USA > New Hampshire > Cheshire County > Swanzey > The history of Swanzey, New Hampshire, from 1734 to 1890 > Part 2
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The boulders generally come from hills and mountains not far away,
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TOPOGRAPHY.
but some of them came from places evidently quite distant. They must have been distributed at a period previous to the time when the surface of the lowlands was formed and are not often to be seen above the surface, having been buried to the depth of many feet un- der clay and sand.
After the upheavals that raised our hills and mountains ; after they had been ploughed and ground by the glacier ; after the glacier had distributed the earthis and rocks, leaving them profusely scattered from the lowest valley to the highest mountain ; after heat and frost, rain and atmosphere had disintegrated the surface rocks ; after an im- mense amount of movable material had by mighty floods been brought into the lake, and after this material had been levelled and smoothied by the ceaseless motion of its water, then the barrier which had kept the valley a lake for ages gradually wore away and the valley ceased to be a lake.
The formation of rivers and brooks followed the draining of the lake ; and from that time to the present their currents have been mould- ing much of the surface into its present form.
Much the largest river in Swanzey is the Ashuelot. It enters the town nearly at the centre of the north line and flows in a south and southwesterly direction. It has cut down to the primitive rocks in three places,-at Westport, at West Swanzey, and at a place less than two miles above West Swanzey. Before it was obstructed by dams, it had a fall of some twenty-four feet in passing a distance of about six miles in the town ; ten feet of this fall were at Westport, ten at West Swanzey and four feet above West Swanzey. Its channel is gener- ally deep and its movement sluggish.
Much the largest of the other streams is the South branch which enters the town from the southwest corner of Marlborough, flows some three miles in a southwesterly direction and then runs about five miles west and north, entering the Ashuelot about a mile from Keene line. It has not apparently cut down to the primitive rocks at any place. For the first three miles it has considerable fall, and its bed most of the way is stony. The rest of the way the bed is sandy and the fall light. Its fall from the Marlborough line to the Ashuelot river is probably somewhat over a hundred feet.
Pond brook runs from Swanzey pond in an easterly direction to the South branch. Its fall is slight. Two small streams enter the town from Richmond and connect with Pond brook. The east one has a slow current without falls ; the west one is smaller and more rapid.
Hyponeco brook, an Indian name, has its source upon the east side
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HISTORY OF SWANZEY.
of the Ashuelot range of mountains and reaches the Ashuelot river by a circuitons route, a short distance above Westport.
California brook has its source in Chesterfield. Its direction is east of south and it enters the Ashuelot between West Swanzey and Westport.
Rixford brook runs some distance through the extreme west part of Swanzey. It rises in Chesterfield and flows into the Ashuelot in Winchester some distance below Swanzey line.
Swanzey pond is a natural body of water. It is about a mile and a half southwest of Swanzey Centre. It covers about one hundred acres and is fed by small brooks and springs. The water is quite clear and pure.
MINERALS.
Swanzey is not a mining town, yet magnetite and graphite exist in considerable quantities. Potstone is also found.
Magnetite is found in such quantities in some parts of the state that efforts have been made to mine it, especially at the Franconia mine in Lisbon. In Swanzey may be found very good specimens of the crystal, especially toward the Marlborough line.
Graphite or plumbago occurs in the rocks of Swanzey, but not to an extent to justify mining operations as at Nelson or Goshen.
From the northwest side of Franklin mountain, stone was quarried for the Episcopal church in Keene. The ridges'of gneiss crop out in several places in Swanzey, especially east of Swanzey pond.
SOIL.
The State of New Hampshire is covered with soil of four kinds. The Connecticut valley is covered with a soil derived from calcareous rocks, and it is this soil which is the richest and most valuable of the four ; but as we pass to the eastward we reach a basin composed of gneissic and granitic soils, which has the least value of all. It is in this basin that Swanzey lies.
The greater part of the state is underlain by gneiss,- practically the same as granite -but which produces a better soil than granite. The soluble element present is usually potash, from ten to twelve per cent, a valuable substance to be added to the soil.
When the land in Swanzey was first cleared, the soil, enriched by vegetation, produced excellent crops, but when subjected to the ordi- nary operations of farming soon became exhausted.
The inevitable result has been that lands once occupied as farms
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have been abandoned, and the cellar holes and other remains are all that exist to show where was once the home of a prosperous farmer.
