USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Warren > The history of Warren; a mountain hamlet, located among the White hills of New Hampshire > Part 42
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How different in effect is the city from the country funeral. In the city a strange corpse passes along amid thousands of stran- gers, and human nature seems shorn of that interest which it ought,
house, and occupying as a burying-yard and training field. The third is in the basin of Runaway pond. In this yard about thirty were buried, the last being children of Jonathan Clement, innkeeper, who died in 1815 of spotted fever. In the pond basin was also the old Indian burying ground.
The old burying ground at Charleston should not be forgotten.
Besides the village cemetery on the Pine hill road, there are used at the pres- ent time, the Clough grave-yard, by the Forks school-house in Patchbreuckland ; the East-parte grave-yard, as you turn up the Moosehillock road; and the Summit grave-yard, as you go up lligh street road. The Whitchers also had a grave-yard of their own on Pine hill.
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PRESENT RELIGIOUS STATUS.
especially in its last stage, to possess. In the country, every man, woman, and child, goes down to the dust amid those who have known them from their youth, and all miss them from their place. Nature seems in its silence to sympathize with the mourners. The green mound of the rural grave-yard opens to receive the slumberer to a peaceful resting place and the maples and the elms which he climbed when a boy in pursuit of bird's nests, moths or butterflies, overshadow as it were with a kindred feeling his grave.
In concluding this chapter let us say that the Methodists and Universalists have had no fights since; the former having the whole control of the old meeting-house, and the latter using the town- house when they want preaching. The Freewill Baptists have preaching at either place just as they can get accommodated. Sometimes the Second Adventists, a new sect that has seen the world destroyed a half dozen times or more, occupy the town-house much to their great delight. And now at the close of Warren's first century entire harmony among the different religious societies prevails.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF A DELECTABLE VISIT TO MOOSEHILLOCK, AND WHAT CAN BE SEEN THERE-THE WEATHER PERMITTING.
READER, let us go on to Moosehillock. The Indians called it Moosilauke from mosi, bald, and auke, a place,-" Bald- place." There are three paths leading to the top of the mountain, one from North Benton, one from Warren Summit, and one from the East-parte region. The last one will answer our purpose best.
Let us start early on the East-parte road. There has been a great storm, but it has cleared off now; the moon is on the full, and the air is clear as a bell. We cross Berry brook where Samuel Knight had a fight with a bear, keep Silver rill upon our left, and come to the Sawtelle school-house. Crossing the bridge over the Asquamchumauke or Baker river, we pass a remarkable flume in the rocks which the waters for ages have been wearing out, leave the " pot holes " where McCarter was said to be hid when he was murdered, to our left, and listening to the white thoated finch, our mountain whistler, as he sings the prelude to the "Wrecker's daughter," in the fir woods, we reach East-parte school-house by Moosilauke falls on the Asquamchumauke.
ยท It is a modest little school-house by the roadside, but it has a history such as few others can boast. Within thirty years, nearly a score of boys have been to school there, who have made preach- ers of the gospel. Heber C. Kimball, the celebrated Mormon, and Moses H. Bixby, an eloquent divine, are the most noted. Four
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" MOOSILAUKE."
doctors and two lawyers also got their early education there. Perhaps the great wooded mountains around, the mighty chasms worn in the solid rocks, with pot holes, some of them forty feet deep, and the music of falling waters, had something to do with forming the character of the pupils who have attended school there.
We go up through Moosehillock district, climbing the hill all the time, past a swaley meadow-field on the right, where a hun- dred bob-o'-links titter, and laugh, and sing all through the month of June, past another school-house and over Merrill brook, and we arrive at Nathaniel Merrill's, the last house high up on the northern marche or boundary of Warren.
