CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
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 3 1924 028 836 852 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this bool< is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://archive.org/details/cu31924028836852 
 
THE 
 
 ■ - 'll^'' ' '' ' " 
 
 HISTORY OF WARREIS^ ; 
 
 A M0U:N^TAIK -^HAMLET, 
 
 LOCATBD AMONG 
 
 The White Hills 
 
 NEW HAMPSHIRE. 
 
 BY WILLIAM LITTLE. 
 
 MAJSrCHESTER, N. H. 
 
 WILLIAM E; MOOKE, PRINTEB, UNION BUILDING 
 
 1870. 
 
f\7oiz5 
 
 Entered according to Act of CongresB, in the year 1870, by William Little, in the office of the 
 Librarian of Congress, -at Washington. 
 
 The illustrationa in this volume were mostly made by 
 AmoH P. Clough, Artist, Warren, N. H. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To preserve the Indian traditions, tales of border wars, the 
 memories of the old proprietors and first •'white settlers, the 
 legends, anecdotes, and events of our mountain hamlet, and to 
 afford some slight assistance to the great historian of New 
 Hampshire who shall come hereafter, was why this book was 
 written. 
 
 The author was sailing chip boats on Aiken brook one day 
 when a very small boy. A companion, several years older, 
 now Rev. "William Merrill, Was planting potatoes near by. 
 For amusement he told the story of James Aiken, how his 
 house was burned up, who did it, and why, and showed the 
 old cellar. An interest was excited; it grew as the years went 
 by, and the result is this history. 
 
 The writing of it has not been a labor. It has been a 
 pleasant pastime, a source of amusement — "good fun." If 
 any are disposed to smile at the writer's efforts, let them 
 remember that- every one must have a little recreation of s6me 
 
kind, and that while the writer's Mends have enjoyed them- 
 selveg some by hunting and fishing, some by music and danc- 
 ing, some by cards and gaming, some, by squinting through 
 glass tumblers and worshipping the god Bacchus, some by 
 paying their devotions at the shrine of Venus, some by buying 
 pictures and costly libraries, some by sporting fine horses and 
 carriages and building magniflcent houses, some by preaching 
 and praying and singing psalms and songs, and some in divers 
 other ways too numerous to mention, the author of these pages 
 has passed many pleasant and happy houi-s preserving the inci- 
 dents of his native town. 
 
 But we wish all our readers to know that this pleasant 
 pastime, writing a town history, is a costly one; that we have 
 not, cannot, and shall not make a cent out of it; that, to use 
 an expression of the vulgar world, " We are a good deal out 
 of pocket by the operation ; " and that the whole thing is well 
 illustrated by the wise maxim that " those who dance shall 
 pay the fiddler." 
 
 We claim that this history has one merit over ordinary 
 town lustories, and that is unity. That instead of being 
 heterogeneous matter thrown together without any regard to 
 connection of thought, and with no unity except perhaps 
 that of time, and with no interest to any one except persons 
 particularly acquainted with the town, we have grouped oui- 
 facts together, giving unity of thought, unity of time, and 
 we hope some interest to the general reader. 
 
 We know that the first two books of this history are no 
 more applicable to the town of Warren than to any other of 
 the neighboring towns. But it seemed necessary to write them 
 
in order that it might be knowu hbw this wild northern coun- 
 try came to be cultivated and settled. 
 
 The citizens of Wan-en should be very happy that they 
 have this history. Their acts and those of their ancestors and 
 their friends vidll be preserved as long as the State exists. 
 They have a bright and sbining page, while Wentworth, Rom- 
 ney, Ellsworth, Woodstock, Benton, and Piermout, and all the 
 other neighboring lands round about, have lost the pleasant 
 memories of their early settlers ; and all their historical data, 
 so rich, so entertaining, has passed away forever. To-day the 
 inhabitants of those regions are no better off than the Negroes, 
 Hottentots, or the dwellers on the Cannibal Islands. They 
 have no place in history, and perhaps never will have. 
 
 To those who have assisted us in producing this work, we 
 tender our most grateful acknowledgements. We would men- 
 tion Col. Stevens M. Dow, Anson Merrill, Amos F. Clough, 
 Geo. Libbey, Nathaniel Richardson, James Clement, Mrs. Susan 
 C. Little, Miss Hannah B. Knight, all the town clerks, and 
 particularly Russell K. Clement, as persons who have materially 
 aided us. We would also return our most sincere thanks to 
 those pleasant writers who gave "Knickerbocker's History of 
 New York," " Margaret," and " Rural Life." We have helped 
 ourselves freely to such portions of those works as pleased us, 
 and while the authors of them will not suffer, we believe the 
 good folks of Wan-en will be much happier by reason of our 
 literary larceny. We have also derived great assistance from 
 Vol. vii. of the N. H. Hist. Coll., a book dry as a chip to the 
 general reader, but one of the most valuable historical works 
 ever published in New Hampshire. But most especially do we 
 
feel thankful to those persons who have encouraged us in writ- 
 ing this book, by placing their names in our list of subscribers. 
 "We shall hold them in happy recollection to the latest day of 
 our life. 
 
 In closing, we hope that those who look over these 
 pages may be in some degree amused, pleased, edified, and 
 entertained ; and that some one, a native of Warren, may, 
 many years hence, revise, add to, and continue this history, 
 making a book ten times better than ours. 
 
COl^TENTS 
 
 Introduction. - 17 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CONTAINING A HISTOKT OF A TRIBE OF INDIANS NEVER BEFORE WRITTEN BY 
 ANT OTHER HISTORIAN. 
 
 CHAP. I. Of the name of this tribe, or how they called themselves one name 
 while foreigners called them another, together with where they resided 
 in themostpermanentmanner,audwhatgreattribeslivedaroundthem. 23 
 
 CHAP. II. Containing the origin of the Pemigewaseetts with a few profound 
 
 theories very interesting to know. 29 
 
 CHAP. in. About Acteon,— politely called old Acteon, — and what he as 
 
 well as others said of the manners and customs of the Pemigewassetts. 33 
 
 CHAP. rv. The first account of the Nipmucks, or the earliest history of the 
 Pemigewassette, and of their union with other tribes; also how a 
 Bashaba was kiUed, with a description of a very polite way of treating 
 captives, and a foreshadowing of something dreadful to happen. 41 
 
 CHAP. T. Of a terrible war, pestilence, and famine, the heroes of which 
 
 are all dead and their names forgotten. - 47 
 
 CHAP. VI. How the Pemigewassetts and the rest of the Nipmucks were 
 compelled to enter a new league to protect themselves from the Mo- 
 hogs, Marquas or Mohawks, with a slight sketch of another great man 
 who came to be Bashaba. - ■ 51 
 
 CHAP. Vn. In which is set forth the manner the Pemigewassetts some- 
 times enjoyed themselves, while the new Bashaba lived, and then of a 
 slight war that arose which was exceedingly entertaining to them, to- 
 gether with its pious close at Quooheco. - ■ 58 
 
CHAP. VUI. How according to tradition the Pemigewassetts were present 
 at a gi'eat court at Quoclieco, wliere tlie laws were very legally executed 
 and justice done— according to the idea of certain exasperated red men. 64 
 
 CHAP. IX. Containing a slight attempt at biography, or the early life of 
 Waternomee, otherwise Wattanumon, sometimes vulgarly called Wal- 
 ternumus, last chief of the Pemigewassetts. 69 
 
 CHAP. X. How the Pemigewassetts engaged in Queen Anne> war— of sun- 
 dry expeditions— and how several Pemigewassetts were surprised and 
 slain by five terrible Marquas led by the brave Caleb Lyman. 73 
 
 CHAP. XI. Of several things that happened during the progress of the war, 
 and how, as one of the results, the Pemigewassett tribe was destroyed 
 and their hunting grounds, of which Warren was a part, became a 
 solitude. ■ - . 80 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 » TREATING OP INDIAN FIGHTS AND MASSACRES, EXPEDITIONS AND EXPLORATIONS, . 
 RESULTING IN OPENING TO THE WHITE MAN THE LAND OE THE PEMIGE- 
 WASSETTS, AND MAKING THE VALLEY NOW CALLED WAKREN, AND ALL THE 
 ADJACENT COUNTRY, A SATE PLACE TO LIVE IN. 
 
 CHAP. I. Of two wars and more than a dozen battles. 87 
 
 CHAP. n. A beautiful solitude, and how there was an attempt to build two 
 
 forts above the Pemigewassett country, and what came of it, 99 
 
 CHAP. III. Giving an account of a hunting party on the Asquamchumauke ; 
 how two young men were captivated in the most captivating manner — 
 concluding with how one got his back tickled with the oil of birch, 
 while the other did not, much to the delight of all concerned. - 103 
 
 CHAP. IV. How the salvages, Sabatis and Christo, stole two negroes from 
 the settlement at Canterbuiy and the excitement it caused, together 
 with a gi'and result before hinted at. . 107 
 
 CHAP. V. How the i^oad was cut through the woods, and how the great and 
 mighty nation of Arosagunticooks, composed of all the Nipmnck tribes, 
 including our Pemigewassetts and some others, sent a flag of truce to 
 Number Pour. Concluding with a general back out. - 110 
 
 CHAP. VI. How Sabatis and Plausawa fared in the hands of Peter Bowen, 
 ■ together with the miraculous opening of the jail. Concluding with a 
 captivating account of a whole family wh<) were politely invited to go 
 to Canada, by " the gentle salvages." 114 
 
 CHAP. VII. How Capt. Peter Powers marched gallantly through the Pemi- 
 gewassett country to the land of the Uoosucks ; of a brave exploit and 
 a heroic retreat. - . , lao 
 
IX. 
 
 CHAP. Vin. Of a gallant exploit on the New Hampshire fcontler,— of an 
 excited camp on the shore of Wachipauka pond, with other entertain- 
 ing and curious matter, very interesting to know. . 126 
 
 CHAP. IX. Account of the manner the hrave Arosagunticooks of St. Fran- 
 cis passed Captain GofFe; the capture of the Johnson family, with 
 other incidents no doubt very interesting to the participants, together 
 with the first campaign of the old French war. - 132 
 
 CHAP. X. Treating of the assembling of the regiment, and the building of the 
 log fortress at Coos, with other interesting adventures, in the country 
 about I>ake Champlain. 136 
 
 CHAP. XI. A long march through the woods ; a terrible attack on an Indian 
 vUlage; a bloody butchery-=-awful to the participants— but withal very 
 pleasantto read about. - 141 
 
 CHAP. XII. The retreat and its horrors. The camp on the Coos interval 
 under the shadow of the mighty Moosilauke ; concluding with a beauti- 
 ful and golden tradition that has been repeated around the farmer's 
 fireside tor a hundred years. • 147 
 
 CHAP. Xm. How the surviving rangers aU got safely home and how 
 thenceforward the Pemigewassett land containing the pleasant little 
 territory of Wacren, became a very safe country in which to sojourn. L')4 
 
 BOOK III, 
 
 OF THE BIRTH OF A MOUNTAIN HAMLET, OK THE PKEOISE AND ACCURATE HISTORY 
 OF THE ACTS OF SIXTT-SIX BISTINGUISHED MEN, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS 
 THE PROPRIETORS OF WARREN. 
 
 CHAP. I. ■Concerning a gi*eat shaggy wood, and numerous hunters therein ; 
 and then of a sweet little feud between thi-ee royal governors, and how 
 one of them politely "euohered" the others, much to their delight. 157 
 
 CHAP. II. Of a fine old Governor of 'ye ancient days, and of his royal Sec- 
 retary; how these two worthies built golden castles in the air, and 
 finally grew quite rich. 162 
 
 CHAP. III. What John Page, Esq., did, or how he procured a royal charter 
 of our mountain hamlet, Wari'en, conferring many glorious privileges 
 and only a few conditions very easy to be complied with. 166 
 
 CHAP. IV. Of eager men,— Jiow they held several meetings— also of a gay 
 and festive corporation .dinner; concluding with a powerful eff'ort to 
 obtain a surveyor of the King's Woods. 176 
 
CHAP. V. How the lines were run round about Warren; a camp in the for- 
 est; a roaring, raging equinoctial storm worth seeing, and a report of 
 the whole affair by surveyor Leavltt. 182 
 
 CHAP. VI. Conditions hard and terrible, — road made of an Indian trail, — 
 
 rich lots of land drawn by lot, and how men felt rich but anxious. 187 
 
 CHAP. VH. How the proprietors' prospects got desperate — so much so 
 that they were willingto give away some of their lands; how Phillips 
 Wtiite, Esq., came to the rescue— got them out of a terrible difficulty, 
 and finally procured a new charter, which ends this book smd intro- 
 duces us to an altogether new life in Warren. . - 194 
 
 BOOK lY. 
 
 WHICH KELATES HOW OUR WUjD MOUNTAIN HAMLET WAS CULTIVATED AND 
 SETTLED. 
 
 CHAP. I. Of divers and sundry sounds, heard on the head-waters of the 
 Asquamchumauke, and of two hotels in which not a drop of "grog" 
 could be got either for love or money. 201 
 
 CHAP. n. About Joseph Patch, the first white settler of Warren, and how 
 
 he had a few hungry visitors which ate up all his provisions. - 207 
 
 CHAP. III. How eighteen families and two single gentlemen came to War- 
 ren to reside, and amused themselves building cabins, clearing land, 
 hunting moose and deer on the hills, and fishing in the clear, rapid trout 
 streams. - - 214 
 
 CHAP. IV. Of how the early settlers of oiir mountain hamlet took great 
 thought about the manner they should be sheltered, and what they 
 should eat, and of the building of mills ; concluding with the mighty 
 leaps of the salmon, and a delectable swim by the boys. 336 
 
 CHAP. V. Narrating how two men, Stevens MerriU and J-ames Aiken loved 
 
 each other, — how the laws were executed, and a house burned xip, 
 
 concluding with a " pious inquiry " worthy of all good christians. 243 
 
 CHAP. VI. Mount Carr; its ancient inhabitants, and then of the grand old 
 huntings that were had about it, with a beautiful Moosehillock descrip- 
 tion thrown in for variety. 247 
 
 CHAP. VII. Of a provision for religious meetings; gi-andiloquent descrip- 
 tion of one, and how it closed with a cup of sweet comfort and peace 
 as was the custom in ancient times. . . - 857 
 
CHAP. VIII. War I How it reared its horrid ft'ont and its din resounded 
 even across the boundaries of Warren, together with what part oiir 
 early settlers took in it. 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 CONCEKNING THE MIGHTY MAKCH OP EVENTS IN THE GKEAT CIVIL HISTOHT OP 
 WAKBEN. 
 
