sheep which were then the most profitable to raise. It was not long before many of the farmers had large herds of the best cattle and flocks of the better breeds of sheep. About this time, for the first time in the history of the town, an intelligent interest began to be taken in the matter of fertilizing the soil. From the very earliest times little or no attention was given to this subject as the lands were rich, and newly-cleared lands took the place of that first cleared before it began to show much effects from exhaustion by continuous cultivation.
The scientific study of agriculture taught them to return to the soil an equivalent for the crops taken from it; to raise the best stock as it cost no more than to raise poor stock and gave them a much larger return in profits; and also to use better implements for the cultivation of their soil.
In a few instances the interest in new breeds of stock led some men into extreme measures. Joel Hemmenway and Josiah Bellows stocked their farms with merino sheep with the expectation of reap-
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ing great profits from them in an incredibly short time; but they were doomed to meet disappointment. Joel Hemmenway lost more than a dozen fine merino bucks he brought here expecting to sell at fabulous prices to the farmers, by wolves in a single night. Wolves were then abundant, and almost nightly somebody's sheep- fold was invaded by them. They were not content to kill what they wanted to eat; often their diabolical disposition led them to destroy a whole herd after they had taken their fill on a few of their victims. They seem to have killed as a sort of diversion after they had their feast of blood and fat.
At all events these gentlemen lost money on their ventures. They were not slow to discover their mistakes, and by devoting their atten- tion to other kinds of stock and crops soon retrieved their losses in the venture at raising fancy stock, when they should have been con- tent to give their attention to what was best calculated to bring a certain return for their labor and investments. With these better improvements once fairly established in the favor of the people, the seasons became more like those of earlier times, and crops became as certain as ever before, but new ones were discovered to be better adapted to their soil and seasons than the old-time ones. A greater variety of crops were cultivated, and, of course among the many, some of them were always good, so if some particular crop was a failure another would, in great measure, make up for the loss and disappointment from that source.
During the whole of the period of poor seasons for farming the village kept up its relative increase of population over the rural sec- tion of the town. In 1825, there were thirty-four houses in the vil- lage between the Rev. Joseph Willard's place (now known as the Hanson place) and the Rosebrook place, where John Ingerson now lives on North Main street. None of these houses was painted, according to the recollection of the late Richard P. Kent, who came to town that year. The only painted buildings in town were two stores. One of these was painted red and the other green, from which fact they were designated as the "red store," and the " green store." It is an interesting coincidence that the first of these painted houses should have been decorated in the first of what are called the " simple colors," red, and that the second one should have employed a combination of the other two simple colors, yellow and blue, to have produced its secondary color of green. This art of decoration began at the bottom and has steadily worked its way up until to-day few villages are so beautified by the use of paint upon its buildings as Lancaster; and even the farmhouses and other buildings display this same good taste in the matter of colors.
At the time of which we are speaking, 1825, there was probably only one interior of a building decorated by painting. That one
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
was the old meeting-house. Its pulpit and communion table were painted ; but as near as can now be learned, the painting did not extend any further than " the Holy place " of their temple.
That painting was probably done in 1798, or soon after, as one would infer from the fact that Sylvanus Chessman circulated a subscription for that purpose on July 7th. Ed. Clark is men- tioned in it as working on the pulpit, and to do the painting; but it seems from an entry on the back of that document that a Mr. Phil- brook did the work, receiving for it one pound, eight shillings, and six shillings for oil. This document is still in the possession of J. S. Brackett.
The other buildings of the village, apart from residences, were : The four stores, two hotels, two schoolhouses, the church, court- house, gun-house, and the log jail. The population was again rapidly increasing as many newcomers were then in town, about equally divided between the village enterprises and the farms. In five more years the population had reached 1, 187, and many new enterprises had gained a footing among this larger number of cit- izens.
