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 4
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 4
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Our thoughts of God, of man, of labor, and of law ought to be much clearer, wiser, better than theirs. Standing this hour by the graves of our sires, under the spell of these tender memories, stirred by these great associations and suggestions from the past, face to face with such a magnificent future, let us recog- nize our indebtedness to these familiar old truths, renew our vows of loyalty to the principles and cus- toms that hallowed the homes and made beautiful the firesides where we first saw the light, and recon- secrate ourselves to their maintenance wherever we go, until the best that has ever been seen and known in dear old Boscawen shall be reproduced in every town and hamlet throughout the land.
The choir, accompanied by the Hopkinton band, sung Eichberg's hymn,-
"To thee, O Country, great and strong."
The president said,-
" Fifty years ago we had a flourishing academy in this town, to which a boy came from the neighbor- ing town of Salisbury. He is with us to-day, the honored president of Dartmouth college. Allow me to introduce President Samuel C. Bartlett, of Han- over."
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Engª by Ceo E Ferine, N York
S.C. Ballett
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PRESIDENT BARTLETT'S SPEECH.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen :
As a native of your sister township, I am here to- day to offer you her congratulations. It is eminent- ly fitting that Salisbury should say a word of fra- ternal greeting to Boscawen on this one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Perhaps no two towns in all the region have had so much in common, or been bound together in bonds so close. They are very nearly equals in age. In actual settlement you are but sixteen years our senior. Benjamin Petten- gill, one of your original proprietors and explorers, was one of our few first settlers. Andrew Bohonon, Philip Call, and Nathaniel Meloon, members of your first colony, moved northward to become founders of ours. Capt. John Webster, one of your most active proprietors and leading spirits, became one of our earliest and best citizens, a worthy asso- ciate, as he was a near relative, of our noble Capt. Ebenezer Webster. We afterward paid the debt by lending you two of the noblest men of Salisbury and of America, Ebenezer's great sons, Ezekiel and Daniel Webster. We shared the same early dan- gers and sufferings from the savages. The murder of Josiah Bishop, Thomas Cook, and the stout slave Carson, here, in 1744, was matched ten years later by the massacre of our Timothy Cook and Mrs. Cole. Your Enos Bishop was carried captive to Canada in the same summer with our Nathaniel Meloon and family, and in the same company with our Samuel
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Scribner and John Parker. And when Edward Em- ery in the month of May, and a little later in the year most of the inhabitants of our old Stevenstown, fled in terror from their homes, we, their descend- ants, have to thank you that your fathers gave them shelter in the old King-street forts. It was your Bowen and Morrill who, whether rightfully or wrong- fully, dispatched the blustering Indians Sabatis and Plansawa, and they were buried at the Indian bridge on the Stirrup-Iron brook, close by the common border of Salisbury and Boscawen, as if in token of the common danger and the mutual help-the alli- ance offensive and defensive. These mutual rela- tions and good offices took many forms. Our set- tlers came to your mills and crossed the Merrimack by your ferry. If I mistake not, the first physician of Salisbury, Joseph Bartlett, used to visit your sick before Dr. Daniel Peterson became a resident of this village; and after that they both rode through these and the neighboring towns, carrying their medicines in saddlebags, and sometimes, at least, travelling on snow-shoes.
For more than twenty years the men of Salisbury who heard the preaching of the gospel heard it here. This church undoubtedly aided in organizing the church in Salisbury, while, some thirty years later. ours reciprocated at the forming of the church in Webster. When our clergyman was afterward sup- posed to have erred from the faith, your ministers investigated the case and sounded the alarm. Dea. Enoch Gerrish records in his journal, September 16, 1810,-"All to meeting ; Mr. Price whipt Mr. Wor-
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cester." Whipped him, no doubt, with the smiting of the righteous.
When the great struggle for independence came, we were still united. Not long before the battle of Bunker Hill, your captain, Henry Gerrish, with the men of Boscawen, was joined at Cambridge by the men of Salisbury, and together they held their post at the fence to the very last. They were together again at Bennington. Capt. Ebenezer Webster had preceded with the men of Salisbury, and on the 24th of July Capt. Peter Kimball, with his company, including twenty-six men of Boscawen, made their rendezvous in Salisbury on the march. The two companies fought side by side on that 17th of Au- gust, and rejoiced together over the signal victory.