There still remains, however, considerable land in the hills which produces good crops and upon which the owners still live, and there is no probability, with the improvements in farming now in vogue, that they will ever be abandoned.
The plains of the town are quite extensive, and it is upon these plains that most of the varied crops of rye, corn, beans and buck- wheat have been raised, together with flax, oats and potatoes.
The quantity of hay cut upon the plains has always been compara- tively small. The soil here has not sufficient clay in its composition to render it productive without constant enriching, and extended droughts, doubtless brought about by the destruction of our forests, affect the raising of good crops upon this land.
The extensive forests, especially upon hills, are the safeguard of the farmer. The rains are absorbed and held through their agency and the freshiets are therefore avoided, while the evaporations take place at the spot where the rain fell, not from the lakes and ocean into which the streams, swollen by freshets pour ; thus there is a more equal dis- tribution of rain in the neighborhood of the hills.
It is a significant fact that, in the northern portion of the state which has less rain than the southern and central portions, the hay crops are often above the average the same years that the hay crops in the south are poor on account of drought. This is because the northern portions have extensive forests which hold the moisture dur- ing what would otherwise be periods of drought.
Farm buildings quite generally are located upon the plains and up- on this land water may be obtained without excavating to a great depth, as there is a solid clay formation below the sand which insures a good and pure supply of water.
A mineral spring in the north part of the town on the border of Great meadow has obtained considerable notoriety.
The large amount of meadow upon the Ashuelot river, the South branch and numerous brooks, has been the foundation of most of the farming since the town was settled. Large quantities of hay are taken from these meadows annually, without the application of manure, their production being kept up by occasional overflowing of water. They generally have a clay soil, as they lie below the line which sep- arates the clay earth from the sandy earth. They are adapted to high cultivation and are now much appreciated for this purpose.
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HISTORY OF SWANZEY.
FOREST TREES.
Swanzey, to-day, has but one-third of its surface covered with for- est trees. Throughout this region the chestnut was once a common tree, although to-day comparatively scarce.
Before the denudation of the land of the primitive forest, the white pine was the most numerous of our forest trees, growing everywhere, but particularly adapted to the plains. This tree sup- plied the most excellent timber and was highly appreciated by the col- onists before the British government caused the broad arrow to be af- fixed upon the choicest trees as a sign that they were to be used only for the King's navy.
Among other trees of this group the Norway and pitch pine were found in some quantity ; the first particularly in the southeastern corner of the town.
Hemlock was, next to the pine, the most abundant and was found upon the hills and intervales.
Red oak was more common than white, which was found more es- pecially in the southwestern portions. The first of these varieties were often of good size.
Upon the clayey soils the elms flourished to a considerable extent, such a soil being particularly adapted for their growth.
Of hard wood trees, the beech was most numerous, while of the birches, the white was the most common growing on a lighter soil than either the black or yellow variety.
Rock maple occurs in considerable numbers upon the intervales and hills, but is not to be considered as one of the principal forest trees.
Although not so stately as the rock maple, the red, and white, or river maple, occur to some extent, and the first, particularly, was per- haps more widely distributed than the red maple.
One of the trees, once common in the central and western portions of the town, yet rare in the eastern, was the walnut. The chestnut was most abundant in the southwest part.
Much of the sandy land of the town was congenial to the growth of the poplar, and next to the pine and hemlock was the most com- mon tree.
The black and little red cherry were common trees, and to-day the choke cherry, which was but little known to the early settlers, is fast monopolizing the waysides and river banks.
Upon the rich moist upland the white ash thrived, and the black ash was common upon the swamps and meadows.
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A limited number of basswood and butternuts were found upon the uplands, and spruces and buttonwood along the river bottoms and swamps.
The growth of white pine and grey birch is increasing, as much of the cleared land has been abandoned and has grown up to brush, which easily gives way to the pine and birch. The gradual reclothing of our hillsides with forest trees is a matter of great satisfaction to all interested in the farming interests of the state. A careful and sys- tematic cutting of timber is conducive to the better and healthier growth of the remaining trees and at the same time does not injure the source from which the profit is derived. We may turn to many of the older communities in Europe and learn much in this regard ; for there the stripping of forests is expressly forbidden, yet no com- plaints are heard, as the owners realize it is better to draw a small but assured income yearly from the ownership of their forests than to use the whole at once and obtain a comparatively small amount, besides destroying the great storehouse of moisture.
