USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Peterborough > History of the town of Peterborough, Hillsborough county, New Hampshire > Part 3
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* For what follows in relation to the Scotch-Irish, we are chiefly indebted to a historical discourse delivered by J. Smith Futhey at the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Octorara Church, Chester County, Pennsylvania, page 27.
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ACCOUNT OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH.
two Irish lords, who had been created earls by the English gov- ernment, arranged a plot against the government. Its detec- tion led these chief conspirators to flee the country, leaving their extensive estates, about 500,000 acres, at the mercy of the king, who only wanted a pretext for taking possession. A second insurrection soon gave occasion for another large forfeiture, and nearly six entire counties in the Province of Ulster were confiscated, and subjected to the disposal of the crown. But it was a territory which showed the effects of a long series of lawless disturbances. It was almost depopu- lated, its resources wasted, and the cultivation of the soil in a great measure abandoned.
" It became a favorite project with the King to re-people these counties with a Protestant population, who would be dis- posed to cultivate the arts of peace and industry, the better to preserve order, to establish more firmly the British rule, and to introduce a higher state of cultivation into that portion of his domains." To promote this object, liberal offers of land were made, and other inducements held out in England and Scot- land for colonists to occupy this wide and vacant territory. This was about the year 1610. The project was eagerly em- braced, companies and colonies were formed, and individuals without organization were tempted to partake of the advan- tageous offers of the government. A London company, among the first to enter upon this new acquisition, established itself at Derry, and gave such character to the place as to cause it to be known and called the city of Londonderry.
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"The principal emigration, however, was from Scotland. It consisted of a population distinguished for thrift, industry, and endurance, and also bringing with them their Presbyterian- ism, with a rigid adherence to the Westminster standards. They settled principally in the counties of Down, London- derry, and Antrim, which has given a peculiar character to this portion of the Emerald Isle."
It is said that the Presbyterians of Scotland, who furnished the largest element of this population, have maintained their ascendency to the present day, though assailed on the one side by the persevering efforts of the government Church, and
5
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
on the other by the Romanists. The Presbyterian Church was established in the County of Antrim, Ireland, in 1613.
The province had great prosperity for some years in con- sequence of this large influx of population ; but such was the bigotry and despotism of the British government at that time, that this prosperity was not destined to continue. A perse- cution of the most oppressive kind was begun in Ulster in 1661, and every expedient, short of extermination, was resort- . ed to to break the attachment of the people to their Presbyte- rian polity, and to alienate them from it. But, as is always the case, these persecutions made them more strongly adhere to their faith.
After a while, the persecution ceased in Ireland and was transferred to Scotland. Charles II. and James II., blind to the dictates of justice and humanity, pursued a course of measures tending to wean from their support their Presbyte- rian subjects, who had been among the most loyal, and to whose assistance Charles II. owed his restoration to the throne. Col. James Graham, better known as Claverhouse, of infamous memory to this day among the Presbyterians, and graphically exhibited in Scott's novel of "The Heart of Midlothian," was sent with his dragoons upon a mistaken mission of compelling the Presbyterians to conform in their religious worship to the Establishment; and from 1670 to the accession of William and Mary in 1688, they had no open worship, nor any hidden, but at the peril of their lives.
The attempts to establish the Church of England in Scot- land, and to destroy the prevailing religious systems so dear to the people, were persistently pursued by the Charleses and James II., and to accomplish their purpose they were guilty of persecutions as mean, cruel, and savage as any which have disgraced the annals of religious bigotry and crime. "Many were treacherously and ruthlessly butchered, and the minis- ters were prohibited, under severe penalties, from preaching, baptizing, or ministering in any way for their flocks."
Having suffered every extreme of cruelty and oppression, and being tired out in such an unequal contest, these uncon- querable and enduring Presbyterians abandoned their homes
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ACCOUNT OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH.
and the land of their birth, and, fleeing to Ireland, found an asylum among their countrymen, who had preceded them there.
They took up their residence in Ulster, reaching there as they could, even crossing the narrow sea in open boats. But they carried with them all their religious peculiarities, which became even more dear to them in this land of their exile, for the dangers and sorrows they had endured in their behalf.
" This is the race, composed of various tribes, flowing from different parts of Scotland, which furnished the population in the north of Ireland, familiarly known as Scotch-Irish. This term, Scotch-Irish, does not denote admixture of the Scotch and Irish races. The one did not intermarry with the other. The Scotch were principally Saxon in blood and Presbyterian in religion ; the native Irish, Celtic in blood and Roman Cath- olic in religion; and these were elements which could not very readily coalesce. Hence the races are as distinct in Ireland at the present day, after a lapse of two centuries and a half, as when the Scotch first took up their abode in that island. They were called Scotch-Irish simply from the cir- cumstance that they were the descendants of Scots who had taken up their residence in the north of Ireland."
