USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Antrim > History of the town of Antrim, N.H. for a period of one century from 1744 to 1844 > Part 3
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STATE OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE. In the House of Representatives, March 21, 1777. The foregoing bill having been read a third time, Voted, that it pass to be enacted. Sent up for concurrence.
John Dudley, Speaker pr. tem.
IN COUNCIL, March 22, 1777. This Act, having been read a third time, Voted, that the same be enacted.
M. Weare, President.
A true copy : Attest, E. Thompson, Sec'y."
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HISTORY OF ANTRIM.
The first town meeting was holden May 1st, when Maurice Lynch was elected Town Clerk, and Thomas Stuart, James Aiken, and Rich- ard McAlister, the first board of Selectmen. The town appointed Lynch to make the necessary surveys to ascertain the centre, to receive for his services a quarter dollar per day. It was agreed that each resident freeholder pay one shilling, to defray the charge of obtain- ing the Act of Incorporation. At a subsequent town meeting, Aug. 20th, at 8 o'clock, A. M., the surveyor and his assistants having reported in favor of establishing the centre at the spot where was afterwards built the old meeting house, the town accepted the report, dissolved the meeting, and immediately went to work at felling trees.
This season, James Moore built the first corn mill in town, on North Branch river, on or very near the site of the Wallace mills. This was hailed by the early settlers as a great acquisition. They had thought themselves highly favored by the erection of Lewis' mill, in Francestown, three years earlier ; but to have a mill within their own limits, was still better. The road from the Great Bridge, by the Centre and the new corn mill, to Hillsboro', was made passable for horses ; and, with some shorter and minor roads, legally laid out and recorded.
July 23d, a company of fifty-two men from Antrim, Deering, Francestown, Lyndeboro' and New-Boston, mustered at the latter place, to join the forces to be led by Stark against Burgoyne. They took part in more or less of the military operations that issued in the capture of the British army. Among the number from Antrim were John Duncan, who served as lieutenant in this expedition, Wil- liam Smith, and doubtless others. John Smith, the son of William, was one of the number designated to march westward, but the father, on reflection, volunteered to take the place of the son : giving as his reason, that should he himself fall in battle, he trusted he was pre- pared to meet his Judge in peace ; while, should his son go and be killed, he could cherish in relation to him no such hope ! A strik- ing instance of paternal and disinterested affection.
In addition to those citizens of Antrim who marched under Stark to aid in the capture of Burgoyne, several others, either before or after this year, entered the military service for a longer or shorter period : as James Dickey, George Bemain, Elias Cheeney, Samuel Dinsmoor, Moses and David George, and probably others. With the exception of Dickey and Bemain, they returned in safety. While these men were absent in the army, the town aided their families ; if they were single men, who had left what the old records call " pieces of chopped wood," i. e., tracts of land on which the trees had been felled but not cleared off, the town cut, piled and burnt the wood, preparing the ground for a crop. The early records contain numerous votes in relation to such matters.
The inhabitants found the year 1778 a trying season. The rapid depreciation of the Continental paper currency distressed them severe- ly ; there was extreme difficulty in finding silver enough to pay the State taxes. In the year preceding, labor on the highway was put
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HISTORY OF ANTRIM.
at three dollars, and ox-work at two dollars per day. The year fol- lowing 1778, a day's labor on the highway was rated at ten dollars ; the town voted the Rev. Mr. Miltimore 70 dollars per Sabbath for supplying the desk. The paper went down, down, till it became scarce an object of valuation. In one instance the Rev. Mr. Barnes, of Hillsboro', paid his whole year's salary for a pig of a month old ; but was afterwards indemnified by that town for his loss. A silver dollar was hardly to be found. These embarrassments, in this place, were aggravated by complaints preferred to the Legislature by non- resident proprietors of lands, against some doings of the town. John Duncan and Thomas Nichols were chosen agents, to repair to the seat of government and defend the town against those charges. The complaints probably related to the assessment and collection of taxes on non-resident lands. How the matter ended, the records, being very loose and indefinite, give us no data to determine. Another in- dication of the pecuniary troubles of the times is seen in the fact that in the next year the town appointed a committee to regulate the prices of all vegetable articles offered for sale; whoever sold for more, was to forfeit the article or its equivalent in money, and the Committee were enjoined to prosecute all violaters of the rule. The attempt, like similar ones in other places, proved a failure ; prices of commodities being scarcely more controllable by human legislation than the variations of the wind.
