USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Holderness > Holderness : an account of the beginnings of a New Hampshire town > Part 3
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Parkman quotes from Walpole a page about the Holdernesses.1 It was on the 1 Montcalm and Wolfe, ii, 358.
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33
THE NAME
night when news came that the French had failed to retake Quebec. "Last night," he says, "I went to see the Holdernesses. I met my Lady in a triumphal car . .. with Lady Emily. . They were going to see the bonfire at the alehouse at the corner. The whole procession returned with me, and from the Countess's dressing-room we saw a battery fired before the house, the mob crying 'God bless the good news!'" Then they amused themselves - this was in May - by eating peaches from a hot- house, then a new invention and called a "Dutch stove."
The most substantial contribution which Lord Holderness made to colonial affairs was in 1754, at the beginning of the last stage of the French and Indian War. He wrote to the governors of the colonies ad- vising them to form a union for mutual protection and defense. A meeting was held at Albany to consider this suggestion, and was attended by delegates from seven colonies. Theodore Atkinson, who signed the Holderness Charter, represented New Hampshire. Benjamin Franklin came from Pennsylvania. This was the precursor
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HOLDERNESS
of that final union of the colonies which constituted the United States of America. The delegates did not agree, and nothing came of it; but the attempt is to be set down to the credit of the good judgment of the Earl of Holderness.
Robert D'Arcy's sons died before him, and the title thus became extinct. His daughter Amelia married the Marquess of Carmarthen, and their son was Duke of Leeds. Afterwards, she married Mr. John Byron, who, after her death, married Miss Gordon, who became the mother of Lord Byron.
V 1417497
THE SETTLEMENT
T HE allotment of Holderness, under the Charter of 1761, was made in three sections.
The first land to be divided was the in- tervale. This was surveyed and planned by Abraham Bachelder in the October of 1762. The new plan departed from the previous division, - into lots of three acres, two such lots to each man, - and provided for sixty-seven pieces of ground, each of eight acres. The arrangement of the town stood as in the previous map, the one-acre lots being set about Church Hill. In the end of October, the proprietors met at Durham, at the inn of Winborn Adams, and drew for these parcels of land, which were called "lots" from that common cus- tom. Afterwards, in 1765, they drew for places in the first division of hundred-acre lots, between Little Squam and the river. Finally, in 1774, they drew for the hundred-
36
HOLDERNESS
acre lots of the second division, around Big Squam, north and south. Winborn Adams's tavern is still standing, beside the Oyster River, in the village of Durham, across the road from the monument erected by the State in memory of General Sullivan.
Some of the original proprietors were friends and relatives of the governor. There was his brother, Mark Hunking Wentworth, who made a comfortable for- tune by providing the royal navy with masts from the New Hampshire woods; with several other Wentworths, Major John, and two Samuels, one "of Boston;" and Theodore Atkinson, his brother-in- law, secretary of the colony, who left money to St. John's Church in Portsmouth, the income to be used in providing for a distri- bution of bread among the poor, on Sun- days. There were persons of distinction and influence in the province: John Down- ing, member of the Council, Richard Wibird, judge of probate, whose father was King's Poulterer; the Rev. Arthur Browne, rector of the Portsmouth parish; and Samuel Livermore, his son-in-law, judge advocate of the admiralty court.
Hundred Acre Lots : First Division
[Campton]
Hundred Acre Lots. Second Division
Livermore falls
4
42
5
2
1
W. Sinpross
4
Piter
Mt Prospect
S
Infernale
.
62
40
& # Bayan jos Eleien
7
let
First Range
Butters River
2
3
44
IS
24
35
Scan Lon
2
25
31
-
2
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Hy Walks
Ck-
TAIN
J. Bergin
S Shop d ]. Bunlar J he Kihoy
"Governors Black"
1ª
Mill Preh
AU LT
12
27
Squam Mrs
13
12
2
[3]
Church
Hill
46
47
30
E Cor
TRAINING
Shepard 2
Collage Road
7
5
Comfort
27
11
3
Con
Mooney
hibrid
60
4
Helfen
S.bank /ST
File Range
Singen
(nery tramptox]
[Centre Harbor)
moultonborough
Beyon
Jo Simple
9
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W
Third
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Tork
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Centre Harbor
Pengerasset River
32
Spg. /Steke
Line
54
Dag Cove
Sarah Michel
ENTROIL
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S.P9
22
39
Province Road [16]
e
Su
[Pegmoulin]
31
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Ismeret
V. Ku
THE HUNDRED-ACRE LOTS
=
14
51
45
ナ
37
THE SETTLEMENT
Most of these names appear in the proprie- tors' lists of other townships of the time.1 Few of them had any intention of becom- ing citizens of Holderness. Some of the land thus granted was forfeited by failure to clear it according to the requirements of the charter; some of it was sold for taxes.
