USA > New Hampshire > Carroll County > Tamworth > The Tamworth narrative (New Hampshire) > 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).
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
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Wentworth, the governor of the new province. They had all made money in trading with the Indians or in masting or in rum, and now they were prepared to make some in land. To- day they would have formed a corporation. Their idea was to lay out towns of six miles square as fast as possible - in four years there were 150 grants of towns -and let groups of men locally interested take over each unit as a body of sixty or more grantees, who in turn would find settlers in the interest of the Proprietors. Land speculation being the main object, many of the grantees reappear in several town charters.
Because the final conveyance of the Patent had "raised a ferment among the people," the Proprietors prudently quit- claimed at once to existing settlers the properties already taken up. At first a new and bona fide settler would receive his land free, with stipulations. In the division of a town into tracts each Proprietor and grantee received about three hun- dred acres for himself which he could dispose of as he liked. One lot in the town was reserved for a school, one for a min- ister, and one for a parsonage, besides the biggest and choicest one of five hundred acres for Governor Wentworth himself. In Tamworth on the earliest map, "B.W." is initialed on a large square in the southwest corner. Masts for the King's Navy were the principal wealth as yet believed in. This lot would be high on the Ossipee Mountain, where probably good pine had been spotted.
And since a man who pioneered into the wilderness usually hadn't a penny in his breeches, the Proprietors gave every settler the bonus of a cow to get him started. In return he promised hard work - so many acres felled, so many plowed and planted, and a house raised by a certain date. The Tamworth Charter in 1766 expressly states that every grantee shall plant five acres within five years for every fifty acres held, on penalty of forfeiture. Every man was further to get a one-acre lot in what was forecast as probably the future center of the town. And he was to pay rent of one ear of corn on Christmas Day annually for ten years (if de-
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The Road In
manded!), and thereafter one shilling "proclamation money" for every hundred acres owned.
When land was as cheap as this, it was no matter if surveys were careless. Buyers buying sight unseen might find their holdings undesirable, and move. Sometimes pioneers would take up land as squatters and be forced off when legi- timate owners appeared. Many were the deeds which were not clearly or even legally drawn, or not recorded, so the question of proper ownership was a minor delirium. This may explain why already in the eighteenth century there were abandoned cellar holes in Tamworth, and some land appar- ently belonged to no one.
After all, what attention is left for legal niceties where every family is alone in the little clearing, miles from any other, intent on its immediate necessities - getting the wheat and corn planted among the rocks, getting maple sugar out, getting fur to trade, getting berries and nuts and game, so there would be no need to boil the moccasins for soup while waiting for the wheat to ripen; all the while dealing with floods, blizzards, avalanches, famished bears, and howling wolves?
The houses these men raised might have been log-built at first, as an axe would be the only tool needed, but recent research has exploded the belief that they were lengthwise logs as in the early west. It is said now (Shurtleff and Mori- son: The Log-Cabin Myth) that the English had nothing of this form of construction - it was later brought by Swedish or Norwegian immigrants and flourished where they settled. In upper New Hampshire the earliest shelters seem to have had vertical poles bent to an arch at the top, as learned from the Indians, and been bark-covered. A three-sided pole shed was open on the south side as described in Seth Hubbell's diary. But frame houses were very soon built by the techniques and tools well known in England, sawmills on the ever-handy streams meeting the demand for "bords." Some houses were as high as a story-and-a-half. A few of these in Tamworth survive
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TAMWORTH
today, as the Fay house on the road to Chocorua, the Forrest Ayer house in Tamworth village, or the Johnson and Mather houses in Chocorua.
In some cases settlers were paid outright to go on the land. In Moultonborough £100 went to each of the first six settlers, and later £1000 was offered for anyone to build a sawmill and "keep her in repair." The Proprietors, being absentee owners sitting comfortably in older towns down coun- try, would turn a grant over to a committee of two or three who in turn would have a Proprietor's Clerk or agent in the field, usually someone early on the scene who knew the terri- tory well and was himself a settler. This was a cushy job during the sixties and seventies and on after the Revolution when settlers were coming thick and fast. The agent would put down his own name for any lots he thought especially good; when someone came along to buy one, he would get his pay from the Proprietors, and the settler would give his bond and get his deed after one year, or perhaps forfeit it by moving on. Orlando Weed held this agent's office for Sand- wich, before he moved over to Burton, and Colonel Jonathan Moulton's was the iron hand that controlled the Tamworth allotments from his mansion down in Hampton.
