USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Warren > The history of Warren; a mountain hamlet, located among the White hills of New Hampshire > Part 35
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Some had great courage and lived even in spite of the plague. Joseph Merrill the innkeeper, went wherever he was asked, to the sick bed, to the coffining the black and loathsome corpse, to the graveyard-and never got sick. His wife had the plague, but she got well. On the contrary, Mr.Samuel Merrill who lived next house to the burying ground would shut all his doors and windows when they came to bury the dead. When they brought Tristram Low dead, from the East-parte, he was particularly careful; but it was no use. The grim spectre death was after him, and in two days . they carried him out upon the hill-side and buried him without a psalm or a prayer.#
* Pillsbury was paid $1.34 for going to Hanover after Dr. Burns. Clough received $1.50 for going after Dr. Scott.
Dr. Scott was paid for his services $182.59.
Jonathan Merrill received for boarding Dr. S. and horse, $10.75.
Dr. Burns received $2.00 for carrying money to Dr. Scott.
Paid Col. Clement for his wagon to Hanover, $2.20,-probably the little Dutch one .- Selectmen's Records, Vol. i.
t'Squire George Libbey says he dug twenty-eight graves in one month during the spotted fever time, and did not dig them all either. He also worked for a month taking care of the sick.
# Samuel Merrill was taken sick in the morning, and at ten o'clock at night was dead.
Lemuel Keezer, Jr., father of Ferdinand and Fayette, kept store in Warren in 1815. He was afraid of the spotted fever, very. One day the fire went out and he went to Joseph Merrill's for live coals. Dr. Wellman was sick there then, and Kee- zer would not go in, but sent a man in after them. Four days after, Keezer was dead, died of spotted fever.
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THE PLAGUE ABATES.
The town suffered terribly from spotted fever. One third of the inhabitants on Beech hill died. Some families in the valley, like that of Mr. Frederick Brown, almost all died. Half a dozen members of Mr. Jonathan Clement's family died of spotted fever, and are lying in the almost forgotten grave-yard of Runaway pond. On the Height-o'-land, by the ponds near Piermont line, on Pine hill, the Summit, in the East-parte district, and the Forks district - all parts of the town suffered .*
When cold weather came on, the disease grew less malignant, and gradually disappeared. Those who recovered were almost invariably deaf, and there was a good deal of loud talk in town for years after.
Since 1815 but very few cases of spotted fever have been known in Warren. But the neighboring land of Piermont was since sorely afflicted with it - nearly half the inhabitants in East- man pond district dying in a few months.
May the like never visit our hamlet among the hills again, for the mind shudders at uncoffined burials, at funerals without a prayer, at midnight grave-digging, at persons buried in nameless graves, unbeknown to their friends. Let the memory of the woes of 1815 never be forgotten. They will serve to chasten us and teach us that in life we are in the midst of death, and that time with his scythe may cut us down when we least expect it.
* Abram, Elsie, and Emily Brown, Children of Frederick Brown, died; also Ruth Knight, two children of Charles Bowles, two of Luke Libbey, and Mr. Thom- as Patch, died. Three of Joseph French's children died.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW ALMOST A FAMINE, THEN A HURRICANE CAME, AND THEN A HISTORY OF ONE OF THE MOST PLEASANT YEARS WARREN EVER EXPERIENCED.
THE war came first, that of 1812, then the pestilence, the black plague, then in 1816 famine almost looked into our valley among the hills. A venerable writer of that time says that the whole face of nature appeared shrouded in gloom. The lamps of heaven kept their orbits, but their light was cheerless. The bosom of the earth in a midsummer's day was covered with a wintry mantle, and man and beast and bird sickened at the prospect. For several days in summer the people had good sleighing, and it seemed as if the order of the seasons was being reversed. On the sixth of June, the day of the meeting of the Great and General Court of New Hampshire, the snow fell several inches deep, fol- lowed by a cold and frosty night, and on the two following days snow fell and frost continued; also July the 9th, there was a deep and deadly frost that killed or palsied most vegetables .*
Then one August day in Warren, the sky was lurid in the west.
* DIARY OF WEATHER IN 1816. May 16, froze hard enough on ploughed land to bear a man.
June 6, snow squalls.
June 8, snow squalls.
June 10, frost last night.
June 11, frost last night, heavy, killed corn and five-sixths of the apples. June 22, ice formed on water.
July 10, frost on low ground.
August 20, heavy snow on mountains. Hurricane. August 22, heavy frost.
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THE GREAT HURRICANE.
