History of Lancaster, New Hampshire, Part 4

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

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From the earliest years of the settlement, bands of Indians wan- dered through Lancaster, hunting and stopping to traffic with the white settlers. Emmons Stockwell, David Page, and Edwards Bucknam carried on quite a trade with the Indians by which they accumulated considerable stocks of furs which they traded for sup- plies. Among the private papers of Edwards Bucknam, who administered upon the estate of David Page, I find a letter and bill consigning to Page a stock of goods for such traffic :

" Boston, January, 1767.

6. Mr. David Page, Sir-

Agreeable to our conversation I have sent the goods I talked of, of which you have an Invt. to be sold on my account & Risque. I hope they may sell well among the Indians, & you will take care to send me down to Boston the Neat

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

Produce of them in Beaver skins as Early in the Spring as possible After deduct- ing charges for certain commissions etc.

yr Most Hble Servt. W. Molineaux."

The inventory referred to in Molineaux's letter is this :

" Invt. of Sundry good Delivered to Mr. Saml Jennison to cart to Lancaster in New Hampshire directed for Mr. David Page of Lancaster & these to be sold by him to the Indians & to Receive Beaver in Return on the Propper Risque of W. Molineaux. Mercht in Boston.

I grind stone

I Doz. Scythes

· .

I Doz. Sickles

· 16 :

I Doz. Wood Axes

I 9

: o.

3 : IO :

IO ·

: 17

5 .

£41 : 17

: 3.

Errors Excepted

W. Molineaux."

Lawful money Boston January 1767.

£ o

sh.

I Bagg Flints for guns

IO M. 10ª Nails, at 7/

I Whole Barr,1 Gun Powder

I Cask for do.

I Barr,1 Rum, 96 gal. at 1/9

3 Barr,1ª for Do.

I Pr. Indian Blanketing

I Pe. 30 yards Half thick

2 Russian Saw bans 166

I Barr English steel 16/

o. 8. o.

One may well doubt whether Page ever sold the grindstone or any scythes to the Indians; but the blanketing, rum, lead, and powder no doubt found ready conversion into their market value of beaver skins and other furs. Furs were abundant, and large packs of them were carried out on horseback during the first few years, and later " carted " down the Connecticut river on the ice. There were no wagon roads to the Upper Coös when the goods, above referred to, were " delivered to Saml. Jennison to be carted to Lan- caster," for as late as February, 1768, we find the Provincial Assembly dealing with a petition from David Page and others for a road to Upper Coos [Provincial Papers, Vol. 7, pp. 151, 152, 195, 266, and 313].

At the time referred to the settlers used a sort of sled called a " car " for transporting goods on the snow and ice. It was made of two long poles dressed thin enough at a particular distance from the butt ends to allow the slender ends to bend up and answer for shafts by which the vehicle was drawn by a horse. Knees and cross-bars bored into the portion of poles resting upon the surface,

5 Barrs Lead

THE SETTLEMENT OF LANCASTER.

allowed the load to be adjusted high enough to pass over ordinary obstruction met with on the ice. In this way large loads were drawn with considerable ease and dispatch. This style of car was not peculiar to Lancaster, nor to the period of its settlement. It had been used by all the early settlers in different parts of the country as early as 1630. It is still in use in the mountainous sections of the Virginias, and possibly throughout the whole Alleghany Moun- tain regions. These early settlers were full of resources. They could surmount almost any difficulties liable to be met with in their wild surroundings.

Edwards Bucknam who came here in the employment of David Page, and worked for him some years, married his daughter, Susannah, and located at the mouth of Beaver brook. Just when he built his log cabin there is not known; but there he lived through- out the remainder of his eventful life, and near the site of his first house he lies buried in a grave that has long been unmarked, but over which his grandson, Edward F. Bucknam, is now erecting a suitable monument. There his ten children were born. There seem to be some discrepancies in regard to General Bucknam's children. Tradition has it that he only had six children, two sons and four daughters; but the record of births in his family as found in volume I, p. 189, gives the names and dates of birth of ten chil- dren, three sons and seven daughters, as follows :

" Eunice, born June 4th, 1767.

July 22d, 1769.

Mary, Soffia, Feb. 13, 1771, died Nov. 16, 1771.

Lydia,

Nov. 5, 1772.

Susanna,

Nov. 5, 1774, died April 7, 1776.