 CHAP. I. Of the organization of the hamlet, and how certain men achieved 
 
 immortal glory by getting elected to town oMce. ■ 275 
 
 CHAP. II. How the revenue was raised to carry on the war, much to the 
 delight of several patriotic gentlemen called tories ; and 'what soldiers 
 were furnished to All Warren's quota, with other very interesting and 
 entertaining matter. . 282 
 
 CHAP. HI. The first funeral of a white man In Warren; or how John Mills 
 
 died and was hurled. . . 294 
 
 CHAP. IV. About a great army in Warren, how it marched and counter- 
 marched ; of the pretty names it was called, and how it was subsisted. 297 
 
 CHAP. V. Thanksgiving day, or how there was feasting, dancing and merry- 
 making in our hamlet among the hills. 301 
 
 CHAP. VI. The first schools of WaiTen, or how the yoang idea was taught 
 
 to shoot; and of a certain oil much used in ye ancient days. 313 
 
 CHAP. VH. How Sarah Whitcher was lost in the woods, what happened and 
 how they hunted for her, together with a remarkable dream, and how a 
 bushel of beans suddenly disappeared. - 322 
 
 CHAP. VIH. Of a mighty battle fought between two ambitions office seek- 
 ers, and how each gained the victory, much to his great delight. 329 
 
 CHAP. IX. Concerning a great boiindary feud and what came of it. 335 
 
 CHAP. X. Of the mighty requisites necessary to makeaperfect democracy, 
 
 all graphically portrayed in the most attractive manner. 340 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 IN WHICH THE MIGHTY MAECH MENTIONED AT THE BEGINNING OF BOOK V. IS 
 CONTINUED. 
 
 CHAp. I. How several religions came to Warren; of tythingmen who fined 
 men for traveling Sunday, thereby making them exceedingly happy ; 
 concluding with an account of a camp-meeting, where several pioiis 
 youth sounded a horn in the night and disturbed the slumbers of the 
 godly. - - - - - 361 
 
CHAP. U. Of grand huntings, fowlings, and flaliings ; concluding with how 
 a 'squire, a docf or, and a minister were perfectly deliglited trying to 
 catch every flsh in Wachipaulcaj?ond. 370 
 
 CHAP. HI. How the turnpike was built, and of divers things that happened 
 
 thereby. - 384 
 
 CHAP. IV. About the 1812 war; of di'aitiug and volunteering; closing with 
 a grand muster, when Warren's hills heard louder music than ever 
 before. 390 
 
 CHAP. V. How the first covered stage, accompanied by sweet music, ran 
 through Warren, with an account of the first post-office, and who de- 
 livered the letters. - 398 
 
 CHAP, VI. The Black Plague, otherwise called the Spotted Fever, or the 
 
 greatest horror Warren people ever had. 404 
 
 CHAP. VII. How almost a famine, then a hurricane came, and then a hie- 
 
 toryof one of the most pleasant years Warren ever experienced. - 408 
 
 CHAP. VIII. What a woman can do and how she did it; or the accomplish- 
 ment of one of the greatest " requisites" of the last century, viz : the 
 buUding of a meeting-house. - 432 
 
 CHAP. IX. A gay little chapter about witches. 431 
 
 CHAP. X. The first store in Warren, and its successors, and of a roaring, 
 
 raging canal that never was built. 441 
 
 BOOK VII, 
 
 WHICH BOOK 13 BUT A GONTINUATION OP BOOKS V. AND VI., AND CONTAINS THE 
 HISTORY OP THE THIRD GENERATION OP WARREN'S WHITE INHABITANTS. 
 
 CHAP. I. How gold, silver, and diamonds were discovered ui Warren ; and 
 of several individuals who got immensely rich mining, especially in 
 their imaginations. - 449 
 
 CHAP. II. How the Berry brook road was built, and a path on to Moosehil- 
 lock was cut, with a pleasant account of several individuals who nick- 
 named each other in the happiest manner. 454 
 
 CHAP . IIX. Of a great lawsuit about Mrs. Sarah Weeks, whom foolish people 
 called a witch, concluding with pleasant recollections of a paring bee 
 and a " shin- dig," if anybody knows what that is. 461 
 
 CHAP. rv. A chapter on fires. 467 
 
XIU. 
 
 CHAP. V. How and when the raih'oad was huilt, which will be awonder to 
 
 future generations, hut is qnite a common thing now. 472 
 
 CHAP. VI. A brief account of two murders. - 478 
 
 CHA.P. VII. Concerning a great rivalry between charitable reUgioue soci- 
 eties, which resulted in moving and remodelling the old meeting-house, 
 in a town-house, a new school-house, » beautiful common, and in im- 
 proving the graveyard, all which is an honor to the town and the pride 
 of the inhabitants. 483 
 
 CHAP. vni. Of a delectable visit to Moosehillook, and what can be seen 
 
 there— the weather permitting. ' 490 
 
 CHAP. IX. How several individuals got rich manufacturing, or ought to, 
 
 with the.glorious results of it. - - , ' 499 
 
 CHAP. X Of several things that happened ; concluding this History with 
 
 sincere thanks and many kind wishes. - . 508 
 
APPEI^DIX 
 
 Explanatory Notes. 
 
 Natural History of Wan'en. 
 
 Selectmen, Representatives, and other Town Officers. 
 
 Town Statistics. 
 
 Lawyers, Doctors, and Ministers. 
 
 MUitary Officers. 
 
 Town Lots. 
 
 First Inventory and Tax List. , 
 
 Longevity. 
 
 Genealogies. 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 The Poets of Warren. 
 
 Amos F. dough's Diary, kept on Moosehillook. 
 
 Chronology. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 ' 1. Moosehillock, from Warren, opposite title page. 
 
 ' 2. Map of Wan-en ........ 17 
 
 3. Webster Slide and Wachipanka Pond .... 23 
 
 4. OakFaUs 23 
 
 5. EockyfFalls 87 
 
 6. Portrait of Amos F. Clongh, Artist .... 167 
 7.. Map of Warren 171 
 
 8. Mount Carr 201 
 
 9. Waternomee Falls 201 
 
 10. Old Barn built by Joseph Patch 240 
 
 11. Breaking and Swingling Flax .... 274 
 
 12. Old Boundary Lines 336 
 
 13. Our Grandmothers' Pastime 360 
 
 14. Portrait of Rev. Joseph Merrill 399 
 
 15. Poi-trait of Eev. Moses H. Bixby 426 
 
 16. Map of Modern Warren 448 
 
 17. Portrait of Samuel B. Page, Esq 462 
 
 18. Church and Village School-House .... 486 
 
 19. Town House 486 
 
 20. Sugaring oflf . ■ 486 
 
 21. McCaarter, the Hermit 486 
 
 22. Moosilauke Falls 486 
 
 23. The Forks School-House 486 
 
 24. Moosehillock from Indian Rock 493 
 
 25. Prospect House, Summit of Moosehillock . . • 493 
 
 26. Portrait of Dr. Worcester E. Boynton ... 502 
 
 27. Portrait of Gen. Natt Head 510 
 
MAP OF MODERN WARKEN 
 
INTEODUCTIOl^r. 
 
 WHICH GITES A CONCISJS ACCOUNT OF THE DISOOVEEY OP AMEKICA ; 
 ITS SETTLEMENT BY THE ENGLISH ; THE LOCALITY OF WAEEEN, 
 ITS BOUNDAEIES, MOUNTAINS, HILLS, STREAMS, PEODUCTIONS, 
 AND INHABITANTS. 
 
 AmEEICA was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 
 1492. The first permanent English settlement was made at 
 Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. New Hampshire, another British 
 province, was settled in 1623. These are facts that every one is 
 presumed to know. 
 
 "Warren, the history of which we now undertake to write, is 
 a town in New Hampshire. It is situated in latitude forty-four 
 degrees north, longitude six degrees east from 'Washington, and 
 became a geographical fact July 14th, 1763. Admiral "Warren, a 
 gallant commander of an English man-of-war, was its godfather. 
 These are facts which every one is not presumed to know. 
 
 For further information we would say that Warren is a 
 mountainous hamlet, situated in one of the western valleys of the 
 great "White Mountain range. The latter is a cluster of lofty 
 peaks, located a little north of the centre of the State, which 
 vary from three thousand to six thousand three hundred feet in 
 height. Pour great roads pass through these mountains, connect- 
 ing the northern and southern portions of the State. One leads 
 through the Pinkham notch, another through the "White Mountain 
 
 The White Hills were called by the Indians, Waumbekketmethna; Waum- 
 bekket signifies White, and Methna, mountains. 
 
 B 
 
18 HISTORY OF WAKBEN. 
 
 notch, a third through the Franconia notch, and the fourth and 
 most western one through the Oliverian notch. Warren is situ- 
 ated on the last mentioned thoroughfare. 
 
 That there may be no mistake about the locality of the town, 
 gazetteers say that it is in the very centre of Grafton County, is 
 fourteen miles from Haverhill, one of the shire towns of the 
 county, seventy miles from Concord, the State Capital, and ninety- 
 three from Portsmouth, New Hampshire's only seaport. 
 
 The boundaries of "Warren are the gifts of nature. Its eastern 
 line runs over the ci-ests of three lofty mountains. Mt. Cushman 
 on the north rises like a dark wave of the ocean 3,306 feet high. 
 Mt. Kineo, a hundred feet higher, sweeps away in wav}"^ crested 
 summits to the southeast, and Mount Carr, blue, forest-clad, and 
 the last of the trio, is 3,500 feet in height. The south line bends 
 down the slopes of Eed-Oak hill, crosses the pebbly-bottomed 
 Asquamchumauke, and creeps up to the elevation of 2,059 feet 
 over Mt. Sentinel. The western line is over a spur of the latter 
 mountain, crosses Tarleton lake and Mt. Mist — so called from the 
 vapor that sails up to its summit from the blue waves — and finds 
 its northern termination on "Webster Slide mountain. The latter 
 is 2,170 feet above sea-level, and its precipitous face slopes down 
 800 feet to the deep shadows of "Wachipauka or Meader pond. The 
 northern line rests upon the flanks of Owl's Head mountain, 8,206 
 feet high, Mt. Black 3,650 feet, * Moosilauke about 5,000 feet, f and 
 Mt. "Waternomee, a woody elevation of about 3,000 feet. The first 
 is a most curiously shaped mountain. Like a whale — its head a 
 sharp angular peak, piercing the blue ether, its dorsal fin white 
 jagged rocks, rising from the dark forest of firs, its tail a dizzy 
 precipice, sinking perpendicularly a hundred fathoms down, — it 
 turns up its huge back to be fanned by the rude winds. The 
 second, Mt. Black without a white spot upon it, is a dark, sombre 
 monument, rising in the city of mountains ; the third, Moosilauke, 
 head and shoulders above the others, is monarch of all, and the 
 
 The height of these mountains was ascertained by Prof. Guyot, of Princeton 
 CoUege, in 1857. 
 
 *Moosilauke was so called by the Indians IVom Moosi, bald, and Aulie, a 
 place — Bald-place. On the lirst maps it was written Mooshelauke, then Mooshe- 
 lock, thenMoosehillock. Many persons suppose it was so called from the large 
 number of moose once found about the mountain. 
 
 t Some say 6,051 feet; others say 4,802 feet high. 
 
HILLS AND STKEAMS. 19 
 
 fourth, Mt. "Waternomee, is a green wooded mountain with three 
 round crests, and is sometimes known as the southern spur of the 
 Pemigewassett range. 
 
 The exact centre of Warren is the summit of Knight hill. 
 Standing on the top, one is surrounded on all sides by lofty crests, 
 and the forest hamlet appears like a huge bowl, . with another 
 bowl transparent, formed of blue sky inverted and placed over it, 
 and resting upon the rim of mountains. 
 
 "Warren is well watered. The principal stream is the As- 
 quamchumauke, now called Baker river. It rises in a little 
 meadow pond on the north side of Moosilauke mountain. At 
 first a wild torrent, then a bright pebbly-bottomed stream, and 
 lastly a deep blue river, it empties into the Pemigewassett. " Its 
 Warren tributaries from the west are Merrill, Berry, and Black 
 brooks; on the east. East Branch, Batchelder, and Patch brooks. 
 Through the north part of the town, running into the Connecticut, 
 is Oliverian brook. These are the principal streams ; but small 
 yet never-failing rivulets gush from the mountain springs situated 
 in every ravine, while there is scarcely a meadow which does not 
 contain a fountain whose waters, cool and crystalline, bubble up 
 from the white sands. More than a hundred of these musical 
 streamlets make "Warren one of the best watered towns in New 
 Hampshire. 
 
 Five sparkling ponds lie sleeping high up among AVari-en's 
 mountains. Over on the east side of Mount Carr two bright gems 
 gleam in the greenwood, which from their locality are called the 
 Glen ponds. Near Mt. Mist is Kelley pond, furnishing a stream 
 for an old mill, and under the face of precipitous "Webster Slide 
 mountain is the^before-mentioned "Wachipauka or Meader pond. 
 West of Mt. Mist, and kissing its sloping base, a crystal sheen in 
 an emerald setting, is Tarleton lake. 
 
 Within the town are numerous hills, some of which deserve 
 mention. Eed Oak, Picked, Clement, and Patch, each rise about 
 a thousand feet high on the east side of the Asquamchumauke. 
 Bald, and Knight, wood-crowned heights of about the same eleva- 
 tion, are situated between the Asquamchumauke and Berry brook. 
 
 The Indians 'called Black brook Mikaseota, or with ftill Bpelling it was Mik- 
 hasseotque. — Acteon. 
 
20 HISTORY OF WAEREN. 
 
 Pine hill is a long rolling ridge, terminating abruptly in Keyes 
 ledge, or Mt. Helen, and stands between Black and Berry brooks. 
 Wyatt, Marston, and Beech hills are on the western border. 
 
 Warren is rich in minerals. On Sentinel mountain is a large 
 and productive vein of ore. Gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, zinc, 
 plumbago, molybdenum, calc-spar, rutU, epidote, beryl, garnets, 
 quartz crystals, tourmalines, and many others are found. Near 
 the Summit are large quantities of limestone. Gneiss and mica 
 slate abound, and the underlying granite which crops out on 
 Webster Slide mountain and Mount Carr affords excellent build- 
 ing material. 
 
 The first road through Warren was the old Indian trail enter- 
 ing* the town where the Asquamchumauke leaves it, and following 
 the Mikaseota to its source in Wachipauka pond, it descended the 
 slope of Webster Slide to the valley of the Oliverian. The second 
 was built by the first white proprietors, and wound over the 
 Height o' land and round the east shore of Tarleton lake. The 
 third was the turnpike. Then the road over Pine hill and through 
 the Oliverian notch was constructed, and last of all the railroad, 
 which follows the old Indian trail with little variation and leaves 
 the town by the above-mentioned notch. Numerous other roads 
 have been made, for the accommodation of the later inhabitants, 
 among which is the bridle-path over Moosilauke moiintain. 
 
 The climate is very healthy. Residents of the town have 
 seen the snows of a hundred winters. Owing to the elevation of 
 the valley, and to the mountains which surround it, good sleigh- 
 ing often lasts from December to April. The snow then suddenly 
 disappears, frequently causing destructive freshets. Summer 
 treads quickly in the footsteps of winter, the crops'spring forth as 
 if by magic, and autumn never fails of returflang an abundant 
 harvest to cheer the heart of the husbandman. 
 
