The history of Weare, New Hampshire, 1735-1888, Part 3

Author: Little, William, 1833-1893. cn
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Lowell, Mass., Printed by S. W. Huse & Co.
Number of Pages: 1240

USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Weare > The history of Weare, New Hampshire, 1735-1888 > 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).

HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

SOUTH WEARE, in the south-central part of the town.

NORTH WEARE, in the north-central.

EAST WEARE, in the east-central.

WEARE CENTER, north of Mount Wallingford.

CLINTON GROVE, in the west-central.

EVERETT STATION, between Oil Mill and East Weare. ROCKLAND, on the Piscataquog, east of North Weare.

BOSTON, on the Piscataquog; a short distance west of East Weare; one-half mile above East Weare station.

SLAB CITY, between Clinton Grove and North Weare.

CHAPTER II.

GEOLOGY.

WEARE was once part of a nebula. Scientists speak of it as a nebulous haze or cloud, - the fire mist. "It contained the promise and potency of all future life.". Out of the fire-mist have come sun, planets, and satellites. The spectroscope shows, in the chemical con- stitution of the nebula, all the successive phases of cosmic growth : nebula, sun, and planet. " They are as plainly seen bursting into life throughout the heavens, as the germ, leaf, and flower at our feet." As the nebula condensed, the earth was at first a fiery ring cast off from the nebulous sun, then an incandescent sphere, and at length a granite shell, its center a glowing mass. The planets are ancient fragments of the sun, freezing as they whirl; the moon is a cold cinder of the earth. Once it was a live planet circling round its sun, the earth.

When the hot granite shell further cooled, it increased in thick- ness, and hot rain fell upon it in torrents ; chemical reactions were produced, and disintegration took place. The cooling earth shrank in size, its crust crumpled, and great folds appeared as mountain ranges. Then the prodigous rains denuded and destroyed them, the debris was swept down into hot seas, and secondary rocks were formed. Strata of these on the surface of the earth are found many thousands of feet thick. The earth still cooling, and the crust

GEOLOGY OF WEARE.

breaking, these strata, once horizontal, were tilted up, -inclined at all angles, - and these, in turn, gradually rose above the sea.

The first territory now remaining to us, in New Hampshire, that was thus redeemed from the primeval ocean, is the back-bone or ridge extending from north to south sixty-one miles, between the Merrimack and Connecticut rivers .* Besides this great mass, there are in the state eleven or more smaller masses that appeared as islands above the sea. The largest of these, and next to the main ridge, is the north part of Weare, and another is Raymond cliff, north-west of Oil Mill village.t

But this land was not permanent. There have since been numer- ous continental elevations and depressions, and the whole land surface of North America has been many times, for long ages, under the sea. During these periods many different kinds of secondary or metamorphic rocks were formed. Of these, only the deep-lying beds are found in Weare; all the later fossiliferous rocks have been eroded and swept away.

GRANITE was the primordial rock out of which, as many geolo- gists teach, our present rocks are formed. It consists of quartz, feldspar, and mica, and has no planes of cleveage. No original granite is found in Weare.

The rocks of Weare are gneiss and mica-schist, and the many varieties of them.

GNEISS is formed from the disintegrated granite, and it is much like it, but it has the mica and other ingredients in layers, and cleaves readily in the direction of the mica layers. It is a metamorphic rock, and a compact, hard gneiss is what is called granite, and is extensively quarried in this state.

PORPHYRITIC GNEISS has large crystals of potash feldspar, three- fourths of an inch to two inches long, of a whitish-gray color, scattered through a base of much finer material.

LAKE GNEISS is simply a fine-grained gneiss.

MICA-SCHIST differs from gneiss in that it has finer-grained mate- rials and consists largely of mica, with feldspar and quartz. It divides easily into slabs, - that is, is very schistose.

ROCKINGHAM-SCHIST has the mica in coarse blotches.#

FERRUGINOUS-SCHIST is simply a mica-schist that has six to seven per cent. of red peroxide of iron.