The governor's three shares came pre- sently into the possession of Samuel Liver- more. When Benning Wentworth died, in 1770, having been deprived of his office for reasons among which this quiet appropria- tion of township lands had a conspicuous place, it was found that he had left all his estates to his widow, Martha Hilton, whose marriage is described in the "Tales of a Wayside Inn." This so displeased his rela- tives that his nephew and successor, John Wentworth, declared the title to all the Governor's Farms, as they were called, to be null and void. Thus these lands were restored to the king, and John Wentworth regranted them in the king's name. The Governor's Farm in Holderness came in
1 January 7, 1797, tracts of land being part of the real estate of the late M. H. Wentworth, deceased, were advertised for sale. They were in twenty-four townships.
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HOLDERNESS
this way into Samuel Livermore's hands, on payment of £50 for the eight hundred fertile acres.
Among the other grantees, one notices several family groups : three Ellisons, three Bamfords, four Simpsons, six Shepards, seven Coxes. A further study of the list discloses the fact that these families and others were neighbors at Durham, and that they there belonged to the parish of the Rev. Hugh Adams, the first settled minister of that place, and grandfather of Winborn Adams, the innholder. The parish records show that Parson Adams baptized children of Robert Bamford, of Joseph Ellison, of Samuel Shepherd, of John Shepherd; he married William Wil- liams and Sarah Bamford, and Samuel Shepherd and Margaret Creighton, in 1726, and Samuel Shepherd, their son, and Elizabeth Hill, in 1761, and William Kel- sey and Margaret Hay; he baptized Thomas Willey and Derry Pitman. The Lanes were Durham. people. Hercules Mooney was the schoolmaster. A more extended examination would probably find still others among the first proprietors who
ES
THE WINBORN ADAMS HOUSE
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THE SETTLEMENT
lived on the banks of the Oyster River in the village of Durham. These, however, are enough to show not only that Holder- ness was a colony from Durham, but that the colonists were mostly of Puritan train- ing in religion. Adams was a Puritan par- son.
The provision of shares of land for the Church of England was not infrequent in New Hampshire, where both the Went- worths, Benning and John, were members of that communion, together with other official and eminent persons of Portsmouth. Of the actual settlers, however, very few were churchmen, even in Holderness. And Holderness was almost alone in the colony in having a town minister in communion with the English Church. Starr King, in his "White Hills," refers to an expectation of the first settlers that Holderness would sometime be the chief city of New England. Boston, they admitted, had certain com- mercial advantages, and would probably continue to be an important, though some- what vulgar, Puritan town; but Holder- ness would be the social centre, the aris- tocratic metropolis. This prophecy has
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HOLDERNESS
lingered in the neighborhood as a dim tra- dition since a time beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant, and has been treated by some with an over-serious derision. It probably began with the vivacious Mrs. Livermore, - the daughter of the Rev. Arthur Browne, - who had a merry dis- respect for Puritans, which she was at no pains to conceal. She first uttered that impossible forecast in order to dismay some solemn person who had no sense of humor. It was also Mrs. Livermore, in all likeli- hood, who made over Parson Adams's flock in Holderness into a parish of the Episcopal Church. She had already brought her husband into the church, and she showed the same zeal in bringing her neighbors.
The proprietors were called to order at their first meeting by Thomas Shepard, who was named as moderator in the charter. They chose three selectmen to administer the affairs of the new township, of whom Thomas Shepard was one, and Samuel Shepard, 3d, another. The family name is perpetuated in Shepard Hill.
Thomas Shepard, with Thomas Ellison,
2
PLAN OF INTERVALE LOTS, 1762
KAPHI
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-
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THE SETTLEMENT
his brother-in-law, and Samuel Lane, the surveyor, visited Holderness in 1750. They cut their initials on a white oak by the falls in the Pemigewasset, and on a white pine six miles south, near the junction of the Pemigewasset and the Squam, and thus established the boundaries of the township. They are the first men whose names are definitely connected with the place. Thomas presented the petition to the gov- ernor, in reply to which the first charter was granted.