 The physical formation of a country has much to do with 
 moulding the character of its people. The Indians of New 
 Hampshire, to whom we shall devote the first book of this history, 
 especially those who inhabited the central part of the State, must 
 have been a race of mountaineers. As such, a love of freedom, 
 the spirit of adventure, and a granite hardihood must have char- 
 acterized them. Their wars with the early English pioneers will 
 
INHABITANTS. 21 
 
 form the material of book tlie second of this very sedate and 
 truthful history. 
 
 The acts of the sixty-five distinguished men, otherwise known 
 as the provincial proprietors of "Warren, will be accurately nar- 
 rated in book the third. 
 
 The present inhabitants of Warren are mostly farmers. They 
 are tenacious of their rights and political privileges, and are just 
 such a hardy race as one might expect to find dwelling among 
 granite boulders, leaping torrents, and high hills. In the Eevolu- 
 tion about one-fourth of those capable of bearing arms served in 
 the army. In the 1812 war they furnished their quota of troops 
 cheerfully, all who went going as volunteers. The adventures of 
 the early settlers of Warren and those of their descendants will 
 form the subject of the remaining books of Ibis, we trust, most 
 entertaining liistory. 
 

 tW;*»vi ■■ - ^BiCi-«^ -1*.*---.- ■'- . '■■■■ ■-•,Tfc>.-#^ ^*^ ,.3*^ -^^ 
 
 r^'- 
 
 
 
 -f ^'^}^'^> 
 
 '4-- 
 
 
HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CONTAINING A HISTORY OF A TRIBE OF INDIANS NEVER BEFORE 
 ■WRITTEN BY ANY OTHER HISTORIAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF THE NAME OF THIS TRIBE, OR HOW THEY CALLED THEMSELVES 
 BY ONE NAME WHILE FOREIGNERS CALLED THEM BY ANOTHER, 
 TOGETHER WITH WHERE THEY RESIDED IN THE MOST PER- 
 MANENT MANNER, AND WHAT GREAT TRIBES LIVED AROUND 
 THEM. 
 
 The first sunlig-ht.of history begins to dawn upon that 
 little territory now called Warren, of which we have just given 
 such a full description, about the last years of the seventeenth 
 century. It reveals a pleasant valley surrounded by lofty moun- 
 tains, watered bj-- a rapid river and a hundred tumbling trout 
 brooks sparkling down from the hills, and inhabitgd by a por- 
 tion of a small tribe of Indians known in after years as the 
 Pemigewassetts. 
 
 '< This people belonged to the Algonquin race, which occupied 
 the whole Atlantic coast from the gulf of the St. Lawrence to 
 Cape Fear. * 
 
 ♦Bancroft's Hist, of V. S. Vol. iii. Chap. 22. Whiton's Hist, of N. H. 9. 
 
24 HISTORY OF WAEREN. 
 
 They called themselves Nipmucks," a word derived from 
 " iiipe," meaning fresh water, and "auke,'' a place, an " m" being 
 thrown in by skillful manufacturers of Indian words for the sake 
 of euphony, — the whole meaning fresh-water Indians, a name 
 used to distinguish them from those who resided on the immediate 
 sea coast, f 
 
 These jSTipmuck Indians were divided into jiumerous tribes or 
 families, each having a head or chief, and we are told that as 
 neighbors of the Pemigewassetts "a great and powerful tribe" 
 lived on the Nashua stream and were called Nashuas. t That 
 another lived on the Souhegan river, and of course were called 
 SoDHEGANS. A third lived at Amoskeag faUs, and were called 
 Amoskeags. a fourth inhabited the beautiful interval at Con- 
 cord, called by the Indians Pennacook, and they were Penna- 
 cooKS. A fifth dwelt on Squamscott river, now Exeter, and for 
 the same reason were called Squamscotts. A sixth stopped at 
 Newichannock, and they were Newichannocks. A seventh stayed 
 at Piscataqua river, and they were Pascataquaukes. An eighth 
 built a wigwam city at Ossipee lake, and they were the cultivated 
 OssiPEES, with mounds and forts like more civilized nations. A 
 ninth built flourishing villages in the fertile valley of the Pequaw- 
 ket river, and were known as the pious Pequawkees, who 
 worshipped the great Manitou of the cloud-capped Agiochook. A 
 tenth had their home by the clear Lake "Winnepisseogee, and were 
 esteemed "the beautiful Winnepissaukies." An eleventh set up 
 their lodges of spruce bark by the banks of the wild and turbulent 
 Androscoggin river, and were known as " the death-dealing 
 Amaeiscoggins." a twelfth cultivated the Coos intervals on the 
 
 * Drake's Biog. of Indians, 13, 281. Hist, of New England, 636. 
 
 t The Indians from the interior were Imown and called among the tribes upon 
 the seashore by the general name of Nipmucks, or Fresh-water Indians, and, true 
 to their name, the Nipmucks usually had their residences upon x>laces of stUl water, 
 the ponds, lakes, and rivers of the interior. Biit the Indians in the Merrimack 
 valley, although properly Nipmucks and living in distinct bands or tribes, were 
 usually called by the English, Pennacooks, etc. 
 
 t Nashua means the river with a pebbly bottom. Souhegan is a contraction of 
 SouheganBsh, meaning worn-out lands. Amoskeag \& derivedfrom Naniaos (aflsh) 
 and Auke (a place). Pennacook is derived from Pennaqui (crooked) and Auke. 
 Squamscott^ fvQvi\ Asquam (water) and Auke. Newichannock, from Xee (my), 
 Week ( a contraction for Wigwam ), and Owannock ( come ). Pascataguauke, ivoni 
 Pos (great), Attuck (a deer), and Auke. Ossipee, from Cooash (pines) and Sipe 
 (ariver). Pequawkees, from Feqi-iakis (crooked) and Auke. Winnepissattkies,ti-oia. 
 Wmne (beautiful), Nipe (water), Kees (high), and Auke. Ainariscoggins,ts:onL 
 Namaos (flsh), Kees (high), and Auke. Coosucks, fl-om Cooash, pines. — Potter's 
 Hist, of Manchester. 
 
THE NIPMUCKS. 25 
 
 Connecticut, and were called " the swift deer-hunting Coosucks." 
 Besides these twelve tribes, just equal in number to the tribes 
 of the children of Israel, the Pemigewassetts also had as neighbors 
 in New Hampshire, and along its present borders, the "Winne- 
 cowE^TS,* inhabiting a beautiful pine-tree-place in the southeast 
 corner of the State, the Wachusetts living about the mountain of 
 that name in Massachusetts, the Agawams residing at the mouth 
 of the Merrimack, the Pawtuckets, who fished at Pawtucket falls, 
 and several small tribes upon the banks of the Connecticut river 
 whose names are unknown. 
 
 All these various tribes derived their pretty names from some 
 prominent object in the territory which they inhabited. Thus the 
 Pemigewassetts are so called from the principal river that flowed 
 through their hunting grounds. That the places inhabited by the 
 Indians, neighboring to the Pemigewassetts, did not derive their 
 names from the name of the tribe, can be seen by examining the 
 derivation of the names themselves. For instance, we are told 
 that Pascataqua means "great deer place." Now we have too 
 much respect for the memory of the noble Pascataquaukes to 
 believe they would like to be called great deer, or rather great 
 cowards. Again, Nashua means the river with a pebbly bottom; 
 and we cannot think those red men intended to call themselves the 
 pebbly-bottomed Indians. The literal significance of the word 
 Pemigewassett is " the crooked mountain pine place" — a name 
 that will answer well enough for a river, but would not at all 
 describe the hardy race of Indian mountaineers that hunted in the 
 pleasant territory of "Warren. They were not crooked children 
 but straight as arrows; they were not mountains, except in firm- 
 ness and strength ; nor were they pines, for that is a soft, brittle 
 wood, and they were tough as oaks. "We conclude that the Pem- 
 igewassetts, and all those numerous tribes who called themselves 
 Nipmucks, received their name from foreigners in pretty much 
 the same ma,uner that Boston men are called Bostonians and the 
 highly moral men of Gotham, Gothamites. 
 
 The diflferent families of these several tribes, neighbors of our 
 Pemigewassetts, were not very careful to confine their residences 
 
 * Wvimecowetts, li'om Winne ( beautiful ), Cooash, and Auke. — Potter's Hist, of 
 Mancliester, 28. 
 
26 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 to any particular locality,* but generally changed them several times 
 in a year, and changed their names as often as they changed their 
 residences. Consequently when a few families went to Amoskeag 
 falls to flsh they were Amoskeags ; if they went to the rich inter- 
 vals of Pennacook to plant they were Pennacooks ; if they went 
 later in the season to Winnepissiogee lake, where they could fish 
 through the ice and hunt on the hills, to spend the winter, they 
 were Winnepissaukies, — and, furthermore, any tribe had but to 
 say presto and travel, and they immediately changed into some 
 other great tribe. 
 
 Where in Warren, " the beautiful bowl of the mountains," did 
 the Pemigewassetts live? They had numerous camping-grounds, 
 but several places are particularly shown, where it is said they 
 built their wigwams. 
 
 On the right bank of the Asquamchumauke, and a few rods 
 below the large railroad bridge that spans its waters, was a fertile 
 meadow. Here was a planting place. Arrow-heads have been 
 found there, and the ridges where the corn grew were seen by the 
 first settlers. But the Indians who sometimes lived here left a 
 monument more enduring than the little mounds where they 
 hilled their corn. Twenty rods back from the river, and fifty feet 
 higher than the running water, a trap dyke cuts across a high 
 ledge, known as 
 
 INDIAN ROCK. 
 
 On its top are formed four smoothly cut bowls. Lines connecting 
 them would point east and west, north and south. Such regularity 
 shows that they cannot be " pot-holes," and they were without doubt 
 formed by the Indians. This settlement was on the Indian trail. 
 
 *From thick warm valleys where they winter they remoTe a little nearer to 
 their summer fields. When it is warm spring they remove to their fields, where 
 they plant corn. In middle summer, because of the abundance of lieas which tlie 
 dust of the house breeds, they will fly and remove on a sudden to a IVesh place. 
 And sometimes having fields a mile or two or many miles assunder, when the woi-k 
 of one field is over they remove hence to the otlier. If death call in amongst tliem, 
 they presently remove to a fresh place. If an enemy approacli they remove to a 
 thicltet or swamp, unless they have some fort to remove into. Sometimes they 
 remove to a hunting house in the end of the year and forsake it not until the snow 
 lies thick; and then will travel home, men women and children, through the snow 
 thirty, yea fifty or sixty miles. But their great remove is from their summer 
 fields to warm and thick woody bottoms, where they winter. They .ire quick in 
 half a day, yea sometimes in a lew liours warning to be gone, and tlie house is 
 up elsewhere, especially if they liave a few stakes ready pitclied for their mats. I 
 once- in my til-avels lodged at a house at whicli in my return I hoped to liave lodged 
 again the next night, but the house was gone in that interim and I was glad to 
 lodge under a tree.— Roger Williams' Key, 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. 213. 
 
THE PEMIGEWASSBTTS. 27 
 
 Then there were indications of another settlement near Beach- 
 hill bridge over Black brook, or, as they called it, the Mikaseota. 
 This was a favorite place, and old Indians came back and caniped 
 there even after white settlers had moved into the valley. 
 
 A high embankment known as the Blue ridge connects the 
 base of Keyes ledge with the foot of Sentinel mountain. This is 
 the southern shore to what is now called Runaway pond. "Where 
 the water burst through is plain to be seen, and on the rocks of 
 the former beach are yet the marks scored by the tumbling waves 
 and dashing ice. The broad acres, once the bed of the pond, are 
 now fertile meadows. They were never fully overgrown by forest 
 trees. Mounds, where the Indians stored their corn ; ashes, where 
 burned the wigwam fires ; pieces of rude pottery, axes of stone, 
 arrow-heads turned up by the ploughshare, and graves under the 
 shadow of Marston hill,' tell that here once was an Indian village. 
 By it ran the trail* leading to the land of the Coosucks. In front 
 wound their Mikaseota, silent and dark, and near by the bright 
 water of Ore hill brook flashed in the rocky glen. Here the steep 
 hills, that once sloped down to the curling waves, protected from 
 the chill winds the Indian's maize, his pumpkins, squashes, and 
 beans, which g^rew in these most fertile meadows. 
 
 Then by the mouth of Berry brook, — the stream that comes 
 down through the dark ravine from Moosilauke, — was a planting 
 place. Debris from the wigwams, rude implements of husbandry, 
 of hunting and fishing, have been found here. 
 
 High up on a plateau of Moosilauke mountain lies one of the 
 most fertile farms of "Warren. On ite eastern side is a dark ravine 
 a hundred fathoms deep. Through this rushes a foaming torrent, 
 the head-waters of the Asquamchumauke. On the north the lofty 
 Moosilauke shoots up five thousand feet ; Mts. "Waternomee, 
 Cushman, and Eaneo are on the left, a woody mountain ridge runs 
 to the valley on the right, in front are Mount Carr and Mt. 
 Sentinel, and through the passes and over hills may be seen the 
 distant mountains of the southwest. Near the eastern edge of the 
 plateau bubbles up a clear, cold spring. A little stream flowing 
 therefrom winds for a considerable distance nearly parallel to the 
 
 * It is admirable to see wliat paths tlieir naked hardened feet have made in the 
 wilderness, in most atoney and rooky .places.— Roger Williams' Key. 
 
28 HISTORY OF -WARBEN. 
 
 brink of the ravine and then, flasliing among the boulders, leaps 
 down through a deep gully to the toiTent. Between the spring 
 and the brink, in a grove of tall hemlocks, Indian implements * 
 discovered show that here also was once an Indian village. 
 
 But the Pemigewassetts, as we have gently intimated before, 
 were not coniined to the woody territory of "Warren. They had 
 ample hunting grounds, larger than any of the other great tribes 
 we have mentioned. The Height o'land was their northern boun- 
 dary and the Connecticut river was on the west. The great "White 
 mountains were on the east, while on the south was the land of the 
 Pennacooks and the "Winnepissaukies. 
 
 Their's was a beautiful country. No clearer and more spark- 
 ling rivers could be found in the world than the Asquamchumauke 
 and Pcmigewassett ; no brighter and more smiling lakes than the 
 Newfound and the Squam, and no more glorious mountains than 
 Moosilauke and the Haystacks. By Sawheganet and Livermore 
 falls were the best of fishing places, and at the confluence of the 
 Asquamchumauke and Pemigewassett were the broad and beau- 
 tiful intervals of the tribe. No place more fertile can be found in 
 New England. Luxuriant grasses and wild flowers growing 
 with tropical exuberance, clusters of noble elms with waving 
 branches, a dense forest, hills and wood-crowned summits on the 
 border, and lofty mountains in the distance, often snow-capped at 
 midsummer, made this spot a wild garadise. Kidges where the 
 corn was planted, ashes where the wigwam was built, mattocks 
 made from the bone of a moose's thigh, rude pestles and knives 
 of stone, gouges, and arrow and spear-heads here found, show 
 that this was the chief planting place of the tribe. f Here also 
 was frequently the royal residence, and without doubt the Indians 
 had encamped here for centuries. 
 
