History of Newbury, Vermont, from the discovery of the Coos country to present time, Part 3

Author: Wells, Frederic Palmer, 1850- ed
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: St. Johnsbury, Vt., The Caledonian company
Number of Pages: 935

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This resolution, which is dated June 11, 1712, mentions Lieut. Baker as "commander of a company of marching forces in the late expedition to Coös, and from thence to the west branch of the Merrimack river, and so to Dunstable." From this man Baker's river in Warren, Wentworth, and Rumney is named. He died in Dover about 1763.

In 1748, settlements began at Charlestown, N. H., long called "Number Four," but were abandoned after several families had been carried off. After the erection of a fort at that place, a few of the settlers returned and cleared land under its protection. But it was hazardous, as Indians constantly prowled in the woods and assaulted the place ten times within two years. In April, 1747, while the fort was held by Capt. Phinchas Stevens, with thirty men, it was attacked by Boucher de Niverville with a large war- party of French and Indians, and sustained one of the most desperate sieges in the whole record of frontier wars. The assault lasted three days and two nights, and at the end of the third day, the enemy, having suffered great loss, withdrew to Canada. Richard Chamberlin, afterwards one of the first settlers , of Newbury, was one of the garrison.

THE COOS COUNTRY.

The settlement at Charlestown had now acquired a firm hold, and people began to think of settling the Coös country. In the summer of 1751, several hunters came up the river and examined the land on both sides as far as the highlands at the mouth of the Ammonoosuc.

In the following year, Capt. Symes of North Hampton made application to Governor Wentworth for charters of four towns six miles square at Coös, to be granted to four hundred men, who proposed to settle there. On the 22d of November, he again wrote to the Governor that three hundred and forty men were already engaged in the service, and prayed that fifty of them might be in the pay and maintenance of the province. These men were mainly from New Market, Rye, North Hampton, East Hampton and South Hampton. It further appears from the petition that several of them had been to Coos in the summer, and were favorably impressed with the country.

In his message to the General Court, Wentworth favored the design, and alluded to "previous grants and promises of land at Coös" being forfeited. It would thus appear that this was not the first attempt to settle the country. He also recommended that these four hundred men be formed into a regiment, one hundred men in each town. Their plan was to cut a road along the river from Charlestown and lay out towns on each side. They were to erect a stockade in each town, large enough to enclose a blockhouse and the dwellings of the settlers. Thus it was to be, not only a settlement, but a military post.

The project made some stir, and tidings of it reaching Canada, a deputation of French and Indians appeared at Charlestown, and remonstrated against it, using language not to be misunderstood, and the plan came to an end. So little is known of the scheme that we have no record of the names of the adventurers, or whether any of them were among the settlers of either Newbury or Haverhill ten years later.

In the spring of the same year, 1752, John and William Stark, Daniel Stinson, and Amos Eastman, while hunting in Rumney, were surprised by the Indians. Stinson was killed, William Stark got away, while John Stark and Eastman were taken to Canada. The party encamped the first night where Haverhill Corner now stands, and passed directly through the Coös meadows, and on their return in the summer passed through them again.

In the spring of 1753, a committee was appointed by the General Court, to go up "and view the Coos Country." This consisted of Col. Zaccheus Lovewell, Maj. John Talford, Capt. Caleb Page, a surveyor, and sixteen men, with John Stark as their guide. The celebrated Robert Rogers was one of the party. They came up the Pemigewasset and Baker's rivers, and marked out a road, cutting out the fallen trees, reaching the Connecticut river at

HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

Moose meadow in Piermont. They passed but one night in the valley, returning the way they came. Grant Powers, following the the biography of General Stark, gives the year of this expedition as 1754, but the state archives show that it was in the previous year. It is supposed that they discovered traces of a large force of Indians, and made a timely retreat.

Meanwhile, the first mutterings of the storm which was about to burst began to be heard, and the great contest which was to decide forever whether North America was to be ruled by French- men or by Englishmen, opened in the forests of Pennsylvania.

In the spring of 1754, Governor Wentworth, hearing reports of a French advance into the Connecticut valley, sent Capt. Peter Powers of Hollis, a brave and experienced soldier, with a company of men, of which James Stevens was lieutenant, and Ephraim Hale was ensign, who came up the Pemigewasset and Baker's rivers, and reached this valley at Piermont. They seem to have followed the path marked out the year before by Lovewell and his men.

