USA > New Hampshire > Strafford County > Rochester > History of the town of Rochester, New Hampshire, from 1722 to 1890, Vol. I > Part 32
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As our population has increased, the "lights and shadows" which variegate our history have multiplied also. It would be difficult to say which generation has the advantage. Though
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drunkenness is not universal and respectable as formerly, still the liquor dealers continue their diabolical traffic; still they sow the seeds of violence and crime; still death suddenly claims the victims which rum has marked for his own. The shadows of the past are already spread upon these pages; those nearer the present should not be omitted.
In the winter of 1870-71 a man and his wife, having become drunk on cider, got into a quarrel in which he beat her so that she died. In July, 1871, a man died very suddenly of delirium tremens. A post mortem examination showed that his stomach was nearly eaten through with liquor. Sept. 9, 1871, a man who was suffering from delirium tremens shot himself and died the next day. Not long after, a shoemaker died of sudden attack of lung fever directly induced by drunkenness. His wife died the day before and they were buried at the same time. All these events occurred within a year, and though this may have been a little unusual, still if the full record of rum's doings were kept, every year would be spotted with its murderous list. We are apt to think of the evils of intemperance only in connection with violence, crime, and the extremes of exposure and poverty, and overlook the more numerous deaths really caused by strong drink, which occur every season, not only among the poverty-stricken and degraded, but in the highest circles of fashion and culture.
About 1874 the popular wave introduced Reform Clubs all over the country. May 29, 1875, twenty delegates from Dover held an enthusiastic meeting in the town hall, George Fox Guppy pre- siding. Eighty-eight signed the pledge that evening, a majority of whom had been habitual drinkers. A week later The Rochester Reform Club was permanently organized, with Dr. T. J. Sweatt, president, and Charles C. Wingate, secretary. Weekly or fort- nightly meetings were held for more than a year, with temperance discourses from the village pastors and addresses of laymen from abroad and at home. In the fall of 1875 and subsequent months this Club made special efforts to enforce the law. The town was rife with controversy and excitement. Mr. Lamprey, principal of the High School, was a leader in the movement. His firm prin- ciple and sturdy bravery fitted him specially for the work, in which he never flinched. His untiring devotion to the cause led to his removal in the spring of 1877, the liquor interest having
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gained control of the school board. Frequent prosecutions roused the liquor dealers to deeds of rage and violence. In public meetings there were bitter denunciations of the clergy and the "Courier" for their activity in the cause. Nov. 5, 1875, Charles W. Bradley, who had been faithful as a policeman in suppressing the liquor traffic, while quietly passing along the street was struck violently from behind by the keeper of a low groggery, causing the blood to flow freely from a gash in his cheek. A crowd of roughs speedily gathered, who had singled out Mr. Bradley for special hatred on account of his activity in the reform movement. But with unswerving pluck Mr. Bradley seized his assailant and had him bound over to appear at the higher court. Three weeks after this, while he was at a temperance meeting, some cowardly miscreant threw several bricks through the plate glass in Mr. Bradley's front door. The excitement of this period extended through the town. Public meetings were held at Gonic. Many signed the pledge, and the rum traffic in that village was " squelched " for a time. Mention should here be made of Squamanagonic Lodge of Good Templars, which was organized May 24, 1876, and has continued in active existence to the present time, doing a good work for that village.
In 1879-80 there was considerable activity on the part of tem- perance people. Meetings were frequent, with lectures from Neal Dow and others. The " blue ribbon " movement sent its apostles, Booth and Smith, and many signed the pledge. The " Courier " says Frank McDuffee delivered "a powerful lecture on temper- ance," March 14, 1880. This renewed activity had salutary results in closing saloons and diminishing drunkenness.
June 12, 1881, The Rochester Total Abstinence Society was organ- ized with about two hundred and fifty members, some of whom were reformed men. The president was John B. Kelley, and secretary Charles H. Dore. This society met nearly every week for more than two years, with discussions, lectures, sermons, and addresses from various persons.
Oct. 18, 1881, a well-known citizen of East Rochester was thrown from a wagon while intoxicated, receiving such injuries that he died after three days of terrible suffering.
