USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Peterborough > History of the town of Peterborough, Hillsborough county, New Hampshire > Part 24
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aught that I have heard to the contrary may have mowed and raked his hay, too, the year following.
This brings me to what has, perhaps, from the beginning been their one trait, standing out from all the rest ; I mean their love of fun. The sun would go down before I could tell half the stories we still have which might illustrate this point .* No occasion, no subject, was kept sacred from their wit. The thoughtless and the grave, the old and the young, alike enjoyed it. When Capt. Scott had been pierced by five bullets, and his life almost lost, he said the minister had prayed in the morning that their heads might be covered in the hour of battle. "His head," he added, " was safe enough, but the prayer should have extended to the rest of his body."t Relatives and friends were never spared, when they offered a good subject for laughter, but were rather dealt with the more freely. From the cradle to the grave there was no circum- stance which at one time or another did not administer to their mirth. Even their superstitions had in them a mixture of drollery that took much from their terror. The bird that was bewitched "only laughed " at the man who shot at it. They who believed most fully in the reality of the account, and who never doubted that Satan was actually present at the scene, could yet, with shouts of laughter, tell how, at a certain place, when Mr. Morrison and Mr. M'Lellan, another minister, were there, the evil spirit came, and the bed on which a young woman lay actually rose from the floor, and the ministers, ter- ribly frightened, called upon each other to pray, and Mr. Mor- rison would not pray, but at the prayer of Mr. M'Lellan the spirit was driven off. Our fathers were serious, thoughtful men ; but they lost no occasion which might promise sport.
* Moses Morison, the prince of story-tellers, usually manufactured his stories for the occasion. The wit consisted in a wild and comical exaggeration of real facts, and was the offspring of a prolific fancy. It had, however, an unfavorable influence ; for though these stories were told and heard merely as romances, the habit of exaggeration thus produced was likely to extend itself to more serious matters, so that strict verbal accuracy has been too little regarded.
t A story has been told, which, though perhaps without foundation as a matter of fact, may yet show the extent to which they often indulged their wit in serious matters. The story is, that when they were first forming a church, almost every one propounded was set aside on account of some objection (particularly intemperance), till it became doubtful whether a church could be established, when one of their number rose, and gravely said, "If God chooses to have a church in this place, he must take such as there be."
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Weddings, huskings, log-rollings, and raisings, - what a host of queer stories is connected with them !
At weddings* seventy years ago, the groom usually pro- ceeded from his dwelling with his select friends, male and female. About half-way on their progress to the house of the bride, they were met by her select male friends. There each party made choice of a champion to run for the bottle to the bride's house. The victor returned to the party with the bottle, gave a toast, drank to the groom's health, passed round the bottle, and the whole party proceeded, being saluted by the firing of muskets from the houses they passed, and answering the salutes with pistols. When they arrived at the bride's house the groom was stationed upon the floor, the father led his daughter, dressed usually in white satin, and de- livered her up to the groom, and the rest of the ceremony was performed nearly as at the present time. The evening was filled up with all imaginable sports, and closed with a ceremony which it will hardly do now to mention. This is the way in which our grandparents were married.
The other merry-meetings then common, I cannot stop to describe. Huskings, log-rollings, apple-parings, and rais- ings,t most of those now in middle-life have seen; and as they think of the new cider, the smoking Indian puddings, and huge loaves of brown bread, such as our grandmothers made, with perhaps a whole quarter of mutton, and pork and beans, smoking also from the same oven, and followed by
* The first notice given in town publicly of intended marriage was in 1749. William Ritchie agreed with Alexander Robbe, for half a pint of rum, to give notice of his intentions, which he did by nailing the publishment to a beech-tree near the old meeting-house. The first oral notice (which mode prevailed for a long time) was given thus by Alexander Robbe : "Marriage is intended between Joan Robbe and Betty Creighton. If ony man or man's man has ony objec- tions, let him speak neu, or forever after haud his clash."
