History of Lancaster, New Hampshire, Part 3

Author: Somers, A. N. (Amos Newton)
Publication date: 1899
Publisher: Concord, N.H., Rumford press
Number of Pages: 753

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It does not appear that there was ever any conflict between the whites and the Indians in the limits of Lancaster. It never became necessary to erect a garrison, or fortify the houses against the Indians. Not even during the Revolutionary War did the Indians commit any depredations upon the settlers in Lancaster, while in other places they were a source of much danger and annoyance. There were frequent alarms spread through this and other settlements, and on several occasions the little bands of brave men and women were brought to the resolution to quit the country when some one of more courage than the rest would shame, or persuade, them into remain- ing. The most important reminders of the Indian occupants, or rather claimants, of this territory, are the names they gave to the country, its streams and mountains, animals and plants; and yet these have been almost supplanted by names given by the white settlers. The Anglo-Saxon has but little regard for aboriginal names. His apt imagination and self-assurance lead him to invent and apply names to localities with an aptitude never quite equalled by the American Indians. His new names supplant the aboriginal ones so readily as to cause them to be almost forgotten in a single decade. Such was the case in Lancaster. When the whites did attempt to preserve and use the Indian names they corrupted their spelling and pronunciation so as to completely change them. The Indians gave the name of " Coo-ash-auke," to the meadows at. Haverhill and Lancaster. As their names always had some definite meaning there has been a difference of interpretation of this name. A very early interpretation of " Coo-ash-auke," and one very gener- ally accepted by the earlier writers, is " the-crooked-place." This meaning had the very plausible facts of the great bends or "ox- bows " and " cat-bows " as they were called, to sustain it.

To that class of interpreters the terms of " Lower " and " Upper Coös," soon came to mean the lower and upper bends in the river. The similarity of the bends in the river and the fact that they were early known as "Lower," and "Upper Coös," was taken to mean lower and upper bends, or " crooked-places" to follow the Indian idiom. A later interpretation of "Coo-ash-auke" gives it the

ORIGINAL TOWN POCKETBOOK.

LANCASTER.

equally possible meaning of " Pine-tree-place," or place of pines. That these intervales were covered with giant pines to the river's edge admits of no doubt. It has been asked,-"Were there not pines all along the rivers? "

There were, and the evidences of it remain to this day. I do not attempt to settle this mooted question. The reader must do that for himself until we have a final authority to which we can appeal, if such is possible.

This name has been greatly corrupted in the spelling. What seems to have been the first corruption of " Coo-ash-auke " was " Cowasse." Later this was shortened into "Cowass; " then the spelling was changed to "Kohass;" still later we meet with "Cohas," "Coas," "Cohos," "Cohoss," "Cooss," "Coo-ash," and finally shortened down to " Coös," which we cannot help regarding as a mistake. Either "Cohos" or "Co-ash" would have been a more euphonious sound than our present " Coös."

The name given to the Connecticut river was " Quinne-attuck- auke "-the long-deer-place-from which our form of spelling was easily derived. Our Isreals river they called "Siwoog-a-nock," the meaning of which seems to have been lost at a very early date. The present name is in honor of one Isreal Glines, as before stated, who hunted and trapped on the stream at a very early period. He had his camp on the stream for some time while his brother John had a camp on the present John's river running through Whitefield and Dalton. As near as can now be ascertained at this time they were here some time between 1740 and 1752. When John Stark was captured by the St. Francis Indians on Baker's river in 1752, and carried to Canada along the Connecticut river trail, he relates that they camped on Johns river and hunted beaver, indicating that the name had attached to the stream long enough to have become known to him before the time of his capture.

The Indian name of the Ammonoosuc river was "Namoas-auke," -" Fish-place." The change to our present form of spelling was a simple one.

The spruce they called "hackmatack," larch was " tamarack," and mountain ash, " moose-missic." These names were retained by the whites for a time until they became familiar with the com- mon names of the trees, when their Indian names were dropped. The same was no doubt true of many other names of things.

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SETTLEMENT OF LANCASTER.

Lancaster was settled by a company of people from Massachu- setts in the year 1763, instead of the petitioners of the governor and Assembly from the older settlements in the southern part of the province of New Hampshire. For more than a decade Governor Wentworth and the Assembly had been urged by New Hampshire men to open up the "Cohoss Country" to settlement. The gov- ernor was, indeed, willing to grant their requests, but the Assembly would not agree with him in his policy of granting new townships so far beyond the frontier settlements.

