USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > New Boston > History of New Boston, New Hampshire > Part 24
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can lisp the name of Jesus, to say, "Our Father who art in heaven," and tell me, if you can, the value of such instruction, the influence of such love.
What minister of the gospel, living in the middle of the nine- teenth century, would not thank God for such a church to " stand up for Jesus," ever ready to counsel with and sustain the pastor in his arduous work of love ? The respect, encour- agement, and obedience of these parents and their children, which they promise "in the Lord's order," proves their faith and sincerity in what they considered the instrumentalities to be used for the conversion of their fellow-men, and the wisdom of the choice so unanimously made. God signally blessed them by imparting the influences of his Holy Spirit to the word spoken, in the purifying of many souls, and by continuing that connection, so prayerfully considered during the space of nearly. forty years, in which there was a great ingathering of those made wise unto salvation. The church was greatly strength- ened, and made a power for good to influence many generations. In the process of time, after a long and successful ministry, God called this faithful servant from his labor on earth to his rest in heaven. The people bowed with saddened hearts as they laid him in the tomb, sorrowing most of all that his work on earth had ceased, and they "should see his face no more." These praying disciples, whose hearts burned within them as they talked of Him whose voice was now silent in death, and called to mind the kind words of comfort and consolation they had received, were now found just where we may always ex- pect to find the unwavering child of God, clinging closer to the cross as sorrow and affliction darkened their pathway, earnestly seeking that divine and heavenly light which every true Chris- tian finds when he comes to the throne of grace, and there asks wisdom of Him who said to his own chosen disciples, " Let not your hearts be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me."
These pious fathers and mothers, pillars in the church, did not shrink from duty, nor falter in their efforts to secure another under-shepherd at the earliest convenient time. After repeated trials, God heard their prayers, and sent them a young man, possessed of high intellectual endowments, firm in pur-
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pose, with a deep conviction of the great responsibility he was about to assume in entering upon the work of preaching the glorious gospel of the blessed God. His labor for the instruc- tion of the young, and counsel to those in the vigor of life, his kind words of comfort for the distressed, his efforts in elevating the standard of picty among this people for nearly half a cen- tury, will be felt in their influence long after those who now hear me shall have passed away. Eternity alone will reveal the nature and extent of the work he accomplished for the Master, as he traversed these hills and valleys, carrying joy to every young, buoyant heart, and consolation to the sick and bereaved in sorrow's dark hour. The hallowed associations and delight- ful memories of the Rev. Ephraim P. Bradford are yet fresh with many here to-day, whose hearts have been made to rejoice in a risen Saviour through his instrumentality. Ay, they can never forget him until they shall fail to appreciate the impor- tance of a faithful and earnest presentation of divine and saving truth.
This beloved pastor and all his carly faithful associates and colaborers in the church of Christ have gone to their reward in heaven ; but their Christian fidelity and the moral influence of their lives cannot fail, under God, to promote the welfare of his kingdom in years to come. " Here the flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies: the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages ; but time writes no wrinkles on eternity. In the dwelling of the Ahnighty can come no footsteps of decay."
The old meeting-house that stood on the green hillside, with its square pews, and ever-to-be-remembered sounding-board, where our fathers worshipped for more than half a century, has been vacated forty years, but there are some present who re- member the religious privileges of that house with sacred joy.
Never can we forget some of the solemn seasons that occur- red within those hallowed walls, as we witnessed them in our youthful days. Semi-annually were spread the long tables around which were first gathered the aged servants of God, to partake of the holy communion ; following these were the active, vigorous members of the church, and then came the youngest of the flock, all in their turn, to hear words of wisdom from this faithful minister of the Lord. The sweet harmony of
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those voices in the choir, as they sung of a crucified and risen Redeemer, the earnest exhortation, the devout prayer, are all written on the tablet of our memory, never, never to be effaced.
As we write these words we seem to see that devoted pastor we early learned to reverence and love, with dignified and manly form, his countenance beaming with Christian kindness, rising to address the throne of grace. Oh! how those melting tones, uttered in words of humble, devout prayer, lift the soul upward and onward toward the divine life! Oh! how they impart to all who seek that higher life, holier aspirations, and a firmer reliance on the promises of the gospel, an earnest desire for a closer walk with God, and a fuller purpose to do his will.
