USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Manchester > The Londonderry celebration. Exercises on the 150th anniversary of the settlement of old Nutfield, comprising the towns of Londonderry, Derry, Windham, and parts of Manchester, Hudson and Salem, N.H., June 10, 1869. > Part 3
USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Hudson > The Londonderry celebration. Exercises on the 150th anniversary of the settlement of old Nutfield, comprising the towns of Londonderry, Derry, Windham, and parts of Manchester, Hudson and Salem, N.H., June 10, 1869. > Part 3
USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Londonderry > The Londonderry celebration. Exercises on the 150th anniversary of the settlement of old Nutfield, comprising the towns of Londonderry, Derry, Windham, and parts of Manchester, Hudson and Salem, N.H., June 10, 1869. > Part 3
USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Derry > The Londonderry celebration. Exercises on the 150th anniversary of the settlement of old Nutfield, comprising the towns of Londonderry, Derry, Windham, and parts of Manchester, Hudson and Salem, N.H., June 10, 1869. > Part 3
USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Windham > The Londonderry celebration. Exercises on the 150th anniversary of the settlement of old Nutfield, comprising the towns of Londonderry, Derry, Windham, and parts of Manchester, Hudson and Salem, N.H., June 10, 1869. > Part 3
USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Salem > The Londonderry celebration. Exercises on the 150th anniversary of the settlement of old Nutfield, comprising the towns of Londonderry, Derry, Windham, and parts of Manchester, Hudson and Salem, N.H., June 10, 1869. > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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Prudence, industry, sound judgment and self-reliance have been the common characteristics of this descent, at all times, and in every variety of circumstances. In the long list of those who have risen, by force of these quali- ties, to prosperity and eminence, it would be invidious to particularize some, while it would be idle to attempt to make mention of all. The catalogue would embrace names from the ranks of the leading men of every department and calling ; agriculturists, merchants and manufacturers ; professional men and inen of letters; conductors of insti- tutions of learning ; high officers in the state and nation ;- in short there is scarce a single position of respectability or dignity which the country affords, that would not claim its share in the enumeration.
The march of civilization, while it tends so greatly t)
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elevate and refine humanity, is not without attendant evils in its train. Physical and moral deterioration are not un- frequently to be discovered, even where the mental faculties have become sharpened, if not broadened. Effeminacy is born of a life which demands little bodily toil ; and unman- liness and insincerity are the common curse of an artificial state of society. Yet it cannot with justice be asserted that these canker spots have seriously infected the generation to whom the blood of ancient Nutfield has descended. The titanic shoulders may indeed be less frequent now than formerly ; the athlete of the old wrestling ring might per- haps find fewer antagonists worthy of his prowess ; the po- tato which our fathers presented to the new world may sometimes assimilate less kindly with the gastric fluid in our time than in the days before man learned by dire ex- perience that he had a stomach ; but if we compare the statistics of life and health of the two periods, the balance will not be found to be all in their favor. Mighty as were the thews and sinews of that olden time, the " Boys in Blue " of their descendants proved that they were as wiry and tough, could march as fast and as far, and could endure hardship and exposure as well, as the Rangers of a century ago, or the Covenanters who trod the heaths of Scotland.
Nor, I apprehend, has there been any greater degeneracy in the moral, than in the physical, fiber of the race. Rude fashions have been abandoned or modified, and the curt speech has been amended to suit more polished ears ; our generation maintain their opinions with less of pungent comment and flat contradiction, but it is extremely doubt- ful if they adhere to them with diminished tenacity. The larger vocabulary of this day sanctions the dealing with of- fensive things in gentler phraseology, but there is the same contempt for shams, and scorn of meanness and falsehood, as in the days of simpler language. It will be found that the iron hand is there, though it may be covered with a glove of velvet.
