USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > Boscawen > One hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Boscawen and Webster, Merrimack Co., N.H., August 16, 1883. Also births recorded on the town records from 1733 to 1850 > Part 2
USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > Webster > One hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Boscawen and Webster, Merrimack Co., N.H., August 16, 1883. Also births recorded on the town records from 1733 to 1850 > Part 2
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President. Nathaniel S. Webster. Vice-Presidents.
Calvin Gage, Charles W. Webster,
George Little, James H. Gill,
Bliss Corser, Henry Atkinson,
Laban M. Chadwick, Eldad Austin,
Jabez Abbott, Luke Corser,
Levi Sweat.
The president, upon taking the chair, said :
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ADDRESS OF WELCOME.
Ladies and Gentlemen :
It is perhaps proper for me to say, that a wise Providence has seen fit to remove one who was allot- ted to fill the position that I find myself occupying at this time.
We have come together to celebrate the one hun- dred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the town of Boscawen. The religious, civil, and mili- tary record of this town, reaching as it does far back into colonial times, we claim is not surpassed by that of any other town, and her sons may be excused if in our pride on this day we boast of it. But let me leave to abler tongues the recital of its history. In behalf of the citizens of the original town of Bos- cawen, and on the part of the committee for this occasion, we bid you a cordial welcome.
The president called upon Rev. Edward Buxton, who for forty-five years had been pastor of the Con- gregational church in Webster, to offer prayer.
The president then said,-
" If there were need of more proof that the ' pen is mightier than the sword,' it has been given in a popular New England journal, from off the field of battle, and over the world's wide waters, by a son of Boscawen whom we greet here to-day with the warmth of an early affection.
"I have the pleasure of introducing to you Charles Carleton Coffin, of Boston, a gentleman too well known to need any introduction."
Charles Carleton Goffin
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
BY CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN.
It is a time-worn and faded map, which you may see in the office of the Massachusetts secretary of state, of the Plantation of Contoocook, drawn by Richard Hazen, surveyor, in the month of May, 1733. It includes a tract of land seven miles square, granted to John Coffin and other citizens of New- bury by the province of Massachusetts Bay, then exercising jurisdiction over New Hampshire.
It was in the wilderness. The question arises, Why did John Coffin and eighty other citizens of Newbury petition His Majesty's provincial govern- ment for such a grant? Why should they desire to leave their comfortable homes by the sea to start life anew on the frontier, making themselves videttes of civilization on the great highway of the Indians between the Atlantic sea-board and the St. Law- rence ?
The reasons were various. Newbury had been settled one hundred years. It was an old, well reg- ulated, thrifty town, large in area, including the
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present towns of Newbury, Newburyport, West Newbury, and Byfield. According to the ideas of the time, it was becoming crowded with people, there being some six hundred tax-payers, and a pop- ulation of between two and three thousand.
At Contoocook the young men could obtain farms, and, accompanied by their true-hearted wives, could establish homes for themselves. They were exercised by the inherited Anglo-Saxon's hunger for land. Why should they not accept what could be had for the asking? Would not the advancing wave of civilization ere long enhance its value ?
But there was a stronger impelling force than any already mentioned,-the lofty ideal which a century before had brought about the great emigration from Old England to Massachusetts, the Puritan ideal of building a community on the foundations of right- eousness and godliness.
THE THEOCRATIC IDEA.
Although a century had rolled away, the theo- cratic idea had not lost its force. On the contrary, it had become a principle of government. It appears in the order of the general court for the preliminary survey of the tract :
" Ordered : that within the space of four years from the confirmation of this plan they settle and have on the spot eighty-one families, each settler to build a convenient dwelling-house, eighteen feet square at least, and fence and clear and bring to four acres fit for English grass, and also lay out three
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shares throughout the town, each share to be one eighty-fourth part of said tract of land,-one of said shares to be for the first settled minister, one for the minister [for his support], and one for school, and also to build a convenient meeting-house, and settle a learned and orthodox minister within the time aforesaid."
The employment of a minister, the establishment of a church and a school, were the controlling ideas. The citizens of Newbury had no thought of emigrat- ing to the wilderness to become heathen, but rather to make it bud and blossom like the rose, to fill the land with fragrance, and make it beautiful in the sight of God and man. Beyond all personal aggran- dizement, the bettering of their material interests was a sense of moral obligation. It was no hardship for them to accept the conditions. They would gladly make the meeting-house a controlling force in the building up of society.