There is something truly delightful to the Christian heart in such holy worship, such solemn, quiet communings with the Great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. These commemora- tions serve to raise our thoughts from earth toward heaven, pointing the soul to that day when all the saints in glory shall be gathered around the great white throne, with their voices in harmony with that angelic choir whose heavenly music shall swell in rapturous strains when the last sound of the organ and the lute shall have ceased forever. Thus may all the sous and daughters of the early settlers of New Boston, down to the latest generation, be prepared to sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, that when, one by one, they cross the river of death, exulting angels may welcome them to the celestial city.
RESPONSE OF REV. J. A. GOODHUE.#
THE RESIDENT SONS OF NEW BOSTON. - " Theirs is a good inheritance. 'As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff.'"
MR. PRESIDENT, -
The world in which we live is a wide, wide world, and man at best is a pilgrim and a stranger in it. The idea of his hav- ing anything that can be called a residence here is very imper- feetly realized under any circumstances. The rapid march of mankind from the cradle to the grave, the changes which even a few short years produce upon the face of human society, are a sad and impressive commentary upon the fact that we have here no abiding place, no continuing city. The appearance of mankind upon the face of this earthly ball is like that of the ants upon a molehill which to-day are lively and busy, but to- morrow are gone forever. The idea of having a habitation and a home here on earth can be realized under the most favoring circumstances only just enough to make us appreciate the pre- ciousness of the conditional promise of a real home in heaven, and an everlasting mansion there.
That the possession of a place on earth, which you can call your home, is an invaluable blessing, and one of the choicest and dearest in this world, no one will deny. The enjoyment of this blessing is greater, too, than we are wont to suppose. The great mass of mankind do not, except by the privation of it,
* In addition to the "Crucible," noticed in a sketch of him on page 161, Mr. Goodhue is author of an article entitled " The Preaching of Ecclesiastes," published in the Christian Review, July No. for 1854, page 434; also an article entitled, " Dying unto Sin with Christ," it being an exposition of Rom. vi. 2, 8, 10, 11, published in the Bibliotheca Sacra, and American Biblical Repository for July, 1857, it being the 55th No. of the former, and the 107th of the latter, page 538.
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know what it is. Aside from the comparatively sparse popula- tion of the rural portions of the country, aside from the yeo- manry of the land, the cultivators of the soil, the large propor- tion of the race follow an exceedingly unsettled, nomadic, planetary mode of life. The mechanics of the land, the arti- sans, the merchants, and those who follow the professions, are almost constantly subject to migration and change. Very few of the inhabitants of our cities and large towns, into which the great tide of humanity is constantly pouring, realize to any extent what it is to have a home. The major part live merely by tenantry from year to year ; so that they are able to acquire no uninterrupted attachments to one locality over another. They are equally at home everywhere; which is equivalent to saying that they have no home anywhere. . Even those who are fortunate enough to be the owners of the dwellings in which they live, and the soil on which these dwellings stand, can have but a very imperfect enjoyment of the home feeling. Their estates are limited within the very narrowest compass by a crowded and crowding population all around them, while the rapid march of events, like an invading army, is continually jostling them from their places as they come in the way of its onward progress.
The conditions which are necessary to constitute a real home, in the most perfect sense in which it can be realized in this world, are found among the inhabitants of the country, . who are the grand producers of the land. One of these con- ditions is the perpetual and perpetuated ownership of the dwell- ings and lands which they occupy, and in connection with which their entire lives are spent and all their earthly labors are performed. The tillers of the soil are the most permanent and almost the only permanent and really settled class of people in the whole community. They are almost the only class who can contemplate, with any kind of certainty, the spending of their entire lives in the dwellings in which they were born, and who can look forward to a changeless occupation through life, and that upon the very same materials that have always con- stituted the means of their industry and the sources of their livelihood. Those who have chosen to remain by the stuff and. perpetuate their family tree, in this goodly town, may have this
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thought to console them, that though they may see less of the world than many others, and experience less of its adventures, they have elected for themselves a mode of life which is cal- culated to insure to them the invaluable blessing of an uninter- rupted earthly home, as no other mode of living can ; a blessing which they are not in a position to appreciate as we do who are not permitted to enjoy or anticipate it.