What a magnificent place is Mr. Merrill's; green fields up to his very door; rustling maples, the hum of millions of bees, the primitive cheese-press and an old loom in the shed, and pure water to drink. Cattle and sheep are in the rich pastures, there are waving fields of ripening grain, the orchard is filled with apples, cherries, and Canada plums, and the murmuring of brooks and the roar of the distant torrent is heard. Around are the lofty wooded crests of the great mountains, Waternomee, Cushman, Kineo, and Mount Carr, sweeping away in a circle to the south- west.
We will get saddle horses here and go up the mountain slowly that we may enjoy the trip all the better. We open the heavy gate, cross the little rill that comes down from the great sugar orchard where the song thrush is singing, and going up through the pas- ture, startle a grass finch that skippering to the top of a low wav- ing maple, warbles two soft half plaintive notes, followed by a sweet silvery giggle, as though the bird exceedingly pleased, was laughing at its own rich melody.
As we enter the woods we see the mountain summit rising 4,000 feet above us; the river is roaring in the ravine 500 feet deep, on our right; the red-eyed vireo and winter wren are perpetually singing in the thick forest, and when we cross on rustic bridges two mossy streams, where a pair of solitary sand pipers are feed- ing, we begin the sharp ascent of the mountain.
The forest is deep and dark. Deer yard in these woods every winter; bears prowl in them all summer long, there are sable-traps
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
beside the path, traps in which wild cats are caught; and it was near here that Joseph Patch, his son, and Captain Flanders killed the last moose that were ever found in this region. Yet no one. was ever hurt by these " wild beastes," so terrible, only Jared S. Blodgett once was greatly frightened by a bear by the path, and many a traveler has seen a hedgehog rapidly disappearing in the thick bushes. Hear that great owl hooting away across the table land by Gorge brook. What a dreadful voice he has ; but it never injured one yet. There are red squirrels chattering by the road- side,- a pleasant sound.
Climbing, zigzaging up the mountain, the forest changes, the ash, beech, and maple disappear, and the spruce, fir, and silver birch take their places. We have reached a different zone, and the birds change,-the soft, sweet love note of the purple finch is heard up among the cones, the ivory billed snow bird is startled from its nest by the path, Canada jays scream out from the fir shade, and sometimes cross-bills, yellow rumped warblers, pine grosbeaks and lesser red polls, birds that breed in Labrador, are found. The Canada grouse, with their brood of chicks, run from the path. Then there are nut hatches, kinglets, ruby crowned wrens, oven birds and olive backed thrushes far in these woods.
The trees grow smaller and smaller, so short and thick and scraggy that one can almost walk on top of them. Blueberries and raspberries, that are ripening in the valley below, are just beginning to flower here; the bunch plum is white by the path, and a dozen kinds of flowers, new and strange, flora of Green- land, appear.
We will stop at the cold spring just under the southern peak, to drink. It is the coldest water we ever drank; our teeth ache and chatter, and we say with all the rest that surely there is an ice bank near by.
Soon we are out on the bald mountain ridge that connects the two peaks; on either hand are wild and hideous gorges, three thousand feet down into the depths below. Beyond to the west is the bright valley of the Connecticut, garden land, with silver river; to the east the dark ravine of the Asquamchumauke filled with the old primitive woods, where the trees for thousands of years, like the generations of men, have grown, ripened and died.
.
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THE PROSPECT HOUSE.
Half a mile further on and we are at the Prospect House on the bald summit of the mountain. The most sensible thing that we can do is to hitch our horses under the ledge on the eastern side, out of the way of the wind, and go in and get a good cup of tea, or something of the sort. The house is a rude structure, built of stone. Darius Swain and James Clement built it in 1860 .* Samuel Hoit was master workman and John Whitcher, Nathan Willey, and numerous others, worked there. They had two yoke of oxen up on the mountain for a whole month, and the men all camped over by the cold spring.t
We are out now on top of the mountain, well wrapped up in shawls and quilts. It is a glorious day, but a little colder than when the Indian chief, Waternomee, sat on this summit, yet not so cold as when a century ago one of Robert Rogers' rangers died here. Chase Whitcher, the first white settler who came up here, thought it a cold place. But Mrs. Daniel Patch, the first white woman who ever stood upon this summit, thought it quite pleasant. She brought her tea-pot with her, and made herself a good cup of tea over a fire kindled from the hackmatacks, bleached white, so many of which you see standing like skeletons down on the shoul- ders of the mountain, just as though a great grave-yard had been shaken open by an earthquake. Mrs. Susan C. Little, wife of Dr.
