USA > New Hampshire > Carroll County > Tamworth > The Tamworth narrative (New Hampshire) > Part 23
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26
The town's obligation being to supply men for the Army, one man at a time, the question of raising another man was often foremost at the early town meetings. A bounty had to be found for the man "hired," and the financing could get very involved. The selectmen might have to advance the bounty, and after the war be in a long and complicated cor- respondence to recover the amounts. By 1780 a committee
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was being appointed to arrange regularly for the hiring of three men, and to assess taxes for the purpose.
The two Stevens men died in service, as also both Heads, their names now extinct in Tamworth. Elkanah Danforth was the son of a selectman and some say he was the first to enlist, September 18, 1775. He apparently lived to come home. Moses Head, thirty-seven and the eldest of all, may have had the honor of being first. He was a high character who said to the enlisting officer: "I go to die for my country" and did die the same year, leaving wife and children. A man who would die a hard death for his country when it had been but a year in existence was a remarkable patriot. Of this man's descendants was the "Aunt Head" notable in the lore of Chocorua. Of Colonel David Gilman, the six-and-a-half- foot Revolutionary officer whom Washington presented with his own sword (page 179) there is no actual record that he originated in Tamworth. Presumably established here after the War, he promptly became one of the young town's ablest citizens and remained its living link with the War of Inde- pendence. It is this man's house that is still standing by But- ler's Bridge.
The informality of that first war is beyond imagining by those who have seen the intensive organization of twentieth- century armies and wars. A man would join by merely walking from his remote home to where he had heard there was fight- ing, having only the clothes he stood up in, and "the old hereditary firelock, which snapped six times and went off once." With the other recruits when he had found them, he would crouch behind stone walls and fire, and when the immediate occasion seemed to be over, would unceremoniously leave for home to get his hay in.
Gradually, however, as the war wore on, some organi- zation crept into it. The newly made Congress, trying to cope with action on a federal scale, passed a few laws regulating what phases they could. Not only had they no traditions in general war legislation, they were not in any sort of adequate
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touch with the matters they were trying to legislate about, communications between Congress and the forces in the field being ludicrously inadequate or nonexistent. It is more heart- breaking than strange that the hardships of the Revolutionary War reached the shocking point they did.
The First New Hampshire Regiment was naturally raised in the southern part of the state where prospering towns had existed for fifty years. These recruits had fought before in the French and Indian Wars, and news of Lexington and Bunker Hill was enough to start a flow of enlistment. A con- vention of town delegates was called at Exeter (April 21, '75) "to assist our suffering brethren in the Province of Massa- chusetts Bay. It is recommended to the towns in this colony to supply the men gone from it with provisions and other necessaries, and from the spirit of the people you may expect their aid, should the emergency require it." Colonel John Stark, its first working commander, received "beating orders" and soon enlisted eight hundred men "from the top of the drum" which made up the largest regiment in the whole Federal Army. Stark was the picturesque figure always able to excite his soldiers to heroism though not always in favor with the authorities.
The regiment began with Bunker Hill, was later under Washington in all the campaigns, beginning when he took command of the Continental Army under the famous elm at Cambridge - "a motley crowd, clad in every variety of rustic attire, armed with trusty [more or less] muskets and rifles, but destitute of everything else that belongs to a soldier's outfit." At the Siege of Boston, New Hampshire had twelve hundred men, even though this Province was by no means yet for breaking all ties with the mother country. Independ- ence was a possible last resort only; the fighting was to right some obvious temporary wrongs. At the famous crossing of the Delaware, the New England troops were directly under General Washington and apparently were the only ones who really got across. New Hampshire itself ultimately had three
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regiments. They "did most of the fighting," says Joel Kidder's history, though it might be more becoming not to claim so much. In the Union every state had seen actual invasion save New Hampshire.
At first every soldier had to provide his own clothes or buy them from the Army. Later he was supposed to be fur- nished by the Government.