The town though remote from the great centres of commercial activity was affected by a sort of tidal-wave of interest in the acquisition of land that swept over the entire country. Foreign immigration had rapidly increased from 7,912 in 1824, to 23,322 in 1830. Most of these people found their way to the rural sections of the country ; their object in coming was to acquire our cheap and productive lands and make homes. This fact stimulated the interest of speculative men throughout the nation to profit by this demand for new lands. During the next decade the speculation in lands was carried to an extreme and ruinous degree. Throughout the country lands were bonded many times over, by which very heavy losses resulted to many persons ambitious to gain a fortune in a few years. While this craze did not extend to Lancaster to any great degree it did tend to encourage emigration to this northern section of the state; and from this coming of home seekers the town profited materially as many good families settled here. But by far the greatest advantage to Lancaster from this general craze of land- speculation came from the enhanced value of the products of the farms. Almost every farm product increased in price, due to the general neglect of farming throughout the country by which a scarcity resulted. It so happened that the farms had become very productive again. Various kinds of business suffered from neglect, also, while the people ran to and fro seeking their fortunes in lands. In Lancaster the people gave themselves to the task of farming and developing their various business interests.
When butter had reached fifty cents a pound, and cheese twenty-
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five, and pork sixteen cents, the farmers of this town had vast quan- tities of these, and other products equally high in price, to sell. The period had come to make money and they applied themselves to their vocation with zeal. Farmers grew wealthy, and merchants increased in number, and did a good business for many years following. Prosperity smiled upon all alike, and the town continued to enjoy a steady growth of population.
The various industries that we mention in Part II flourished in a remarkable degree. The life of the community began to flow in broader and deeper channels; an old type of social life and busi- ness began to yield to newer ones. Did space permit of it, and had we not already done so, we might recount here the innovation of hundreds of new articles of trade in the stores, of new articles of manufacture, of new customs and fashions welcomed by the people. When a newspaper was established by a few enterprising men in 1838, the Whig and Aegis, its columns were literally crowded with the advertisements of the traders and artisans offering their new wares and skilled service to the public in the most inviting and tempting manner of the printer's art. Elaborate wood-cuts showed the latest styles of furniture, stoves and cooking utensils, hats of local and foreign manufacture, farm and other machinery, and a hundred other things of scarcely less importance to the comfort and welfare of the people. Such merchants as R. P. Kent, Royal Joyslin, B. H. Chadbourne, William T. Carlisle, William Cargill, and Bryant O. Stephenson, made trips to Boston and Portland once or twice a year to buy goods and study the markets, seldom returning without bringing something new to offer the people. Almost every article of merchandise known in the great markets of New England was to be found on the counters of those enterprising merchants, some of whom were men of uncommon ability as traders; and what they did to build up their town is beyond the power of any one to compute to-day, nor do we believe that they were themselves half conscious of what was resulting to the town from their efforts to develop their own business interests. Certainly others looking on at the time saw, and even at this late date, no doubt see in them only shrewd traders enhancing their own fortunes; but society is an organism, and what helps one doing a useful and legitimate business helps all parties to the social compact or community. Those men were breaking down the old, frontier civilization and introducing the broader cosmopolitan one by creating new hungers in the lives of the people in this remote town for the most comfortable and elegant things of the whole country. The tempting display of new goods and machinery before their customers was the natural and only way to draw them out of the old, narrower life into one as broad as that of the entire country ; it compelled them to think and feel as their
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fellow-men did in other and more favored communities. That is, after all the glamor and newness is worn off, what we call culture. It is leading men to think and feel as others have done, and by which process the individual partakes of all the elements of the strength of the many. That is the way in which progress is made; and cannot we recognize in those old-time merchants the promoters of much of the culture of the town? Of course the newspapers and books the people read, the lectures and sermons they listened to, and the training and information afforded by the schools did much to advance the culture and refinement of the life of the people; but when full account of their influence is taken, it still leaves a large factor unaccounted for unless we recognize that more silent, yet none the less powerful, factor of the intercourse and interchange of ideas that go with trade and commerce. Of course men enter those pursuits primarily with the idea of enhancing their own for- tunes ; but no man can carry on any important business legitimately without fostering the interests of many more even, than those with whom he does business. The dishonest man, the tricky rogue, does much to injure the interests of other people and shake their con- fidence in others' integrity ; but society is not slow to detect them and place upon them the mark of their class.