For several years about this time there seems to have been but little activity in the cause of temperance. The ministers continued
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to preach plainly on the subject, and there was an occasional outspoken article in the " Courier." In the summer of 1885 it was publicly charged that seventy-five rum-holes were in active operation. Some of the temperance organizations still maintained their existence. But it was for the most part a time of general quiet.
This quiet was suddenly broken by a fatal drunken affray, Oct. 16, 1885. A party of seven men had come up to "the Plains " from Gonic early in the evening. After a little trading and drinking several times, they started for home. On the way they got into a drunken squabble, in which James McKee stabbed Michael Crannon so that he died in a short time. At the trial it was shown that the parties had been on friendly terms, and McKee had no remembrance of the act. He pleaded guilty of manslaughter in the second degree, and was sentenced to the State Prison for seven years.
This affair aroused the people to action. Many places were searched for liquor, and several dealers fined or put under bonds. Frequent meetings were held, with stirring addresses from nearly all the prominent citizens, and a great improvement was manifest. John Young, J. P. Swasey, C. H. Hodgdon, Silas Hussey, and C. W. Edgerly were appointed to draft a constitution for a Law and Order League, which was presented Nov. 22, 1885, and signed by over one hundred persons. Meetings continued with good work through the winter. In September, 1886, the League was revived with the special purpose of aiding the selectmen to enforce the law. Charles C. Hodgdon was president, and J. J. Abbott secretary. Meetings were continued for about three months.
A party of four or five men were engaged in a drunken broil May 5, 1887, when Elmer Tebbetts was fatally stabbed by some unknown person.
Among the forces at work for the suppression of intemperance the Woman's Christian Temperance Union should not be overlooked. This was organized Oct. 11, 1876, with Mrs. A. J. Quick, pres- ident. The next year Mrs. Edwin Wallace became president and held the office over five years. Like the other organizations the Union has had its times of declension and revival. Lecturers have been secured from time to time. By earnest, self-denying efforts sufficient money was raised to open a reading-room July 5,
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1885. This reading-room has since been supported in part by the Union Mission Band, and since 1887 the town has made an annual appropriation of $100 for that purpose. The Union also established an evening school in 1887 which has been quite successful.
At the annual meeting in March, 1888, the town adopted the following resolution by a large vote, no one voting against it: -
" Resolved, that it is the sentiment of the town in this meeting assembled, that the law relating to the sale and keeping for sale intoxicating liquors, and to the keeping, maintenance, and letting of places defined by law as nuisance, shall be rigidly enforced by the selectmen."
Accordingly notice was served on all known liquor dealers that the selectmen would carry out these instructions after the first day of April. .
Those who have carefully followed the history of the temperance cause cannot fail to note one fact. Amid all the vicissitudes attending the work, the friends of temperance from the beginning of the reform sixty years ago have labored persistently and hero- ically. The work has scarcely been remitted during the whole time, and if there have been occasional periods of apparent rest and slackness, the work has been speedily taken up with increased earnestness and determination. When one band of fighters has become weary or passed away in death, others have quickly sprung to the front, and resumed the battle. And if for the last few years there has seemed to be a lull in the fight, and drunk- enness has seemed to increase, yet even now (1888) there are not wanting those who are ready to deal vigorous blows in behalf of temperance, and tokens of renewed activity are manifest.
CHAPTER XIV.
LEADING MEN SINCE THE REVOLUTION.
"In the race and not the prize Glory's true distinction lies. And the generous and the good, In the crowd or solitude, Stand in modesty alone Still serenely struggling on, Planting peacefully the seeds Of bright hopes and better deeds."
RICHARD DAME.
RICHARD DAME Was born at Rochester in 1756, and died Sept. 19, 1828. He was a very prominent man in his day. He repre- sented the town in the Legislature in 1800-01-03; was a member of State Senate from 1807 to 1809; a councilor from 1809 to 1811; and justice of the Court of Common Pleas from 1817 till his death.