* The persons who worked on the mountain :- James Clement, Darius Swain, John Hoit, Samuel Hoit, John Whitcher, with yoke of cattle; Nathan Willey, drove cattle; Vanness Wyatt, Burgess A. Clement, Jesse Eastman, James S. Merrill, J. F. Merrill, Horatio Willoughby, with cattle; Eben Swain, Chas. Carpenter, Joseph Whitcher, Ilazen Libbey, Benjamin Eastman, Daniel Willis.
The Prospect House was opened July 4, 1850, and the day was celebrated on the mountain. More than a thousand people were present; the Newbury brass band furnished the music. Col. Stevens M. Dow marshaled the citizens, a whole regiment of them, marching and counter-marching upon the mountain top, and Hon. Thomas J. Smith delivered an excellent and patriotic oration.
On this occasion Daniel Q. Clement drove two horses attached to a large pleas- ure wagon on to the mountain; and the celebration conelnded with a show by a party of Indian performers, genuine Indians, who danced, sang, and sounded the war-whoop.
Nathaniel Richardson and Nath. K. Richardson made the shingles high up on the mountain side.
" 1860, Aug. 29 .- Philip Hadley, 90 years old, came up to the Prospect House. He lives at Bradford, Vt., and he walked all the way from that place to the top of the mountain."-Register of Prospect House, 1860.
James Cutting, 85 years of age, rode horseback from his home in Haverhill, to the top of Mooshillock, and back the same day, Aug. 24, 1869.
Immediately after opening the Prospect House, several citizens of Warren commenced to keep summer boarders; Russel Merrill was the first to open the business ; and after him, H. H. Sheldon; the Moosilauke House, now kept by D. G. Marsh, and Nathaniel Merrill, 2d, have followed the business.
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
Jesse Little, was the first woman who rode a horse on to the moun- tain, and that was in 1859.
William Little was the first landlord of the Prospect House, then Ezekiel A. Clement kept it for one season, and afterwards James Clement, for years and years, was mine host on Moosehil- lock. He was really the old man of the mountain. Many a niglit he has stopped alone up here among the clouds and the eagles. The housewife rocking her cradle of a stormy night, below, would mutter as a gust of storm thundered over the roof, "O then it is poor Jim that has enough of fresh air about his head up there this night, the creature !"
One summer they had, as visitors at the Prospect House, a deer, three eagles, a bear, and a wild cat. Jim said he saw the deer cropping the harebells on the mountain top; that the bear lay in the grass at the foot of the falls; the wild-cat screamed from the hackmatacks at the moon, and the eagles looked in at the win- dow as he was building the morning fire. Jim was a great hand at telling stories of his adventures in the woods, and what he had witnessed on the mountain. He said he had seen the fog so thick that he could bag it up like corn ; that he had seen it so cold that it turned into icicles and sailed round like birds; that the wind . would blow one hundred and twenty miles an hour; that once a whirlwind lifted a pair of cart-wheels fifty feet into the air, spun them round for a minute and then let them down again uninjured ; that he had heard a bear in the night, hallooing over on the south peak so loud that it waked the whole family up; that there was an earthquake that shook the crockery on the shelves; that once a column of smoke and fire issued from the easterly ridge, belching up like a volcano; that the aurora borealis came down on the mountain so thick and so splendid that it seemed like a shower of silver and gold; and that every year, there was one night, about the full of the moon in August, when witches, and ghosts, and spirits, and fairies danced, and yelled, and sang over the mountain peaks by the million. When remonstrated with for telling large stories, he would reply, " What is the use of telling a story at all unless you can tell one that will call the mind into activity."
