USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Peterborough > History of the town of Peterborough, Hillsborough county, New Hampshire > Part 20
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254
HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
That an attempt was made to settle this town as early as 1739 there can be no doubt. The authority of the petition for incorporation as a town, of which, through the Secretary of State, we have been favored with a copy, is on this point decisive. The town was surveyed and laid out by Joseph Hale, Jr., in 1737. Of the party that came in 1739 no me- morial remains. Probably they were driven away before any considerable clearing had been made. In 1742, five men,* each with an axe and a small supply of provisions upon his shoul- ders, came from Lunenburg, Mass., and cleared a few small patches of land near the old meeting-house. They abandoned the settlement at, or more probably considerably before, the alarm of war in 1744. Soon after this party, three men cut down the brush and girdled the large trees on the hill near the Ritchie place, at the south part of the town, but left before they had put in their seed. They probably returned the next year, with Thomas Morison and John Swan. It could not have been later than 1744, and must have been at a period when there were no other settlers here. For it is a story often told by the children of Thomas Morison, and which cannot well be doubted, that soon after they came several Indians called upon them just after breakfast, appeared friendly, and, after tarrying a short time, went away. When the cook, how- ever, came from chopping to prepare a dinner for the party, he found not only the pot which he had left upon the fire robbed of its contents, but all their provisions carried off ; and they were obliged to go to Townsend, twenty-five miles, for a dinner ; which they would not have done had there been other inhabitants here at the time.
In 1744, the town was entirely abandoned, and the settlement was not resumed till the peace of 1749. Indeed, I have found little evidence that families ; had established themselves here
* The traditions are by no means distinct, and it is possible that this party came as early as 1739. They may not have stayed more than a single season. Their names, according to Mr. Dunbar (see N. H. Historical Collections, Vol. I., p. 129), were William Robbe, Alexander Scott, Hugh Gregg, William Gregg, and Samuel Stinson. John Todd, Sen., a high authority in the antiquities of our town, says they were William Scott, William Robbe, William Wallace, William Mitchell and Samuel Stinson.
The second party were William M'Nee, John Taggart, William Ritchie.
t Catharine Gregg, mother of Gov. Miller, is said to have been baptized here in 1743.
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previous to that period, and this presumption is confirmed by the fact that the first male child, John Ritchie, was not born till Feb. 22, 1751. All that was done, therefore, previous to the war of '44 was only to prepare the way for the future set- tlement, which was commenced in earnest in 1749: From that time the colony was rapidly increased by new accessions from abroad, till, in '59, there were forty-five or fifty families, from Lunenburg, Londonderry, and some immediately from Ireland. They all, however, belonged to the same stock. They came to this country from the north of Ireland, and were usually called Scotch-Irish.
Early in the reign of James I,* on the suppression of a re- bellion by his Catholic subjects in the north of Ireland, two millions of acres of land, almost the whole of the six northern counties, including Londonderry, fell to the king ; and his Scotch and English subjects were encouraged by liberal grants to leave their own country, and settle on these lands, in order to keep in awe the turbulent spirits who had so often defied the authority and arms of the British government. This accounts in some measure for the hatred which the English and Scotch population bore to the Catholics, who could not but hate the men who occupied the soil from which their countrymen had been forcibly expelled. The great Irish rebellion - for they were many - which happened thirty years after, in the reign of his son, doubtless had its origin in the attempt of the Irish Catholics to extort the re- dress of grievances and repel religious persecution ; and we may well suppose that they had not yet forgotten the transfer of their property to foreigners of a religion different from their own. The plot of a general massacre of the Protes- tants was discovered in the southern part of the kingdom be- fore the time fixed for its execution ; but this was unknown in Ulster, and the most cruel destruction of lives and property ensued that has ever stained the bloody pages of history. Some of the first settlers of our Derry were probably alive at the time.
* Lingard, Vol. IX., p. 121. Hume, Vol. VI., pp. 433-6.