Samuel Shepard presently became clerk of the proprietors; and when the town meetings began, he was elected clerk of the town, in which office he continued for forty- one years. When Holderness was settled, he established himself on the west side of Owl Brook, where three roads meet, one to the mill at Ashland, one to Plymouth, one to Squam Bridge. There, in a house still standing, he kept an inn. After 1785, the town meetings were regularly held at his house. The inn was the social and political and commercial centre of the colonial town. There were made their bargains; there all public notices were posted; there all
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HOLDERNESS
strangers stopped, with the news of the great world. Shepard was a person of in- dependent mind, which he showed by a hearty disapproval of the American Revo- lution. To his last day he maintained his allegiance to the English crown. He de- tested Napoleon Bonaparte; and the walls of his parlor were covered with caricatures of that eminent disturber of the peace of Europe. It may have been by reason of Shepard's English sympathies that in 1812, when hatred of England was particularly bitter in these parts, a proposition was made by some to change the place of hold- ing the town meetings; 1 but the motion did not prevail, and the meetings continued at his house until his death in 1817. Some political differences may have occasioned a petition and a counter petition in 1789, one asking that Samuel Shepard be appointed a justice of the peace, and the other pro- testing that there were already two such officials in the town.
Shepard was eminently fitted for the post of clerk by his habits of accuracy, his know- ledge of surveying, and his uncommonly 1 N. H. Town Papers, xvi, 230.
THE SAMUEL SHEPARD HOUSE
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THE SETTLEMENT
legible writing. He is still dimly remem- bered as a picturesque figure, especially on Sundays, when he wore his wedding coat, light blue with buff facings, with long tails and flapped pockets, surmounting a waist- coat of red plush. In his vast pockets he carried a store of apples for the solace of small boys.
The first care of the proprietors, after the division of the land and the choice of officers, was to make a way of getting from Durham to their new possessions. There was already a road from Durham to Can- terbury, Canterbury having been settled in 1727 by Durham men. They therefore empowered Hercules Mooney "to imploy a Pilot to find out a good and convenient place for a Road to be cleared from Can- terbury to New Holderness." In 1766 the making of such a road was said to be agree- able to an act of the General Court of the Province, and it is thenceforth called the Province Road. They were still at work upon it in 1769, when it was voted to pay each laborer four shillings a day, and the same amount for his time in journeying from Durham and back again. This is the
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HOLDERNESS
road which still comes up from Canterbury through Northfield, across the Winnepe- saukee River, through Sanbornton and Meredith Centre, across a corner of the township of Centre Harbor, through New Hampton, along Long Pond, between Long and Hawkins Ponds and Beech and Fogg Mountains to Ashland, thence to Plymouth along the east bank of the river. It was for the most part a valley road, along the Merrimac and the Pemigewasset.
Hercules Mooney,1 who was thus en- gaged in the business of the Province Road, was one of the most interested and active of the early settlers. In a petition which he and others made to the governor to extend the time for clearing and planting the land, he says 2 we "have nothing more at heart than to complete the settlement of said town, and have already got twenty families there, and hope soon to see it in a flourish- ing condition." Mooney had been a vol- unteer in the French and Indian War and had taken with him his two young sons. He was at Fort William Henry when it was
1 Lucien Thompson, in Granite Monthly, March, 1901.
2 N. H. Town Papers, ix, 396.
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THE SETTLEMENT
captured by Montcalm, and was one of that unfortunate company who, as they marched out unarmed under the protection of a French safe-conduct, were furiously attacked by the Indians. After that he re- turned to his school-teaching until the be- ginning of the War of Independence, when he reentered the military service with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In 1777, at the evacuation of Ticonderoga, he lost his horse and most of his clothes and camp equipage, for which he was partially re- compensed by the General Assembly.1 After the war he resumed his place behind the teacher's desk. Tall and lank, and bronzed with exposure, the hero of two wars, he must have commanded the respect and prompt obedience of the boys. He con- tinued to live at Durham till 1785, when he removed to Holderness. He died in 1800, and is buried in Ashland, east of the village about half a mile, between Squam River and Thompson Street, under an old willow by the water, on Mr. S. H. Baker's farm. The gravestone is an unhewn slab, bearing neither name nor date.
