USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Wilton > History of the town of Wilton, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, with a genealogical register > Part 21
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Voted, that if the selectmen shall so determine, instead of issuing said bonds, they may hire the aforesaid sums of money upon the credit of the town, and upon the same terms as aforesaid, and give the note of the town with the same rate of interest of four per cent.
On article tenth it was voted that the sum of one thousand dollars is hereby raised and appropriated towards the building of said Town House, to be expended by the agents referred to in the vote under the foregoing ninth article of the warrant, upon the conditions and with the limitations of the use of the same expessed in said vote.
On the eleventh article of the warrant it was voted that David Whit- ing, Frank M. Pevey and James L. Hardy are hereby chosen building agents, with the authority expressed and the limitations in the vote under the ninth article of the warrant.
At the town meeting held November 4, 1884, a report of the building committee being called for, Dr. F. M. Povey of said committee made a statement of the progress made on the Town House, and of the amount of money received and expended for the same, to wit :
"The architects were Merrill & Cutler of Lowell, Massachusetts. The contractors were James L. Hardy for wood and iron work. and Charles Hesselton for stone and brick work. The amount of J. L. Hardy's
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contract was $9.813: the amount of Charles Hesselton's contract was $8,279.93: total, $18,092.93. After the contracts were fulfilled the hall was titted up with steam apparatus for heating at an expense to the town of about $700. Gas apparatus for lighting was furnished by the town, costing about $400. All the gas fixtures in the building were furnished and donated to the town by the several sons of HI. A. Whiting. The sup- per room was finished with the proceeds of the dedication festival, amount- ing to 8500. The stained glass windows were donated by several ladies of Wilton. The inside blinds were furnished by Hon. J. HI. Spalding of Nashua, Mrs. D. Whiting of Wilton, Mrs. Geo. Newell of Boston and Mrs. Geo. O. Whiting of Lexington. The desk for the stage was donated by Hon. Charles H. Burns of Wilton ; the clock for inside of hall, by Dr. J. Fleeman ; the stone steps at the end of the building, by citizens. The en- gine and selectmen's rooms were finished by the town, estimated expense $400. The table and chairs for selectmen's room were given by Mr. Geo. 1. Doe ; the town clock, by Dr. F. M. Pevey. The amount of the several donations exceeds $2,500."
On motion of C. H. Burns, voted to accept the following offer made the town by the Messrs. Whiting, and to appropriate five hundred dollars for the same:
" The sons of Harvey A. Whiting offer to pipe the whole building for gas, so far as it can be piped as it now stands, and to furnish with fixt- ures that part of the building that is finished, on condition that the town furnish and set up the gas machine and its appurtenances and maintain the whole lighting apparatus."
Also voted that the building committee be authorized and empowered to carry out the above vote.
On motion of Rev. A. E. Tracy, voted that the timely and valuable present of a town clock given by Dr. F. M. Pevey be accepted with thanks. The following resolution was unanimously adopted : Resolved, that the committee of three be charged with the duty of investigating the subject of heating apparatus for the town hall and be empowered to buy and put in such apparatus as upon investigation they shall think best ; also, resolved, that said committee be charged with the subject of furnish- ing, and be empowered to buy and put in suitable furniture.
DEDICATION SERVICES.