The Masonian Papers, meaning correspondence that went on between the Proprietors at Portsmouth and the men who were their agents here on the scene, and letters of pioneers themselves trying to write their grievances from their kitchen tables after a sixteen-hour day with grub hoe and crowbar, exist today in the fascinating bound volumes of the State Papers. The grievances were often very real. Can we not feel for "Mr. Rewbin Nichason" who "Desires the Favour of the Propretors that they Woud Consider him for the Lot of Land sold Richard Jackman on which the Said Nichason has Got a Framed House, Also a barn 30 by 40 . .. and the Said Jackman Takes into his Inclosir all the Buildings of the said Nichson, and Nichason has paid Taxes in Ossipee, as per rec't." (No upshot recorded. )
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Reuben was in Ossipee; Ossipee and Tamworth papers often overlapped. In November, 1776, the year when certain other things were also taking place in America, one Captain John Dudley in Ossipee, a land speculator, had been laying out a road which was to serve Tamworth as well, and one Henry Rust, the agent for Wolfeborough, had to report on it. He could not be enthusiastic. He writes: "Memo ... Capt. Dudley's Road the first half Mile or thereabout from Dun- cans or Bare Pond to be cut Straight, Wider & Stump lower The remainder of the Road to Lovel River will Answer for Wedth but, what Crosswayg & Bridging there is not quite Sufficient, some few Trees & some partly cut down to be clear'd Out - The Road in General is Straight & carried as Nigh Ossepe Mountain as possable to go to Tamworth being but just a Good Passable way between Sd Mountain & Bare Camp River - Henry Rust." Here making their first appear- ance in history we recognize the vague outlines of our Routes 16 and 25. The names of Duncan Pond (now Lake) in Ossipee and the Lovell River easily fix their identity. Until John Dudley's efforts this had been a horse-trail only, or for goaded oxen, doubtless the same as that which for centuries before had been known only to Indian moccasins. Where it carried "as Nigh Ossepe Mountain [Nickerson's Mountain on the Geological Quadrangle] as possable" it would be the old "mountain road" which joins the present highway again at the covered bridge, and continues as Route 25, still the main artery into present-day Tamworth by way of Butler's Bridge on Route 113. The covered bridge itself was not created until 1820, by which time it was necessary to connect our road with the extension to West Ossipee and points north. Up this route many a pioneer with a pack on his back had passed, coming into Tamworth over the ford near Butler's Bridge or at Bennett's Corner. If from the southwest, he would have used the rivers and lakes to get here by dugout and by canoe, as did LeGrand Cannon's Tamworth pioneer Whit Living- ston, in the novel Look to the Mountain.
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As to this John Dudley, he was a not too reliable worker, but he tried to please. The next year Henry Rust reports:
Gentlemen Agreeable to Your Desire I have again Servey'd Capt. Dudleys Road & find it much better than it was so that it may be call'd a passable Waggon Road except Bridg- ing over the Two largest Rivers Tho not compleated accord- ing to his Agreement with You for the Agreemt is that it shall be a Good & Compleat Waggon Road I have allso Seen Sd Road Measured begining at the Conway Road near Bear Pond to Beach River ... from thence to Lovel River ... which carried us near a small pond on the Easterly side of the Road whereabouts Capt Dudley thinks the Notherly side Line of the Township of Ossipe Crosses Sd Road tho we could not find it.
Dudley was often wrong, but his opinion about the line between Ossipee and Tamworth at that time is borne out by the 1775 survey map. The line today is farther north.
Two years later the same road is still not satisfactory, and forty-six Tamworth and Sandwich men, all now familiar names to us, such as Bryant, Tappan, Weed, Mason, Folsom, Beede, Meader, sign a complaint to the Proprietors.
A good & proper Waggon Road from Tamworth through your Land to Wolfborough is much wanted: the present Road for that Purpose made by Capt. Dudley & others, wanting great Repairs, & is in every Respect unfit for pass- ing with any kind of Carriages ... Two considerable Bridges on the same Road are of absolute Necessity ... the one ... over Lovels River & the other over Beach River; the want of which has put the Publick in this Quarter to great In- convenience in carrying on their Business.