FIBROLITE-SCHIST is a mica-schist that has fibrolite crystals in it.

* Geol. of N. H., part 2, p. 519. t Ibid., vol. i, pp. 512, 515. # Ibid., vol. ii, p. 576.

HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

MONTALBAN ROCK * is a feldspathic mica-schist carrying crystals of andalusite, or some closely related silicate.

These rocks are located as follows : -

PORPHYRITIC GNEISS ¡ forms the two islands that were a part of the first land of New Hampshire : North Weare and Raymond cliff.

LAKE GNEISS # extends in a great mass, ten miles long, through Francestown, Deering, and the north-west part of Weare. A pre- cipitous cliff of it is found nearly three miles west of North Weare station, facing westward, and near the union of Dudley and Had- lock brooks. Other layers of it crop out near the west line of the town, and it comes within a mile of Clinton Grove. It underlies nearly the whole of South Weare, and extends along the slope of Mount Dearborn to Odiorne hill and the east base of Mount Misery. The porphyritic gneiss that crops out at Raymond cliff is wedge-shaped, and makes a notch in the lake gneiss. § .

MICA-SCHIST forms Rattlesnake hill. There is an out-crop of it two miles north of Clinton Grove and a mile west, also near the west line of the town; and Mount Misery and Odiorne hill are composed of it.

FERRUGINOUS-SCHIST | is found on the summit of Mount Walling- ford and throughout the west part of the town. It reddens the mica-schist rocks.

FIBROLITE-SCHIST ** makes the top of Mount Misery.

ROCKINGHAM-SCHIST tt forms the huge masses of Mounts Walling- ford and William and rests upon the lake gneiss.

MONTALBAN ROCKS ## are on the Kuncanowet hills.

On the east slope of Mount Misery is a large mass of talc, of the variety called steatite, or soapstone. Moses A. Hodgdon has quar- ried a large amount of it, and his mine is seventy-one feet long, sixty feet wide, and ten feet deep. There are masses of mica-schist in it called "horses," - one thirty-five feet long, - and portions of the wall-rock are hornblendic. The soapstone is the same as that at Francestown, -may be on the same out-crop, - and both are characterized by massiveness, arising from the uniform dissemination of crystallized radiated bunches of talc through the rock. Minute

* Geol. of N. H., vol. ii, p. 112. t Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 519, 528.

Į Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 535, 537.

§ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 581. || Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 575, 591. ** Ibid., vol. ii, p. 590.

tt Ibid., vol. ii, p. 581. ## Ibid., vol. ii, p. 641.

GEOLOGY OF WEARE.

bits of pyrrhotite occur occasionally, but they do not injure the soapstone. *

The minerals found, besides the soapstone and pyrrhotite, are arsenopyrite, asbestos, and crystals of feldspar.

A great change in the face of the country occurred during the early stages of the human period. A time of intense cold came on, and the land was deeply buried beneath a sheet of ice from three thousand to six thousand feet thick. It is hard to tell the causes of the glacial cold. Some attribute it to astronomical causes, -that the change in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, in the precession of the equinoxes, and the motion of the line of apsides, whereby there was an excess of twenty-eight winter days more than summer days, caused it. Others think there was a great elevation of the continent near the north pole; that it began in local glaciers, like those in Greenland now, and in time they became continental, ex- tending as far south as the fortieth degree of latitude.

The ice overtopped all the present hills, even Mount Washington itself. It carved and ground down the rocks, made the valleys and ridges, dug the lake beds, carried square miles of earth and rocks on its back, and pushed out to sea more than fifty miles. It piled up the moraines, long lines of waste; formed the lenticular hills, and left a layer of rubbish on the land hundreds of feet deep. It ground a rock blanket from the whole land more than a thousand feet thick.

Some think the glacial cold began about two hundred and forty thousand years ago, and terminated about eighty thousand years ago. Others, skeptical, say that it all happened not more than ten thou- sand years ago.

