USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Lancaster > History of Lancaster, New Hampshire > Part 6
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Edwards Bucknam, Collector.
Lancaster, April 20th, 1789."
While Lancaster was diligently making public improvements with these taxes laid upon her rich acres, she was, like all other New England towns, looking after the intellectual and spiritual interests of her citizens. Of equal importance as a bridge over Isreals river was a meeting-house in which, as they said, " to worship that Being to whom we owe our existence." As early as 1786, the town had voted thirty-two dollars to be expended for preaching at the hands of a committee consisting of Maj. Jonas Wilder, Edwards Bucknam, and Lieut. Emmons Stockwell. During the next six years various sums and amounts of wheat were voted for the purpose of hiring preaching. When paid for in wheat, five bushels was the price for a " day's preaching." A day's preaching included two sermons, one of which would occur in the morning, and the other followed an intermission of an hour or more in the middle of the day, during which time the people held social intercourse or partook of refresh- ments. In 1791, active steps were taken for building a meeting- house on the old common on the hill south of Isreals river. This building, fully described in another place, was an imposing structure for its day, and two years elapsed before its completion. Like all meeting-houses in New England, those days, it served as a place of public assemblage for all occasions. The first use we have any knowledge of its being put was for holding the annual town meeting, March 11, 1794. The house was then only partially completed. Sev- eral ministers were employed for short periods, with long intervals between, from 1786 until 1794, when the town voted to unite with the church in calling the Rev. Joseph Willard, who accepted the call and became the first settled minister of the town. The town assumed the amount of his salary, and for more than a quarter of a century paid it. This expenditure the town continued to meet for some forty years, when through disaffections and divisions in church,
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45
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE TOWN.
many of its members left it to unite with other churches then being formed on the policy of a voluntary support of their ministers.
Just when the voluntary support of the church began we do not know, but after the split in the First church over the Trinitarian controversy, we find the Orthodox Congregational church appoint- ing a committee to solicit money to pay for preaching. This was in 1836. Since that time the town has made no appropriations for any church, and how long before is uncertain. Some trouble was had in the Rev. Joseph Willard's time in collecting the " minister's tax." This term has no real meaning to the younger generation, although some of the older people still call their contributions to the support of their churches " the minister's tax."
Lancaster was equally zealous in the matter of education. The first schools were, no doubt, private enterprises started by such persons who felt an interest in the education of their own and their neighbor's children. Tradition says that Ruth Stockwell, at a very early day, taught the children of the settlement in her own house. Her teaching probably only extended to instructions in the alphabet, spelling, and reading, with possibly a little attention given to numbers -the three R's which lay at the root of all learning. I have before me as I write some old letters on the blank margins and backs of which Edwards Bucknam's children made their first efforts at the use of the pen. The paper of the time was coarse and porous, making the writing of the best penmen seem mean.
Schools were maintained in both the Stockwell and the Bucknam neighborhoods as early as 1787. The Stockwell neighborhood probably had a school-house before 1789, when a Mr. Bradley taught in that section. As early as 1787, the Bucknam neighbor- hood had a school taught by one Burgin from Boston, Mass. He probably taught in some private house, and may perhaps have moved about from one house to another as some of the early teachers did in other parts of the town at a much later day.
The earliest public support we have any knowledge of the town giving for its schools was in 1790. At a special meeting held on December 13, 1790, it was "voted to raise thirty bushels of wheat including what the law directs to be laid out in schooling the present winter." The province was then governed by the laws of 1719 as regards the matter of school taxation, which was discretionary with the selectmen. I have not been able to discover any change in that law until 1792, under the constitution. In 1789, Massachusetts led all the colonies in the matter of dividing the towns into school dis- tricts. In 1791, New Hampshire towns began to follow that example, and by 1794, its merits had appealed to Lancaster people so strongly that at the March meeting of that year they appointed a committee of nine men to divide the town into school districts.
46
HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
What division they made is not known, but whatever it was, it lasted until 1814, when a new committee was appointed to redistrict the town.