The above, with other curious particulars relating to our early history, was furnished me by John Todd, Jr.
t At the raising of the third two-story house (in 1764), all the men, women, and children of the town were gathered together. After the sills were levelled, prayers were offered, and a psalm sung. Seventeen gallons of rum had been provided, and none of it remained the next morning, except half a pint, which had been stealthily put aside. At a training, much later than this, a barrel of rum was placed upon the field, and the head knocked out, so that each, without loss of time, could dip from it what he wanted. Before night an express was sent for more. One man, on returning home, said they had had an excellent training, and he believed they were to have more of it the next day, " for he saw many of the soldiers lying upon their arms."
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pumpkin, apple, and mince pies, such as they also made, not thin, depressed, or all outside, but thick and plump, and re- member the jokes, the plays, the peals of merriment, and the sound night's rest that followed, their childhood and the dawning hopes of life rise again; the father and the mother, the brother and the sister that are gone, come before them, and what would they not give to renew but for once those ancient times ? But they cannot be renewed, and we must soon follow them into the pale and shadowy past, and be known here among our native hills only as a memory more and more dim, till it shall vanish clean out.
But I may not dwell on subjects like these. Our ancestors dearly loved fun. There was a grotesque humor, and yet a seriousness, pathos, and strangeness about them which, in its way, has perhaps never been excelled. It was the sternness of the Scotch Covenanter softened by a century's residence abroad amid persecution and trial, wedded there to the comic humor and pathos of the Irish, and then grown wild in the woods among these our New England mountains. I see in them and their genuine descendants the product of the heaths and highlands of Scotland with their border wars, of the rich, low fields of Ireland with their mirth and clubs, modified afresh by the hardships of a new settlement and the growing influence of a free country .*
In nothing here was the Irish character more visible than in the use of ardent spirits .; When the entrance of death into the little colony had suspended the sound of the axe, and a strong arm was laid low, all the people gathered together at the' house of mourning, and through the long, dark, dismal night watched by the body of their friend. The eldest and
* See Notes, No. I.
t I had thought our ancestors an intemperate people, but it was not so. Some never drank ; but there were loose men who would always, when an opportunity offered, get intoxicated, and be quarrelsome. The great body of the people were not in the constant habit of using inebriating drink ; but on great occasions there were few of whom it might not be said, as of Tam O'Shanter, that if they "were na fou," they "just had plenty," - enough to put them in the best possible trim for telling their " queerest stories."
# The first death in town (March 15, 1753) was that of William Stuart, aged 53, who was buried in the Old Cemetery.
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most sacred of their number, with the holy volume before him, and with an iron sternness of manner, from time to time administered the words of divine consolation and hope. This was the offspring of Scotland, and betokened at once the sub- lime and severe character of the highlands. But ever and anon another comforter came in, of Irish parentage; the long countenance became short, the broad Irish humor began to rise, and ยท before the dawn, jokes and laughter had broken in upon the slumbers of the dead. Again at the funeral the same mixed custom prevailed. After the prayer had been of- fered, and the last look taken, and the coffin closed, spirit was handed round, first to the minister and mourners, then to the bearers, and finally to the whole congregation. All fol- lowed to the grave. The comforting draught was again ad- ministered at their return, and a sumptuous supper prepared. So did they bury their dead in the days of our fathers.
And yet they were a devout, religious people. With their Presbyterian predilections confirmed by the inhuman massa- cres, extortions, and wars through which they had passed, their first object in settling here was that they might be free in their religious faith. And nowhere upon the shores of New England, every part of which was sought for a religious end, have prayers been offered more fervent and sincere, or the Scriptures read with more constancy and reverence, than in the first rude dwellings of our fathers. The fact that with such religious teachers they should still have preserved a relig- ious character shows how deeply those principles had been im- planted in their minds. What had clung to them in Ireland, the disposition to humor, rioting, and laughter, was only upon the surface, playing there and varying the outlines of the countenance, while the strong, granite features of Scotland . were fixed deep in the soul. The unbending purpose, the lofty principle, the almost haughty adherence to what they believed true, and high, and sacred, resting on a religious basis, was the real substance of their character. They had foibles, they had weaknesses and errors. But well may it be for us if the refinements of a more advanced society and a more liberal culture should serve to give grace, beauty, and
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light to the same strong powers of thought, the same courage, though in a different sphere, the same generous elevation of soul, the same vivacity, and, above all, the same deep, thought- ful, religious principle that belonged to them.