Resolved, that all non commissioned officers and soldiers who are, or may hereafter be enlisted during the war, be annually furnished with: 1 regimental coat full made; one pair cloth breeches; one cloth vest; one pair woolen overalls; two pairs woolen hose; two pairs woolen socks; one felt hat or leathern cap; four shirts; two pairs linen overalls; four pairs strong shoes; one blanket; one rifle shirt; one pair woolen gloves; two pair shoe buckles and one clasp, for stock every two years. ... Taking care to have the clothing equally and impartially distributed, when it is found incom- petent for the whole army.
Congress had good intentions but "found incompetent for the whole army" became the rule, not the exception. A letter of General Stark: "Indeed I am obliged to detain the six months men to do the necessary camp duty on account of the nakedness of the Continental troops [December 12] only thirty six 'three-years-and-during-the-war men' are fit for duty in the two regiments. The remainder are so naked that they cannot procure fuel for their own use." Testimony of this kind is frequent in the records.
The willingness of the fighters in the first of America's wars, before enough tradition had accumulated to supply overwhelming pressure, and in spite of the hardest usage at the hands of their own providers, is something that we spoiled moderns who think of comfort as an inalienable right can only regard with awe. Though it was fear for their people and property, and not political theory that took them over the hills to help stop the Redcoats from the north, Tamworth may be proud to have contributed a handful of the men who
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thus acted on behalf of the young nation's independence. It is regrettable that so little is now known of each man's personal case.
Between the wars the State Militia was a great institu- tion, with regiments composed of all arms - artillery, cavalry (or troop), infantry, and rifle - and uniforms vying in color and swagger with any in history. Muster day was a festivity for the entire countryside; people crowded the roads to see the sham battle and make free with the rum and cider. The days of the old Militia were affectionately recalled by all the fathers of today's old men.
By the time the Civil War burst into flame, Tamworth had grown into a prosperous, churchly agricultural commu- nity with a full life. The town at once voted ten thousand dollars to assume its state and government bounties to soldiers.
On the rosters of New Hampshire regiments of the Civil War, there were something over a hundred Tamworth en- listments first and last, though there are only a few on the monument; and official lists do not agree in this war either, as to all the names. There seem to have been eighteen New Hampshire infantry regiments alone. Some of these saw more fighting than others. Men died in action, died of wounds, and especially died of disease. One regiment that was never in any engagement lost one-fifth of its men by disease. Of the total of thirty thousand from New Hampshire, less than half returned. When one succeeded in getting home again, he was likely to be in unfit condition for living out his life, as in the case of a man in the Chesley family of Tamworth who arrived home almost starved with a festering bullet in his face, and died soon after. This man had been captured at Spot- sylvania and had had nothing to eat - reported missing.
Charles Smart's mother who was Helen Folsom left a little written account from the Civil War period, of how she had watched William Buttles and James Johnson standing in the road at the South Tamworth Post Office waiting for
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the stage to take them to the front. With them stood their wives who were sisters, never to see their husbands again. Mrs. Frank Whiting's father was one who was invalided out, but pulled through and lived; he would never speak about the war, never even asked for a pension. The mother of Sarah Frances Kimball was the first telegraph operator. The little girl remembered people crowded into the telegraph office, all weeping at the news coming in of the very many deaths. Mrs. Kimball said that one regiment with Tamworth men was almost wiped out in one of the big battles. "The town has never got over it."
There is plenty of testimony to the grim valor of our rugged home manpower in the desperate circumstances of the Civil War. Most of the regiments were Infantry, but the Sharpshooters with whom were two Sanborns, a Wiggin, a Berry, a Blake, and a Moulton, all from Tamworth, "partici- pated in more battles and skirmishes than the average of regi- ments and probably killed more rebels than the same number of troops in any other arm of the service."
Of the First World War, records are sparse. Our share was this time not so long-drawn-out, the fighting was not here at home, and it has not receded far enough into history to have become matter for consolidating research. In the years 1917 and '18 intercommunication between all corners of Tamworth was even yet not as today, but many remember the home activities for Red Cross, Belgian and French Relief, and the like. As an instance, in Wonalancet Mrs. Walden stripped her dining room, summoned workers from far and near, and the community shipped an amount of surgical dress- ings and clothing out of all proportion to its size. A decoration came to her from the French Government. The sock knitting, the packing, the sewing-machine treadle, the bales of gauze, the collection of used clothing, the war gardens, creating the major occupations of the time at home are all vivid to the women who lived them through. There were 650,000 Ameri-
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can soldiers in France by May 24; by June 22 there were 900,000, and this was "the war to end wars."