On January 1, 1885, the new Town House was dedicated with appropriate exercises, an eloquent address was delivered by Isaac Spalding Whiting, Esq., and the entertainment and festivities of the occasion were participated in by a large number of the people of Wilton and the neighboring towns. We quote the following ad- mirable advice from this address, which points the way to what we may yet do to make our town still more beautiful, patriotic and flourishing :
If, now, our fathers' time was the time of pioneer work, and if theirs
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was the period of the struggle for existence, it would seem that it was our duty to advance upon their state and create her some of the products of a later and more civilized time. With the completion of the rough work, and increase of property, we must have time and strength left free from bread-earning, for cultivation of self, and improvement and adoru- ment of the town. I know I trench here upon doubtful ground. I know, too, that what was true in the forty's and fifty's is not true today. At that time, with a constant and growing market in New England, which could be supplied with agricultural products only from New England. our prospects were bright for increase of population and of wealth, and the things they bring. But the Texan steer stalked suddenly out of the mist, and our tended and housed cattle could not stand up against him. The railroads stretched their arms into the West, and brought back grain from lands, the richness of which was fabulous to the rock-born New England farmer. The application of steam to machinery stole away from us the advantage we had in our thousands of streams. even before we had our- selves wantonly destroyed them by cutting off the forest that fed them. Moreover, the rapid development of the resources of the country called away to the cities a class of men whose great works there are but cold comfort to the towns who have lost their help. I believe the New Eng- land farmer of thirty or forty years ago is dead without successor. 1 con- ceive him to have been a man of liberal mind, of aente interest in public affairs, who worked half a day in the field, and the other half in law, re- ligion, polities or business; who gave himself time for social works, and for the observation of the world's doings. But the need of lawyers, doc- tors and merchants soon called for the whole time of all that had any ability for those things. Although, perhaps, the present farmers are bet- ter tillers of the soil than their fathers. yet the diverse abilities and inter- ests of the older men would have made themselves felt in the villages in one social or business attraction or another, while the leisure and sim- plicity of the times must have thrown a charm about the farms that mod- ern conditions have dissipated. Our own times have imposed limitations upon us that we must abide by. If we say that the great amount of knowledge in all departments, combined with fierce competition, has com- pelled him who would succeed to devote his whole soul to his one busi- ness, we only utter a platitude; but in those days it probably was not true, certainly not stale. I suspect that while those men of the old time farmed, they were but half farmers and half something else. We of today have learned the lesson of the times, and we content ourselves with the best results that nature and our conditions permit. From these causes : loss of men, opening of richer lands, progress in arts and science. the New England towns have been checked in their advance. We have not to show what we might have been expected to show in my father's early life. The things that wealth would bring, the things that a large population and diverse business would bring, are not ours. Moreover, in my own time, we have been called off from our regular work to repair the frightful ravages of flood and fire.
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But our resources and benefits are yet great and secure. The railroad has been our friend as well as our enemy. Though it has wrested from us our old business. it has yet developed a new kind, which would have been impossible without it. The giant lines that stretch into the West and South coutribute to our support no less than our own short strip. Our soil, though barren, must yield a competence in the production of those perishable articles that will not bear days and weeks of transporta- tion from the richer lands. And in the moral realm, the possession of the New England towns, are things that will hold the body of her people to her, against all the attractions of the world. There still live here, as of old, pride in home and town, self-respect, disposition to improve, thrift and conservatism. We possess the indissoluble power that home and tradition exert. The pleasures of friendship, and the thousand small joys and benefits of an established community, are ours beyond the possibility of loss.
And if we would hold our own and advance, these affections and long- ings point out the way. If there exists a great natural attraction in the soil of the West, we must create artificial ones here. So far as the West appeals to the love of gain, we must appeal to the love of home and so- ciety. We must throw out into contrast the manners and conservatism of the East and the radicalism and roughness of the West. If the South al- Jures us, we must be made to compare carefully its squalid and slovenly villages with our neatness and kemptness. The invisible chains that link to home must be made so abundant and so strong that they cannot be broken.
Such a purpose would seize upon all the improvements of the age that were indicated by our conditions. Think for a moment where the town would be today if there had not been enterprise enough here to build the railroad. There would be no village where we now stand, and little, if any, manufacturing. With a diminishing farming population. and no other industry to take the place of farming. the current of progress would have left us stranded high and dry, feeble in numbers, and of no diversity in sentiment and judgment. The moral influence of the railroad will be rec- ognized by every man who but compares his own town with those lying near, who from any reason, good or bad, did not seize upon the oppor- tunity at the time of its buikling to lift themselves into the atmosphere of the new life.
If I were to name some of the things that have occurred to me that be- long to our time to do, the first would be the building of a library. We want histories to teach us of former experiments in goverment, and of the rise and fall of parties; we want novels to take us out of our work-a-day life, and to put us into the life of other classes; we want to learn that human nature is the same in palace and cottage; and we want poetry for our darker moments, and to instruct the imagination with fan- cies we could never dream of alone. But it is a waste of time to speak of our want of books. Our former possession has created a desire that our misfortunes have left unsatisfied. We are all of one mind. The
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appropriate word of today is patience till we complete the shell, and till our pocketbooks are replenished.
