USA > Vermont > Orange County > Newbury > History of Newbury, Vermont, from the discovery of the Coos country to present time > Part 17
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The "Fleming sawmill," next above it, was built by Joseph Prescott and Samuel Gibson, and operated by Alonzo Fleming many years. It went away in a freshet, June 5, 1872. The stream which comes down from Round and Long ponds has turned two mills. About 1858, Thomas Corliss put a circular saw into a building which he had erected a few years before, in which he did business, in the spring and fall for about twenty years. John and Thomas Corliss, Sr., and Solomon Jewell, erected, about 1820, a sawmill on the farm of the former, which was operated till about 1865, and fell in ruins in June, 1877. Somewhere about 1790, Jonathan Johnson, Samuel and Jonas Tucker, built a mill at the foot of Hall's Pond, which, several times rebuilt, was in operation till 1871, the last of the old "up and down" mills, and using the crank placed in the first mill in town. A part of the mill still stood when the present dam was built for storage, about 1883. In 1841, Capt. Samuel Eastman crected a building at the falls on Vance brook, ncar the Union Mceting-house, in which he carried on a starch factory for two years. This ends the list of mills on Hall's brook and its branches.
Harriman's brook and pond, were formerly called Taplin's brook, and Taplin's pond. There have been several mills along
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that stream. Gen. Jacob Bayley built a distillery at the place sometimes called "the old tannery." This is called in old deeds "Gen. Bayley's malt house." Later, probably about 1790, it passed into the hands of Rasmus Jonson, a native of Sweden, who built the quaint house now owned by N. Lupien. He was called "Stiller" (distiller) Jonson. The making of whiskey was in those days thought to be as reputable a business as any other. The buildings afterward passed into the hands of Freeman and Henry Keyes, who converted them into a tannery. Since then they have been put to various uses under several owners. A grist-mill formerly stood at the foot of the falls, above the bridge. The mill at the top of "sawmill hill," was first built by Gen. Bayley, and after him was owned by several persons. In 1838, Joseph Atkinson sold it to Austin Avery, who kept it in operation till a short time before he died, after which it went to decay. It was rebuilt in 1882, and has since been in use, when there was water to run it. At the "dry sawmill" the mill was abandoned about 1855.
There have been mills on Scott's brook, nearly down to South Rvegate, of which no particular account has been received, and there have been a few elsewhere. The first steam sawmill was erected by the Scotts, at Ingalls' hill, near the "Tavern brook," "about the time the railroad was built." Of later portable mills, it is not worth while to attempt any history. They have nearly stripped the town of its timber.
It is believed that the first stove in this part of the country was one set up in the house of Rev. David Goodwillie, in Barnet, about 1790, by his brother, who was a tinsmith in Montreal. Stoves for heating were certainly in use in Newbury by 1800, but cooking stoves did not come till after 1820. Before that time all cooking was done at the fireplace, which, in the larger houses, filled more than half of one side of the great kitchen. Wood was more than plenty, it was an object to get rid of as much of it as possible, and the great fireplaces were sometimes eight feet long, five feet high, and three feet or more deep. To build a roaring fire in one of these caverns was a work requiring considerable skill. First, the "back- log," of maple or birch, two feet or more thick, and as long as the fireplace, is drawn into the kitchen by a horse, or pair of steers, and rolled by the farmer and his boys to its place at the back side of the chimney, where it will defy the heat for days, sputtering and giving out clouds of steam and smoke. In front of it, is a structure of various kinds of wood, green and dry, with pine knots, burning like torches, and sending out a resinous smell. The andirons support the burning mass, and on long, cold winter nights, enough wood is consumed to heat a modern house a week. Such a blaze we moderns never know. The fire illumines every corner of the room and the great chimney roars defiance to the blast. Half the heat goes up its huge throat, and the draft draws
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in the cold outer air through every crack and crevice of the room. Before the fireplace stands the "settle," a long, wide seat, whose high back shuts out all draught, and when the wind rages outside, and the snow drives against the panes-
"The house-mates sit, Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm."