I have now before me a list* of four hundred and eighty emigrants, who, scattered through sixteen different States, and, if not greatly distinguished, yet holding a respectable place, retain these same strong features. Here, though at times we have felt as if strangers who came among us could only spy out the nakedness of the land after the fruitful gatherings of the harvest, there is still, enriched as the town has been by new accessions, enough to perpetuate the character which we have received from our fathers. Their faults were usually virtues carried too far. The strong mind sometimes became dogmatical, impatient, overbearing; their courage became rashness, their generosity extravagance, their wit levity ; their piety was sometimes proud, formal, severe; and all these in- congruous excesses were not seldom mingled in the same mind. Such were our fathers, the substantial elements of their characters well deserving attention, especially in these days of timid virtue; their faults, partly belonging to the times, but more the effect of strong feelings without the advan- tages of early discipline. At the same time, they had in them the rudiments of a real refinement - warm, kind, and gentle feelings, -and specimens of politeness were found among them worthy of the patriarchal age.
A century has gone by since the solitude of our forests was first broken by the sound of their axe; and within that cen- tury what events have successively risen upon the world ! The old French war; our own Revolution, one of the few great events in the history of man; Washington and his as- sociates, - they have come and gone, and the noise of their actions is like the distant murmurings of the sea, heard in- land when the storm is over, and the waves are sinking to their repose. Then there was the French Revolution, filling the world at once with hope and terror, the rise and fall of
* Prepared with much care by Capt. Isaac Edes.
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that wonderful man, who, beginning and ending his life in a narrow island, dethroned monarchs, shook empires, ploughed through kingdoms in his bloody course. During all this while, our mountain retreat remained, answering only with a faint echo to the tumults that were agitating all the great in- terests of the world. The common incidents of time passed over it. Our fathers sowed, and, with the patience of hope, waited the result of their labors ; they laughed and mourned, performed or neglected the great work that was before them, and went off one by one to their reward. All of the first, and almost all of the second, generation are now gone. The few that linger with us will soon be gathered to their fathers, and no link will be left connecting us with the first settlers of our town. They are going, they are gone; a strongly-marked race, - bold as the craggy summits of our mountains, gener- ous as our richest fields, impetuous as the torrents that came tumbling down our hills, kind and gentle as the same streams winding through the valleys, and watering the green meadows.
They, and all that they loved, hoped, or feared, their intelli- gence and strength, their warm sympathies and strong hearts, their loud jests and solemn prayers, are gone from their old homes. Their bones repose on yonder bleak hill-side, near the spot where they were wont to assemble, as a single family, to worship the God of their fathers. Blessings rest upon the spot. The old meeting-house, as if it could not longer, in its loneliness, look down day and night upon the graves of those who had once filled its walls with prayer and song, has gone like them, and the ploughshare has removed every mark of the place where it stood. The graveyard alone remains. It is overgrown with wild bushes, briers, and thistles. There let them in summer spread their shade over the ashes of the dead, and in winter let the winds whistle and howl through them, a fitting emblem of the desolation which must sooner or later strip off every earthly hope. May the blessings of heaven rest still on that spot. Fresher tears may be shed, and more sumptuous ornaments prepared for the new ground, but many are the hearts, of children and brothers and parents,
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which still cling to the old graveyard, bleak, and wild, and lonely as it is. And some there are who, when the paleness of death is creeping under their thin gray locks, shall leave the parting charge of the patriarch : " Bury me with my fath- ers on the old hill-side. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife; there I buried Leah, and there let my bones be laid."
