USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Mont Vernon > History of the town of Mont Vernon, New Hampshire > Part 20
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44
At the time Mont Vernon was first being settled, the American Colonies contained a larger population than had ever before gone out from any nation for such a purpose. All this had been accomplished, not by aid of the English government, but in spite of it. Religious persecution had in part started it, and subsequently helped it. A
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political revolution had given it a new impulse ; but the real explana- tion of its great success is to be found in causes that reach back as far as the Norman Conquest. For nearly a thousand years the title to the greater part of the soil of England has been vested in the hands of less than a hundred men. In the estimation of mankind nothing gives to the individual so much importance and dignity, so much of all that which makes life attractive as the possession of great landed estates. The passion to own land is inborn in every Englishman. He looks upon it as the crown and glory of life. What one sees to be so advantageous to others he desires to possess for himself. It was this passion for the ownership of lands, of estates great or small according to the means possessed for acquiring them, that led most of the English colonists to found their homes in America. They did not come here in quest of gold, or glory or adventure or novel excite- ments, but to build up homes for themselves and their children. Un- fortunately the information which we possess in regard to the earliest settlers upon this hill is very meagre. We know the names of some of them, but no memorial of their existence remains save that which they have left on the surface of the earth which we daily tread.
How we should treasure and with what delight we should now read a well-kept diary by one of our earliest settlers covering the first fifty years of our history ! Not Pepy's or Evelyn's or Fannie Burney's would be to us half as interesting and instructive. It would be what Bradford's history is to a wider circle of readers. By its aid we should almost be able to see passing before our eyes the transforma- tion of a wilderness into a prosperous and civilized town. Perhaps, too, we might learn what were his emotions and what was his wonder as he gazed for the first time from the brow of this hill upon the most extended view obtainable in New England from any spot habitable by man and saw no trace of man's existence ; how he received and with what delight he welcomed the incoming of other settlers to become his neighbors and friends, each in turn making a new opening in the forest where for centuries the giant trees had wrestled with wind and storm and tossed them off from their branches in the glory of their strength ; when and who brought under cultivation Prospect Hill, our highest elevation, where now the summer visitor from the piazza of the "Grand" can enjoy a view of surpassing loveliness by day or watch the coast-wise lights send out their friendly rays to the wan- dering ship by night ; when and who wrought into lawn-like smoothness the waving lines of Campbell's hill where the golfer of today at the ninth tee looks up to catch a smile or receive a frown from Crotchet Mountain at the success or failure of his stroke; by what way and when the first horse and cow and pig and sheep and hen were brought here to equip the shaping farm ; when the footpaths leading from house to house were transformed into roadways for more convenient travel ; how long it was before the blueberry, raspberry and blackberry bushes sprang up and bore fruit from the burnt-over soil ; when, too,
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was the house ready for the incoming of the wife to cheer and en- courage all with her genial presence, and when and where did the first-born see the light on Mont Vernon soil; who first discovered and with venturesome step descended into the gloomy depths of Purga- tory - facilis descensus Averno, sed revocare gradum superasque, evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est - these and a thousand other facts of greater or less interest we should know, if only Lamson, Wilkins, Carleton, Averill or Smith could have foreseen that a century and a half later this church, which has taken the place of the one they helped to build, would be crowded with their descendants and successors to bless their memories for such a gift.
As early as 1760 there were fourteen taxpayers in t' e town, and after that date its settlement must have been very rapid, for during the Revolutionary War our territory furnished about fifty soldiers and two commissioned officers, Stephen Peabody attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, with the command of a battalion of infantry be- fore its close.
