USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Amherst > History of the town of Amherst, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire (first known as Narraganset township number three, and subsequently as Souhegan West) > Part 9
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10 June, 1777. Voted, in case there should be an imme- diate call for men to serve in the Continental army, to allow
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those who are disposed to enlist the same encouragement that has heretofore been paid, and to assess the amount necessary for its payment upon the polls and estates of the inhabitants of the town. Capt. Stephen Peabody, Capt. Hezekiah Lovejoy, and Mr. Solomon Kittredge, were appointed a committee to procure soldiers on the terms mentioned above.
Col. Nahum Baldwin, Mr. Stephen Burnam, Mr. William Wallace, Mr. Andrew Bradford, and Mr. Timothy Smith, were chosen a committee to affix and settle prices upon sundry articles.
The Mile Slip had only a partial town organization, and its inhabitants were a law to themselves. Hence it became a sort of Texas, to which the fathers sometimes resorted in times of trouble. A bridge across the Sonhegan, within its limits, became necessary to accommodate the travel between Amherst and Wilton, and as no town was liable by law to build and support it, an act was passed by the General Court, 2 April, 1779, " to oblige the county of Hillsborough to build and maintain a bridge across the Souhegan river in the Mile Slip, so called." This was the origin of the " County " bridge now in Milford.
THE DARK DAY OF 1780.
The famous " dark day " occurred 19 May, 1780. The morning was ushered in by a very dark cloud hanging over the west and north-west, attended with thunder. The wind from the south-west brought over a number of clouds from that quarter.
The darkness began about nine o'clock in the morning, and at twelve o'clock it was as dark as evening. Candles were lighted ; domestic fowls repaired to their roosts ; night birds appeared ; and the cattle gathered about the barns. Objects could be discerned at a small distance only. The clouds put on a strange, brassy, copper color.
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The darkness abated at about twelve, and at three o'clock in the afternoon it was no darker than on an ordinary cloudy day.
Though the moon fulled the day before, the darkness returned at night, and soon became total, and continued until about midnight. Its whole duration was about four- teen hours. It extended all over the New England States and westward as far as Albany. To the sonthward it was observed all along the sea-coast, and to the north as far as settlements had been made. Many of the people were very much frightened, and thought the day of judgment was at hand. The darkness was supposed to have been occasioned by the smoke from numerous fires at the westward, com- bined with a thick fog from the sea.
The winter of 1780-81 is said to have been the coldest that had been experienced in New England for forty years. From about the 15th of February to the 15th of March the snow did not melt on the south sides of buildings in shel- tered situations, and on the 24th of April the heavy tim- bers used in the frame of the North-west parish meeting- house were drawn on the snow crust over fences and rocks.
The dissensions between the different sections of the town, commencing with the building of the second meeting- house, 1771-74, and aggravated by the settlement of Mr. Barnard, in 1780, were not healed by the division of the town into parishes, as is shown by the following petition sent to the General Court by citizens of the First parish, in February, 1783, which sets forth the unhappy state of affairs in town at that time.
STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. HILLSBOROUGH SS.
To the Honorable the Gentlemen of the Council and the Honorable the Gentlemen of the House of Representatives, in General Court assembled.
The Petition of sundry Persons, Inhabitants of the Old Parish in Amherst, whose names are hereunto subscribed, humbly sheweth :
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That, at the session of the general Court held at Exeter, in May, Anno Domini 1781, sundry persons, whose names are given, obtained an act discharging them from that time, the Polls of their respective families & Estates from any future support of the Gospel ministry and other expense attending public worship at Mr. Barnard's meeting- house, as particularly mentioned in said Act, and erecting them into a distinct Parish, with incidental powers, still leaving the said Parish- ioners to act with the remaining part of the town of Amherst in all other matters proper to such a corporate body.
And Whereas the disuniting a body corporate in some things most commonly does, and probably always will, while human nature remains the same, disunite them in other matters, and such a partic- ular disunion is but little else but to set them at perpetual variance and discord, a most unhappy situation, which the unfortunate sufferers lament in vain. While such particular laws, perhaps too little adapted to the general good, made to gratify a minority, on the spur of present heat and opposition, always against the great rule that the majority must govern, chain each struggling Party to the unre- lenting enemy of human happiness, CONTENTION.
