USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Weare > The history of Weare, New Hampshire, 1735-1888 > Part 6
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+ CANADA TOWNS. 1. Weare, 2. Bow, 3. Lyndeborough, 4. New Ipswich, 5. Peter- borough, 6. Richmond, 7. Rindge, 8. Salisbury, etc. They were known as, 1. Canada to Beverly, 2. Canada to Dantziek, 3. Canada to Salem, 4. Canada to Ipswich, 5. Canada to Harwood, 6. Canada to Sylvester, 7. Canada to Rowley, 8. Canada to Baker or Stevens, or Capts. John Mareh, Stephen Greenleaf and Philip Nelson.
§ Our province in a like manner said that what she did was to fix the linc so those near it might know where to pay taxes, vote, cut trees and go to court. But this was not the whole truth. It was also done to get elean rid of the bay provinee, to own the waste land, to make grants and get rieh. New Hampshire men were told the grants would be made to them, and of course they said "go on with the case."
45
THE BOUNDARY LINE.
1737.]
said she did not want a trial, and then went right on as usual making grants.
Parris, in 1733, put the question : "From what part of the Mer- rimack river shall the line start?" It was sent to the attorney-gen- eral, and both sides were heard.
Massachusetts put in the grant to Roswell, and the charter of William and Mary which had the same bounds.
New Hampshire put in the grants to Capt. John Mason.
It was found June 5, 1734, that according to the charter of William and Mary, "The division ,line ought to be taken from three miles north of the mouth of the Merrimack where it runs into the sea."
Then the Lords of Trade said the king should name men from the provinces near by to fix the line. Eight of them met at Hampton, Aug. 1, 1737. Some time was spent to get to work, and Aug. 10th, our General Assembly met at George's inn, Hampton Falls, north of the line, and the Great and General Court of Massa- chusetts met at Salisbury, south of the line and not five miles off. Exactly what these great and general courts met for we have never found out, probably that they might have a good influence on the commissioners. At any rate they had a "great time," and how they got there has been well set forth, thus: -
" Dear Paddy, you ne'er did behold such a sight, As yesterday morning was seen before night, You in all your born days saw, nor I did n't neither, So many fine horses and men ride together. At the head the lower house trotted two in a row; Then all the higher house pranced after the low, Then the governor's coach galloped on like the wind, And the last that came foremost were troopers behind; But I fear it means no good, to your neck or mine; For they say 'tis to fix a right place for the line."
There was much talk, and a great deal of time spent. The gov- ernor, to while it away, with some friends rode through the woods to "the mighty falls at Skeag." He came back well pleased with his trip.
The commissioners heard the case and all the "proofs" were put in.
Massachusetts said the line should run from a point three miles north of the Black Rocks* parallel with the stream, and three
* The Black Rocks are in the north bank of the Merrimack, just west of its mouth. They are now as plain to be seen as when the great and general courts met there more than a hundred and fifty years ago. The south point of them at mean tide is the south end of the three-mile line. Many pleasure excursions are made these late days to the Black Rocks.
46
HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.
[1738.
miles from it to the crotch, where the Pemigewasset and Winnipe- saukee meet, and from thence due north three miles to a tree known for more than seventy years past as the Endicott Tree,* and then due west to New York.
New Hampshire said that the line should run from the point three miles north of the Black Rocks due west to New York. That the line might not go up the river, she said she would give up a strip of land nearly fifteen miles wide across the whole south end of our state.
The king's commissioners were no doubt well "log-rolled." They found that if the facts were one way the line should be as Massa- chusetts said; if another way it should be as New Hampshire said; also, that there was a law point in the case for a higher court to decide, and so in fact they drew their pay and did not find at all.
Both sides took an appeal to the king. Wilkes and Partridge, on the death of Edmund Quincy, 1738, were counsel for Massachusetts; Thomlinson and Parris were for New Hampshire, and they were too many guns for the bay province. By their shrewd, smart work New Hampshire got more than she could ask or hope. Parris was very dexterous in his "petition of appeal." He recited all the circum- stances attending the whole transaction from the beginning, and colored them in such a manner as to asperse the governor and as- sembly of "the vast, opulent, overgrown province of Massachusetts," while "the poor, little, loyal, distressed province of New Hampshire" was represented as ready to be devoured, and the king's own prop- erty and possessions swallowed up, by the boundless rapacity of the charter government. England thought Massachusetts was not quite loyal, and hated her Puritanism. On the other hand, she thought New Hampshire was true, and liked her leading men, many of whom were members of the state church.