The journal of Captain Powers, now in the possession of the Connecticut Historical Society, is largely quoted by Rev. Grant Powers, who does not seem to have known what the real object of the expedition was. In his message to the legislature of that year, Governor Wentworth says that he had sent Powers to see if the French had begun settlement at either Upper or Lower Coös, or had, as reported, built a fort at Northumberland. Leaving Concord June 15, 1754, they came to the Hibbard place in Piermont on the 25th, and on the next day they went up as far as Horse Meadow, "above the cleared intervale." On the 2d of July they reached Northumberland, but saw no signs of fort or settlement, but did find where the Indians had been making canoes, but who had probably fled on the approach of a force too strong to molest. On their return they crossed into Newbury at the mouth of the Ammonoosuc, and went through the cleared intervalc, crossing into Haverhill below the Ox-bow. They seem to have reached Concord safely with the Indians following close behind. Captain Peter Powers was the father of Rev. Peter Powers, the first minister of Newbury and Haverhill. Hundreds of his descendants have lived in the valley which he explored in 1754.

Five years later there passed through this valley an expedition to which there attaches a melancholy interest. In 1759, Major Robert Rogers, whom we have met before as one of Lovewell's company of explorers, was sent by General Amherst from Crown Point, with about one hundred and fifty men, to destroy the Abenaki village which was situated upon the St. Francis, a few miles above its junction with the St. Lawrence, and was the residence of the most cruel tribe of Indians in Canada. After leaving Lake Champlain, Rogers, finding himself pursued, and fearing that his retreat would be cut off, took the bold resolve of

THE COOS COUNTRY.

out-marching his pursuers, destroying St. Francis, and returning by Lake Memphremagog and the Connecticut. He accordingly sent men back to Crown Point to request General Amherst that provisions should be sent up the river from Charlestown to meet him as he came down.

The Indian village was surprised in the night and set on fire. Two hundred of the savages were killed. They found several captives, and nearly seven hundred scalps. Rogers's men, some of whom had suffered from this cruel tribe, gave no quarter, but inflicted a blow which struck terror to all the Indian tribes, from Lake Ontario to the Penobscot. The victors at once began their return through the wilderness, closely followed by the enemy. Near Lake Memphremagog their provisions gave out, and Rogers divided his men into small parties, the better to sustain life by hunting. Several of the band fell into the hands of the Indians, but most of them reached the great river, at one place or another, between the Nulhegan and the Passumpsic. But when the foremost came to the place where relief was to meet them, they found, to their horror, fires burning, but those who had made them were gone. Lieutenant Samuel Stevens had been sent up the river with boats and abundant provisions, but when he came to the place which had been appointed, finding no one there, he waited two days and returned. For this outrageous conduct he was dismissed the service.

It has never been clearly demonstrated where this spot was. Some of the survivors stated that Round island, in the mouth of the Passumpsic, which is separated by a deep and narrow channel from the railroad, a little below East Barnet, is the place where they found the fires burning. Others insist that the mouth of the Ammonoosuc is the place, which is the one specified by Rogers himself. The fact seems to be that the unfortunate men were so overcome with hunger and despair, that they did not know where they were, and were never able afterward to tell, with certainty, where they came out upon the river. The late David Johnson, Esq., who had personally known several of Rogers's men, was told by them that when they came to the mouth of Cow Meadow-brook, they found the smouldering embers of a fire, but no one with it, and that they were so much overcome by hunger and despair that some of them died. The first settlers, three vears later, found the remains of men at various places upon the Ox-bow and the high ground near it, who were believed to be some of Rogers's expedition, and there may be still a few old men who can point out the spots where the bones of these unfortunate men were found.

Rogers, with three men, made his way with great peril down the river on a rude raft, and sent back boats with provisions to the men, as they could be found along the banks. Some of the survivors made their way through the woods to the settlements

HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

on the Merrimack. Of the one hundred and forty-two men who had left St. Francis, forty-nine perished in the wilderness, or were tortured to death by the Indians. Robert Rogers served under the king during the revolutionary war, and made his appearance in Newbury several times during the struggle.