The clouds thickened fast, hailstones rattled on the forest, and the wind shook the tops of the trees. Suddenly it grew dark, then in the twinkling of an eye the hurricane leaped like a maniac from the skies, and howling, crashing, dizzying, it came. It lighted down on Mt. Mist at first, and then with a breadth of twenty rods, the whole forest seemed to give way; to have been felled by the stroke of some Demiurgic fury, or to have prostrated itself as the Almighty passed by.
Eastward towards Mt. Kineo, it shot like a flash of lightning. Across Pine hill it left the woods and entered the settlement. Nothing could withstand its fury. Stephen Richardson's barn was blown down, and the long shingles of its roof borne across Berry brook valley, across the Asquamchumauke, three thousand feet above it, to Amos Little's back pasture, two miles away on the side of Mt. Kineo. Nathaniel Libbey's house was unroofed and the furniture was scattered over the whole farm. A looking-glass was blown thirty rods and deposited by the wind on a stone, with- out breaking it .* The tornado cut a swath through Nathaniel Richardson's oats three rods wide, as smooth as if mown by a scythe. Fences were prostrated, cows lifted from their feet and sheep were killed. In bush and settlement, upland and interval, was its havoc alike fearful.
Thus passed the season. Autumn returns, alas ! not to fill the arm with the generous sheaf, but the eye with the tear of dis- appointment. Winter came, and with it would have come starva- tion had it not been for the tolerably good crop of rye, the only crop that matured, which supplied the inhabitants with bread. So terrible was the year 1816, that the people grew disheartened, and many sold out and went south and west.
But in 1817 a change came. Everything was lovely, and when the year closed people said it was the happiest one they had ever known. Let us follow it through and see how the citizens spent each season,-how they worked, played, and enjoyed themselves.
As the winter wore away, a warm wind blew from the south- west, and the snow begun to melt early. What joy was there when the spring breathed under sheltering rocks the sweet arbu-
* Nathaniel Richardson's statement.
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
tus into bloom, and sky born blue-birds came down on the air of wondrous morning with throats full of fresh and fragrant melody.
As the days grew still and long in the yards of the quiet dwellings, the sturdy chopper's axe was swung all day long above the winter gathered piles. Dogs basked for hours on southern door-steps, and cattle, turned out from dark stables, tried horns and heads with each other.
In the maple groves of Warren, and on all the hill-sides around the quiet valley, sugar fires were smoking, for it was charming sugar weather; bland and sunny overhead, frosty under foot, the sap racing up from the roots every morning and running back at night for fear of a freeze.
There had been a scalding and soaking of sap-buckets, a tramping through maple woods, augur in one hand and sap spouts in the other, a repairing of arches or the hanging of great five-pail kettles ; sap pails and sap yokes to bring the sap, all in order; a crackling of dry beech limbs, a roaring fire, then a simmering and seething of the sweet maple sap in the kettles before it leaped up . in white dancing foam only to be kept from overflowing by being wallopped with a stick having a piece of pork on its end .*
Amos Little had a glorious sugar place on Beech hill, and his boys and girls,- for he had a large family,- were determined to have a sugar party. Young folks, Merrills, Clements, Bixbys, Knights, and numerous others came to the beautiful farm where George E. Leonard lives now. They had fun and frolic; rosy cheeked girls laughing as they stamp the mud from their thick boots, charming forms carried in stout arms across the little rill which now swollen leaps laughing down to the Mikaseota, some- times called Black brook.
The great sugaring-off kettle is hung on a pole placed on two forked stakes, by itself. The syrup, enough for all, is turned in, the fire lighted, and then there is a rustic jubilee over the brown- ing cauldron, as the fragrant steam grows richer and the color deepens from hue to hue of russet, till the syrup clings in double drops on the edge of the skimmer, and the hot fluid changes to delicious gum when poured over the melting ice cake. There
* The farmers in Warren often use the last runs of sap to make spruce beer - an excellent and very common drink in Warren.
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SUGARING OFF.
were pretty lips closing over beech paddle sticks, and young John L. Merrill and Russell K. Clement blistered their tongues and got laughed at for they could not wait for the delicious sweet to cool.
Their hearts were all happy, and what sweet songs were sung in the dusk of nightfall, as the earliest frog peeped from the swamp in the valley below. The sweet songs of that day, alas! what were they? They are gone, they are forgotten, like the smiles and the roses of those who sang them, like the hopes and the affections of the youths who listened to them. The triumphs of the singers of those days and the popularity of the songs, where are they? It is a lesson for us; but let us chase it out of mind. Be happy while ye may. We love the month of March, for in Warren it is the liveliest and most romantic month of the year. No tree does so much for happiness as the sugar maple. It brings more good cheer, more joy and frolic, more money into the pocket and more sweetness upon the table than all the rest of the forest trees put together.