To many of the conveniences and comforts of life, the hardy gen- eration then on the stage were strangers. Their dwellings were log houses, without glass, ill fitted to exclude the cold. Had it not been for the roaring fires kept up in winter in the huge fire places, fed continually by great logs, which they were glad to be rid of, the in- mates must have suffered. Wood and timber were so abundant that the faster they could consume them the better. Their farming uten- sils were clumsy; their clothing homespun and coarse, but durable ; the men wore tow shirts, striped woolen frocks, and leather aprons. The best suit of coarse woolen cloth was reserved for Sabbaths and special occasions, and lasted year after year. In winter they wore shoes, excluding the snow by a pair of woolen leggins, fastened over the mouth of the shoe by strings. Boots were rare ; great coats and surtouts rarer still. A pair of boots would last a man many years. In summer, neither men nor women wore shoes at home; on the Sabbath, the women often carried their shoes in their hand to save wear, till they came near the meeting-house, when they would put them on. They were clad, when engaged in their work, which was nearly all the time on week days, in a short gown and petticoat of some coarse material, with a striped apron ; calicoes being thought quite a dressy article. The household furniture was rude and coarse ; carpets, sofas, pianos, were unheard of ; instead of them was the spin- ning wheel, both small and great, and the loom-articles if less orna- mental, certainly more indispensable. Tea and coffee were almost unknown ; broths of various kinds, corn, bean, barley broth, were in constant use. In many families, hasty-pudding with milk, if milk
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HISTORY OF ANTRIM.
could be had, was almost the standing supper. For a lunch in the intermission of public worship on the Sabbath, instances were not wanting of men carrying in their pocket a few cold boiled potatoes, and nothing else. Sometimes, in winter, families were conveyed to meeting through deep snow on an ox sled ; in summer, the man, if he were the owner of a horse, rode to meeting with his wife seated on a pillion behind him, and a child seated on a pillow before him ; and sometimes another and smaller child in the mother's lap, encircled by one of her arms. A party of the smart young people once as- sembled at a neighbor's, in early times, for a social interview. The supper-what was it ? Not a modern supper of roast turkey and oys- ters, but hasty-pudding and milk! There being but three spoons, one division of three guests sat down to table, then another division and another, till all had been served. All went off well, and it was con- sidered a fashionable, well-managed affair.
That age has well been called " the age of homespun." It was an age of hard work and simple fare; interspersed, on the part of the men, with trainings, musters, raisings, huskings, wrestling matches, chopping-bees and piling-bees ; and, in the female world, with quilt- ings, apple-parings and carding-bees. If the rude dwellings were not often animated with the faces of visitants, they were daily enliv- ened with the buzzing of wheels and the clatter of looms. If the inmates had fewer means of high wrought excitement, they were not destitute of the sources of contentment and tranquil enjoyment.
In the course of this and the preceding year, Jonathan Nesmith, James Nesmith, Benjamin Gregg, Samuel Gregg, William Boyd, Daniel Miltimore, James Carr, Nathan Taylor, James McAlister, Phillip Coffin, and Elias Cheney were added to the number of settlers. The first school kept in town was commenced at the close of this year, taught by one Dinsmoor, at Dea. Aiken's, for one month ; con- sisting of the deacon's children and a few others, twelve in all. Reading, writing, and a little arithmetic, were the only objects of at- tention ; Dilworth's spelling book and the bible being the only read- ing books. No books on arithmetic, English grammar or geography, were then attainable. In some places, at this date, the children learned to write on birch bark, for lack of paper. Dinsmore taught the same school a second winter. In the intervening summer, that of 1779, as nearly as can be ascertained, the first school-house, a rude and very small framed building, was erected on or near the site of the present school-house in district No. 1, a little south of George Burnham's. The difficulties growing out of the depreciation of the currency still pressing on the people with increasing weight, they at this time petitioned the Legislature for some relief; with what suc- cess does not appear. The winter of 1779 and 1780 was one of ex- treme severity, long after called " the hard winter." Storms were fre- quent and driving, the snow very deep, the cold intense, so that for six weeks water did not drop from the eaves. There was little pass- ing, except on snow-shoes or rackets ; fuel was drawn to the houses on hand-sleds ; some families, unable to get to mill, were obliged to
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HISTORY OF ANTRIM.
dispense with bread and live on boiled corn and broths. May 19, 1780, was the well known dark day-the obscuration being so great that many persons lighted candles to see to eat their dinner.