We have only to turn to the diary of John Brown, surveyor, to learn how all-pervading was the idea that the building of a meeting-house and the settle- ment of a minister would, above all things else, promote the welfare of the community.
JOHN BROWN'S NOTE-BOOK.
How this little time-stained book, its russet cov- ers and yellow leaves, the diary and note-book of John Brown, becomes a potent charm to bring before us the little group of men-Moses Gerrish, William Ilsley, Benjamin Petengill, Daniel Pierce, David
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Hale, Benjamin Willet, Edward Emery, the com- mittee appointed by the proprietors to lay out the town !
Thus reads the diary :
" Oct. 23d 1733. I set out for Contoocook with ye committee who were to lay out ye Intervale & home Lotts. This proving a rainy day & setting out late we got no father than Chester.
" 24th. Being rainy we came to Pennacook.
" 25 . We came to Contoocook & viewed ye land in order to find a place to settle ye Town.
" 27. We viewed ye place to set ye Meeting house on & Run out ye highway to lay lotts."
They viewed the land to find a place to settle the town !
Was it to be a mart for trade-a bustling city of the possible future? Was it such a gorgeous air- castle which quickened the imagination of those plain, practical men of Newbury, as they stood be- neath the stately trees of this terrace of the Merri- mack, and looked down upon the wide intervale and the majestic river ? Not that. This record, written by John Brown one hundred and fifty years ago, car- ries us back beyond that October day, far beyond the settlement of this country, beyond the green fields of Old England, to the oldest England on the shores of the Baltic, to the plains of Germany, where the New England town, unlike any other town in the wide world, had its origin.
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ORIGIN OF THE NEW ENGLAND TOWN.
Between the North and the Baltic sea lies a nar- row strip of land marked on the present maps as Schleswig Holstein and Jutland, the home of the ancient Angles. In the years when Rome was mis- tress of the world, it was a country of pasture-lands, marshes, fields, forests, and rude villages. Each vil- lage was a tun-a collection of houses,-not of house joined to house, but each with its garden,-the whole village surrounded by a trench or palisade for defence. Each village was independent and sovereign, manag- ing its own affairs, each land-holder having a voice in government, the majority electing annually its elder-men to look after the welfare of all, and a tith- ing or tenth man to be sergeant, or chief over the other nine in battle.
Each tun was a commonwealth, jealous for its own independence, yet ever ready to unite with other tuns for the general defence. Land-holding gave right of citizenship. Each tun had its moot or meet- ing-place, where all questions affecting the welfare of the community were discussed in town-meeting. The moot or meeting-house was the central place- the heart, the life, of the tun. Within its walls each citizen had the right of free speech, and showing of hands in voting.
From the moots went forth the tithing or tenth men with their commands to join Hengist and Horsa, sea-rovers and pirates, to gain a foothold in Britain, transplanting to the banks of the Thames individual freedom, the organizing faculty, and obedience to the will of the majority.
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The town as an institution had very slight devel- opment in England. Not under a monarchy, neither under a hierarchy which stifled free thought and action, could there be an evolution of the New Eng- land town. Not till the Mayflower had cut loose from her moorings, not till Bradford and Brewster and their fellow Pilgrims had severed themselves from all old things, could the town-meeting, the new state, the future Republic, begin their development in the election of John Carver as governor. That election was the first Christian town-meeting ever convened.
THE TOWN-MEETING AND MEETING-HOUSE.
It is interesting to note the words that were in common use a half century ago, but now rarely heard, which had their origin in the German moot or meeting-place,-moot questions, moot point, moot case, moot court,-the word meaning debatable, in its primary sense.
To the moot or meeting-house the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay brought all questions. On Sunday it was a place for the discussion of things eternal ; on week-days, in town-meeting, for things temporal, each citizen hav- ing the right of suffrage in electing a minister, the elders who had the seating of the congregation on Sunday, the selectmen to manage the affairs of the town, the tithingmen who were to arrest any who might be travelling too far on Sunday on unneces- sary journeys, and whose special duty was to pre- serve order among the youthful members of the
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congregation, and awaken those who might drop off to sleep during the sermon.