It is almost certain that before the end of the century every acre of land which we now see cleared and many more now grown up into woodland had been brought into cultivation, and the houses now standing, with a few exceptions, had been built. I am amazed as I attempt to compute the amount of labor which this achievement repre- sents. What workers these early Mont Vernon men must have been ! The only thought then could have been how short could the hours of sleep and how long could the hours of labor each day be made. The "walking delegate" was the creation of a later day
We hear much at the present time of what is called the strennous life-of urgent and persistent labor in one way or another that taxes strength to its utmost limit of endurance, of a determination to do things that never ceases until the spring is broken or the sands of life have run out. It is spoken of as if it were an incident of our day only, and is held up as a racial menace. But there were heroes be- fore Agamemnon and hard workers before the age of Roosevelt. The man, who, with a warrant for 120 acres in his pocket, a rifle on his shoulder, and an axe in his hand, first came upon this hill, and during a lifetime, by the labor of his own hands, transformed his wilderness tract into fields of timothy and elover, of wheat and rye, barley and oats, corn and potatoes ; who erected a commodious house for a large family, and a barn ample for fifty sheep, twenty head of cattle and the necessary winter supplies ; who in the off-days of the year con- structed ten miles of fencing from the loose and half-buried boulders that some prehistorie glacier had scattered about his fields, apparently for the very purpose of keeping him from idleness ; who had reared a family of eight or ten children and given them a good education ; who had fulfilled all the duties of a good citizen in helping to keep the town up to a high standard of excellence in all things; the wife of this man who did a full share in this great accomplishment, who rose
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before the lark in summer and before the weasel in winter just to put the house in order for a good day's work; who with her own hand made the butter and cheese from the milk of twenty cows, washed and spun the wool from forty sheep, became the mother of ten children and did all the work for such a household without the aid of any servant; who tried out the lard from the fat of half a dozen hogs ; and who made the candles to light the house through the long nights of winter when she knit the stockings and from the waste pieces of woolen braided the mats that were scattered over the floor of every room in the house, including the front entry; who cultivated her own little flower-bed, set out and watered the hollyhocks that bloomed on either side of the front door and made it look like an entrance into paradise : who dispelled the wintry gloom by filling the sunward windows with flowers almost as bright and cheerful as her own warm and sunny heart ; who held herself in readiness every day of the year to sit by the bed of sickness at the summons of any neighbor in distress ; who found her only recreation in going to church on Sunday three miles away to listen to a sermon three hours long, keeping off the chilblains by a little portable stove filled with coals from the parish fire,-this man and this woman knew something of a strenuous life that the men and women of our day little dream of.
From the beginning of time did the Infinite Eye ever look down upon brighter examples of absolute consecration to duty than the fathers and mothers who made this beautiful New England in order that they might leave to their children and those who were to come after them something which they may have dreamt of but never realized ?
Can it be a matter of wonder to us that in the early ages of our kind, among children of such parents as these, if such there were, who had heard from the lips of father and mother and in part seen with their own eyes the long story of their toil and struggle to build up a home in order that they might bequeath to them that which they did not inherit, there should have sprung up the thought and feeling for ancestral worship that still survives as one of the religions of the world? In life they had been their earthly parents seen, and in death they became their heavenly parents unseen.
Though we know but little of the first generation of Mont Vernon men and women individually, we know much of them collectively. They were a strong, vigorous, God-fearing race, who never turned from the path of duty as they saw it until the race of life was run. Religion was to them something more than a formality; it was a stern, living, ever present reality.
The inconvenience of going from two to six miles to church, at a time when no roads existed, was very great, yet it is doubtful if there was a family here that failed in going to Amherst every Sunday of the year to hear the preaching of the Gospel until a house of wor- ship of their own had been provided. As early as 1779 many residents
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petitioned the General Court of New Hampshire to be set off as the second parish of Amherst, but the petition was not granted until two years later. Before this, however, a church had been organized and the building across the way from this in which we are now assembled had been constructed, every farmer in the town having contributed of the materials entering into it, the heavy timbers having been hauled to this spot by oxen over the snow then piled so high and crusted so hard that stone walls were invisible and a straight, smooth road was open from one place to another in any direction.
The Rev. John Bruce from Marlborough, Mass., a graduate of Dartmouth College, was the first ordained minister, of whose quali- fications I am unable to speak for two reasons: First, that I never heard him ; and second, that I am one of his direct descendants.
Separated as the people here then were from Amherst ecclesi- astically, the ties that bound them to the old town became very slight, and from ecclesiastic to political independence was a natural and easy step. In 1783, 121 residents petitioned that the second parish of Amherst might be set off as an independent town, but then as now such applications were not readily granted, and it was not until 1803 that an act of incorporation was obtained and Mont Vernon then be- came and has ever since remained one of the brightest of all the jewels that adorn the crown of New Hampshire. It is this event and that which flowed from it that we have met here today to commemorate.
It was right and proper that the people living upon this hill should form a little commonwealth by themselves, and govern it as they deemed best. They were in numbers sufficient, their wealth was equal to it, and in intelligence and capacity they were in no way lacking. They felt for this land so lifted up towards the heavens all the passionate love which the Swiss feel for their snow-clad mountains or the highlander of Scotland for Ben Nevis or Ben Lomond. They took a pride in their lofty isolation and desired to give to it a local habitation and a name, and the mention of that name has never yet brought a blush of shame to the cheek of one of its citizens.