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If the mischiefs which are incident to an older civiliza- tion have been fortunately so far avoided, on the other hand its full benefits have been experienced. The life of perennial toil, unmitigated save by stern duty and coarse pleasures, has passed away forever. Comfort, cultivation and refinement are seated by the firesides of our more favored age. The ingenuity of modern invention ministers to our material wants. The works of the great masters of literature lie upon our tables. Our taste for the beautiful in art has abundant means of gratification. Commerce pours into our laps the productions of the four quarters of the globe. Travel invites us to wider scenes, and a more varied and complete experience. Philosophy opens for our inspec- tion the arcana of nature. A wealth of appliances sur- rounds us, for the supply of all our needs of body and spirit ; for the cultivation and development of every faculty, for the gratification of the most elevated tastes and the highest aspirations of our nature. It is not too much to say, that these high privileges have neither been under- valued nor unimproved by the present generation of repre- sentatives of the Londonderry settlers. Elegance has be- come ingrafted upon native force ; polish superadded to acumen ; refinement to rough manliness. It is matter of sincere congratulation that so much of the sound ore of character has been retained, unmixed with dross, and well fitted to be moulded into the graceful forms of a higher civilization.
I have thus hastily and imperfectly sketched some of the changes which a century and a half have brought about in the character and condition of those who owe their origin to this historic place. Who will venture to foretell how much is to be added to the story, when, after the lapse of five more generations, our successors shall assemble here to pay their anniversary honors to the ancestral home !
Our progenitors here would have been struck dumb with amazement if they could have lifted the veil of the future
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and foreseen the stupendous revolution that was to be wrought in their adopted land : - the rescue of a continent from the hand of nature, and peopling it with teeming mil- lions; the experiment of a vast republican government successfully carried into execution ; the vapor of water made the great moving power of the industrial world ; and the very lightnings broken to harness as carriers of dispatches ! How would their eyes have distended with wonder at the view of a road of iron spanning the hills and valleys over which they bore upon their shoulders their whole worldly goods from the ancient landing place at Haverhill ; and of a populous city taking its rise from the river falls to which the friendly hand of the Indian pointed them the way, to take the fish which eked out their scanty winter's subsistence,- a city whose looms each day produce a greater quantity of cloth than their whole female industry could have woven in a generation !
Is there any reason to doubt that the coming century and a half are to usher in changes which would be as startling to us as those I have mentioned would have been to them ? Have we any ground for believing the resources of nature have been so far explored, and the powers of art so exhausted, that the future is any less full of promise than was the past? On the contrary, it cannot be supposed that our age is beyond the threshold of improvement. Every day furnishes new problems for solution in the phe- nomena of nature and the domains of industrial, political and social science. The spirit of discovery was never more active. Regions of the globe hitherto unexplored are day by day opening to the view like the outlines of moun- tains through a vanishing mist. The powers of chemistry are unsealing the book in which the secret of nature's internal forces are written. Inventive enterprise is elabor- ating new methods and combinations to facilitate the oper- ations of life and give ease and relief to physical humanity ; while the political and moral requirements of the age are
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engaging the attention of the profoundest thinkers and most earnest philanthropists of the world.
Not unreasonably, therefore, may we look for improve- ments in coming time in no way inferior to those of the past. The next three half centuries are destined to behold a prodigious increase in the population, the resources and the achievements of science and art, in our country. What further alterations are to befall the home of our fathers, or what triumphs may be in store in civil or military life, for the coming man of the lineage of Londonderry,-it is for- bidden for us to know. But from the reliance we justly repose upon the energy, sense and honesty of the Scotch Irish character, as developed in the period over which we have glanced, we have high faith that in every stage of progress that race shall creditably bear its part, and shall not fail to leave its impress upon each coming generation.
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ADDRESS.
BY HON. HORACE GREELEY.
MR. GREELEY, being introduced by the President as a native of New Hampshire, sprung from a Londonderry stock, who was widely known and honored, responded as follows :
MR. PRESIDENT AND FRIENDS :
Though we are of diverse origin, and have gathered from many states, yet I trust we shall cordially agree to devote this festival to the memory of that Scotch Irish race who first settled this town of Londonderry, and gave it the character it still proudly maintains. The old township has been cut up into several ; old landmarks have disappeared ; old fashions have changed ; new institutions have changed old habits and softened rugged peculiarities ; but the Scotch Irish people remain ; their genius lights up most of the faces now looking into mine. Let me speak, then, for the few minutes in which I may venture to claim your atten- tion, of this race and its living influence upon our country and its people.
The influence of a race is not measured by the area of the country it inhabits. Greece and Palestine are but specks on the surface of our globe, yet they have exerted a far greater influence upon human progress and well- being than the vast empires of China and Persia, in either of which they might both be lost. Scotland is another speck, not nearly so large as Arkansas, with a population never yet reaching four millions ; yet what poets, philoso- phers, historians, have been proud to claim her as their native land ! Like other small countries, her sons have made her great.