In the town-meeting every citizen had not only the right of voting, but also the right of being heard on every question affecting the welfare of the com- munity,-in raising money for the building of roads, supporting the minister, the maintenance of schools, the payment of bounties on foxes and crows,-in the election of hog-reeves, fence-viewers, cullers of staves, sealers of leather,-or the propriety of yoking geese, or putting wires in the snouts of swine.
The meeting-house was the parliament-house, the capitol of the miniature commonwealth, the one institution ever giving forth its energizing influence. It was like the flowing of arterial blood, the pulsa- sations of the heart of the people, the source of all power, the energy, the life.
A NEW FORCE IN GOVERNMENT.
With the establishment of the New England town- meeting there came a new unit of government into the world, a force which has given direction to the course of human events in this western hemisphere, and which is making itself felt in every land.
The men who one hundred years ago this coming month of October stood upon this plain and selected a site for the town and the meeting-house, compre- hended in a marked degree the value of the meeting- house as an element of power ; and so we see them, before choosing the ground where they would build their own habitations, selecting the site for the meet-
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ing-house. They further complied with the condi- tions of the grant by calling Rev. Phineas Stevens, a graduate of Harvard, to be their minister.
During all the proprietary period to 1760, when the plantation became an incorporated town, the first business done at the annual meeting was to provide for the salary of the minister.
CHARACTER OF THE FIRST SETTLERS.
We get an insight of the characters of the first set- tlers of Boscawen-their sense of honor, love of jus- tice, their large-heartedness and liberality-in their readiness to tax themselves to make up to Rev. Mr. Stevens the full value of his salary, which had become diminished by the depreciation of the currency. In law they were under no obligation, but they fully comprehended that law is not always equity. Their own property had been affected by the depreciation, they were pinched by the hard times, but though dis- tressed they could not lose sight of the great prin- ciple of moral obligation, without which in their view there could be nothing substantial or enduring.
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More than this, the records reveal to us the lofty plane on which they stood-a half century in advance of the community at large in the recognition of indi- vidual rights of conscience-by annually remitting the minister's-tax of Samuel Fowler, a member of the Society of Friends.
They were resolute men. Through the troubled years of the wars between England and France, when the St. Francis Indians from St. Lawrence, stimulated
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by the French and the Jesuits, were harassing the northern frontiers, when the settlers of Hopkinton and Salisbury were driven from their homes, they scouted the woods, while their equally resolute wives reaped the harvests. At night they entered the fort, closed the gate, each man taking his turn as sentinel. With every returning Sunday they gathered in the meeting-house for worship. For a period of a quar- ter of a century the log meeting-house was the farthest advanced beacon light in the wilderness. Although Canterbury was settled in 1733, no minis- ter was employed till 1760, the inhabitants prefer- ring to cross the Merrimack and attend service in Boscawen.
Although Nathaniel Meloon, Andrew Bohonon, Benjamin Pettengill, Philip Call, and John and Eben- ezer Webster removed from Boscawen to Salisbury, a portion of them in 1754, that settlement suffered from Indian depredations, and was not in a condition to support a minister till the year 1773. Through all these years they made their way to the Boscawen meeting-house on Sunday, to shake hands with their old friends and neighbors, to sit in the radiant light which never for a moment grew dim through all that dark and gloomy period.
THE FIRST MINISTER.
No written sermon has come down to us penned by Rev. Mr. Stevens. We know nothing of his elo- quence or intellectual force. We only know that in every alarm he shouldered his gun and stood with 3
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his congregation at the post of danger ; that his influ- ence was ever for justice and righteousness ; that he had a love for the beautiful,-for, even when the settlers were felling the giants of the forest, he was setting out young elms in front of his house, one of which is to-day throwing its grateful shade upon the spot where he lived.
That he was a man of large and liberal spirit we may infer from the fact that one of his sons bore the name of Charles-the first Charles in the records of the town. We are to remember that it was a name detested by the Puritans and their descendants, who never forgot that Charles I was a usurper of their liberties, that Charles II was a graceless liber- tine. A century had passed since the cutting off of the first Charles's head. During these years parents ransacked the Bible from Genesis to Revelation for names for their children. The antediluvians, the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, all, or nearly all, may be found in records of the town, together with the Christian graces and virtues-Faith, Hope, Char- ity, Patience, Experience, Prudence, Thankful.