 There was really but one tribe of Indmns in New Hampshire^ the NmmuckSj as 
 they called themselves. The division of this tribe into ten or fifteen small but distin- 
 guished tribes is but a pleasant fancy of great Indian Historians, and we have been 
 pleased to hiimor that fancy. The Nipnracks belonged as much to one section of the 
 State as to another, and inhabited all sections, setting np their wigwams wherever 
 
 they could find good hunting grounds, fishing waters, and planting places. Potter 
 says the New Hampshire ludiajas were all Nipmucks, and Drake says the same 
 thmg— and they have given the matter more research than all others who ha 
 written upon the subject. Bvery^ town in New Hampshire has had aportion oj 
 tribe of Indians at some time residing within its borders, and that was the Nipmuck 
 *Nathaniel MerriU, 2d, found a beautiftil Indian li-eestone bowl at this place. 
 
 tAt the mouth of Baker river.ln the town otPlymouth.N. H., the Indians had 
 a settlement, where have been found Indian gx-aves, bones, gun-barrel«, stone mor- 
 tars, pestles, and other utensils in use among them.— I. Farmer & Moore's Col. 128. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 CONTAINING THE ORIGIN OP THE PEMIGEWASSETTS, WITH A FEW 
 PKOFOL'ND THEORIES VERY INTERESTING TO KNOW. 
 
 W"hENCE came the Pemigewassetts ? Whence all the 
 red men? These are not easily answered. 
 
 Naturally one would turn to the Indians and seek the informa- 
 tion from them. The medicine man, priest, or panisee, when 
 asked the question would reply, as he often has, as follows : 
 
 " The first pair of mortals crept from a hole in the earth, 
 climbing up by a grape-vine," to inhabit a world that, as some 
 lay, had " grown out of a tortoise's back," or as others, "the 
 globe reconstructed from the earth clutched in a muskrat's paw." 
 
 Or the great legend man of another tribe would say that man 
 was brought to earth on the back of the white-winged bird of 
 heaven. 
 
 The traditions of another would have it that the land was 
 peopled by "a teyr wanderers from the seven caves (if any one 
 can tell where they are), veiling their god-like powers of terror 
 with hissing rattlesnakes fearful only to others." 
 
 Then it was often told round the wigwam fire how a mam- 
 moth bull jumped over the great lakes with the first Indians on 
 his back, and how a grape-vine carried a whole tribe across the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Now these, and very, many more like them, were all satisfac- 
 tory answers to the Indians themselves, but did not at all clear 
 up the mystery of the origin of the Indians to the minds of the 
 pious missionaries who first came among them, or the host of 
 Indian historians who have sprung up in later years. Conse- 
 quently theories without number have been started, a few of 
 
30 HISTOKY OP WAEHEN. 
 
 which the most important we will mention briefly, as they will aid 
 the enquiring reader greatly in solving the momentous question. 
 
 Christopher Colon — otherwise the great Columbus: — immedi- 
 ately upon his discovering the red men in the West Indies began 
 to theorise upon their origin, and concluded they were the people 
 of the ancient Ophir, from whence Solomon procured the gold to 
 embellish the temple at Jerusalem, and "imagined that he saw 
 the remains of furnaces of veritable Hebraic construction em- 
 ployed in refining the precious ore." 
 
 Numerous writers, following the great discoverer, asserted 
 without the least hesitation that the Jews were the early settlers 
 of America, and many pious authors rejoiced that they had found 
 at last the abode of the ten lost tribes of the children of Israel. 
 
 Then learned authors arose who said North America was 
 peopled by a colony of Norwegians, and a generation of later 
 writers were sure that the newly discovered land was peopled in 
 remote ages by the Chinese. 
 
 As time passed on, one distinguished historian ascribed the 
 settlement of America to the Egyptians ; another to the Scandi- 
 navians ; a third to the Gauls ; a fourth to the Celts ; a fifth to the 
 Phcenicians, and a sixth to the Carthagenians, and numerous 
 others to as many difierent peoples and nations, — each author 
 bringing a cloud of witnesses and numerous tomes of written 
 evidence to support his theory. 
 
 In later times distinguished antiquarians, bringing to bear the 
 light of natural science and modern geographical discoveries, 
 have come to the conclusion that America was not peopled by the 
 Norwegians, Celts, or Gauls, — marching from Europe by a pleas- 
 ant route across frozen rivers and arms of the sea through Iceland, 
 Greenland, and Labrador; neither that they sailed direct from 
 Egypt, Phoenicia, or Carthage, westward across the Atlantic, or 
 from China eastward across the Pacific ; but that they came in 
 veritable birch canoes from thfe northeast corner of Asia, coasting 
 with a pleasant breeze along the Aleutian isles, or sailing in thg 
 most daring manner directly across Behring's straits — forty-four 
 miles wide — with three small islands intervening at equal dis- 
 tances for convenient resting places. 
 
 Others are so kind that they have constructed in remote ages 
 
THE ABORIGINES. 31 
 
 an exceedingly strong bridge of ice across the above-uamed strait, 
 over which the red men could pass dry shod. 
 
 It is said, with how much tnith we know not, that the Esqui- 
 maux of Asia and those of America are of the same origin, as is 
 proved by the affinity of their language, and the latter probably 
 emigrated from the former country — coming over in canoes or on 
 the convenient bridge of ice. Also that the Tungusians of Asia* 
 are identical with the red men of America ; only this cannot be 
 proved by their language, but by similarity of features, hair, and 
 complexion. 
 
 Certain it is there are many who do not believe the last men- 
 tioned theories any more than the foi-mer, and assert that the 
 Indians had an Adam and Eve of their own, who lived more than 
 a hundred and fifty thousand years ago upon that strip of land 
 seen to the northward from the top of our Pemigewassett's loved 
 Moosilauke, and which was once the only land in the whole 
 world, an island washed on eveiy side by a boundless and un- 
 known ocean. 
 
 From this we are to infer that Asia was peopled from Amer- 
 ica, and not vice versa, as was gravely asserted in former times. 
 
 Others there are who, discarding all the former theories, assert 
 that the human race had diverse origins, by the development pro- 
 cess, as unfolded by the great Darwin, in which he makes man to 
 have descended by natural selections and gradual development 
 from the — oyster, or some other equally distinguished creation of 
 animal life. Our noble tribe on the banks of the Pemigewassett 
 must have felt honored had they but known from what noble 
 ancestors they descended. 
 
 Dissenters, who do not believe in the unity of the human race, 
 affirm that the five species of men each had a different origin — 
 five different pairs of first parents. f But these are only an arislo- 
 cratical sort of people, who do not like to acknowledge themselves 
 
 * Captain Ray, of the whaleship Superior, testifies that while he was fishing at 
 Behring's straits her saw canoes going from one continent to the other. The origin 
 of the native Americans is thus evidently explained. It has also been observed 
 that North Americans have hahits and. manners similar to the Tchuktchians, Kamt* 
 schatkans, Yakoutsks, and Koriaks of Asia. A similarity in the language has also 
 been discovered. — History of the Abnakis, 13. 
 
 t They say it would have been just as easy for the Creator to have made five or 
 twenty-five different races of men as it was to have made one. 
 
32 HISTOKT OF -WAKREN. 
 
 to be cousins to the Hindus, Hottentots, and Negroes, perhaps to 
 the g-orillas and orang-otangs. 
 
 We do not propose to go further in this antiquarian or anthro- 
 pological expedition, but think that our readers, from what has 
 been thus briefly presented, will come to the sage conclusion that 
 the Pemigewassetts came from somewhere, the Lord only knows 
 where, and inhabited the fair valley of the Asquamchumauke for 
 long centuries before the advent of the white man. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ABO€T AGTEON — POLITELY CALLED OLD ACTBON — AND "WHAT HE 
 AS WELL AS OTHERS SAID OF THE MANNEES AND CUSTOMS OF 
 THE PEMIGEWASSETTS. 
 
 In a little old legendary manuscript histoiy, where the 
 handwriting was decidedly poor and the sppUing none of the best, 
 said to have been written by Colonel Obadiah Clement in his 
 younger and palmiest • days, are related many and wonderful 
 things, reported to have been told the Colonel by an Indian * who 
 had seen more than a hundred and twenty winters, and who was 
 wont to stop at his inn, about the red men that once resided on the 
 head waters of the Asquamchumauke. We have made the most 
 diligent search for this exceedingly entertaining work, and al- 
 though we found his few poems and a lengthy religious experience 
 written out, and numerous other interesting papers, yet we were 
 never able to lay our hands upon it. But we have no doubt that 
 a work written by Colonel Clement, containing divers and sundiy 
 , facts, did once e;Xist, which like many another great production is 
 now lost to the world forever. In fact, we have met with one 
 person who claims to have read the identical history, and from 
 him we learned many a fond tale which he said his grandfather's 
 manuscript recounted. These we have scrupulously written 
 down, preferring to give them as heard rather than to trick them 
 out in all the beautiful adornings and gay images of rhetoric. 
 
 The old Indian, whose name was Acteon, as tradition has it, 
 
 * Joseph Clement and James Clement both Tonch Ibr the Indian. 
 
 In 1728 this same Acteon, at the head of ten Indians, surprised the family of 
 Phillip Durrell, at Kennebunk, Me., burned the honseaud carried away ten per- 
 sons into captivity. Acteon was a Nipmuok, although there was much dispute 
 as to where he was born. — Drake's Ind. Biog, 33S. 
 
34 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 narrated liow that the Pemigewassett tribe were a jovial set of 
 wandering hunters, going from one end of their hunting grounds 
 to the other in a single season, and building for themselves ever}^ 
 time they stopped to plant, fish, or hunt fairy wigwams* to protect 
 them from the weather. These mountaia Indians had a taste for 
 the beautiful, and their forest halls were elaborately constructed, 
 splendidly ornamented, and furnished with the most artistic skill. 
 A smooth plat of ground was chosen among the embowering 
 trees, near which a bright cold spring gushed up from the white 
 sand, or by which a sparkling brook danced in circling eddies 
 among the rocks. Sometimes they chose the bank of the river, 
 and again the margin of the shining lake. 
 
 In building their palaces they were the sole architects and 
 artificers, and, being able to do so many things, they would have 
 been termed in Yankee land jacks-at-all-trades. 
 
 Yet they reared no marble or granite halls. They planted 
 numerous sapling poles in the ground, at equal distances from a 
 given point called the centre ; these were all bent toward each 
 other till they met and formed a sharp cone, when they were there 
 fastened. Spruce or birch bark was neatly shingled all over this 
 light framework, save a small opening on the top and another 
 about two feet wide and three feet high, on the southeast side. 
 The first was never closed, no doubt being left open that the 
 smoke of the fire, which was always built in the centre of the 
 palace, might easily escape, — perhaps also for ventilation — while 
 the second, wliioh answered for a royal entrance, and was really 
 larger than that through which the dirty philosopher Diogenes 
 entered his tub, was stopped by the shaggy skin of a bear. Mats 
 were placed upon the ground, and these were covered with rich 
 furs. Dishes of birch bark, shells, and gourds ; bows and arrow- 
 filled quivers, tomahawks and scalping-knives ; spears, paddles, 
 pipes, and tobacco — in fine, all the treasures of mighty warriors, 
 together with the scalps of enemies, were hung, like trophies in 
 old baronial halls, upon the pillars, architraves, cornices, fluted 
 shafts, friezes, and capitals of the stately pole and bark edifice. f 
 
 * The men make the pol^s or stakes, but the women make and set np, take 
 down, order, and carry the household stuff.— Roger Williams' Key. 
 
 t Deer skins, or those of some other animal, were >iung at these apertures to 
 take the place or doors, and were pushed aside when they wished to enter or pass 
 
ACTEON, 35 
 
 The palace of Versailles, the Kremlin of Moscow, or the halls of 
 St. James have not half the beauties these woodland lodges and 
 their surroundings possessed. Fountains and baths in silvery 
 sands, with flowers smiling on the mossy rim ; long aisles amid 
 the mighty colonnade of trees ; terraces on the green slopes, planted 
 with flowering shrubs ; leafy canopies echoing with the fairy notes 
 of the light-winged winds, or thrilling with the sweetest madri- 
 gals of a thousand birds, with plumage dyed in the brightest rain- 
 bow hues ; arches of sky of the sweetest blue, or ebon vaults 
 glowing with diamond stars — all these emparadised the forest 
 lodges of the Pemigewassetts. 
 
 But, said old Acteon, although we don't use his exact lan- 
 guage, let no one who has common sense suppose for a moment 
 that these almost ephemeral wigwams were free from the numerous 
 cares that harass and perplex humanity. The Pemigewassetts, 
 like other men, must eat. Their bodies were sensible to the 
 scorching rays of the summer sun and also felt the chilly blast and 
 biting frost. Toil might procure them food, but from heat and 
 cold their j)alaces afibrded only a weak protection. 
 
 Still they had one advantage over ordinary civilized mortals : 
 STo frowns, scowls, or cross looks on the lovely faces of their 
 squaw-queens ever troubled them on washing or cleaning days. 
 In fact, it required no great outlay of elbow-grease to keep their 
 castles clean, nor coats of whitewash to make them look comely. 
 If a dirty mud-puddle stank before the entrance, or^ if all the 
 chinks and cranies of the low-arched hall swarmed with fleas 
 and lice, as was frequently the case, all that was necessary to bo 
 done was to move out the treasures, applj"^ the torch, let the de- 
 vouring element do its work — and ther^ no forest flower could 
 grow half so quick as a second roj'al wigwam.' 
 
 How did the Pemigewassetts subsist? Old Acteon, in a story- 
 out. They had gourds of various kiuda. The common gourd they cultivated for 
 dippers aud musical instruments, use and pleasure. The hatu of the Pemigewas- 
 set was usually made of white ash or hemlock. The arrow was pointed with 
 stone; sometimes of fine granite, but oftener of quartz and glate. The spear-head 
 and knife were of the same materials. When behfUng the bow the string was 
 drawn with three fingers, while the forefinger and thumb held the arrow. In this 
 manner a strong man could bend a very stiff bow, Which would throw an arrow 
 with very great velocity. Paddles were made of light bass wood or ash. Pipes 
 were made of freestone. .' , , 
 
 * The- wigwam for the summer was a frail and temporary ajffair, as it was re- 
 moved from the winter encampment to the fishing place, and from thence to the 
 
36 HISTORY OF 'WAEREN. 
 
 telling mood, often related to Colonel Obadiah how it was, — and 
 
 as they were just like all the rest of the New England Indians 
 
 their manners and customs can also be learned from the early 
 
 English Indian historians among them, and perhaps the most 
 
 entertaining is John Jpsselyn, Gent., as he was accustomed to sign 
 
 himself. 
 