It was brought in, Aug. 5, 1740, that the line should start from a point on the sea three miles north of the Black Rocks, and then to run on the course of the stream three miles off to a point at a hard pine tree t three miles due north of Pawtucket falls, and thence in a straight line due west to New York. This line gave to New Hampshire a territory about fifty miles long by fourteen wide more than she claimed at the hearings.
* It is said the place of the Endicott Tree ean not now be found, but we do not see why a line that runs due north three miles from a point on the Winnipesaukee river, said point being also three miles east of the Merrimack, would not liit the place. t This tree is shown on some of the old maps. # Hist. of Haverhill, Mass., p. 297.
47
THE BOUNDARY LINE.
1741.]
As a reason for thus fixing the line, it was said that when the first grants were made the land was not well known, that the course of the stream was thought to be from west to east, and it would be right for the line to be parallel to it as far as the stream so run ; and if the stream bent to the south, it would not be right to run the line south, and so not right to turn it north when it was found the stream came from that way.
Thus was the danger to the Masonian title, through which ours comes, averted, and our chain of title kept whole. But Massachu- setts was so enraged about the decision that she would not help run the line, and her historians have generally ignored the whole subject in their works.
The line was run for our state three miles north of the river, in February and March, 1741, by George Mitchell, from the sea to the hard pine tree, and by Richard Hazen west of that to New York. It is said that Hazen, by order of Governor Belcher, allowed ten degrees for the variation of the needle when he should have al- lowed but six degrees and forty minutes, thus making the line cross the Connecticut river two and one-fourth miles too far north, and losing from New Hampshire over eighty square miles of terri- tory .* Yet the new line cut off from Massachusetts twenty-eight towns and placest and gave them to New Hampshire, and also gave her what is now Vermont.
As the contest to fix the line had gone on, John Tufton Mason4, son of Robert Tufton Mason8, who sold to Allen, thought he would try and annul that sale.
It was said that his father, Robert3, and uncle, John8, could not sell for a longer term than their own lives, and that the fiction by which the land was held at the time of the sale to be in England made the sale void, and that the sale was only to Allen himself and not to his heirs; and so the entail to him, Mason, was still good.
* A commission was appointed by each state in 1825 to rectify this mistake, but it failed to accomplish any thing. Three commissioners were appointed by each state in 1885, " for the purpose of ascertaining and establishing the true jurisdictional boundary between the two states." They are still engaged in their duties, and as yet, 1886, have made no report.
t It " cut off from Massachusetts," says Douglass, " the constituted, but not repre- sented, towns of Rumford, Litchfield on Merrimack river, with part of Nottingham, West [Hudson] and Dunstable, part of Groton and Townsend, part of Northfield; and the districts and grants not incorporated were Herry's Town, Contoocook, the nine townships commonly called the double row of Frontier towns against the French and their Indian auxiliaries; the row of four townships on the east side of the Connecti- cut river, the row of two townships west side of Connecticut river, Canada to Gallop and others, Canada to Sylvester and others, Lower Ashuelot, Upper Ashuelot, Canada to Rowley, Canada to Salem, Canada to Beverly [Weare], Narraganset No. 3, Narra- ganset No. 5, Lane's New Boston and the township to Ipswich." - Douglass' Summary, Hist. of Amherst.
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HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.
[1746.
But while trying to get, as he thought, his rights, and to earn the means to pay for a suit, John Tufton Mason4 died in Havana, 1718, where he had gone to trade.
His first son, John Tufton Mason5, born 1713, took up the case and tried to make good his claim. Massachusetts, as we have said, thought it might be a good one, and, while the line case was on trial bought for £500 all the lands to which he had a claim, lying be- tween the Merrimack and their north line as far west as the. hard pine tree near Pawtucket falls. Then they sent him to England to work on their side of the line case, but he soon fell out with them, met Thomlinson and made a trade with him to sell the rest of his claim to New Hampshire for £1,000. Thomlinson tried to have our province close it, but they let it rest for a long time, then all at once said they would buy. They were too late, John Tufton Mason5, Jan. 30, 1746, sold his whole claim for £1,500 to twelve men,* in fifteen shares.
