USA > New Hampshire > Belknap County > Sanbornton > History of Sanbornton, New Hampshire, Vol. I - Annals > Part 34
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L. B. Hathou, ulle of the town. Ile cultivated eight acres in 1879, with a total
largest coru harvested erop of three hundred and thirty-two bushels.
producers.
Ile had purchased the Jonathan Cawley farin, at the foot of Prescott Ilill (New State), in 1872, for $2,000. Just then, hardly hay enough was cut upon it to keep two cows. Now, his stock con- sists of eighteen head of cattle and three horses. He values the farm at present, with some additions to the land and a new barn proposed for 1882, from $6,000 to $8,000. Mr. Hathon thinks corn can be raised in Sanbornton for twenty-five cents per bushel, so that we need not " go West " for it ; also that any of the small farms here may be thus essentially improved in the line of corn raising, though he has the special advantage of a good bed of muck upon his premises.
Ile has also built the first silo in Sanbornton ! (1881) ; an apart-
* Mr. George H. Brown, in 1881, claims to have harvested over three hundred bushels from less than five acres of land ; and a yield per acre quite as large as this has formerly beeu realized by Major David C. Clough, in the same neighborhood (Calef Hill), on the old March farm. Mr. Frederick F. Osgood is said, this same year, to have cultivated ten acres of corn ; but not all upon oue farm, and much of it on light soil. His crop is known to have aggregated at least four hundred bushels.
1
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HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
ment sunk in the bay of his old barn, twenty feet by twenty, and twelve and one half feet deep, with a capacity of 5,000 cubic feet, and capa- ble of holling one hundred tous. This silo is to be air-tight except mpon the top, impervious to frost, and free from exposure
The first to surface water, being well protected by two drains. To borutull. fill it, he proposes to plant about six acres of corn, in drills three feet apart, and with stalks growing from four to six inches asuu- der. This corn is to be gathered about the first of September, just as the cars are beginning to ripen, and ent up by a machine into bits three eighths of an inch in length. It then takes the name of " ensi- lage," and is immediately packed away in the sito, in layers, well salted, with thin layers of rye straw alternating between them. After the silo is filled, the whole mass is to be weighted with rocks, and thus pressed down. In the winter, only the topmost layer will be found unlit for use, while all beneath can be " dug out like canned rhubarb " and fed to the stock ; all kinds of which, as experiments
The use of have shown, will devour it with the utmost relish. Mr.
cusilage. Ilathon hopes to be able, with this new arrangement, to keep twice the number of cattle that he now does ; while he will con- tinne to raise his usual quantity of corn in the ordinary way.
Sanbornton, being for the most part a good grass and grazing town- ship, has always been noted for its fine cattle, which were formerly more numerous, but never of larger size than at present.
C'attle-raising ;
Meredithi rs. It has never quite equalled the neighboring town of Mere-
Fauboruton. dith in " matching up " at the county fairs ; but for solid- ity or weight, it is believed that Sanbornton has rather preponderated !
Yet between the earliest and later times in our history, a great dit- ference has been manifested as to the size and quality of all kinds of live stock. We have reason to conclude that before the present century, cattle especially were comparatively quite diminutive. As proof of this, it is said that the oxen which were driven into town by Mr. William Sanborn in 1799 (see Vol. IL. p. 632 [140]) were regarded as prodigies for size by the older inhabitants, and were for this reason visited from far and near as curiosities : yet The famous oxen of' Wil- liam Sanborn, 1799. the yoke worn into Sanbornton by these cattle, which is still in the possession of Reuben P. Sanborn, a grandson of the said William, has not more than six inches for the " spread of the bows," and " distance between the bows" is only four- teen inches ; while the oxen themselves were said never to have girthed so much as six feet! What would those same old inhal- Contrast with itants have said, could they visit the commodious stalls the presell. of Jonathan M. Taylor, Esq., this winter of 1881-82! They would find a pair of yearling steers girthing five feet nine inches ;
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FARMING NOTES.
another pair of .. two-year-olds " measuring six feet seven inches, with an estimated weight of 2,700 to 2,800 pounds (probably the largest of the age ever seen in town) ; and still another pair of " four-year- olds," with a girth of seven feet two inches !