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
John Morison,* my great-great-grandfather, who died here in 1776, was born about thirty years after, but you may well suppose that vivid pictures of this dreadful time, when, ac- cording to some, not less than one hundred and fifty thou- sand were victims, had been strongly impressed upon his mind.
In order better to understand these people from whom we are descended, we must remember that, in addition to those already mentioned, in the time of Cromwell, about 1656,¿ a large number of English and Scotch, mostly Scotch, were in- duced to settle in Ireland on lands forfeited for the Popish re- bellion of 1641, or by the adherents of the king. All these circumstances must have greatly exasperated the original Catholic Irish against the foreigners who had thus been planted among them.
In 1689, James II. returned from France. His intention was to settle the affairs of Ireland. On the first alarm of an intended massacre the Protestants flew to arms, and shut themselves up in the strong places, particularly in London- derry, where, under the command of Walker, an Episcopal clergyman, they defended themselves against the royal army. The ships sent to them with supplies were kept back by a boom across the entrance of the harbor, below the city. The French general who commanded the besiegers threatened to raze the city to its foundations and destroy every man, woman, and child, unless they would immediately submit to James. But these brave men, suffering at the time from hunger and every privation, treated the Popish general's threats with contempt. His next step was to drive the in- habitants, for thirty miles round, under the walls of the city. Among these miserable beings, exceeding four thousand in number, was the family of John Morison, then nine years old. The greater part, after being detained there three days with- out tasting food, were suffered to return to their habitations, plundered of everything, and many of them actually dying
* I have retained the spelling for this name which was used by his sons, Thomas and Jonathan in their signature to the petition for incorporation in 1759. It is the true Scotch orthography.
Hume, Vol. VI., pp. 436, 7. # Hume, Vol. VII., p. 268.
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upon the road of hunger and fatigue. His family were ad- mitted into the famished city. The garrison, which consisted of about seven thousand, became greatly reduced* in num- bers; but their courage and constancy remained unshaken. Just when their sufferings had reached the point beyond which human nature can suffer no more, Gen. Kirk, who had deserted his master and joined King William, sent two ships, laden with provisions and convoyed by a frigate, to sail up the river. One of them, after two unsuccessful attempts, and amidst a hot fire from both sides of the channel, at length reached the wharf, to the inexpressible joy of the inhabitants.
There are now alivet those who have frequently heard this youth, when near a hundred years old, relate the most striking incidents of the siege. Standing upon the walls of the city, where he could survey at once the besieging army surround- ing them, and full of a more savage cruelty than any other army had ever possessed, ready to execute their threats of indiscriminate rage and slaughter against the miserable suf- ferers within, the frigate and transports just heaving in sight, the foremost in full sail, with a strong wind, prepared to cut the boom. Amid a severe fire from the enemy, on both sides of the channel, she strikes against it, and bounds heavily back, to the consternation of the inhabitants. Again she ad- vances ; new hopes are kindled ; she strikes, and again bounds heavily back, in full sight of the pale and starving multitude. A third attempt is made; the chain creaks and breaks. The old man could resume the boy, and describe most graphically the universal joy when the ships reached the city.
I have dwelt long on this part of the subject. For John Morison, the oldest man that was ever buried in our place, had, among our early settlers, three sons, four sons-in-law, and the numerous family of Steeles i were descended from his
* Burnet says that near two-thirds of them perished by hunger. Burnet's Own Time, Vol. III., p. 20.
t This whole account I have received from his grandson, Hon. Jeremiah Smith, who remem- bers distinctly the tall, erect form, the engaging countenance, urbane manners, and " peculiar native eloquence," which, together with the remarkable scenes through which he had passed, made a strong impression upon the young.