New Hampshire was indignant and made trouble about it, but she had to submit to it. Allen's heirs and their assigns also tried to get the land once more, but they, too, in the end, had to get out of the way.i
The twelve men, known as the Masonian Proprietors or the Lord Proprietors, to whom several others were soon joined, at once put a deed of quit claim on record to the seventeen old towns east of the Merrimack, and made peace where they could with the men who had claims in the new ones laid out by Massachusetts. Yet some of the settlers in the new towns quit their farms, but the most held on and got new deeds. Our province also did well enough, for the Masonian lands were only about one sixth of the whole territory, as the new lines made it, and there was plenty of other land out of which the governor and his council could make grants of townships and get rich.
Thus the long fight, that had gone on for a hundred years, and in which kings, queens, earls, dukes and lords, sir knights, and keen lawyers took a part, came to an end. From this time, 1746, the
* The purchasers were: Theodore Atkinson (three fifteenths), M. H. Wentworth (two fifteenths), Richard Wibird, John Wentworth (son of the governor), George Jaf- frey, Nathaniel Meserve, Thomas Packer, Thomas Wallingford, Jotham Odiorne, Joshua Pierce, Samuel Moore and John Moffatt, one fifteenth each.
t They made much trouble and bluffed some men to pay them small sums for quit claim deeds.
# Among these were John Thomlinson who worked so persistently for New Hamp- shire in the line case, and John Tufton Mason" who sold to the twelve men.
49
THE MASONIAN TITLE.
1746.]
Masonian Proprietors held the land, and at once began to make grants and stretch out their lines.
In their haste to get wealth they laid out townships before they marked the boundaries of their purchase. It was soon found that their eight Monadnock towns* were outside of a straight line drawn from the end of the crooked line sixty miles from the sea, to the north end of the east line up the Piscataqua, and they were put to their wits' end to fix it. But it is said they did it in this way: they run the south line straight from the sea sixty miles to a point in Fitzwilliam, ten miles or so west of the former end of the line in Rindge, and then they said the north-west line must be in all places sixty miles from the sea, and so they made it a curve, like the curve of the sea coast, and took in all their new towns. This curve is shown on some of the old maps of the province, and is known as the "MASONIAN CURVE," but they could not run it twice in the same place, and on some maps one and a half or two curves are shown.
But when the revolution was over, the curve line, being itself uncer- tain, made it hard to tell where the bounds of the towns near it were. Allen's heirs and assigns also set up claims to the waste lands, and some suits were brought. The state, we were no longer a province, to quiet the titlest and fix town bounds held, 1786, that the west line should be a straight line# and not a curve, and that Allen's heirs had no claim to any land west of the straight line. Then the Masonian Proprietors bought the land of the state between the straight line and the curve for $40,000 in securities, and $800 cash, and made the town lines as they thought they should be.
Thus from King James I, through the Plymouth Company, Capt. John Mason and his heirs, and the Lord Proprietors, one of whom was John Tufton Mason5, came our titles which thus far have stood all tests and trials.
* Monadnock No. 1, or South Monadnock, is now Rindge; Monadnock No. 2, or Mid- dle Monadnock, Jaffrey ; Monadnock No. 3, or North Monadnock, Dublin; Monadnock No. 4, Fitzwilliam; Monadnock No. 5, Marlborough; Monadnock No. 6, Nelson; Monadnock No. 7, Stoddard or Limerick; Monadnock No. 8, Washington.
t Province Papers, vol. x, p. 275.
# This line ran through Weare from north-east to south-west, entering Weare from Hopkinton, running out of it into Francestown and dividing our town into two nearly equal parts.
4
50
HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.
[1623.
CHAPTER VII.
INDIANS.
WHAT race of men lived in our land in pleiocene times can not now be told. Along with the ice-sheet which succeeded came the wicked Scraelings, as the Indians called the Esquimaux, they were here thousands of years, and it is said their stone tools have been found in the drift. Heat and the red Indians drove them back to the north.
Whence came the Indians is as hard to tell as whence the pleio- cene man. Some think from eastern Asia, and point for proof to his Mongol face. No doubt the Indians like all other animals had their origin from the moner, evolved through countless ages.
The Indians of New England were Algonquins, one of the eight great tribes that held the land now called the United States. They occupied the coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Fear, were divided into many small tribes, and each of these into clans.
