USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Peterborough > History of the town of Peterborough, Hillsborough county, New Hampshire > Part 2
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In the House of Representatives, Dec. 8, 1737.
Read and ordered that the petition be granted, and the petition- ers and their associates be, and are hereby empowered by a Surveyor and Chainmen on oath, to survey and lay out a township of the contents of six miles square, in some part of the unappro-
21
THE TOWN IN 1738.
priated lands of the Province suitable for a township, and that they return a plat thereof to this Court within twelve months for confirmation. And for the more effectual bringing forward the settlement of said new town, ordered, "that there be sixty-three house lots laid out in a suitable and defensible manner, one of which to be for the first settled minister, and one for the second settled minister, and one for the school ; each of said three lots to draw equal divisions with the other grantees of the said sixty lots. That the grantees do, within three years from the confirmation of the plan, have settled on each home lot a good family, and in order thereto, that they build thereon a dwelling-house of eighteen feet square and seven feet studs at least, and finish the same, and have well fenced and brought to hay, grain, or ploughed, six acres to each home lot. That they settle an orthodox minister and build a decent convenient meeting-house for the public worship of God ; and that Col. Josiah Willard and Capt. John Hobson, with such as shall be appointed by the honorable board, be a Committee for admitting the grantees or settlers, and that they take effectual care that no persons are admitted as such who have had any grants for . the space of three years, and that each grantee give bonds to the Province Treasurer or his successor in the sum of forty pounds for his fulfilling or complying with the terms or conditions of the grant ; and if any of the settlers fail of performing the said conditions, then his or their right or share to revert to and be at the disposition of the Province."
The above Act having become a law by the signature of Gov. Belcher, January 16, 1738, the Committee appointed to admit the grantees or settlers into a township granted the petitioners and other associates, whose names are entered on a petition of Samuel Heywood and others; viz., William Dudley, Josiah Willard, and John Hobson, Esq., met at Woburn, March 17, 1738, and admitted sixty grantees of such as had not had any land grants for the three years last past. Not one of all 'this number. ever settled on the land, or proba- bly ever saw it. A majority of them belonged to Concord, as we learn by a vote, in regard to notifying meetings, August 12, 1738, "that the clerk be empowered to call meetings of the future by posting up notifications at Concord, &c., where great numbers of the proprietors dwell." It was now past
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22
HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
the middle of March, and no time was lost by the proprietors in preparing to select and survey the township of unappropri- ated land granted them by the Legislature. They accordingly employed one Joseph Wilder as Surveyor, and Joseph Rich- ardson and Zacheus Lovell as Chainmen, to run the lines round their grant, who were required to make oath to the same. We see that the work was hurried as soon as the spring should open and admit of an examination and survey through the trackless wilds of this region, for by the 21st of May succeeding the selection had been made, a plat laid out and surveyed of a township six miles square.
We can form no idea of what governed the Surveyor in the location of the town. It is to be supposed that he was aided by some of the proprietors interested in the grant in selecting the spot he did. After passing the mountain, no surveyor's lines had ever been run; on the north to Hillsborough, and perhaps even farther north, and on the west to Keene and Hinsdale, a large amount of unappropriated land lay before him. We suppose that he could go anywhere in this region · and lay out his six miles square. It was a rough country, and contained a vast amount of waste land; the object would be to select a plat that should be as free from these natural ob- structions as possible.
We can imagine that, in search for this location, he came through what was afterwards Temple, up to the Notch of the Mountain, so called, where the great travelled road now runs. Of course he desired to include as little of the East Moun- tains in his township as possible ; so he passed west of the mountain somewhat, on very high land, where he could look over a great portion of all the territory that would be included in the new town. Here was spread out before him the Mo- nadnock, in all its grandeur and beauty, which he was satisfied that his survey would not reach ; also a large amphitheatre of land, unbroken with any mountainous ridges or precipitous hills, with a considerable river running through its midst. With such a view before him, he no doubt determined to carve his new township out of this particular region. All this would be north-east from the great Monadnock Hill, as it is
23
THE TOWN IN 1738.
called in the survey. These suppositions may account in some degree for what has seemed the fortunate location of Peterborough beyond that of any town in this part of the State.