Mr. Samuel Gregg, having given the town a piece of land at the old centre for a common, the remaining trees on the common and ad- joining burying-ground were felled this season ; each man volunteer- ing a day's labor. The people in the course of the year sent a peti- tion to the Legislature for aid toward building a meeting-house. The labor and expense, without some aid, exceeded their ability ; the war having drained the country of specie, and the paper currency being unavailable to make purchases, dishonest men paid their debts in money hardly worth taking, and too many creditors, compelled to receive the trash when legally tendered, were greatly injured, if not absolutely ruined.
Asa Merril, from Hudson, was killed, 1781, by a fall in Dea. Aiken's mill ; this being, it is believed, the first death of an adult that had occurred in the town. The same year, the first bridge, built at the cost of the town, over the North Branch river, was constructed in the present North Branch Village.
We are now come to the date of the first assembling of the Con- vention which formed the present Constitution of New-Hampshire. A town meeting was holden, June 1, to determine whether they would send a delegate to this important Convention. The action of the town is recorded in the following quaint language : "Voted, that we send no man to Concord." If the vote seem surprising to the present generation, it must be recollected that those who passed it were few and poor, and thought it better to waive their privilege, than incur the expense of compensating the Delegate.
As an interesting memorial of the strength of religious and devo- tional feelings in the breasts of the early settlers, it may be stated, that by a vote of the town, the 19th of May, this year, was observed as a town fast ; it being the first anniversary of the dark day.
The appointment of Thomas English, as Collector and Constable for 1782, proved unfortunate for the town. The Legislature having imposed a tax of a penny an acre on wild lands, for the support of the war, and the tax being disregarded by some non-resident propri- etors, English sold many lots at low rates for payment of taxes. Some years after, these titles, derived from the Collector, were adjudged to be invalid, through some illegality in his proceedings ; and the unfortunate purchasers had to submit, not only to the vexa- tion and cost of lawsuits on writs of ejectment, but in the issue, to pay for their lands a second time. Having collected a considerable portion of the sums assessed in his tax-bill, English absconded with near two hundred dollars of town's money, in silver, in his hands ; a loss more severely felt by the people of that day, than would be the loss of ten times the amount by the present citizens.
The news of peace with Great Britain, giving the prospect of relief from the toils, anxieties, and heavy burdens of war, diffused univer- sal joy. The people of Antrim had borne a full share, in proportion
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HISTORY OF ANTRIM.
to their number and means, in the sacrifices and sufferings necessary to the attainment of American independence.
In the summer of 1783, Dea. Aiken, who had, by a contract with: the town, cleared off, during the preceding year, the fallen timber of the old Common and Burying-ground, reaped the crop in one day, with the aid of his two hired men and three daughters. These daughters, one of whom fired the timber when the land was burnt over, were as active reapers as any in the field, and all became intelli- gent and respectable women. In that day it was deemed proper and reputable for females to perform, at certain seasons of the year, out- door work. They reaped, raked hay, pulled and spread flax; in the absence of their husbands, housed and foddered the cattle ; milked the cows, fed the swine, and, when occasion required, caught and har- nessed the horse. They thought little of walking a few miles to meeting ; carrying sometimes a babe in their arms. In addition to all this, they carded, spun, wove, colored, and made up the garments of the family. Surely our good grandmothers and great-grandmoth- ers, many of whom were women of intelligence, high moral princi- ple, and native, not artificial refinement, were far from eating the bread of idleness.
This year, or about that time, Jeremiah Wier, formerly of Chelms- ford, then of Antrim, disappeared in a manner that remains inexpli- cable. He had served in the army through most of the Revolutionary war; came home on furlough; and peace being declared before the expiration of the furlough, it was not necessary for him to return into the service. Considerable arrears of pay were due him. He removed his family to Antrim, to a place near Hopkins Griffin's, re- mained with them one winter, and then went in the spring to New- York for his dues. The money being not ready, he let himself to labor there through the summer. In autumn he received the arrears of his soldier's pay and his summer's wages, set out with the money on his return home, but never arrived, and was never more heard of. It was the belief of his relatives, or at least feared by them, that he was followed by some one who knew he had money, and murdered on the way.