In this connection we clip the following from the Tilton correspond- out of the Laconia Democrat (Dec. 2, 1881): -
" The big cattle that William Sanborn brought into Sanbornton in 1,99 bring out a big hog sent to Newburyport about a century ago. It was con- spicuously loaded on to a pod team. At every stopping-place
The bly porker of one hundred it drew a large crowd, and many a time its dimensions were
year's agu. taken. Its length was measured, its circumference girthed, and the announcement of its weight, sixteen score (three hundred and twenty pounds), capped the climax. It was deemed an overgrown mon- ster, and even its fitness for the pork barrel was cunvussed. All the facts and Algures above we had from Deacon Emery, whose mind is a storehouse of all that pertains to 'ye olden time.' If there is fancy or fletion interlarded, it is your correspondent's. The stock of Capt. March, which at eight months have been made to weigh four hundred to four hundred and sixty pounds, might have hung him as a wizard in those days."
The same paper, of Dec. 23 (the last issned at the present writing), Present weights. reports two porkers sold by W. D. Pike " weighing
1,029 pounds after hanging over night" ; and like results are not uncommon among the farmers of Sanbornton and Tilton.
As to products of the dairy, we must contine ourself to one or two recent illustrations. The farm of Thomas W. Taylor, at the Square, has kept, on an average, eight cows of the Hereford stock the last nine years. Besides selling $30 worth of milk each year, Dairy products. and the consumption of a family of six (considerably larger in summer), the whole product of his dairy for five years past has amounted to $300 annually. Sold in 1880, three hundred and forty pounds of cheese and six hundred and seventy pounds of butter ; a large proportion of the latter going to Provincetown, Mass. The milk has hitherto been set in cans holding each from ten to twenty quarts, twenty inches being their uniform depth. Of late, Mr. Tay- lor has introduced " Ferguson's Bureau Creamery," manufactured at Burlington, Vt., which combines the advantages of light, air, and even temperature, with appliances for ice in the summer. The The establish. milk is to be set in large pans holding five pailfuls each. ments of T. W. Taylor and G. Il. Brown. George II. Brown, on the oldl Josiah Hersey farm, south- ern slope of Calef Hill, keeps from twelve to sixteen cows of the Jersey breed, devoted exclusively to butter-making, amount of sales for 1880 being abont 81,200. Greatest prodnet per week. in 1881, one hundred pounds. Ile also uses the deep cans, set in a tank with running water ; markets his butter principally in Concord. Ilis
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HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
graminivorous stock consists of thirty head of cattle and five of the horse kiud, for which were stored in his burns on commencing to " feed out," Oct. 16, 1881, one hundred tons of bay and corn fodder.
Among the fertilizing expedients which seem nt all marked, or pecul- iar to our town, two instances near at hand may also be cited. Two years ago Mr. T. W. Taylor discovered that the small meadow of half an acre or more, in his pasture, through which flows the small branch of Gulf Brook (" Taylor Brook ") heading at the Square, was really a valuable deposit of rich loam strongly impregnated with A fertilizlux
" mine " dis. ashes, and three and one half feet in depth, down to a hard covered. sand foundation ! The ashes were evidently washed down three fourths of a century ago, from the old Lovejoy " potash " stand- ing near the brook, which in those days received the refuse ashes to prevent their damaging the land ! Mr. Taylor has already brought back to his ancestral fields one hundred loads of an excellent fertilizing material which the waters of former years had carried away from them !
The enterprise of Messrs. J. and II. N. March, on Calef Hill, should also be noted. They have lately reclaimed several acres of rough pasture into valuable tillage land, digging deep for the
Furinluy iut- provemuents foundation of many a rod of substantial stone-wall to be
of the Messrs. filled with superfluous rocks, and thus seenring vast quan- March. tities of loam, which their numerous porcine family mann- facture into excellent manure.
The period of the last sixteen years has seen great improvement in the barns of minnerous farmers all over the towns of Sanbornton and New barus. Tilton, four new ones having been erected at the Square within that time. Many of these, for size, convenience, and even ornament, will rank high among the similar structures of Belknap County, or of this part of New Hampshire.
To note, as a matter of history, one other enterprise which had its basis in the soil, the attempt was made in a few instances, some less than half a century ago, to raise in Sanbornton the raw material of silk. Col. Daniel Sanborn, especially, had two acres at Silk culture ouce attempted. one time set ont to mulberry-trees on the oll Dr. San- born place (now Thomas 31. Jaques's), with rooms in the old Sanborn honse devoted to silk-worms. But the experiment, as in other parts of New England, was not entirely successful.