And it is the misfortune of these partial separations that they do not redress, but increase, the evils they are intended to remedy.
This we find to be our unhappy case in common with all those Towns where such divisions have been encouraged by law. Instances would be burthensome to your honors.
Your petitioners do not presume in this instance to counteract what the legislative body have thought proper to pass into a law ; but their unhappy situation compels them to such redress in your power and wisdom, and thereby extricate themselves from the bondage of con- tinual discord, party factions, and those little uneasy arts which are but too easily practiced by disunited spirits.
Those separate interests, so established by Law in this place, make our town-meetings scenes of confusion, irregularity, and vexation. Permit us to part with one of them, and to ask your Honors that the persons above named, who have chosen to be separated in part, may be separated from us wholly. We, therefore, your petitioners, do humbly pray that your honors would cause it to be enacted that the Polls and Estates aforesaid, so set off in ministerial matters, may be wholly separated from us in all matters whatsoever. Your Honors have ample power to confer on them any privileges necessary for their welfare, unconnected with us, and we do not wish to retain them to our mutual rexation. Nothing herein to alter the present method of paying Rev. Mr. Wilkins's salary.
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And we hereby do empower Messrs. Daniel Campbell, Samuel Wilkins, Thomas Wakefield, and Ebenezer Weston, or any two of them, to prefer this Petition to the General Court and to carry the same into effect, with full power to appoint one or more agents on our behalf for the same purpose.
All which is humbly submitted by your Petitioners, who, as in Duty bound, will ever pray.
AMHERST, Feb'y ye 24th, 1783.
Signed by
Joshua Atherton,
Amos Flint,
Nahum Baldwin,
Amos Flint, jr.,
Ephraim Barker,
Nathan Fuller,
Moses Barron,
James Hartshorn,
Ebenezer Batchelder,
John Hartshorn,
John Batchelder,
John Hartshorn, jr.,
Aaron Boutell,
Timothy Ilartshorn,
Amos Boutell,
William Hartshorn,
Joseph Boutell,
Samuel Henry,
Joseph Boutell, jr.,
Timothy Ilill,
Kendal Boutell,
David Hildreth,
Enos Bradford,
Jeremiah Hobson,
William Bradford,
Ebenezer Holt,
Daniel Campbell,
Reuben Holt,
Benjamin Clark,
William Howard,
Benjamin Clark, jr.,
Isaac Jaquith,
Joseph Coggin,
Joseph Jewett,
Joseph Coggin, jr.,
Timothy Jones,
Eleazer Cole,
Joshua Kendall,
Jacob Curtice,
Nathan Kendall,
Samuel Dana,
Nathan Kendall, jr.,
William Dana,
Stephen Kendrick,
Andrew Davis,
Henry Kimball,
Benjamin Davis,
Moses Kimball,
Bartholomew Dodge,
Moses Kimball, jr.,
John Eaton,
Jonathan Lampson, jr.,
Ebenezer Ellinwood,
Francis Lovejoy,
Jedediah Ellinwood,
Hezekiah Lovejoy,
Ralph Ellinwood,
Jacob Lovejoy,
Rolandson Ellinwood,
John Lovejoy,
Francis Elliott,
Edward Lyon,
Elisha Felton,
James McKean,
William Fisk,
Robert Means,
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Benjamin Merrill,
William Stewart,
Reuben Mussey,
Samuel Stearns,
Reuben D. Mussey,
Samuel Taylor,
Aaron Nichols,
Jonathan Taylor,
Timothy Nichols, jr.,
William Taylor,
William Odall, William Odall, jr.,
John Tuck,
Joshua Pettingill,
Amos Truel,
Nathan Phelps,
John Twiss,
Benjamin Pike,
Samuel Twiss,
Benjamin Pike, jr.,
Phinehas Upham,
Abel Prince,
Thomas Wakefield,
Joseph Prince,
William Walker,
Robert Read,
William Walton,
John Roby,
Stephen Washer,
Joseph Rollings,
Ebenezer Weston,
John Seaton,
Ebenezer Weston, jr.,
Samuel Seaton,
Thomas Weston,
Andrew Shannon,
Aaron Wilkins,
Joseph Small,
Andrew Wilkins,
William Small,
Benjamin Wilkins,
Jacob Stanley,
Benjamin Wilkins, jr.,
Samuel Stanley,
Benjamin Wilkins, 3d,
Daniel Stevens,
Samuel Wilkins,
Thomas Stevens,
David Williams,
David Stewart,
Thomas Woolson.