The Lovell River bridge was finally achieved in the modern manner in 1950, and the Beach River bridge a couple of miles south at Center Ossipee, in 1932. If by 1779 " any kind of Carriages" were on the roads, of course the previous
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ox road could no longer be tolerated, as the motoring public today can no longer tolerate any mere carriage road.
Dudley was a very busy man; amassing property is hard work. One list of "Lotts" pitched by him describes ten dif- ferent ones for which "proper securities ... in three months" are promised to him, but signed by himself in some slight fog as to legality. Another list of forty-five lots, with names of claimants against many of them, shows the initials J. D. for nine, four hundred acres each. A while later he is reporting on what others have accomplished: "Labour don on Land in osepey gore by ... Setlers on the Lord Prirters Land and Examand by John Dudley ... upon Strict Exseminnation of the Land menshend above is now under improvement by the men menshend above which I am Rady to a test to the Best of my Knowledg."
Though John is like some modern school pupils in not remembering from one line to the next how he has spelled a word, he seizes quill pen undaunted whenever he wants to talk to the Proprietors, and does not bother to reread his letter to make sure it contains the essentials :
To Daniel Rogers Esq Sir I make free to Recomend to your Honer a Nabeor of mind for a setlor in the New Gar- den [Ossipee's early name] and I do the More freely Reco- mend him as I take him to be a Claver honest man and one that will be sarvesable to the Place on account of his trade as wall as a Good townsman and as he Hath a fancy for a settlment on the Lot No 4 I Desier that you wold Do him the favor to Lat him have it one Reson of my Riteing to your honor is becaus one of his Nabors is about to under- mind him after he hath Ben at Consadrable Troble abut it your honers Compliance will very Much ablidge your very humble sarvet John Dudley M: borough october ye 13 1777.
Failing to mention his "nabeor's" name or trade! We suspect the neighbor was one Adam Brown, who later gives Dudley a good deal of trouble, as the Papers show. John got
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him a lot he had practically promised him, and next is writ- ing:
To the Honrable Commity of Masons Pattan I have had a hint that one Mr. Brown is a Coming Down to Git Liberty of your Honours to build a Sowy mill and a Griss mill on Loat No 7 on Conway Road on a Smoll Brock but I think it will hurt your Intrest much and be of but Littel Profit to the Setlers but if he will agree to build them on Pine River at the Lore End of the town I think it will be much for your Intrest for thair is a Good Place for mills. . . . mr Parse minsters fogg of kinnitown Sun he is Seen your Loat no 16 and Concluds to bie it if he Can git Sum Good Parterner and no fear I told him the Prise is 20 Shilings pr accor. . . . gentlemen I Should be glad to build the Brige if wee Can agree by Reason I am in Sum Difikilty aboute Sum Land that I wanted of your Hounors . . . I Reamein your Neady frind and Humll Sarvt osepee Gore June ye 18th 1781 John Dudley
John, in deep as he is, probably had a lot on Pine River that he wanted to sell to Brown. But next year Brown is in favor again (John is now dictating to someone who can write ) :
The Case of Capt Brown. ... He at first ventured to lay out a large Interest ... without any Encouragement of the Proprietors, & what has been unfortunate for him he has not got upon the first Rate Land - however his Enterpris- ing Genius has overcome the many Obsticles in his Way - his Proficiency in Clearing Land has been great for the Time & his Buildings are large & commodious, & carried on through almost every Inconveniency - & he has ever through great Expence kept best Entertainment for Travel- lors - he still Labours under great Discouragements; the Low Circumstances of the Settlers round him often call for his Assistance which he readily affords he has Two Mills upon his own Bottom now in Building - & in short the Business he carries on there give Life & Spring to the Settle- ments of the Place & will still greatly tend to promote the
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Interest of the Propriety - & give me Leave Sir to add that his whole Conduct is worthy the Notice of the Propriety & any Favours they may shew him I humbly conceive woud be for the Interest of the Town .
In the process of giving life and spring to the settlements Brown is learning about real estate promotion from Dudley: "Capt Brown Desires that the proprietors would Impower him to Put Setlers upon the Five hundred Acre Lots that are not Already Disposed off." Sixty years later Adam Brown is still operating, now called Esquire. He is selling a hundred- acre lot in the southern section of Tamworth, "taken off" from Ossipee, for twenty dollars to Mark Pierce of Portsmouth, probably a son of Joshua Pierce, a Proprietor who was an un- tiring real estate trader himself.