As early as 1748, Governor Wentworth, in the spirit of avarice, which was one of his chief characteristics, began his policy of grant- ing charters for new towns on both sides of the Connecticut river. His grants of charters were so numerous that soon there were not enough actual settlers to occupy the new townships, which led to speculation in the lands of the towns by absentee holders of rights in many of them. Such was the case in Lancaster, as we shall see later; and it was a source of no small trouble to many of the actual settlers whose burdens were often greatly enhanced by the failure of non-resident landholders to develop their lands, and bear an equitable share of the burdens of taxation, as we shall see in the course of this narrative.

The active ones among the original proprietors and settlers of Lancaster were Massachusetts men. Some were interested in the scheme of settlement in the hope of gaining lands upon which to build homes for themselves and their children, while others were merely speculative holders of lands from which they hoped to reap a rich gain as the community should become prosperous. The land was a gift, costing nothing in the first disposal of it, and the conditions upon which it was to be held were so easily complied with that it invited speculation.

The leading spirit among the first settlers was David Page of Petersham, Massachusetts. He was, in 1761, a grantee of Haver- hill, where he was assigned several lots, none of which suited him. He abandoned his rights in that town and returned to his former home in Massachusetts to brood over his fancied wrongs in the allotment of the fertile lands of "Cohoss Meadows," as the place was then called. Page was a real pioneer, and had come to enter- tain hopes of identifying himself with some prosperous new town. Perhaps he was not without an ambition to promote and maintain his importance to such new community, for we find that for some reason he became known as " Governor Page," an epithet that must

THE SETTLEMENT OF LANCASTER.

have been bestowed upon him because a natural leader among the proprietors and settlers.

There was residing in Petersham a young man by the name of Emmons Stockwell, who was, in some way, connected with Rogers's Rangers in that famous raid upon the village of St. Francis, which crushed the power of the French and Indians in the northern section, and made it safe to undertake the planting of new settle- ments so far from the garrisoned ones farther south.

It is probable that young Stockwell was in the company that had been sent from Crown Point to convey provisions to the mouth of the upper Ammonoosuc river for the relief of Rogers's men on their return from St. Francis. In that event he would have marched up to Fort Wentworth and returned along the Connecticut river, afford- ing him a good chance to see the advantages offered in the " Upper Cohoss."

At all events, the knowledge young Stockwell had of this section of country, so rich in fine meadow and uplands, fine streams and abundant timber, served to make him a valuable assistant to David Page in founding the town of Lancaster. Procuring a charter from Governor Wentworth, in company with sixty-nine others, the next year after abandoning his claims in Haverhill, David Page sent his son, David Page, Jr., and Emmons Stockwell, who acted in the capacity of guide, to the "Upper Coös," in the latter part of the summer of 1763. It was the intention of David Page that these two young men should select good lots of land, and erect some sort of shelter against his coming, early the following spring. These two young men blazed a track from Haverhill to Lancaster, as they proceeded through the dense forests, for the guidance of those who should follow them the next spring.

They pitched on the table-lands on the rear of the Holton home- stead, where the " cellar-hole " of their house is still to be seen. They built here, of logs, the first house occupied by white men in town. This house remained for many years, and was pulled down by Mr. Holton, within the memory of many persons now living. He also dug up a large tree near it, that was its " shade," and beneath which the first weary settlers rested, and the first children born in town used to play.

They subsisted by hunting and fishing through their first winter, which must have been a lonely and long one for them, separated by fifty miles from the nearest settlement at Haverhill. They were no doubt cheered by the hope that their friends would join them in the spring; and in this they were not disappointed, for on the 19th of April, 1764, David Page, in company with Edwards Bucknam, Timothy Nash, and George Wheeler, landed here, bringing with them twenty head of cattle, and other things essential to the hard

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

task of winning a livelihood from an untamed region. David Page is the only one of the first settlers who brought a family, or portions of their families, here that year. His daughter, Ruth, came with. him from Petersham, Mass., in August, arriving here on the 26th of that month, to enjoy the distinction of being the first white woman to set foot upon the soil of her father's new township. The wife of David Page came here at some subsequent time, of which we have no exact knowledge. It has been often said that she did not reside in Lancaster, but that is evidently not true, as there are in existence letters of the year 1782, that refer to her departure from Lancaster, her passage down the Connecticut river in a canoe, and her resi- dence and death at Winchester. (Whether Winchester, N. H., or Winchester in Massachusetts, is not certain, though the former is probably the one meant.) *