 Cultivating the land, fishing, fowling, and hunting occupied 
 
 for the most part their attention. 
 
 The braves did not like to work, and the women were com- 
 pelled to strengthen their feeble constitutions by cultivating the 
 wild fields with mattocks of wood, bone, or shell. They planted 
 the maize, scared away the crows, hoed the beans, and trained the 
 flowering vines. 
 
 While their women were thus employed and kept out of mis- 
 chief the men would gamble, tell their brave exploits in war, sing 
 their rude songs, engage in wild sports, or eat, smoke, and sleep. 
 When they were tired of this lazy way of existence they would 
 dig out their boats, construct their birchen canoes, * repair the 
 wigwams, and make bows, arrows, spears, and tomahawks. 
 
 When they wanted moderate excitement, and did not care to 
 fight, they would engage in fishing, fowling, and hunting. It is 
 said that in the first they used a spear, a net, and rude hooks of 
 bone.f But Old Acteon said the Pemigewassetts and their Mp- 
 muck cousins down the river had no need of such artificial con- 
 trivances. So plenty were the fish in the Merrimack and its trib- 
 utaries that all they had to do was to jump into the water and 
 with their hands throw out a hundred dozen or so, just as their 
 delicate appetites happened to crave. 
 
 In the ponds and rivers, at certain seasons, wild-fowl congre- 
 gated in immense flocks. Then fleets of birchen canoes would 
 
 planting grounds ; then from one field to another, and then again oftentimes from 
 one spot in the field to another, to get rid of the fleas, which were numerous in hot 
 weather, and which insect fhey call Poppelc from its celerity of movement.— Pot- 
 ter's History of Manchester, 47. 
 
 * The carwe was made of hirch hart : A suitable tree was cut down and the 
 hark peeled off in one piece. Then a framework of spnice was made and the bark 
 fitted or sewed to it with spruce or other roots. The holes were stopped with 
 pitch. They were really beaiftiiul and graceful structures, and one that weighed 
 less than forty pounds would carry five persons. A man could easily carry one on 
 his shoulders around falls or from place to place. 
 
 t Up higher from' the sea, at the falls of great rivers, they used to take salmon , 
 shad, and alewives that used in great quantities, more than cartloads, in the spring 
 to pass up into tlie fresh water ponds and lakes to spawn.— Ms. H. C. iii. s. vol. 
 v. 30. 
 
riSHING AND HUNTING. 37 
 
 surround them, and gradually narrowing their circle they would 
 rapidly huddle them into some narrow creek or cove, and then in 
 wantonness destroj"^ them by thousands. 
 
 In hunting they set spring traps* for deer, snares for pai'- 
 tridges and rabbits, and kulheags for bears, coons, fisher-cats, 
 minks, muskrats, and sable.' In early autumn, when moose and 
 deer fed at night on the grassy shores of the lakes and rivers, the 
 Indian hunter, with rude lantern brightly flashing in front, placed 
 in the prow of the canoe, would paddle noiselessly in the dark 
 shadow behind, and when suflciently near his spell-bound vic- 
 tim would send his feathered shaft on its silent but fatal mission. 
 Every dark night of autumn these spectral fires might be seen 
 gliding like will-o'-the-wisps over the rivers, ponds, and lakes in 
 the Pemigewassett country. 
 
 But the most exciting and the most attractive of all were 
 their grand hunting-parties. As they had no hawks, hounds, nor 
 horses, and as it was diflleiult for a single hunter to capture the 
 larger game, these huntings were necessary. They would select 
 some woody glen or pass of the hills, such as can be found any- 
 where in the East-parte regions, or like the notch of the Oliverian, 
 Which they would nearly hedge across by an abattis of trees placed 
 in the form of the letter V — the apex being left slightly open, so 
 that the game could pass through. The skilliful spear and bow 
 men stationed themselves near the open apex. Some of the more 
 inexperienced hunters, together with the women and children, 
 would go out on the hillsides, while others stood in a semi-circle 
 across the valley. Then with shouts, and yells, and wild whoops, 
 the juoosc and deer, bears and wolves, were roused witte',the 
 smaller game. Narrowing their semicircle, they di-ove the wild 
 
 * In November, 1620, soon after the arrival of the Mayflower, as Stephen Hop- 
 kins, William Brlaford and others were walking in the woods they. came to a tree 
 where a young sprit was bowed down over a bow and some acorns strewed un- 
 derneath. As Bradford went about it it gave a sudden ;jerk up and he was imme- 
 diately caught up by his legs and hung dangling in the air .-^ Potter's Hist, of Man- 
 oliester, 42. 
 
 They hunt by traps of several sorts. To which purpose after they have ob- 
 served in spring-time and summer the haunt of the deer then about harvest they 
 go ten or twenty together, and sometimes more, and withal if it be not too far, 
 wives and children also, where they build up little hunting houses of barks and 
 rushes, not comparable to their dwelling-houses; and so each man 'takes /his bounds 
 of two, three, or fbur miles, where he sets thirty, forty, or fifty traps, and baits 
 them with that food the deer loves, and once in two days he walks, his round to 
 view Ills traps where they lie at what comes at them, for the deer, whom tliey con- 
 ceive have a divine power in them, will soon smell all and be gone.— Roger Wil' 
 liams' Key, 233. 
 
38 HISTOEY OF -WAEKEN. 
 
 herd toward the restricted opening of the ahattis. The moose and 
 deer were shot, as bounding forward they endeavored to escape. 
 Bears generally took to the trees, but the bowmen brought them 
 down, while the lesser game, confused and crowded, was easily 
 captured by the shouting drivers.* 
 
 Such scenes were yearly witnessed in all the Nipmuck coun- 
 try, and especially in the Asquamchumauke valley, where game 
 was so plenty. In this manner they procured a large supply of 
 meat which, smoked, lasted through the winter, as well as an 
 abundance of furs and skins for clothing and blankets. 
 
 When the strawberry crimsoned the banks of the Asquam- 
 chumauke, the wild cherry and sugar plum tempted the songster 
 by Berry brook and the Mikaseota ; when the raspberry and black- 
 berry grew by the wild maize fields, and the blueberry and huckle- 
 berry ripened on the rocky heights of Owl's Head and "Webster 
 Slide and along the shores of the sedgy ponds, rosy-cheeked girls 
 and bright-eyed boys of the Pemigewassett tribe had a joyous 
 time gathering the luscious store. 
 
 But when the green corn was ripe enough to roast, and the 
 fishings, or fowlings, or huntings were over ; when the squaws 
 had gathered the silken ears, or had cooked the geese, the ducks, 
 and the partridges, or the golden-fleshed salmon or rich fat trout ; 
 or had roasted the moose meat and the venison and bear steaks, — 
 then began the feast and jubilant festivals ; then, the archways' of 
 their forest temples echoed with wild harmonious choruses and 
 deep-resounding music; then on the fire-lit lawn symmetrical 
 forms circled in the mazy green corn dance, the salmon dance, 
 and the hunters' dance; then vows were plighted, nuptials cele- 
 brated, and the old men recounted the legends of the tribe. 
 
 Acteon said that the Pemigewassetts never considered "Warren 
 — the land upon the head-waters of the Asquamchflmauke — as a 
 very good planting ground. Plymouth, and the rich meadows of 
 Coos, were much better. But as a good hunting region, about the 
 lofty Moosilauke, or as containing excellent fishing waters, no 
 better place could be found. 
 
 *When they pursue their game, especially deer— which is the general and 
 wonderful plenteous hunting in the country — they pursue in 20, 40, 50, yea 200 or 
 300 in a company, as I have seen when they drive the woods before them.— Koger 
 Williams' Key, 236. 
 
THEIK RELIGION. 39 
 
 The Pemigewassetts like all the rest of the Mpmncks hunted, 
 or fished, or planted, every da^ in the year. There was no Sun- 
 day for them. Still they were somewhat piously disposed and 
 observed religious rites whenever the spirit moved. They had no 
 God, as we understand Him. Their deities were inflnitfe; but 
 some were superior to others. Every thing that showed life or 
 motion had a divinity, and they saw a god in every blade of 
 springing grass, in the waving of the forest trees ; they saw him 
 smiling in the blue river and heard him in the dashing of the 
 great lakes, in the music of the leaping waterfalls, in the sighing 
 of the trickling drops of the grotto, apd in the winds shrieking 
 on the cliffs. To them there was a bright Shade dancing in the 
 stars, gliding on the moonbeams, smiling in the rosy dawn of 
 morning, and the last tinges of the setting sun. 
 
 Then there was a divinity — a guardian angel — for the trout, 
 the salmon, and the shad; for every kind of fish, for the songster 
 that sang by the wigwam, and the eagle that screamed above the 
 mountains ; for the beaver, the bear, the deer, the moose, and for 
 every creeping thing. This divinity, this "shade," would neyer 
 die. "When its mission on earth was ended it flew to the "happy 
 hunting grounds" of the far southwest, along with the noble 
 shades of the dusky departed Indians, and there it would live 
 forever. 
 
 But the great god, Gitchie Manito, of the Pemigewassetts 
 had his home on the mountains, and they heard him in the voices 
 of the storm and the mighty torrent, and in the thunder that mut- 
 tered in the dark gorges and rumbled low over the crests. They 
 saw him in the rosy hue that kindled on the peaks in early morn- 
 ing, or in the sharp flash of the lightning that leaped from the 
 murky clouds. 
 
 His home they seldom visited, and. the Indian had a bold 
 spirit who dared to climb the bald crest of the mountain. 
 
 To him they sacrificed. The first fruits of the chase, the early 
 green maize, the golden salmon, the wild duck, the goose, and the 
 partridge were their offerings. But, like more modern Christians, 
 they believed in evil spirits as well as good ones, and the former 
 came in for their share and received their portion, — the same as 
 
40 HISTORY OP WABEBN. 
 
 the ancient Greeks were accustomed to sacrifice live whiite sheep 
 to the good gods and ten black ones^to the bad. 
 
 Many other things, as Acteon said, the Pemigewassetts were 
 wont to do, such as to marry and be given in marriage, and now 
 and then obtain a divorce, as is the custom in later days ; to die 
 and, be buried, to weep and mourn, and then to engage in the 
 pleasant pastime of war, as we shall be most happy to narrate. 
 
 * When they come to the gi'ave they lay the dead by the grave's mouth and then 
 all sit down and lament; that I have seen tears run dovrn the cheeka of stoutest 
 captains, as well as little children, in abundance. And after the dead are laid in the 
 grave and sometimes in some parts some goods cast in with them, they have the 
 second great lamentation. And upon the grave is spread the mat the party died 
 on, the dish he eat in, and sometimes a fair coat of skin hung upon the next tree to 
 the grave, which none will touch, but sulTer it there to rot with the dead.— Roger 
 Williams' Key, 238, 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FLKST ACCOUNT OF THE NIPMUCKS, OR THE EAELIEST HISTOET 
 
 OF THE PEMIGEWASSETTS, AND OF THEIE UNION WITH OTHER 
 
 TRIBES ; ALSO HOW A BASHABA WAS KILLED, WITH A DESCEIP- 
 
 TION OF A VERY 'polite WAY OF TREATING CAPTIVES, AND A 
 
 ' FOEESHADOWING OF SOMETHING DEEADFUL TO HAPPEN. 
 
 Captain JOHN smith desei-ves honorable mention in 
 this and every other great history. He wag the bravest man 
 of that company of adventurers who founded Jamestown, Vir- 
 ginia. He would have been leader AVhether chosen by the London 
 Company or not, for as a general thing the bravest man in trying 
 times takes the lead. Smith was courageous. There was a sort of 
 a bull-dog crossed with a rat-terrier look in his countenance. He 
 had stamina, gumption — pluck in abundance. "With his cocked 
 hat, blue coat and bright buttons, sword, buff-breeches, leggins, 
 shoes and buckles, he presented an imposing appearance, which 
 showed that he. was the man for the times and the occasion. He 
 arranged the affairs of the colony, explored the country, met with 
 Ms Pocahontas adventure, went twice to England and returned, 
 made a map of all the American coast claimed by his sovereign, 
 King James, and then all for glory went to fight in the wars of 
 some eastern prince. 
 
 This same Capt. John Smith, many thanks to him, claimed to 
 be something of an author. He explored the coast of New Eng- 
 land, kept a journal, and afterwards published an account of his 
 travels. From him we learn all about this beautiful land — called 
 by some a rock-bound coast — how it was full of bays and inlets, 
 and how bright rivers came down from the mountains seen rising 
 from the far interior forests. 
 
42 HISTOKY OF -WARREN. 
 
 We also learn from him how many and what Indians resided 
 here. He tells us of the cruel Micmacs of Nova Scotia, who, with 
 the New Brunswick Indians, were called Tarentines. They were 
 jolly fighters, and delighted in blood and carnage. He also tells 
 us of the Scotucks, a tribe with a beautiful name, admired by all, 
 and of the Penobscots, who inhabited the Kennebec country, and 
 were celebrated in the songs of the red men as a tall race of noble 
 warriors. He says the Sokokis dwelt on the Saco river and fished 
 at its falls ; that the Pascataquas were at the Isles of Shoals, and 
 built handsome wigwams on the shores of the beautiful bay, at 
 Strawberry Bank. The Massachusetts lived at Trimountain, the 
 Paconikicks at Cape Cod, and west were the -warlike Pequots and 
 the bloody Narragansetts. In the interior of Massachusetts and 
 New Hampshire were the Nipemucks, and the Noridgewolks were 
 seated on the upper Kennebec and Moosehead lake. 
 
 All these tribes were divided into numerous clans, and the 
 famous Capt. Smith tells all their musical, easily pronounced 
 names, such as the Aumughcawgens, Pauhuntanucks, Pocopas- 
 sums, Taughtanakagnets, Mauherosquick, Pasanack, and many 
 others equally pretty, with as much particularity as he would 
 mention the hundred names of all the great and powerful German 
 states. 
 
 This voyage of exploration, when Smith made such wonder- 
 ful discoveries, which resulted in his giving us the earliest account 
 of the Nipmucks extant, happened in 1614. At this time the 
 Marquas,* or Mohawks, on the Hudson, were a powerful race of 
 warriors. Their wild maurauding parties frequentty crossed the 
 Green mountains and fell on the dwellers of the coast. Then the 
 bloody Tarentines of the east were continually panting for glory 
 and triumphs — not unlike the Eomans — and the consequence was 
 that all the above-mentioned tribes were compelled to join in a 
 league for mutual protection. 
 
 The Penobscot Indians were at the head of this league. They 
 were a valiant race, and their chief Was superior to all of his 
 
 *To sum up all concerning the Marquas yoii may see in the foregoing discourse 
 that they are a stout though cruel people, much addicted to bloodshed and cruelty, 
 Tery prone to vex and spoil the peaceable Indians.— Gookin, Ms. Hist, Col. 167. 
 