One of the most difficult questions we, who have gone abroad, ever have to answer, is, Where is your home ? The only reply we can make to it is that New Boston is our native town. Aside from that we are as much at home in one place as an- other. There is no other spot on earth that is endeared by any sacred memories or by any ties that may not be sundered without much pain. And the question where we shall lay our bodies when we are dead, and the bodies of our loved ones, is as unsettled as it is painful to contemplate. With you who remain upon your native soil these questions require not a moment's thought. Here you were born on the same ground and under the same skies where your fathers before you have lived and toiled, and here you expect to live and labor and die, and yonder graveyard is to be your final resting-place. Rooted down thus deeply as you are, having grown up out of the soil made sacred by the industry of your ancestors, your very life
is identified with the scenes in the midst of which it is your lot to perform all your carthly labors. How it must sweeten and lighten your otherwise laborious pursuits to stop a moment and call to mind the hallowed memories that cluster around you ; to remember that every foot of the ground on which you perform your daily toil has been trodden by the feet of your fathers, and that they have so oft reclined under the very same trees for shade and rest to which you are wont, in your wearied moments, to resort.
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What peace and quiet, also, it must impart to your life to think of the comparative security of your earthly posses- sions and the unfailing nature of the resources from which you derive your livelihood. Though such scope for ambition and enterprise is not open before you as lies in the path of others, yet neither are you beset by the harassing fears by which their minds are haunted day and night in view of the
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uncertain tenure by which they hold their worldly goods, and the liability that, in some unfortunate hour, their wealth and all the sources of it may be swept away, and they be left amid the strife and bustle of a selfish and avaricious world, penniless and helpless as the veriest beggar. The vibrations of the market, the rise and fall of stocks, which they watch with breathless anxiety, and on which their fortunes depend, affect you no more than a wave of the sea dashing against the dis- tant shore affects these everlasting hills on which you dwell. Until the sun shall cease to shine in the heavens and the rain to fall from the clouds ; until the wheels of Nature shall stop in their course, and day and night, seed-time and harvest, shall return no more, you will have no fears that your comfortable, though not luxurious, livings will fail to make to you their steady returns.
The voyage of your life is across a smooth and quiet sea ; and though you have to toil in rowing, and do not penetrate so many seas, nor feel the winds of so many climes as others, yet you are sure of a peaceful voyage, and a safe arrival at your destined haven ; - while those who go out to try their fortunes upon the wide world, though animated by greater enterprises and higher hopes, yet they also find a rougher and more stormy voyage. The jarrings and commotions of human society are most keenly felt by them. They mount up and go down with every wave, and are often at their wits' end, not knowing whether the favoring breezes of fortune shall land them high up on the shores of wealth and fame, or whether contrary winds shall lay them forever low in the valley of disappoint- ment, mortification, and penury. Go to the thickly-settled towns and cities, the great centres of human activity, and you observe at once the constant feverishness of the life that is there spent ; you witness the rapid pulse, the hurried tread, the excited, anxious eye, and flushed countenance, which make you feel as if men thought they were liable not to live out half their days before they arrive at their journey's end ; while the dwellers in this goodly town pursue their peaceful avoca- tions with as much quiet and leisure as if they had taken a lease of life for a thousand years. All but the most extraor- dinary waves of excitement spend their force and die away
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before they reach them. Nothing, except it be some such calamity as the civil war which is now convulsing the entire nation, moves them, and that only in a modified degree. Yet the world will stand just as long, and its ends be just as fully accomplished for them as for those who spend their lives in anxious solicitude lest every day should be the last.
There is no more independent class of people on the face of the earth than the resident sons of this goodly town. The sources of their earthly livelihood are as little connected as possible with the treachery and fickleness of public opinion. The favor of no earthly mortal are they obliged to court in order to secure the privilege of earning their daily bread by the sweat of their brow. Dependent for their sources of in- dustry and livelihood only upon their broad and fertile acres warmed by the genial sun and watered by the gentle showers of rain, and upon their faithful and obedient flocks and herds, it is their prerogative, as it is of no others, to say, -
" I am monarch of all I survey,. My right there is none to dispute ; From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute."
