History of Newbury, Vermont, from the discovery of the Coos country to present time, Part 4

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

USA > Vermont > Orange County > Newbury > History of Newbury, Vermont, from the discovery of the Coos country to present time > Part 4

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HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

roads, no schools, no churches; that there was no physician nearer than Canterbury or Charlestown; that there was no habitation of white men within sixty miles of them, and that the woods were full of savage beasts, and that the dread of the Indians had by no means passed away, we wonder how the people endured it. One of the sons of Richard Chamberlain related in his old age, that they seldom arose in the mornings of that long winter, without seeing the tracks of bears and wolves in the snow around their cabin on Musquash meadow. Few of the cabins had doors, for as yet there was no sawmill, but a coverlid suspended over the entrance kept out some of the cold. Sometimes wolves would lift this curtain, and thrust in their heads. The cattle had to be shut in pens built strongly enough to resist the attacks of bears. Yet the people seem to have got through the winter very well. No one died, and we do not know that any went back in the spring disheartened to the older settlements. The men worked hard, at healthy, vigorous labor in the open air, chopping, and clearing land and hunting. They seem to have had plenty of food; they were all young, and took their privations as a matter of course. Richard Chamberlin was the only man past forty-five, and he was accustomed to pioneer life.

It is probable that there were several additions to the settlement during the winter. We know that Jacob Kent and Joseph Harriman came in January, for the former tells us this in his journal. They probably came from Concord on snow shoes, carrying their packs, each with his trusty gun, camping out at night, beneath such shelter as they could make. People thought little of such things then. How welcome must have been their coming to the settlers. We may be sure that the tidings of their arrival were not long in reaching every cabin on the Little Ox-bow and Musquash meadow, and the Great Ox-bow, and how the settlers must have flocked around the newcomers to hear the news! In these days when we have instant communication with all parts of the world, we cannot comprehend what the coming of an old acquaintance meant to these people, in this far-off nook of civilization; what feasts from their rude plenty would be set before the weary travelers. Such excitement must have been to the hardy settlers and their wives, what a brisk walk in the wintry air is to a man in perfect health, which sets every nerve and fibre in a glow. Still, make the best of the winter as they might, how welcome was the approach of the spring of 1763! How glad the people must have been to see the days grow longer; the snow banks settle; the bare ground once more appear; the river break up, and the cleared lands emerge from the snow. Col. Frye Bayley said, in his old age, that maple sugar was made in Newbury in that year. It is quite probable, however, that the hardships and privations which the people had to suffer were too much for two feeble frames, for in the spring two women at Coös died of consumption.

Photo. by Corliss.

FROM THE HEIGHTS WEST OF COW MEADOW.

Showing Horse Meadow, Cow Meadow, the Great Oxbow, the Little Oxbow, and Musquash Meadow

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHARTER.

THE ENGLISH NEWBURY .- THE MASSACHUSETTS NEWBURY .- THE WENTWORTH CHARTER .- BOUNDARIES AS BY THE CHARTER .- PROVISIONS .- WHY THE TOWN IS SO LARGE .- THE BRADFORD CLAIM OF 1807 .- COL. JOHNSON'S STATEMENT .- TOPSHAM GORE. - THE GRANTEES. - THOSE WHO BECAME SETTLERS. - GRANTEES OF BOTH NEWBURY AND HAVERHILL .- GRANTEES OF NEWBURY WHO SETTLED IN HAVERHILL .- GRANTEES OF HAVERHILL WHO SETTLED IN NEWBURY. - FIRST MEETING OF PROPRIETORS. - THE TOWN AND THE PROPRIETORS .- ALLOTMENT OF THE TOWN AMONG THE GRANTEES.

N EWBURY, in England, is a municipal borough on the river Kennet, in Berkshire, near the border of Wiltshire, fifty-three miles west of London. "It owes its origin to the Roman station Spine, now represented by the modern village of Speen." Several centuries ago, a portion of the village, on the other side of the Kennet was called the New Borough, which became the market town of Newbury-that is New Borough-now having some ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants. Two battles were fought there during the civil war, in 1643, and 1644.

In 1635, certain emigrants, whose minister, Rev. Thomas Parker, had for some time preached in the English Newbury, settled at the mouth of the Merrimack in New England, and complimented their pastor by giving the name of Newbury to the new town. Our forefathers in Coos, when they applied for a charter to this town, gave it the name of Newbury, whence most of them originated, as their ancestors had given the name of the English town to the New England settlement.

No one knows what became of the original charter of Newbury, signed by Governor BenningW entworth on the 18th day of *May, 1763, and countersigned by Theodore Atkinson, his junior

* Powers says March 18, 1763, but May 18th is the correct date.

HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

secretary. It is believed that Gen. Bayley carried it to New York when he went there to obtain the charter from the Governor of that state, in 1773, and it may be still in existence at Albany. But the charter is on record at Concord, in the office of the Secretary of State, in the second of the folio volumes of town charters. In these volumes, the body of each charter is printed; in form and conditions they are all alike, but the particular description of each town is written in. The charters of Newbury and Haverhill are precisely alike, except in the written parts. The following is the particular description of this town as written:

"Beginning at a Tree marked standing on the Bank of the Westerly side of Connecticut River opposite to the mouth of Amonusock River so called, and from thence Southerly, or South Westerly, down Connecticut river til it comes to a Tree there standing marked with the Figures and is about seven miles in A Strait Line below the Mouth of Amonusock aforesd from thence running North fifty-nine degrees West Six Miles and one Quarter to a stake and stones, from thence North twenty Degrees East Six miles & one half Mile to a stake and stones, from thence to the Marked Tree on the Side of the River, the Bound first mentioned."

Newbury, in common with other towns, was granted the privilege of holding fairs and markets. The conditions of a grant, were, in brief, as follows :

1st. Each grantee must cultivate, within five years, five acres for each fifty acres which he possessed, under penalty of forfeiture.

. 2nd. All white pine was reserved for the royal navy.

3rd. A tract of land near the center of the town was reserved for town lots, each grantee to have one acre.

4th. For this an ear of Indian corn should be presented when required during two years.

5th. After December 25, 1773, each proprietor must pay one shilling annually, Proclamation Money, for each hundred acres which he held.

These conditions do not seem to have been very hard, but before the rent became due, the charter granted by Wentworth was superseded by that of the Governor of New York, and Newbury became a part of that province. * By the terms of the charter, the town was divided into eighty-one shares; one to the Church of England; one to the Incorporated Society for the Propogation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; one for the first settled minister in town, and one for the benefit of a school in the town. In addition to these reservations, a tract of five hundred acres, counting as two shares, was reserved for Governor Wentworth, and was called the Governor's farm. This land includes most of what is now called

* Both town charters will be found in full in the appendix.

THE CHARTER.

Wells River village, and the corresponding reservation in Haverhill embraces Woodsville.

The charter also provided that the first meeting for the choice of officers should be held on the second Monday in June, 1763, and that Jacob Bayley, Esq., should call the meeting and be moderator thereof. The conditions of the Haverhill charter are identical with those of Newbury, and the first meeting of the proprietors was to be held on the day following that of Newbury, the meeting to be called and presided over by John Hazen, Esq.

A glance at the map of the state will indicate that Newbury is a very large town in area, much larger than any of its neighbors, in fact there is only one larger town in the state. It may now be proper to explain how it came to be so large. In the year 1807, the town of Bradford, whose inhabitants had always considered themselves unjustly deprived of a portion of their territory by this town, applied to the legislature of that year, to have a strip of Newbury, one mile and sixty-eight rods wide, annexed to Bradford. Their claim was supported in a paper drawn up with great care by John McDuffee, Esq., of Bradford, a noted surveyor of his time, in which their side of the case was presented.

It will be noted by reference to the charter, that the south corner of Newbury was appointed to be about seven miles below the northeast corner, which would be near the southwest corner of Bedell's bridge. In reality, the corner of Newbury and Bradford is one mile and sixty-eight rods south of that point. According to their claim, Thomas Blanchard of Dunstable was employed in 1760 by Wentworth, to make a survey of Connecticut river-from Charlestown to the mouth of the Ammonoosuc, which latter place the Governor fixed upon as a point from which to establish the bounds of the towns above and below it. Between these two places, he was to erect a boundary, or mark a tree, at the end of every six miles, these boundaries being the north and south limits of the towns on the river. Blanchard chose Thomas Chamberlain as his assistant, and they made the north limit of the ninth pair of towns on the Connecticut river, now Bradford and Piermont, to be near the southwest corner of Bedell's bridge, and, finding that there still remained seven miles between that point and the island at the mouth of the Ammonoosuc, this was made into one town on each side of the river, one mile longer than the town below it.