Kettles, large and small, hang by "hooks and trammells," from the "lug-pole," a green stick, which is suspended from hooks along the roof of the fireplace. This gave place, about 1785, to the iron crane, by means of which the kettles could be swung out into the room.
Later, when wood grew scarce, fireplaces were made smaller, as we see them now. Some of the older houses had four, and even more fireplaces, built on the ground floor, and in the chambers, around the chimney, which was the core, about which the house was constructed. On one side of the fireplace, nestling against the great chimney, with an opening into the kitchen, was the brick oven, which was, commonly, about four feet long, three or more in breadth, and two feet high, with an arched roof, and a small opening into the chimney. To heat the oven, a fire of light, dry wood was made in it, and kept up until the bricks were thoroughly heated, when the fire was withdrawn, the oven swept, and the interior filled with loaves of bread, pots of beans, joints of meat, pies and cakes, and closed up. The oven gave out a steady even heat, and it is a waste of time and breath to try to convince any one, who has ever tasted the flavor of the baked beans and bread, which the old-fashioned brick ovens turned out, that any modern range, however marvelously constructed, can produce anything which approaches their delicious flavor. There are still a few houses in this town, in which the brick oven is occasionally used.
Friction matches were not invented till about 1834, and before that time the only way of starting a fire was by "flint and steel," which consisted in striking a spark by their means into "tinder," which was prepared in various ways. It was a matter of domestic economy not to let the fire on the kitchen hearth ever go out, but this sometimes happened, and there are a good many people left in this town who can remember being sent to the next neighbors, to "get some fire."
Candles were, next to the firelight, the only means of illumination which our predecessors possessed, and were made by being run in moulds, or by "dipping." By the last named process, a great many . candles were made at a time, and "candle-dipping," was one of the annually recurring labors of the farm.
It is not possible to tell when the first oil lamps were brought into town. Mr. Livermore is "not prepared to deny that there
ON WELLS RIVER.
OLD BLACKSMITH SHOP IN WELLS RIVER.
FIRST SAWMILL CRANK IN TOWN.
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may have been, in 1820, one or two oil lamps," in Haverhill Corner, and they were, probably, introduced here about the same time. Kerosene came in 1859, and was preceded by a number of illuminating compounds, one of which, called "camphene," gave a brilliant light, but was dangerously explosive. Whale oil was used in most families before kerosene came into general use. Candles were made of tallow, and sometimes other substances, animal and vegetable, were mixed with it which hardened them, and improved the quality of the light.
Watches were brought into town before clocks, and came with the first settlers. Col. Kent's diary mentions selling a watch to Abiel Chamberlin in March, 1763. The watches of those days were called "bull's eyes," and had two cases, an outer and an inner, which were detachable.
No fewer than seven families claim the honor of having brought the first clock into Newbury, and it is impossible to decide the precedence. A clock owned by Dea. Sidney Johnson, is believed to be one of the oldest in town, and was owned by his grandfather, the Colonel. The works were imported, but the inner case bears the name of a jeweler at Newburyport. There is a family tradition that some years after being brought here it needed cleaning and a local clock cleaner took it to pieces and accomplished the task. But he could not put it together again, nor, it seems, could the united skill of the settlement accomplish the feat, and the works were taken to Haverhill, Mass., on horseback, put together, and brought back in the same way. Its tall upright case was made by Michael Carleton.
Most of the houses had their "noon marks," which indicated when the sun had reached the meridian. The custom of placing noon marks upon houses continued down to 1860, at least, and the late Richard Patterson stated that he had marked more than a hundred such. In the absence of clocks, people were often very skillful in telling the hour of the night by the progress of the heavenly bodies, and there were men who could tell the time by the stars, with surprising accuracy. When the sky was overcast, this resource of the watcher failed, and some amusing mistakes are chronicled. A woman whose husband was from home, arose from her sleep, and supposing it to be near morning, thought that she would spin till it was time to arouse her children. She accordingly kindled a fire, lighted her candle, and got out her wheel. She spun on and on, but the day did not break. She continued her task, but it was not until she had accomplished more than a usual day's "stint," that the light began to glow over the eastern hills. With the daybreak came her brother, who lived about two miles away, in plain sight, who inquired anxiously after the health, of the family. They had seen her light burning all night, and thinking
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some one of the household must be ill, he had come over to ascertain the cause.