Judge Dame was universally esteemed for the purity and integ- rity of his character in all the public and private relations of life. He always desired to be a peacemaker. A near neighbor of his was a very irascible, passionate, quarrelsome man. While work- ing together on the highway he got in a, rage and threw some snow upon the Judge. Desiring to live in peace with all men, the Judge thought this afforded a good opportunity for reconciling his unkind neighbor; so he sent him a note stating that by throwing the snow he had rendered himself liable to punishment under the law, and informing him that he might take his choice, to be reconciled and live thereafter on peaceable terms with him, or pay five dollars as a penalty for the assault. The plan, how- ever, failed, as the messenger returned bringing the money. Judge Dame was an exemplary and highly respected member of the Society of Friends. During his last illness he exhibited that patient resignation which might have been expected from the
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uniform tenor of his life, and which happily illustrated his char- acter as a pious and devoted Christian.
JONAS C. MARCH.
Clement March, father of Jonas C., was six feet and a half in height, and of very commanding presence. When any disturbance was heard among the inmates of his house, he would say, "Nat, take my cane there." The boy, shouldering the long, mysterious wand and marching through the room, would restore quiet without a word. He was an agreeable, social man, whose company was sought at all merry-makings. In 1758 he was constable of the North Parish in Portsmouth, and his duty was to keep the unruly boys in and out of church in good order. He had three sons : - John, Nathaniel, and Jonas C .; and four daughters : - Margaret married a Mr. Maloon, Sarah married B. Akerman, Hannah married a Mr. Clark, and Elizabeth married J. Akerman.
JONAS C. MARCH was born at Portsmouth in 1764, and married Sally, daughter of Judge Aaron Wingate, who was the mother of his eight children, and died at the age of thirty-six. He after- wards married Lydia, sister of his first wife, who died in this village about 1865. Mr. March removed from Farmington to Rochester in 1803, and commenced trade on the present site of Feineman's clothing store. As a business man he was very methodical, his books being kept with great precision and neatness. His semi-annual visit to Boston to purchase goods was a great event in Rochester. On these occasions he was always accompanied by his firm friend and neighbor tradesman, Joseph Hanson. As great preparation was made for the trip as would now be made for a journey to Europe. For a week previous the old horse was allowed an extra quantity of oats, the chaise was inspected and put in thorough order. Two days were occupied in going and the same in returning.
For the poor, Mr. March had always a kind word and good advice, with not unfrequently more substantial assistance. He was a good friend to the young and deserving, ever ready, even unso- licited, to assist those who were striving to rise. His benevolent traits of character rendered him universally respected and greatly beloved. He was register of deeds for Strafford county from 1803
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to 1811, and state senator from 1813 to 1815. He died after a short illness, Aug. 20, 1820, and his funeral was attended by mul- titudes of people from far and near. The names of his children were Eliza, Hannah, Jonas C., Jr., Caroline, Sarah Ann, Aaron Wingate, Emily, and John Plumer.
The last named is a successful merchant in New York city. Jonas C., Jr., inherited many traits of his grandfather, being fond of merry-makings, and abounding in practical jokes. He suc- ceeded his father in the store, and was representative to the Legislature in 1827. After leaving Rochester he was for many years a salesman in Boston.
UPHAM.
BY F. W. UPHAM, LL. D.
As the story of Greece is that of the states of Greece, so the story of New England is that of her towns; and of few is the story of more curious interest than that of Rochester, New Hamp- shire, and of the village on what of old was known as Norway Plain, from its stately pines, a few relics of whose pride stood, in our youth, like motionless sentinels near the burying ground. De Tocqueville, the traveler who looked with truest philosophic insight into what here is best worth seeing, saw and regretted that our history was fast perishing. Wise and worthy, then, the sentiment that led Franklin McDuffee to save the traditions of his native town! It is well that the work he well began should be his lasting monument!
Of the time of the Revolution, in which our town had its share, my mother told me a family story, so characteristic of the men and women of that heroic age, that, had he known it, Bancroft would gladly have told it in his history. To test the feelings of the country people, not long before the fight at Lexington, the patriots in Boston sent out word that the British troops were marching out. Everywhere the minute-men sprang to arms. Her father was not enrolled among them, as he was waiting for his commis- sion, and his wife thought he would not go, for she was sick, and in the house there lay in its coffin the body of one of the children. He came in; he took down his pistols from over the
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mantel-piece. " You are not going?" she said, and this was the answer, " I would rather die than be a slave." No other word passed between them. Their feelings were too much for words, and they understood each other. She was willing he should go, though, too sick to rise from her couch and left with their unburied dead, she listened to his horse's hoofs while he rode down the little hill where the house stood, as to a knell ! He came back before night, but soon went away again to serve through the seven years of war and to receive the commendation of Washington. He was worthy of the love of my mother, who in her written farewell to her children told them to inscribe on her gravestone that "she was the daughter of Hon. Thomas Cogswell of Gilmanton."