The least of any class in the world are those who remain upon their native soil obliged to be servants to their fellow- men, and to be under the disagreeable necessity, as are the great mass of men of every rank in the cities, of constantly compromising their personal feelings, if not their consciences, for the purpose of endeavoring to secure the good-will of others, both their inferiors and superiors, for whose persons they care nothing, but only for their patronage. By no such mortifying obsequiousness and servility does the farmer obtain his earthly living. He bows down to no one but to his Maker, and has none to thank for his prosperity but a favoring Provi- dence and his own industry.
Those who remain upon their native soil are, also, most per- fectly contented with their situation and their lot of any class of people in the world ; while those who roam abroad and fol- low a life of adventure and experiment never find the situa- tion that precisely suits them. Having once sundered the ties that bind them to their native land, such ties are never formed again.
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But independently of these natural ties, the resident sons of New Boston have as much reason to be contented with the lot which their nativity has afforded them as any other people. A more salubrious climate, a more beautiful landscape, a more productive soil, a more upright, moral, and peaceable commu- nity, is nowhere to be found. A more favorable portion of the earth on which to spend one's life, if one desires to live in peace, could not be assigned by a wise Providence to any mortal. The temptations and exposures which are attendant upon the path of the young, especially in our populous towns and cities, are here almost entirely unknown. It would scarcely seem possible that one reared in such a community as this should not lead a life of moral purity at least. The value of such an opportunity for rearing up the children, which a kind Provi- dence gives us, for spheres of worth and usefulness, can be ap- preciated only by those who are subjected to the trying expe- rience of educating their offspring in the midst of the mixed populations of the seaboard towns.
Above all, and finally, a more fitting spot than this can- not be found on the face of the earth for religious culture ; for the implantation and cultivation in the heart of true piety to- wards God, and for securing a preparation to meet our common Maker ere long at the day of final accounts, and then to spend an eternity in the abodes of the blessed beyond the grave. I see not how the accumulative influences of the sacred asso- ciations and hallowed memories which come welling up from the past here to-day ; the recollections of the departed, of whom yonder graveyard so vividly reminds us ; the solemn associations that cluster around these holy shrines, where ven- erated ministers of religion were wont to lead their people in the worship of Almighty God, but who, with large portions of their flocks, have gone to their reward ; - I see not how these sacred associations and reminiscences, in the midst of which resident brothers are permitted to spend their lives, can fail, under the blessing of God's Spirit, to mature and ripen them ere long for the rest of the true people of God. That this may .
be their portion and ours when the next centennial shall come round, is our sincere and earnest prayer.
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BIOGRAPHICAL AND GENEALOGICAL SKETCHES.
THOMAS SMITH. - He came from Chester to this town about 1734, when it was an entire wilderness, and settled where the late Hiram Lull lived, in the cast part of the town. He was for some two years the only white man within the present lim- its of New Boston, before the grant of the town was made. It was near his farm that the Proprietors built sixty dwell- ing-houses, a grist and saw mill, and a meeting-house, as early as 1740. Mr. Smith is said to have built the first frame house in New Boston, and it yet stands in a state of comparatively good preservation, and constitutes a part of Widow Hiram Lull's house. Mr. Smith was once obliged to flee from his farm before he had moved his family to it, because of the pres- ence of Indians. They had done violence to some neighbors living a few miles from him in Goffstown, and sceing traces of one or more in the vicinity of his cabin, evidently seeking an opportunity to capture him, he precipitately fled with his faith- ful gun, and returned not until the Indians had departed from his neighborhood. His son Samuel, in 1765, lived where the late Deacon Thomas Smith died ; his son James perished with cold on the road leading from his father's to Parker's, in Goffs- town. His son Reuben was in the war of the Revolution, and after the close of it he removed into the State of Maine, near the Passamaquoddy Bay.