Our early educational interests have been united. For a long time your venerable Dr. Samuel Wood, whose voice still lingers in my ears as I heard it from the neighboring pulpit more than fifty years ago, was fitting both our boys and yours for college. At a later period, the Salisbury academy was train- ing your Gen. John A. Dix, Dr. Henry Little, Rev. Enoch Corser, and others; and, later still, this Bos- cawen academy, in the palmy days of Jarvis Gregg, and afterward of Joseph Lord and Jonathan Tenney, was preparing some of us, myself and my two broth- ers included, in company with your excellent towns- man, Rev. Nehemiah C. Coffin, for Dartmouth col- lege. There are some here to-day with whom it was my privilege to study and to play half a century ago. And as early as 1784 Capt. Henry Gerrish was one of a committee to lay out what was known as the
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"old College road," beginning from the river road in Boscawen, and leading to " the Connecticut river at or near Dartmouth college." And over that road or its successors nearly an equal number of the boys from Boscawen and Salisbury-a goodly number from each-have travelled to complete their educa- tion. Some of us have come hither again to teach in your schools, and I doubt not that some of my own former pupils in the High-street school are here to-day within sound of my voice. I tender them a kindly greeting, and a tender memory for the dead.
We are closely allied by intermarriage also. The same blood flows in many of our veins. The alli- ances have been from the first so abundant as to be difficult adequately to trace. But I find that the daughters of the Meloons, Pettengills, Searles, Beans, Websters, Blaisdells, Calefs, Eastmans, Fi- fields, and Sawyers of Salisbury have found favor with the young men of Boscawen of the Abbott, Atkin- son, Burbank, Fellows, Greenough, Kilburn, Corser, Coffin, Rolfe, Burpee, and Little families; while the Salisbury youth have made gallant reprisals on the daughters of the Corsers, Couches, Kimballs, and others of this town. Indeed, in standing here to-day as the representative of friendly relationship, I also represent in person the alliance of blood. I am a guest to-day in the hospitable home of one-Mr. Charles W. Webster-who is a lineal descendant of the same great-grandfather, Pettengill. And all the many descendants of Capt. Benjamin Little are chil- dren also of Rhoda Bartlett, and Rhoda Bartlett was granddaughter of Dea. Stephen Bartlett, who died
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in Amesbury in 1773. But Dr. Joseph Bartlett, of Salisbury, my grandfather, was also grandson of the same Stephen ; and one of your speakers to-day, Dr. Arthur Little, of Chicago, is the great-grandson of Rhoda Bartlett. Dr. Little is therefore my distant, or, rather, my near, cousin. Your other orator, Mr. Coffin, had a narrow escape from being one of my blood relatives too, for Lieut. Thomas Coffin, his father, married, first, Hannah Kilburn, and for his second wife, Hannah Bartlett, who was no doubt of the same stock with myself. Charles Carlton Coffin was the ninth and last child of Thomas and Hannah Kilburn Coffin. Had he but been the son of his step-mother, he would have been my relative, too. Constructively I shall hold him so to-day. Standing thus side by side with my actual and my constructive cousins, I extend to them and to you all the right hand of fellowship from Salisbury to Boscawen. Long may this noble old township flourish in all that is good and great, moral, intellectual, and material. To wish you all manner of such prosperity is only to wish that the record of the one hundred and fifty years that are past may be repeated in the centuries to come.
The President introduced Hon. Moody Currier, of Manchester, a native of Boscawen, who made a brief congratulatory address.
The President said,-
" It is well known that there is an association in existence which has for its object the perpetuation
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of the memory of an illustrious man who began his great career in this town. I have the honor to intro- duce Hon. Stephen M. Allen, of Boston, President of the Webster Historical Society."
ADDRESS OF HON. STEPHEN M. ALLEN.