FRUITS.
The blackberry, raspberry, strawberry and blueberry are the prin- cipal native fruits and grow extensively upon land which has been burned over and partially cleared. The strawberry is most abundant upon mowing fields cleared within a few years.
The blueberry was not abundant in olden times, but is increasing especially in old, moist pastures long since deserted by the cattle.
The wild grape grows upon the intervales and produces very good fruit, although the improvement of the land has not tended to better its quality.
WILD ANIMALS.
The native animals that were known to the early settlers and which became nearly extinct here many years since, were the wolf, bear, catamount, lynx, beaver, otter and deer. Those which caused the in- habitants the most annoyance were the wolf and bear. It is not known that any person in the town ever suffered personal harm by either of these animals, but their habits were known to be such that persons living in secluded places or travelling through forests remote from settlements, were in constant dread of encountering them; this was particularly the case with women and children.
The loss of sheep, caused by the depredations of these animals, was a constant annoyance, and the state awarded a bounty of six pounds
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HISTORY OF SWANZEY.
for the killing of each wolf, and in 1787 Joseph Whitcomb, 3d, and in 1789, Thomas Greene and Jonathan Woodcock each obtained the reward.
The killing of wolves was considered of so much consequence that arrangements would be made for a wolf hunt which would draw out hundreds of persons, who would surround some dense forest, usually a swamp, which was supposed to be the wolves' haunt, and then close in from all sides and entrap the animals.
One of the noted places for these hunts was the swamp in the west part of what is now Troy. Some of these wolf hunts were made on so extensive a scale as to surround some part of Mt. Monadnock.
The bear, though less dreaded than the wolf, was not an animal for which the people had any particular affection. Night was the time for Bruin to take a look about the farm houses and appropriate such domestic animals as might have been left exposed to its depredations. Incidents have been related as having occurred from apprehension that a bear was around one's dwelling which were both laughable and pro- voking ; one man having shot in the dark and killed a supposed bear. prowling about his premises, carried the carcass into his house, only to be asked by a youngster, " Do bears have hoofs?" The bear be- came a black sheep. Another man, mistaking in the dark his black cow for a bear, shot and killed it.
Since the beginning of the present century but few bears or wolves have been seen in this vicinity.
Catamounts were not often encountered even by the first settlers, and when they were it was in some secluded place. John Whitcomb, 1st, and one of the Hammonds, while hunting upon Bear hill in the south part of the town, were attracted by the barking of their dog to a place where they found him in a deep, dark recess of a ledge. In their anxiety to ascertain what the dog was barking at, one of them crawled into the ledge and soon saw, through the dark, the glare of the eyeballs of an animal which he shot with deadly effect; the crea- ture, afterward found to be a catamount, jumped and caught the dog in its mouth, both dying there together.
Lynxes and wild-cats were never common, but it may not be said that they have become entirely extinct, as occasionally reports are circulated that one of these animals has been seen or killed.
It is not probable that beavers were very plentiful here when the town was first settled, and the only place the writer has seen where they lived is on California brook. Some of the old conveyances of land upon that brook make mention that the land was above or below the
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AUTOGLYPH PRINT, W
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VIEW OF WEST SWANZEY, FROM MARCY HILL.
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TOPOGRAPHY.
beaver dam. It is probable they did live on other brooks, but the fact is not authenticated.
It is known that otters have lingered about some of the waters of the town nearly down to the present time.
Of all the native animals the deer was the favorite with the early settlers. Its value for food, its innocent nature and its sportive char- acter made the people anxious that it should not become extinct. To protect them from wanton destruction, laws were made and deer- reeves chosen by the town to see that the laws were enforced. The effort was a vain one and but few have been seen in the town for the last ninety years.
The fox, woodchuck, skunk, hedgehog, raccoon, rabbit, musk-rat, mink, the grey, red, striped and flying squirrel are here and most of them quite as plentiful as they were in former years.
BIRDS.
The migration of flocks of wild geese going north in the spring and south in the fall is occasionally seen at the present time, but their num- ber has been diminishing from year to year. It is not known that they ever had their haunts here during summer.