The next proceeding of the Surveyor was to determine where he should make his starting point. He was now over the mountains, or sufficiently so as to leave them principally on the east, and so he commenced his survey at the south- east corner of the town, which must have been quite high on the mountain's side; nevertheless, sufficiently west to shun the East Mountains in the survey. It was determined to lay out the town in a square, each side being six miles in length, and exactly in the points of the compass. We have no ves- tige of this survey, except the following sworn report of the Surveyor and Chainmen, made to the Legislature : -
Birch
South. 6 miles and 68 rods.
Spruce S
Black
E
S
Tree. WN
PETERBOROUGH.
6 miles and 60 rods.
Contents 6 miles square, with an allowance of one . chain in thirty, for swag of chain, and 50 acres for a pond.
6 miles and 60 rods.
West.
heap of Stones.
E
N
N
6 miles and 68 rods.
WE
Stake and
pillar of Stones.
Stake ànd
24
HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
Report of the Surveyors : -
May 21st, 1738. Then finished the surveying and laying out of a township, of the contents of six miles square, to satisfy a grant of the Great and General Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, made the 16th day of January, 1737, on the petition of Samuel Heywood and others, and their associates, lying on the easterly side of a great hill, called Monadnock Hill, between said hill and a township laid out to the inhabitants of Salem and others (Amherst), who served in the expedition to Canada in 1690, and lyeth on a southerly branch of the Contoocook River, near the head thereof, said branch running through it. It began at a black Birch Tree, the south-east corner, and from thence it ran west six miles and sixty-eight rods by a line of marked trees to a spruce tree marked for the south-west corner ; from thence, it ran north by a line of marked trees six miles and sixty rods to a stake and pillar of stones, the northwest corner; and from thence it ran east by a line of marked trees six miles and sixty-eight rods to a stake and heap of stones, the north-east corner ; and from thence straight to where it began, six miles and sixty rods. The lines above said did contain the contents of six miles square, with the allowance of one chain in thirty for swag of chain, and fifty acres for a pond.
JOSEPH WILDER, Surveyor.
Then follows, June 8, 1738, the certificate of the oath of the above of Joseph Wilder, the Surveyor, and of Joseph Richardson and Zacheus Lovell, Chainmen, before William Dudley, Justice of the Peace, of Boston.
The Act confirming the land to the grantees was as follows :
In House of Representatives, June 14, 1738.
Read and ordered that the plat be accepted, and the land therein delineated and described be and hereby are confirmed to the ' Grantees, the Petitioners mentioned in the petition of Samuel Heywood and others and their associates, agreeable to the grant of this Court of said Township made them at the settling, begun and held the thirtieth of November last past, and to their heirs and assigns respectfully forever, they effectually complying with and fulfilling the conditions of the grant. Provided the Plat exceed not the quantity of six miles square of land and does not inter- fere with any former grant.
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THE TOWN IN 1738.
The grant of the township having been confirmed by the General Court, the sixty grantees or proprietors having been selected by the Committee of the Legislature, and Jonathan Prescott, by a subsequent Act of June 28, 1738, having been authorized to call the first meeting, they were now in order to begin their new enterprise. Singular as it may seem, in · all this array of the names of sixty proprietors, only four are found to be really concerned in the settlement; viz., John Hill, John Fowle, Jr., Jeremiah Gridley, and Peter Prescott, not one of whom was among the original petitioners.
These men seem to have been purely speculators, who bought out the original grantees for their own profit. What must we think of those disinterested petitioners, whose zeal for the public good was so great that they were only anxious for permission to redeem some of the waste lands of the Province from the wilderness ; and whose desire to form a community by themselves was so strong that they had wearied the General Court for seventeen years with importunate pe- titions for a township of land, where they might settle in a body, and enjoy that pleasant social intercourse with each other which they so much coveted? Many of them must have disposed of their rights before the grant was finally made, on the 14th of June, 1738, and in six months from that time only two of the proprietors, and they not among the peti- tioners, retained theirs. Every man and one woman who signed that petition of Dec. 7, 1737, forgetting the fervent zeal which, in it, he had professed for the improvement of the Province, forgetting the brotherly love which he said had bound him to his fellow-petitioners for seventeen years of earnest longing and waiting, of trial and disappointment, and just when success had crowned his efforts and made the end sure, sold out, pocketed the profits, and was ready, it is sup- posed, for another adventure.