The first settlers were intelligent men and women who believed in education, and not a few of them were scholarly for their times. They were liberal in the support of their schools, and ingrained in their descendants a policy of liberal support for the schools. During the first century of the town's history, its schools were the best in all this northern end of the state. Even to-day when statistics show that illiteracy in the state is on the increase because of a large increase of foreign-born population, it is decreasing in Lancaster. In matter of secondary education the town has been comparatively slow. At a time when it should have had good secondary schools it has had only tolerable ones, chiefly due to the lack of proper super- vision. The town is not, and never has been, parsimonious in the support of its schools.
Whatever defects may have been found in the schools of the town at any time within the past generation have been due to the defective system the state imposed upon its people.
In 1798, the school tax for the Bucknam district, or No. 2, was only $13.55. As this is the first school tax I have been able to dis- cover, I give it below, that the taxpayers of to-day may compare it with their own.
" School Tax of 1797-1798.
Edwards Bucknam,
$1.695 Joseph Brackett,
$ .993
John W. Brackett,
.212
Phineas Hodsdon,
.51I
Jonathan Hartwell,
. 107
William Moore,
.358
Coffin Moore,
.249 . John McIntire,
.752
Moses Page,
.742
Walter Philbrook,
.194
Edward Spaulding,
.593
William Ayres,
.394
Joseph Wilder,
.332
Nath'l White,
3.12
Peter White,
1.000
Mathew White,
.107
John Weeks,
.173
Jeremiah Wilcox,
.250
Stephen Bucknam,
. 147
William Ewen,
.127
Isaac Purdoe,
.269
Elijah Laton,
.109
Joseph Bell,
.213
Ashbell Web,
.133 = $13.355."
At the rate Master Burgin taught in that district ten years before, viz .: "$5 per month and board around," this sum would not fur- nish quite three months of school, whereas Burgin taught six months in 1787. If the schools kept open six months or more in the year the patrons of them must have found it necessary to raise consider- able funds over and above the school tax.
The first provincial and county tax collected in Lancaster, of which we have any knowledge, was collected on a warrant issued Dec. 22, 1773, for the amounts of: Province tax, one pound, two shillings, and one pound county tax, lawful money. These taxes
47
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE TOWN.
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the town continued to pay with promptness until about 1787, when it was thought that the tax bills the town received from the govern- ment were out of proportion to the advantages they received from the province, and accordingly they remonstrated with the general court in the form of a petition they made also the medium of a request for help in building roads and bridges to connect the new town with the outside world, especially with the seaports, where they must purchase their supplies and find a market for their furs and salts of lye, which were about the only articles of trade pro- duced in the settlement up to this time. They were willing to pay tax on the principle that taxes should help and not hinder the growth of a community, and they frankly told the government so. It may seem to us a small matter for the town to pay a few pounds a year in taxes, and even cause us to wonder if they did strain a point in their objections to the burden it imposed upon them. We must not forget that the general court made provisions to assist the outlying towns to build roads, but Lancaster had never received a cent to help it. The people here were left to their own resour- ces; but after a time they literally hewed their way through miles of dense forests, and had bridged, in a primitive way, it is true, some of the smaller streams, before the state came to their aid at all. The first relief they got was in the privilege to tax themselves, and recoup themselves from the persons who should afterward occupy the lands through which the roads were built. A little later the government adopted the policy of granting the public lands freely in return for the building of roads. That method led to an unjust scramble, in which much of the most valuable lands were given for very poorly constructed roads. This was not the relief to Lancaster and the other towns north of it that it was supposed it would be. The roads so built were generally out of repair in a short time because poorly built, and no provisions were made to keep them in repair. There is, then, little wonder that the poor settlers felt that they were unduly burdened by what may seem to us a small tax bill. They were getting nothing for it, at most not an adequate and just return of state aid in a task that is now no longer regarded as a local matter.
All these experiences tended to develop a spirit of self-reliance and independence in the citizens of the town.