The strength of the Bradford claim was in their belief that when Caleb Willard and Benjamin Whiting, under the direction of the proprietors of Newbury and Haverhill, surveyed the bounds of each town, in 1763, they, acting under private instructions from Bayley and Hazen, as they went down the river from the mouth of the Ammonoosuc, disregarded the boundary which Blanchard had made three years before, and kept on into the ungranted and unsettled land below them, and made a new bound, one mile and sixty-eight rods below the previous one. Thus doing, they had

HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

enriched Newbury and Haverhill, at the expense of Bradford and Piermont. The settlers upon the river road, south of Bedell's bridge, attended town-meeting in Mooretown, now Bradford, and paid taxes there, for some years before 1778. But in that year, Newbury reasserted its claim, and has held it ever since.

In rebuttal, Col. Thomas Johnson, with the assistance of Gen. Jacob Bayley, still in the full possession of his faculties, drew up a paper, stating the claim of Newbury to the strip in question, which is, in substance, as follows:

In 1762, Governor Wentworth, desiring a new survey made, sent Gen. Jacob Bayley, with Mr. McNeal, the King's surveyor, to make new bounds to the towns above Charlestown, and they proceeded up the river about thirty miles above the mouth of the Ammonoosuc. In that summer there was a road marked out from Canterbury, and, in some degree, made passable. In the same summer, Maj. Joseph Blanchard made application for himself and friends for a charter of what is now Newbury, and so did Oliver Willard, but Bayley and Hazen had claims upon the Governor for their services in the late war and had friends whom it was for his interest to oblige. He therefore promised the charter to Bayley and Hazen. But when they appeared before the Governor, Wentworth insisted that he should add the names of twenty of his friends to those who had been decided upon by Bayley and Hazen. To this the two latter naturally objected, representing that they had already been at considerable expense in surveying the town, and opening a road, and that it was unjust to them to admit twenty other proprietors, thus reducing the value of each of the shares- dividing the land among eighty proprietors instead of sixty. Wentworth was but following the custom of the time. The colonial governors were in the habit of rewarding their friends for their support, either by making dircet grants of land to them or by placing their names among the grantees of new towns. The governments were poor in money, but rich in land which had an indefinite prospective value, and thus the royal governors could enrich their favorites without costing themselves anything. So Bayley and Hazen were told that the twenty names must go in, but that they should be allowed to take from the ungranted lands south of them enough to make up for twenty additional shares. Accordingly, the survey of Newbury, by Bayley, in 1763, cut out of the ungranted lands south of it a strip one mile and sixty-eight rods wide. The map, or plan, of Newbury, upon the back of the recorded charter gives the south-east corner of Newbury exactly where it is now. Therefore their claim that this addition to Newbury was by direct permission and authority of Governor Wentworth was admitted by the legislature, and Bradford lost its case. But Haverhill was less fortunate, or Piermont more persistent, as in 1784 the former town was compelled to divide with the latter a similar disputed strip along its south side.

THE CHARTER.

In 1803, Newbury was compelled to relinquish to Topsham a strip one mile in breadth, which it had claimed, along the east side of that town, which in old deeds, is called "Topsham Gore." It was the opinion of the late Richard Patterson, who had carefully surveyed the town lines, that Newbury gained a little at the expense of Ryegate. The truth seems to be, that Newbury and Haverhill were settled when the land around them was ungranted, and the proprietors made the towns as large as they could.

The town of Newbury was granted to the following persons as proprietors, the spelling of their names being that of the charter :

Jacob Bayley, Esq.

John Hazzen

Ephraim Bayley

Ephraim Noyse

Jeremiah Allen

Enoch Thurstin

David Flanders

John Beard

Samuel Stevens

Joshua Copp

Abner Sawyer

John Ingalls

William White

Joshua Bayley

John Goodwin

John Hasseltine

Noah White

Simeon Goodwin

Edmond Morse

Joshua Hayward

Moses Little

Jesse Johnson

Simeon Stevens

Peter Page

Abner Bayley

Jacob Kent

Jaasiel Harriman

Abner Newton

Hayns Johnson

John Hugh

Joseph White

Samuel Hobart

Zacheus Peasley

Ebenezer Eaton

Thomas Danforth

John White, Jun.

James King

Caleb Johnson

William Holden

Timothy Beadle

Ebener Mudgett

Moses Hazzen Asa Foster

Joseph Chamberlain

Daniel Appleton

Thomas Chamberlain

Abiel Chamberlain

Samei Johnson

Jonathan Broadstreet

Sam1 Stevens, Esq.

Wm Haywood

Benjn Emerson

Jacob Eaton Peter Morse

Joshua Hains

Archelaus Miles

Frye Bayley

Edward Bayley

Martin Severance

Col Willm Symes

Theodore Atkinson

Hon. John Temple Benj Winn

Mark Hunk& Wentworth

Mark Temple

Samuel Cummius

Elnathan Blood

John Cummius Elias Alexander

Col. Clement Marsh Coll John Goffe

Capt. Marquand

Richd Chamberlain

Nathn1 Martan

HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

Governor Benning Wentworth was eounted as holding two rights, or shares.