# Capt. Thomas Steele came in 1763 from Londonderry, N. H.
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
sister ; so that he has been connected far more extensively than any other man with our inhabitants, and may in some measure be looked back upon as the patriarch of the town .* But in addi- tion to this, it is necessary to bear in mind the circumstances that have been mentioned, in order to understand the charac- ter of the emigrants from the north of Ireland. They have been often confounded with the Irish, and yet at the time of their emigration there were perhaps no two classes in the United Kingdom more unlike, or more hostile. Every cir- cumstance in their history, for more than a hundred years, had served only to inflame them against each other. The original strong traits which separate the Scotch and Irish had been gathering strength through more than a century of turbulence and bloodshed, in which they had been constantly exasperated against each other by their interests, by secret plots and open rebellions, by cruel massacres, by civil wars carried on through the most black and malignant of all pas- sions, religious hatred.
It is not, therefore, wonderful that even after the establish- ment of the Protestant cause by the accession of William, Anne and the house of Hanover to the throne of Great Britain, they should still have found their position in Ireland uncomfortable. They considered themselves a branch of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, and, though permitted to main- tain their own forms of worship unmolested, a tenth part of all their increase was rigorously exacted for the support of the established Episcopal Church. They also held their lands and tenements by lease, and not as the proprietors of the soil. ; They were a religious people, with an inextinguishable thirst for liberty, and could not therefore bear to be trammelled in their civil and religious rights.
For these reasons, and influenced particularly by the repre- sentations of a young man named Holmes, the son of a clergy-
* By marriage, or direct descent, he has been connected with the families of Steele, Wilson, Smith, Wallace, Moore, Mitchell, Todd, Jewett, Gregg, Ames, Holmes, Gray, Field, Stuart, Little, Swan, and probably some others, without including the last generation.
t See Century Sermon, by Rev. Edward L. Parker, of Londonderry, p. 7. See also Farmer's Belknap, p. 191.
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man, who had been here, four Presbyterian ministers,* with a large portion of their congregations, determined to remove to this country. They belonged not to the lowest class in the country from which they came, but perhaps to the lower por- tion of the middling class. They had the cool heads which their fathers had brought from Scotland, and doubtless counted well the cost of the step they were about to take. It required no small strength of character to leave a country where they could live quietly and in tolerable comfort for an untried region, with an ocean between, and a full prospect be- fore them of the labors and sufferings incident to planting a new country with slender means. In the summer of 1718, they embarked in five ships for America .¡ About one hun- dred families arrived in Boston į Aug. 4th; and twenty families more, in one of the vessels, landed at Casco Bay, now Port- land. Among these were three of the families, Gregg, Mori- son, and Steele, who afterwards settled in Peterborough. The vessel had intended to put in at Newburyport, but arrived at Casco Bay so late in the season, that she was frozen in, and they, unable to provide more comfortable quarters, were obliged to spend the whole winter on board, suffering severely from the want of suitable accommodations and food. It is said that on first landing upon that cold and cheerless coast, the wintry ocean behind them and naked forests before, after the solemn act of prayer, they united in singing that most touching of all songs : "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down ; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion"; and with peculiar feelings, as they surveyed the waste around them, and remembered the pleasant homes which they had
* Holmes, James M'Gregore, William Cornwell, and William Boyd. The Federal Street Church in Boston was founded by this same class of emigrants.
¡ From a manuscript left by Rev. James M'Gregore, and seen by Mr. Parker, it would appear that he preached to them on leaving Ireland, stating distinctly that they were coming to America in order " to avoid oppression and cruel bondage; to shun persecution and designed ruin; to withdraw from the communion of idolaters, and to have an opportunity of worshipping God ac- cording to the dictates of conscience and the rules of his inspired Word."
# They brought with them, according to Dr. Belknap, the first little wheels turned by the foot that were used in the country, and the first potatoes planted in New England; which from them have ever since been called Irish potatoes.