Lancaster, for purposes of representation in the New Hampshire congress and house of representatives, was classed with other towns until 1817, when its population was large enough to entitle it to its own representative. In 1775 the town was represented by Capt. Abijah Larned of Cockburn (now Columbia), who was elected by " Apthorp, Lancaster, Northumberland, Stratford, Cockburn, Colburn, Conway, Shelburne, and other towns above." The journal
48
HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
of the house does not show that Captain Larned, though a good man and warm friend of the upper towns, did anything to further their interests. During the three following years the same class of towns were represented by Col. Joseph Whipple of Dartmouth (now Jef- ferson). He was a man of means, well known in the older towns of the province, and fully interested in the development of these new towns, as he had become a large landholder in Dartmouth. He secured legislation favorable to the towns in his class; and at sub- sequent sessions, for he served as representative five years in all, he secured assistance in the construction of the road through the White Mountain Notch, which was one of the greatest benefits to Lancas- ter and neighboring towns for many years.
It was not until 1793, however, that a Lancaster man was elected to the general court. In that year Jonas Wilder, Jr., was elected to represent Lancaster, Littleton, Dartmouth, and Dalton. As the class of towns became smaller it gave the representative a greater chance to promote the interest of his own town. In 1796, Col. Richard C. Everett, the first lawyer to settle in the practice of his profession in Lancaster was elected to represent the same class of towns. The town found in him an able servant, one entirely in sympathy with, and fully interested in, the prosperity of the town, for he was already engaged in various enterprises here beside his profession. He was a man of considerable means, a recent graduate from Dartmouth college, and of an active and pleasing manner. The records of the house show that he labored faithfully to bring his town into the favorable notice of the state. He did much to convince the repre- sentatives of the older towns in the southern portions of the state that Lancaster was a town with a future and destiny that its inhabi- tants could well feel proud of. The time had not come, however, for Lancaster to ask and receive the recognition she deserved. For the whole period of the Revolutionary War, the people of all sec- tions had learned to make sacrifices of their own interests for the common good and safety, await the coming of a time of safety and prosperity in which to take up their own interests and problems for adjustment in the forum of politics. The only politics they had known and practised during that period and trial of their strength against one of the strongest nations in all the world, was patriotism, a patriotism in which self-interest sunk out of sight in the common effort to promote only the general interests of the whole country.
Beginning in 1790, and continuing until 1803, there was a deter- mined effort to induce the general court to erect a new county out of these northern towns, and to include Conway beyond the White Mountains on the east. In 1790 the selectmen of Lancaster and Northumberland drew up and signed a petition to the general court, which convened that year in Concord, praying that these
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THE ORGANIZATION OF THE TOWN.
northern towns, with Conway, be set off into a new county by the name of Coös, In that petition they say :
"That our located situation in the northern part of the state is such, that it will be particularly beneficial for us, to have Conway and adjacent towns annexed to us, in the formation of the northerly county in said state, not only on account of the occupancy and improvement of our most advantageous road to seaport, but in order to promote Emigration, and agriculture in this fertile and healthy teri- tory ; the promotion of which we humbly conceive will be of publick utility and the state to which we owe our allegiance, will receive emolument in proportion to the opulency of this part of the state."
This petition failed to influence the legislature to take favorable action for the relief of the petitioners although signed by the select- men of the two towns named above. Edwards Bucknam, Emmons Stockwell, and Francis Willson signed it on the part of Lancaster, and Joseph Peverly and Jeremiah Eames signed as selectmen of Northumberland, and Elijah Hinman and James Brown signed as selectmen for Stratford.
The failure did not discourage the resolute people, for we find them sending up another petition from Lancaster the next year signed by forty-seven men, who probably comprised the leading taxpayers of the town at the time. That petition is so character- istic of the people of the Lancaster of that day that I cannot pass it by, but insert it in full :
PETITION FOR A NEW COUNTY.
" To the Honorable the General Court of the State of New Hampshire
The Petition of the Inhabitants of Lancaster in the County of Grafton, Humbly Sheweth,
That Your Petitioners live at the distance of near sixty miles from the nearest shire Town in this County,
That a very considerable part of the Inhabitants of this part of the County live above us and are under similar disadvantages with us,
That the Roads to Haverhill our nearest shire Town are exceeding bad and at some seasons of the year unpassable,
Wherefore we your petitioners pray that we may be seperated from said County of Grafton and made a new County by a line drawn from Connecticut River between the Towns of Concord alias Gunthwait and Littleton and on Eastward taking in the Towns of Conway Eaton &c to the Province line so called and we as in duty bound shall ever pray - Lancaster Novr. 22nd, 1791.