The Nipmuck was the tribe that lived in the Merrimack and Connecticut valleys. It was the name they gave themselves, and means fresh water Indians, from nipe (fresh water), and auke (a place). The early writers of New England history variously spelled the name Nipmuck, Nipmug, Nipnet and Nopnet.
The clans of Nipmuck Indians on the Merrimack were known as the Agawams at its mouth; the Pawtuckets at Pawtucket falls; the Nashuas; Souhegans; Namaoskeags; Pennacooks; Winnipe- saukees; Pemigewassets, and above the last the Coos. These names were but a freak of the early writers. All any small tribe or clan had to do was to change the place of their residence a few miles, and they often did it, and they had a change of name, it being that of the new place to which they removed. If a few families went to Amoskeag falls to fish they were Amoskeags, to Pennacook to plant they were Pennacooks, and if in late autumn the same fami- lies went to Lake Winnipesaukee where they could fish through the ice and hunt on the hills, they were Winnipesaukees.
It must be certain that each town in our state has had at some time a great tribe of red men in it, and as we have seen the name of the tribe was the same as their name for the place where they were. The town of Weare had hills and dales full of wild game, large streams alive at certain seasons with the speckled trout and
51
THE NIPMUCKS.
1623.]
golden salmon, rich land to plant and of course the " Poscatta- quoags," a small tribe, had been here, off and on, for centuries.
They were similar to all other Indians in the country. They were tall, straight, and well made, eyes black, hair long and coarse, color a bronze, their health the best.
The men did not like to work. They wage war, hunt and fish, sing and dance, and have games of chance and sports.
The squaws do all the hard labor. They bring home the fish and game, get the wood, light the fire and cook the food. They make baskets of willow or ash, mats of reeds, rushes and corn husks, and clothes of skins.
They built the wigwams. These were rude huts made of poles set in the ground in a circle, bent together at the top, tied with a withe, and covered with mats, skins, or bark of trees. A hole was left in the top for the smoke to go out, and another at one side for a door, closed in winter with the skin of a bear, and so low they had to crawl in and out. They slept on mats and soft furs. For a fire- place they set up a stout pole in the center, put a flat stone on its edge by it, and made a hearth of small rocks let into the ground. A branch or limb was left on the fire-pole for a peg on which they hung their clay pots. These were frail houses, and new ones had to be built at each change of residence. They were filthy, and they were often burned to get rid of the fleas, which were called poppek, from the fact they could jump so quick.
They clear their small half-acre fields by girdling the trees and burning the underbrush. They break up the mellow ground with their hoes made of bone, wood or stone. When the leaves on the oak are as large as a mouse's ear they begin to plant. The shad and salmon, alewives and lamper eels are coming up the river now by the million, and they enrich the land by putting a large fish in each hill. Maize or corn is the chief crop, but they also raise pumpkins, squashes, inelons and beans from seeds that were first brought from the south. They round up the hills, kill the weeds and set the children to scare away the squirrels and crows.
The men make their own tools and weapons, axes, knives, awls, needles, gouges, arrow- and spear-heads, mortars and pestles, of quartz, jasper, schert, jade, hornblende, flint and slate, canoes of birch bark sewed with roots or fine strips of rawhide on a light frame work of spruce, the holes made tight with pitch, paddles of bass and ash, both canoe and paddles weighing less than forty
52
HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.
[1623.
pounds. A man could carry a canoe round rapids and falls, and from pond to pond on his back, and five men could safely ride in it.
To hunt they had bows, arrows and spears. They bent down a small tree, cut off the top, a peg just holds it, a snare is put on its end, and in it they caught deer, rabbits, grouse and other small game; for mink, sable and wild cats, they set culheags or dead falls, and for moose, deer and bears, they made a drive by building two long fences in the form of the letter V just open at its apex. All the old men, women and children would go up the valley and on the hills upon either side, start up the game with whoops and shouts, hurry it into and through the drive, where it was killed by the hunt- ers at the apex. What meat they did not eat at once they smoked or dried at the wigwam fire for future use.
War was their delight. Forty men would go on the war-path, but often no more than five or six. It was glory they sought. The young war-chief led them. The old sachems were for the coun- cil. To fight they used bows and arrows, spears and war clubs, tomahawks of stone and scalping knives of bone. They hardly ever engaged in open combat, but relied upon the deadly ambush, stratagem, and often crept upon their victims when they were sound asleep at early dawn. Captives they tortured, and the scalps of their dead foes were hung on the poles of their wigwams. When they were tired of this they made peace and smoked the calumet.