As the sun run higher and the air grew warmer, there was a sound in the earth, as if myriads of fairies were at work preparing juices for the grass and fruits and flowers,-a sound of tiny foot- steps, multitudinous bells deep down in caverns and dingles, and here and there a bank smiled back in downy green the sun's radiant favors. And then the leaves come out, at first no larger than a mouse's ear, and thousands of birds are singing in all the fields and woods. Up narrow roads, the one to Red-oak hill, and those to Rocky falls, Beech hill, Pine hill, and the East-parte, between high, mossy banks where the little runnels come rushing and chiming along, through the wild, still, shady woods of Warren, and in fields deep with the greenest grass and bright with the sun- shine and glory of spring; all these birds are at work building their nests, each in its own peculiar fashion ; the song sparrow, the vesper sparrow, the grass finch and Wilson's thrush, on the ground and under warm hummocks; the robin on nearly every tree, black birds and cat-birds in the hedges ; bob-o'-links in the meadows of Runaway pond and the swaley fields by Moosehillock road; vireos and orioles in the ever waving boughs of the elms in the valleys, and the maples on all the hills ; warblers among the emerald green leaves of the wild rose-brier, to say nothing of the blue-bird in an
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
old knot hole of a fence post; swallows in the barn, Jennie wren in a box in the apple tree, and martins in the house on the top of a pole.
The men are out in the fields and gardens, the cottage dames and the rosy daughters are engaged in the renewal of flower borders, in the sowing of seeds and the planting of shrubs; old men sit watching them on the steps or wooden benches, on the warm side of the house, while groups of children are scattered here and there over the happy fields, tracing the fence sides or the bright streams or running to secure the first dandelions, their clear voices all the while ringing out from the distant steeps and hill-tops. There they find the sugar plum, the wild-bird cherry and the moosemissa in bloom, their flowers hanging on the waving boughs or fluttering on the earth, a profusion of beauty in which the per- ceptions are almost lost.
Men went to work with good courage in the spring of 1817. They seemed to feel that good times were coming back. How did they work? How did they live? The farmer of that period was up in the morning by half past four, stoutly dressed in his leather pants and sheeps-gray frock. At five he gets up his help. His wife hurries the girls out of bed, crying, " Up sleepy heads, the sun will burn your eyes out if you lay there." The house is swept, the cows are milked, the hogs are fed. Man and boys go to work, fodder stock, clean out barn, prepare for the day's work.
Then comes breakfast. How some of the old settlers could eat. In olden times huge basins of bean-porridge and loaves as big as bee hives and pretty much of the same shape, and as brown as the backs of their own hands, delighted and refreshed our ancestors. To this fare they would betake themselves with a capacity that only pure air and hard labor can give. A settler would eat as much of these as would answer for a round family now at breakfast, and then he would only be ready for his dish of pork and beans ; pounds of pork six inches thick set on the top of a peck of baked beans. What a pile he takes on his plate, how sharp is the vinegar he pours on them, how keen the pepper, and then they vanish as rapidly as if they did not follow that mess of porridge and those huge hunches of bread. Christian William Whiteman, who lived on the top of the Height-o'-land, said he
413
ENORMOUS EATERS.
" could eat three quarts of baked beans and also Indian pudding and other ' fixings' suitable to accompany them, at his morning meal." Mr. Pixly, a tall gaunt man who once resided in Charles- ton by Tarleton lake, said that " many a time he had eaten a six quart pan full of pork and beans and vinegar, at a single sitting and then could make a famine among the pies and cakes and cheese on the table." Mr. Nathaniel Richardson, who has had his home on the East-parte road for more than half a century, has been known to eat two full grown chickens, seventeen large, mealy potatoes, and plum-pudding in abundance along with them, and he said he could always top out such a slender repast with twenty- five cents worth of cracker toast, when he stopped at a hotel. Yet Mr. Richardson never was sick in his life, only a little spleeny by spells, and now at the age of nearly eighty years he is tough as an ox .*
And then what mugs of cider those old settlers could drink. A Mr. Lund could swallow a pint at a draught, without stopping to breathe, and Dr. Ezra B. Libbey, in his day, could easily per- form the same feat, while Mr. Obadiah Libbey, who lived in War- ren long ago, has often been known to proudly drink a quart and a half of hard old cider without once taking his lips from the mug. Mr. Samuel Jewell, who lived on Pine hill road, often said he " wished his throat was as long as a pine mast, that he might more fully enjoy the good taste of the fluid as it trickled down." These are only a few notable cases where hundreds could be cited, and we can but envy the keen appetites and great capacity of our early settlers. Breakfast eaten and at ten they would take a hearty luncheon of bread, nut-cakes, and cheese, to set their appetites right for dinner.t
There is plowing in the field, there is manure to be carted out, there is harrowing, and sowing, and harrowing again, there is furrowing and dropping potatoes and corn, and covering the hills ;
* Josiah Burnham, surveyor, had an enviable capacity and appetite. He could eat eight quarts of hasty pudding and milk, at a sitting .- Anson Merrill's state- ment.