John Stewart,
No action seems to have been taken by the legislature on this petition, and the desired relief was not obtained for some years.
While the citizens of the town were divided into factions, and their meetings were scenes of discord and confusion, the country at large was in an equally unsatisfactory con- dition.
A period of distress and depression was then prevailing, greater than had been experienced during the sharpest crises of the struggle for independence.
The government was weak and inefficient ; money was scarce ; the country and the people were heavily in debt ; and credit, public and private, was well nigh destroyed.
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INTERNAL DISSENSIONS.
Israel Towne,
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Complaints were made of the attorneys and officers of the law, that they sought to advance their own selfish interests to the ruin of their fellow-citizens ; and the peo- ple, indignant at such a course, assembled in some instances to prevent the sessions of the courts.
An assemblage of this kind took place in Keene in the month of October, 1782, which was frustrated in part in its designs by the address of Attorney-General Sullivan.
In the midst of these troubles the following petition, from citizens of Amherst and others, was presented to the legislature at its session in February, 1783.
To the Honorable Council and House of Representatives of the State of New Hampshire, in General Court assembled, at Exeter, on the second Wednesday of February, 1783.
The prayer of your humble petitioners, inhabitants of the town of Amherst, and others, in the County of Hillsborongh, hereby sheweth :
That your petitioners have beheld, and do still behold, with great concern and resentment the numerous needless lawsuits that have commenced the year past, and that are still commencing and carrying on in this State, and more especially in this County, purely for pri- vate debts, it being a time of great scarcity, not only of the necessaries of life, but also of the silver currency in this State, when all the money that can be found in this state is scarcely sufficient to pay our public taxes and procure the absolute necessaries of life ;-
Therefore private debts cannot be suddenly paid in money, without great neglect of public debts and damage to the public cause.
Neither are private debts often to be recovered at this day by sueing, for all the money that can be procured is little enough to satisfy attornies and under sheriffs (which your petitioners think are too numerous in this County), so that the Creditors often take notes for their dnes after the debts are sned, and leave said notes in the hands of their Attorneys, where their debtors are quickly exposed to pay the same, or a greater cost, over again, for as though the cost of sueing in the County where both debtor and Creditor reside is too little, the practice is begun of sueing in another County, where neither debtor or creditor reside, which angments the cost, and is a practice which your petitioners view as very unjust and unreasonable in common cases.
Your petitioners are of opinion that if this extraordinary sueing be not seasonably prevented, it will have a very bad effect on our public
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affairs, as it hath a tendency to disunite, imbitter, and alienate the affections of the good Subjects of the State from each other, in a time when peace, harmony, and congruity, are very needful, yea, the greater part of our human strength.
This excessive sueing, if not prevented, will fill our gaols with honest laborious husbandmen and mechanics, and therefore leave our soil in a measure uncultivated. and our manufactories damaged. It will starve our army in the field, and our civil and ecclesiastical officers at home. It will starve the poor and needy, and greatly debil- itate the wealthy. It will greatly encourage and embolden our external and internal enemies, but discourage our sincere but injured friends. It will build up lawyers and sheriffs only, and that upon the ruin and destruction of their fellow-men.
Therefore it appears needful to your petitioners that something Constitutional be speedily done, in order to prevent this increasing calamity; otherwise we may expect that something will be done unconstitutionally, the dangerous tendency and consequence of which your petitioners would greatly deprecate.
Therefore. for the above reasons, your petitioners hereby pray that this Honorable Court would take the above case into their most serious consideration, and, by a wise and prudent act, prevent this extraordinary cost of lawsuits, and establish some more reasonable way for the recovery of private debts in this time of public calamity by making such lands, goods, chattels, lumber, &c., as the debtor is pos- sessed of. to be a lawful tender for debts at such prices as shall be set upon such goods. &c .. by faithful men chosen for that purpose, or such inen as the debtor and creditor shall choose themselves, which may be done with little cost and without the cost of any lawsuit.