A hundred years have gone by. What unlooked-for events in the great wheel of human life shall rise before another century has closed, it were vain for us to inquire. But when a remote generation shall come next to celebrate this day, not one of us, not one of our children, except as a gray and wrinkled relic from the past, shall be found among the living. The Monadnock then, as now, will catch the first glimmerings of morning, and the last rays of evening will linger upon his bald and rugged brow; the Contoocook will journey on- ward to the sea; but of all that our hands have wrought, and our hearts have loved, not a vestige will remain as we now behold it. What future good or ill, what storms of civil vio- lence or public war, may pass over the land, we know not. But so may we live that the inheritance which we have received, of freedom, truth, intelligence, virtue, and faith, may be handed down unspotted to those who shall succeed ; and the blessing of Almighty God will go with it, and go also with us.
NOTE. - My object throughout has been to state facts, and not to give opinions. In noticing at the beginning of the discourse, for instance, the long and bitter contests between the native Irish and the Scotch who had settled on their lands, I wished to say nothing of the blame attached to either party. My sole object was to state the facts as viewed at the time by the Scotch emigrants, in order to show the influence upon the character of their descendants. The Irish may have been guilty of cruelty and madness, but it was the cruelty and madness into which a sensitive, generous, enthusiastic people were goaded by oppression.
I cannot let this opportunity pass without expressing my obligations to several members of the Committee of Arrangements at Peterborough, without whose assistance in the collection of facts, this Address, imperfect as it is, could not have been prepared.
NOTES.
No. I.
THE union of opposite qualities, which has sometimes prevented our character from being rightly estimated by strangers, is, with great justice, expressed in the following account of Dr. Jesse Smith, which I have been permitted to extract from a manuscript sermon preached after his death (Sept. 22, 1833), by my friend, Rev. Ephraim Peabody, who had been his pastor.
" There were united in him qualities which, in so eminent a degree, are rarely seen combined. His mind was thoroughly possessed by that foundation of every virtue-a sense of his own per- sonal responsibility - which governed his life with the omnipotence of habit. Hence that firmness and independence of purpose which kept its calm and even way, equally incapable of being se- duced by the solicitations, or overawed by the fear, of man. His iron firmness of resolve seemed almost to partake of obstinacy, till a more intimate acquaintance showed that it was the result of a character where the mental and moral powers were peculiarly active, but peculiarly well-propor- tioned, - where habits of independent, clear thought left no wavering of mind, and the moral en- ergy fully sustained the intellectual decision. And interfused through these more rugged features was a true tenderness of nature, which softened down everything like austerity, and preserved for manhood the simple feelings of the child. It struck men almost strangely, who had seen him only in the struggle of life, to witness how quickly and deeply he was touched by everything that inter- ested others, until it was remembered how much better the firm character preserves the original susceptibilities of the heart, than the feeble. . . . But that which shed beauty over his character, and commanded the love and respect of his friends so deeply, was the light and strength it received from religious faith. "
In conversation, my friend speaks also of his fearless intrepidity of spirit, which, united with the Peterborough humor, that spared noone, and with a frame of mind so vigorous, gave to those who knew him little the idea of coarseness and levity, hiding at once the nice susceptibilities, deep feel- ings, and lofty principle which were really, with him, the controlling powers.
No. II. PROVINCE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
To his Excellency, Benning Wentworth, Esq., Commander-in-chief and over his Majesty's Prov- . ince of New Hampshire; the honorable his Majesty's Council of said Province.