Let us get up on the deck of the roof. It is the best view of all from here; the grandest and most sublime, far surpassing that
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A PANORAMA OF MOUNTAINS.
from any other peak in New England, because of its isolated posi- tion, and of its great height, and no other mountains near to hide the prospect, as is the case at the White mountains. Then stand- ing alone it does not attract the clouds as the White mountains do, and for a whole month in the season it shoots up into the clear heaven when all the eastern peaks are cloud capped.
Just around us, the mountain is green with mosses and lichens, thirty kinds of mosses; and harebells and mountain cranberries, with their millions of flowers, make it seem like a garden, with a green border of firs and spruces and birches below. Purple finches, snow birds, and the mountain whistler are singing in this garden.
The sun is going down and it is cold you say. Let us travel with our eyes round the whole horizon.
Look away to the south first. How the ruby light is gleaming on Lake Winnepisseogee, " The Smile of the Great Spirit ;" see that tall shaft just on the horizon beyond. It is Bunker hill monument standing " down by the sea." Carry your eye round to the west ; Mt. Belknap is first, then Wachusett in Massachusetts, the Unca- noonucks, and to the right of them, Jo English, Kearsarge, Mt. Cardigan, Monadnock, and Croydon mountains. Close by is Wa- ternomee, Cushman, Kineo, Mount Carr, Stinson mountain in Rom- ney, Smart's mountain in Dorchester, Mt. Cube in Orford, Senti- nel mountain in Warren, and Piermont mountain.
Across the Connecticut river to the southwest is Ascutney, and beyond it, farther down, is Saddle mountain, Graylock, and Berk- shire hills, in Massachusetts. Then wheeling round towards the north are Killington peaks, sharp and needle like, shooting up above the neighboring hills; farther north and directly west, is Camel's Hump, unmistakable in its appearance; then Mt. Mans- field, towering above the thousand other summits of the Green mountains.
Above and beyond them, in the farthest distance, are counted nine sharp peaks of the Adirondacks in New York, Mt. Marcy higher than all the rest. To-morrow morning at sunrise you will see the fog floating up from Lake Champlain this side of them.
In the northwest is Jay peak on Canada line, and to the right of it you see a hundred summits rising from the table lands of
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
Canada. Then there is the notch at Memphremagog lake, Owl's head by Willoughby lake, and Monadnock in northern Vermont.
Close down is Black mountain; Owl's head of New Hamp- shire, and Blueberry, Hogback and Sugarloaf mountains. Then north is Cobble hill in Landaff; Gardner mountain in Lyman, and Stark peaks away up in northern Coos.
To the right, and stretching away to the northeast in Maine, you see a long rolling range of hills, the water-shed between the Atlantic ocean and the St. Lawrence river, said by Agassiz to be the oldest land in the world. East of these is the white summit of the Aziscoos, by Umbagog lake.
Nearest and to the north-east is Mt. Kinsman, the Profile mountain; and above and over them Mt. Lafayette, its sides scarred and jagged where a hundred torrents pour down in spring, its peaks splintered by lightning. South of this, and near by, are the Haystacks. Over and beyond the latter are the Twins, more than five thousand feet high; and just to the right of them Mt. Washington, dome shaped and higher than all the rest. Around this monarch of mountains, as if attendant upon him, are Mts. Adams and Jefferson, sharp peaks on the left, and Mt. Moriah, the Imp, Mts. Madison and Monroe, Mt. Webster, the Willey notch precipice, Double head, and a hundred other great mountains standing to the right and front.