In answer to a petition of the inhabitants, the Legislature, in 1783, imposed a tax of a penny an acre, for the three next years, on the lands of non-residents, to aid in building a meeting-house. A large portion of the town was still owned by the Masonian proprietors in Portsmouth; they submitted to the tax with rather an ill grace, but it could not be evaded; it yielded a considerable supply of hard money. Encouraged by this aid, the town voted at the March meet- ing of 1784 to build, the next year, a meeting-house fifty feet by forty, with a porch at each end, to be modelled on the plan of the west meeting-house in Londonderry ; a house endeared to them as the place where they and their fathers had worshipped.
This season, the town of Stoddard, having ascertained that without encroaching on other grants, they could claim a strip of land on their west border, deemed more valuable than the land on the east line of
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the town, claimed the land on the west ; and in order not to exceed the quantity allowed in their charter, disclaimed a strip of land on their old east line. As the charter of Antrim extended its western limit to Stoddard line, the former town voted to tax the land dis- claimed by the latter ; nor was the claim of Antrim ever contested. The strip was almost a mile wide on the south line of the town, and ran thence to a point at the northwest corner; making an addition, in a triangular form, to the territory of Antrim of about 1200 or 1300 acres.
The winter of 1784-5 was very severe; snows lay deep on the ground till late in April. The wolves at this period were very de- structive to the sheep, and even the cattle were in danger from their ferocity. The town voted a bounty of five dollars for killing a wolf, in addition to the bounty paid by the State. The people were often annoyed in the night by their howlings in the woods.
Numerous instances are found in the old records of this period, of persons being warned by the constable to quit the town. When they moved into the place, it was the duty of the selectmen, if they appre- hended it might subject the town to expense for their maintenance, to direct the constable to warn them to depart. The notice was served on quite a number of individuals ; they might then depart or remain, but if they became a public burden, the towns whence they came were liable for their support.
June 8, 1785, Col. Wm. Gregg, of Londonderry, an officer who had borne a distinguished part in Bennington battle, under Stark, came to town as the master workman in the erection of the meeting- house. The people engaged in the work with spirit. In the brief space of twenty days all the timber was cut and hewed, the slitwork sawed and the framing accomplished. The pine timber was cut on the plain near Mr. Jonathan Carr's; the hard wood timber on Meet- ing-house Hill. The house was raised June 28, on which occasion the town called in the aid of men from the towns adjacent. As a sample of the usages of the time, it may be stated, that a breakfast was pro- vided for the raisers, of bread, cheese, and dry fish; a dinner of meat. Two barrels of rum were purchased for the use of the workmen; it being scarce needful to be added that the day of the temperance re- form had not then come.
So pleased were the people with the idea of having a meeting- house, that on the Sabbath next after the raising of the frame they met in it for worship, having a Mr. Whipple for their preacher. Nothing had been done to the house but to lay down a little loose flooring, to place a few boards on blocks for seats, and a few on the beams as a screen from the sun. In time of service there arose a violent thunder storm, and while the little congregation were fleeing for shelter to Mr. Gregg's, (now Mr. Gates',) the rain poured down copiously, wetting many to the skin. Little was done to the house this season, except to cover the roof.
As the erection of the meeting-house was the work of the town in their corporate capacity, a narrative of the matter seems to belong to
.
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HISTORY OF ANTRIM.
the civil rather than the ecclesiastical portion of this history. In finishing the house they proceeded tardily, doing something each year, but not striking the finishing stroke, and selling the pews, till the ex- piration of six years. Nor is this strange. At the beginning of the work there were but forty-three families in town, most of them living in log houses; willing-hearted, but in narrow circumstances. There was neither store nor tannery nearer than Amherst. An eye-witness of the state of society at that period, remarks, " Then was a time of brotherly love; each family sat under its own vine, having none to molest; no haughty looks or mincing steps; no jealousy, tale-bearing or envy, known in town; but as population and wealth increased, those evils crept in." The picture is a pleasing one, colored no doubt by the partiality of the witness to scenes of olden time, yet contain- ing no small portion of truthfulness. The simplicity, sincerity, and cordial hospitality of most of the men and women of that day, con- trast favorably with the specious, but too often hollow, pretences of modern refinement.