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The Scotch Irish were eminently men of conviction. They saw clearly ; they reasoned fearlessly ; and they did not hesitate to follow wherever truth led the way. Migra- tion to Ireland cracked the shell of their insular prejudice ; removal thence to America completed their emancipation. Liberalized by crossing a strait, the passage of a stormy ocean made them freemen.
The Scotch, whether at home or abroad, were an intel- lectual, an inquiring, and a Bible-reading people. Whether Bible-reading made them such early zealous Protestants. or Protestantism opened to them the Bible, they have been eminently familiar with the Good Book for three centuries. Their knowledge of its contents kindled and has kept alive in their breasts the sacred fire of Liberty. No haughty prelacy can domineer over a Bible-loving, Bible-reading people ; and the spirit of John Knox lives and reigns to- day in the hearts of the Scotch Irish in America.
Hence their early and steadfast devotion to Common Schools. Their Christianity and their love of Liberty alike impelled them to educate their children, including those of the humblest and least esteemed. A meeting-house was the first building not of logs erected in this township; but a school-house soon followed; and the children of London- derry have ever been blest with excellent common schools. And the good they enjoyed they were ever eager to impart and diffuse. I presume more teachers now living trace their descent from the Scotch Irish pioneers of Londonderry than to an equal number anywhere else. New England · is to-day teaching our country. If you should visit all the school-houses in California you would find two-thirds of them under the sway of teachers from New England, and a sixth of these tracing their lineage to Londonderry, whose early devotion to the Bible and to common schools is still cherished by her children.
In New York we feel, as in Londonderry you do not, the pressure of Old-World prelacy in determined, though as yet
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quiet, efforts to break up our common schools into theo- logical fragments, each under the control of the hierarchy of some sect or denomination. I deprecate the change thus sought as perilous, if not fatal, to republican institu- tions. When the time shall have come for apportioning our children to Catholic, Orthodox, Liberal, Baptist, Metli- odist and Unitarian primary schools, I shall apprehend that the last sands of the Republic are nearly run. When our common schools shall have perished we may still have a country ; but it will not be the land of Liberty and Equality for which our fathers toiled and suffered, and poured out their blood.
Let me not seem to speak as one filled with apprehen- sion. Despite its trials and perils, the Republic will live and not die. It has cost too much-it is worth too much -to be tamely surrendered. In one of the many dark hours of our late terrible struggle, a doubting friend asked me, "Do you not consider Popular Rule about played out here ?" "No," I replied. "We have Common Schools and Trial by Jury left, and we can afford to fight fifty years longer rather than give them up."
Burke said the chief end of government was twelve hon- est, intelligent men in the jury-box to decide all contested issues. In the same spirit I hold that, so long as we can maintain common schools free to all children, and be tol- erably sure of twelve fair men in the jury-box when issues of fact are to be tried, so long will our country remain a lighthouse to the nations and a star of hope to the op- pressed throughout the world. And so long, I trust, will our people gather on anniversaries like this, to honor the virtues of their ancestors and hand down the fame of their grand achievements to their latest posterity.
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Engª by Geo E Perine
M. Patterson
HON. JAMES W. PATTERSON,
SENATOR FROM NEWHAMPSHIRE.
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ADDRESS.
BY HON. JAMES W. PATTERSON.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :
I had supposed until a late hour that I should be re- strained from participating in the agreeable festivities of this day by engrossing public duties elsewhere. Still I felt that it would be a personal loss and a sort of breach of loyalty to my ancestors not to come ; and so, by dint of effort, I am unexpectedly present.
I am not here to speak, however, but to enjoy, and have awakened in my own mind the memories and inspirations of the past. I come to look into your strong Scotch Irish faces, in which one seems to see the force and meaning of those centuries of earnest and terrible struggle through which our fathers passed. I am not quite sure I ought to respond to your call at all, for my status here is very well described in what that splendid New Hampshire soldier, General J. G. Foster, once said to me of a brother officer. Happening to meet him in a street-car soon after one of the reverses of the war, our conversation turned upon the unfortunate conduct, during the battle, of one of our dis- tinguished commanders. I said I believed he was a native of New Hampshire. "No," said the General ; "a native of the South." "But I had the impression," I replied, . " that he was born in our own state. "O yes!" responded the General ; " he was accidentally born there, but still he is a native of the South."