A little to the south is Carrigan, 4,800 feet high, black and sombre, most attractive and most dreaded, not a white spot nor a scar upon it ; covered with dark woods like a black pall, symmetrical and beautiful, the eye turns away to return to it again and again. Mt. Pigwacket in Conway, its neighbor, always seems gray in the hazy distance, Chocorua rises farther south, and Welch mountain, Osceola, Whiteface, Ossipee, Agamenticus, on the sea coast; Mt. Prospect and Red hill fill up the circle.
This view to the north and east is the most magnificent moun- tain view to be had on this side of the continent. The most indif- ferent observer cannot look upon it without feeling its grandeur and sublimity.
Forty ponds and lakes are sparkling under the setting sun. Two in Woodstock, the little tarn in the meadow where the As- quamchumauke rises; Stinson pond in Romney, Lake Winnepis-
-
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MAGNIFICENT PROSPECT.
seogee, Winnesquam, Long bay, Smith's pond, Squam lake, Mas- coma lake, two ponds in Dorchester, Baker ponds in Orford, Indian pond, Fairlee pond, and numerous others in Vermont ; Tarleton lakes, Wachipauka pond, by which Rogers and his ran- gers camped, Kelley, and Horse-shoe ponds; two others in Hav- erhill, Beaver meadow ponds in Benton, and many more with names unknown; how they all gleam and glisten, and look like silver slieens.
The Pemigewassett, the Asquamchumauke, the Ammonoosuc, and the Connecticut, from their wooded valleys are flashing in the setting sun.
The villages with their church spires are gleaming. See Brad- ford, Haverhill Corner, East and North Haverhill, Newbury, Woods- ville and Wells River, down there in the Connecticut valley. A hundred spires are shining on the hills of Vermont. Landaff and Bath are lighted up, and Warren, Wentworth, Campton, Franco- nia, Lake Village, and Laconia all come distinctly out as the sun goes down.
Now see the sun just touching the Adirondacks beyond Lake Champlain in the west. There is a rosy blush on the White moun- tains, the Green mountains are golden, while all the peaks behind which the sun is going down are bathed in a sea of glorious light. How it changes! Darkness creeps over the eastern peaks, the Green mountains are going into shadows, the vermillion, pink, ruby, and gold of the Adirondacks, is fading away, and the stars are coming out.
But look ! there is a silver line on the eastern horizon. 'Tis the moon rising. But Luna don't come from behind the hills. Her upper limb as she creeps up is distant twice her diameter from the land horizon. That bright band twixt moon and earth is
The view is the grand thing of Moosehillock. But if it should happen to be cloudy, as is frequently the case, there is much of interest about the top of the mountain. Garnets an inch in diameter, with perfect faces, are found by the car- riage road, forty rods from the house. The best tourmalines in New Hampshire are also obtained in the same locality. Down in the Tunnel are magnificent quartz crystals. On the south peak is a most curious furrow. Mr. James Clement says it was undoubtedly plowed by an iceberg drifting from the north-east to the south- west, when New Hampshire mountains were under the ocean. No person can fail to notice it. "Jobildune" ravine where the Asquamchumauke leaps down a thousand feet at an angle of 80 degrees, is much visited. The Seven Cascades between the two peaks of the mountain on Gorge brook, are also well worth a visit. The stream descends at a sharp angle eight hundred feet over a series of steps, and after a great rain is a most magnificent sight.
F*
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
the ocean. It is a sight seldom seen from New Hampshire's moun- tains.
As we come down from the roof, the mountain whistler, well called the northern nightingale, chants its sweet notes in the hack- matacks, an owl hoots over by the old camp at the Cold spring, the wind is soughing mournfully on the mosses of the rocks, and the deep voice of the torrents comes up from the dark ravines below. Let us go in, get supper, listen to Uncle Jim's yarns for a while, go to bed and sleep till the sunrise, which is scarcely less glorious than the sunset.
CHAPTER IX.
HOW SEVERAL INDIVIDUALS GOT RICH MANUFACTURING, OR OUGHT TO, WITH THE GLORIOUS RESULTS OF IT.