In the spring when the fish came up the rivers from the ocean, they had the shad and salmon dances. When maize was ripe enough to roast they circled in the green corn dance, and when game was plenty in autumn they often joined at night, beneath the ghostly trees which were lighted by their spectral fires, in the wild hunters' dance.
When one died the body was wrapped in skins and seated in his grave, face to the rising sun. His ornaments, bows and arrows, tools, paint and food were buried with him, for the soul would need them on its journey to the land of shades. The Indians were much attached to the graves of their friends, and made sacred mounds above them which they planted with wild flowers.
They had an infinite number of gods, great and small, good and bad. Gitche Manitou was their great god, and his home was on the mountain tops. All that had life or motion had a divinity in it. They saw a spirit in every blade of green grass, in the waving for-
53
INDIANS IN WEARE.
1623.]
est trees, in the flow of the blue river, the leap of the water-fall, the trickling drops of the grotto, and heard it in the voice of the winds. Bright shades danced in the stars, glided on the moonbeams, smiled in the rosy dawn and in the golden sunset. These would never die, but with the spirits of the dead Indians would live for- ever in the happy hunting-grounds of the far south-west.
The Indians, who at times lived in Weare, have a history, but it is not written in books. It consists of their bones dug up in making excavations or their stone implements turned up by the plow.
Once they had a home by the Hodgdon meadow. Here was a fertile soil to plant, much game and good fishing waters. Moses A. Hodgdon found arrowheads, a stone axe, and a large pestle or stone to dress skins. It is eighteen inches long, two inches thick, made of hornblende, and one side looks as though it had been oiled.
Alvah Gove, who lived near Hodgdon's, found arrowheads and a stone axe, and Obadiah Gove picked up a stone gouge neatly made.
Thomas and John Follansbee, when they lived near the Harlan Mar- shall place, three miles above Oil Mill, found a stone knife, arrow- and spear-heads, a skinning implement made of blue stone, a stone mortar for pounding corn, and on the intervale in a bend of the Piscataquog several stone fire-places. Here once was a cluster of wigwams by the blue, winding river.
The Felches dug up a stone axe near Hogback hill. It was kept in the family for a long time.
Mrs. Mary Edmunds Felch said she had seen many arrowheads which her husband plowed up on Sugar hill.
John S. Day found a stone axe on his Uncle Abner Hoyt's land near the Kuncanowet hills.
George Day saw many arrowheads picked up along the banks of the Piscataquog.
Andrew J. Philbrick's father plowed out two arrowheads, some other implements, and many flint flakes, on the upland south of Center square.
John Emerson found arrowheads by Duck pond.
Ezekiel Moore discovered a needle on the Benjamin Perkins place in South Weare. It was sharp-pointed, had a beveled head, made of hard slate, and was probably used to make holes to sew birch canoes and snow-shoes. He plowed open what was supposed to be an Indian grave on a sandy knoll, and an ox fell in, and he
54
HISTORY OF WEARE, NEW HAMPSHIRE.
[1623.
saw a tomahawk and stone pestle found on the Simon P. Colby place near by.
Jeremiah G. Davis got large pieces of pottery from the same Perkins place.
Page R. Merrill had two fine stone gouges and an Indian's skull on Sugar hill.
Albert B. Johnson has an Indian pestle found by James Gould on the flat between East Weare and " Boston."
Probably many other stone implements have been discovered in the past and no record made of them, and very likely many more will be in the future.
The first settlers found an Indian trail through Weare. It led from Amoskeag falls up Black brook by Gorham pond in Dunbar- ton, over the Kuncanowet hills, up the Piscataquog, over the high- land and the Contoocook, and on to the Connecticut river, where is now Claremont. David D. Hanson, a hunter and part Indian, used to tell about the Indian trail near a hundred years ago.
The chiefs of our Nipmucks were Passaconaway, Wonnalancet, Kancamangus, Waternomee and Paugus. Passaconaway was a sorcerer, who lived to be more than a hundred years old. It is said he could make water burn, or freeze on the hottest summer day, green leaves from the ashes of dead ones, and a live snake from a .dry skin. Whittier gives a poetical account of the marriage of his daughter, Wetamoo, to Monatawampatee, the haughty sagamore of Saugus. In telling how the wedding feast was provided he thus mentions our bright river : -
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