Amony the hardy pioneers that first entered upon the clearing of the primitive forests which preceded these beautiful lawns, was, if I have been rightly informed, my great-grandfather on my mother's side. To him, during the first decade of the settlement, was born Elizabeth Johnson, my mother's mother, whose death in 1824 I well remember. Here, so far as I can learn, she was educated, and remained until married to Col. Jeremiah Gilman, who subsequently, as captain, led the troops of this region to the war of the Revolution. He was from Exeter, but I believe . quite early removed to Haverhill, Mass., and after the war to Burton, N. H. She was a good type of a native American woman, and in many respects resembled in character her neighbor and associate, Abigail Eastman Webster, the mother of the illustri- ous and world-renowned Daniel of the adjoining town. In their maturer life, when their husbands were at the war, these two women were sympathet- ically associated, and their intercourse lasted during life. One of my sisters was named by my grand- mother for Mrs. Webster and herself. Circumstances have heretofore prevented me from tracing the later history of the Johnson family, or how nearly they were associated with that of Webster, but certain it is
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that Col. Gilman and one of his brothers were in the war together with the father of Daniel, and the latter was also with him in the French war. Jonathan Webster enlisted in Capt. Gilman's company in 1777. After peace was declared, and the Gilman brothers removed to Tamworth and Burton, in that part of Carroll county on the head waters of the Saco, which included the adjoining towns of Conway and Sand- wich, the families often met in social intercourse. Elizabeth Johnson Gilman was a most beautiful woman, not only in form, but in feature, mind, and heart. She was one of that class to whom the state and nation owe much, and that the present genera- tion can never fully appreciate. She was symmetri- cally formed, of fine complexion, and of most graceful manners, possessing more than ordinary talent, with superior culture for the times in which she lived. It is hardly possible now to assimilate such a character with the practical woman of the present day. Look back for a moment to the log cabins that first dotted the hills and dales of New England as places of human habitation. The ground was rough and sterile, the weather cold and dreary, and the prin- cipal means of existence must be found in the woods and streams, or be extracted from the roughly culti- vated soil. From these cabins often might be seen issuing troops of children, families of ten or twelve, glowing with health and vigor, yet having all the appearance of cultivated youth. Cultivated they were, for they had refined and pious mothers, who were more than Spartan in the mental and moral training of their children. Such mothers must have 5
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drawn deep from natural fountains, both for physical 'and mental strength. The hardships they endured were almost incredible, the amount of labor per- formed was enormous, yet their mental and spiritual culture was more advanced than the millions of the present day.
The President introduced General John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, a native of the neighboring town of Sutton, who made a felicitous address upon the service rendered to the world by the early settlers of the country in estab- lishing the common school.
The President introduced Henry P. Rolfe, of Concord, as the last speaker, who spoke as follows :
ADDRESS OF HON. HENRY P. ROLFE.
Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen :
Last month I received the very polite invitation of the Committee of Arrangements to attend the cele- bration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Boscawen. I could not fail to know that this town was meant; for there is but one place on this green globe of ours that bears this name as a town. There is, somewhere among the isles of the sea, in the Pacific ocean, an island or place recently named for this distinguished English admi- ral, whose honored name this town bears.
The accident which happened to me about seven- teen months ago had so seriously affected my health that I much feared I should be obliged to deny myself the gratification of being present on this oc-
Photo bn WI " Kimball
Henry Pr Golfe
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casion. But I am here, and it gives me pleasure to mingle with you, and renew old acquaintances, and exchange congratulations at a time so auspicious and so full of interest to the native born of this illus- trious town and their descendants.
Soon after the close of the old French war, my grandfather, Benjamin Rolfe, came to Boscawen from Newbury, Mass., and built his "bark cabin " in the primeval forests, on the highest swell of land in the township. His wife, Lydia Pierson Rolfe, accompa- nied him on horseback to the intervale in Fisherville, soon to be known as Penacook. On a single horse both rode, and carried the axe, the shave, the pod- auger, the gouge, the hoe, and several other tools, and certain domestic utensils. There is a peculiar significance to the gouge in this connection. It was an accompaniment of the pod-auger at all times, and the auger could not be used until the gouge had cut out a cavity for its insertion. These were then what are termed " old pod-auger times ; " but the times at length changed, and the change is due to the sin- gular genius of a citizen of Boscawen, Henry Ger- rish, who invented the screw auger ;- and let it always be remembered, that to Henry Gerrish, a citi- zen of this town, is due the credit of changing the old, dull pod-auger times to the lively and more prosperous times of the screw auger !
My grandmother returned alone on horseback, going through Chester to Newbury, and joined her family of five children ; and my grandfather took his axe, his camp-kettle, and such other articles as he could carry on his back, sought out his future home
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in the lone, dense forests, four miles north-westerly of where we now stand, on what was afterwards called High street, and was for a time the frontier settler in the town, as Daniel Webster's father was the frontier settler in the town of Salisbury. During the summer and fall he stayed alone, and heard no sound in his " clearing " save the birds and the wild beasts, his axe, and his own musical voice. His wife and children remained in Newbury.