However, your petitioners submit the particular method of proceed- ure in this matter to the wisdom and prudence of this Honorable Court, trusting, as you rule for GOD, and are interested in the com- mon welfare and happiness of your Country, and are touched with a fellow feeling for the calamities of the meanest of your subjects, that you are able and willing to point out and establish a method far superior to any pointed out by your petitioners, both for the redress of grievances and for the safety of this State, in patient expectation of which, your petitioners, as in duty bound, shall ever pray.
Signed by Robert Parker. Joshua Lovejoy, Lieut. John Patterson, James Woodbury, John Bradford, Richard Ward, and forty-four others."
As a measure of relief, the legislature, early in 1785, passed an act making property of most kinds a tender, at
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an appraised value, for the payment of debts ; but the effect of the law, contrary to the design of its makers, was to render specie still more scarce ; and, as creditors were unwilling to receive property for their claims which they could not turn into cash, their demands remained unpaid.
Conventions were held in several towns and in most of the counties of the State for the purpose of devising some means of deliverance from the troubles in which the peo- ple were involved.
One of these was held at Goffstown in the month of May, 1786, to which Col. Daniel Warner was chosen a delegate, at a town meeting held on the third of that month ; but no record appears of any report made by him of its proceedings.
Among the measures proposed for the relief of the people at this time were the abolition of the Court of Com- mon Pleas and the establishment of town courts in its place, and that not more than two lawyers should be allowed in any county.
Also, that a large amount of State notes should be issued, which should be a legal tender for the payment of all debts. No provision, however, for their redemption seems to have been thought of.
The legislature formed a plan for the issuing of £50,000 in paper money, to be let out at four per cent. interest on land security, redeemable at some future period, which was to be a tender for taxes for the internal support of the State, and for fees and salaries of the officers of the government. This plan was sent, September, 1786, to the several towns to collect their minds upon the subject.
In this town the project was laid before the people at a meeting held on the fifteenth day of November, 1786, wlien, after discussion, they voted not to sanction it, and " voted unanimously not to propose any alterations in said plan."
On the twentieth day of September, 1786, an armed force of some hundreds of men assembled at Exeter, and sent in a petition to the General Court, then in session at that
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place, asking for a redress of grievances, and declaring their intention, if their petition was not granted, of doing themselves justice. They surrounded the house in which the Court was in session, and placing sentries at the doors demanded an immediate answer.
The House of Representatives appointed a committee, to be joined by one from the Senate, to take the matter into consideration ; but the Senate refused, unanimously, to concur in this action, and the two houses met in convention. President Sullivan, who was ex-officio a member of the Senate, addressed the convention and such of the petition- ers as chose to be present, and presented the reasons which influenced the Senate in non-concurring with the action of the House.
He spoke of the petition, and showed its extreme folly and great injustice, and concluded by saying that if the voice of the whole State was for it, the legislature ought not to grant it while they were surrounded by an armed force. To do it would be to betray the rights of the people they had sworn to maintain, and he declared that no considera- tion of personal safety should ever compel him to so flagrant a violation of the constitutional rights of those who had placed him in the executive chair.
The president and the members of the legislature were held as prisoners until after dark by the mob, when some of the citizens of the town devised means for their release. On recovering his liberty the president called out a detach- ment of the State militia to assist in restoring order. His call was responded to promptly, and before night of the next day the mob was entirely dispersed. Many of the leaders were arrested, and some were bound over for trial at a court to be holden some months later ; but on the assembling of the court they were discharged without further action, and the affair ended without fighting or bloodshed, thanks to the prudence and firmness of Pres- ident Sullivan.
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The financial troubles, however, continued for some years, but were finally closed by the establishment of the Federal government, and the reestablishment of the in- dustry and commerce of the country.
THE REVEREND CLERGY.
Ample provision was made for the reverend clergy at the public festivals in these times, as the following extraet from the Council records of the State will show :
"7 June, 1786. The Council advised that a dinner be prepared at the public expense for the Gentlemen of the Clergy who may think proper to attend the election, and that the President, Council, Speaker of the House, and such members of the two branches as they shall think proper, dine in Company with the Clergy, the expense of which is to be defrayed as the two branches may think proper to order.
Mr. Hannaford, the innkeeper at Concord, was accordingly directed to prepare a dinner for fifty persons the Thursday following."