One fact in the annals of Rochester, in its date, at least, is almost unique. There the union of Church and State long survived; for, born in A. D. 1817, I was baptized by old Parson Haven, after whom the hill that on the south overlooks the village is named. And in town meeting the town voted that for life he should be the town minister. Quakers came and settled in Mcader- borough, Baptists in the south of his parish, in force the Meth- odists contested the village, and Parson Haven out-preached his eyesight, his voice, and his congregation, yet the town faithfully paid him his stipend till he died !
The town that in town meeting voted for its minister, cared so well for its town school that scholars were there fitted for college. My memory runs not back so far as to that sternest and best of schoolmasters, Henry Orne, but one of his pupils told me, that when to the common regret he gave up his honorable office - for the schoolmaster then was one of the grandees of the town- he was so worn out, that when a man whom he loved in his boyhood sought him out in his strict seclusion, saying he must see his old friend, this answer came back, "Tell him, what is left of Henry Orne is not worth the seeing!"
Of his boys he made men, and of them there were some who came to honor. Of one of these I may speak - my oldest brother, Thomas Cogswell Upham (p. 243). I have traveled far in many lands, but not so far as the bounds of his fame. A Brahmin told a missionary in India that he had read his religious works with more satisfaction than any others in the English tongue. Going up to the Black Sea, I saw on heights overlooking Con-
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stantinople the lofty towers of Robert College; his Philosophy, translated into one of the principal languages of the Ottoman Empire, was there taught by its founder, Cyrus Hamlin, whose name, clarum et venerabile, here may well be named, as for a short time he was master of the Academy on Norway Plain.
Thomas was a grandson of the first minister of the fine old town of Deerfield, N. H., and a graduate of Harvard. He was born in that town, in a house that still looks out on Pleasant Pond; but all his childish recollections and life-long love were of and for the hills and streams and the people of Rochester. Giving up much from a sense of duty, he became assistant to old Parson Haven, and soon filled the deserted meeting-house. Thence called at the age of twenty-five to Bowdoin, his fame as a discoverer in philosophy and a religious writer became the rich possession of the college, in whose graveyard, shaded by his native pine, his body now waits for the resurrection. He was so widely known that I give two incidents in his life -one of which were other- wise too trivial. So well-mannered and studious a child was he, that for a long while he, alone, of the pupils of Henry Orne, escaped the flogging administered for cause to every other one. When at last his time came, to the amazement of all the school, of its stern master, too, the gentlest of the village boys so stoutly resisted, that for once Henry Orne gave in, feeling that there must be some mistake, as there proved to be.
As to himself the Professor was reticent; and till near the end of his days may never have told what is too honorable to him that with me it should perish. In Bowdoin there were professors only, and to each a special field was given; as, to Henry W. Longfellow that of modern languages, to him, that of mental phi- losophy. What then was known as such, was a chaos. It then bore (as it still bears in some treatises) much the same relation that alchemy bore to chemistry, astrology to astronomy. With iron industry, fourteen hours a day for ten years he labored to bring order into its confusion, and with results so little satisfactory that with a high sense of honor, feeling that he could not master the life work given him, he silently made up his mind to resign his professorship. Just then there came into his mind a perception of the truth, that while the spirit there is in man is one spirit, it has three phases of being, - the mind, the heart, and the will,
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equal in breadth of manifestation, and each with powers and laws of its own. In the light of this idea, with fresh courage he began to classify all the many facts he had gathered, and "praying all the time," clear through the realms of the intellect and of the passions he carried the science which before had for the most part stopped with imperfect attempts to survey the mind; and thus far he made an accurate map of the soul. Then, on the will, as equal in the breadth and complexity of its manifestations and laws, he wrote a treatise, the first ever written with any such broad purpose in any language under heaven.