Late in the fall of the year his wife came up for him alone on horseback, visited him in his cabin, and he returned with her to Newbury, where he worked in a ship-yard, being by trade a ship carpenter. In the spring he returned to his cabin in the woods, his wife accompanying him on horseback, and returning again alone. In course of time he cleared away the forests, built himself a house and barn, the first frame house in the town, dug a well, sowed and planted his land, and made the wilderness smile. Thither he eventually moved his wife and five children, in the spring of 1772.
In this house my father was born, in 1773. In this house I was raised, and all the days of my childhood were passed here. All the first recollections of my youth, after more than half a century, turn back to this spot where I first drew breath, and where the opening buds of life cheered me with their fragrance.
In the little brick school-house on the highlands of Boscawen I drank from the "Pierian spring" some " shallow draughts." I cannot say that my brain was not intoxicated here, but this I will say, that my body was never intoxicated here or elsewhere.
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Noble old town ! What a cluster of great names hangs upon thy record of one hundred and fifty years ! How familiar and how dear to me to-day are the scenes which "fond recollection presents to my view"! I have roamed through her forests, climbed her hills, traversed her valleys, wandered upon the banks of her rivers, drank from her brooks, swam in her waters, buffeted her storms, and basked in her sunshine. In 1840 I could look into the faces of all her citizens, and call them nearly all by name. I knew the fathers and mothers, the men and maidens, the boys and girls, of this dear, delightful town. How much pride we may justly cherish in her great names, in her honored sons, her brave soldiers, her able statesmen ! With what thankfulness and with what gratitude may we not reflect upon the Christian influence which she has shed abroad over all the earth, through the instrumentality of her gifted re- ligious teachers ! What a noble, patriotic record she has made !- and the air over all the land has been quivering these many years with the sweet strains from the "Field of Monterey" and the "Blue Juni- ata !"
When we look upon the old flag, " the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star ob- scured," and see standing beneath "its ample folds" the sturdy son of Boscawen, declaring that if any man attempt to tear it down he will shoot him on the spot,-what a scene for a painter! When we
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look on this picture, have we not a right to exult with pride in the great name of John Adams Dix?
It is true, as Councillor Phillips declared at a public dinner in Ireland, the lightnings of heaven yielded to the philosophy of Franklin ; for
"While cyphering over the thing, He tried to discover a plan To catch the electrical king And make him the servant of man. He put rods on the meeting-house steeple, And so when the lightning came round, He kept it from building and people By running it into the ground."
Yet it really remained to a son of Boscawen, Moses Gerrish Farmer, to subdue the wild, dangerous current to the convenient, harmless, and profitable uses of man.
Boscawen ! A century and a half of thy age is past and gone. One hundred and fifty years have flown since the voices of civilized men broke the soli- tude which for many centuries had remained undis- turbed. One hundred and fifty years of valor's story has been told. The glories of thy youth, thy man- hood, and, maybe, thine age, have been counted, and we here, to-day, set up a monument for thee, by which time shall mark its ages; and may the years that are before thee be illumined by the rays of fame's setting sun, and while night, and sleep, and the darkness, in the economy of nature, must come, may the morn's returning sun bring along for thee new and more resplendent glories !
"O Boscawen ! While life in this bosom is swelling, I will not forget thee, the place of my birth ;
On thy hill-tops I'll hold with sweet friendship my dwelling, And hymn forth thy praises, thou favorite of earth!"
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The following poem by Rev. Frank Haley was to have been read, but, owing to the lateness of the hour, was omitted :
CONTOOCOOK-BOSCAWEN.
I.
Hail, old Contoocook ! Here our fathers planted An outpost of a nation yet to be : Courageous souls, by savage foe undaunted, Sons of the brave and daughters of the free. Here, in thy wilds, a heritage they sought,
Here, in thy wilds, at giant tasks they wrought ;
Here men, armed as for war, went forth to toil,
Hewed down the forests, rooted up the soil,
Built strong log houses, built an ample fort, With room for tiny houses in its court,
And reared, upon the cleared and virgin sod, A temple, out of well-hewn logs, to God : A sacred gift, for in each sturdy stroke There beat a heat as true, as strong as oak. Here, in thy wilds, men did what they essayed, And heroes watched, and toiled, and fought, and prayed. Contoocook, hail ! Dear to thy children ever, Thy storied hills, and vales, and plain, and river !