When the bell was placed in the meeting-house on Ladd street, in Haverhill, it was rung at morning, noon, and nine o'clock in the evening, and the same custom was continued by the Newbury bell, when hung in the belfry of the "old meeting-house," in 1828.
The first town clock in this region, north of the college clock at Hanover, was placed upon the brick meeting-house at Haverhill Corner, about 1840. There is no record of the opening of any shop for the repair of clocks and watches here before 1830; there was one in Haverhill before 1810.
In earlier days, and down to the middle of the third decade of the century, there were but three vocations open to women- domestic service, nursing and teaching. For the first, there was little demand and small pay. Families were large, and there were apt to be many girls in them, for whom there was no outside employment. Seventy-five cents a week was considered very good pay, for a strong woman, whose daily task began before daylight, and continued during the evening. One dollar a week, in special cases, was thought very high pay. Housekeepers of the present day must almost sigh for those early days, when there was a surplus of domestic help. It was not uncommon for a woman who had worked nine months in a family, for seventy-five cents a week, to continue through the winter on board wages.
Nursing was a precarious employment, and hardly better paid than domestic service. In 1815, two dollars a week was received by a very skillful woman who had the care of the wife of David Johnson.
Teaching was about the most poorly paid of all woman's labors. Masters were usually employed in winter, and that left only a few months, when a young woman might secure a school, for a dollar a week and board.
With domestic service may be classed the work of tailoresses, who went from house to house and made up the men's garments. Such were quite important personages in their time, and a woman who "went out sewing," and had skill with the shears and needle, received fair pay, which was often in produce or home made cloth.
With the opening of the cotton mills in Lowell and elsewhere, there came a great change. There was a steady and increasing demand for female labor, in the mills, and in the other employ- ments which soon opened in the growing manufacturing towns. Thousands of bright, resolute, capable young women flocked to the cities, and often found homes for themselves there. Instead of a surplus of domestic help therc began to be a scarcity, and a consequent rise in wages of the few employments open to women, in this part of the country.
In these days, when every farmhouse draws upon distant
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regions for the supply of its daily needs; when our flour comes from beyond the Mississippi; when our homes are lighted by oil from Pennsylvania; when our shoes are made in one part of the country, and our coats in another; when luxuries and conveniences of which our fathers, seventy years ago, never even dreamed, are found in the remotest dwellings among the hills, it is hard, even impossible, for us to put ourselves in their places. The expenses of a healthy family were very small, when every farmhouse was a hive of industry, where butter and cheese, woolen and linen cloth, and many other articles of commerce were manufactured.
At the sixtieth wedding anniversary of Nathaniel Roy and wife, of Barnet, about twenty-five years ago, it was stated that this couple, although well-to-do, and hospitable, had not, in that time, bought a pound of meat, a pound of flour, or a pound of sugar. Many of the families in Newbury of that era could say as much. The actual, unavoidable cash expenses of a healthy family a century ago, hardly exceeded twenty-five dollars. People commonly worked out their taxes, and store bills were paid in produce. Nearly every man had some trade at which he could work, and exchange the skilled labor of his hands, with some other man, equally skillful in some other employment. Sometimes, and often, a man was master of two or three trades. There were men in this town who made their own shoes, of hides furnished by their own cattle, and converted into leather at the local tannery, formed upon lasts carved out by their own hands, sewed with linen thread made upon their farms, with "waxed ends," furnished with bristles from the backs of their swine, and soled by pegs made by themselves. The same men, could, probably, shoe a horse, lay up a chimney, or make tables and chairs. An old account book, kept by Jonas Tucker, shows that he did all these, and more, and there were many like him.