Dudley sometimes writes his letters from Moultonborough and sometimes from Ossipee Gore, the gore being at that time the northerly part of Ossipee. He calls himself a husbandman, but he sounds too busy running around trading, laying out roads, building bridges, and helping raise houses to give much time to husbandry. One list of deeds that he signs names nine settlers, of which two are himself - easy, wasn't it ?: "I hereby ingage to have the above ment'd deeds on record in office with Thomas W. Waldron Esq. and produce in three months from the date his certificate thereof."
The Proprietors wearied of John Dudley. They finally sent him an ultimatum that he must show results on some of these lots they had awarded him. On Lot No. 10 on the Con- way Road he must build "an House on said Lots of Thirty feet Square or Equal thereto" and "a good Barn Twenty by Thirty feet and Set out Two hundred Apple Trees on said Lot and a Famely to Move on said Lot by the First Day of October Next Ensuing and to Reside on the Same for Five Years. ... " Further, that on "that hundred Acre Lot that he Chose out of Lot No. 19," he must "clear up and fit for Sowing" as many acres as were cleared on the other lot, and "raise a Substan- tial House Frame on said Lot Thirty feet by Sixteen feet,
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Also a Good Barn Frame Thirty Two feet by Twenty" and "Bring a sufficient Quantity of Bords to the Spot for Covering [and] Inclosing and Bring also for Building a Partition a Cross said House, by the 15th August Next Ensuing." Also "the Bords to be halled upon the Spot" by that date. John had his comeuppance in these exasperated instructions. Quite a job ahead of him - two houses and barns besides necessary clear- ing, all in a very short time. We do not know how he came out, but after a while he proudly wrote the Proprietors of what he had accomplished on still another lot, No. 41, and had three friends sign it:
This May Certify whome it May Consarne that Capt John Dudley of Ossipee goare has Erected a Comfortable Dwell- ing hous of Two goods Rums well Seeld of workmanlike - & has fitted 20 Acres fit for the ploy - Ten Acres of which Was plowed & put under improvement Last season with Indian Corn wheet & oates & Removd a famely on the premisses Last fall - the house is built of Good Hew'd timber - And it appears Verry likely a fine Settlement will bee Carried on there -we whose Names are Under written Attest to the same. Winthrop Smith John Sander- son Obadiah Dudy
Another set of friends testified similarly about John's mills.
We have taken time out to record these maneuvers of John Dudley not only because he is the father of Route 16, but because he exposes the wild real estate conditions inevitable in wild country. There are John Dudleys wherever pioneer land operations invite them, whether in New Hampshire forest wilderness, Yukon gold diggings, Virginia City, or today's uranium developments in Canada. The shrewd opportunist, educated or not, sights his chances and works several fields at once.
These events took place during six years. After 1782 John Dudley fades out of the Masonian Papers. He may have been too fast a worker even for his day. But he built the first road to Tamworth.
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The Road In
It was not long before it all changed. Like the forties and fifties of the twentieth century when the face of the world has altered so fast and so radically, the eighties and nineties of the eighteenth saw trails become dirt roads, clearings become farms with frame buildings, and mills, taverns, churches, schools, town meetings, and social living blossom out of isola- tion and hardship.
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Town Boundary Disputes
IN THE TAMWORTH TOWN HOUSE vault are some packets of tightly folded weekly newspapers tied up with hempen string, more primitive as string than any seen nowadays. These are copies of the New Hampshire Sun of Dover and the New Hampshire Gazette of Portsmouth. The first ones are dated at about when Tamworth was becoming conscious of itself as a corporate town and had a tax collector who advertised un- paid taxes as required by law. No hand had ever untied the string of the packet marked "1809 non-residence" until nearly a hundred and fifty years afterward.
It is illuminating to glance at what was going on in the outside world while within Tamworth's forest borders settlers were solely engaged in struggling with the woods, the rocks, the black flies, the wolves, and the risky crops that stood be- tween them and starvation.
The Sun and the Gazette were each four pages only, about half the width of a modern newspaper, printed on heavy handmade rag paper with rough edges (pulp as yet unknown), beautiful paper by today's craft standards. The very fine print larded with long s's is now browned by time, and of course there are no pictures. Foreign news had been brought by fast sailing packet from Liverpool and was only two months old. Napoleon was the hottest topic of the time. "Bonaparte Re- turning to France. On the 1st of October relays of horses were placed on the road from Vienna to Paris to convey the French Emperor home." "Napoleon has instituted a new Military Knighthood, to be called The Order of the Three Golden Fleeces. It will be composed of one Grand Master (himself ),
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Town Boundary Disputes
100 Grand Knights, 409 Commanders and 1000 Knights. With exceptions as respects himself, and some favorites, a condition of creation will be having received at least three wounds in battle."