 The Mohawks were a powerful tribe and made frequent incursions among the 
 New England Indians.— 3 Ms. Hist. Soc. Col. iii. 21, 22. 
 
THE BASHABA. 43 
 
 time. Of powerful frame, no Indian could hurl the tomahawk 
 Avith more precision, could shoot an arrow higher, paddle the 
 canoe faster, or run swifter than himself. In the council he Avas 
 eloquent, and commanded the closest attention ; in the fight his 
 whoop was the loudest and his blow the most deadly ; as a medi- 
 cine man.he was unequalled, and as a sorcerer all the subtle spirits 
 stood ready to do his bidding. Of commanding appearance, with 
 eagle plumes in his straight black hair, with an eye flashing like 
 lightning, high cheek bones, broad nose and firmly set jaws ; with 
 necklace of panthers' claws, and a rattlesnake skin on his tawny 
 red arm ; naked to the waist, a robe of fox-skins with tails pen- 
 dant extending to the knee; bear-skin breeches, with flowing 
 hair, and moccasi^js of moose-hide, — the chief of the Penobscots 
 — the Bashaba of New England — was the idol of his braves. 
 
 This great Bashaba had numerous chiefs of his own tribe 
 under him, and so in all the other tribes. Even our Pemigewas- 
 setts had several chiefs, according to Acteon's narrative : a war 
 chief, who led the army of braves to battle; chiefs in the council, 
 who sat as head men-of the deliberations, — and everyone of these 
 great chiefs acknowledged fealty to the Bashaba. 
 
 But this great man did not long survive the visit of Capt. 
 Smith, and then the league went to pieces. How it happened is 
 very interesting to know : 
 
 The young warriors of the Tarentines* were thirsting for 
 glory. They feasted in the groves where the wigwams were 
 planted ; by their fire they sang the war-song and danced the war- 
 dance in the shadowy night, and all who danced enlisted. As the 
 full moon waned, a score of parties, each numbering from three 
 to forty, were ready for the march. Theiroutflt was simple. A 
 bow and quiver of arrows, tomahawk, scalping-knife, pipe and 
 tobacco, with pouch of parched corn provided, and they were 
 ready for a month's campaign. They make themselves hideous 
 with black and red paint, they sing the farewell song to their 
 women and children, and they are gone. 
 
 Bound the Bay of Fiindy, where the foam-crested tide was 
 rushing, across the rivers St. John and St. Croix, for weeks they 
 thread the pathless wilderness towards the southwest. They 
 
 ■ * They were aometimes called the A.liilaki Indians of the east. 
 
44 HISTORY OP WARREN. 
 
 place no watch at night. They ]Dray to their fetiches and, like the 
 panther, lie down feeling secure. Arrived in the land of the 
 Penobscots, for days together they hide in deep ravines and among 
 the spruces of the mountains. When the moon is sleeping in the 
 western waves, when the first blush of morning tinges the eastern 
 sky, when sleep is soundest and sweetest, they rush jipon the 
 Penobscot villages. Like the tornado they sweep them away. 
 The warriors of the Bashaba are slain. The Tarentine brave 
 twists the scalp lock in his left hand, places his foot on the neck, 
 cuts a circular gash around the head with the scalping knife, 
 gives an accompanying dexterous jerk, and the scalp is his. Even 
 the Bashaba liimself, fighting bravely, finds a death-couch upon the 
 bodies of half-a-dozen Tarentines. The score o:^ war parties have 
 a hundred scalps. The richest wampum, the choicest skins, strong 
 bows, ornamented quivers full of arrows tipped with rose quartz, 
 spears and nets, are among the spoils. Yet they return home 
 with few captives. 
 
 As they approached their own villages they announced their 
 ' return in triumph with loud yells of exultation. To celebrate 
 their victory they renew the feast and dance the scalp dance. The 
 latter was a unique performance. The scalps taken in former 
 battles are attached to their girdles. With heads bent forward 
 they hold by the hair the fresh scalps in their teeth. Then they 
 howl and stamp around the fire in the centre of their cluster of 
 wigwams, cutting all the uncouth antics imaginable, performing 
 gyrations innumerable, and screaming and yelling in their intense 
 jollification, "as though," in the language of a pious writer, 
 " bedlam had broken loose and all hell was in an uproar." 
 
 But this very interesting ceremony was only a gentle prelude 
 to the good time that followed. Let no one be shocked at the 
 recital. Men are the creatures of education. The efieminate and 
 refined queen of Spain enjoys a bull-baiting on the Sabbath as 
 much as northern Christians enjoy psalm singing and hosannas. 
 Some of our near neighbors take a peculiar delight in cock-fight- 
 ing, and the Roman matrons of old reached the acme of their 
 bliss when they saw fierce gladiators butchering each other or 
 contending with ferocious wild beasts. After the scalp dance had 
 ceased the few Penobscot captives were brought forward. The 
 
METHOD OF TOKTURE. 46 
 
 young Micmacs were enjoijied by the old men to do well. A 
 young brave from the west was to undergo the ordeal. "With 
 scornful eye and air of defiance he presents his hands to be 
 crushed between the rough stones. His fingers are torn off one 
 by one, yet not a cry escapes him. His nose is cut off — his tongue 
 torn out — and still he does not flinch. His joints are separated; 
 he is flayed like a deer — and then the cold shivering spirits are 
 driven away by pushing him up to the fire that he may enjoy the 
 hot ones. Yet he survives this exquisite torture; and pitch 
 faggots are thrust into his involuntary, quivering flesh, and 
 lighted — at which all the assembled braves, the tawny squaws, 
 and their sunburnt daughters laugh and shout, iu fiendish glee at 
 the sickening misery. At dawn, if still alive, he is dragged 
 beyond the wigwams and there hacked in pieces. Such was the 
 practice, not only of the Tarentines, but of all gentle Indians.* 
 
 Some cunning writers, to show off the fine points of their 
 heroes, draw a parallel between them and other notable characters. 
 One might be set forth in this manner : Did the most Holy Pope 
 of the Christian Catholic Church apply thumbscrews in the Inqui- 
 sition — the Micmacs had as pleasing a torture in putting hands 
 between the mashing rocks. Did his holiness unjoint limbs on 
 the rack — the more primitive savage could unjoint them as well 
 with his hands. Did God's vicegerent break limbs — Indians 
 could do the same with a stone beetle. Did the good John Calvin 
 burn Michael Servetus at the stake — Micmacs could roast the 
 flayed victim and laugh at the sound of the quivering flesh cooked 
 by the faggots. Did the Puritans scourge the backs, crop the 
 ears, cut out the tongues of unoffending Quakers, and hang 
 witches — the "brave " with as keen an avidity could cut off the 
 nose, tear out the tongue, and hack in pieces. 
 I But we will not carry this refined comparison further. There 
 is a dark side to everything. If we looked only to the failings of 
 men we might run mad with melancholy. The Indians have been 
 strangely venerated. We are sometimes disposed to admire them. 
 
 *For an account of their method of torturing see V. Bancroft, Chap. 28. 
 
 One William Moody unhappily resigned himaelf into the hands of some French 
 Mohawks, who most inhumanly tortured him by fastening him unto a stake and 
 roasting him alive, whose flesh they afterwards deyoured.— Penhallow's Indian 
 Wars, N. H. Hist. Hoc. Col. 61. , 
 
46 HISTORY OF WAKREN. 
 
 There is a disposition from some cause to hide their faults, but, 
 for the sake of truth, their character should be correctly presented. 
 Yet after all we do not see as they are much worse than many 
 others who have pretended to vastly better things. 
 
 For a long time the Penobscot tribe was ruined. The Bashaba 
 dead — all the New England Indians, including our Pemigewas- 
 setts, who were no doubt exceedingly interested in passing events, 
 were at sea without compass or rudder. The bond of union was 
 broken. Each tribe now struggled for the supremacy. Like the 
 earlier times, when Milton's Satan and his good angels showed a 
 belligerent spirit in Paradise, primeval war raged.* It extended 
 from the Hudson river to the St. John. How this very amiable 
 contest, in which our proud Pemigewassetts engaged with delight, 
 was conducted and ended, we shall endeavor most faithfully to 
 narrate. 
 
 * After the death of the Bashaha the puhlic business running to confusion for 
 want of a head, the rest of his great sagamores fell at variance amongst them- 
 selves, spoiled and destroyed each other's people and provision, and famine took 
 hold of many; which was seconded by a great and general plague, which so vio- 
 lently reigned for three years together that in a manner a greater part of the land 
 was left desert, without any to disturb or oppose a free and peaceable possession 
 thereof. — Sir Ferdinando Grorges' Des. ol N. B., vii. Ms. Hist. Soo. Col. 3 Ser. vol. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF A TERRIBLE WAR, PESTILENCE, AND FAMINE, THE HEROES OF 
 "WHICH ARE ALL DEAD AND THEIK NAMES FORGOTTEN. 
 
 It is much to be lamented that there were no historians 
 among the Indians to record the names of their heroes and their 
 victories. But the wild hordes of Asia, the highly enlightened 
 darkies of Africa, who have had their bright civilization crushed 
 out by powerful European armies, which so frequently have rav- 
 ished their beautiful lands at the sources of the Nile, have no- place 
 in history and never had. The Indians may thank .their lucky 
 stars that their European exterminators have taken so much pains 
 to preserve the remembrance of the benevolent acts that thrust 
 them out of existence and on to the page of history, where they 
 stni live. In this they have the advantage of the- Esquimaux, the' 
 Negroes, some of the Asiatics, and their numerous cousins in the 
 Pacific isles. The author of this excellent history has had occasion 
 to be thankful to the renowned and the redoubtable Capt. John 
 Smith for his notes on the Indians, and he here renews his thanks. 
 To take up the thread of this to us very interesting subject, 
 we would say we are sure there was a most fierce fight among the 
 Indians on the death of the Bashaba. Capt. Smith says so. In 
 what tribe it commenced we never could learn, but when begun it 
 proved universal. The strong fought for supremacy, the weak for 
 existence. There was no necessity for the war-song or the war- 
 dance. Every brave was compelled to enlist whether he would or 
 not. The signal fire gleamsd on the hill-top. The war-whoop 
 was heard in the valley. New England, before nor since, never 
 saw such carnage within her borders. The French war and the 
 
48 HISTOEY OF -WARREN. 
 
 Eevolution were nothing compared to it. The battles of the Scot- 
 tish clans, or those of the old Norsemen, might have been some- 
 what similar, yet there were many points of difference. In fact, 
 the red Indians had decidedly a style of their own— original, 
 and one that could not well be imitated. The children of the 
 forest were early to bed and early to rise, and they generally 
 fought in the morning. The shrill war-whoop, the whistling 
 arrow, the whirr of the tomahawk, the yells in the savage on- 
 slaught, or of the wounded who refused to groan though hurt to 
 death, were a wild matin hymn to their fierce war-god, who 
 smiled upon them in- the blood-red streaks of dawn. All the 
 tribes on the seacoast with euphonious names fought with wild 
 frenzy. Numerous were the warriors slain, the captives taken, 
 the scalp locks hanging on the poles of the wigwam.* 
 
 But the fiercest fighters of all were the mountaineers of New 
 Hampshire. From their Secret lurking places in the dark ra-yines 
 they would steal out and drop silent and still as the falling dew 
 into the pleasant villages of the coast. Then leaping up fiery and 
 fierce, and shouting and yelling like fiends iucaniate, they would 
 massacre eyery inhabitant. They would traverse the passes of 
 the mountains, and flying down swift as the scudding mist, in a 
 few hours they would secure scalps enough to astonish their vil- 
 lage. Then retreating up the beds of the torrents they would 
 elude all pursuit. Invincible as their own mountains, and secret 
 as the panther that crouched in the pathless forest gloom, their 
 enemies fell beneath their blows like frost work under the 
 morning sun. 
 
 Thus the war went on, and every tribe seemed about to be 
 exterminated, when a foe more terrible than the mountain Indian 
 entered the villages, and cut down alike men, women, and children. 
 
 The plague t first appeared on the coast. But it soon jour- 
 neyed inland and preyed on every tribe. Its ravages were terri- 
 ble. One individual of a village smitten down, and despair seated 
 
 * Divisions arose as to the succession to the Bashaha, of whicli the Tarentines 
 taking the advantage soon overpo-wered the other ti'ibes of Maine, and extended a 
 war of extermination along the coast of Massachusetts.— Potter's Hist, of Man- 
 chester, 23. 
 
 Drake's Indian Biography, 81. 
 
 t Drake's Indian Biograjjhy, 3. 
 
 Not long hefore the English came into the country, happened a gi'eat mortality 
 amongst them, especially where the English afterwards planted. The east and 
 
PESTILENCE AND FAMINE. 49 
 
 itself on the countenances of all. Flight was hopeless. One by- 
 one they would lie down and die. The dead were unburied. A 
 terrible stench tainted the air. Strong warriors, who had coped 
 with death in a thousand forms, lay rotting in the wigwams. In- 
 fants lay on the breasts of their dead mothers, striving in vain to 
 draw life from the bosoms that would never throb again. The 
 strong and vigorous youth, the beautiful maiden, were alike a 
 prey to it. In a few weeks whole villages were depopulated, and 
 whole tribes ceased to exist. 
 
 Inland the crops were neglected, and when winter came the 
 famine was as terrible as the plague. As the snow grew deeper, 
 and the cold more intense, and the wind howled back the shrieks 
 of the spectre famine, attenuated forms with haggard faces and 
 sunken eyes and cheeks would sit for days in the smoke of their 
 wigwam fires. Then with tottering steps they would reel into the 
 woods for food, and there, chilled, would lie down and die. 
 
 Three summers the plague came, until on the seacoast not an 
 Indian village remained; and for many leagues along the shore 
 not five Indians in a hundred were alive. When the Pilgrim bark 
 anchored in Plymouth Bay, " the hardy few found the country a 
 solitude/' 
 
 One thing has troubled exceedingly in writing the above 
 very minute and accurate account of this war, pestilence, and 
 famine. A particular description cannot be given. The names of 
 the warriors who fell, the men, women, and children who sickened 
 
 noi-theni parts were sore smitten with the contagion, first by the plague, afterward 
 when the English came by the small pox.— John Josselyn, Gent., 2 Voyages to N. 
 E. 123. 
 
 For that war had commenced, the Bashaba and most of the great sagamores, 
 with such men of action as followed them, were killed, and tliose that remained 
 were sore afflicted by' the plague. [1616-J617.] So that the country in a manner 
 was left void of inhabitants. Notwithstanding Vines and the rest" with him that 
 lay in the cabins with those people that died, some more some less nightly, (bless- 
 ed be God for it I) not one of them ever felt their heads to ache while they ataid 
 there.— Sir F. Gorges' Description of New England, Chap. 10 Ms. H. C. 3 s. t.G, 57. 
 