Jonathan Prescott, as empowered by the General Court, 'issued his mandate for a meeting of the proprietors on the 25th of July, 1738, the meeting to take place the same day, at the public house, or tavern, of Luke Verdy, in Boston. The ease with which a meeting could be called in a single day of 4
26
HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
sixty proprietors, a majority of whom lived twenty miles dis- tant, shows conclusively that the rights of the other proprie- tors had been already gathered into a few hands in the imme- diate vicinity. The changes which had taken place among the proprietors were shown in the meeting, as John Hill, a new name, was chosen moderator, and Peter Prescott, another new name, was made proprietors' clerk. At an adjourned meeting, a committee of five (any three of them to act) was appointed to "view" the township, and to lay out "the town . lots " required as a condition of the grant. This committee consisted of Hill, Fowle, Gridley, Jonathan and Peter Prescott; none but. Jonathan Prescott among the original proprietors. This meeting also appointed John Hill treasurer, levied a tax of ten pounds on each right, to defray the expenses of the sur- vey, etc., and empowered the committee, or any three of them, to agree with some person to build a saw-mill, and fix the price of sawing.
It is evident, from the officers chosen, from the committee appointed, and from the whole proceeding, that the four asso- ciates, Hill, Fowle, Gridley, and Prescott, had the management entirely in their own hands. It is not known how many of the original proprietors still retained their rights; but on the 29th of November, when the first division of the lots took place, these four men had become proprietors of all but two lots in the township. Each of the four represented himself as the assignee of fourteen proprietors, but Hill actually ob- tained the portion of sixteen proprietors, we suppose, to make up the sixty required in the grant. After Nov. 29, 1738, when this drawing took place, the two original proprietors, Hubbard and Jonathan Prescott, disappear from the record, and the other four act as sole proprietors of the township.
We can only briefly allude to the proceedings of the pro- prietors up to 1756, by relating all their important acts. The proprietors usually met at a tavern in Boston, but sometimes at Mr. Foster's in Woburn, and once at Peterborough, Sept. 26, 27, 1753, where, for the first time on their record, the name of the town, Peterborough, is recorded as the place of meeting. Mr. Gridley usually acted as moderator. The following are
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THE TOWN IN 1738.
some of their proceedings, related without the particular dates. They ordered the town to be surveyed by Joseph Wilder, who laid out the sixty-three home lots (each home lot containing fifty acres, being united with a proprietor's lot of fifty acres). He laid out the rest of the town in lots not exceeding two hundred acres, nor less than one hundred acres each. They cut and cleared a road, five rods wide, from New Ipswich to the meeting-house (the present street road is part of the same) ; .presented a lot of fifty acres to the school ; two lots of fifty acres each to the first and the second minister, reserving ten acres for the meeting-house, burying-ground, and training-field : they presented fifty acres to John Ritchie, the first child born in the town ; sent a gun to Rev. Mr. Harvey ; in 1750, sent ten pounds of powder, and twenty pounds of lead; and in 1754, at the beginning of the French and Indian War, sent half a barrel of powder, one hundred pounds of lead, and two hundred flints to the settlers.
The first survey of lots by Wilder must have been made in the summer and autumn of 1738, as the plat was ready and the division made among the proprietors on the 29th of No- vember. It is well known that the first attempt at settlement was made in 1739. As all the lots surveyed had been divided among the proprietors, each one must have undertaken to provide settlers for his own lands. The plat in the records, though undoubtedly made to be presented to the Masonian proprietors, is especially useful, as showing the position of farms occupied by all the original settlers. In addition to the lands divided according to the Wilder survey, each proprietor received a farm containing five hundred acres of land not sur- veyed in the previous surveys. Farm A, the most valuable of them all, situated just above, and taking in the upper por- tion of the village, and embracing the farms now occupied by Cyrus Frost and son, Stephen D. Robbe, Charles McCoy, and W. Hiram Longley, and eighty acres east of the River Nub- unusit, was assigned to Gridley; Farm B to Hill; C to Pres- cott; D to Fowle; these farms lying on the Contoocook River, extending from Hancock line nearly to the North Fac- tory.