OLD-TIME NAMES.
Through their reverence for the Bible any name to be found therein was regarded as appropriate. So in other records may be found Shadrach, Meshech, Abednego, Lamentations, Balaam, Belial, and Beel- zebub, together with such names as Learn Wisdom, Hate Evil, More Fruit, Dust and Ashes, Sorry for Sin, and Ma-her-sha-lal-hash-baz !
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EARLY HARDSHIPS.
The congregation which attended meeting in Bos- cawen was composed of men and women who had an earnest purpose in life. It was a great battle that they fought-the contest with nature-felling the forest, turning their furrows with the plough brought by Moses Gerrish, building the saw-mill on yonder brook, opening highways, enclosing their farms, and from 1742 to 1756 living largely in the fort, ever on the watch for Indians. Many their cares, heavy their burdens, great their anxieties. They had few imple- ments of husbandry, and those of rude construction. I recall a plough used in my boyhood on my father's farm, built in the present century, from twelve to fif- teen feet in length, its share of iron plated with steel ; cast-off horse-shoes were nailed to its wooden mould-board. It required twelve oxen to draw it, with one man riding the beam to keep its nose in the ground, a second hand to mend the furrows with a "breaking-up hoe."
Of the hardships of those who lived one hundred years ago, I recall the narrative of Dea. Benjamin Knowlton. The nearest plough to be had was in use, a mile and a half distant across-lots, three miles by the then travelled path. Mr. Knowlton's neigh- `bors could loan him their oxen for the afternoon. Eating his dinner at eleven o'clock to reinforce his strength, he shouldered the plough, carried it across- lots, crossing Mill brook, and climbing the ascent to his farm. I recall his pathetic words : " When I was at the steepest part of the hill I thought my heart would break; but I took breath and got there."
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The nearest grist-mill for the settlers was in Con- cord, eighteen miles distant. It was no light day's work for a man to shoulder a bag containing a bushel of corn, make his way to the mill, wait for its grind- ing, and return to his home. Many of the settlers pounded their corn in a rude wooden mortar. Hulled corn, hominy, hasty-pudding and johnny-cake, pork and beans, also the boiled dinner-beef, pork, and vegetables, heaped on a great pewter platter-was their fare.
THE AGE OF HOMESPUN.
It was the age of homespun. All cloth must be spun and woven in the family. First raising, rotting, breaking, swingling the flax; then the combing, spinning, and weaving by the women. From morn till eve the wheel was ever humming. Old and young must work. Necessity, with whip and thong, was always behind them.
With amazement may we contemplate the expend- iture of physical force and vital energy in clearing the forests, building their homes, constructing roads, bridges, mills, supporting their families, establishing schools, fighting the Indians, securing their indepen- dence, building the nation, developing a civilization commanding the admiration of the world !
RECREATIONS.
Few their recreations. There was never a ring for wrestling within the town, nor a race-course to try the mettle and speed of horses. Teachers of dancing found no occupation. In the old kitchens,
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with the pitch-knots blazing on the hearth, young people played blind man's buff and games of forfeits. If the young men indulged in a game of cards, it was upon the hay-mow, or behind a wall, with the chance of feeling the tingling of a whip, and the forcible exclamation from their father, "I'll let you know what's trumps!"
But through all the hardships, then as now, as ever has been and ever shall be,-
" Bright eyes looked love to eyes which spake again."
There were bashful 'Zekiel and waiting Huldah.
"His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity 'Zekle."
HABITS AND CUSTOMS.
No doubt, in common with the rest of the world, the citizens of Boscawen, before the temperance reformation, drank their full share of rum ; but a dil- igent searching of the papers of Henry Gerrish, Na- thaniel Green, and Benjamin Little, justices, reveals no drunken brawls. During the century and a half, very few have been the offences against the public peace or morality.
