USA > New Hampshire > Carroll County > Tamworth > The Tamworth narrative (New Hampshire) > Part 17
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Blaisdell's guess as to twenty or thirty years for his iron- works was pretty close. It kept on a while after the ore in Ossipee Lake was exhausted. Probably some came from Six Mile Pond (Silver Lake) as well. Some ore was brought from Portland, and the products shipped back there for sale, espe- cially anchors. An account tells how oxen would drag two poles between wheels, with the big anchor lashed across them. Probably this did not pay very well, for the furnace went out of business in the early 1820's and then everything burned.
The end of its career in iron did not, however, end Cho- corua as a heavy industry center. Alongside the river in the same locality but on the other bank, a tannery sprang up and flourished for many years under Ben Goodwin who lived where the Chocorua View House is. He had a crew of fifteen or twenty men, and the first steam engine in these parts, which
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had a whistle so loud that it "scairt 'em," but the tannery put out three thousand sides of leather in the year 1874. At the tannery hemlock and spruce bark were ground up and put in pits of hot water. This was below Hayford's field where the black soil is now blackest. The hides having been de-haired by a lime process, were soaked in the liquor several days. James Welch describes the barking of the trees with a bark iron. You got a cord of bark from about two thousand feet of lum- ber, and it brought ten dollars a cord at the roadside. The peeled logs could be marketed, but often they were left to rot. Hides from oxen or cows were drawn from some distance in addition to those to be had roundabout, for this was cattle country. Farmers or shoemakers often tanned a hide or so for themselves too.
Another riverside industry was lye converted from the abundant wood ashes into potash and pearlash, now consid- ered a lost art. Who today understands the handling of vast amounts of ashes from forest-burning? But the pioneers boiled lye outdoors in those great iron kettles over brick bases, still to be seen here and there holding geraniums on the front lawn. Or the storekeeper would give good exchange for ashes, and do leaching and boiling on his premises in order to send potash away for cash. Only housewives continued to make pearlash to raise their cornbread instead of cream of tartar, as they surely made their lye for soap, and the indigo dye for their woven coverlets. A dye industry may have been also added to the minor Pittsburgh about the Iron Works.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher for her Vermont Tradition has done much research into the potash industry. A big elm tree transformed into five tons of wood, and then burned to ashes and the lye evaporated, would produce thirty-nine pounds of potash, she figures. This could be carried to market in a man's knapsack, or a couple of packhorses could take over the trails a load of potash worth fifty dollars in cash, ten times what the same weight in wheat would bring. Fifty dollars was a fortune for the period, and since it was a by-product of the
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necessary clearing for agriculture, it was "velvet." This bo- nanza lasted only for one generation. The development of the salt mines in Europe brought chemically produced potash into being and began the business of returning that element to the soil by way of fertilizer bags. It also provided England with the vast amounts of soap used by woolen mills, without their needing to import potash from the colonies.
Now all these businesses must have given off on the air of Chocorua a less agreeable fragrance than the pond lilies of its lake. The no less unpopular steam whistle helped the new city people investing in summer homes to deplore the presence of any industry at all. After the Chocorua Lake House, subse- quently Chocorua Inn, opened in 1866, Frank Bolles the nature writer headed the propaganda to change the name of the Iron Works, the meaning of which had lapsed. The village became Chocorua at about 1890.
But the Chocorua River supported mills in addition and they were slower to fold. Phin Tibbetts', later Alonzo Nick- erson's, was noted by the Granite State News in the summer of 1872 as having just put in a circular saw, "and [they] purpose to erect a new mill for manufacturing other wooden ware [besides the inevitable spools] during the present summer." The granite masonry of the dam still stands on the Hammond Trail Road. But the stream from the mill was the inlet to Chocorua Lake. Boards and sawdust floated down to stag- nate among the lilies and spoil the effect, until the Bowditch and Runnells point of view prevailed. Perhaps it was not too great a loss to industry when these later benefactors began their purchases to preserve landscape, with a farseeing eye to con- servation of the region's attractions.