Another thing we might do is the shading of our roads. I speak not of the limits of the village, where the private enterprise of each individual has adorned his immediate premises with all the public spirit that could be desired; I refer to the roads that stretch out all through the town. To obtain a fair result we need only to instruct our road agents to cut out with care the small stuff that grows beside the road, and to leave stand- ing at proper intervals such trees as will develop into throwers of shade in the summer and into wind-breaks in winter. Somebody has set us an example of this care just above Mr. Daniel Cragin's. But to accomplish the best result we must build up such a public spirit that the abutters will leave not only such young trees, but half and full-grown trees, when they cut their forests. With generosity among the owners, and recogni- tion of it among the travellers, we might, in a dozen or twenty years, have a substantial attraction and comfort to ourselves and strangers, and a notice to travellers the moment they crossed the town line that they were within a progressive town.
Of this kind of work is this buikling. It belongs to the time of in- provement ; of striving for ideal things. As a matter of dollars and cents we had better have endured the old hall. Though useful and comforta- ble, we had gotten along without it. Its function is as much that of a model and exemplar as a doer. Its beauty and simplicity are ever-present standards by which to judge of our efforts in all our doings. We are among the last of the towns in the neighborhood to build a town house. They have stimulated us to put our best foot forward; we believe they ean not be ashamed of our achievement. As the ancient bell-towers of Italy were placed at easy intervals, so that the whole people might be warned to be up and doing for the common safety, so the towns of New England have erected town houses to be ever-present warnings to every man that, in her system, his duties are never done. We should not like to be behind in that work. We should not like to see broken at our doors the continuity of the New England custom.
It is the product of our best enterprise and of our most advanced public spirit. Born in a gift, that gift has provoked other gifts, and so on, till everybody has brought his contribution of material or service for the ornamentation of our common building. It has lifted us into heights of generosity that we never dared to believe we could climb. It has strengthened us with the strength that comes to a people inspired with a common thought, and working for a common ideal end. In the middle ages the people were so filled with religious zeal that they left all else to carry stones and mortar for the erection of those great churches and cathedrals that we go so far to see. In the beautiful language of an old writer, "it was as if the earth, rousing itself and casting away its old robes, clothed itself with the white garment of churches." Our clearer ideas of religion stand in the way of such enthralling devotion, and the multitude of creeds divides our allegiance, but we all vie in devotion to
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one common state, we recognize one common sovereignty, and we all lay our hands to the upbuilding of her visible representative.
Who knows but that the church may once more unite the town in a com- mon sentiment. When Orthodox and Unitarians shall each have learned something from the other, and when two attenuated societies have ap- proached nearer the vanishing point, perhaps they will come together again to hear the great principles of Christianity which they both believe in. Perhaps, too, when they shall have become tired of heating and painting two barn-like churches, they will gather again into the town hall and marry onee more the long-divorced church and state.
It is in such things as this building and in moral improvements that our way lies open. To build in the best way, even to fastidiousness, what new things we build, to improve the old, to attract to this town all that would come to the country to live, to supplement the natural scenery with intelligent and agreeable men and women, are our task. And if we would keep our capital of youth and money at home, it must be, beyond all question, by such means as these. It has been said that it is our duty to send them out ; that the most glorious product of any soil is its men. It may be the patriot's duty to plant the New England heart and brain through all parts of our common country. but we must be parental before we are patriotic. If they will but be satisfied with a competence from our barren hills, we will give them the advantages of home and society. But if they must make money, our prayers shall follow them to their western isolation, and we will consent to be patriotic if they will but build up, bit by bit, a new New England village.
CHAPTER XXVI.
STORES, TRADE AND THE MILK BUSINESS.