The expedition of Rogers was one of the most dramatic episodes of the French and Indian war. The story of the long march through the wilderness; the night attack; the burning village; the terrible tale of the retreat through the wilds of Canada; the famished men struggling through the pathless woods, and the fearful deaths of so many, thrill the imagination. There has been much controversy over different portions of the narrative. Rev. Grant Powers, in his "Historical Sketches of the Coos Country," treats as fabulous the account of the relief expedition of Stevens. It appears that he had not seen Rogers's journal of the expedition. He made no mention of the statements which Mr. Johnson had obtained from the lips of some of the survivors, several of whom were living in this vicinity in his younger days. But Mr. Powers was anxious to believe that his ancestor was the first to explore the country where so many of his descendants were to live, and put aside all evidence of previous discoveries. Several men who after- wards attained considerable distinction in the revolutionary war were of Rogers's party. One of them, Capt. Benjamin Wait, from whom the town of Waitsfield, where he settled and died, is named, is memorable. And Waits river in Bradford was also named for him. The Indian name of this river-Mahounquamossee-is given upon the map of 1760.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST YEAR.

CLOSE OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR .- BAYLEY, HAZEN, KENT, AND BEDELL AT Coos .- THE CHARTER .- THEY TAKE POSSESSION OF THE LAND .- PETTIE, JOHNSTON, AND WEBB .- SAWMILL BUILT IN HAVERHILL .- SAMUEL SLEEPER. - GLAZIER WHEELER .- THOMAS CHAMBERLAIN .- WRIGHT .- NOAH WHITE .- JOHN HAZELTINE .- THOMAS JOHNSON .- JACOB KENT .- BLANCHARD AND WILLARD .- THE SEASON OF 1762 .- CORN AND POTATOES .- APPEARANCE OF COUNTRY .- THE DWELLINGS .- ARRIVAL OF OLD FRIENDS.

W ITH the close of the French and Indian war the history of Newbury begins, and practically that of Vermont. Before that time a few settlements along the river, in the southeast corner of the state, had been held only by the intrepidity of the settlers. All the rest of it lay a wilderness, save only a few spots of cleared land like the Ox-bow, or where the woods had been removed for military purposes along Lake Champlain. But the constant passing of troops and small companies through the state had made the resources of the country generally known, and, at the close of the war, civilization, whose outposts had been Charlestown on the Connecticut, and Salisbury on the Merrimack, advanced into the wilderness by leaps and bounds.

With the surrender of Montreal, on the 8th of September, 1760, the empire of France in the New World, which had been so gallantly held, passed away. The French in Canada settled quietly down under English rule. There was no longer any one to stir up the Indians against the settlers of New England. All that came to them of the struggle in which they bore so great a part, had been their own destruction. They saw their hunting-grounds pass into the hands of their enemies, and were too feeble even to protest. The army which had conquered Canada was disbanded, and the victors sought their homes in the older settlements. Among those who returned through the Connecticut valley from the surrender

HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

of Montreal, were four officers who had served in Goff's regiment during the decisive campaign, and whose influence is felt in Coös to this day. They were Lieut .- Col. Jacob Bayley, Capt. John Hazen, Lieut. Jacob Kent, and Lieut. Timothy Bedell. As Jacob Bayley's name will occur in these pages more frequently than any other, and as there were several other officers named Bayley in Coös, to distinguish him from the others, he will be spoken of as General Bayley, although he did not attain the title until seventeen years later. We do not know whether either of the four had ever passed through here before. It is not known whether there were any others in the party. But we do know, from written statements made long after, by both Bayley and Kent, that they remained some days in the place, and carefully examined the surrounding country. They decided that it was a desirable place to settle in, the gateway to a vast country above, a central point which should command the trade of the region.

On their return to Hampstead, these four men, being prompt and resolute, set themselves at once to the work of obtaining charters of two towns at Coös, taking measures to secure their friends in the enterprise. Bayley and Hazen stood high in the estimation of the colonial government, as they had done efficient service in the late war, and both had influential relatives, whom Governor Wentworth was anxious to please. Hazen was aided by his brother, Moses Hazen, while Bayley received the advice and powerful support of his brother-in-law, Moses Little. These had been officers in the late war, and were to be still more distinguished in that of independence. As the result of their combined efforts, the charter of Newbury was granted, May 18, 1763, to Jacob Bayley, John Hazen, Jacob Kent and Timothy Bedell, with seventy-two associates. The charter of Haverhill was granted on the same day to the same men, John Hazen's name being first, with a number of partners equal to that of Newbury. But, before that time, a great deal had been done at Coös, and quite a number of families had begun to make homes here. Bayley and Hazen came up in the summer of 1761, and made their plans. The former went on to Crown Point, while the latter returned to Hampstead, by way of Charlestown, and engaged several men to come to Coös, cut and stack hay on the great and little Ox-bows. Col. Thomas Johnson says that they secured about ninety tons of excellent hay. Mean- while, Col. Moses Little had been gathering cattle for himself, Bayley and the Hazens, mostly young cows and steers, with which John Pettie, Michael Johnston and Abraham Webb left Hampstead about the middle of August, and reached Coös the last of October. They came by way of Charlestown, then called Number Four, and followed a line of spotted trces along the river bank. They spent the winter here, feeding the hay to the cattle, and breaking the steers, subsisting mainly on provisions which had been brought up