The weight of the ice depressed the general surface in this section about two hundred feet. When the ice melted, all our river-valleys were either estuaries of the sea or inland lakes, and the immense flow of water filled them full of sand and gravel. This was the Champlain period.

After this the country gradually rose to its normal level, and the rivers and streams slowly cut down through the gravels to the bed- rock, making their valleys and terraces. The time occupied to do this is called the Terrace period.

In Weare there are many indications of the ice sheet : -

STRIE are on all the rocks, which have been planed smooth.

* Geol. of N. H,, vol iii, part 2, pp. 34, 113, 135; vol. ii, p. 590.

2 B

HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

They are very distinct where the ledges have been covered up and not exposed to the weather. They show that the ice moved south about twenty degrees east .*

LENTICULAR HILLS show it. Their trend is with that of the moving ice. They are composed of till or hard-pan, covered with soil. The till is of two kinds : blue till at the bottom, gray at the top, with a thin intercallary layer of sand between them. The blue till has polished striated boulders in it and was probably moulded under the glacier during its decline and departure. The upper till has angular boulders and it probably fell down when the ice melted. The south-east slope of Mount Dearborn, the top of Chevey hill, where the till crowns a high ledge, and many of the eminences in the south-west part of the town are lenticular hills.t

THE BEDS of Mount William and Ferrin ponds were gouged out by the moving glacier.

BOULDERS by the thousands, on all the hills, were brought there by the ice sheet. Some of them are really curiosities. One on the south slope of Mount Wallingford has the form of an elephant; so much so, that nearly every one notices it. On the long south slope of Barnard hill is a vast navy of them, stranded when the ice melted. One on the farm of Mr. Alonzo C. Follansbee was pushed forward by the ice over the edge of a precipice. If it had gone six inches further, it would have plunged down; but there it has hung, prow in air, through sunshine and storm, just ready to take its leap, for the last eighty thousand years. Another huge one, with a thou- sand lesser companions around it, is in an old pasture a half mile to the north. It will weigh more than two thousand tons. Near the latter is what seems a veritable dolmen or cromlech. Like the others, it is a boulder of porphyritic gneiss, will weigh twenty-five tons, and rests on six smaller boulders, each about a cubic foot in volume, placed under it in regular order. It looks as though some huge giant had taken it up in his hands, held it, while some little giant carefully placed the six bed-rocks on the ledge, and then set it down gently upon them.

EMBOSSED ROCKS (roches moutenes) are abundant in town. Many are found on the south slope of Barnard hill, among the boulders.

PRECIPICES on the south-east slopes of the hills show that the ice crept slowly from the north to their summits, then broke off and fell

* Geol. of N. H., vol. iii, part 1, p. 190. t Ibid., vol. iii, part 1, p. 297.

THE TRAVELER.

THE DOLMEN.

GEOLOGY OF WEARE.

down, thereby drilling out great depressions at their foot. The south-east face of Mount William, Raymond cliff and Mount Misery show this.

THE TERRACES in the valley of the Piscataquog were formed of materials broken up by the ice sheet. This drift or glacial waste has been worn, sorted, and rearranged, by water action; much of it is laid down in strata.

THE CLAY BEDS are from the feldspar of the rocks ground up by the great ice mill. Their material was sorted out by the action of running water and laid down in the Champlain period in compara- tively still water. They are like the lenticular hills: blue clay at the bottom, gray clay at the top, with a thin intercallary stratum of fine sand * between them. The gray clay is the best. Beds of clay are situated in the valleys of the Peacock, Meadow brook, the Otter, Choate brook, the Piscataquog, and near Henniker line. The thin stratum of sand often thins out so as to allow the upper and lower deposits of boulder clay to come together.