The Humble Petition of us, the subscribers, being Inhabitants of a tract of Land (lying in said Province on the West side of Merrimac River, of the contents of about six miles square, common- ly called and known by the name of Peterborough) in behalf of ourselves and others, the inhabi- tants of said tract of land, most humbly shews -That about the year of our lord 1739, a number of Persons in consequence of a Grant of a tract of land, had and obtained from the Great and Gen_ eral Court or Assembly of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, by Samuel Haywood and others his associates, granting to them the said tract of land on certain conditions of settlement. And in pursuance whereof a number of People immediately went on to said tract of land and began a set- tlement, (tho then vary fur from any other inhabitants) which we have continued increasing ever
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
since the year 1739, except some times when we left said Township for fear of being destroyed by the Enemy, who several times drove us from our settlement soon after we began and almost ruined many of us. Yet what little we had in the World lay there, we having no whither else to go re- turned to our settlement as soon as prudense wood addmitt where we have continued since and have cultivated a rough part of the Wilderness to a fruitful field -the Inhabitants of said tract of land are increased to the number of forty-five or fifty familys, and our situation with respect to terms we at first settled on are such that we cannot hold any Provincial meetings at all, to pass any vote or votes that will be sufficient to oblige any person to do any part towards supporting the Gospel building a Meeting-house and Bridges, Clereing and repairing Roads and all which would not only be beneficial to us settlers to have it in our power to do but a great benefit to people trav- elling to Connecticut river and there towns settling beyond us -
Therefore we humbly request of your Excellency and Hon' to take the premises under considera- tion and Incorporate us, that we may be invested with town privileges and immunities as other towns are in this province and your petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray, &c. Oct. 31, 1759.
THOMAS MORISON, JONATHAN MORISON, THOMAS CUNINGHAM.
Your petitioners beg leave to add, as a matter of considerable importance that the only road from Portsmouth thro this Province to number four is through said township of Peterborough, and which makes it more necessary to repair said Road within said Township, and to make many bridges which they cannot do unless incorporated and enabled to raise taxes, &c.
No. III.
MORTALITY. - The average annual mortality, according to an estimate made from tables fur- nished by Dr. Follansbee, was, from 1801 to 1806, one in ninety-three; from 1806 to 1816, one in eighty-one; from 1816 to 1826, one in seventy-eight; from 1828 to 1838, one in sixty-eight; which shows a very considerable increase, notwithstanding all the comforts which have been brought in.
EPIDEMICS .- In 1777, the dysentery prevailed severely; in 1800, it prevailed in the north part of the town, particularly among children. Number of deaths, twenty-three. In 1826, it prevailed under a more malignant form among adults as well as children. Number of deaths, fifty-eight.
CASUALTIES. - There have been, since 1751, fifty-eight cases of death by accident ; but no per- son or building has ever been destroyed by lightning.
PAUPERISM. - The first pauper in town was Jean . Culberson, 1764; the largest number (seven- teen) in 1821. In 1826, the expense was four hundred and ninety-nine dollars and fifty-four cents, and the average annual expense, from 1815 to 1836, was about four hundred dollars. Since then the poor have been on a farm purchased by the town, and maintained without cost.
POPULATION in 1775, five hundred and forty-six ; in 1790, eight hundred and sixty; in 1800, one thousand three hundred and thirty-three; in 1810, one thousand five hundred and thirty-seven; in 1820, one thousand five hundred ; in 1830, one thousand nine hundred and eighty-four; in 1839, two thousand three hundred.
No. IV.
WATER PRIVILEGES. - The following is condensed from Mr. Steele's report. I regret that an abstract of his full and exact account of the subject is all that our limits will admit.
On the spot where the Peterborough Factory now stands, a saw and grist-mill was erected about 1761. The grist-mill ceased operation in 1817. The mills were burnt in 1772, and rebuilt.
The South Factory Mills were built in 1758, burnt 1768, rebuilt 1770. Bowers' Mills, - saw_ mill built 1778, grist-mill added 1781. The Moore Saw-Mill built 1780, burnt 1790. Hunt's Mills, -saw-mill 1799, grist-mill 1803. Both have ceased. The present saw and grist-mill be- gan 1826. The Spring Saw-Mill built 1810; James Howe's Saw-Mill, 1814; City Grist-Mill, 1820; Union Saw-Mill, 1823; Grist-Mill, 1828; Holmes' Mills, 1827; Upton's Saw-Mill, 1837.
COTTON FACTORIES. - The Peterborough Factory, or the Old Factory, or the Bell Factory, in- corporated December, 1808, started 1810; the brick part with looms added 1817. The first cloth woven 1818, under direction of John H. Steele. It now contains one thousand two hundred and eighty spindles, and forty-two looms, making three-fourth drillings and shirtings of No. 16 yarn, four hundred thousand yards per annum.
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