Tamworth had two officers, Captain Carroll Potter and First Lieutenant Edward V. McKey Jr., from Wonalancet. Elden W. Drew died in the war, and Ellis Sanborn of illness in camp. The following are the names on the stone war monu- ment :
Edson L. Alley
Harold D. Griffith
Chas. B. Bickford
Chester J. Bickford
Lawrence D. Hayford Henry A. Hutchins Hi Mason
Chas. A. Blaisdell
August L. Blodgett
Elmer P. Moody
*Edw. V. Bookholtzį
Norman G. Nickerson
*Wm. F. Brennan
Carroll Potter
Andrew O. Buxton * John Clough
Levi W. Remick
Elmer R. Robertson
Elmer E. Downs
Herbert H. Ross
Harold E. Gilman
Wilbur J. Gilman
Harold B. Trask
Harold M. Gray
*Ellis R. Sanborn 1
By the Second World War the back country was ex- perienced in radio listening and newspaper reading. Com- munications with the boys in service stepped up for every family the sense of belonging. There were 127 war personnel from Tamworth in all theatres of the war, and the home town vibrated with the struggle. The facts may be read in the booklet Tamworth in World War II put out by the Tamworth Woman's Club, with photographs of all service men and women, and full statements regarding bond drives, first aid courses, motor corps, air raid organization, observation posts, Red Cross production, nurses' aides, and the rest of the home effort to share the burden. It would be duplication to repeat this material here.
# This is in error on the monument. Edward Bookholz survives.
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It should be re-emphasized for posterity, however, with- out false modesty, that this small town achieved a record in the war bond drives. There were eight drives. In three Tam- worth was the first town in the state to reach its quota, and in one, New Hampshire's Tamworth was first in the entire country. It was given high quotas because of the alacrity with which it met them. The final total of $313,305 was nearly twice the combined quotas. The adult population was about seven hundred, and these seven hundred were not rich. The chairman Wilbur Goodson in his final report stated, "It is safe to say that there is no single community in the country with a war bond record equal to Tamworth's record."
Further, any history of Tamworth would be inadequate which did not acknowledge a special dignity conferred upon the town in the Second World War. Mr. and Mrs. Albert J. Fortier of Chocorua had six sons in the service. Recog- nition of this circumstance came to them when the Navy invited Mrs. Fortier to sponsor a submarine, the U.S.S. "Bat- fish," at its launching at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, April 5, 1943. This was done to the accompaniment of a ceremony with many guests, the presentation of a silver bowl and a luncheon in honor of the sponsor. Two of her sons were sta- tioned near enough to be released by their commanding officers for the occasion. A coincidence was that the "Batfish" sub- sequently sank three enemy submarines off the Philippine coast, reaching the highest record of any of the 104 Ports- mouth-built submarines in the war.
Vice-Admiral Walden Ainsworth throughout his Navy career always had registered from Wonalancet. He was not widely known as belonging here until he retired after the last war to the property he had inherited from his uncle, Arthur Walden. No layman can write adequately of war achieve- ments. But the events constituting the Battles of the Kula Gulf were tremendous by any standard. Admiral Ainsworth was commanding a task force in the Pacific at the time the Japanese had been making their spectacular island-conquer-
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ing campaign southward. He had taken seven cruisers for a night bombardment in the New Georgia island group, after which he was heading for base to replenish. A wire was handed him that the "Tokyo Express" was "running," his division was to reverse at once and intercept. Reversing, with twenty- four minutes of fuel left to be spared, his flagship received word to give battle. The superior Japanese force was sur- prised and annihilated in flames. In the melee the bow of our cruiser "Helena" was shot off. While collecting her survivors, the rescuing U. S. destroyers were attacked three times, but seven hundred "Helena" men were picked up and eighty-five more next day, the rest eventually found by a rescue fleet on an island.