In their new country, these people, by their frugality, in- dustry, and skill, soon became prosperous, and made the region into which they had removed rich and flourishing. They improved agriculture, introduced manufactures, were noted for the excellence and great reputation of their pro- ductions, and attracted trade and commerce to their markets. But the government of that day, never wise in their commer- cial relations or their governmental affairs, began to recog- nize them only in the shape of taxes and embarrassing regu- lations upon their industry and trade. In addition to these restrictions, the landlords (for the people did not own land, they only rented it), whose long leases had now expired, occa- sioned much distress by an extravagant advance upon the rents, which brought the people to a degrading subjection to England; and many of them were reduced to comparative poverty.
1138917
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
By their grievances, their patience at length became ex- hausted; and these self-willed Scotch-Irish, animated by the same spirit that moved the American mind in the days of the Revolution, resolved to submit to these oppressive measures no longer ; and, by another change of residence, they sought a freer field for the exercise of their industry, and for the enjoyment of their religion.
"Ireland was not the home of their ancestors; it was endeared to them by no traditions ; and numbers determined to quit it, and seek in the American wilds a better home than they had in the Old World."
About the beginning of the eighteenth century they began to emigrate to America in large numbers. So great was the emigration of this period that it threatened almost a depopulation of the Old Country. Such multitudes of husbandmen, laborers, tradesmen, and manufacturers flocked over the Atlantic that the landlords became alarmed, and began to concert measures to prevent the growing evil. At this time scarcely a vessel sailed for the colonies that was not crowded with men, women, and children. "They came prin- cipally to Pennsylvania, though some settled in New England, and others found their way to the Carolinas. It is stated by Proud, in his history of Pennsylvania, that by the year 1729, six thousand Scotch-Irish had come to that colony, and that before the middle of the century nearly twelve thousand arrived annually for several years. In September, 1736, one thousand families sailed from Belfast, on account of the diffi- culty of renewing their leases."
All these emigrants at this period were Protestants, and principally Presbyterian, few or none of the Catholic Irish coming till after the Revolution.
" Extensive emigration from the northern counties of Ire- land was principally made at two distinct periods of time. The first, of which we have been speaking, from about the year 1718, to the middle of the century; the second, from about 1771 to 1773, although there was a gentle current west- ward between these two eras."
The causes of this second extensive emigration were some-
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ACCOUNT OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH.
what similar to that of the first. It is well known that the greater portion of the lands in Ireland are owned by a com- paratively small number of proprietors, who rent them to the farming-classes on long leases. In 1771, the leases on an estate in the County of Antrim, the property of the Marquis of Donegal, having expired, the rents were so largely ad- vanced that many of the tenants could not comply with the demands, and were deprived of the farms they had occupied. This aroused a spirit of resentment at the oppression of the landed proprietors ; and an immediate and extensive emigra- tion to America was the consequence. From 1771 to 1773 there sailed from the ports of the north of Ireland nearly one . hundred vessels, carrying as many as twenty-five thousand passengers, all Presbyterians. This was shortly before the breaking out of the Revolutionary war; and these people, leaving the Old World in such a temper, became a powerful contribution to the cause of liberty, and to the separation of the colonies from the mother country. Most of these Scotch- Irish emigrants landed at New Castle and Philadelphia, and from these places made their way northward and westward. One stream followed the great Cumberland Valley into Vir- ginia and North Carolina; and from there colonies passed into Kentucky and Tennessee. Another large body went into western Pennsylvania, and settled on the head waters of the Ohio, in the vicinity of Pittsburg, and became famous in both civil and ecclesiastical history.
Such is a brief history of the people known as Scotch- Irish, and their emigration to this country. This race, “in energy, enterprise, intelligence, education, patriotism, relig- ious and moral character, the maintenance of civil and relig- ious liberty, and inflexible resistance to all usurpation in Church and State, was not surpassed by any class of settlers in the American colonies."
· Pennsylvania owes much of what she is to-day to the fact, that so many of this race settled within her borders. It is supposed that not less than five millions of the people of America have the blood of these Scotch-Irish in their veins ; and there is not one of them, man or woman, that is not
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
proud of it, or would exchange it for any other lineage. This race has already furnished five Presidents of the United States, seven governors of Pennsylvania, besides many impor- tant officers of trust and honor in many of the other States.
" The first public voice in America for dissolving all con- nection with Great Britain," says Bancroft, "came from the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian." A large number of them were signers of the Declaration of Independence ; and throughout the Revolution, they were devoted to the cause of the coun- try. The cause might have failed but for this timely help. Such a thing as a Scotch-Irish tory was unheard of; the race never produced one.