All farm work, except plowing, harrowing and hauling was done by hand, and with the aid of tools which a man would not now accept as a gift. The iron plow did not come into use till after 1820; the plow of earlier date was of wood, except the point, which was of iron, and fastened on by bolts, and plates of iron were attached to the wing and share, where the most wear came. With plows like these were the great meadow farms tilled, eighty years ago. Harrows were made of the crotches of trees, into which the teeth were placed. Our complicated variety of modern apparatus for pulverizing the soil, was then unknown. It is only within fifty years that cultivators began to come into use.
Grain was reaped, the only way in which it could be gathered, on newly cleared land. A good reaper could cut about an acre in a long August day, laying it in "gavels." Cradling came next, and a man could cradle an acre rather quicker than he could mow one. The occupation required a peculiar deftness of arm, and a good
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cradler was paid about forty cents a day, more than the wages of a mower, in 1820. Grain was threshed entirely by the flail, and cleaned by hand by the help of a "fan." This was made of thin boards, and shaped much like the letter D, the semi-circular side being next to the operator. It was about four feet long, on the straight side, and around the circular part ran a thin board, set on edge, and fitted with handles like those of a basket, on each side of the man who held it. About a peck of uncleaned grain was poured into the fan at a time, and it was shaken up and down in a peculiar way, by the handles, with a sound that went "swish," "swish," "swish." The exercise was varied by shaking the fan, to bring all the grain to the front, and the chaff and dust was expelled by the breeze created by the motion of the fan, and the falling grain. The process was considerably hastened by working in the wind. A man could clean up about thirty bushels in a day, "if his back-bone was made of iron."
Winnowing mills came into use about 1815, and threshing- machines twenty years later. The first machines only threshed the grain, the cleaning was done afterward, by the hand-mill.
Mowing was all done by hand, down to about 1855, when mowing machines came slowly into use. There were men in this town who made a business of mowing, hiring out to mow on the great meadow farms, keeping up a steady swing from morning till night. Such men had great strength and endurance, qualities aided by liberal draughts of New England rum. Some of these could mow very rapidly. There is a story of a man who could mow faster than he could ordinarily walk, and when he wanted to go anywhere quickly, he took a scythe and mowed his way along. Such tales illustrate to us the prowess of our ancestors! The bent scythe snath came into use about 1810. Before that time they were all straight, and many old people clung to the straight snath, as long as they lived. Worn out scythes were made into horseshocs by the blacksmiths.
The first mowing machines were brought into town and sold by Dea. George Swasey. They bore little resemblance to the machines now in use, which are the result of many years of experiment. They had only onc wheel, the cutter-bar extended at right angles to the machine, and could neither be raised nor lowered. The only way of stopping the scythe when the machine was moving was to take it out. In a short time the hinged cutter-bar came into use, and other improvements, one after another. Yet the vital principle of the machine, the knives attached to a bar of steel, moving swiftly back and forth between immovable fingers, was the same at first as now. The many and various improvements consist in the more ready application of the power to the knives, and in the manner by which the cutter-bar is
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adjusted to the conditions of the grass, and the inequalities of the surface.
The horse-rake is of modern invention, the first mention is of one on Long Island in 1826. This consisted of a beam of wood about eight feet long, into which wooden teeth were fastened, and which had handles like those of a plow. The teeth slid under the hay, and when full, the horse was stopped and backed, the man drew out the rake, and, bearing down upon the handles it was made to pass over the windrows when the process was repeated. Later, some genius put teeth on both sides of the head, and, by means of a lever on the handles, the rake was made to turn over when full. This was called the "revolving rake," and there may be a few still in use in this town. Another rake had wire teeth, and was much like the present rakes, but had no wheels, and the man walked behind, holding by a pair of handles. When full, it was lifted up by main force, and the hay was discharged. This kind of rake was called the "man-killer," and no man who ever followed one, behind a fast-walking horse, over a five acre field, on a sultry July afternoon, ever doubted the applicability of the name. In 1857, Charles P. Carpenter, of St. Johnsbury, invented a rake which went on wheels, and was one of the first predecessors of the wheel-rakes now in use.