The task force, all but out of both fuel and ammunition, had started again for base, when another enemy fleet was con- tacted and reverse again ordered. All available destroyers were put at the Admiral's disposal, with which he engaged the Japanese fleet in a great night battle, with terrible penal- ties to his own force. But the Japanese were put out of action, and their triumphant course turned back. These two Battles of Kula Gulf were the crisis of the Pacific campaign and won for Admiral Ainsworth the Navy Cross. For the entire Solo- mon Islands campaign he also received the Distinguished Service Medal.
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Business Adventure, with Philanthropic Overtones
White Mountain Camps
Wonalancet Farm had flourished for some years when the farm known as Nat Berry's on the Fowlers Mills Road began to board "rusticating" schoolteachers. Out of this grew a remarkable institution which attracted its hundreds of people for some thirty-odd years.
Among first visitors to enjoy Nat Berry's were two teach- ers from the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Philadelphia, Dr. and Mrs. S. G. Davidson. Similarly handicapped them- selves, they had thought of having a camp for deaf boys, and decided that this was the ideal spot for such a venture. They pitched tents in the field behind the Berry house, and called it Camp Chocorua.
The camp soon crowded the boardinghouse. The David- sons then leased the Gardner farm (now Miss Waymouth's) at the top of what was known as Kill Kritter Hill, and built their camphouse down in the field below. Each day the boys walked three miles over to Chocorua Lake or down to the Evans milldam for a swim. All climbed the mountains, with a blanket roll strung around the neck, and a tin cup and plate tied on where they would make the most clatter. The camp idea was young and there were few precedents. After a time, "hearing boys" were mingled with the others to make a more normal group.
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As the camp grew in size, parents wished for a vacation place where they would be near their children but without responsibility for them, and the Adult Camp was born. The Gilman farm and one adjoining it were bought, and the move was made to the permanent location, entering from the upper road from Tamworth to Wonalancet. A girl's building was added to the others, and finally a children's building, and the name of the whole aggregation was changed to White Moun- tain Camps. As adults had cottages, the place grew to eleven buildings.
Though open to all faiths, the organization became affili- ated with the then new Christian Science movement; there was a little church in Tamworth village with a very rustic interior made out of Cole's blacksmith shop by the river; it later burned. Here were the Sunday meetings. After fourteen years Dr. Davidson moved his school up from Philadelphia and remained here the year through, still operating his three or four kinds of camp in summer. Along with these was now the camp's own farm, including cattle, work horses, and saddle horses. When the farm activities grew distracting to the nearby Boys' Camp, the Brett farm (formerly the Poor Farm) was added to the investment and Perley Grace installed as farm manager. Still another farm, the Gardner farm origi- nally leased, was taken for adults with small children. It was a boom period for help secured from all the roads around. Ed Currier brought everybody from the depot by stage, at first by team, later by Model T, and then in a converted Pierce Arrow which was the wonder of all who rode in it. The hun- dreds of trunks came in four-horse teams driven by probably the strongest man in town, Ansel Cummings. Roy Arling bought a fleet of Fords and Hudsons, and these were on the go night and day, taking parties on picnics and "around the mountains." Annie Jackson close at hand did all the chil- dren's laundry for years upon end, and "how she kept every- thing separated and returned so clean was a marvel."
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White Mountain Camps was the first extensive camp undertaking in this part of the world. Water sports had not yet come to be a requirement for juvenile camps. It had the distinction of being an innovation, and was the most pros- perous business in Tamworth. The Adult Camp alone had the turnover of an inn, the children's camps were always full, and happiness greatly lessened the problems of the deaf.
Various adverse factors then entered the situation: the rise of the family car as agent for vacations, which in the end revolutionized summer recreation; the developing imperative of a lake as a main feature of camps; and above all, the De- pression. The Davidsons, skilled educators to start with, had not been afraid to pioneer in a new field. Their handicap retarded them not at all. They believed and demonstrated constantly that the healthy well-fed outdoor life is in itself therapeutic.