The wild turkey was a valuable bird in early times. Considerable numbers of them once lived where they could feed upon nuts and have the south side of a hill for their haunt in the winter. It was nearly a hundred years from the time the town was settled before they be- came entirely extinct.
The two birds which have furnished the principal sport for the gun- ner are the pigeon and partridge. The pigeons come north in the spring in flocks and return south in the fall. After their advent in the spring they separate into pairs and are found during summer more generally in dense forests than elsewhere. Late in the summer they begin to congregate into flocks. Fifty years ago they were so num- erous that some men did quite a business in catching them with nets. They were attracted to particular places by having grain fed to them upon beds, and while eating a net was sprung over them. Often a number of dozens were caught at a time. Their numbers have been constantly diminishing. Partridges are much hunted, but they do not appear to decrease.
Robins, swallows, martins, wrens and whip-poor-wills are a privi- leged class of birds. Seldom have they been destroyed by the mnost reckless boy. Robins in the fields and swallows about the barn are more plentiful than in early years. Very few cages at farmhouses are
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HISTORY OF SWANZEY.
now provided for martins and wrens, as their numbers have been con- stantly decreasing. Whip-poor-wills are likely to flock here in large numbers for a summer abode, and their peculiar notes will continue to be heard morning and evening.
Crows and hawks have maintained their existence against all efforts for their destruction. The depredations of crows in the corn fields and of the hawks in the poultry yards have made them the farmers' hated birds ; although a decrease in the number of the latter have made them less annoying than formerly.
Our meadows still resound with the music of the bobolinks and the woods with that of the brown thrasher.
Wild ducks, fish hawks, eagles, owls, cranes, snipes and loons have all had 'their haunts here, but their numbers have been too limited to afford sportsmen more than an occasional opportunity to capture them.
FISH.
Before dams were constructed on the Connecticut and Ashuelot riv- ers, salmon, shad and lamprey eels frequented the large streams of the town in such numbers that they constituted an important article of food. Of the other fish, trout was the most valuable during the early years of the settlement. The South branch and some of the large brooks once contained many large trout. Refuse from mills has made the water uncongenial to this fish. In some streams, anglers have not been slow in their efforts to capture the shining beauties ; con- sequently but few trout of good size are to be found in any of the streams in the town. Small-sized trout are still quite numerous in some of the small brooks. No great change has taken place in the size or number of the other native fishes.
SNAKES.
Of the snakes it is supposed that the black snake is the only one that made its advent here since the town was settled. Quite a sensa- tion was created some sixty years ago by a report that a black snake had been seen in the southeast part of the town. Since then they have been increasing and are now quite common.
One of the annoyances to the inhabitants in early times was the flea. The primitive houses and their surroundings afforded means for their propagation in large numbers, and their bite was a torment espec- ially to children. In recent years people have suffered but little from them.
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CHAPTER II.
The Indians of the Connecticut and Ashuelot Valleys.
INDIAN WIGWAMS AND RELICS-STATEMENTS OF BLAKE AND WHEELOCK-IM- PLEMENTS AT SAND BANK-INDIAN DAM-FRENCH AND INDIAN RAIDS AT SWANZEY, KEENE, WINCHESTER, HINSDALE, NORTHFIELD, CHARLESTOWN AND PUTNEY-MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN CAPTURED, SCALPED AND MUR- DERED-TOWNS ABANDONED-MUSTER ROLL AT FORTS.
T THE name of the tribe of Indians formerly inhabiting the Ashue- lot valley was Squakheag. The territory occupied by the tribe extended northward to the headwaters of the Ashuelot river, eastward to Mount Monadnock, south to Miller's river, and several miles west of the Connecticut river. This territory was abandoned by the Indians several years before it was granted by Massachusetts to the first white proprietors. It is not known that there is any deed in existence by which the Indians conveyed away these lands, neither is it known that they ever complained of having their possessions here wrongfully taken from them. It is not definitely known where the Indians went when they left here, but probably they mingled with those higher up on the Connecticut river, or went to the St. Francis' tribe in Canada. This tribe claimed the territory in the northern part of New Hampshire and Vermont. They had numerous settlements in different parts of their territory, usually near the banks of the larger streams, in locations fa- vorable for hunting and fishing, raising corn and pumpkins. The wigwam was the Indians' habitation. Its common form was circular, made of sticks stuck in the ground, converging at the top, and leav- ing an aperture for the escape of smoke. Two low openings on op- posite sides answered for doors. Boughs of trees and turf served for its covering, and skins of animals and mats for most of its furniture.