He was a great man, but his father, HON. NATHANIEL UPHAM of Rochester, was by nature greater than any of his seven sons. His mother, who was brought up in the house of her aunt, the wife of Col. Timothy Pickering of Salem, was a woman of quick intellect and unpretending piety. The eldest of her two sons * was of great energy, so controlled by common sense, that he suc- ceeded in whatever he undertook. In my childhood he was so much in Washington, where for six years he was the representative from the old county of Strafford, that my remembrances of him are few till after a long and severe fever, from which he but par- tially recovered, to die at the age of fifty-five, July 10, 1829. He was a personal friend of two statesmen, very unlike and bitterly hostile, Henry Clay of Kentucky and Andrew Jackson. His pri- vate secretary told me that the old General, in the last years of his life at the Hermitage, often pleased himself with calling over the roll of his friends, and among them always named my father. In the attacks made in Congress upon the military conduct of the General, no doubt my father gave him earnest support, for he ever stood in opposition to the Federalists, who before and in the war of 1812 went, as he thought, to the very verge of treason. Rightly to state the value of his political influence, the story of a strife as severe, as bitter, and as important in its principles as any in our annals, would have to be written; but here it can only be said, that in 1811 he was one of the Council of Governor Langdon, and that when he ran for Congress, this was the sig- nificant heading of the ticket: - "The union of the States."
* NOTE. - The other son was Col. Timothy Upham of Portsmouth. He was distinguished for bravery and good conduct in the war of 1812. In the sortie from Fort Erie he led the reserve, and in the bloody battles on the Niagara frontier his regiment from twelve hundred was cut down to three hundred and fifty men.
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In person he was tall and commanding, above the average of men, six feet four inches in height, straight as a dart, and said to have been the finest-looking man in the house. The only portrait of Mr. Upham now in existence may be seen in the Corcoran Art Gallery, in a picture of the House of Representa- tives in session in the old hall as it was in 1817. It was painted by Morse, since so famous, then a young artist, and a son of a friend of my father. He is in the front circle, the only one of the members standing, and, consequently, he is the most con- spicuous figure in the picture; but all the figures are so small that no one of the portraits is of much value as a likeness.
The town that in town meeting chose a minister for life, and that for its school-master selected one who could fit boys for college, and kept him in office till his strength was worn out, provided a town library, and the spirit of the early dwellers on the Norway Plain is proved by those three facts. Very small and very well selected that library was the delight of my boyhood, for there with histories and travels were "Don Quixote," "Gil Blas," "Waverley," and the "Lay of the Last Minstrel." It was then kept in the law office of Hon. David Barker, a native of the town and one of the boys of Henry Orne, -a successor to my father in Congress, a. graduate of Cambridge, a favorite pupil of Dr. Abbot of the Exeter Academy, he was a gentleman of fine nature and fine culture. My oldest sister Mary was his wife. I was up at his house one afternoon, and, as at the usual hour Mr. Barker did not come over to tea, we knew that something unusual had happened. After a long while he came in and told his wife that he had been with a boy who had walked down from Farmington, some eight miles, to consult with him as to what to read and how to improve his mind. Walking such a distance was less common then than now, and a sign of utter poverty. "Why did you not send him back in the wagon?" among other things was asked, and there was a depth of meaning in the answer, " He was not that kind of a boy !" That boy lived to be Senator, and to die Vice- President of the United States - Henry Wilson -and the book selected for him was Marshall's Life of Washington.
In that library was "The Monastery," the first of Scott's novels read by me, and always for that reason a favorite, as, for the same reason, Ruskin says it is with him. Now, Scott's glowing
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descriptions of scenery in "The Monastery" and in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel " led me, as a boy, to imagine that his marvelous genius might have been quickened by the natural beauty of the valley of the Tweed and the country around Abbotsford; and much surprised, delighted, and perhaps incredulous I should have been, had any one told me the truth, that the natural beauties of the Lowland of Scotland are surpassed by those of the old county of Strafford; that few of their inland prospects equal the far-reaching view from the top of Haven's Hill; that the Cocheco is very much as the Tweed, and that, at a like distance, the Eildon Hills are not finer than New Durham Ridge and Blue Job as seen from the Norway Plain.
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