Ruth Page was only about eighteen years of age when she started with her father for Lancaster, over three hundred miles away, and some fifty miles beyond the nearest settlement. The fact that within a year of her arrival in Lancaster she became the wife of young Stockwell, lends color to the supposition that she must have known and entertained a warm affection for him. At all events, she would hear no arguments against her undertaking so long a journey, and leaving behind her all the benefits of civilized life, for life in a cabin in the wilderness. Be that as it may, her presence and in- fluence did much for the settlement. She and Edwards Bucknam, who came with her father in the spring, did more to give shape and character to the settlement than any, or all others, of the first settlers. She was the embodiment of all female qualities essential to pioneer life; and she left her characteristics and personality stamped, not only upon her own descendants, who were numerous, but upon the entire settlement. She was a woman of action, full of courage and hope. With a determination that knew no such word as fail, she filled the hours and days so full of toil and song, that there was no time to be lonesome. Her example had a wonderful influence upon the other members of the settlement.

While Ruth Page was a source of inspiration and cheerfulness to the settlement, Edwards Bucknam was, in his sphere, the most uni- versal genius of the settlement. There was little, if indeed anything, that needed doing in a new settlement that Bucknam could not, and did not, do. No other man, at any time in the history of the town, has exerted so powerful an influence as he did. He adapted him- self to his situation in a masterly manner, helping, in many ways, the prosperity of the new settlement. He kept the first stock of

* In "Hammond's Town Papers," Vol. XII, pp. 351-361, is found a petition from David Page to Governor Wentworth, for more land, in which he alleges that he brought his own family to Lancaster. His will is dated at Lancaster, in the county of Grafton, state of New Hampshire, November 13, 1778, in which he refers to himself " of Lan- caster."

THE SETTLEMENT OF LANCASTER.

goods for barter among the settlers; surveyed their lands: acted as clerk to the proprietors, and later for the town; was the first justice of the peace; acted as scout in times when the Indians threatened the peace of the settlement; built the first roads that allowed the passage of loaded teams from Haverhill to Lancaster; was a safe and constant advisor of his neighbors on all manner of subjects, and at all times. He was often unmindful of opportunities for self- advancement and gain when he could serve his neighbors. He was always trusted by his neighbors as one of the most reliable of men, nor was their confidence ever imposed upon. His public actions and neighborly relations were always above criticism. Of his early life little is known beyond the fact that he was born in Athol, Mass., June 21, 1741, of English parentage ; and that he married Susannah Page, a daughter of David Page. Until the time of his death, March 20th, 1813, at the age of 72, his life bore relations to about every- thing in the history of Lancaster, as we shall see in the progress of our narrative. Until Parson Willard arrived, he performed all the marriage ceremonies of the town and region.

Not so much can be said of David Page, although the real pro- jector and founder of the settlement. While he possessed, in a large measure, the spirit of the pioneer, he was not destined to be the masterly personality that should stamp itself upon the settle- ment. His time was, more or less, divided between interests here and in Petersham, Mass., where he owned a farm, which he, how- ever, sold to Charles Ward Apthorpe of Bloomingdale Island, N. Y., a speculator, to whom he also sold ten full rights of land in Lan- caster in 1766. Page was badly involved in debt most of the time, and often drawn into litigation. His business transactions seem to have not always been either wise or fair. Be that as it may, he never seemed to have become the controlling spirit he desired to be in the settlement. His five children, however, as well as his brother and a nephew, held honest places in the town, and were among the most trustworthy of its citizens. David Page was the owner of much land in Lancaster, and Lunenburg, Vt., in the chartering of which latter town he was also concerned. He is credited with hav- ing built the first frame house in Lancaster. Certainly he was an enterprising man, full of business ventures, and not without the refinements and social graces of his time. His services to Lancaster were valuable, even if his personality was not accepted as the con- trolling spirit among the settlers. He was a selectman from 1769 until 1776. He was designated and given power in the charter to call the first meeting and preside as moderator. The proprietors' records having been lost in the burning of Edwards Bucknam's house, we have no knowledge of what relation he sustained to the settlement previous to 1769.