DEACON JOHN SMITH. - He was son of the above-named Thomas, and moved with him from Chester. He married a Miss McNeil, daughter of William McNeil, by whom he had five children : Martha, Sarah, Janey, Mary, and John. After her death he married Ann Brown, of Francestown, by whom he had fourteen children : Janey, Thomas (the late deacon), Elizabeth, William, David, Susanna, Ann, Samuel, Martha, Reuben, Elizabeth B., Robert, an infant, and James D. Of the
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children of his first wife, Martha died Feb. 19, 1756, and Janey Jan. 10, 1756, of dysentery, and were the first that were buried in the graveyard in the north part of the town.
Sarah married a Mr. McMarston for her first husband, and for her second, John Burns, who owned the farm now owned by Mr. Luther Colburn. He was in the war of the Revolution, also of 1812, and had the title of Major. He moved to White- field when a young man, and died there a few years since, hav- ing represented his town in the Legislature after he was eighty years old, remarkable for his vigor of body and mind.
Mary, another daughter of Deacon Smith, married Robert Burns, of Bedford ; they had a son who became a physician. John Smith entered the army in 1776, and served to the close of the war, then settled in Francestown, and died there, having married for his first wife Elizabeth Campbell, of Litchfield, by whom he had two sons, John and David ; one of his daughters is now the wife of Mr. Benjamin Dodge, of New Boston.
This John Smith, son of Deacon John, was a lieutenant in the militia. A musket-ball was lodged in his neck, and was never extracted. He was one of the early deacons in the Con- gregational Church in Francestown. He was a very worthy man, and reared an interesting family ; his son John being distinguished for his piety and devotion to the instruction of the Indians at the West. Deacon Smith, Senior, died Sept. 3, 1800, in his 74th year. The inscription on his tombstone is very appropriate : -
" The sweet remembrance of the just Will flourish though they sleep in dust."
DEACON THOMAS SMITH. -- He was son of Deacon John Smith, born May 7, 1765 ; he married, March 22, 1791, Esther Poland, who was born May 1, 1774. They had thirteen children ; Susannah was born Jan. 27, 1792, became the wife of Mr. Thomas George, of Weare ; after his death married Mr. James Adams, of this town, and afterwards removed to Johnson, Vt., where she died Dec. 12, 1843, leaving three children, two by the first, and one by the second husband ; Ann, born March 17, 1794, became the wife of Thomas Ring, and lives in New York, having five children : John, born May 14, 1796, married Dec. 1, 1819, Nancy, daughter of David Tewksbury, and had
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thirteen children, eight of whom survive, viz., Ezra D., who married Mary Jennis, and lives in Concord ; John B., who married Rebecca W. Richards, and resides in California ; Amos T., who resides in California ; Ivers, Sarah T., Almas, Ethan A., who married Maria E. Burt, of Bennington, March 19, 1863, and lives in New Boston, and Clara ; Thomas died March 2, 1852; Charles B. died Jan. 17, 1847, at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, in Hartford, Conn ; David T. died in California March 8, 1862; Clarinda died August 17, 1837; James K. P. died Sept. 25, 1848.
Esther (daughter of Deacon Thomas Smith), born August 20, 1798, married Asa Dodge, of Francestown, having one daughter, who became the wife of Smith Follansbce, of Frances- town ; Thomas, born April 8, 1801, married Nancy Gove, of Weare, lives in New Boston, and has one son, Daniel.
William, born May 22, 1803, lives in Croyden with his third wife, having three children by his first, and seven by his second wife ; Moses was born June 8, 1805, married Eliza Bai- ley, of Weare, and lives in Johnson, Vt., having seven chil- dren ; Rachel was born August 10, 1807, married Ambrose Story, and lives in Antrim ; Clarinda, born January 9, 1810, became the wife of John McCurdy, who soon died, leaving her no children ; Ivers was born March 31, 1812, married Sarah Hoyt, of Weare, and lives in New Boston, having two daugh- ters, one of whom, Lora, became the wife of Thomas Moore, of Bedford ; the other, Clarinda, married Elbridge Colby, of Weare; George W. was born January 19, 1815, and died February 15, 1858 ; Ethan was born October 17, 1817, mar- ried Alvira Morrill, and lives in Weare, having six children ; Sarah, born October 23, 1819, died young. .
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