In the early history of the town the necessaries of life, and the luxuries, what few were indulged in, were procured directly from the lower country towns ; from " down below," as the familiar phrase was. The home custom was too small to support grocers alone or dry goods merchants alone. In the winter, particularly, the farmer filled his sleigh with butter, cheese, beef, pork, grain, beans, &c., and journeyed to Boston, Salem, Marblehead or New- buryport, as the case might be, and bartered away his farm products for groceries and goods for family use during the coming year. The roads leading from Vermont and New Hampshire to the sea- port towns were lined in the winter with long processions of these loaded teams on the way to market. At night they rendezvoused at the country taverns along the route, and a merry time they had of it around the roaring bar-room fire, what with a stiff mug of flip or toddy, and a story or jest to snit the hilarious company. They re- turned with ample stores for the family of tea, coffee, sugar, rum, molasses, spices, codfish, &c.
But the time came when the increase of population required trad- ers nearer home, and that old curiosity shop, the country store, came upon the stage. Some of the earlier storekeepers, as they were called, were Jacob Abbot, in the middle of the town; Nathaniel Sawyer, on what are now the premises of Henry Gray ; Richard T. Buss, Nehemiah Hayward, Nathan Livermore, Haskell & Whitney, Harvey Barnes, Stephen Abbot and Newell & Hopkins at the Cen- tre. The store of that period was a combination of grocery, dry goods, hardware, wholesale and retail saloon, post office, book store and news room. The bar was well patronized. Treating was a general custom, and the counter was seldom dry. Ample hogsheads of Santa Cruz, Jamaica and New England rum testified to a brisk
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HISTORY OF WILTON.
trade. The farmers brought their home prodnets to the store and bartered them for the merchant's goods. Here they retailed the news of the day, and came for their weekly papers. Notices of sales, auctions, estrays and advertisements were posted on the walls. It was the rendezvous of business men. Here caucuses were held, and politics were discussed. Lodges and societies held their meetings in the store hall above, and, in the winter, singing schools, dancing schools and balls gathered the young people to- gether. A quite universal institution was the old country store, and some feeble likeness of it may still linger here and there in the back settlements. But with the modern division of labor and trade, the introduction of railroads, telegraph offices, public libraries and reading rooms, town halls and post offices, its glory has passed away, and has been distributed in a dozen different directions.
In 1871 this was the list of stores and business men as recorded in the New Hampshire Register of that year :
Express Agents : L. Giddings, II. D. Epps, I. A. Parker.
Dentists : F. M. Peavey, E. Wood.
Merchants : Win. J. Bradbury, books and stationery ; Geo. W. Wallace, elothing; Alfred E. Jaques, Samuel N. Center. dry goods and groceries ; D. B. Needham, dry goods: Frank P. Kent. Dillon & Keyes. D. Gregg & Co., F. S. Intehinson, groceries : Dillon & Keyes, D. Gregg & Co., flour, grain and hardware; Henry Trevitt, A. P. Fitch, drugs and medicines; Miss B. P. Hall, millinery.
Manufacturers : Jones & Dascomb, A. A. Clark, Hutchinson & Macabe, N. Flint, boots and shoes ; Wilton Co., Newell Co., carpet yarn ; Putnam & Cochran, furniture; A. J. Putnam & Co., leather; D. Whiting & Sons, Levi Putnam, lumber; D. Gregg, sash and blinds; N. D. Foster & Co., tin ware; Daniel Cragin, wooden ware and toys; H. W. Hopkins, writing desks and faney boxes.
Hotels : Whiting House, D. Whiting & Sons; Railroad House, John F. Goss.
Livery Stables : Jos. Langdell, L. II. Blood.
In 1887 the list of stores and of business men, with the excep- tion of manufacturers previously given in Chapter XVI, reads as follows :
The Wilton Savings Bank : Josiah Fleeman, president ; Moses Clark, treasurer.