No intimation of any agricultural society has been received, except of the " Sanbornton Farmers' Club," - fresh in the memory . The Farmers' of most, - which was organized about 1870, and of which Club. the lamented Mr. Samuel M. Thompson was first presi- dent till his death. Joshna Laue was secretary through its whole con-
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FARMING NOTES.
tinuance of several years. Its meetings, twice a month, were well attended, and ably sustained by Jona. M. Taylor, Esq., the late Mr. Abel W. Brown, Messrs. Cyrus Swain, Joseph D. Wadleigh, George N. Sanborn, and other citizens of the town ; and the conclusion arrived at was that " farming pays," or may be made to pay, even in San- bornton !
CHAPTER XXIX.
QUAINT SPECIMENS OF SANBORNTON POETRY. - BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS.
" Though my rhyme be ragged, Tattered, and jagged, Rudely rain-beaten, Rusty, mothi-eaten ; Yf ye take welle there-withe, It hath in it some pithe." SKELTON (POET LAUREATE, 1489).
BY no means as literary embellishments, but merely as " enriosi- Why Intro- ties" of the oldlen time, are the following introduced, to duced. answer certain references elsewhere made in this work, and to fultil the promise that they should appear in the history of the town.
Mr. James Cate, one of the original members of the Congregational church, was a writer of verses. (See Genealogical Sketch, Vol. II. p. 103.) A " broadside " is now found in the possession
J.unea Cate's
elegy on the of one of his descendants, consisting of seventy-three Emily of Ben- stanzas from his pen, printed in the antique style. It jaunin sauborn. is some two feet long by one in width ; is heavily lined : has four black coffins each twice delineated mpon it; and is headed thus : -
" The following lines were composed on the melancholy state of the family of Mr. Benjamin Sandborn of Sandbormiou, who departed this life Oct. 20 . 1794, in the 40th year + of his age. . . . Ile left a widow and fourteen children to lament the loss of a kind Husband and an indulgent Father. Now take a view of his wife and children."
". She by his bedside then did stand, To hear death's dread alarms, And thirteen children wringing hands, ller baby in her arms."
* His age is erroneously given in Vol. II. p. 631 [125]. It should be 48-3, as he was born July 16, 1746.
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QUAINT SPECIMENS OF POETRY.
Ile was a good singer.
" Now we shall hear no more his notes, Nor his melodious voice ; For now death rattles in his throat, lIe's turning to the dust."
Was leader of the choir.
"Ye singers, now lament your loss, For he has been your head ; No more you'll hear his pleasant voice, Ile's now among the dead."
To the church mourning the loss of their brother:
"God hath removed our brother dear From his church here below ; May he in realms of light appear, Free from all grief and woe."
Soon after, his little son, Hugh March Sanborn, was seized with the same disease, a nervous fever, and died after five weeks, Dec. 3.
"Now God hath struck another blow With his chastising rod; With trembling fear before Him bow, And own your gracious Lord."
His oldest son, Ebenezer, followed by death, Jan. 6, 1795, in his twenty-sixth year, after nine days' illness.
" Another of your number gone ; Hle could no longer stay ; His days are passed, his glass is run; Now he must haste away.
"Should we arrive to twenty-five, It would be but a span; While we coutrive to live and thrive, Death overturns our plan."
Finally, a daughter of the same family, Lucy, died of the same disease with the preceding, Jan. 23, 1795, in her seventeenth year.
"O stay thine hand, Almighty God; Let not thine anger burn ; We fear the threatening of thy rod, And beg thy kind return.
"Sinners in Zion, be afraid ; Let fearfulness surprise Such as are lying on their bed, Or walking in disguise.
.
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HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
" Teach ns, O Lord, that art and skill To mummaber so our days, That we may learn to do thy will, And turn to wisdom's way's."
The whole closes with eleven stanzas, as " An acknowledgment of God's goodness in Creation, Preservation, Redemption, and Resigna- tion to Death, and hopes of a glorious Resurrection and Ascension up to God" ; the last two stanzas being : -
" Lord, thou wilt ralse my sleeping dust At the great judgment day ; O may I stand amongst the just, Where I shall never stray.
"There to behold thy blessed face ; There I shall never sin ; And from the rivers of thy grace Drink endless pleasures in."
About the year 1784, while Mr. Nathaniel Cheney, Sen., soou after his first settlement in town, was felling trees, and " had just got a drove started," he saw his little boy coming in the way of them, and sereamed out, at the top of his voice, "Jump, Moses, A narrow es- cape. jump !" The child sprang, just in time, behind a large hemlock, which screened him from being crushed by the tops of the trees, either by holding the " drove" (line of falling trees) or turning it to one side. This young lad was afterwards the famous Elder Moses Cheney, and he says of this tree : " After my father moved away, I was often back to visit it, and then its stump, which lasted many years. At length, I sought in vain for any remains of it." IIe then wrote the following : -
" FAREWELL TO THE OLD HEMLOCK-TREE.