KETTLE HOLES are found in great beds of drift. Many are to be seen in the valley of the Piscataquog. They were probably formed by the slow melting of a great chunk or mass of ice, covered up in the gravel and left by the retreating glacier. The debris upon it fell to the bottom and the great bowl or kettle in the ground has ever since remained. Some have very steep sides.

POT HOLES worn in the solid rock are high up on the Kuncanowet hills. There is now no river or brook near by to form them, and they were probably worn out by a stream of water running from the melting ice sheet. Formerly it was thought they were made by the Indians, to be used by them as store-houses for their corn.

Since the ice period, only frost and snow, wind and rain, and running brooks and rills have made a change in the surface. But this has not been much, for the kettle holes, as we have seen, have stood for eighty thousand years without filling up. Some say that it is only about ten thousand years ago that they were formed; but we fail to see why, if they would last so perfect for ten thousand years, they might not for eighty thousand years as well.

Several caves have evidently been formed since the glacial epoch.

RAYMOND CAVE is in the side of Raymond cliff, near Everett station. Its opening is large enough for a man to comfortably enter

* Geol. of N. H., vol. iii, part 3, p. 327.

HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

erect. For the first forty feet it is about twelve feet high and eight feet wide, then for the next forty feet it is of smaller dimensions. It is very cold in summer. The cave is formed of huge, angular blocks which have fallen from the cliff above. Frost and ice, or the lightning, may have cracked them, and an earthquake shook them down. A great boulder of porphyritic gneiss is near the entrance of the cave. It is forty-five feet long, thirty feet thick, thirty feet high and weighs about two thousand two hundred and sixty-eight tons. Jacob Carr and others started this great rock from the brink of the cliff above, one Fourth of July morning. It made such a thundering noise going down, and the earth trembling, the inhabitants thought it was a veritable earthquake. It fell nearly a hundred feet, broke huge trees as though they were pipe- stems, and crushed rocks, tons in weight, in its course .*

CARR CAVES are on the old Jacob Carr place. Huge blocks have fallen from the cliff above, and piling up loosely, formed great holes or crevices. Into some of these persons can crawl twenty to fifty feet.

The soils of Weare vary in different parts of the town. Near Oil Mill, and up the valleys of the Piscataquog and Otter, is some pine plain and scrub oak land. Where the river is sluggish, alluvial soil is found; on the uplands the soil is better, though hard, and on the lenticular hills it is best of all.

The early settlers sat down first on the plain land, for it was easier to clear, and there were some natural or beaver meadows on the streams near by, where they could get hay at once for their stock. But the hills with strong soil were settled very soon after.

CHAPTER III.

FLORA.

CHANGES of climate have led to corresponding changes of vegeta- tion. Long before the glacial epoch, the trees, shrubs, and herbs, now growing in New England, flourished at the North pole. Many of them, with huge sequoias like those now in California, are found as fossils in Greenland. The semi-tropical vegetation of Florida and the West Indies, palms, bananas, oranges, lemons,

* John L. H. Marshall says that his father, Moody Marshall, vouched for this.

HW. HERRICK

THE GREAT BOULDER.

THE FLORA OF WEARE.

and figs, grew on our tertiary hills. The remains of cinnamon trees have been dug up in Vermont.

But when the cold came on and the glacier advanced, the tropical vegetation moved southward; the deciduous forests succeeded. These were followed by the present flora of the arctic zone, and finally all were driven south by the ice. These changes occupied many thousand years.

When the ice sheet had melted, the water subsided, and the new soil become fit for land vegetation, moss and lichens first appeared, then the dwarf willow, ancestor of the little willow that grows in our wet lands, and after it the small gray birch that is always found in the meanest and coldest soil. These had clung near the toe of the glacier on its advance, and they followed its retreat. They still grow in Spitzbergen and Greenland, and insular patches of them are found upon the tops of the highest mountains. An arctic butter- fly also kept company with the edge of the ice, and a few got left behind on the summit of Mount Washington. They all live within five hundred feet of the top. If they descend lower, they die. The species is not found anywhere else south of Labrador.