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
left, might they add : "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land ? "
They left Casco Bay early in the spring, and began their settlement in Londonderry, April II, O. S., 1719. The people of the neighboring towns, supposing them to be Irish, harbored strong prejudices against them, and wished to have them driven out from the country. Soon after they began their settlement in Londonderry, a party from Haverhill, headed by one Herriman, came, in order forcibly to expel them. It was on Friday afternoon, and the settlers, with their wives and children, had come together under an old oak, to attend, according to the good old Presbyterian fashion, the lecture preparatory to the communion, which was to be ad- ' ministered the following Sabbath. Herriman stopped his party and listened till the services were over, when, deeply affected by what he had seen and heard, he said to his follow- ers, "Let us return; it is vain to attempt to disturb this people; for surely the Lord is with them."*
In September, 1736 or '37, another party came over from Ireland. Among them were the Smiths, the Wilsons, and Lit- tles. Mrs. Sarah M'Nee, or, as she was called, old Aunt Nay, who died within my memory, aged ninety-seven, or, as some supposed, one hundred years, was one of this party, and used to relate, with much satisfaction, that as the vessel approached the wharf in Boston, a gentleman there, after inspecting them closely, said, "Truly, these are no poor folk; and," she always added, "he was an awfu' great gentleman ; for he had ruffles on his fingers." It f was noised about that a pack. of Irishmen had landed, and they were much annoyed by the observations that were made upon them. "Why," said one, with evident surprise, "these people are white." "So they are," said another, with not less astonishment ; "as white as you or I." "It made my blood boil," said the elder William
* This account I have taken partly from Mr. Parker's sermon, and partly from the lips of John Todd, Sen.
+ For this I am indebted to my great-aunt, Sally Morison, who, though always feeble, and for many years an invalid, retains now, in her eighty-fifth year, a very perfect recollection of what she heard more than seventy years ago.
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Smith, who was then about eighteen years old, "to hear our- selves called a parcel of Irish." The prejudice subjected them to a more serious inconvenience, and rendered it difficult to procure lodgings. They, however, succeeded in getting a Mr. Winship, in the east part of Lexington, to take them for the winter. His neighbors, especially during the intermission on Sundays, would crowd around him and remonstrate loudly against his harboring these Irishmen. At last he would listen no longer, but told them that if his house reached to Charles- town, and he could find such Irish as these, he would have it filled up with Irish, and none but Irish.
The spring or summer following (1737), they came to Lun- enburg, Mass., from which place, and from Londonderry, small parties, as we have seen, came out between '39 and '49 to make a settlement in Peterborough. The township had been granted by the General Court of Massachusetts, on the supposition that it was within their limits, to Samuel Hay- wood * and others, but soon after was transferred to the famous Jeremiah Gridley, of Boston, John Hill, John Fowle, and William Vassal, who were become the sole proprietors of the soil. Under purchases made from them the first settle- ments were made, and the town is said to have taken its name from Peter Prescott, of Concord, Mass.
Till 1749, almost nothing was done. It is impossible to say how many came then; but from that time the growth was rapid. The hardships of the first settlers cannot be under- stood from anything that is now experienced by the pioneers in our Western territories. Being recently from a foreign country, they were unaccustomed to the axe, and by no means acquainted with the best method of clearing away the timber ; and yet, here they were in the midst of an unbroken forest, to which alone they must look for support. The gloom and loneliness of the place, the hollow echoing of the hills and woods as the first tall pine fell groaning by their side, the sound of strange birds and insects, the dismal creaking and
* The petition for incorporation (Oct. 31, 1739) says, .. . "in consequence of a tract of land had and obtained from the Great and General Court or Assembly of the Province of the Massachu- setts Bay, by Samuel Haywood and others, his associates," etc.