Of the above grantees of Newbury the following became actual settlers: Jacob, Ephraim, Frye, and Joshua Bayley, Thomas, Richard, Joseph, and Abiel Chamberlain, William, Joseph, and Noah White, Caleb and Haynes Johnson, John Hazeltine, Simeon Stevens, Jacob Kent, Benjamin Emerson, Samuel Harriman, John Goodwin, and Moses Little. A few of these remained only a short time, but most of them made their homes here.

Jacob and Ephraim Bayley, John Hazeltine, Jacob Kent, and Simeon Stevens, who settled in Newbury, were grantees also of Haverhill, while John Hazen, Joshua Howard, Timothy Beadle (Bedell), and Simeon Goodwin, who settled in Haverhill, were also proprietors of Newbury.

The following were proprietors of Haverhill only, but settled in Newbury, although some of them did not remain here long: Aaron Hosmer, Nathaniel Merrill, Thomas Johnson, John Mills, Benoni Wright, Josiah Little, John Taplin, and Nehemiah Lovewell. The remaining grantees soon sold their rights to persons who became actual settlers.

The first meeting of the proprietors of Newbury was held at the inn of John Hall in Plaistow, N. H., Monday, June 14, 1763, at which the town was duly organized, and which seems to have been attended by several of the grantees. Jesse Johnson was chosen elerk; Caleb Johnson, constable; Benjamin Emerson and Capt. John Hazen, selectmen. This organization was made before any of the grantees present had removed to Newbury, and was merely in accordance with the terms of the eharter, as a formal act. At the same time and place was held the first proprietors' meeting, which was the first town-meeting of Haverhill, at which Jesse Johnson was chosen clerk; Stephen Knight, constable; Capt. John Hazen, Jacob Bayley, Esq., and Maj. Edmund Morse, selectmen.

The town machinery, thus put together and set running at the inn of John Hall at Plaistow, on the 11th of June, 1763, and transported to Newbury in the next year, still continues, after the lapse of one hundred and thirty-seven ycars, by being wound up on the first Tuesday in Mareh of each year, to do its regular work with very little change in its most important parts. There were then, as now, a moderator, clerk, selcetmen, and an overseer of the poor. The constable still, as "when we were under the King," collects the taxes, and arrests cvil doers. The highway surveyor of those and later times is represented by the road commissioner. But the real official labor of the town, is done by officers bearing the same titles at the elose of the nineteenth century, as their predecessors bore at its beginning.

During the first thirty years of our history there were two

THE CHARTER.

separate organizations, the Town of Newbury and the Proprietors of Newbury. All the male citizens of the town, who took "Freeman's Oath," could vote in town-meeting, and hold office, but only the grantees or those holding land immediately under them, could vote in the proprietors' meeting.

For some years the proprietors or grantees under the crown, owned the whole town, and divided the land among themselves, held their own meetings, and raised taxes upon the real estate. The Proprietors' Book, one of the most valuable of those preserved in the town clerk's office, records the proceedings of the proprietors' meetings, and the original divisions of the land among the grantees. These proprietors' meetings were held only when warned by the clerk at the call of a certain number of members. But when the land was all divided and many of the grantees had died or moved away, the meetings seem to have been held only at long intervals, (the last one recorded was in 1791), and the proprietary seem to have passed out of existence without any special vote to dissolve on the part of its members. But in Haverhill the proprietors seem to have exercised authority in the town, held their meetings regularly, and controlled public affairs. The last meeting of the proprietors of Haverhill was held August 22, 1810, almost twenty years after the Newbury proprietary had ceased to exist.

At the meeting held June 13, 1763, a committee consisting of Joseph Blanchard, Edmund Mooers, and Edmund Morse, was chosen to audit the accounts of Bayley and Hazen, and assess the amount of their expenses in procuring a charter, surveying the town, making a road from Canterbury, and other necessary expenditures, upon the proprietors' shares, with two and a half dollars upon each right, to defray the expense of laying out the town into lots. They also voted that the committee should select responsible men to assess and collect this tax. At that time the only legal residents of Newbury were the proprietors, so that this meeting was, in fact, the first legal town-meeting of Newbury, although held more than one hundred miles from it. It was also voted at this meeting that Jacob Bayley, John Hazen, Jacob Kent, Ebenezer Mudgett, and Lieut. Harriman should be authorized to bound the town, and lay out one lot to each proprietor in the intervale or meadow, and a house lot on the higher land, these lots to be of size according to their estimated value. For his services rendered to the town, Jacob Bayley was authorized to select five intervale lots, where he should choose, "provided that his taking so many does not incommode the settlement of the town."