"Old Hemlock, you're gone; oh, how lonely I feel ! When I knew where you stood, then I knew where to kueel. "T was thither I flew when no other could save, And the tall evergreen saved the boy from the grave.
" My God, didst thou plant that strong-rooted tree On the side of this hill, just to save one like me? ' Yes,' answers my Lord, ' when 't was small as a hair, I bid it stand there and watch and take care.'
"My Lord and muy King ! thy command was obeyed, When the fast-falling trees threatened death o'er my head; And the lad was secure by Eternal deeree, Through the watch and the care of the old Hemlock-tree.
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QUAINT SPECIMENS OF POETRY.
" Old Hemlock, you're gone ; yet I see where you stood And pointed your green spriggy hands up to God; Ne'er shall I forget, with my heart full of joy, How you kept the command and protected the boy.
" Old Hemlock, thou 'rt gone; 'tis a warning to all, That just as thou didst, so must we all fall : Farewell, then, ohl friend, and this pledge I give thee, I'll be kind unto others, as thon wast to me."
We had hoped to procure the verses said to have been written by William Knapp, and published in the Dover Sun, upon the drowning casualties of 1805 (see page 246) ; but must now content ourselves with the following reflections of the eccentric William upon himself, after finally settling in his little house on the Bay Shore. He desired
that his papers should be buried with him, and his " poetry,"
The "poetry" of William as recalled by some of our oller citizens, especially when Knapp. dealing with his neighbors, did not always breathe so de- vout a spirit as is manifest in these lines : -
"From East to West, from North to South, I have travelled o'er the ground ; But beside the Bay, in this small hint, I trust I've settled down.
"I'll catch some tish, if they will bite ; I'll do the best I can, That I may live an honest life And die a righteous man."
Some of the old Sanbornton rhymesters were far enough from being "religions poets " ; and against the persons and the names of certain individuals in town, who, with moderate abilities, essayed Rhy mes against the to be exhorters to the path of Christian dluty, the shafts " preachers." of sacrilegious wit were often levelled. We are led to conclude that the subjects of these verses were usually much more worthy of commendation than their authors. Thus, of one Daniel Call - to which family belonging is unknown - it was once sung : - " Daniel Call, his gifts are small, But he's become a preacher ; Ile goes abont, and makes a rout, Misleading many a creature.
" lle tell- them they must come to-day Or they can't be received; They hear his voice, and do rejoice, And by it are deceived." .
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HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
Of another, Mary Sleeper, who was accustomed to preach or exhort quite effectively, it was also sung, in rather a vituperative strain : -
" Mary Sleeper here of late Set out to go lo Zion's gate ; There Gabriel met her with a club, And drove her back to Beelzebub."
Among the doggerel rhymes which Stephen Smith was accustomed to make and sing, about certain persons with whom he had misunder- standings, and whom he sought to " pay off" in this way, the three following stanzas have come down to us, traditionally, Stephen Smith's satirl- from his " Tribute" to a leading citizen of the town. cul verses. That citizen's full name was spoken in two words of three syllables, with the accent on the first ; which we accordingly indicate in the first line by three dashes (-) : -
" "" was - - - , a man of might, In buying land was his dellght; Upon the mountain he did own Full eighty acres of choice stoue.
" A dozen acres he lias fell; Ile means to burn and clear it well, And get it into winter rye, His luck and fortune for to try.
-
"And if by chance he raise a erop, Upon the ground he'll let it rot, Unless his wife should go with hun And tell him when to get it in."
Ile also wrote the following " Epitaph " for himself; which, how- His pro- ever, was never inscribed on his gravestone : -
Dused epitaph.
" Beneath this sod old Stevey lies : Nobody laughs and nobody cries; Where he has gone, or how he fares, Nobody knows and nobody cares."
Samuel Smith indulged in a similar propensity. He seems to have been dissatisfied with the judgment rendered by one of the justices of the peace in Sanbornton, upon a case in court in which against a legal
Samuel Smith's complaint himself' was one of the parties. The justice in question had a well-known exckunatory grunt which he was in the
decision. habit of uttering, like the guttural " oo" with the short sound and the aspirate " h " before it. Hence the allusion in line first. The metrical tirade was originally quite long, but only two stan- zas and part of a third have been reported, as follows :- .
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BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS.
" The unjust judge is old Squire 'Hoo'; fle will drink rum both old and new ; lle will the wicked justify, And righteous judgment he'll deny.