What I have said of the trader, the merchant, is true in a large measure of the manufacturer, the artisan, and the professional men of those early times; they all did something to foster a newer type of social life. When Greenliaf C. Philbrook plied his art as painter, glazier, and paper hanger he was doing much to foster a more re- fined taste for the beautiful, the true, and the pure in the domestic life of the people. We have seen a few specimens of his work per- formed about 1838, which, although it provokes a smile when com- pared with the house decoration of to-day, was yet, nevertheless, a great help to pave the way for the more perfect order of things in our day. The decorations of those days were mostly in the simple colors. The wall papers contained large patterns or flowers, the lat- ter conventionalized ones, for there was never anything seen on earth bearing such flowers and fruits as they abounded in. The colors were generally red, blue, yellow, and green; but a few years later the modified colors or tints began to make their appearance, and the figures and patterns were in keeping with those of our day. The greatest changes in these matters took place during the decade between 1840 and 1850, which has been rightly designated as a transition period. Prior to that period changes were slow, and what few were made were a sort of reluctant yielding to the inevitable. After that period a much more rapid progress was made in all things pertaining to the social and domestic life of the town. The provincial character of the town began to fade out, and the opposi-
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A TRANSITION PERIOD.
tion to changes to what was undoubtedly a larger and more refined life, grew less as the years went by, so that after a time the wiser ones, who are always the fashioners of the life of every community, learned that the new is old, and the old is ever new through the ceaseless changes that take place in the evolution of society when one penetrates beneath the surface of appearances and breaks through the incrustations of habits by which men are often bound to mere surface indications of reality. It is so in all things.
If the town had lost many of its citizens from the various causes I have named, there yet remained a considerable number of the sturdiest, wisest, and bravest of her men. To that number was added by emigration from some of the older settlements south of the town, some others of like character who saw great possibil- ities in this new section of the state. At any time from 1825 to 1830, the traveler passing along the river road between the south and the north lines of the town would have passed the thrifty homes of the following named men : John Burgin, Samuel Burgin, Artemas Lovejoy, Ziba Lynds, John Stockwell, Josiah Bellows, 2d, Emmons Stockwell, Joel Page, Benjamin Stanley, William Stanley, William Lovejoy, Josiah Hobart, Samuel Hannux, Josiah Smith, Samuel White, Charles Baker, Thomas Carlisle, Benjamin Hunking, Samuel A. Pearson, Warren Porter, Benjamin Boardman, Allen Smith, George W. Perkins, John Perkins, Isaac Darby, Richard P. Kent, William Farrar, Jared W. Williams, William Cargill, Royal Joyslin, Levi Barnard, Francis Bingham, David Greenleaf, Jacob E. Stickney, Reuben Stephenson, Lieut. Benjamin Stephenson, Turner Stephenson, Sylvanus Chessman, Silas Chessman, Ephraim Stock- well, Moses T. Hunt, Jonathan Willard, Charles J. Stuart, Jonas Baker, Rev. Joseph Willard, Adino N. Brackett, John W. Weeks, Benjamin Adams, Lemuel Adams, Moses White, John H. White, John M. Denison, William Denison, Eliphalet Lyman, Ashael Go- ing, Francis Wilson, Samuel Philbrook, G. C. Philbrook, Andrew Adams, William Moore, Heber Blanchard, a Mr. Holmes, Gideon Smith, Frederick Messer, Joseph Holton, Col. Stephen Wilson, Gen. John Wilson, John Dewey, John Cram, Moses Church, Ephraim Mahurin, Levi Church, Noyes Denison, Ariel Rosebrook, John Straw. Along other thoroughfares in and out of the village lived the following representative men of the town, also: Horace Whit- comb, Allen Smith, Samuel Rines, George Bellows, in the village, and the Lovejoys, Savages, Wentworths, Chapmans, Stones, Balches, Aspenwalls, Farnhams, Howes, Stebbens, Boutwells, LeGros, East- mans, Freemans, outside the village.