Two mills using the dam at the village within its memory were Joshua Nickerson's up-and-down sawmill, later Dor- man's gristmill, nearest the bridge; slightly upstream from that, Metcalf, whose home was the present Blaisdell house, made spools from birch. In the same faded Granite News sheet from Wolfeborough in 1872 it is noted under Tamworth Iron
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Works that "Messrs. Varney, Metcalf & Co. have their spool manufactory in operation, running four complete set of spool machinery, and employing from fifteen to twenty hands. The works are driven by an engine of thirty-five horsepower. The Enterprise is in the hands of energetic men . . . and promises to be a complete success." When it burned it was bought and moved to Conway by the Kennetts, along with Metcalf himself and a number of other Iron Works figures. In Conway they said, "Now all we need is Elder Runnells."
Moore's Pond, so lonely and charming, was almost as busy a spot as the Iron Works in its day. It was first Joshua Elliot's Pond. Then one Blackburn who lived on the Vinton farm had a big mill there where all the women's spinning yarn was carded and rolled. Below Blackburn's was Elvia Moore's from whom came the Pond's final name. These men had the usual gristmill as well, and the usual cider mill. Cider was the universal year-round drink, probably safer than water with its attendant typhoid fever. The Cogswells made cider three times a year. David Hayford produced four hogsheads annually, four barrels to a hogshead. Let us hope he had a large family. The dam and electric power at Moore's Pond were put in much later by Mark Robertson & Piper, but this all washed out and took the highway bridge with it, and they failed. They had sold power to Chocorua, however, and shown the advantage of it. Harry Roberts, for example, had it put into his barn "when he was first married." (Not in his house, though there was where the bride was. )
An odd addition to the mill at the center was a winepress. Evidently the rich soil about the tannery was favorable to grapes. The waste was dumped into the river by the press, and in the hundred years that have followed the millions of grape seeds lodged in the banks have fathered a growth of grapevines that now run wild through field and forest, "acres and acres of them." Four or five bushels of grapes from a single tree are nothing uncommon, but it takes ladders and patience to get them.
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Down until the nineties there seems to have been practi- cally a single store at the Iron Works since the beginning, and that began as a hat factory (beaver hats is a guess) ; this was Daniel Hayford's. Zenas Blaisdell then had it and then True Perkins. This, the third True in his line (True was a grand- mother's surname) was one of those remarkable people who impress themselves beyond the rest of their times, those whom we call the salt of the earth. He was forty years justice of the peace, which meant holding court and making decisions, and he held all other possible offices, always with methodical accuracy and conscientiousness, and according to Larkin Ma- son was "the best selectman the town ever had." "His judg- ment was considered superior by his associates in all his various positions." Strongly religious from the age of thirteen on, he had a deeply sympathetic nature and was beloved by children and all his neighbors round.
True Perkins' store, headquarters for the work of his potent personality, passed successively to four or five others, including the Merrill brothers who enlarged it and added the manufacture of clothing. In the midst of their prosperity the Merrills listened to the call of the west and went to Iowa where Samuel Merrill became governor. It is interesting that he then sent for young Sumner Runnells to become his private secretary, a Chocorua boy who had graduated from Amherst, and whose father the Elder had traded at the Merrill store. There was a vigorous New Hampshire colony in Des Moines, and there young Runnells met his bride, daughter of ex-Gov- ernor Baker of New Hampshire who had gone to Iowa in the Civil War to be adjutant-general. Helen Baker became the mother of Alice Runnells James, the last of the Runnells name in Chocorua.
Samuel Merrill was the first postmaster in the village, appointed in 1847 and continuing probably about eight years. His successor for three or four years was James Howard the innkeeper on the hill, son or grandson of the original David. Otis Hatch, also postmaster for long, was the next Chocoruan
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who ran the True Perkins store, with James Emery, after which it was Otis Hatch's alone and then became "Moore's store" until its end; Fred Moore its impresario lived opposite. The store was in the house with the double porch on the front, now the home of Dr. Harry Hammond. Fred had a couple of church pews on the porch of the store, where the men smoked and swapped yarns. In later days the universal "sale- work" for women was handled from the upper story.
The store that has reached this present day as the Cross- road Store is recent, supplanting Kennison's blacksmith shop, and it has also had a succession of owners. Recent also is Eulalie Pascoe's store across from it, inherited from her father William, and another that "Quin" Perkins had.