In time, as the climate further ameliorated, New Hampshire was clothed with the dwarf fir and white spruce, then came black spruce, arbor vitæ, canoe birch, and beeches. When it grew still warmer, then appeared white and red pine. At length the common pitch pine occupies the lighter soils, and with oak, maple, ash, and their associate trees, now make up the New Hampshire forest. The semi-tropical forest may yet return in the æons to come.

Botanists tell us that there are twenty-seven natural orders in the flora of this state, and that the pine family is the most important.

White Pines (Pinus strobus) are the largest. When the town was first settled some were cut in Weare seventeen rods long, and their stumps were so broad and large that a yoke of oxen could easily mount and turn about upon them. The surveyors of the king's woods, in the Piscataquog valley, once put the broad arrow- mark, some say the broad "R," on all fit for masting the royal navy .*

Red Pine (Pinus resinosa) occurs in groups, grows from eighty

* In 1885 Robert Peaslee cut a pine on his farm one hundred and forty feet long and four feet in diameter, straight as an arrow.

Hon. Moses A. Hodgdon, in 1864, cut a pine that was over six feet in diameter, and one log from it weighed more than seven tons. It was sold with other lumber for ship timber.

HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

to a hundred feet high, tall and slim, straight as candles and slender enough for liberty poles. It is wrongly called Norway pine. A fine grove of these is now growing by the road from Oil Mill to South Weare.

Pitch Pine (Pinus rigida) grows on plains and drift-knolls. Some are found in the valley of the Piscataquog and by the Otter.

Black Spruce (Abies nigra), not very plenty, is found upon the highest land. It is an excellent timber tree.

Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea) is also rare. A few are found grow- ing on the slopes of Mounts Dearborn and Wallingford.

Hemlock (Abies Canadensis) , most graceful of all the spruces, is very common.

Hackmatack, or Tamarack, or Bald Spruce (Larix Americana), is found in swamps, or set out as an ornamental tree.

Red Cedar (Juniperus Virginiana) is rare. Some are growing near Oil Mill village.

Juniper (Juniperus communis) spreads over hilly pastures and is a pest.

Yew (Taxus Canadensis), called ground hemlock, is found in the shade of woods and cold swamps.

Arbor Vitæ (Thuya occidentalis) is used for hedges about gar- dens and front yards. These mostly retain their green, needle-like leaves throughout the year.

The deciduous trees have leafless branches in winter, are delicate green in spring, have full leafage, in summer, and gorgeous hues in autumn. People like the maples best.

White Maple (Acer dasycarpum) grows on intervals and along the banks of streams, - rarely away from them.

Red Maple (Acer rubrum), erroneously called white maple, gives the brilliant scarlet hue to the woodlands in autumn.

Rock or Sugar Maple (Acer saccharinum) is the largest of the genus. It furnishes sugar and timber and makes the best of wood.

Beech (Fagus ferruginea) is common in the highlands, often growing with spruce and hemlock. Large quantities of beech-nuts were gathered by the early settlers, and beech groves were a favorite resort for wild turkeys two hundred years ago. It is a handsome tree.

Black Birch (Betula lenta) is a common tree in our upland woods. From it were produced the ever-enduring leaf table-tops of our ancestors' big kitchens.

THE FLORA OF WEARE.

Golden or Yellow Birch (Betula lutea) is a very handsome tree ; symmetrical in proportions and luxuriant in foliage.

Paper or Canoe Birch (Betula papyracea) grows high up on the hills, its white bark in striking contrast with the fir and spruce. Most of the ancient growth has been cut and sold for peg-wood. It is often called canoe birch, and a hundred years ago they were found large enough to furnish bark, in one piece, sufficient for a canoe fourteen feet long. Two Indians could make a good bark canoe in one day, weighing less than forty pounds and capable of carrying five or six persons.

White or Gray Birch (Betula populifolia) is the smallest of all the birches ; light and graceful, and extensively used for hoop poles.