Merchants : L. W. Perkins, George W. Wallace, clothing and furnish- ing goods; Heury Trevitt, M. D., H. A. Powers, drugs and medicines; George A. Carter, dry goods, boots and shoes; S. N. Center & Son, fancy and dry goods, boots and shoes; M. P. Stanton, fish and groceries ; David E. Proctor, flour, meal, groceries, boots and shoes. hardware and a general assortment of stoneware; A. O. Barber, groceries; S. N. Center,
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2d. groceries, flour and farming tools; S. H. Dunbar, James Shea, meat and vegetables ; Miss S. A. Smith, millinery and fancy goods; S. K. Fos- ter, stoves and tinware ; - Stickney, undertakers' furnishings; P. R. Ring & Son, variety store.
Livery Stable : Joseph Langdell, who has about twelve horses.
THE MILK BUSINESS.
Wilton furnishes more milk than any town in the state. Mr. T. W. Wellington of Newton, Massachusetts, was the first to buy milk in Wilton for the Boston market. The amount first produced was very small, less than two hundred gallons per day, and for nearly a year was freighted in the baggage car. Mr. Wellington continued his business about a year and then disposed of it to Mr. David L. Pierce, who at that time was a retail milk dealer in Bos- ton, and through him the business increased so that it became necessary to have a car built and run expressly for milk. Mr. Pierce, after continuing in the business for three or four years, be- came financially embarrassed, and in 1857 sold his entire interest to the senior member of the present firm of David Whiting & Sons. The business of producing milk in Wilton and in towns along the line of the Wilton Railroad has steadily increased from that time to the present. A special milk train is now run daily from Hills- borough to Boston, with one car from Hillsborough, one from Wilton and one from Milford. One car from Concord, Massachusetts, is also added to the train at Lexington, and, at North Cambridge Junction, two from Barre and Hudson, Massachusetts, making a train of six cars expressly for milk.
In the early days of milk production for the Boston market, one of the most serious objections to the business was in meeting the constant variation in trade, owing to the larger demand on some days than on others, so that a farmer who sold milk was obliged every few days to make butter or cheese of his surplus. In 1864 the introduction of the cheese factory did away with this serious objection, and at once placed the business on a more reliable basis. Since then no product of the farm is more sure of ready sale. The capacity of our first cheese vat was sixty gallons, and the cheese was manufactured in a back room of Mr. Whiting's house. The business of cheese making rapidly increased, and when it was de- cided to order a new vat of latest improvement, with a capacity of two hundred and fifty gallons, the climax for the care of surplus milk was supposed to have been reached. About the year 1875 the manufacture of butter was found to be more satisfactory than that
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of cheese, and the factory and fixtures were changed accordingly to their present location. The present factory has a capacity of twenty-five hundred gallons, and the business is fast out-growing the accommodations. The product of milk was never larger than at present. The present firm pay to their producers annually for milk and cream, on all lines operated by them, over four hundred thousand dollars ; and it is but reasonable to believe that, with the inevitable increase in the population of Boston and vicinity, and with the rapidly increasing appreciation of milk as a wholesome and nutritious article of food, the product will be in still greater demand, and will continue to be the largest and most valuable of any along the line of the Souhegan valley.
Messrs. Whiting are also manufacturers of lumber and dealers in cattle-feed and coal. The annual product of their lumber mill is 500,000 staves and 500,000 feet of lumber, and of their grist mill is 1500 tons of corn meal. They also sell about 2000 tons of shorts, middlings, etc., and 700 tons of coal per annum. Their farm produces about 75 tons of hay and their hoggery contains about 500 hogs and pigs.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CENSUS AND STATISTICS.
The growth of the town for many years was very slow. The re- sources of the place were limited to the soil for agriculture, the forests for wood and timber, and the streams for water power. Farming and mechanics were the two principal careers open to im- migrants. The early settlers met with great trials and hardships, as we have seen. No very flattering prospects were open to the ambition of the young. As young men and women came upon the stage, many sought other and more encouraging opportunities of making their livelihood and fortune.
According to the report in the Centennial pamphlet there were two families in 1739 ; 70 people in 1755 : 240 in 1763 ; 623 in 1775 ; 1013 in 1786; 1105 in 1790; 1017 in 1800; 1017 in 1810; 1070 in 1820. From 1790 to 1839 the average varied very little from 1100, and the population never was greater than in 1790. There were about 45 inhabitants to the square mile.
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