THE FIRST YEAR.

in boats from Charlestown. Dr. Bouton, in his history of Concord, N. H., says that the winter was unusually long and cold, and it would seem that the time must have dragged heavily to the men in their rude shelters on the Little Ox-bow. But spring came at last, and Johnston and Pettie, being relieved, started for home down the river. Their canoe was upset at a point now called Olcott Falls, and Johnston was drowned. He was a brother of Col. Charles Johnston of Haverhill, and of Col. Robert Johnston of Newbury. The next year, Abraham Webb, who was partly mulatto and partly Indian, was drowned in the river at Newbury, and was the first man buried in the cemetery at the Ox-bow.

In the spring of 1762, Capt. John Hazen came up and began to build a sawmill at the falls in North Haverhill. In February came the first family into Newbury, which consisted of Samuel Sleeper and his wife from Plaistow, or Hampstead, by way of Charlestown. They came up on the ice in a rude vehicle, half sleigh and half sled, which conveyed the family and a few necessaries for their primitive housekeeping. He lived for some time, says Rev. Clark Perry, in a rude hut which stood about where Mr. Doe's brick house now stands, at the Ox-bow, but later took up land where the Kents long lived, in the south part of the town. According to Rev. Grant Powers, Sleeper was a Quaker preacher, whom Bayley had sent on to take possession of the land for him, but none of the letters which are preserved, that passed between Bayley and Col. Little, mention Sleeper at all. Mr. Powers says further, that Sleeper made himself obnoxious to the people by disturbing the services of the Sabbath in the meeting-house, and interrupting the sermon by obtruding his dissent from the doctrines of the minister. For this untimely exercise of the right of free speech, he was imprisoned for awhile in a cellar upon Musquash meadow. Later he removed to Bradford where he became quite prominent, but died before 1771.

With Sleeper came Glazier Wheeler from Shutesbury, Mass., and his brother Charles, who had started on a hunting trip, fallen in with Sleeper, and established themselves at Newbury. Wheeler was a practical genius, whose skill in the use of tools made him invaluable on the frontier, but whose misdirected ingenuity was destined to get him into trouble. He engaged, some years later, in making counterfeiter's tools, and in the manufacture of base coin, and, according to the custom of the time, had his ears cropped. Later in life, he is said to have been employed in the mint at Philadelphia, on account of his remarkable skill as an engraver.

The second family was that of Thomas Chamberlain and wife from Dunstable, N. H., who settled on Musquash meadow, near the river, but later removed to the Ox-bow, where he built a house which afterwards became the parsonage. A depression in the ground, in the newest part of the cemetery, at some distance from the road, marks the cellar. He had been here before, more than

HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

once, as a hunter and as chain-bearer for Joseph Blanchard when he marked the bounds of the towns along the river in the winter of 1760-61. In June, "one day about noon," came Richard Chamberlin and wife, being the third family, from Hinsdale, N. H., in boats. Seven of their thirteen children came with their parents, the rest afterward. Before night they had erected a rude hut of posts and bark, in which they lived three months. A large stump in the middle, covered with a board, served for a table. He settled upon Musquash meadow, and kept a ferry between Newbury and Haverhill for many years. At the same time with Richard Chamberlin, says Mr. Perry, came Benoni Wright, and associated himself with Sleeper. For some strange doctrines which he preached and for his way of making himself obnoxious, the elders of the settlement condemned him to receive ten lashes, "well laid on." After this gentle reminder of public disapproval was carried out, Wright removed to Bradford, and dwelt for some time in a cave on the mountain which still bears his name.