Gen. Washington visited the State in November, 1789, and at a meeting of the President and Council, at Ports- mouth, 31 October, the President requested the advice of Council whether it would be advisable to provide an enter- tainment at the public expense for the President of the United States, " To which the Council did advise and con- sent."
Hon. Joshua Atherton, having been elected senator, resigned the office of representative, to which he was elected in March, and the town, at a meeting held 27 August, 1792, voted not to fill the vacancy made by his resignation.
THE GREAT FROST OF 1794.
The spring of 1794 was one of the most forward ever known. On the seventeenth day of May winter rye on burnt ground was in bloom, and apples were as large as ounce balls. On the night following that day there was one of the most destructive frosts ever experienced, which
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was spoken of for years as the "great white frost." The rye was killed to the ground, and the apples destroyed, except where they were covered or protected by artificial heat. Mr. Barnard, the minister, had a fine orchard of young trees, on which the fruit had formed, which he saved by keeping fires of brush and logs burning in the orchard through the night. In other instances the fruit was saved by smoke from chimneys near by being driven among the branches of the trees through the night. Mr. Price, of Boscawen, in writing of the frost, says the winter grain and apples were destroyed. The canker worms, which had infested the apple trees for years, and had become exceed- ingly troublesome, were also destroyed. In that case the loss was not without some equivalent.
The June session of the legislature was held in this town in 1794, and Gov. Gilman here took the oath of office as governor, for the first time.
Ample provision seems to have been made by the citizens for the entertainment of the honorable members, as no less than twenty-two taverners' and retailers' licenses were granted by the selectmen that year, previous to the session of the Court.
This was the first and only session of the General Court held in Amherst.
At the annual meeting in March, 1795, the town " voted to apply to the General Court to alter the time of holding the annual meeting from the second to the first Monday of March, and that Col. Warner be a committee to prefer the above vote to the Court."
In compliance with this vote the legislature passed the following act, which received the approval of Gov. Gilman, 16 June, 1795 :
" AN ACT for altering the time of holding the Annual Meeting in the town of AMIIERST.
8
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The Inhabitants of the town of Amherst having petitioned for an alteration of their Annual Meeting from the second Monday of March to the first Monday of the same month,
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in Gen- eral Court convened, that the Annual Meeting of the inhabitants of the said town of Amherst forever hereafter shall be held on the first Monday of March, any law, custom, or usage, heretofore to the contrary notwithstanding."
" Forever," in the act above, proved to mean about ten years, as the time was again changed to the second Tuesday in March, in that time.
The first stage coach ever seen in Nashua passed through that place in 1795 on its way from Boston to Amherst.
Party politics have been the occasion of much hard talk in Amherst'as in other New Hampshire towns. Its citizens were plain-spoken people, having ideas of their own, and in their expression a good deal of heat has sometimes been evolved. Their disputes, however, generally ended in words which were soon forgotten, or remembered to be ashamed of or laughed at. The leading loyalist in town at the commencement of the Revolution, though sadly tor- mented for a time, was received into favor, and, long before the close of the war, entrusted with important offices, which he filled to the satisfaction of the people. The estab- lishment of the Federal constitution-the ratification of which he opposed in the convention of which he was a member, acting under the instructions of the town and from his own convictions-divided the people into parties, and the division became more marked after the breaking out of the French Revolution, hailed with all its terrible crimes by one party as the triumph of the people, and dreaded by the other as the precursor of the destruction of all government among men.
The measures the general government thought proper to pursue in its intercourse with the European powers, the ratification of Jay's treaty with Great Britain during the
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administration of President Washington, the passage of the Alien and Sedition Law and the land tax law passed during the administration of the elder Adams, intensified the divis- ions among the people, and at the annual meeting in March, 1799, the selectmen were constituted a committee to draft a petition to Congress asking for a repeal of the Alien and Sedition Law, and of the mode adopted for assessing and collecting the land tax.
The selectmen declining the appointment, Maj. William Bradford, Ensign William Low, and Eli Wilkins, Esq., were chosen to act as the committee, who accepted the appointment, and, at an adjourned meeting, on the Tuesday following, presented a report which was read and accepted by the town. The people in the north-west part of the town were almost unanimously in favor of the acceptance of the report, which fact will explain some parts of the following description of the meeting, which made its appearance in the Village Messenger of 9 March, 1799, which is inserted to show the feeling prevalent at that time.
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