Susanna (2d), 66 Feb. 7, 1777.

Edwards, 66 Feb. 15, 1780.

Grove, Jan. 12, 1783, died April 13, 1783.

Sally, May 22, 1784.

George, Sept. 27, 1786."

It is also claimed by some that Eunice Bucknam was the first white child born in Lancaster. This claim is not true, for we have a reliable record of the birth of Emmons Stockwell's children that shows that the distinction of being the first white child born in Lan- caster belongs to Polly Stockwell, born December 25, 1765. From a family record in the possession of A. P. Freeman, son of Betsey Stockwell, the eleventh child of Emmons and Ruth Stockwell, I take the following facts :

" Children of Emmons and Ruth Stockwell :

Polly, born Dec. 25, 1765.

Sally, " April 27, 1768.

David, " July 7, 1769.

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

Charlotte, born Oct. 24, 1770.

Dolly,

Sept. 2, 1772.

Ephraim,

Oct. 25, 1774.

Liberty,

Aug. 27, 1776.

Ruth, 66 Sept. 21, 1778.

Emmons,

Oct. 11, 1780.

Phebe,

Oct 14, 1782.

Betsey,

June 18, 1784.

Samuel,

May 27, 1786,

William,

Feb. 17, 1788.

John,

Dec. 25, 1790.

Mary, 66

April.4, 1792."

These two records are authentic and settle all points in regard to this question at issue between the descendants of these two first fami- lies. Some credit and interest always attaches to the privilege of being the first person born in a new settlement, and that certainly belongs, in this case, to Polly Stockwell, unless the tradition be true, that there being no other women in Lancaster, Ruth Stockwell went to her mo- ther in Petersham, Mass., to be confined. If that was the case, then the honor of the first birth in Lancaster goes to the family of Ed- wards Bucknam, and his daughter Eunice carries off the honors. This tradition is a plausible one, and there is no direct evidence against it. The wife and the rest of David Page's family came to Lancaster as near as we can learn about 1767. It is altogether likely that this one lone woman in a pioneer camp of a half dozen men would prefer the fatigue of a journey of more than three hundred miles to be with her mother at the time her child was born than to have remained here without any one capable of giving her the care she required at such a time. The practical good sense of the commu- nity led them to provide for such emergencies in the future by voting at the first proprietors' meeting, "To give one good Right of land to the first good Midwife that shall come and settle in Lancaster on or before the first day of next December."

That meeting was held March 10, 1767, at the dwelling house of David Page.

CHAPTER V.

THE LOCATION, SURVEY, AND ALLOTMENT OF THE TOWN LANDS-TERRI- TORIAL CONFLICT WITH THE TOWN OF STONINGTON-RE-LOCATION OF BOUNDARIES-RENEWAL OF THE CHARTER-FINAL ALLOTMENT AND DIS- TRIBUTION OF LANDS, AND SETTLEMENT OF CONFLICTING CLAIMS TO TITLES.

Some time between the actual settlement of the town and the first proprietors' meeting we have any knowledge of, March 10, 1767, the discovery had been made that Page, Stockwell, and Bucknam

- -- - --

LOCATION, SURVEY, AND ALLOTMENT OF TOWN LANDS.

had located on territory covered by the charter of Stonington. Although it does not seem that the grantees of Stonington had taken any' action at that time to dispossess these settlers, they became deeply concerned over the possible danger of losing the homes they had sacrificed so much to establish. They made it a matter of public action.

David Page, who had no doubt been the real discoverer of their mistake, was authorized by the vote of that meeting to " change the boundaries of the town," and was voted, also, a compensation of one dollar on each right for his services in that undertaking. Not satis- fied with the results of their own change of the location of the bounds, they sent to Portsmouth in 1769 and had Lieut. Joshua Tol- ford, son of John Tolford, one of the proprietors, come up and survey the town, hoping no doubt to give his survey the weight of the governmental sanction, as he was one of the governor's deputy surveyors-general. Tolford seems to have run on the same lines that Page located two years before, and gave entire satisfaction to the proprietors. He laid out the town plot provided for in the charter, and also the first and second divisions of the town lands. These divisions consisted of twenty-acre meadow lots, and fifty-acre house lots lying contiguous to them on the first elevation of the hill- lands. The town plot consisted of seventy one-acre lots lying along both sides of a street four rods wide, beginning at a point about where E. V. Cobleigh's house stands on Prospect street and running east to the second bend in Isreals river, near the dam of the old paper mill. The design was that every proprietor should build his house on one of these lots which were disposed of by " draft" in the same manner that the first and second divisions had been. Just what disposition was ever made of this allotment is not so clear. The plan laid down for them by Governor Wentworth to form a vil- lage community, after the old system that had prevailed in England some centuries before that time, did not seem to meet the approval of the hardy pioneers. So far as we know anything of the original proprietors or actual settlers, they built their houses upon their sev- eral " house-lots." There is no doubt that the "town plot " was a failure, for we soon discover that the town bought six of those lots for their "meeting-house lot" on the western end of the street. There is no evidence that there was ever a street opened and used there until the present Pleasant street was laid out in 1860, easterly from the Meeting House common.