Of all these there survives one of the account-books, the daybook of the Merrill brothers, an education to researchers in showing how the bartering was done and what the values were in the 1840's. The long narrow ledger is meticulously kept, every detail of every transaction with every customer in a fair regular hand:
Widow D Head Dr.
to 12 yds Calico 9c if cash 8 1/3c $1.08 paid
John Pollard Dr.
to 1/4 lb Tobacco .06
6 sticks candy .06 on bill
2 sticks candy .02
.14
John Pollard also acquired snuff and "segars" for five cents, and items such as "Twist 6¢, 7 buttons 5¢, 3 yds edging 4¢, 3 yds. Krenilin 1/6 .75," bespeaking the ever-expensive womenfolk. Credit items in exchange for these luxuries show how the business was handled.
By 6 doz. eggs 9¢ .54,
By 1 Calf Skin going on sale 71/4 lbs. By 16 Biscuit left by Boy.
Very soon it became more convenient to give each cus- tomer whole debit and credit pages opposite each other. Bal-
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ancing the nails, the pr Mitts, the coffee, the Powder and shot debited on the left page is, on the right, Rent of Store (at a dollar a month), 1/2lb. rosin (one Merrill a fiddler!), Horse to Freedom [next town] .50, and Pain Killer furnished to the Merrills by Zenas Blaisdell. Various teamsters were paid in goods for "hauling to [or from] Portland." James Howard had a long credit account for Boots & Shoes. Besides the Post Office he had his inn up on the coach route to Conway where the Carpenters in summer show the inn sign over their mantel. He had shoemaking evidently as his main occupation.
The only women to have an account at Merrills' store were Miss Olive Briar and Mrs. Abigail Edgerly. Arthur W. Calhoun in his Social History of the American Family says that "the rage for dress amongst women in America in the very height of the miseries of war [Revolutionary], was beyond all bounds; nor was it confined to the great towns, it prevailed equally on the sea-coast, and in the woods and solitudes of the vast extent of country from Florida to New Hampshire." The woods and solitudes about Tamworth must have been immune, for we look in vain for any extravagance reflected in the store ledgers turned up in these researches. Olive Briar bought all the family supplies as well as her calico and hand- kerchiefs, and she brought eggs and beeswax and apples as part payment.
Moses Cross was one of the largest consumers, the same Moses who was read out of the church as will be seen.
Individual farmers who kept daybooks would go into more complicated transactions; these are typical entries from such ledgers: "I took 4 bushells of my Rie to Nath'l Holt for the 4 bushels I borrowed from John McIntosh the 24th of last June to pay for a bushell of salt he had from Holt this faul or winter"; "I got a Meat Barrel from Isaac Atwood to- ward which I took three Bushell of Turnips and the Remainder of the price is to be paid in Turnips"; "I paid Mrs. Chandler a pound of coffee I borrowed from her a fortnight or three
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LUCY BOWDITCH (BALCH) and guest. Early summer people recall how they were very wild when young, caring nothing for appearance.
CHARLES P. BOWDITCH with his father, his aunt, and cousin CAROLINE DIXWELL at the Brown Study which he and his wife built to escape their noisy children Cora, Katy, Lucy, and Ingersoll. About 1880.
HULDAH STAPLES RUNNELLS
"Aunt Huldy," wife of Elder Runnells, beloved in Chocorua. "Never knew hairpin or corset."
Chocorua
weeks ago and I borrowed the full of our Shugar dish of Shugar from her."
In village memories Elder Runnells is a name synony- mous with combined strength and gentleness of character. As Parson Hidden's long career in ardent leadership was com- ing to its end up on the Stevenson Hill road, young Runnells at Tamworth Iron Works was seizing the torch in turn, if torch could signify the weapon of the kindly blue-eyed soul whose portrait in his white chin-fringe still hangs on the wall of the Chocorua church. It has not hung there unchallenged, it seems. Persons unnamed once climbed in the window and abstracted the likeness of the celebrated Elder, which is an enlarged tinted photograph in the best tradition of the eighties and never fails to startle newcomers for its dominating pres- ence in a church. But public wrath recaptured and rehung the irreplaceable effigy. Long may this museum piece be pre- served; we shall not see its like again.