Another meeting of the proprietors was called for September 26th, which adjourned to October 1st, at the same inn of John Hall, at which Jacob Bayley was chosen Proprietors' clerk, Edmund

HISTORY OF NEWBURY, VERMONT.

Mooers, moderator, Capt. John Hazen, Lieut. Benjamin Emerson, and Jesse Johnson, assessors, and Caleb Johnson, collector. They voted :

1st. that "the rights whose owners had failed to pay their equal share of the expenses," should be sold at public vendue.

2d. That allowanee should be made to those who have already settled at Newbury.

3d. That each proprietor should choose his intervale lot and receive the same, when he should improve by tillage three acres on each lot, and that they should piteh, in the order of their making improvements, each paying his share of the assessed expenses.

They also provided that if more than one person should pitch upon the same tract, they should draw lots and the loser should pitch elsewhere.

4th. They voted to make half the road through Haverhill toward Portsmouth, with the proprietors of Haverhill, and chose Jacob Bayley, John Hazen, and Jacob Kent a committee to prepare such a road.

It will be understood that as early as 1763 there were no settlements between Canterbury and Haverhill, and whatever was to be done, must be by the settlers at Coös. A road of some kind must be had, yet we shall find that they did not intend to build the whole road alone.

5th. They voted to lay out a fifty-aere lot of equal value, to each right, as near it as possible.

6th. They chose Capt. Moses Little, Lieut. Moulton, and Jacob Bayley a committee to lay out one hundred aeres to each right, "this fall, if there be time," and that these lots should be drawn.

Finally, they voted "to pay a preacher, with the proprietors of Haverhill to preach at sd town, two or three months this fall or winter." On the same day, and at the same place, the proprietors of Haverhill met, and made similar regulations, and voted "to join with Newbury one or two months this fall in paying for preaching."

On the 1st day of Mareh, 1764, another proprietors' meeting was held at the house of William Marshall, in Hampstead, which at onee adjourned to the former place of assembly at Plaistow, where it was voted to sell at publie vendue the mills which had been built at Haverhill by the proprietors of both towns. They voted, also, to give eighty acres of land to the man or men who should build a sawmill on Hall's brook, under certain conditions, the grant including the mill privilege. This meeting adjourned to William Marshall's house, in Hampstead, where it was voted that the proprietors assist Haverhill in laying out a road to meet the road from Portsmouth, and that Benjamin Whiting should be a committee to lay out the lands voted last fall.

The mills which had been built in Haverhill were sold at

THE CHARTER.

auction April 2d, and were bid off by Jesse Johnson, John Hazen, and Jacob Bayley, for two hundred and ninety-seven dollars. When we speak of dollars in those early days, it must be understood that Spanish dollars are meant. Many of the older deeds on record in the town clerk's office mention the consideration to be a certain sum in "Spanish milled dollars."

The last meeting of the proprietors, held out of town, passed a vote about supplying the town with preaching, and adjourned to "Col. Jacob Bayley's att Newbury, Coös, on the 15th of October next."

CHAPTER V.

THE EARLY YEARS.

CONDITION OF COUNTRY .- INDIAN TRAILS .- HALL'S POND, BROOK AND MEADOW .- JACOB KENT .- JOHN FOREMAN .- THE FIRST WHITE CHILD .- THE FIRST MARRIAGE .- THE FIRST DEATH .- REV. SILAS MOODY .- HARDSHIPS OF THE SETTLERS .- NEW-COMERS IN 1763 .- REV. PETER POWERS .- THE LOG MEETING- HOUSE .- THE FIRST SAWMILL .- THE MILL-CRANK AND ITS HISTORY .- SAW- MILL ON HARRIMAN'S BROOK .- THE FIRST GRIST MILL .- SETTLEMENT OF LANCASTER .- AT BATH .- CULTIVATION OF POTATOES.

W HILE the proprietors of the town were settling its concerns more than a hundred miles away from it, hardy and resolute men and women were making themselves homes in Coös. It is probable that there were quite a number of families here before the end of 1763, whose names have not come down to us. Mr. Powers and Mr. Perry seem only to have mentioned those who remained in Newbury. There were others who staid here a few years and then went on into newer lands or back whence they came. In the early records recur names of families which disappeared before the revolution.

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History of Newbury, Vermont, from the discovery of the Coos country to present time, Part 4

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