Tolford's survey was laid before the governor, but just what action, if any, he ever took upon the matter is not known. It may be inferred, however, that he did nothing about it at the time, for the governor then was John Wentworth, a nephew of Benning Went- worth, who had granted the charter, and who, if he had then been

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

in office, would no doubt have given his Lancaster friends what they asked for. The new governor seems to have hesitated, or to have had more conscience than his old uncle, and the unsettled question was left for the future to take care of. The proprietors were kept in a troubled state of mind over their territorial limits for a considerable time. They had taken action upon the matter in 1766, 1767, 1769, and again in 1773. The towns of Woodbury, Cockburn, Coleburn, and Stonington, now regranted as Northum- berland, were as greatly disturbed, for if Lancaster was to hold the territory she claimed, it would either rob Northumberland of three fourths of her best lands or compel her to move up the river upon territory granted to Cockburn in 1770, and renew her territorial conflicts with that town.

At the proprietors' meeting, August 26, 1773, the location of ten rights bought up by Charles Ward Apthorp, a land speculator living in New York, was made, in which the proprietors recognized a possible difficulty in holding their claims. These rights were to be in the south part of the township on what is known as the Cat-Bow on Connecticut river. It was to contain the three hundred and sixty acres of meadow land in that famous tract and front two miles on the river and run back toward the eastward far enough to include ten full rights of two hundred and seventy-four acres each in a body. In granting that location this clause was inserted in the vote con- firming the location, viz. :

The grant hereby made to him (Apthorp) shall not operate to the disadvantage of the rest of the proprietors by the intervention of any foreign legal claim under color of a mistake in the boundaries of the township.

In 1769 the proprietors found that they had not quite complied with the terms of their charter, and had requested and received a renewal of it from Gov. John Wentworth. In that document refer- ence is made to a survey made under the direction of Isaac Rindge, surveyor-general of lands of the province, which survey was that of Joshua Tolford, but no change of boundary was mentioned or made in the renewed charter given below. Under this charter, which tacitly conceded the survey of Tolford as the one on which the original charter had been granted, the settlers continued to act as a body politic upon its rightful territory ; and yet they were not quite satisfied with the validity of their titles as is seen in the allot- ment of Apthorp's ten rights.

That renewed charter, under which the people tried to comfort themselves in the security of their titles, is an important document, and we give it here in full :

LOCATION, SURVEY, AND ALLOTMENT OF TOWN LANDS.

LANCASTER CHARTER RENEWED 1769.

Province of New Hampshire Lancaster extended

GEORGE the THIRD by the grace of God of Great Britain France and Ireland KING Defender of the faith and so forth.

WHEREAS we of our special grace and mere motion for the due L. S. encouragement of setling a new Plantation within our Prov : of New Hampshire in New England by our Letters Patent or Charter under the Seal of our said Province Dated the 5th day of July Annoque Domini 1763 in the Third year of our Reign ; a Tract of Land equal to six miles square bounded as therein expressed (& since surveyed admeasured, marked & ascertained by our Order to Isaac Rindge Esqr our Surveyor Gen1 of Lands for our said Province) Granted to a number of our Loyal subjects whose Names are entered on the same to hold to them their Heirs and Assigns on the Conditions therein Declared, and to be a Town Corporate by the name of Lancaster, as by reference to the said Charter may more fully appear. And whereas the said Grantees have represented to us that by the great inconveniences which occur in the Settlement of New Townships so remotely situated from any other Town- ships or Settlements that can afford any Assistance hath rendered it impracticable for the whole number of Grantees to perform that part of the condition that relates to the Cultivation of such a portion of said Grant. That there are a Con- siderable numbers of Families now resident on the Premises, which affords them hopes of a final Settlement without delay. And humbly supplicating us not to take advantage of the Breach of said Condition, but to lengthen out, and grant them some further Time for the performance thereof. NOW KNOW YE that we being willing to promote the end proposed Have of our further Grace and favour suspended our Claim of the forfeiture which the said Grantees may have incurred, and by these Presents Do Grant unto the said Grantee their Heirs and Assigns the further Term of Five Years from this Date for performing and fulfilling the Conditions, matters and things by them to be done as aforesaid .- Except the Quit Rents, which are to remain due and payable as expressed and. reserved in the Original Grant or Charter.