Edwards Bucknam, John Weeks,
Bradford Sanderson.
William Bruce,
John Hartwell,
Zadoc Samson.
Stephen Wilson,
Nathaniel Lovewell,
Jonathan Ros,
Jeremiah Wilcox,
Joseph Wilder,
Daniel How,
David Stockwell,
Emmons Stockwell, Robert Gotham, Francis Willson
Samuel Johnson, Dennis Stanley, Isaac Darby
Daniel Chany, John Wilder
Joseph Bruce
Phinenas Bruce
Jonas Wilder
Jonas Wilder Jr.
Elisha Wilder
Mannassah Wilder
Asaph Darby
John Rosebrook
Charles Rosebrook
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50
HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
Jonas Baker Jonathan Cram Edward Spaulding Wm. Moore Joseph Brackett Ephraim Wilder
Ezra Reves
David Page
Benj. Twombly
Walter Philbrook
James Twombly Coffin Moore
Moses Page
Phiehas Hodgdon
John Macintire
William Johnson "
Abijah Darby.
[12 Hammond's Town Papers, 358-359].
All these petitions failed, at the time, to secure this much- desired object; and yet the people of these northern towns never despaired of some day getting a county formed of this territory that laid so far from the shire town where all their court business must be transacted, which at the time was growing to be consid- erable, especially in the probate business, as lands were being transferred, and estates settled with increasing frequency owing to the considerable increase in population due in a measure to the increasing value of their lands after the war, and the remarkable prosperity that began to crown the efforts of the pioneers' descen- dants of the first generation after the settlement of the rich "Upper Coös Country." Then, too, the same causes operating in other portions of Grafton county as they did here began to crowd the courts and county offices with a mass of business that made it necessary to reduce by some means. The people in the northern end of that vast county could see no way to lessen their burdens and expenses but by the creation of a separate county that should bring their own part of that business home. Every argument against the project for a new county of the "Upper Coos " was easily met by a recital of the inconveniences to which the people were put by being compelled to travel some sixty miles over the worst roads in the country to get a deed or other legal paper recorded, or to attend courts, which were sometimes so over- crowded with business as to compel persons attending upon them to remain away from home at unusual expenses a longer time than seemed necessary to transact their business. Indeed it seems the most reasonable solution of the problem that could have been suggested that a new county be erected out of the large territory lying about several considerable villages like Lancaster, Littleton, Northumberland, and Colebrook.
There can be but little doubt that Richard Claire Everett, Lan- caster's rising young lawyer, had a great influence in determining the general court to yield to the people's wishes and grant the formation of the prayed-for new county of Coos. At any rate, Lancaster probably was the greatest influence in bringing about the formation of the county; and once formed, as it was in 1803, Lan- caster was the proper place to locate its courts. It was later found necessary to make Colebrook a shire town with its court sessions for the better accommodation of the citizens of the county.
5I
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE TOWN.
Lancaster has always held a prominent place in the government of the state since 1796, when she sent R. C. Everett as her rep- resentative to the general court. Since then the town has always been honored by the election of some of her citizens to honorable positions in the state government. Some of the highest offices in the gift of the state have been accorded to citizens of Lancaster, and many of the most responsible positions of trust have been filled by her citizens without an instance of disloyalty or abuse of a public trust. Mistaken her citizens have sometimes been, but in purpose they have been always among the most loyal of the citizenship of the state, patriotic and trustworthy.
The people of the town have never favored severe and coer- cionary measures. Even in the earliest days they did not go as far as many other towns in carrying into effect the inherited Puri- tanical notions of the more strict among their number. As we have shown, with respect to various public actions, they were capable of originality in the conduct of their town affairs; but they did not hold a usage or convention of practice so rigidly that they could not change it upon finding what to them seemed a better way of doing the business of the community.