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Hail, Boscawen ! Filial, reverent love is burning In all our hearts, as on a thousand shrines ; Thy absent ones, to thee this day returning, Enwreathe thy brows with green, perennial vines ; Our home, our fathers' home, birthplace of men Could wield all manly tools, spade, sword, or pen ; Birthplace of women of a noble race,- Women brave-hearted, and of matchless grace. Here valiant preachers in their place have stood,- Stevens and Morrill, and our saintly Wood,
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Buxton and Price, beloved and revered : A score of true apostles thou hast reared And sent abroad throughout this goodly land, Yea, scores on scores, a large and honored band, To meet and fill the world's vast, varied need.
Here Dix was born, here played, and learned to read ; Here Daniel Webster, in that long ago, Read Virgil, and declaimed great Cicero ; Here, later, he began his grand career. Boscawen, all hail ! To all thy children dear. We pledge thee, now, thy treasured Past to cherish :
Of all thy honors, never one shall perish !
The audience accompanied by the band joined in singing the hymn,-
"All hail the power of Jesus' name."
The benediction was pronounced by Rev. Mr. Buxton.
LETTERS.
Many congratulatory letters were received from sons and daughters of Boscawen, and from distin- guished men in the various walks of life, regret- ting their inability to be present, a few of which are appended.
DORCHESTER, August 13, 1883.
Gentlemen :
I regret exceedingly that circumstances beyond my control will prevent me from participating with the good people of my native state in the forthcom- ing celebration of your good old town of Boscawen. Happy should I be to visit New Hampshire once more, and there to express the gratitude I feel for her early training, and to which, more than to any- thing else, I am indebted for whatever success has attended me in life, or the little which I may have done by my efforts to increase the happiness of my fellow-men. Most happy should I be to have the privilege, once more, of expressing the profound respect I have for the memory of Daniel Webster, who once roamed over and breathed the inspiring air of your fields, and whose name and fame will be treasured up in the hearts of grateful millions as long as the granite hills, in whose bosom he was born, shall rear their heads toward heaven.
It was my privilege to know Mr. Webster, both in public and private life. We were intimately associ-
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ated in the promotion of American agriculture, and he would have rejoiced exceedingly could he have foreseen the wonderful improvements which we have witnessed since his death. Mr. Webster was great in everything which he undertook, and, although not so great a farmer as a statesman, yet his name as the Farmer of Marshfield will only be second to that of the Expounder and Defender of our Constitu- tion, a name and fame that shall gild the pages of American history in letters of living light, while loy- alty, patriotism, and integrity shall have a place in the heart of man.
MARSHALL P. WILDER. (Born September 22, 1798.)
Messrs. I. K. Gage and others of committee.
FROM PROF. M. G. FARMER.
NEW YORK, AUG. 12, 1883.
Fellow-Townsmen :
I thank you for the kind invitation to be present on this long-to-be-remembered anniversary, and regret exceedingly that circumstances beyond my control render it impossible for me to be with you in person, but you may rest assured of my presence with you in spirit.
It is not every town that can celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its settlement, and it is not every New England town that has sent forth such illustrious worthies as has old Boscawen.
Daniel Webster the statesman, Ezekiel the advo- cate, Rev. Dr. Woods the preacher and teacher, Charles Carleton Coffin the historian, whose name
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and fame are now world-wide, Revs. Jacob and Henry Little the home missionaries, Rev. Joseph Little, son of Jacob, who, although not born in the town, was yet identified with it by his marriage with one of its daughters, Emma Kingsbury Little. He was famil- iarly known as "Chaplain Joe," and few men did more or better work than he during the war of the Rebel- lion. In this service his faithful wife bore an honor- able part, both greatly endearing themselves to our "boys in blue." "Chaplain Joe" was a man of clear convictions, unswerving in the discharge of his duties, and it can truthfully be said of him that " he never sold the truth to serve the hour." The sweet songs which he sang to our soldiers will long be remem- bered by those who heard him, though his voice on earth is now hushed forevermore.
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