The Indians lived mostly on nuts, corn, pumpkins, the flesh of an- imals and fish. They had kettles made of soapstone in which they boiled vegetables, and other utensils that held water and were used in cooking. Hot stones were placed in vessels of water to heat it.
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HISTORY OF SWANZEY.
They used a kind of spit for cooking large pieces of meat. Fish were cooked just as they were taken from the water; birds were plucked but not otherwise dressed; small animals were roasted whole and caten without having their entrails taken out. Corn was pounded into coarse meal and made into samp ; it was sometimes parched and pounded fine, mixed with snet and made into balls and called nokake. Pumpkins were cut into strips and dried in the sun. They smoked and dried fish to preserve them. They were expert in killing game with arrows, and capturing it with traps and yank-ups. To kill the trees and burn the brush where they wished to raise their corn and pumpkins, fire was relied upon, as but a small part of the Indians' time was em- ployed, in cultivating land; they naturally incline to live by hunting and fishing.
That there was once a large settlement of Indians at the Sand Bank, on the southeast side of Ashuelot river near Sawyer's Crossing, is too evident to be doubted. Traces of an irregular fortification inclosing several acres of ground still exist. It must have been here that large quantities of implements were made for hunting and fishing. Frag- ments of hard white quartz, which were broken from the rocks from which they made their implements, are now to be seen in the sand. These relics were once too common to induce people to preserve them, and but few have been collected and they are in possession of Swanzey people. The drifting sand will soon obliterate and hide from our view all these mementos of the race of people that once roamed over these plains where we now securely dwell.
Messrs. Geo. A. Wheelock, Hiram Blake and F. K. Pratt of Keene have taken much interest in collecting and preserving these Indian relics. Mr. Blake has furnished the compiler with a schedule of these remains found at the Sand Bank, among which are the following :-
A stone pestle, fourteen and one-half inches long, well finished from a hard grey stone; a chisel, six inches long, well finished; a small gouge three and one-half inches long, well finished; an unfinished gouge five and one-half inches long, roughly worked into shape; a collection of ten arrowheads made of quartz and flint, varying from one inch to three inches in length, some of which are very fine specimens, several are broken at the points but most are perfect ; a very fine small quartz arrowhead; three arrowheads made of the same stone as the chippings or fragments which are still found lying about on the Sand Bank-these fragments excepting the quartz, are of a stone foreign to this part of the country ; numerous specimens or pieces of Indian pottery, some of which show evidence of orna- mentation.
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INDIANS.
On the farm of Jonas L. Moore were found, by Mr. Pratt, a little below the Sand Bank, a large flint spearhead and four flint arrow- heads of peculiar shape. On Asa Smith's farm a spearhead four and one-half inches long, the top part broken off; also an arrowhead with shank broken, made of flint.
An arrowhead of jasper, very fine, found by Benjamin Whitcomb on his farm at West Swanzey.
A few years ago as Charles L. Ball was ploughing on the side hill south of his house about five rods from the river his plough came in contact with what proved to be a human skull and exposed it in the furrow, and also twenty-four teeth, and on further examination of the ground he ascertained that a grave had been made in the sand about two and a half feet long, two feet wide and two feet deep when made, and was probably deeper as the surface appeared to have been washed or worn away : In the west end and facing the east, in a sit- ting posture was the skeleton of a human body; the hands, arms, chest, limbs, spinal column and feet, all, when the earth was removed settled in a mass, and was probably that of an Indian girl from fifteen to twenty years of age as determined by the size of the frame and po- sition of the wisdom teeth. The sex was determined by hip bones and pelvis and the absence of such relics and implements in the grave as are usually buried with the opposite sex. He also found in the same land, arrowheads and two hatchets. The grave was in clear, white sand, and that the sand had been moved only within the limits of the grave, was distinctly to be seen. Near the river bank were some twenty places of from two and a half to three feet in diameter where fires seemed to have been kept burning for an indefinite period of time, and, from the surroundings and the situation it was an Indi- an camping ground for the winter.
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