WARREN has always been esteemed an agricultural town. Some mining has also been carried on, but we do not now propose to consider either of said branches of industry ; but to give a brief history of manufacturing in our little democracy.
Saw Mills .- In the earliest days of our hamlet the manufacture of lumber was the most important of this branch of industry. Stevens Merrill, as we have said before, built the first saw-mill at the " white little falls" on the Mikaseota, Black brook, where once John Page shot a deer.
Joshua Copp built the next saw-mill near the outlet of Runa- way pond. What an excellent mill privilege might be made there now by constructing a short dam fifty feet long and forty-feet high and flowing all Runaway pond basin again. The pond would be a mile wide, two miles long and thirty feet deep. What a grand reservoir! Then Kelley pond could be flowed so as to make a reservoir of eighty acres, twelve feet deep, and Wachipauka could be raised some eight feet by a short dam. If it was raised higher than that its water would flow down the Oliverian to the Con- necticut.
After Mr. Copp, Nathaniel Clough built two saw mills, the first on the Asquamchumauke near the southern boundary, and the second on that musical stream, Hurricane brook. Joseph Clement
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
repaired the latter and then sold it to John L. Stevens, who moved it away to Higli street.
My grandfather Joseph Merrill, Jonathan Merrill, and Benja- min Merrill, then built the great saw-mill just at the depot cross- ing.
Ruel Bela Clifford built on Mooschillock falls the mill stand- ing near the East-parte school-house, and later, Adoniram Whitcher built the old mill now gone to decay, on Berry brook, far up the "New Road."
William Kelley built the saw-mill at Kelley pond.
Joseph H. Stevens, the mill on Oak falls ;* hardly a vestige of it now remains.
Mrs. James Harriman, first a mill np High street on the Oli- verian, and second another mill lower down on Warren Summit.
Sylvester Merrill and Capt. Daniel Merrill, a flourishing mill high up in the East-parte regions.
Levi F. Jewell, two mills on Berry brook, and Isaac Sawtelle, a mill in Streamy valley district, near the mouth of Batchelder brook.t
What a host of different persons have owned some of these mills. Stevens Merrill sold his to Moses H. Clement, and the subsequent owners are Ebenezer Cushman, F. A. & M. E. Cush- man, Philo Baldwin, Hazelton & Eaton, and Whitcher, Merrill & Clark.
Joseph Merrill bought out Jonathan and Benjamin Merrill, and then sold to Anson Merrill. He sold to James Dow; and subse- quent owners are Col. Charles Lane, Albe C. Weeks, Whitcher & Weeks, L. C. Whitcher, J. M. Whiton, and last, H. W. Weeks.
At first all the lumber was manufactured for home consump- tion ; but since the railroad was built millions of feet are annually sent to market, bringing thousands of dollars back to the lumber- men and farmers of Warren.
Grist Mills .- The manufacture of all kinds of grain into meal and flour is one of great importance, yet but two grist mills of
* Mr. Paul Meader was killed here, Nov. 8, 1835. A log rolled over him crush- ing his head to a jelly. He was 77 years old.
t Since the advent of the 2d century Col. John S. Bryant built another mill on the Oliverian, at the Summit, and Charles Thompson, a large steam mill by the depot on the Summit.
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MILLS AND MILLERS.
any consequence have ever been established in Warren; Butler's mill at the old deep hole, and Clement's mill at the mouth of Black brook. For nearly twenty-five years the Butler mill stood on the Asquamchumauke, and sons of Joshua Copp "tended it." Then it went to decay. The Clement mill has since done nearly all the " grinding." Col. Obadiah Clement was the first miller* at the white little falls on Black brook, and old men and women tell how when they were boys and girls they went there "to mill" and waiting for their " grist" whiled away the time listening to the buzz of the old Col.'s rude mill stones, the splash of the water- wheel and the rattling music of the kingfisher, equally familiar, that every year had its nest down the stream in the river bank.t
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