On Sunday the whole population,-men, women, children, infants in arms,-made their way to the meeting-house, not solely to listen to the sermon, but to learn what had been going on during the week. At noon, during the first quarter of a century, their conversation is about the Indians,-the killing of Thomas Cook, and Cæsar-Rev. Mr. Stevens's negro
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man-I think the only slave ever held in Boscawen. In 1754 the theme is the killing of Mrs. Philip Call at Salisbury, and the capture of the Meloon family. In 1759 their conversation is of what is going on in Canada,-of the soldiers of Contoocook serving un- der General Amherst; of the last struggle between France and England, on the Plains of Abraham, for supremacy in this western world ; of Montcalm, of Wolfe, of Admiral Boscawen commanding the Brit- ish fleet cooperating with Wolfe, and his annihilation of the French fleet. In their enthusiasm they name the town in honor of his victory.
In town-meeting they discuss the measures pro- posed by the ministers of George III for taxing the colonies against their consent. They are brought face to face with a vital question-the maintenance of their liberties. In pulpit and pew there is an awakening of patriotic fervor.
Whoever would fully and truly comprehend the forces underlying the American Revolution,-the birth of independence and growth of the nation, the rise of the people, the evolution of democratic ideas,- must study the power of the meeting-house and the town-meeting.
The Congregational polity thought out by the Pil- grims, adopted by the Puritans, making every church an independent democracy, united to the Germanic ideal of the town, making each town a Christian commonwealth, became an energy which swept away, as with a whirlwind, kingly prerogative and hered- itary privilege from this continent, when the contest came between king and people in 1775.
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PATRIOTISM.
In the Revolution the people were patriots. Ev- ery citizen, with one exception, signed the articles of association. He who did not sign was in no sense disloyal to liberty ; it was his idiosyncrasy that made him stand alone. Twenty men of Boscawen stood " unfalteringly behind the rail fence at Bunker Hill, and their volleys, fired in the faces of the advancing foe, were but the flaming of ideas which had their origin far back in the centuries.
Ideas are eternal. Nations may rise and fall, but ideas live on. Liberty, truth, justice, right, can never perish. Liberty knows no defeats.
The flag of freedom flung to the breeze in the green meadows of Runnymede, its inscription The Rights of Man, is the banner of all the ages. The Mayflower bore it at her mast-head ; Prescott, Put- nam, Stark, Reid, and the men of Boscawen in com- mon with the eleven hundred New Hampshire sol- diers, fought beneath it at Bunker Hill in this conflict, which so widened the distance between kingly pre- rogative and individual right that reconciliation was never again to be thought of, and so the Republic became a possibility.
One hundred and six years ago this 16th of August twenty-six citizens of Boscawen assisted in planting that banner of the ages upon the heights of Benning- ton, and shared in the victory which must ever be regarded as a decisive hour in the rise of the people to power. It was a victory of the meeting-house and the town-meeting.
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PATRIOTISM OF THE PULPIT.
It is a true, a great, and an honorable thing to say, that the Boscawen pulpit, whether filled by Phineas Stevens, Robie Morrill, Samuel Wood, Ebenezer Price, Edward Buxton, or by whomsoever occupied, has ever been loyal to the highest Christian ideal. It is an equally great and honorable thing to say that the Boscawen town-meeting, whether east or west of the line which now divides the old plantation of Contoocook into two towns, has wielded its influ- ence for liberty, law, order, and righteousness.
Only once during the one hundred and twenty- three years of its existence as a town has there been any lowering of the high standard assumed by those who settled the plantation. For a brief period dur- ing the closing decade of the last century came the demoralization incident to the war of the Revolution, the ferment which preceded the separation of church and state, the change from the confederation to the union; there were, also, the want of a national cur- rency, the operation of the newly imposed tariff, and, greatest of all, the demoralizing and disorganizing influence of the French Revolution, which, like a tidal wave, swept over the land ;- these, combined, produced momentary disturbance in this staid and sober community.
POWER OF DEMOCRATIC IDEAS.
Were this a monograph upon the power of ideas, instead of a brief historical address, we might follow the outcome of Bunker Hill, Bennington, Yorktown, and the establishment of the Republic, across the
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Atlantic, to the overthrow of the Bastile, the sacking of the Tuileries, and the river of blood running through the Place-de-la-Concord ; and from thence westward, again across the Atlantic, the reflex influence exer- cising its power upon society and politics all over this fair land,-the invasion of infidelity and disor- der,-the influence being felt in this town in the burning of the school-house and the meeting-house by incendiary hands.
For a few months only the disorganizing element held sway, and then law and order ruled supreme.
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