 "It seems God has provided this country for our nation, destroying them by 
 the plague, it not touching our Englishmen, though many traded and conversant 
 amongst them, for they -had three places in three years successively, neare two 
 hundred miles along the sea-coast, that m some places there scarce remained five 
 in a hundred. * * * * But most certain there was an exceedingly great 
 plague .imongst them ; for where I had seen two or three hiiudred, within three 
 years after there remained scarcely thirty.— Ms. H. C. vol. iii. 3 s. 40. 
 
 Thomas Morton, in his " New England Canaan," p. 23, says: "But contrary- 
 wise [the Indians having said they were so many that God could not kill them, 
 when one of the Frenchmen rebuked them for their wickedness, telling them God 
 would destroy them] in a short time after the hand of God fell heavily upon them 
 with such a mortal stroke that they died in heaps as they lay in their houses, and 
 
 D 
 
50 HISTORY OF WAEKEN. 
 
 and died, or of those who starved, cannot be told. Thucydides 
 narrates how in the plagite of Athens, during the Thirty Years 
 W&r, such and such a distinguished man was sti'icken down. Our 
 sympathies are particularly excited at the death of the noble and 
 renowned Pericles and his doubtful wife, Aspasia, with their sweet 
 children. Hume, in his narrative of the great plague in London, 
 makes his history decidedlj^ entertaining in giving the minute par- 
 ticulars, and Moses of old, likewise, in telling of the plagues of 
 Egypt. These great historians have 3,11 the advantage there, and 
 one can but mourn that time has buried the names of all the old 
 Indian heroes in oblivion. 
 
 the living that were able to shift for themselves would run away and let them dy, 
 and let then- karkases ly ahoVe ground without buriall. For in a place where many 
 inhabited there hath been but one left alive to tell what became of the rest. The 
 living being (as it seems) not able to bury the dead. They were left for crows, 
 kites, and vermin to prey upon. And the bones and skulls upon the several places 
 of their habitations made such a spectacle, after my coming into these parts, that 
 as I travelled in that forest nere Mass. it seemed to me a new-found Golgotha." 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 HOW THE PEMIGEWASSETTS AlfD THE BEST OP THE NIPMUCKS WERE 
 COMPELLED TO ENTER A NEW LEAGUE TO PROTECT THEMSELVES 
 FROM THE MOHOGS, MARQUAS, OR MOHAWKS, WITH A SLIGHT 
 SKETCH OP ANOTHER GREAT MAN WHO CAME TO BE BASHABA. 
 
 The war is over. The famine and the pestilence, mighty 
 woes in the land of the Nipmucks, have passed. Peace comes 
 again — and once more there is plenty in the wigwams. 
 
 But the terrible Mohawks still dwell in the west and the 
 bloody Tarentine war-whoop still resounds from beyond the hunt- 
 ing grounds of the Sokokis and the Penobscots. 
 
 There is no safety but in union ; and our Nipmucks, whom 
 we are pleased to style Pemigewassetts, are compelled to enter 
 into another mighty league, which is formed among all the Nip- 
 muck tribes, with a new Bashaba " at its head. 
 
 This great ruler, the second Bashaba, standing as he does on 
 the confines of civilization, with the mellow twilight of history 
 casting a halo of romance about him, seems to us one of the most 
 prominent characters in our annals. He makes his first appearance 
 in 1623. Acteon well remembered him, and as he was much 
 beloved by our Pemigewassetts and all the rest of the Mpmucks, 
 and was their great protector, we cannot pass him by without a 
 brief notice. 
 
 Born, as tradition has it, abont 1540, by his bravery and 
 genius he won at length his proud position. Indian legends tell 
 of his great prowess, and of his sanguinary battles fought and 
 
 *Potter's History of Manchester, 54. 
 Mass. Hist. Col. 3 series, vol. viii. l'?3. 
 
52 HISTORY OF -WAKHEN. 
 
 won in the deep forests on the streams and mountains. These 
 Indian tales, collated and adorned, might prove to Indian lovers 
 as interesting as the account of the twelve labors of Hercules, or 
 the voyage of the Argonautic Jason. But we cannot loiter in 
 these pleasant fields. The demands of our most important history 
 of a most important tribe compel us to hurry rapidly through these 
 interesting chapters. 
 
 When the little province of Mariana, alias Laconia, other- 
 wise New Hampshire, was first settled he was about eighty years 
 old, and at this early period of life, having been schooled in all the 
 cunning wiles of the forest, had won for himself the title of Pas- 
 SACONAWAY*— "The Child of the Bear." 
 
 Of powerful frame, he was more than six feet tall. He could 
 leap like a catamount across the streams, and bound like a wild 
 deer through the pathless woods. No warrior could bend his 
 bow, and his feathered arrows were lost in the deep blue of the 
 sky. A cap of red plumes on his head, his quiver at his back, his 
 bow iu his hand, clothed only in a robe of the richest furs, shod 
 with moccasins of the toughest moose hide, with flashing eye and 
 haughty mien, the Nipmuok Bashaba was the most noble Indian 
 that ever trod the Granite hills. f 
 
 But we must assure our readers that we draw the above pic- 
 ture by reasoning a po«ienori. He was Bashaba — only such an 
 Indian could be a Bashaba— therefore such was Passaconaway. 
 
 Yet his appearance is much changed from this when he makes 
 his first mythical bow in 1623. Modern painters (who have seen 
 him) put a royal crown on his head in the shape of a dowdy skull 
 
 *His name is indicative of his warlike character; Papisseconewa, as "wi'itten 
 by himself, meaning the child of the bear. Being derived from j)aj)oe!s, a child, 
 and Kannaway, a bear — Potter's Hist of Man. 48, 54. 
 
 t Laws made by the Apostle Elliot for Passaconaway and his people : 
 
 1st. That if any man be idle a week, at most a fortnight, hee shall pay five shil- 
 lings. 
 
 2d. If any unmarried man shall lie with a young woman nnmarried hee shall 
 pay twenty shillings. 
 
 3d. If any man shall beat his wife his hands shall be tied behind him and he be 
 carried to the place of justice to be severely punished. 
 
 4th. Every young man, if not another's servant, and if unmaiTied, he shall be 
 compelled to set up a wigwam and plant for himself, and not live shifting up and 
 down to other wigwams. 
 
 5th. If any woman sliall not have her hair tied up, but hang loose or be cut as 
 men's hair, slie shall pay live shillings. 
 
 6tli. If any ^^'oman goe with nalted breasts she shall pay two shillings sixpence. 
 
 7th. AH those men that weare long locks shall pay five shillings. 
 
 8th. If any shall kill their lice between their teeth they shall pay five shillings. 
 ■■-Jfass. H. C. vol. iv. series 3. 
 
PASSACONAWAT. . 53 
 
 cap, with a crooked horn ahout four inches in length rising from 
 its apex. Sashes of furs are worn on his shoulders, a pipe, a 
 pouch, a bear's face — the Nipmuck totem — are attached to his 
 girdle ; his teeth are gone, his face is shrunk up, and his sunken 
 eyes, shaded by the high cheek bones and the massive forehead, 
 only gleam with their wonted Are when fierce excitement fills his 
 breast. 
 
 His disposition is also changed. From what the English saw 
 of him we should say that he had more the spirit of John Howard 
 the philanthropist, coupled with that of old Potter the juggler, 
 than of Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte. He had lost the 
 war spirit of former years, and loved the retirement of his wig- 
 wams. About them he assembled his council and his statesmen. 
 To them the children of the forest brought his tribute. This did 
 not .always consist of soft furs, shad or salmon, venison or bear 
 steaks, maize, squashes, or pumpkins, stone axes, arrow-heads, or 
 gouges, canoes, paddles, spears or fish-nets — none of these. But 
 when they saw the water in the freestone bowl burning with a 
 blue flame ; when they saw him sailing on a cake of ice over the 
 shining lake on the hottest siimmer day, or at night changed into 
 a will-o'-wisj) and dancing a wild cotillon with the mighty forest 
 trees ; or weaving for himSelf garlands from snow-born flowers, 
 and wreaths of honor from oak leaves growing on fields of glar- 
 ing ice, and holding in his hand a writhing snake, sprung to life 
 from the dead skin, the badge of honor on his left arm — they paid 
 him a mighty tribute and great honor by opening their mouths in 
 right good earnest to the fullest extent, while their eyes involun- 
 tarily started from their sockets. By such astounding juggling 
 feats Passaconaw ay in his old age extorted his tribute and retained 
 his mighty power. 
 
 Another gift also aided Passaconaway to maintain his influ- 
 ence. He was a great medicine man. He could beat all the 
 renowned homeopaths, clairvoyants, and healing mediums of to- 
 day clear out of sight. If one of his subjects was sick, he placed 
 him in a tight wigwam or lodge. Vessels of water were set 
 by his side, and in them were put fiery hot stones. A warm steam 
 naturally arose like a great cloud and filled the lodge. Passacon- 
 awaj- then dressed in the most agreeable manner possible, paint- 
 
54 • HISTOET OF 'WARREN. 
 
 ing himself all over like a striped pig. With his head covered 
 ■with a porcupine skin, a drum in his hands, and tinkling bells 
 attached to his legs, he went howling and stamping round and 
 round the lodge full a hundred times, all the while keeping step 
 to the soul-stirring peals of his drum and the soft voluptuous notes 
 of his tinklers. TMs was done to drive away the evil spirits. 
 Then he oped his mouth- and set his teeth firmly together ; then 
 gentle twitches spasmodically jerked all the muscles of his fair 
 countenance ; then he rolled up the whites of his eyes, and then 
 slowly rolled them down, v\rhere they remained set like those of a 
 dying calf; then his jaws relaxed, his tongue began to wag, and 
 he pronounced incantations thirty-one, all different, to invoke the 
 healing spirits. For a full hour and a half he thus performed, like 
 a medium, the steaming and sweating being only a preliminary of 
 little use, while the aforesaid howls, music, and incantations 
 effected the cure, pretty much in the same manner as the homeo- 
 paths' very little doses from the smallest possible bottles, with just 
 nothing at all in them, effect extraordinary cures at the present 
 day.* 
 
 Passaconaway was an orator.f. His eloquence was great, and 
 with it he could mould the council at Ms will. Several splendid 
 speeches which it is said he made are still extant. These have been 
 handed down to us by the politeness of the historians. The first, 
 as given by Hubbard, is said to have been delivered at a great 
 public fish-feast, when all the Indians were assembled at Pawtucket 
 falls, and is as follows : 
 
 " I am now ready to die," said Passaconaway, " and not likely 
 to see you ever meet togethes- any more. I will now leave this 
 word of counsel with you, that you may take heed how you quar- 
 rel with the English ; for though you maj' do them much mischief, 
 yet assuredly you will all be destroyed and rooted off the earth if 
 you do ; for I was as much an enemy to the English on their first 
 coming into these parts as any one whatsoever ; and I did try all 
 ways and means possible to have destroyed them, at least to have 
 prevented their sitting down here ; but I could in no way effect 
 
 * Force's Historical Tracts, vol. ii. New England Canaan, 25, 26. 
 John Josselyn, Gent., 2 Voyages to New England, 131. 
 tDrake's Indian Biography, 277. 
 Hubbard, Indian Ware. 67, 68. 
 
INDIAN OEATORT. 55 
 
 it. [Meaning by his incantations and sorceries.] Therefore I 
 advise yon never to contend with the English nor make war with 
 them." 
 
 Dr. Bouton, a celebrated modern historian, gives the follow- 
 ing much prettier version, as ho had probably a reporter on the 
 ■ spot: " Hearken to the last words of your dying father. I shall 
 meet you no more. The white men are the sons of the morning, 
 and the sun shines bright above them. In vain I opposed their 
 coming ; vain were my arts to destroy them ; never make war 
 with them ; sure as you light the fires, the breath of heaven will 
 turn the flames to consume you. Listen to my advice. It is the 
 last I shall ever give you. Remember it and live !"* 
 
 Now there is much beauty in all this, as well as in many other 
 speeches that have been attributed to him, and what is better a 
 great probability that the old chief delivered the speech quoted. 
 Hubbard says it was done at Pawtucket in 1660, and was his dying 
 speech to his tribe. Bouton in his book says the speech he gives 
 is the identical one delivered by Passaoonaway in 1660, and we 
 may well believe it, for he affirms that it was delivered at the 
 same place, to the same audience^ and at the same time as Hub- 
 bard's. "We come to the probably correct conclusion that Passa- 
 conaway said something very pretty and exceedingly eloquent 
 sometime.! 
 
 "When he had seen the snows of a hundred winters or so pass 
 away he concluded, like many another sinner, to join the church. 
 To the apostle Elliot, who had left friends, home, and happy coun- 
 
 *Boutoii's History of Concord, N. H ., 30. 
 
 tBarstow gives tlie following: "Hearken," said Passaoonaway, "to the last 
 words of your father and ftiend. Thewhite men are the sonsof the morning. The 
 Great Spirit is theii- father. His sun shines bright about them. Never malie war 
 , with them. Sure as you light the flres the breath of heaven will turn the flames 
 upon yon and destroy yon. Listen to mj- advice. It is the last I shall be allowed , 
 to give you. Remember it and live I" — Hist, of N. H., 68. 
 
 Hon. Chancer E. Potter gives this fanciful version: " Hearken to the words 
 of your father. % am an old oak that has « ithstood the storms of more than an hun- 
 dred winters, leaves and branches have been stripped from me by the winds and 
 frosts; my eyes are dim— my limbs totter — I must soon fall. Butwiien yoiing and 
 sturdy — when my bow no young man of tiie Pennacooks could bend — when my 
 arrows would pierce a deer at a hundred yards, and I could bury my hatchet in a 
 sapling to the eye, — no wigwam had so many furs, no pole so many scalp-locks as 
 Passaconaway's. Then I was delighted in war. The whoop of the I'ennaoook 
 was heard on the Mohawk, aud no voice so loud as Passaconaway's . The scalps 
 upon the pole of my wigwam told the story of Mohawk suffering. 
 
 "The English came. They seized our lands. I sat me down at Pennacoolc. 
 They followed upon ray footsteps. I made war upon them, but they fought with 
 Are and thunder; my young men were swept down before me when no Otte was 
 
66 HISTOET OP WAEKEN. 
 
 try to cross the oceau on an errand of mercy, is due his conversion. 
 He left off juggling and became a very good man. He was benev- 
 olent, peaceful, and forgiving. We think it fortunate for the very 
 kind-hearte'd and well-disposed colonists who came to Massachu- 
 setts and New Hampshire that, like Massasoit, he was not fight- 
 ingly disposed. It is a notorious fact that the English trespassed 
 on his hunting-grounds and stole his lands.' Yet he never stole 
 anything from them. They killed his warriors — yet he never 
 killed a white man, woman, or child. They captured and impris- 
 oned his sonsf and daughters — yet he never led a captive into 
 the wilderness. Once the proudest and most noble Bashaba of 
 New England, he passed his extreme old age XDOor, forsaken, and 
 robbed of all that was dear to him, by those to whom he had been 
 a firm friend for nearly half a century. 
 