"To court he warned mue to appear, And that I did with right, good cheer ; Knowing my cause was just and right, 'Gainst my antagonist to light.
" Ile to my righteous cause was deaf, He'd look on but one side the leaf."
At another time, going to a mill where no tender appeared to wait Impromptu at upon customers, he left the following lines chalked upou The mill. the door : -
"To mill I went; nobody found; Being in haste, my grist I ground ; I do protest I have not stole, For in the chest I left the toll."
Tke following was tastefully printed on a half-sheet eight inches Fourth of July square, evidently for general distribution at the time, but marching sonly. with a margin far more highly ornamented than on most hand-bills at the present day : -
"FOURTH OF JULY, 1840.
"( For the Sabbath school on a walk from the First Baptist to the First Congre- gational Church in Sandbornton.)
"Ifere, on we march, a youthful band; We're all united hand in hand; Each eye with joy is sparkling bright; Each face a rose of red and white.
" May the freedom we now possess, This our dear country always bless ; Our father's fame forever be On every land, on every sea." .
BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS.
The literary (?) aspects of this chapter cannot be better sustained than by adding a short account of the books and newspapers formerly published at Saubornton Square. The book and paper business was there carried on, quite extensively, for about ten years, mostly if not wholly in connection with the buildings mentioned on pages 225 [15] and 227 [24]. Small Testaments were issued, and the " Psalms of 20
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HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
David" published by D. V. Moultou, 1828 ; also, nnother edition of " The Psalms and Hymnus of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D. D.," Book» pub. with a " Selection" of nearly three hundred and fifty
byuafu. Ilyums from various authors, added, and printed sepa- rately. These books were very nently and substantially bound, with the pews of the Centre meeting-house numbered on the covers of many of them. They bear the impriut of . L. Dow Pierpont, pub- lisher, 1833," and " D. V. Moultou, printer"; but are " Entered ac- cording to Act of Congress, in Clerk's Office of the District Court of New Hampshire, by Charles Lane & Co." A large and bandsoute Family Bible. clear and of good size, and with several plates, said to Family Bible was also published by Mr. Lane, in type have been " procured at great expense," which must have illustrated the highest style of picture-making in those days. Wilson & Giles were the printers of this Bible. A copy, in good preservation, was owued by the late Den. 1. B. Sanborn, and is now in the possession of his widow. Several other books (school-books and others) were produced at this establishment ; among them " Alonzo and Melissa ; or, The Uufeeling Father : An American Tale, by Daniel Jackson, Jr.
Extent of the Published by D. V. Moulton : 1832." Books were here
printing and bound as well as printed, and the number of hands em-
book -hiding ployed by C. Lane & Co., both in their printing office and business. bindery, at the time of their largest business, could not have been less than twenty-live.
A newspaper, called the Weekly Visitor, was started (Vol. I., No. 1)
The Werkly Oct. 23, 1824 ; published every Saturday morning by S. l'isitor. A. Morrison, for the proprietors ; terms, $1.50 (advance) and $1.75 per year ; motto, -
" Pledged to no party's arbitrary sway, We follow truth where'er it leads the way."
It was a sheet twenty-two inches by eighteen, with four colminns on each page. First side, and one and a half columns of the second, occupied by a sermon by Dr. Logan of Edinburgh, Scotland, ou .. Redeeming the Time" ; two and a half columus, "Sketch of San- bornton " (afterwards published in Vol. III. of Farmer & Moore's .. Historical Collections." as also, with additions, by the " Citizen " Anualist, in 1841) ; one column of poetry, in part suggested hy Cien. Lafayette, whose progress through the country, on his visit. is chronicled as the chief item of news, besides the ". Late News of the Gale in the West Indies." This paper gives us the names day, lo24. of fifteen aspirants for Congress, among them Hon. Ezekiel Webster of Merrimack County, and Thomas Whipple, Jr., Esq., of
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BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS.
Grafton (who was one of the six elected). Gov Morrill's " Procla- mation " for Thanksgiving also appears ; and there are two columns of advertisements (see pp. 224 and 225), including that of twenty- ciglit letters by Abel Kimball, postmaster, and one of a column or. more by Jacob B. Moore of Concord, extolling the merits of " Leavitt's Almanac " and " Marshall's Spelling Book." In his salutatory, the editor says, "There is but one newspaper printed in this county [probably at Dover], and none in this section of it."
Yet almost at the same time with the Visitor must the Strafford Gazette have been started ; unless, indeed, the Visitor may have been sold out, and changed both in name and form, at the expi-
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