Dr. Davidson published and edited a magazine The Edu- cator, devoted to questions of pedagogy for the deaf, in which many ideas now current were brought out for the first time. The articles are for the most part as valuable today as in the nineties when they were published. When he died he was accounted as having invented the modern technique of con- necting the deaf with language. The families of those who benefited are not slow to give him grateful credit.
The Barnstormers
Classified as a business though in the sphere of the arts is the Barnstormers Theatre, oldest summer theatre in New England, and these many years consistently aiming at highest quality in production. Francis Grover Cleveland's interest in theatre has been lifelong. In 1931 with Edward Goodnow as director, he formed a company called The Stagers. For two winters they took The Peabody Playhouse in Boston. They then added a summer tour with Tamworth as headquarters. For one or two nights a week they played in the building
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known as the Tamworth Gardens back of the Town House. The other nights the company "barnstormed" in a circuit including the Conways, Poland Springs and Harrison in Maine, Sugar Hill, Laconia, Wolfeboro, and Rockywold Camp. "The Barnstormers" became inevitable as their name. To rehearse all morning, drive a long distance with scenery and costumes, and play in the evening, getting back in some of the smallest hours, was the gruelling program every day, faithfully carried out until the Second World War cut it short. In 1942 for four years the effort was suspended.
It did not die: in '46 the enterprise came back to life with a season of two plays only. In '35 the Clevelands had bought the old store building of Cook and Kimball tradition at the heart of Tamworth and remodeled it as an informal theatre seating three hundred people. This has a certain dis- tinction in its simple architecture. Save for one year, a full season of eight weeks has been played here ever since by a stock company under Francis Cleveland's direction. Some- thing like 160 plays have been produced here, mainly Broad- way successes, some repeated more than once. By avoiding the star system, believed prejudicial to genuine artistic value in "summer stock," the standard of performance has been kept high. The company has included several actors of notable ability. Some have gone on to wider fame. A certain per- centage of the group must always be members of Actors' Equity, nationwide union of these artists, which specifies a minimum salary; this includes the stage manager. Every program must be sent to Equity headquarters, represented by a member in every cast. Locally procured talent may fill executive positions and some minor roles. But scenery has become a subtle and complicated art, and a specialist has always been necessary for this.
A very unusual combination of circumstances created the Barnstormers. To command respect among professionals in theatre business, and to attract best-grade talent, it must be a commercial enterprise like another. But to attain great
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box-office success, the theatre business has traditionally had to dispense with certain strictnesses. Neither Francis Cleve- land nor Tamworth would be interested in entertainment with lowered standards. The Barnstormers is therefore a luxury which it has taken some subsidizing to carry on. The public which has enjoyed the charming results year after year owes a long debt to the Cleveland family. Art is rarely its own complete reward.
The Carroll County Timber Cooperative
Another Tamworth-operated nonprofit business was the Carroll County Timber Cooperative, Inc. Though it lived but five years, it may be said to have established in this part of New Hampshire the principle of selective cutting of timber tracts for sustained yield, now adopted by nearly all timber owners or timber management organizations. This change- over was slow in coming, the American tradition having been to mine without thought of the future all natural resources including forests. It had become plain that the end of profit- able timber was in sight unless conservation could enter the public consciousness.
A county forester had been set up not long before 1940. He believed as did the theorists that owners could be given as good stumpage return by operating on a selective basis as by cutting clear with attendant waste and impoverishment of land for the future, the difference being between a crop every twenty years as against one every seventy-five or a hundred years. The economy was obvious: cutting only the larger trees meant fewer trees and less limbing per thousand feet, making logs which would then travel faster through the sawmill - about fifteen logs to produce the same footage as perhaps fifty by the old method.
The Timber Cooperative was one of two sparked by a meeting called by the Society for Protection of New Hamp- shire Forests. The second was in Coos County. Richard Read
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of Wonalancet did the first missionary work in this county, became promoter and manager of the effort, and saw it re- lentlessly through to its conclusion. His equal aids and con- stant co-contenders were first Whipple Farnum until he de- parted to the war, then Sydney Mather. Timber-owning charter members were twenty-two in number; at the end membership had risen to forty-five.
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