28
HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
In the meantime, before any settlements were permanently made, the proprietors had discovered that the township was not under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts ; and that the as- signees of John Tufton Mason claimed the territory, under the Masonian grant, of a large portion of southern New Hampshire. We have no means of telling how this discovery was made, or what its influence was upon the proprietors and settlers of the town, or whether it either accelerated or re- tarded the final settlement of the town. We are equally ignorant of all the discussions between the parties, their prop- ositions and counter-propositions on this subject. There must have been room for much diplomacy,-for much recrimina- tion and hard feeling, in the few years that intervened be- tween the discovery and the final settlement in 1748. There was hardly a single settler in town at this time. The records are silent on all these points, but they give a document dated January 26, 1748, in which the Masonian proprietors grant and quitclaim the whole town to Hill, Fowle, Gridley, and the heirs of John Vassal, on certain conditions, only reserving to themselves thirty-four hundred acres of land, which was not to be taxed until improved, and all the " trees fit for masting his Majesty's navy." This is the only legal document by which the proprietors ever held the town. It will be observed that Prescott was not one of the grantees. It is probable that he had not the means of meeting the expenses of the settle- ment, and had sold out to his associates at the time of his resignation of the clerkship, in 1754. Under the Masonian grant, the failure of any proprietor to meet his share of the expenses, wrought a total forfeiture of his rights to the other proprietors. Under this provision the heirs of John Vassal forfeited their interest in the grant. The conditions of the grant required that the "grantees shall settle forty families on said tract of land within four years, and each family shall have fifteen acres of land cleared and fitted for tillage, -have a meeting-house built there, and preaching in the same con- stantly supported. The time of the Indian war was not to count as a part of the four years."
The Masonian grant annulled the Massachusetts grant, and
-
29
THE TOWN IN 1738.
all the conditions contained in it. All could have been begun anew, had the proprietors so chosen; but they did not. The old division of lots was retained, and all their previous acts were assumed to be valid in all their subsequent proceedings.
We have no further demonstration of any acts of the Ma- sonian proprietors, who owned all the lands adjoining the town, except that, under their direction and instruction, at such a time as they had authority so to do, for the purpose of improving the townships of Jaffrey and Dublin, Colonel Blanchard run the west line of the town one entire range and half of another, farther east than the original line, and added the same amount, three-fourths of a mile, on the east line, - of course including most of the largest of the East · Mountains, which the first survey had so adroitly avoided; of which act the proprietors say, -" which was a great damage to the settlers, and expense as well as damage to the proprie- tors." We know not whether it was in the spirit of injury, that the thirty-four hundred acres, reserved by the Masonian proprietors, were assigned to them of this very portion added by the Blanchard survey, which being situated on the East Mountains was almost worthless for any purpose, the lit- tle that could be settled being very undesirable and unsala- ble. This controversy probably bred a good deal of ill-feeling, for it continued to linger along for twenty years, till May 22, 1767, when John Hill, the clerk, sent them a plat of the town, with the Mason lots laid out, and the alterations made in its position by the Blanchard survey, marked upon it; and thus the subject was finally disposed of. This act of Hill's is the last transaction recorded in the proprietors' book.
It must be acknowledged that the Masonian proprietors were very lenient to these intruders upon their premises. They had come in and carved out the only six miles square that could be found in this region, so free from mountains or ponds, and embracing so many advantages for a successful set- tlement. It is perfectly natural that they should insist upon a change of bounds, so as to render the adjoining towns - all owned by them - better adapted to settlement. They cut off from the west line of the town about three-fourths of a
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30
HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
mile in width, and added the same amount on the east side, - throwing the town so far east. It was a damage to the town, as it threw the Contoocook River to the west of the centre of the town, when by the original survey it run nearly through the middle of it; and it substituted an almost worthless tract of land for what was well adapted to settlement. It must have been a poor remuneration for their property, which the Masonian proprietors derived from this town. The thirty-four hundred acres set off in the plan, was, a good part of it, en- tirely worthless, being situated on the mountain, and the rest too poor to be of much value.