According to Mr. Perry, Noah White, the first of seven brothers and sisters to settle in Newbury, came in 1762, but Mr. Powers says he came in the next year. In the former year came John Hazeltine, from Hampstead, and settled on the Ox-bow. In the same spring came Simeon Stevens, Joshua Howard, and Jaasiel Harriman, and were the first of the settlers to come up by way of the Pemigewasset and Baker rivers. They employed an old hunter to guide them, and came in four days. Stevens settled in Newbury, Howard on an island which still bears his name, now a part of the Grafton county farm, while Harriman, who was a blacksmith, lived a few years in both Newbury and Haverhill, but became one of the first settlers of Bath. Thomas Johnson arrived in the same year, and boarded awhile in the family of Uriah Morse, in Haverhill. Joshua Howard came as agent or hired laborer of Gen. Bayley, being an cnlisted soldier in his company, but whose services not being needed, was sent here to take care of his cattle. In the fall came Jacob Kent, who was employed with Johnson by those who proposed to become proprietors, to examine the land, and make boundaries, preparatory to the town being chartered. In the summer, Gen. Bayley also came to see what was being done in the region to which he expected to remove, and from that time forth was the master spirit of the new colony. It would appear that there were five or six families in Newbury before it was chartercd, who were here without any special leave to settle, or title to the soil, but who probably expected that when the town was chartered they should, with others, bccome proprietors, which, with most of them, was the case.

According to Col. Thomas Johnson, neither of the Chamber- lains was in the interest of Bayley and Hazen, but Thomas came here to take possession in behalf of his neighbor at Dunstable,

THE FIRST YEAR.

Capt. Joseph Blanchard, under whom he had served in the late war, and who hoped to obtain a charter for a town in Coös. Richard and his sons were in the interest of Oliver Willard, a merchant and land speculator of Northampton, who also hoped to secure a charter, by virtue of possession; but Bayley and Hazen seem to have easily persuaded the Chamberlains to cast in their lot with them, as both Thomas and Richard, with Joseph and Abiel, sons of the latter, all became grantees under the charter. It is said that Willard was so mortified and angry at being thus supplanted by Bayley and Hazen, that he threatened that if he could ever catch the latter outside the settlement, he would flog him to his heart's content. The two men afterwards met at Charlestown, and, upon endeavoring to carry out his threat, Willard found Hazen much more than his match.

It was the testimony of the first settlers who still survived when Rev. Clark Perry collected the materials for his historical discourse in 1831, that good corn was raised on the Ox-bow in 1762, but lower down, on Kent's meadow, the first seed did not prove good, and it was so late before good seed could be had from Charlestown that it was not ripe before frost came. This corn, carefully dried, pounded up, and made into puddings with a little milk, was the chief food of the settlers. After this year, corn and wheat were both good and plenty. Mr. Perry says that potatoes were grown in that year from seed brought through the woods from Concord. Salmon were plentiful in the river, and trout in the brooks. Deer were not unfrequently found and bears were often killed, which, in the absence of beef and pork, formed a welcome addition to the larder; but it was several years before domestic animals could be spared for food, and during the earlier years their meat was seldom tasted at Coös.

Could we return for an hour to the primitive life at Newbury, one hundred and thirty-eight years ago, we should find little to remind us of the present aspect of the scene. The Connecticut flowed through a dense forest, broken here and there by Indian clearings of a few acres in extent. A heavy growth of pines covered the plain on which Newbury village now stands. Moos- ilauke overlooked a mighty forest which stretched away as far as the eye could reach; but a closer observation would discern tokens of a coming change. The sound of the settler's axe was heard by the river bank. In a few places, a rude trail, the precursor of the present river road, wound through the woods. The sun shone into new clearings here and there, and the smoke from a few log dwellings rose in the primeval forest, for the settlers had come. What was there here for that handful of adventurers in the Coös country in that far off winter of 1762-63? What was their manner of life in the rude huts which only partially sheltered them from the northern blasts? When we remember that there were no

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History of Newbury, Vermont, from the discovery of the Coos country to present time, Part 3

Author: Wells, Frederic Palmer, 1850- ed Publication date: 1902 Publisher: St. Johnsbury, Vt., The Caledonian company Number of Pages: 935

Author: Wells, Frederic Palmer, 1850- ed
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: St. Johnsbury, Vt., The Caledonian company
Number of Pages: 935