Maple sugar began to be made in the second or third spring of the settlement of Newbury. Its manufacture has steadily increased, and the capital invested in the business probably exceeds in value that of all the farm implements and machinery in use, seventy years ago. In earlier years, sap was caught in wooden troughs, and boiled in kettles hung from poles in the open air. Sugar-houses with arches and set pans came into use about 1857, and evaporators ten years later. The industry may be completely revolutionized by discoveries and inventions sure to come within a few decades.
The wages of a farm laborer have steadily increased. In 1800, Isaac Waldron hired out to Col. Frye Bayley for one year for eighty dollars. Eight dollars a month, at the beginning of the century, and long after, was the ordinary pay. The few living yet whose memory runs back to the '30s declare that this sum was the common pay of a hired man in those days. But eight dollars a month meant something then, and he saved enough in a few years to buy a good farm. Very few save anything now. Wages were higher along the seacoast, where the young men went to sea, and it was common for young men in this part of the country to start off on foot, in April, for Salem or Marblehead, work there all summer, returning in the fall. The number of occupations in which a young man could engage in those days was very small. But with the opening of the railroads, the requirements of manufacturing cities, and the westward migration, laborers became scarcer, and wages rose. During the civil war wages rose to a high figure, and the
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introduction of farm machinery had hardly begun. At the present time comparatively little farm work is done by hand, but machinery has not yet come to the aid of the farmer's "chores."
An industry which has wholly passed out of existence in this part of the country, was the manufacture of "salts" as pot and pearl ashes were called. The manufacture of these began early. There was a "potash" in 1768, at the foot of the hill below Mr. Lang's barn, on the Ox-bow. There was always a great demand for these products and "salts" were one of the very few things which always brought cash. They were formerly made quite extensively around West Newbury, and in different parts of the town there are places which resemble the sites of abandoned houses, and which the old people will say "is where they used to make salts."
In early days grain was the staple product of the farms, and thousands of bushels of corn, wheat, rye, oats and barley, were exported. Some farmers went to Salem, the wheat market for the export trade, several times in each year. About 1800, the blight came upon the wheat which grew on the meadows, and it soon became unprofitable there.
The raising of fat cattle for market was profitable. The Boston markets were mainly supplied from Vermont and New Hampshire. Immense droves of fat cattle were collected by buyers in this part of the country every year, and driven to market. Young cattle were also brought in herds from northern New York, and sold to the farmers along the Connecticut valley.
During the civil war, the price of wool rose to seventy-five cents and even one dollar a pound, in the depreciated currency of the time, and every one rushed into the wool business. With the return of peace, and a plentiful supply of cotton, wool declined, and sheep became unprofitable in their turn.
Dairying has always commanded a large share of the farmer's labor, and was never more skilfully conducted than at present. Formerly, the butter season began with the turning out of the cows to pasture in the spring, and ended when they were brought to the barn in the fall. Few fed grain to cows in winter, except to one or two which were allowed to go farrow, for a supply of milk.
All the butter and cheese making was done by hand, and with most of the farmers, butter was stored away in the cellars to await cool weather and the higher prices which came with it. The burdens of the dairy were heavy on the women of the family, and many a housewife wore her life out in this work. The introduction of the creamery system and the invention of the cream separator, has changed all this. With improved systems of dairying came the silo, for preserving corn-fodder, and a great change in farming. Instead, as formerly, of exporting great quantities of grain, vast amounts of western feed are brought into Newbury to supply the
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dairy farmers, and the acreage of corn, now larger than ever, is all consumed in town.
The wages of carpenters in 1820, were $1.25 per day for a skilled workman, and seventy-five cents for an apprentice. The bricklayers on the seminary building, in 1833, received $1.25 per day.
John Mills is understood to have burned the first kiln of brick at South Newbury, at the foot of the hill, north of Mr. Doe's. There have been two other brick-yards in that part of the town, one east of the brook, near the grist mill, and the other north of the mill-pond. George Eastman leased the latter yard, and its appliance for brickmaking, of Benjamin Atwood, for every tenth brick ; his father, Seaborn Eastman, also made brick there.
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