These surveys were all that have come down to us from the beginning of the town to the present time. The lots are so irregular in form, so unequal in size, and laid out in such a manner that they cannot be recognized by number of lot or range, and we cannot rely upon them to designate the locali- ties of the early settlers.
We have thus given as brief an account as we could of the early starting, of the situation, of the territory, of the survey, and of the laying out in lots, of the town; all of which con- stitutes a part of the historical record that could by no means be omitted.
CHAPTER II.
ACCOUNT OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH.
Character of Early Settlers .- Intelligent .- Stern Presbyterians. - Perse- cutions. - Emigrtion to Ireland. - Their Hardships. - History of the Scotch-Irish. - Irish Rebellion and Confiscation. - Second Rebellion. -Re-peopling from Scotland. - Principally about 1610. - One Com- pany from London. - Prosperity. - Persecution of Presbyterians in Scotland. - Claverhouse sent against them. - Contest from 1670 to 1688. - Presbyterians Rush to Ireland. - Ulster County Prosperous. - Exactions of Government .- Advance of Rents .- Emigrate in great Numbers .- Beginning Eighteenth Century .- Landlords Alarmed. - First and Second Emigration. - Settled in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee, &c. - Character of these Men. - Number of Descend- ants .- Service in the Revolution .- All Loyal. - Their Perseverance.
THE town of Peterborough was uncommonly fortunate in the character of its early settlers. They were not a mixture of all nationalities and languages and habits, as in all our new settlements at the present time, but consisted principally of Scotch-Irish, who themselves emigrated from Ireland, or were the immediate descendants of the same. They were not of the lower order of the European population, but were of the middling class, men considerably educated, so that they were well qualified to understand the tyrannical and exacting course pursued by their government towards them, and fully to ap- preciate their civil and religious rights.
When a colony contemplated a settlement in America, in- duced by the favorable representation of a young man by the name of Holmes, who had visited this country, they previ- ously sent an agent with a petition to Gov. Shute, of Massa- chusetts, signed by two hundred and seventeen, all but seven
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
of whom signed it in a fair and legible hand. This circum- stance shows that a large proportion of them had learned to write, and were superior to the common class of emigrants. This occurred March 26, 1718. These men were rigid Pres- byterians, and felt that they could not endure the exactions of Protestant England in regard to the Episcopal Church. They were not only heavily taxed, but they were often involved in difficulties from their determination never to conform to their Book of Common Prayer. Besides, they could hold land only on lease, and were subject to such exactions as their landlords pleased. They could not endure such a state of things, and they resolved, at all hazards, to try their fortunes in a new country. They were fully aware of all the dangers and perils of an emigration to a new country, where they knew they were to meet an inhospitable climate, a hard soil, and, still more, and worse than all, where they were to encounter a savage foe. It required no small strength of character to carry out such a resolution, to brave the perils of the ocean, and all the dangers incident to planting a new colony, with such slender means as they possessed. This race of men held such a prominent rank among the first settlers of the town, it so impressed its peculiar habits and modes of thinking and of action upon them and their descendants, that I shall be pardoned if I more fully detail its previous history. I do this the more readily because I have found that many of the descendants of the Scotch-Irish know little else of them, except that they emi- grated from the north of Ireland, and were their worthy an- cestors.
During the Irish rebellion, in the reign of Elizabeth, the Prov- ince of Ulster, embracing the northern counties of Ireland, was reduced to the lowest extremity of poverty and wretched- ness ; and its moral and religious state was scarcely less deplo- rable than its civil. Soon after the ascension of James I., his quarrels with the Roman Catholics of that province led to a con- spiracy against the British authority. O'Neill and O'Donnell,
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