It was, is, and always has been a little town. In population it never reached much beyond seven hundred, but it has succeeded in always making itself known and felt, sometimes in one way and sometimes in another. It is always throwing out its banners, and when one grows dim, it lifts up another. Into obscurity and neglect it will never consent to drop. When the cultivation of the soil began to fail, its enterprising citizens turned their attention to manufactur- ing, and there was not a town or city in the country that did not hear of it through its fancy boxes and portable writing desks. And even before new fashions threw these into innocuous desuetude the same men erected a temple of learning on this hill which for half a century has shed its light over the surrounding country and spread the fame of Mont Vernon far and wide. Finally, she invited the world to come and see her as she is when she puts on her summer robes of
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beauty, to breathe her air as pure as that which mantled Eden ere sin polluted it in spots, to drink of the waters that gush from her granite breast, to look up into her heavenly dome of a blue not less lovely than that o'erarching the Ionian land, to open their eyes upon a land- scape of surpassing loveliness and of endless extent, to gaze upon her western skies when in autumn the sun drops behind the Lynde- borough mountains and paints the piled-up clouds in colors more brilliant and variegated than Turner saw when looking over Venice from the Lido ; and the world came and still comes and will continue to come as long as men seek heal h, beauty and rest, where health, beauty and rest are found.
Mont Vernon followed the order which is observed in the evolu- tion of nearly all of our New England towns. The farms came first and then the village. When the population was sufficient they first erected a church. For convenience it was located near the territorial center and around it the village grew. First came the doctor, then followed in natural succession the blacksmith, the shoemaker, the storekeeper, the carpenter, and these, with the few owners of nearby lands which they cultivated, make up with their homes the typical New England village. Such was the little village of Mont Vernon a few years after the erection of the church already spoken of, and it has continued in the form in which it was originally constructed to the present day, with only few changes and some additions. For a generation after its incorporation the citizens of Mont Vernon were almost entirely engaged in agriculture and prosperonsly so until 1840 or a few years later. The decline in this industry was due to causes beyond their control. They affected every agricultural community in New England to a greater or less degree. Events are every day happening in this busy world that bring a blessing to one place and a blight to another. We can neither foretell them, nor guard against their effects. A Portuguese navigator passing around the Cape of Good Hope to India destroyed the commerce of the Mediterranean and built up that of the English Channel and the North Sea. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and indirectly brought on the Civil War. England repealing her corn laws reduced the value of her farming lands one-half and made herself the greatest manufacturing nation in the world. When our railway system was extended into the valley of the Mississippi our New England farmers found that they could no longer raise corn and wheat and oats and barley in competition with the owners of more fertile lands and easier of culti- vation, and from that date and for this cause began the abandonment of our Mont Vernon farms, and I fear the end has not yet been reached. Not only man and his belongings, but the birds of the air even are subject to the decrees that evolution is issuing from her irresistible throne.
Where now are those flocks of wild pigeons that in the gloom and glory of an autumnal morning fifty years ago darkened the sun
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in their flight like the arrows of Xerxes at Thermopylæ? When the wheat and rye fields disappeared they took their flight and not one from their untold millions remained to remind us of their existence.
After the Revolutionary War the process of settling of New Hampshire continued with an accelerated pace, and before the close of the century our eager home builders had pushed northward to the very borders of Canada and filled up the lands between. Though a farming population is the most independent and self-sustaining of all, yet there is no such thing as real independence. We are always lean- ing one upon another. The city is dependent upon the town and the town upon the city. One nation draws from another and gives of her own what is wanted in exchange. As New Hampshire did not pos- sess navigable rivers, and was unable to construct canals as did New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, they were obliged to build road- ways to meet the demands of trade. In 1802 the Second New Hamp- shire turnpike was completed from Amherst through this town to Claremont, and later by extension to Windsor in Vermont. They imitated the Romans and laid it out in a straight linc, neither turning to the right nor left, whatever might be the difficulties in the way. Our sturdy ancestors seemed to delight in overcoming obstacles and never turned aside to avoid them. The opening up of this road was an event of great importance to Mont Vernon. It was the avenue through which passed the travel of northern New Hampshire and Ver- mont to the metropolis of New England. It continued to hold it until the Concord and Nashua Railroad was opened in 1837, when the toll-gates were pulled down and its glory was a thing of the past
I have heard my father say that he has seen 125 two-horse teams. loaded with the products of the farm, passing one after the other through this village on their way to Boston. Scarcely a day would pass in the appropriate season of each year when droves of cattle and sheep and swine were not seen passing in the same direction. To accommodate this immense traffic taverns were built every two or three miles along the pike, and there were some capable of providing for the care of forty horses at one time. The town then could boast of four stores, and it has been said that the village tavern, located on what is now the pub ic square, was in the habit one time of dispens- ing to its customers a barrel of rum a week This period marked the culmination of the prosperity of Mont Vernon as an agricultural community, and can be looked back to as its most picturesque and busy age. Fortunately for its future there were then growing up here a group of men of high intelligence and ambitious views who gave a new impulse to the town and for a generation kept it in prosperous ways.