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
howling among the trees upon a stormy night, connected with what they had heard of destructive beasts and snakes, and the frightful acts of Indian cruelty which were going on all around them, must have made an impression upon them which we can hardly conceive. Add to these the superstitious fears, the religious awe, that overcame them as they stood here, apart from the civilized abode of man, and it will not seem strange if again and again they abandoned what they had begun, even from imaginary fears, and withdrew that they might, for a season, be within the sympathy and security of an older settle- ment. A single incident will show the constant apprehension under which they lived. About twelve o'clock, on one of those autumnal nights when the moon, rising late, hangs with a sort of supernatural gloom over the horizon, the family of William Smith were suddenly startled from their sleep by shrieks of murder in the house of their nearest neighbor. Immediately, without waiting to put on a single garment, the father and mother, each with a child, left their log-hut, and forc- ing their way, no one could ever tell how, more than two miles through the woods, arrived at the log-house of her brother, near where the South Factory now is, and spread the alarm that they had barely escaped with their lives from the Indians. Capt. Thomas Morison, who was a man of greater martial coolness than his brother-in-law, after supplying them with clothes, joined them, with his own wife and children, one an infant, and after hiding them in the woods south of his house, set out for the fort, about a mile further south, saying, as he left them, that if he should meet the enemy before reaching the fort they would know it, because he should certainly have time to fire, and kill at least one man before he should himself be killed or taken. Meanwhile, the Swans, another family at the south, had taken the alarm and fled for the fort. Soon after, a younger Swan, returning home at that late hour, from what to young men is a very pleasant as well as important business, and finding his father's boots and clothes by the bedside, and the house deserted, ran out almost frantic, and spread the report that his whole family had been murdered and carried away by the Indians. The consternation was
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general and intense; and it was not discovered till morning that the whole panic was occasioned by some thoughtless young men at Mr. Cunningham's, who had screamed and shrieked simply to frighten their neighbors, the Smiths.
This incident, trifling as it is, shows the constant apprehen- sion in which our fathers every night retired to their beds ; and yet they were brave men. About the same time with this alarm, perhaps the following summer, a report was spread here that the Indians had fallen upon the settlements at Keene. Immediately Capt. Morison with his company set out, and in the heat of summer marched more than twenty miles through the woods to rescue their brethren from an enemy of unknown strength, who seldom spared a foe. Upon arriving at Keene, the men there were found mowing peaceably in the field, and so much were they affected by this act of kind- ness, that they could not refrain from weeping .*
Such was the continual fear of midnight fire and murder from the Indians for twenty years from the commencement of the settlement, being several times, as their petition says, driven off by the enemy, and "many of them almost ruined." " Yet," to use their own affecting language, "what little we had in the world lay there ; we, having no whither else to go, returned to our settlement as soon as prudence would admit, where we have continued since, and cultivated a rough part of the wilderness to a fruitful field."
But aside from the apprehension of danger, they surely had difficulties and hardships enough. Till 1751, they had no grist-mill, and were obliged to bring all their provisions upon their shoulders five-and-twenty miles. For many years there was not a glass window in the place. Their dwellings were miserable huts, not a board upon or within them till 1751, when three frame-houses were erected. Most of the frame- houses first made, were poorly built. In one,¡ considerably later than this, when the family had gathered round the table, the floor suddenly gave way, just as the good man was asking
* This was told me by his daughter, Elizabeth Morison,
t The house was William Moore's, and William Smith, Esq., the man who was asking the bless- ing as they sunk.
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
a blessing, and the whole party, dinner and all, found them- selves in the cellar. The first meeting-house,* which must have been erected as early as 1752 or '53, for several years was furnished with no other seats than rough boards laid loosely upon square blocks of wood. For a long period there were no oxen, and still later no horses. The first mill-stone used was drawn, in 1751, more than a mile and a half by seventeen men and boys. Their food was meagre in kind, and not often abundant in quantity. Bean porridge, potatoes, and samp (corn) broth were, for the first twenty years, the principal articles of diet. The women vied with the men, and sometimes excelled them, in the labors of the field. There was no bridge till 1755, and the roads were fit only for foot- passengers. But notwithstanding their privations and hard- ships, with insufficient clothing and almost without shoes, except in the severest weather, the first settlers lived to an unusually advanced period, and the three oldest people that have ever died in the place were natives of Ireland, and among our earliest inhabitants.t
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