"The race is noted," says our author, "for its firmness, per- severance, and undaunted energy in whatever it undertakes ; and those characteristics have aided in carrying it success- fully through many a conflict. Whatever an individual with Scotch-Irish blood predominating in his veins undertakes, he generally performs, if in his power."
CHAPTER III.
SETTLEMENT.
Uncertainty as to the Early Settlers. - Names. - All came to Town. - Time of Settlement. - How Fixed. - Petition. - Time of Centen- nial. - Small Party, 1742. - Morison and Russell, 1743. - Visit of Indians to their Camp. - Their Theft. - Return to Townsend. - Frontier Line. - Danger of Settlement. - Causes that Retarded the Settlement of the Town. - No Permanent Settlements till 1749. - After Close of War of 1744 and the Quitclaim of the Masonian Pro- prietors. - Tardiness to Comply with it. - Causes.
THERE is great uncertainty as to the first settlement in Peterborough, and also as to the first settlers. The names of these persons, according to Mr. Dunbar's "Sketch of Peterbo- rough,"* were William Robbe, Alexander Scott, Hugh Gregg, William Gregg, and Samuel Stinson ; but John Todd, Sen., who was high authority in the antiquities of the town, says they were William Scott, William Robbe, William Wallace, William Mitchell, and Samuel Stinson. It is probable that all the men mentioned by each of the above authorities were the first settlers of the town. Of many of them we know nothing, - tradition has only handed down their names. We have no genealogy of their families, and have not been able to obtain the least trace of Hugh Gregg, William Gregg, William Wal- lace, William Mitchell, and Samuel Stinson.
The time of the first settlement was supposed to be deter- mined by an expression in a petition for an Act of Incorpora-
* See N. H. Historical Collections, Vol. I. p. 129.
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
tion Oct. 31, 1759, signed by Thomas Morison, Jonathan Morison, and Thomas Cunningham, which says :-
"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 General 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 set- tlement. And in pursuance whereof a number of People immedi- ately went on to said tract of land and began a settlement (tho then very far from any other inhabitants) which we have continued increasing ever since the year 1739, except sometimes when we left said Township for fear of being destroyed by the enemy, who sev- eral 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, returned to our settlement : as soon as prudence 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 travelling to Connecticut river and those towns settling beyond us." To which the following is added : "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."
This is almost all the history we have of the earliest settle- ment of the town. The time for holding the Centennial was fixed from this document, though no permanent settlements took place till 1749. It is probable that after a partial survey and a distribution of the lots among the original proprietors that each one of them made efforts to sell lots as he could, and
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SETTLEMENT.
that these lots were sold to those who intended and, after_ wards, actually did make the settlement. It is plain that none of the early settlers had removed their families to town before the year 1749; but it may be that much work had been done in clearing up the land purchased, and preparing it for culture, by a temporary residence of the owners.
Of the party that came in 1739, all were probably driven away, by fear of the Indians, before any considerable clearing had been made. In 1742,* a party of five, with their axes and provisions on their shoulders, came from Lunenburg and cleared a small patch of land near the old meeting-house. "They abandoned the settlement at, or more probably con- siderably before, the alarm of the war in 1744." Another attempt was made, some time before 1744, by William Mcnee, John Taggart, and William Ritchie, which was confined to the Ritchie hill, on the very south border of the town. Before leaving the settlement ; they cut a strip of land on the end of their lots, about twenty rods wide, also all the underbrush, and girdled the large trees. When they returned in '1749 or 1750, with their families, this chopping had been burned by hunters, or the Indians, and was in good order for a crop of corn or rye. They had abundant crops the first year.
No other attempts at settlement were made after this, ex- cept the following, the account of which has been derived principally from the manuscript notes of Samuel Smith. He says that Capt. Thomas Morison, accompanied by a Mr. Russell, came to town as early as 1744, but more probably in 1743. Their camp was about twenty rods north of where the large barn was built, -about north-east of the Thomas Morison house. This camp, by other authority,¿ is said to have been made by the side of a great boulder, about in the position indicated above, having a perpendicular side six or seven feet high, against which the camp-fire was built. They selected for their encampment the beautiful spot indicated, ' which was near the banks of the " Great River," and between
* Centennial Address.
t Manuscript Notes of Samuel Smith.
# P. Transcript, Sept. 18, 1873, N. H. M.
6
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
two sheltering hills, with a pleasant valley widening southward into a broad, level plain, now one of the smoothest and most fertile fields in town. A gushing spring of pure water was close at hand, long after much used for purposes of washing. No spot in the neighborhood can compare with this for the shelter and convenience which it affords for a camp. After building a camp of green poles and hemlock boughs, in which they deposited their few provisions, consisting of salt pork and corn meal, which they had brought on their backs from Townsend. It is supposed that they. spent but one night under its sheltering roof.