As far back as 1781 Baptist services were organized at the Iron Works, apparently by "Aunt Head" in the hermitage where she lived alone after all her family died (or in James Head's barn, now on the Theodore Brown place), before the Congregational enterprise over in Tamworth village had got further than copious debate. Benjamin Randall, founder of the "freewill Baptist" sect, himself is said to have come and established "a branch of the true vine" when the wilderness was still hardly inhabited. But the branch supported a group of eight stout members and James Head as the one ordained deacon. (And the branch had a beautiful lake handy for necessary immersions.) Aunt Head would cook and bake a great meal for the faithful when they met for prayer; she was not only doctor, nurse and midwife, but a rousing preacher whose voice when lifted to heaven, it is said, could be heard a half mile away. Called to a patient eighteen miles distant on the other side of the mountain, she went until she dropped, then prayed on her knees as a rest until she could resume her
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snowshoes. But the patient lived. Another story, quoted by Cornelius Weygandt, is that she was carried in a basket by two men through snow so deep and soft that they could do only a few rods at a time before putting her down, she praying and exhorting the while until they got her to her destination where she successfully brought a child into the white-covered world. That snow often meant heroism in those times should be understood. Moderns like to believe that any stories of snow that differ from today must be old wives' tales, but every elder citizen interviewed in the course of this compilation has testified to the diminishing snows in these present times of lowered standards generally. They sledded as boys from the home chimney down to the ground. Two feet of snow was usual by Thanksgiving and fencetops were covered all winter. In Birch Intervale a man called out for a distant point at night walked for hours in a blinding and freezing blizzard, and when almost giving up he saw at last a light, it was from his own front door.
Sacrifices like Aunt Head's could hardly have been habit- ual without a blazing emotional base to fire them. Just as flowing tears bound the Congregationalists together, fiery fanaticism brought the Baptists to monthly conferences where their life centered, and where self-exhortations and self-justifi- cations were given free rein. The organization took into its hands the moral discipline of the members. In 1852: "Voted that we have a vigilent committee whose duty it shall be to visit delinquent members." The efforts of the committee do not seem to have brought peace. Next year this committee was discharged from further services and another vigilant com- mittee "raised" in its place. Again, "Voted to withdraw fel- lowship from Jonathan Perkins," no reason given, and next day, "Voted to drop his name from the Church Records." "Voted that in the opinion of this Conference Brother Moses Cross done wrong in refusing to renew a note to Mr. John M. Stevenson . .. and that he be requested to make an acknowl- edgment to Mr. Stevenson." Why, Moses Cross had been
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clerk of the church! "The trial against Br. Moses having come up in order, and he having failed to comply with the requirement of the church, voted to withdraw fellowship from him." Brother Saul Blackey met the same fate.
An early Freewill preacher without education could have great power over his hearers, and evangelists of mighty in- fluence could arise from the backwoods farms about Chocorua Lake. Under such a man Baptist branches would flash into life in other parts of town, Birch Intervale, South Tamworth, Fowlers Mills, Great Hill, to die after a few years when his personal effect had evaporated, without his having made a stable group or built a building.
The brethren at the Iron Works, however, did eventually form themselves into a Society of 155 members under Elder Emery in 1835, with a committee which included a Blaisdell and a Head to draft a constitution (James Blaisdell seems to have given land for a church), and shortly thereafter Nathaniel Berry and Daniel Brier were ordained deacons in a ceremony nearly as momentous as that for a minister. Elder Emery is now regarded as the church's real builder. It originally had pews facing the doors, hard on late-comers with a hopeful eye to a back seat.
Usually the pastorates were of short duration, but Elder Charles Gordon Ames's in 1850 nevertheless was notable. "In our simplicity of living," he writes (only six chairs in his house and no teacups), "and our thorough use of a few books and our opportunity to serve the highest welfare of a willing people, our life was more than glad, in spite of all our narrow theories." This elder, twenty-one years old, who had brought his bride to the Albert Drew house, now Mr. Thaddeus Rich's, had to leave because of illness, but he lived to change over to Uni- tarianism, and was long the well-known minister of the Church of the Disciples in Boston. He returned to this region later to a summer home high above South Tamworth, after- ward bought by Mr. A. Farwell Bemis whose family have been based there and done it much honor ever since.