Next to Napoleon in the Sun's columns, James Thomp- son of Farmington announces that "Whereas Molly, wife of the subscriber, has eloped from my bed and board and refuses to live with me - All persons are forbid harboring or trusting her on my account as I am determined not to pay any debts of her contracting after this date." Also, there is "300 Dollars Reward, Extremely interesting to the Public: The Patentee to those much celebrated Bilious Pills, called and known by the name of Dr. Lee's Bilious Pills is under the disagreable necessity of making known to the public that spurious Pills bearing his name are in circulation in the New England States."
Items exciting to the seaport Portsmouth in 1809 are impressment of sailors and shipping embargoes, injustices which three years later resulted in the War of 1812. Their Gazette devotes columns of finest print to the proceedings of Congress regarding the embargo laws. There is indignant elo- quence in letters to the editor over British and French treat- ment of our vessels on the high seas, the slogan of the times being "millions for defence but not one cent for tribute."
Alongside appears Tappan's Book Store announcement which includes: "Tappan's Circulating Library, more than 300 volumes; also Wheaton's Genuine Itch Ointment, alma- nacs and Lottery tickets. Hillsborough, Cheshire, Coos, North- ampton, Penobscott and all uncurrent money received at discounts for Tickets and Quarters in the above lottery," which reveals that towns had taken to printing their own money and were embarrassed by it. Tappan's also has "Glass Eyes for all who need them," and advertises for ten thousand goose quills, for which cash will be paid. And "Doctor Spald- ing very much regrets that more of his debtors have not called and adjusted their accounts."
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As now, local crime has space: "Taken from a Sleigh belonging to the Livery Stable, a white lace work bag, lined partly with pink, containing a linen cambric pocket handker- chief marked Eliza Hall; a red morocco purse with nine dollars and a ticket in the Dixville Road Lottery; silver knife and fork with pearl handles; a gold tooth pick with silver case ... . "
When a ship had come in, the front page of the Gazette froths with merchants' announcements: "More New Fancy & Staple Goods just received and for sale at Draper's cheap cash store, Among which are Ladies and Misses Beaver Bon- nets, Gentlemen's Best Black Beaver hats. Plain & figur'd lace armlets & Gloves, white and fancy habit Kid Gloves, White Swansdown Trimming, Devonshire Kerseys and Forest Cloths, Cassimeres, Broadcloths, etc. Mock Sable Muffs & Tippets. Good Tow Cloth will be taken in pay as cash." Tow cloth was burlap, made from the coarse fibres thrown off by the flax wheel.
At the same time that Napoleon was instituting his new Military Knighthood, upper New Hampshire was exploring the lonely road of straight self-government by the people, in the experiment in pure democracy that became perhaps the top example in all history. Town meeting is not the whole story, however. The democratic principle was lively in town doings no matter what, saturating behavior and acting as corrective whenever a local crisis threatened. Any who did not like the way things were going petitioned. Petitions were prevalent and the law went on from there. It was dubbed Government by Petition.
Tamworth's Charter was dated the fourteenth of October, 1766. This Crown grant was for an area of untouched forest six miles square, and for some years afterward it remained as untouched as ever, completely innocent of the settler's axe. In defining the limits of all land grants, allowance was always made if the space was unduly occupied by mountains, lakes, or rivers. Sandwich, for instance, chartered three years sooner than Tamworth, found its tract so mountainous and rocky in
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Town Boundary Disputes
the northern and western parts that the grantees petitioned for an additional slice on the east and south to make up for it, and this had been allowed. The first settler in the new tract called Sandwich Addition was a man named Orlando Weed. He was given seven hundred acres, seventy pounds in money, and seven cows, on condition that he clear forty-two acres, build seven dwelling houses, and settle seven families within three years - a tall order. But Orlando Weed was a tall man. He became Proprietors' Clerk, and operated exten- sively in other new towns as well. Presumably his seven families were all in residence three years later when the un- claimed space next east of them became Tamworth.
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