1 N. H. Town Papers, xii, 227.
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HOLDERNESS
The Province Road having thus given ac- cess to Holderness by the way of the rivers, another thoroughfare was presently planned by the way of the lakes. John Wentworth, who succeeded his uncle Benning as gov- ernor of New Hampshire in 1768, had a country house at Wolfeborough. He was greatly interested in the founding of Dart- mouth College, to which, by his influence, the province gave a great tract of land. In April, 1771, shortly before the first com- mencement of that institution, an act of the Governor, Council and Assembly set forth the great public utility of roads in general, and in particular the advantage to Dartmouth of the construction of a con- venient highway to the college, and pro- vided that a road be laid out three rods wide from Wolfeborough to Hanover. Joseph Senter, of Centre Harbor, Samuel Shepard, town clerk of Holderness, and David Copp were appointed to lay out that part of the road which lay between the governor's house and the Pemigewasset River near the mouth of Baker's River; that is, at Plymouth. It was to run through Wolfeborough, Tuftonborough, Moulton-
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THE SETTLEMENT
borough, New Holderness, and Plymouth; thence another committee was to carry it to Hanover. John House, Jonathan Freeman, and David Hobart were charged with the construction of the Hanover division. This was substantially the highway which is still called the College Road.1
The governor and sixty gentlemen at- tended the first commencement at the end of August in that year. But the College Road was not yet opened. The surveyors did not make their report until September. They then declared that they had marked it out and that it was "capable of being made a good road." From Senter's, they said, they went eight and a half miles to Shepard's; from Shepard's, a mile and a half to Judge Livermore's; thence two miles and a quarter to the river at the en- trance of Mill Brook. In 1772, the road was so far cleared that it was passable for horsemen, and the governor and his staff, who had previously gone from Wolfe- borough to Haverhill, and so to Hanover, now went by the way of Plymouth. "I purpose," writes Governor Wentworth to
1 Parker's History of Wolfeborough, pp. 65, 66.
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HOLDERNESS
President Wheelock,1 "to set out from this place [Wolfeborough] the first fair day after the 20th inst. [that is, of August]. At Ply- , mouth we shall make due inquiry and if tolerably practicable prefer the College Road lately laid out by authority." He sent at the same time the following names of gentlemen who would accompany him: "the Honorable Mark Hunking Went- worth, Esq., George Jaffrey, Esq., Daniel Rogers, Esq., Peter Gilman, Esq., the Honorable John Wentworth, Esq., Speaker of the Assembly, Major Samuel Hobart, Esq., John Giddings, Esq., Col. John Phillips, Esq., John Sherburne, Esq., member of Assembly, John Fisher, Esq., Collector of Salem, Col. Nathaniel Folsom, Esq., Rev. Dr. Langdon of Portsmouth, Rev. Mr. Emerson of Hollis, Dr. Cutter, Dr. Brackett, Samuel Penhallow, Esq., William Parker, Esq., Benjamin Whiting, Esq., High Sheriff of Hillsboro County, Hon. Samuel Holland, Esq., of Canada, Thomas McDonogh, Esq., Secretary to the Governor." "There may possibly be ten more," he said. 1
1 Chase's History of Hanover, pp. 176, 235.
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THE SETTLEMENT
These were the gentlemen, then, who rode with the governor, in the August of 1772, along the forest path beside the Holderness lakes. The first named was the governor's father, who appears in the list of the original proprietors. Dr. Cutter was the governor's best friend, to whom, when they were lads together, Wentworth wrote amusing descriptions of his undergraduate life at Harvard.1 " The College," he said, "is now filled up (allmost) of Boys from 11 to 14 years old and them [they ?] seem to be quite void of the Spirit and life which is a general concomitant of youth, so you may judge what kind of life I now live, who was wont to live in the gayest and most jovial manner. . . . Should you go into a Company of Schollars now, you'd hear disputes of Original Sin, actual Trans- gression and such like instead of the sprightly turns of Wit and Gay repartees which the former Companys used to have." This was in February, 1754. In May of that year he wrote, "As to Cambridge it is as barren of news as Portsmouth for there is none stirring here except that Commence-
1 Parker's History of Wolfeborough, pp. 56, 57.
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HOLDERNESS
ment is to be new stile this year, at which time shall be glad to see you here to Cele- brate my entrance upon the last year of my Pilgrimage among the Heathen." The "new stile" is the adoption of the Gre- gorian Calendar, whereby, in 1752, the almanac had been corrected by the omis- sion of ten days. The Rev. Mr. Emerson was a collateral ancestor of the philosopher, and had a famous boys' school in his house. Mr. Holland made the first map on which Squam Lake is designated by that name.
The governor came again over the Col- lege Road in 1773, to the third com- mencement, where he heard an oration in Hebrew on the Sublimity of the Old Testament.
The reference which Hercules Mooney made to the twenty families who were al- ready settled here while he was residing at Durham indicates a distinction between the proprietors and the inhabitants. Only a few of the proprietors actually took up their residence on the land. Thus the first settler was William Piper, whose name does not appear in the list of original grantees. William Piper lived in Stratham,
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THE SETTLEMENT
where he married John Shepard's daugh- ter Susanna. John Shepard had been a ranger with Robert Rogers, and had fur- ther shown a courageous spirit by eloping with Susanna Smith. When the War of Independence came on, he purposed to remain neutral, but was arrested by over- zealous patriots and put on parole at Exe- ter. This so altered his ideals of neutrality that on being released he promptly donned the uniform of the British service. He was killed in action on shipboard off the Grand Menan. His daughter Susanna, on her marriage to William Piper, had her father's lot for dowry. It lay between Squam Lake and White Oak Pond, on the west side of the connecting brook. There, in 1763, they built a cabin and set up housekeeping, and thus began the actual settlement of Holder- ness.