My great grandparents settled in Londonderry. Both of my grandmothers, and my grandfather on my father's side, were children of the town ; but my grandfather having re- moved to a beautiful town which nestles in the bosom of
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the. Contoocook, I and my father were born there. Never- theless, I feel that somehow I am, as the General would say, " a native " of this town, and have a right to celebrate with you.
The Scotch Irish settlers of this country were a some- what peculiar people, and unmistakable traces of the orig- inal traits survive in their children. The warp of their character was Scotch, and the threads were as close twisted and strong as hemp; but a hard and varied ex- perience under changing governments and fortunes had filled in the web with a texture of Celtic die and pattern. They had the stern grip and endurance of the old cove- nanter, mellowed by something of the flexibility of the merry-making Irishman. They were equally prepared to defend a natural right or a point in theology, to " the last of their kith and their kin," or to make the welkin ring till morning with their broad but pungent wit.
The distinguished gentleman who has preceded me spoke of the influence of races upon history. It occurs to me to reverse the text, and say a few words upon the influ- ence of history on races. The geologist evolves the un- written history of nature from the fossils, the ripple marks, the distortions and composition of the earth's crust; the naturalist sees the apple-blossom in a section of its fruit, and counts the years of a tree by its rings. So, I appre- hend, the student of human nature may read the history of a people in their character.
Mental and physical qualities are transmitted, but these are modified and special peculiarities created by the con- ditions and events of life. The strength or weakness of the father is likely to be the inheritance of the child, and the remembrance of a great ancestral achievement will ennoble a whole family.
The law holds good of races. National health is an ele- ment of national strength. But the forces which more than all others impart greatness to a people are purely moral,
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The earnest and lofty enthusiasm inspired by heroic deeds and high endeavor in those whose renown they inherit, the songs they sing, the works of art they look upon, the labor of their hands, and, above all, the faith in which they wor- ship,- determine their distinctive characteristics. The songs of Æschylus and Homer and the glory of Marathon and Thermopyla were the seeds of fame which ripened in the peerless intellectual products and military achieve- ments of the age of Pericles. The English at Waterloo could not break in the tempestuous charge of Ney, for they had the integrity of English history to maintain. It was not simply the responsibilities of that day, but of all the past of their people, which pressed upon and held them like ranks of iron against the impetuous valor of France. Races of men become intellectual and strong by a sort of mental concretion of the best things in their national life. The peculiarities of the race to which we belong took their rise at different epochs in their career. One familiar with the record of our ancestors could almost trace in your faces to-day the love of liberty and the enduring faith which resisted the dragoons of Graham of Claverhouse, and en- dured the horrors of the siege of Derry.
The substratum of the Scotch Irish character was laid in the stern and stormy life of early Scotch history ; but its distinctive traits were brought out and confirmed in the long and bloody conflicts which they waged in Ireland against ecclesiastical and royal tyranny, after their emigra- tion in 1612. Profound convictions, an inflexible will, and strong sensibilities, are the natural inheritance of our peo- ple. They have been transmitted from sires into whose mental constitution they were wrought by the bitter experi- ence of centuries. Our fathers, when at last constrained, by the hardships laid upon them by a king whose throne they had saved, to leave the homes they had reluctantly adopted, and which they had redeemed from desolation by toil, and defended with a heroism unsurpassed in the
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annals of war, brought with them to our shores those qualities which have made their descendants a peculiar people. The story of sufferings endured in the defence of civil and religious rights, handed down from father to son, had imparted an unusual energy and obstinacy to their love of liberty and fair play. Patience under oppression they had learned to regard as a stain upon the honor of manhood, and had been taught by experience that arbi- trary power must be repelled in its first approaches. Their rights and their faith they held as a trust to be transmitted without taint or diminution, and hence they battled as they worshiped, from a sense of duty. They sprang to arms at Cape Breton and Crown Point. They fought with Pres- cott at the point of peril and honor at Bunker Hill, and triumphed with Stark at Bennington. Your heroic dead lie buried in every battle-field where our fathers first res- cued Liberty from the grasp of Tyranny, or their children have since maintained it against the assaults of Treason. Reid, Stark, Rogers, McClary, and a few other bright names upon the early military record of Londonderry, reached a high historic fame ; but not less pure was the devotion, nor less exalted the heroism, with which their townsmen in the ranks, gave themselves to the cause of their country. To-day let us pay a full and heartfelt trib- ute of gratitude and honor to those who hazarded life in the great cause without the hope of reward.