Rev. Charles Bowles could frequently do something in the way of eating. He once eat a whole quarter of lamb and nearly everything else on the table, at 'Squire Jonathan Merrill's, thereby depriving the 'Squire and his family of their morning meal. Mrs. Merrill had to do another cooking that morning .- Moses P. Kimball's statement.
t Mr. James Clement's stories.
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
there is picking stones, laying wall, and mending fences to keep the cattle in the pastures. Then there is washing of sheep at the pool in the river, and the shearing of sheep in all the barns .*
At home the wife and girls boil potatoes for the hogs, take turns at the churn, gown sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, kneel- ing to press the sweet curd to the bottom of the " hoop," to salt and turn cheese, and watch progress of different stages from new- ness and white softness, to their investment with the unctuous coating of a goodly age. They also see that the calves, geese, tur- keys, and barn-yard fowls are properly fed, that the door-yard is nicely picked up and swept. Some had a taste for beauty and were most zealous and successful florists. To select rich and suit- able soils, to sow and plant, to nurse, and shade, and water, to watch the growth and expansion of flowers of great promise was an occupation affording much enjoyment to our grandmothers. They had the polyanthus, auricular, hyacinth, carnation, tulip, and ranunculus. Then there were pinks, and poppies, and sweet Wil- liams, and peonies, and lilacs, and a host of others ; but the splen- did dahlias and pansies of to-day were unknown to them. Mrs. Enoch Noyes and Mrs. G. W. Prescott, daughter of Mr. Isaac Merrill, could boast of having the nicest flower gardens.
At night the farmer sits down with his men and boys by the fire, and they talk over the work of the morrow, how to plant, hoe and sow, and where. His wife has a little work-table set near, where she makes and mends; the girls knit, darn stockings, and fix caps for Sunday.
Now days there is a complaint that the farmer has been spoiled by the growth of luxurious habits and effeminacy in the nation.
* Sheep Marks .- In those primitive times, when fences were rare, and sheep were nimble, it was found necessary to record the marks by which one's sheep might be known or recognized. Accordingly we are certified that Obadiah Clement's sheep are marked by one-half crop on the upper side of the right ear, and one-half crop on the under side of the left ear. Stevens Merrill's a fork like a swallow's tail on the end of the left ear. Joseph Merrill's, a crop of the left ear. Jonathan Merrill's, a crop of the left ear and a slit on the under side of the same. Caleb Homan's, a fork like a swallow's tail on the end of the left ear, and a crop from off the right ear. Amos Little's, a slit on the end of the right ear. Joshua Copp's, a fork like a swallow's tail on the right ear, and a crop on the left. Joshua Merrill's, a crop from off each ear. This mark is now taken by John Whitcher, May 27, 1814. N. B .- Joshua Merrill has removed from this town. (1)
(1) Col. Moses H. Clement's ram once troubled Mr. Keezer and his sheep. Keezer took the ram in the night, led him to Mr. Clement's house and tied him to the door-latch. When Mr. C. opened the door next morning it yanked his ramship, and, indignant, the brute with a bound and a bunt knocked Col. C. "flatter than a flounder."
1
415
THE FARMER AT HOME,
Old furniture has been cast out of the houses, and carpets, sofas, and pianos, are to be found where once were wooden benches and the spinning-wheel; that daughters are sent to boarding schools, instead of to market, and the sons, instead of growing up sturdy husbandmen like their fathers, are made clerks, shop-tenders, or some such skimmy dish things. There is some truth in this. But never mind; the farmer should be a rural king, sowing his grain and reaping his harvest with a glad heart, and he can do this by being educated.