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

Timothy Nash and George Wheeler seem to have never come into any prominence in the settlement. The former did, however, discover the old Indian pass through the White Mountains, now known as the " White Mountain Notch," in the year 1771, while on a hunting trip. Having tracked a moose up one of the rivulets he was led near the highest point of land, and eagerly climbed a tree for a longer view of the rocky defile. Satisfied that he had dis- covered the pass affording the shortest route to Portland he confided his discovery to a hunter by the name of Sawyer. These two soon appeared before Governor Wentworth and made known to him the discovery ; and in his spirit of liberality the governor rewarded them by the grant of a tract of land since known as "Nash and Sawyer's Location." In this manner, Timothy Nash has left a memorial of himself for all time. Wheeler appears only a few times on the records of the town, or its landholders, and then as a common laborer, or renter of the lands of others. He held a lease on a certain portion of the famous "Cat-Bow" tract in the southern part of the town in consideration of having cleared the land, after which he disappears from the notice of both public and private records so far as we can learn.

Such were the first little band of settlers who broke the primeval forest, and tamed the soil, and were the nucleus of a town peculiar in its situation and history for more than a century.

In addition to what young Page and Emmons Stockwell did through the winter of 1763 in clearing land, the settlers were able to plant a crop of twelve acres of corn the first season on the meadows. Their corn did well, and promised an abundant crop until on the night of August 26th, when a frost killed it. They report that this first crop raised in town "stood twelve feet high, was eared out, and in the milk" on that date. This was to them the greatest dis- couragement that ever befell the little company. There seemed nothing left for them to do but to abandon the place. Their entire. dependence for bread was swept away in a single night; and the season was too far spent to hope to retrieve their losses by planting any other crops that year.

It happened that on the day preceding this destructive frost, David Page had returned from Petersham accompanied by his resolute daughter, Ruth, then a girl of about eighteen years of age. She proved to be of inestimable value to the disheartened settlers. After all hands had agreed to abandon the place she refused to accede to their judgment, and begged them to remain and try again to make good their determination to establish a community of their own. Half persuaded, half ashamed of their timidity in the presence of that brave girl who had given up so much to share their lot with them, they reluctantly agreed to risk their all and remain another year.

THE SETTLEMENT OF LANCASTER.

But for the earnest pleadings of that girl against the judgment and fears of the six men comprising the settlement, the history of the "Upper Coös" would have been a different story than the narrative we shall trace through more than a century and a quarter.

Knowing that great hardships were in waiting for them through a long winter, they gave themselves resolutely to the task of wresting a living from the forests. They managed, however, to subsist on game together with such roots and berries as they found palatable. One can scarcely imagine a company of people going into one of our long winters, more than fifty miles from the nearest settlement, without the semblance of food in their cabins, and forced to rely upon the flesh of wild animals from day to day for subsistence. Young Page and Stockwell had, however, demonstrated the possibility of such a thing by subsisting for nearly a year in that manner. They were re-enforced by Edwards Bucknam, who, if he was not then, afterwards became, one of the most expert moose-hunters in this region. Nash, too, must have been something of a hunter and adventurer, for we find him chasing moose in the "White Mountain Notch " in 1771.

Fortunately for the settlers that winter this region abounded in moose, and other game and fur-bearing animals. Then the streams abounded in fish of the best quality, easily taken in the spring. The Connecticut river then teemed with salmon every spring, and the settlers soon came to look to it as a source of supply in meat. The fine flavor of the salmon must have afforded them a pleasant change from moose and bear meat to which they would be confined for the greater part of the year.

We must not forget, however, that David Page brought with him in April, twenty head of stock, and during the summer added twenty more. They must have had milk in abundance; and in case of necessity could have dressed and eaten their cattle. The only wonder is, how they subsisted so long on a flesh diet without bread or vegetables. They were probably but little worse off than other settlers in the nearest settlements, as the great frost extended as far south as Massachusetts.

Their cattle wintered well and everything assumed a promising aspect in the spring of 1765. They planted again, but reaped a scanty harvest, that, and the succeeding year; but the next year, their fourth year of effort was crowned by a most abundant harvest. From then to the present time no season has passed that has not yielded enough to feed the people. Some seasons, as we shall see later, were less bountiful than others in the yield of certain crops; but as soon as the people learned to raise a variety of crops, and not trust their all upon a single one, the period of want and uncer- tainty was passed.