But our fathers were as apt in the pursuits of peace as in the arts of war. Their industry and enterprise not only transformed the wilderness into a garden, but made even the sands of old Derryfield to flow with milk and honey. The linens woven by our fair grandmothers acquired a national reputation, and the Derry Fair was as famous, in its day, as the Olympic Games, and, I conclude, bore a striking resemblance to that classic fighting-ground. The Fair was the annual exchange of an extensive agricultural district, and generally closed with horse-racing, and such manly
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sports as are common to the athletic races. There is a mythical tradition that our pious ancestors sometimes be- came a little demoralized by the convivialities of the closing day. But among the numerous gifts of our fathers, I sus- pect the art of speech-making was their special forte. Town meeting day seemed foreordained for the display of their forensic powers. It was there that the whole list of orators entered the arena, and logic, pathos, sarcasm and wit fell upon the appreciating assembly, as brilliant and startling as a meteoric shower. Some profane icono- clast las even dared to enter this grave forum of the peo- ple, and bring forth the report that upon a certain occasion, near the close of the deliberations, a fiery debate having sprung up unexpectedly, a favorite orator who had some time before subsided into silence in a "pew " behind the door, having at last caught the inspiration of the moment, essayed to fulminate over the wrangling assembly ; but, after attempting several times to lift himself to his feet by the help of the railing, and having been as often baffled by an unaccountable weakness in his joints, he at last set- tled back into his seat, and with a look of despair mum- bled out with an inimitable brogue, "There you are- gabble, gabble, gabble, and common-sensey maun sit a hin the door !"
These traditionary anecdotes are doubtless exaggera- tions, nevertheless it is true that our fathers in their sojourn in Ireland developed an unusual readiness and pun- gency of wit, and imbibed a love of fun and frolic which greatly mellowed the austerity of their original Scotch characters. But all this was superficial. Beneath lay the substance of a generous, comprehensive, thoughtful nature, which has given evidence of its power in each generation of their children, in the field, the pulpit, and the councils of the nation.
The family names of old Londonderry were household
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words to me in boyhood, and if to-day I had met one of you alone upon the road, I am not sure I should not have asked how Aleck was getting on with the wound received at Bennington, and if Molly had worked up all her flax for the fair.
But the good old times have passed, and they who made their memory precious have gone with them. Only their graves on yonder hill are with us to-day. Nay, their words, their deeds, and the sanctity of their lives are here, and it may be that their spirits in the still air above us are listening to our words of homage, and feel the throb of our yearning love. Let us emulate and transmit their virtues, that the children in all their generations may be worthy of their fathers.
[At the conclusion of Senator Patterson's remarks, an intermission for dinner took place.]
Dag iy Whipple & Black
2 by J C. Buttre NY.
J. H. Taylor
SAMUR. H. TAYLOR. LL D W/A 347 4 MINUTY ATALEMY AND THE MASS
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ADDRESS.
BY SAMUEL H. TAYLOR, LL. D.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :
It was said of old, " Who can follow the king ?" But I may justly ask, Who can follow two kings* and the en- enchanting music to which we have just listened ?
One of the most valuable lessons which we are to learn to-day is to refresh our memories with the character of the early settlers of this town, and the influences which led them to leave their distant home beyond the broad Atlan- tic, to meet the hardships and privations of a long voyage, and to fix their dwelling in this uncultivated and trackless spot. It is this, more than any other truth, that we need to learn on this anniversary.
Nearly every nation, both in ancient and modern times, has established colonies or settlements in other lands. The Phonicians had their colonies, the Greeks theirs, the Romans theirs ; so, too, the Dutch, the Spanish, the French, the English. Most of these colonies were founded to im- prove the material condition of the people at home, or of the colonists themselves. Sometimes the end in view was to draw off the over-crowded population at home ; some- times to strengthen and protect the government, or to ex- tend dominion, or because of the barrenness of the mother country ; sometimes it was to place beyond the power of doing harm the restless and turbulent leaders and factions at home ; or it was for commercial enterprise ; or to gather gold from the rich mines of the country. Others still formed colonies remote from home to escape the oppres-
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