Like all towns of that day Lancaster elected tithingmen for some years ; but it does not seem that it was an office much called for, or that ever did any good in the town. The only recorded action of that functionary, tithingman, is the following complaint against some persons for traveling on the Sabbath :
" LANCASTER, Ist Aug. 1792.
" To Edwards Bucknam Esqr., one of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Grafton in the State of New Hampshire cometh the subscriber and com- plaineth of William Rosebrook & Samuel Howe Esq. and wife who did on the Eighth day of July last being Lord's Day Travel Also Henderson on the twenty-second of sd. July did travel (it being Lord's Day) all said conduct being in open violation of the Law and against the Peace . and Dignity of State, therefore in my capacity pray your worship that warrant may issue and the above said persons be delt with as the Law Directs.
Elisha Wilder, Tithingman. (L. S.)."
His " worship," Justice Bucknam, issued the following warrant, and upon the back of it is recorded its service; but the docket of Bucknam does not show that they were "delt with as the law directs." The reader's attention is called to the clauses in the warrant following the formal " as the law directs," viz. : "and Fus- tice may appertaind."
Bucknam's warrant was as follows :
52
HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
" State of New Hampshire Grafton SS.
To the Sheriff of the County of Grafton, His under sheriff of deputy or to either of the Con- stables of the Town of Lancaster
Greeting :
" Complaint being made as above- In the name of the State of New Hampshire you are hereby commanded to apprehend the above named Per- sons, if to be found in your Precinct and him or them safely so that you have them before me Edwards Bucknam Esq. one of the Justices of the Peace for said County, or some other Justice in said County so that he or they may be Examined Touching the Premises and Delt with as the Law & Justice appertain. Fail not but make due Return of this Writ with your Doings thereon,
Dated at Lancaster this 20th. Day of August A. D. 1792,
Edwards Bucknam, Just. Peace,"
On the back of this warrant we find the following entry of service :
" State of New Hampshire
Grafton SS.
Pursuant to the within precept I have taken the Body of William Rose- brook and him delivered to the within Magistrate, Edwards Bucknam. Esq.
Lancaster August 27th, 1792.
Wm. Moore, Constable, Lancaster. Fees, travel Ish. 6d. service I " 4"."
What disposition was ever made of the case, and whether the other persons mentioned in the warrant were ever taken does not appear from any documents now in existence. Perhaps the Court . Records would have shown the disposition of the case, for hav- ing been delivered to the justice of the peace the prisoner cer- tainly had a trial. Although General Bucknam believed in law and order as well as the tithingman, yet we may infer that as the case did not excite much attention, and as there seem to have been no others that ever got upon his docket, that under the announced purpose to try the defendants according to justice, that justice decreed that he should be discharged.
The tithingman, "Deacon Wilder," as he was called, was an austere man in religion and politics, though in other respects a a very worthy sort of man. He talked a great deal about what he called "a sane religion." Just what that meant no one ever knew, except that everything he did believe was sane, and what he did not believe was opposed to his "sane religion." He was equally narrow and intolerant in politics. He believed in John Adams and Alexander Hamilton implicitly. He declared that if " Jefferson was elected president of the United States that all our bibles would be burned and our churches turned into horse-stables; and our sons be given up to fight the battles of Napoleon Bonaparte."
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ROADS AND BRIDGES.
A man of short-sightedness, and narrowness of thought, and utter lack of confidence in men and measures with which he did not agree was likely to take a false view of the conduct of men when it did not correspond with his standards of usage. His opposition seems rather to have been to the different way of conducting one's self on Sunday than against the moral of the fact of traveling on that day.
So far as we can learn that was the only instance of any effort being made to enforce the old Sunday laws against traveling.
With but few exceptions the men of the Lancaster of one hun- dred years ago were too sensible and practical to go back to the old Puritanical laws of the province when under the domination of Massachusetts. There was here no opposition to religion or the church; and if men took a mild view of their conduct on Sunday, it was from necessity of going contrary to established usages rather than an evidence of contempt for them.
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