When Morison and Russell went out in the morning, they perceived two Indian men, a squaw, and a small Indian. They intended to be friendly to them, and spoke to them, and in- vited them to come in and take breakfast, which they did. The Indians certainly manifested no hostile intentions. They were probably fishing up the Contoocook River, as the smoke of their encampment was seen on the opposite side of the river, about where John Upton's house now stands. When they returned to camp at noon, after a hard morning's work at chopping, expecting to find the pork, which they had put into the pot, cooked and ready for their dinner, they found the pot empty, and every article of food which they had brought with them gone. The Indians across the river had visited their vacant camp, and stolen every edible thing which it contained, even taking the pork from the boiling pot, and probably the pot with it. The hungry men were obliged to thread their backward steps through the forests for more than twenty miles to Townsend, before they could get a morsel of food, or a substitute for their stolen dinner.
This incident is of more than common interest in the his- tory of the town, as being the only well-authenticated account of any Indians coming near our early settlements, and then with no hostile intentions, although they were so terribly dreaded and feared by the people. We do not wonder at the great fear of the Indians in those times, as the Indian warfare had heretofore been of the most cruel character. No mercy was expected from them ; no faith could be put in their prom-
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SETTLEMENT.
ises ; towards captive enemies they exhibited nothing but the cruelty and ferocity of the tiger. Besides, Peterborough was at this time a frontier town, and far from any other on which it could call for aid. At this time (about 1746 *), "a line drawn from Rochester and Barrington to Boscawen and Con- cord, thence through Hopkinton, Hillsborough, and Peter- borough, to Keene, Swanzey, Winchester, and Hinsdale, con- stituted the frontier line. . The whole region north of it, with the exception of small openings at Westmoreland and Charles- town, occupied by a few families, was a gloomy forest, - a fit lurking-place for savages." Peterborough, though so much exposed to Indian depredations, escaped wonderfully, never having been once molested, while most of the other frontier towns suffered largely.i
During the French war with Great Britain, the Indians in the employ of the French were lurking on all the frontiers of the settlements, and ready at any time to make assaults upon the most defenceless and helpless. This was especially the case in the French war from 1744 to 1748. In the later war- fare with the Indians, there was less of cruelty and murder than ever before. The Indians were paid by the French so much a head for all the captives they could bring into Canada, which made them more humane in their treatment of captives. " So there were no instances of deliberate murder, nor torture exercised on those who fell into their hands. And even the old custom of making them run the gauntlet was in most in- stances omitted. When feeble, they assisted them in travel- ling; and in cases of distress from want of provision, they shared with them in equal proportions." During the war (1744-8), the French "kept out small parties engaged contin- ually in killing, scalping, and taking prisoners. These pris- oners were sold in Canada, and redeemed by their friends at a great expense." By this mode of conduct, the French made their enemies pay the whole charge of their predatory excur- sions, besides reaping a handsome profit for themselves."
There were other causes beside these that retarded the
* Whiton's History of New Hampshire, p. 89.
t Belknap's History of New Hampshire, pp. 287, 296.
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HISTORY OF PETERBOROUGH.
settlement .* The boundary line between New Hampshire and Massachusetts was a long time in controversy, and the un- certainty that hung over their titles, their grant coming from the Massachusetts Legislature, which had no jurisdiction over the territory, and no rights in it to dispense, seemed to un- settle everything in relation to the new township.
The dispute with New Hampshire about boundaries had much to do with the grant of the town of Peterborough. This dispute had lasted seventy years. Massachusetts claimed all lands lying south and west of the Merrimack River, - claimed that her line started three miles north of the mouth of the stream, and run at that distance from the stream along its northern and eastern bank up to the Pemigewasset, where the river forks and where the town of Franklin now is, and thence due west to the south sea. Her boundary, according to her charter, was to run "everwhere" three miles north of, and parallel to, the Merrimack, to its head, and from a point three miles north of its head due west to the south sea. New Hampshire maintained that it was impossible to run a line " everwhere" three miles north of a stream flowing mostly southward ; that in 1629 when the Charter of Massachusetts was given, the river was supposed to come from the west, and was not known to turn north; that the line could not be drawn according to the Massachusetts Charter, and, therefore, it ought to be drawn as near as possible to what was supposed to be the fact when the charter was given ; viz., that the river came from the west. She therefore claimed that the line should start from a point three miles north of the middle of the stream at its mouth and run due west to the south sea, or to other provinces. In 1731 commissioners appointed by the two provinces met at Newbury, disputed, and separated without deciding.
From 1732 to 1737 the discussion was particularly hot and bitter, the New Hampshire men being determined to have the question settled ; and they finally referred it to the king for
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