White Oak (Quercus alba) flourishes at altitudes of less than five hundred feet. Once plenty in town, but now mostly cut off for timber.

Yellow Oak (Quercus prinus) is a companion of white oak, both being often found growing in the same locality.

Red Oak (Quercus rubra) is the hardiest of the species, and is found at an altitude of more than one thousand feet. The old growth attained a height of eighty feet ; but they are scarce now, most of them having been culled out, sent to coopers' shops, and wrought into barrels.

Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus) grows at an altitude of about five hundred feet, in small colonies. It is rare, but a few have been found in Weare.

Scrub Oak (Quercus illicifolia) abounds on pine plain land, and is of little value, except as a summer home for birds.

Chestnut (Castanea vesca) is found at an altitude of four to eight hundred feet. Some have been transplanted and cultivated by the farmers for the delicious nuts they afford.

Elm (Ulmus Americana and racemosa) thrives best on the alluvial soil of rivers. Some elms in town are majestic in appearance and are used as shade and ornamental trees. They are often of great size, being found eighteen feet in circumference, eighty feet high, and the graceful top spreading seventy-five feet in diameter. Many an- cient elms in the valley of the Piscataquog were cut, to supply back- logs for the roaring winter fires of the farmers in the olden times.

Red Elm or Slippery Elm (Ulmus fulva) is found on James Grant's farm, and on the John Jewell place west of the Peacock.

Butternut (Juglans cineria) is found by streams and on hills.

HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

Many have been transplanted and cultivated. It has one of the best of nuts, but hard to crack. The tree is the white walnut.

Walnut (Juglans nigra) is not plenty, most of those in town hav- ing been transplanted and cultivated. There are a few of these trees, one a very large one, on the James Grant place, and an- other at Dearborn's tavern, South Weare.

Hickory (Carya alba and porcina) is tolerably plenty. There are two kinds: one has a shag-bark nut, and the other pig-nuts. A few of the first kind are now growing on Alonzo C. Follansbee's farm, and many of the second on the George Mudgett farm, one inile north-west of Oil Mill, and also on the Abraham Melvin place on Barnard hill.

Basswood (Tilia Americana) grows on the highland and is plenty. White Ash (Fraxinus Americana), once plenty, is now rare.

Brown Ash (Fraxinus sambucifolia), also once common, has mostly disappeared, having been used for hoop poles and "basket stuff."

Poplar (Populus grandidentata) is a large tree, common on rocky hills.

White Poplar (Populus tremuloides) has dark-colored bark on its trunk, and its young leaves are clothed with white down.

Black Cherry (Primus serotina) is common near streams, and furnishes a handsome ornamental wood.

Buttonwood (Plantanus occidentalis) is a rare tree, a few being found along the rivers.

Many trees have been introduced ; most of them from Europe. They are Lombardy Poplar (Populus nigra), Locust (Robinia pseu- dacacia), Horse Chestnut (ÆEsculus hippocastanum), Balm of Gilead (Populus candicans), Thorn (Cratægus tomentosa), Quince (Cydonia vulgaris), Pear (Pyrus communis), Apple (Pyrus malus), Peach (Prunus vulgaris), Plum (Prunus domestica), Cherry (Prunus ce- rasus), and Mulberry (Morus alba).

Shrubs are more plenty to-day than when the country was first settled. When the land was all woods they were only found by the borders of ponds and streams, on rocky hillsides and in paths made by the hurricane. Clearing the forest increased their growth, and they are now abundant, with their beautiful flowers and luscious fruit, on all uncultivated, cleared land. The following is a partial list : -

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

The history of Weare, New Hampshire, 1735-1888, Part 3

Author: Little, William, 1833-1893. cn Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Lowell, Mass., Printed by S. W. Huse & Co. Number of Pages: 1240

Author: Little, William, 1833-1893. cn
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Lowell, Mass., Printed by S. W. Huse & Co.
Number of Pages: 1240