How much better the farmer enjoys himself than the merchant. The latter coops himself up in a small shop, and there day after day, month after month, year after year, he is to be found like a bat in a hole of the wall, or a toad in the heart of a stone or of an oak tree. Spring, and summer, and autumn go round, sunshine and flowers spread over the world, the birds sing, the sweetest flowers blow, the sweetest waters murmur along the vales, but they are all lost upon him ; he is the doleful prisoner of Mammon, and so he lives and dies. The farmer would not take the wealth of the world on such terms. The bright sun, the pure air, the green meadows, the clear streams, the growing crops, the flocks and herds in the pastures, the keen appetite and good health are far to be preferred.
There were no frosts, no snows, no cold and chilling winds in the summer of 1817. All over town there was bustling life and even over to Charleston district, by Tarleton lake, where times had been the hardest, the hearts of men took courage. Corn grew again, the potatoes were luxuriant, and deep grass overhung the banks of all the little streams, and many a flower nodded above the clear water. Upon the fields was a rich mosaic of colors, and on the edge by the wood were seen the wild sun-flower, ox-eye daisies, tiger lilies, and the purple and gold of the hard-hack. Among the crimson headed clover were honey suckles, butter- cups, golden rod, and white top, scenting all the air. The oats were so heavy the farmer was afraid they would lodge; the rye was as tall as a man's head, while shadows fly over the yellow barley, and tumbling waves chase each other on the acres of wheat. Horses stand under the great maples by the road, brushing flies with their tails, the sheep are grazing on the hill-sides, cows are
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
feeding where the grass is shortest and sweetest, while Thomas Pillsbury's spotted bull lows in Mt. Mist's echoing pastures.
They were a happy people over at Charleston. Amos Tarleton, Thomas Pillsbury, Ephraim Potter, Richard Pillsbury, Stephen Lund,* Daniel Day, Hosea Lund, Benj. Bixby, and others, lived there. David Smith was born there. He was a good school-master, was selectman, tax collector, town treasurer, and county treasurer ; cool, shrewd, long-headed, he was one of Warren's smartest men. They had a Methodist society, a class, Sabbath school and regular preaching, a good school-house, which also answered for a church ; many have taught school in it, and a grave yard was by it, where the early settlers were sleeping. Their buildings were good, their great barns were always well filled with hay, and their sugar places were the best in town.
But alas ! all this is changed. The dwellers in the district by the lake are all dead, the houses and the barns have mouldered away, the spot where they stood can hardly be found, and the fields and the pastures are grown with forest trees. Even the old school-house, the church in Charleston, is gone. Nothing but the foundation remains. The burying ground by it is overgrown; the thistle shakes its lonely head by the tombstone, the gray moss whistles to the wind, the fox looks out of its hole by the sunken graves, and the wood-brakes and the birches wave above them.
Whence came this desolation? The great west takes away the young men of Warren; they are gone to cities, the gold mines of California invited some of them; some died on the battle-field. A hundred years may go by before Charleston district shall have such a thriving, happy population again.
The sugar and the wool crop made, the hay crop was the next to be harvested. The farmers of Warren have always raised their full supply of hay, never having been obliged to import any, and grazing and stock-raising has been one of their most profitable employments. Who does not love having time. True, it may be " hot as blazes," but what a softness clothes those green mountains ; what a depth of shadow fills the hollows; how sweet the voice of
* Stephen Lund lived to be over ninety years old. He was a cooper, and a red headed man, bony and rawny. He shot a trout that weighed four pounds. He used to catch large quantities of trout from Tarleton lake and carry them to Hav- erhill and sell them, court time.
417
OUT DOOR LIFE IN THE COUNTRY.
the waters rises on the hushed landscape. Magnificent arcades of trees stretch up the sides of the fair streams, their luxuriant masses of foliage shading the limpid coolness below.
What a luxury to follow some rapid stream, or sitting down - on a green bank, deep in grass and flowers, to pull out the spotted trout from the bubbling eddy below the boulders or from his lurk- ing place beneath the broad stump and the spreading roots of the alder. A summer day spent beside Patch brook as it runs through the meadows, up Hurricane brook to the cool cascades in the deep woods of Mount Carr, by the Mikaseota, or Black brook, by Ore hill's foamy stream, by Berry brook, by the roistering Oliverian, by Merrill brook,* or East branch, or along the roaring, foaming Asquamchumauke, with the glorious hills and the deep, rich foliage clad mountains around you is most delightful -is grand. The power and passion and deep felicity that come breathing from the mountains, forests, and waterfalls, from clouds that sail above, and storms blustering and growling in the wind, from all the mighty magnificence, solitude, and antiquity of nature, cannot be unfolded.
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