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The great name in Chocorua is, however, Elder John Runnells. His granddaughter Alice James has supplied potent details in the portrait of the beloved pastor who changed the moral aspect of the town in the course of a generation of service to it. It is not the material growth, the building of a parsonage, the entire rebuilding of the meetinghouse when it became out of date in 1884 (for which a summer resident Miss Mary J. Thayer gave one thousand dollars, whereupon the church incorporated to receive it), nor yet 965 funerals or 227 marriages, which represent the affection the town felt for him, but the story of how Elder Runnells fitted its needs and evoked its response by mere brotherly love and selfless concern. The old custom of giving much time to matters of discipline gradually relaxed under him. He was "not a geyser type" indeed, but an understanding friend to all men and a worker by slow degrees. He grudged absence even while chaplain for a season at the General Court. His pay on being accepted for his church was $195 a year. Some while later he was offered one thousand dollars as salary in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and prayed to be delivered from the tempta- tion. He suffered all his life from migraine headaches, which is enough adversity for the hardiest Christian. "Such a rain, I went to Effingham Falls to preach an installation sermon for Dr. Mott," he says in a diary-and how many hours each way did that mean, at horse and buggy pace, in a down- pour? Once driving along the road he was stopped by a farmer who handed him a five-dollar bill, saying , "That's for minding your own business." In this singular talent, he was no doubt an innovator. For the minister not to interfere in the private affairs of parishioners was scarcely imagined be- fore him.
He had a remarkable grandfather himself. Ralph Farn- ham was at Bunker Hill and at Burgoyne's surrender, and when 104 years old was introduced in Boston as the last sur- vivor of the Revolution, at a celebration in honor of the Prince of Wales whose hand the ancient was permitted to grasp in
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token of forgiveness. A concert was given in Tremont Temple for his benefit. Elder Runnells' wife was Huldah Staples from Maine, known to the Iron Works as Aunt Huldy. Her ring- lets, her Sunday black silk gloves and velvet bonnet with small ostrich feathers nodding under the crown, her quiet dignity, and her gift of conversation are all vividly remembered by her grandchildren. They testify she "never knew hairpin or corset."
After the Runnells' time the parsonage was burned and the present one built on the site. The church was so flourish- ing under Elder Runnells that we are told there were prayer meetings twice a day, with lunches! Into the present century they held "Donations" at the meetinghouse with big crowds.
They put tables across the front pews and one in front of the platform, and fed everybody. Supper would be just oyster-stew and coffee and ice-cream and cake. You'd get a whole plate of cake for .25, where now you'd pay .75. Everybody would bring a wonderful cake in a box to donate and buy a different one to take home in the same box. If there'd be any cakes left, they'd be auctioned off. Those times are nice to look back on. They don't do things like that now.
This witness is not the only one who says, "Seems if folks had better times then than they do now, everybody knowing every- body else, and in and out, all one kind of people. Little parties back and forth evenings, every evening something, husking- bees and apple-bees and all like that."
These friendly friends had a club besides. Its little leather-backed book, with many pages still to go, was found by Guy Nickerson in a partition in the Otis Hatch house when he was remodeling for the Atwoods. First named The Benevolent Association (alse how could any club in 1859 be respectable?) "to help all those whom we can reach by the hand of kindness, to strengthen each other in labors of love, and cultivate to better advantage the spirit of holy, active
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charity, we agree ... " etc. Persons of good moral character ("That strong preoccupation with morality which is the merit and danger of the Puritan character" Trevelyan says) could become members by signing the constitution and paying : "Ladies, .13, Gentlemen .25, girls .13 and by contributing at each meeting 1 ct whether present or absent." And-here was a departure !- both sexes were entitled to vote. "The invitation to join shall not be confined to the young only but all, both old and young, shall be cordially invited to unite with us in this noble enterprise."
The roster of gentlemen joining was longer than of ladies -it included Elder Runnells and his son Sumner, fifteen. Misses was longer than either. Mrs. Runnells was of course first president. A bisexual association must have been excite- ment in itself. One suspects that the invitation to gentlemen was mainly to charm the twenty-five cents out of them. For after organizing, the first move with forty present was to com- mence a quilt. Devotional exercises were a part of all meet- ings, and meetings were popular. There might be sixty present. The members "wrought" for anyone who would place an order and very soon they bought at the Merrill store a black silk dress and trimmings costing sixteen dollars, as a present for Mrs. Runnells, paying nearly half down. J. Sumner Runnells must have been at boarding school, for he sent sixty-five cents to cover membership and weekly contribution for the year. They sold their quilt for $2.50, making money fast, and promptly started something else. Then occurs a lapse for six years. On resuming, with but few members, they revised the constitution and began raising an organ fund. Another lapse for a few years and then the name becomes the Iron Works Social Circle, and its hour is advanced from six P. M. to seven; the religious exercises were now to be at the option of the president, the contribution raised from one cent to five. The club now flourished exceedingly, everyone who was anyone wished to join, including a few from over Tam- worth way, and no more mention of anything being wrought.
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