A certain individual, who at the March meeting this year had been elected town-clerk and third selectman, happening to fall under the displeasure of his townsmen, they, at a subsequent town meeting, " reconsidered" the choice, and elected other persons to those offices. Whether such a procedure then had the stamp of legality it is not our present business to enquire. The ground of dissatisfaction seems to have been the retention of money in the hands of this person, which the town claimed as belonging to their treasury.
Among the settlers who came in between 1778 and 1785, were ยท Adam Nichols, John McCoy, Samuel and James Dinsmore, William McDole, Hugh Jameson, Nathan Austin, John Gilmore, Reuben Boutell, Alexander Gregg, Adam Dunlap, Lemuel and Stephen Cur- tice, John Stuart, Nathan Taylor, John and William McIlvaine, Da- vid McClure, Thomas Day, Isaac Cochran, and James Wallace. Dea. Cochran raised the frame of the first two story dwelling-house in town, now occupied by his grandson, Ira Cochran, precisely two weeks after the raising of the meeting-house. The same season, while Mr. Whipple was performing divine service on the Sabbath at Daniel Miltimore's, the flooring gave way, and both preacher and hearers were precipitated into the cellar. All were frightened ; a few were bruised; but no bones broken.
The first grant of school money by the town was in 1786, amount- ing to fifty dollars. The little school house first erected having be- come rickety and too small to accommodate the increasing number of scholars, another and larger house was built this year in a more cen- tral location, designed for the use of the whole eastern section of the town, on the north side of the road from Mr. Raymond's to Mr. Cochran's, near the brook a little east of Raymond's house. It was constructed of logs.
Great discontent at this time existed in the public mind, arising from the scarcity of specie, and the difficulty of paying debts and taxes. There was a popular clamor for an emission of paper currency
3
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HISTORY OF ANTRIM.
by the State, to be lent to individuals on landed security, and to be made a legal tender to creditors. Warned by past experience of the disastrous effects of the old Continental currency, the wiser part of the people maintained that a new emission would depreciate; that the relief would be but temporary, to be followed by yet severer em- barrassments ; that industry, frugality, and patience were the true and only remedies. The town of Antrim showed their good sense by instructing their representative to oppose the emission. The op- position to the measure was successful.
This year the body of the meeting-house was inclosed by rough boarding, and the under flooring laid. In these operations, James Dinsmoor, an active and promising young man, was killed by a fall from the staging. Prior to this date, the people had attended public worship, when they could obtain a preacher, in private houses, some- times in barns. Henceforth, they usually worshipped in the meeting- house ; rude and unfinished as it was, it gave them comfortable ac- commodations in the warm season. As they were unable to supply the desk but a part of each year, they were careful to secure the supply in summer. For a number of following years there was little preaching in town in winter.
In 1786, occurred a singular circumstance at the funeral of a child of Hugh Jameson, in the north-east part of the town. The funeral procession, on their way to the centre burying ground, had entered a small piece of woods south of Mr. McCoy's, when a furious wind met them ; trees began to fall ; the bearers, on foot, ran forward with the corpse to Dea. Cochran's ; while the mourners, on horseback, fled back to Mr. McCoy's for refuge. When the tempest was over, the two parties reunited and buried the child. The same blow, from the south-west, prostrated much of the timber in the valley a little east of Mr. E. L. Vose's.
At what precise time Antrim began to be represented in the Leg- islature, has not been ascertained. No doubt, very soon after the in- corporation, it was attached to a Representative District, formed by classing together several adjacent towns ; no town in the immediate vicinity having a sufficient population to entitle it to a representative of its own. The district was represented by John Duncan, Esq., in 1787 ; perhaps for a few preceding years also ; certainly for several succeeding years, till 1797, when he was elected Senator. The town records fail to elucidate this part of our history. As the respective towns attained to a population sufficient to entitle them to a repre- sentative, they were detached from the district, and a new district organized of such places as could be well classed together ; the clas- sification being occasionally changed to correspond with the state of population. The district, in 1791, was composed of Antrim, Deer- ing, and Hancock. Afterwards Antrim was classed with Windsor ; but was able to return, in 1798, a sufficient number of polls to entitle it to a representative of its own.
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