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

Some supplies were brought from Haverhill and Newbury, Vt., during the first decade. The settlers managed to get along for some twenty years without a mill for grinding their grain. They relied upon the use of the pestle and mortar during that time. The mortar was made of a log of hard wood some three feet long, one end of which was hollowed out, and into which the grain would be poured, and beaten with a pestle, which was sometimes of stone, but often of wood, mounted on a spring-pole, either in the yard or one corner of the kitchen. The corn was sometimes hulled by soaking until the hull would burst, when by drying it could easily be separated from the kernels.

Sometimes the corn was mixed with beans, or rye, or perhaps both. This mixture was called samp, and was boiled after which it was sometimes baked. It has been thought that this dish was one the whites learned from the Indians the process of making. That may be true; but all men living under the same circumstances will do similar things. Our ancestors were more inventive than the Indians, and would have worked their way through difficulties more rapidly. The Anglo-Saxon race never fails to adapt itself to any conditions under which it must live and work out its destiny. These first settlers of Lancaster were a striking proof of this claim. We may regard their coarse and simple fare with surprise and feel a pity for them; but it was one best calculated to fit them to their labors. They derived from it the muscular energy that enabled them to perform most herculean tasks; and they were a healthy class of people because of their simple life. Their coarse and simple food, regular exercise in daily employments and outdoor life, kept them well and strong. For many years the majority of the people lived in log houses, often far from comfortable in their appointments.

The year 1765 was spent by the little company of settlers in enlarging their clearing and building more cabins for the shelter of their band. During that year Emmons Stockwell and Ruth Page were married. They rode all the way to Walpole, N. H., in order to find some one authorized to solemnize a marriage.

Upon their return Stockwell erected a log cabin on his land which adjoined that of Page on which the first clearing was made. He was a prosperous pioneer, honest, industrious, and frugal, and in every way worthy of the noble wife who was the mother of his fif- teen children. They both lived to a great age, and long enough to see the little settlement grown into a prosperous community. After some years they built a frame house to take the place of their log cabin. That little house is still standing as the L part of the present house on the Stockwell farm, and is the oldest frame build- ing in town.

It was out of a window of this building that Ruth Stockwell

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THE SETTLEMENT OF LANCASTER.

shot a bear one day. Hearing a great noise and commotion among the domestic animals she opened the door and looked out in time to see a large bear prowling about in the yard. She shut the door, took up a loaded gun, and raising the window fired at the bear, severely wounding him. The report of the gun attracted her hus- band from the fields to the house to see what the matter was. Mr. Stockwell finished the bear with a club. Ruth Stockwell's courage never failed her, nor was she ever slow to take every advantage in a difficult situation. Often when her husband was absent she would have sudden and unannounced calls from roving bands of Indians, who would call for food, or to warm themselves beside her hearth ; but never did her suspicions of them give way to alarm, or cause her to show signs of fear. In her treatment of them she was always kind but firm. If they insisted on remaining through the night she allowed them to do so; but she required them to give up to her all their weapons which she put away for safe keeping until they were ready to leave, when she would hand them back to their owners, who always departed in peace. Even during the War of the Revo- lution when Mr. Stockwell was away on duty as a scout, these bands of Indians would continue to call at the Stockwell home, sometimes for powwows and dances, often making free use of liquors, but never did they forget the kindness of their host and his brave wife. The British used every means to induce the Indians to harass the frontier settlements ; but not once through the whole long and bitter struggle was the defenceless settlement at Lancaster disturbed. It is creditable to the memory of those noble men and women, that in all those turbulent times they never treated the Indians unkindly, and in turn the Indians refrained from harming them. Justice and mercy will win the good will of even a savage. Thus the sense of justice and humanity in the conduct of these pioneers averted all dangers of attack from the savages.

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History of Lancaster, New Hampshire, Part 3

Author: Somers, A. N. (Amos Newton) Publication date: 1899 Publisher: Concord, N.H., Rumford press Number of Pages: 753

Author: Somers, A. N. (Amos Newton)
Publication date: 1899
Publisher: Concord, N.H., Rumford press
Number of Pages: 753