IN TESTIMONY whereof we have caused the Seal of our said Province to be hereunto affixed Witness John Wentworth Esqr our Governor and Commander in Chief of our aforesaid Province This 20th day of September in the 9th year of our Reign Annoque Domini 1769.

By his Excellency' Command with advice of Council

J. Wentworth.

Theodore Atkinson Secry

Proe of New Hampshire 16th Novr 1769-

Recorded according to the Original Grant under the Province Seal Pr Theodore Atkinson Secry

This renewal of the charter must have been a disappointment to the proprietors, for instead of settling their question of title it left it open to harass them in the future. For more than a quarter of a century they were concerned with this troublesome question.

The governor having failed to render the relief prayed for in the petition for a new charter on the lines of Tolford's survey, the peo- ple in their characteristic resoluteness renewed their appeals to the government for legel acknowledgment of the re-location of the town-

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

ship. At the meeting, above referred to, of August 26, 1773, the following vote was passed :

Voted that it appears to this proprietary as a matter of some uncertainty whether doubts may not arise with respect to the northerly extent of the boundaries of this township which upon a construction set up by sundry persons will deprive the whole of the settlers (one only accepted) [that one was Bucknam-Ed.] of their lands, possessions and improvements and reduce the township to very inconsider- able compass, and the proprietors laboring under very great uneasiness from the apprehension of, or expecting a calamity, do therefore request that Ammi R. Cutter, Esq., and Mr. Jacob Treadwell will be pleased to lay before his Excellency the Governor such representation upon the subject as may appear to them most proper to induce his Excellency to grant to the proprietors an explanatory charter ascertaining the limits of the said township as the same as was actually surveyed by Joshua Tolford and is now allotted to the proprietors and possessed and enjoyed by the inhabitants.

There were residing in Portsmouth and vicinity a number of the most influential among the proprietors, friends of the Wentworths, like Matthew Thornton, Esq., Maj. John Tolford, Andrew Wiggin, Esq., Meshech Weare, Esq., Hon. Joseph Newmarsh, Esq., Nathaniel Barrel, Esq., Daniel Warner, Esq., James Nevins, Esq., and Rev. Joshua Wingate Weeks. These no doubt pressed the claims of Lancaster, and the governor yielded to the pleadings of a letter from Jacob Treadwell and confirmed the survey of Tolford, by which he had only to crowd Northumberland further up the river in order to give it its full territory as set forth in the charter thereof. He did not re-issue any of these charters, but simply ordered Northum- berland and the towns above it to move up the river and readjust their limits.

This arrangement seemed to settle matters for a time, and in 1787 the proprietors felt sufficiently satisfied in their titles to vote for a final survey and allotment of the unappropriated lands of the town. They accordingly set Jonas Baker, who had become something of a land surveyor by that time, to work to divide these lands into what they called one-hundred-acre lots, or the third division. Of these . there were to be one hundred and forty, two each for every pro- prietor, but did not include the rights that had been previously bought by Apthorp. This division included a right each to schools, glebe, and meeting-house. It was found, after all these claims had been satisfied, that twelve full lots and many gores of irregular size still remained untaken. The proprietors voted :

Any one holding a right of land in the town of Lancaster may pitch his share on any unoccupied lands, and have the same surveyed by a sworn surveyor, have a plan and description made of it and have the same recorded by the proprietors' clerk in the proprietors' records, and he shall hold the same forever.

These lands were eagerly sought for. Some persons fared well in their choice, but many were dissatisfied with what was left for

- ---- --

LOCATION, SURVEY, AND ALLOTMENT OF TOWN LOTS.

them, and portions of these gores were never located, and possibly remain unlocated to-day, but not unclaimed.