The manufacture of desks and fancy boxes was carried on by William Conant and Harry H. Bragg, which at times gave employ- ment to fifty people; a large tannery was established by Joseph A. Starrett; the husk business was the conception of F. O. Kittredge,
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and besides these, clocks and organs were sent out from here that kept good time and made fine musie, and as they bore the name of the place of their manufacture upon them, they sold readily without a warranty.
In 1850 the men whose names have just been given, joining hands with several other of the prominent citizens, learning from their own experience the value of a good education, and desiring that the rising generation should have within their reach opportunities beyond that which they had enjoyed, resolved that an academy of the first order should be erected, and the result of their labors and contribu- tions was soon seen in the institution which for a long time flourished here under the names of Appleton Academy and MeCollom Institute. Since then I have mingled somewhat widely with men and affairs, but there has never come under my observation or within my knowledge an instance of such liberality or such great personal sacrifices as were made by these men in the establishment of this school. It is certain that one of them gave to it at least one-fifth of all his wealth, which was limited to a few thousand dollars.
There was a time when 125 scholars were being educated in yonder building, and the flourishing years of the academy gave to the village a life and vivacity to which before it had been a stranger, and to hundreds of boys and girls the opportunity of gaining an edu- cation, which, but for the labor and sacrifice of these men, they never could have gained.
The next stage in the history of Mont Vernon is due to the sagacity, good judgment and business enterprise of F. O. Kittredge. His love for his native town was intense and beyond that of most other men. What he thought to be so attractive and beautiful, he believed other people would also enjoy, and in the fifties he erected in the village a hotel for summer boarders that in outward appear- ance and interior equipment was the equal of any house of the same character in New England. From the date of its construction until its destruction by fire in 1872 it was annually filled with guests of high standing and refinement, whose presence was welcomed with the same pleasure and cordiality by the people of the town as they ex- tend to their successors of the present year.
It is not possible to close the history of Mont Vernon, that seems to be so far removed from the rush and roar and turmoil of the great world as to be hardly in touch with it, without reminding you that it is one of the little units that forms a part of a mighty nation. Though far removed the nerves of human allegiance reach here and thrill here, and nowhere have human hearts moved more deeply and responded more quickly to the demands of patriotism.
To the men and women of Mont Vernon, to the men and women of every city and town and hamlet of the North, the year of 1861 stands out in the background of their lives as the one most memor- able and eventful. It presents itself to us still in a dual aspect-
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filled with light the brightest, and with shadow the darkest. It is a canvas from which stands out the majestic figure of America, full of strong and lusty life, in the act of putting on her armor and taking up the sword, set in a frame of mourning.
I need not tell you how the currents of our lives began to widen and to flow into the broad stream of the Nation's life, helping it and strengthening it with heart and hand, with thought and deed.
No longer then were the thoughts uppermost in the minds of men when would the warm and mellow earth be ready for the seed, no fear of summer drought to wither or early frosts to kill the growing corn. All the hopes and fears of everyday life were overshadowed by the impending national calamity and the resolution and work to avert it. It was a conflict on our part not of aggression, but of preservation. We were a people unused to arms. The story of our wars had been told to us, if told at all, by the descendants of those who had partic- ipated in them. The actors had passed away.
But when the nation rose from its sleep of security to put forth its strength in defense of life and honor, we recall with what quiek- ness of decision and alacrity of step our young men left field and workshop, sehool and college, home and friends to meet the unknown but certain perils of war. They were caught up and carried along almost joyously to the strife by that spirit which kindleth a flame in the hearts of a people when great dangers threaten and heroic work is laid upon them to perform. They made no exeuses ; they asked not for delay, but to the call gave the quick response, "We are ready."
The Union soldier was gifted with that intelligence which enabled him to see the importance of the conflict in which he was engaged, and its relation and bearing upon the nation's history and that of the civilized world. He knew and felt that though his own name might soon be forgotten, yet his valor, aiding and stimulating that of his fellows, was being wrought and spent in deeds which were to live through all human story, and, with this foretaste of immortality charged home against the foe. Thus and thus only have the great battles of freedom been won. From the beginning to the close of the war Mont Vernon furnished four commissioned officers and about fifty enlisted men.
The names of your soldiers were upon the muster-roll of every army ; they followed the fortunes of the Army of the Potomac from the beginning to the end; they were present at the taking of New Orleans ; they joined in the assault at Port Hudson, and helped to open up the Mississippi to the peaceful commerce of the world; they endured the hardships and experienced the pangs of hunger without complaint under Burnside in the siege of Knoxville, and marehed with happy hearts under Sherman from Atlanta to the sea.
And now the hour has struck and the story is ended. We stand face to face with the new century. We will not attempt to penetrate into the future, but await its unfolding as surely it will unfold with its
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