In this whole list of names there are but few men who were not of the highest order of intelligence and character. They were such a class of men as are a guarantee of the success of any community
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they choose to live in. Besides them there were living on the vari- ous side roads, east, around Mt. Prospect, and over Stebbens hill, about an equal number of like men. No community can fail with such an array of noble men in it; and Lancaster was not to fail. There was before her a splendid future, in which she was deserving of prosperity and the happiness of her citizens. The steady efforts and patient endurance of those men began to tell for the better soon after 1830, since which time plenty has rewarded the efforts of every industrious and honest member of the community. The vol- ume of produce was rapidly increased, and of course an increased amount of business was done by the various traders. So great was the increase of business that the town for the first time in its his- tory, began to feel the need of a bank of exchange and deposit; and accordingly one was established in 1832, opening for business July 1, 1833, in the house of Gen. John Wilson at the north end of Main street. The demands upon it must have been considerable, for its capital was $50,000. For a full account of this and other banking ventures the reader is referred to Part II, Chapter VIII.
With the increase of population to 1, 187, in 1830, and the im- proved condition of the roads, business rapidly expanded. With better roads communication with the outside world was easier. While only a few years before it took nearly five days to reach Bos- ton, Mass., by stage, the same journey could be made in two days in 1840.
In 1838 the business, political, and intellectual interests of the town seemed to justify the establishment of a newspaper, and ac- cordingly a few of the leading business men backed such an enter- prise with enough capital to allow a couple of young men to offer the people a well-edited Whig newspaper, an account of which we have given in another place in this history.
While this paper served the purpose of an advertising medium, as well as a means of ministering to the intellectual wants of the commu- nity, it simply stirred up the people on political lines. The staunch and earnest Democrats, of whom there were many, soon started a paper of their own political creed and party-the Coos County Democrat. Those two newspapers were ably edited; they had to be to meet the approval and patronage of an intelligent class of readers. They discussed ably all the national, state, and local ques- tions in their editorials and contributed articles. Their space was about evenly divided between news items, editorials, agriculture, and literary matters, leaving nearly a third of the papers filled with ad- vertisements of all sorts of things.
In those days there was more leisure time in the average life of the population than there is in the present. That leisure was due to the fact that there was vastly less to take up the time, interest,
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A TRANSITION PERIOD.
and attention of people than now. The intelligent and moral class devoted their leisure to reading and social visiting, from which there resulted a vast amount of information on a variety of subjects and a degree of sociability that does not now exist. To any student of history it goes without argument that there was a higher degree of originality, and a stronger personality in the men of that day than there is at the present time; not that we know less, but that we know few things so thoroughly as those forefathers did. There was nothing in the life of that time corresponding to what we call the " machinery" of our modern political, ecclesiastical, and educational organization. I do not wish to be understood as advocating the pessimistic notion that the men of the present are degenerating, that they are bundles of vice and trickery, while the men of fifty years ago were faultless, or nearly so. These differences are relative and are the characteristics of the peculiar stages through which society is passing in its normal evolution, and is due to well-understood laws, now that sociology has become a tolerably exact science. Society has its infancy of puerility; its youth, characterized by a spirit of adolescence ; its maturity, characterized by virility ; and its old age, characterized by senility. They who would be leaders in the affairs of the community would do well, therefore, to give due heed to " Rohmer's law of parties." Society is never a yielding mass of humanity that will stay long molded in any arbitrary form under the powerful touch of a leader.
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