The proprietors were generous in their gifts or appropriations of the lands of their township. They wisely set apart for mills a strip of land two rods wide on both sides of Isreals river from the head of the island, just below Main Street bridge, to the second bend of the river, where the Paper Mill dam now is, the rental of which was to go for the support of schools. These lands were later rented to different persons at the nominal rental of one pint of wheat per year, if demanded, which was to be used in the support of schools. These rents, of course, being merely nominal, have never been called for by the town.

At the first proprietors' meeting, March 10, 1767, a right was set off for the first minister that should settle in the town. Another full right of land, and it was to be a " good " one, too, was voted to the " first good midwife that shall come and settle in Lancaster on or before the first day of December next." Two hundred acres were voted, at the same meeting, to David Page for building a black- smith shop and keeping tools for the same; and a half right of land to the first physician that should settle in Lunenburg or Lan- caster within one year from that date.

Of course, their only wealth was in land, of which they had more than they could utilize for the ordinary purposes. If they could induce professional and skilled men and women to come here and ply their arts and professions, it was wise to offer such inducements to them. It is not certainly known whether Page's blacksmith shop ever came to be a realized concern, or whether any physician or midwife ever laid claim to the bonus offered to their respective professions.

The final allotment of the lands did not allay the suspense under which the settlers rested for so many years. The claims of parties were kept alive, but seldom pressed farther than the making of sur- veys and the threats of going to law to sustain the claim of priority of title under the Stonington or Northumberland charters. The first actual settlers in Northumberland found abundant lands of a good quality and were satisfied with their situation so far as to which town they should finally be found to be living in. The fact that those upper towns laid so dangerously near the frontier infested by Indians and threatened with incursions of English and Indian soldiers, made them of comparatively little value; and the proprietors found it difficult to induce people to settle there even on the most liberal conditions.

Matters continued in this somewhat unsettled condition until the Revolutionary War broke out and diverted the interest and atten- tion of all parties to these disputes over titles. The intense anxiety 4

HISTORY OF LANCASTER.

and fear of the inhabitants of all these upper towns drew them together in a common effort to defend their homes against British invasion which was momentarily expected to take place. For a time, in the presence of a threatened danger, they suffered them- selves to ignore the old contention and stand together through twelve anxious years, during which time the little settlements were weighed in the balance. The only garrison built in this northern section was in the immediate vicinity of those towns aggrieved at Lancaster, and they were largely built and manned by Lancaster men. At such a time it was not likely that any one thought to contend with his neighbors about titles when the title of the Ameri- can people to their country was often a doubtful one.

Once the war was over and peace declared, lands were much more valuable than they had ever been before in this section of the state, and the old disputes again arose in threats of lawsuits to recover the territory once granted as Stonington. In 1790 Jonas Wilder, Edwards Bucknam, and Emmons Stockwell were appointed a committee to appear before the general court and ask for a new charter to the original grantees which should cover territory in dispute, and forever confirm the title thereof. The question hung very evenly in the balance, and there appeared no strong advo- cates for Lancaster as before when this same plea was made in 1773. Colonel Goffe, however, seems to have championed the cause of Lancaster, rather as an apology or explanation of the stupidity of Benning Wentworth in granting unsurveyed lands in an arbitrary manner certain to bring about conflicts of claims. He mentions as some of the reasons why these disputes existed-" The loose and uncertain bounds of Lancaster through the geography of the River Connecticut not being at the time of the said grants particularly known, whereby it made a material alteration in the bounds of said Lancaster, and consequently affected the lines of Dartmouth." The action upon this petition was taken at a time when the Wentworth régime had come to a close by the election of Dr. Josiah Bartlett over Joshua Wentworth as president of New Hampshire. Failing to get a new charter to confirm their claims, the people of Lancaster twice again appointed committees to lay their case before the president and general court, but to no effect. Having failed to get their rights confirmed they changed their tactics, and at a meeting in 1796 voted to employ Richard C. Everett, Esq., a young lawyer then recently settled in Lancaster, as their "Agent to act in behalf of the proprietors of Lancaster to defend any lawsuit or suits, or to commence any action or actions against any encroachments that are or may be made upon said township of Lancaster, to make any settlement of all or any dis- putes which are or may be had with adjacent towns respecting

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History of Lancaster, New Hampshire, Part 4

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