By 1771, there were so many settlers out- side the number of original grantees that they felt the need of a local administra- tion of their affairs. Accordingly, they addressed a petition to Samuel Livermore, one of the proprietors and one of His Majesty's justices of the peace, setting forth
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HOLDERNESS
that "the subscribers labor under great inconvenience for want of town officers and other regulations." Twelve names were signed to this petition, and when the first town meeting was held, a few months later, most of them were elected to office. Nathaniel Thompson was chosen moderator; Samuel Shepard, town clerk; Andrew Smythe, Joseph Hicks, and Charles Cox, selectmen; Samuel Curry, constable; Charles Cox, sealer of leather; Richard Shepard and Thomas Vokes, surveyors of highways; Thomas Shepard and John Heron, hogreeves; Charles Cox, Jr., tith- ing man; John Shaw, fence viewer; Sam- uel Gains, - at whose house the meeting was held, - pound keeper; and Bryan Sweeney, field driver.
Nathaniel Thompson,1 the moderator, was the town miller. After the proprietors had provided for a road, their next thought was for a mill. An excellent site was af- forded by the falls of the Squam River, in the heart of what is now the village of Ash- land. In 1767, the proprietors appointed a committee to let out the mill privileges on
1 Lucien Thompson, in Granite Monthly, March, 1901.
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THE SETTLEMENT
the Squam Stream, as they called it, and the committee offered a grant of land to whomsoever should "arect" a sawmill and a gristmill. Thompson, a Durham man, called in various conveyances of land, "trader,""shipwright," and "gentleman," accepted this offer, and built these mills and settled beside them. The Thompson House, at the corner of Thompson Street, marks the place. These industries were begun in 1770 or 1771. Before that, corn was taken to be ground at Canterbury, along a way which was marked by blazed trees.
Andrew Smythe, the selectman, and Samuel Shepard, the clerk, were the first wardens of the Holderness church. In this capacity they were appealed to in 1789 with reference to the election of the first bishop of what was then called the Eastern Dio- cese, including New Hampshire and Mas- sachusetts. The clergy, it appeared, had got together and elected Mr. Bass to be the bishop without consulting the laity. The wardens of Newburyport very properly pro- tested, and asked the wardens of parishes in the two states to join them in such action.
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HOLDERNESS
Smythe and Shepard replied for the con- gregation at Holderness.1 They note that the letter which was sent from Boston on the 30th of August was received in Holder- ness on the 12th of September. They hope that the brethren of the clergy "have not in contemplation any system of ecclesiasti- cal government subversive of the freedom and true interest of our Church." And they express themselves as well pleased with the protest and glad to be of any farther ser- vice. Happily, the clergy came to a better mind, invited the laity to join with them, and together they elected Mr. Bass in a manner acceptable to all concerned. An- drew Smythe's daughter, Martha, taught the school, and afterwards married the minister, and is buried beside him in the graveyard by Squam Bridge.
Bryan Sweeney, the field driver, with twenty-seven others, petitioned, in due course of time, that Holderness be per- mitted to send a representative to the Gen- eral Court, affirming that "it is likely to become the most considerable town in that part of the country." Sweeney's name indi-
1 Addison's Life of Bishop Bass, p. 282.
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THE SETTLEMENT
cates that he was one of that body of emi- grants from the north of Ireland who came over to this colony in 1720, and intro- duced Irish potatoes into New Hampshire. Smythe, too, was an Irishman, having been born "in the Kingdom of Ireland, in the Province of Canaught:" so wrote the town clerk on the occasion of his death in 1812.
Samuel Curry, in 1776, went on an er- rand to the General Court to procure "musquet-balls." 1 "We inhabitants of the town of New Holderness," so ran the peti- tion which he bore, "having gained intelli- gence that a considerable part of our army in Canada have lately been forced by our unnatural ennemies (the British troops in s'd Canada) to retreat and relinquish their Ground, and apprehending ourselves in the greatest danger from the s'd Troops and scouting Parties of Indians that may be sent down to annoy and destroy us: and being in no Capacity for Defence, do in be- half of the s'd Town pray your Honours to send us by the Bearer hereof, Mr. Samuel Curry, the necessary powder, Musquet Balls and Flints for 33 able and effective 1 N. H. Town Papers, xii, 227.
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