 Passaconaway had six children — four sons and two daughters 
 ■ whom we read of — and perhaps he had more. The exceedingly 
 pretty names of the boy pappooses were as follows : Nanamoco- 
 muck, who first was sachem or sagamore of the "Wachusetts in 
 Massachusetts, and secondly with his whole tribe was changed 
 into the great Amariscoggin nation, of which he continued chief; 
 Wonalancet, a peaceable man, who trod in the footsteps of his 
 father; Unanunquosset, of whom we know but little, and-Nona- 
 tomenut. We are much grieved that the name of th? eldest 
 daughter has not come down to us. It only transpires that she 
 was the squaw-queen of the royal Nobhow. The youngest was 
 
 near them. I tried sorcery against them, bnt they still increased and prevailed 
 over me and mine, and I gave place and retired to my beantiflil island of Nati- 
 cook. I can make the dry leaf turn green and live again ; I can take the rattlesnake 
 in my palm as a worm withonfc harm. I, who have had (iommunion with the Great 
 Spirit — dreaming and awake — I am powerless before the pale faces. 
 
 " The oak will soon break before the whirlwind — it shivers and shakes even 
 now. Soon its trnnk will be prostrate, the ant and the worm will sport upon it. 
 Then think, my children, of what I say. I commune with the Great Spirit. He 
 whispers me now : ' Tell your people, peace I Peace is the only hope of vour race. 
 1 have given Are and thunder to the pale faces for weapons. I have made them 
 plentier than the leaves of the forest, and still sliall they increase. These mead- 
 ows shall they turn with the plow — these forests shall fall by their axe ; the pale 
 faces shall live upon your hunting gi-ounds, and make their villages upon your fish- 
 ing places.' The Great Spirit says this, and it must be so. We are few aiid power- 
 less before them. We must bend before the storm. The wind blows hard. The 
 old oak trembles I The branches are gone. Its sap is frozen. It bends I It falls I 
 Peace, peace with the white man, is the command of the Great Spirit, and the wish 
 — the last wish— of Passaconaway.— Hist, of Manchester, 60. 
 
 IV. Maes. H. C. series 3, S3. 
 
 * Potter's Hist, of Manchester, 61. 
 
 t When the gov't of Ms. sent forty men to arrest Passaconaway thev did not 
 succeed, but captured his soune Wonalancet.— Winthrop's Journal 
 
 Drake's Indian Biog. 279. 
 
INDIAN ROMANCE. 57 
 
 "Wetamoo, the beautiful squaw of Monatawampatee, the haughty 
 sagamore of Saugus. From the poet 'Whittier we learp that the 
 marriage of this beautiful Indian girl was celebrated in great 
 state, and that the bride was escorted to her lord's wigwam or 
 palace by a noble train of warriors ; that homesick the Saugus 
 chief returned her to visit Passaconaway with like pomp, and that 
 in due time he demanded her back with the same formality. But 
 old Passaconaway had got sick of this foolery and vain show, and 
 would not take the trouble to restore her. Whereupon, the poem 
 states, she left her father's wigwam at Pennacook — by the way, 
 Passaconaway never had a wigwam there — to sail down the Mer- 
 rimack home, but unfortunately perished on the foaming falls of 
 Amoskeag ; a very poetical idea, but an exceedingly improbable 
 tale. Wetamoo was known as a grass widow for njany years.* 
 
 We give this somewhat extended account of Passaconaway, 
 for his life illustrates some of the finest traits of Indian character. 
 ■ As Bashaba he was obeyed by all the Indians of New Hampshire, 
 and by many other of the New England tribes. He died about 
 1663. In the deep wood, at a place now unknown, the noblest of 
 the Nipmuck Indians, their last and greatest Bashaba, was laid to 
 rest in the burial place of his ancestors. 
 
 ♦Morton's New England Canaan. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IN WHICH IS SET FORTH THE MANNER THE PEMIGEWASSETTS SOME- 
 TIMES ENJOYED THEMSELVES WHILE THE NEW BASHABA LIVED, 
 AND THEN OF A SLIGHT WAR THAT AROSE, WHICH WAS EX- 
 CEEDINGLY ENTERTAINING TO THEM, TOGETHER WITH ITS PIOUS 
 CLOSE AT QUOCHECO. 
 
 The Pemigewassetts, a tribe of the great Mpmuck nation, 
 belonging to the widely extended Algonquin race, were at peace 
 with the English for fifty years after the first settlements were 
 made at Dover Neck and Strawberry Bank. The same is true as 
 far as the thirteen other great tribes of New Hampshire were con- 
 cerned. But with the Marquas or Mohawks — sometimes called 
 Mohogs — their relations were not always the most friendly. How 
 many fierce battles, cunning ambuscades, or gray-of-the-morning 
 surprises our Pemigewassetts encountered or inflicted upon them, 
 cannot now be told. We lament this ignorance, but there is no 
 remedy, for their birch-bark histories, if they ever had any, are 
 all burnt up ; their story-telling legend-men are all dead, while the 
 just and worthy English settlers had such a holy horror and pious 
 hatred of red-skins that they would have disdained to record their 
 great wars, even if they had known anything about them. In 
 fact, the reasons why the learned historians of those days say so 
 little and frequently nothing about our beloved Pemigewassetts 
 are ju&t these : First, because they lived far in the interior, and 
 did not travel down to the coast very often to report themselves, 
 and when they did they had somehow changed into some other 
 groat tribe, being known as the Amoskeags, Nashuas, or "Winue- 
 cowetts, just as it happened, the name depending upon the place 
 
THEY VISIT THE MOHAWKS. 69 
 
 of their temporary sojourn and changing -with their removal. 
 Secondly, the English scarcely ever visited them ; for it must be 
 remembered that ten other great tribes of New Hampshire always 
 intervened. Thirdly, the Puritans believed the Indians to be the 
 children of the devil, and their Quaker-loving, witch-hanging 
 religion forbade them to associate with such low offspring ; and 
 fourthly, being religiously inclined to blot out the devil and his 
 works, they would take especial pains to destroy rather than pre- 
 serve the history of our happy Pemigewassetts. Still we know 
 enough of that history to be assured that in battle they did some- 
 times distinguish and immortalize themselves among all good 
 fighting Indians. 
 
 Old Acteon used to tell how often a large number of brave 
 war-parties, each consisting of three or more fierce, glory-seeking 
 soldiers, all painted and plumed, went majestically forth to fight 
 the Mohawks. They, have danced the war-dance, taken leave 
 of the women and children, and having gathered around their 
 chosen chief, depart from the shadows of Moosilauke and the 
 Haystacks. The Indian story-teller of two hundred years ago, 
 listening, might have heard them singing as they crossed the long 
 river of pines — the Connecticut — 
 
 " The eagles scream on high, 
 They whet their forked beaks ; 
 Raise, raise the hattle-cry, 
 'Tis fame our leader seeks." 
 
 Or he might have heard the whistliug of their arrows, the whirr 
 of their tomahawks, and their savage shouts in the valleys of the 
 Hudson and Mohawk rivers, or in the dark glens of the Green 
 mountains. We can well believe that such brave mountaineers 
 were often victorious, and returned triumphant with rich trophies 
 of dangling scalps. But as all great military commanders know 
 that the fortunes of battle are fickle, it is nothing more than fair 
 to presume that the war chief sometimes came back with a huge 
 flea in his ear, more scalps having been left among the festive 
 Mohawk fighters than he would well care to acknowledge. 
 
 Thus the Pemigewassetts found the wildest kind of enjoyment, 
 and we suppose pretty much all the rest of the New England In- 
 dians lived in the same way, even to the time of the death of the 
 great Basbaba, Passaconaway. 
 
60 ' HISTOET OP WAKEEN. 
 
 But in 1675 a great war with the English arose, in which many 
 of the Mpmucks engaged, and which was exceedingly interesting 
 to the Pemigewassetts who lived among our hills. 
 
 Philip of Mount Hope, sachem of the "Wampanoags, known 
 in Indian tongue as the renowned Pometacom, waged the first 
 war with the peaceable Puritans. The English had arrested and 
 executed his warriors without his consent. He himself with his 
 child they had captured and sold into slavery. The chieftain was 
 stung to the quick ; madness seized upon him ; hatred tormented 
 him, and soon his heart burned for revenge. Besides, the en- 
 croachments of his white-faced enemy were driving him from his 
 hunting-grounds. War was inaugurated. What Alexander or 
 Hannibal was to the ancients, or Bonaparte to the last genera- 
 tion, was Philip to the Indians. The bravest in the fight, the most 
 skilled in diplomacy, and eloquent above all others in the council, 
 the great sachem enlisted nearly every New England tribe in his 
 cause. 
 
 Wonalancet, in part successor to Passaconaway, true to the 
 teachings of his father and the apostle Elliot, refused to join him. 
 This Nipmuok sachem could not break his faith pledged to the 
 English, neither could he be a traitor to his own race and fight 
 against Philip. Beset on one hand to fight for the English, on the 
 other Philip endeavored to gain him as an ally; refusing to join 
 the first he was suspected of treachery, and holding himself aloof 
 from the second, he was hated by all the hostile Indians. 
 
 There was no safety for him at home on the beautiful island of 
 Wickasauke, where he had long resided, and he fled to the land of 
 _ the Penhacooks. And here let us notice a very novel idea, once 
 before slightly alluded to. Wonalancet, by almost evei'y writer on 
 the subject, has been styled the sachem of the Pennacooks. Yet 
 all his life, up to the period referred to, he had lived amongst the 
 Pawtuoket Indians, and we have no record of his ever residing in 
 the Pennacook country until he was compelled to seek refuge in 
 it at this time. Yet he only copies the historical style of his father, 
 Passaconaway, who, likewise called the Pennacook sachem, never 
 lived in that country at all. 
 
 The withdrawal of Wonalancet with his few followers alarmed 
 the courageous colonists very much. Runners were sent "to 
 
A NIPMUCK HEGIRA. 61 
 
 Nataoookc, Penagooge, or other people of those northern In- 
 dians," inviting Wonalancet or any other of the principal men to 
 return. But Wonalancet did not choose to accept the polite invi- 
 tation, which was very much in the form of a peremptory sum- 
 mons, and Captain Mosely, the noted Indian fighter, was sent to 
 disperse the Indian enemy " at Penagooge said to be gathered 
 there for the purpose of mischief." But the valiant captain could 
 not find him, and he had to content himself with burning wig- 
 wams, and destroying dried fish which had been cured for winter 
 use. 
 
 Wonalancet was off to the fastnesses of the mountains, 
 "where," as Major Gookin says, "was a place of good hunting 
 for moose, deer, bear, aud other such wild beasts." 
 
 Late in the autumn all the Wamesits, alias the Wauchusetts, 
 alias the Pawtuckets, joined him. They had been basely treated, 
 had been driven from their homes, and only found Wonalancet in 
 his safe hiding-place after much toil, privation, and suffering. 
 Numphow, their sagamore. Mystic George, a teacher, "besides 
 divers other men, women, and children perished by the way." An 
 old legend, told first perhaps by Acteon, then repeated by our 
 grandfathers, seated at evening around their great cabin fire- 
 places, says that the above-mentioned two lie buried on the banks 
 of the Asquamchumaiike. 
 
 Many other Indians joined Wonalancet in his retreat. Among 
 them was *Monooco, or one-eyed John, and fShoshamin, or Saga- 
 more Sam, a valiant chief who had fought under Philip. Some 
 of these refugees even went to the head-waters of the Connecticut, 
 and during the long and cold winter suffered severely. 
 
 Philip's war closed in the summer of 1676. Wonalancet with 
 his people then returned to the south part of the State. On the 
 sixth of July he with several others made a treaty with the Eng- 
 
 *MonocCo, so called by his countrymen, but by the English, One-ey eel- John, 
 was termed by an early writer a notable fellow. When Philip's war began he lived 
 near Lancaster, Mass. He had frequently served in the wars against the Mo- 
 hawks. With 600 Indians he burned Lancaster and carried all the inhabitants into 
 captivity. He afterwards burned Groton, and boasted much what he was going to 
 do. He was one of those who were captured at Cocheco, was taken to Boston, 
 marched through the streets with a halter about his neck, "and hanged at the 
 town's end, Sept. 26, 1676."— Drake's Ind. Biog. 267. 
 
 Niles' History of the Indian and French Wars, Ms. H. C. 3d series, vol. vi. 202. 
 
 tShoshamin, alias Uskatugun, and called by the English, Sagamore Sam. He 
 was a high-minded, " magnanimous sachem." At the burning of Lancaster he 
 took an active part. He was hanged with Monocoo.— Drake's Indian Biog. 268. 
 
62 HISTORY OF -WAKKEN. 
 
 lish. By it they agreed to live in peace; that they would deliver 
 up, for a reward, all hostile Indians who should come among 
 them, or give notice where they were ; and that the English on 
 their part should attend to their own business, and if they meddled 
 with the Indians or their estates the offenders should be tried by 
 Englishlaws— and these by the way generally found the whites 
 innocent as turtle doves. It was signed on the one part by Mr. 
 Richard Waldron, to be mentioned hereafter, Nic. Shapleigh, and 
 Thos. Daniel; on the other by "Wonalancet, Squaudo,* Doney,t 
 Serogumba,t and others. 
 
 This same Richard Waldron, or the " Major," as he was com- 
 monly termed, had been engaged in the above-board business of 
 persuading Indians to desert Philip. Three hundred of these, to- 
 gether with "Wonalancet and a hundred handsome Nipmucks, 
 came to Quocheoo on the first of September, at the invitation of 
 " the good Major." A few days later Captains Syell and Hathorn, 
 brave trooping men, with their companies also arrived in town. 
 They were marching to the eastern country. Their orders were 
 to seize all Indians, and they wanted to fall upon Major Waldron's 
 four hundi'ed guests at once. But he dissented. He was afraid 
 both friends and foes would be killed. By his advice a little 
 friendly strategy was put in practice. A grand sham-fight was 
 arranged. The English were on one side — the Indians on the 
 other. The latter were furnished with a piece of cannon, on 
 wheels, loaded by English gunners. As the unsusiDecting Indians 
 manned the drag-ropes, the gun by the merest accident ranging 
 along their lines, strange to say it went ofl", no one knew how — 
 perhaps by spontaneous combustion — and several were killed. 
 The rest, including wounded, were taken prisoners. A hundred 
 
 *Squanao was also a sagamore of Saoo or Sokokis. He was one of the oliief 
 ■beginners and chief actors in the war, 1676-6. He was roused to a hatred of the 
 English by the rude and indiscreet act of some English seamen, wlio either for 
 mischief overset a canoe in which was Squando's wife and child, or to see if young 
 Indians could swim naturally, like animals of the brute creation, as some had re- 
 ported. [John Josselyii, Gent., said chey could swim like dogs.] The child went 
 to the bottom, but was saved from drowning hy the mother's diving down and 
 bringing it up. Yet withiu a while after the said child died. The whites did not 
 believe the death of the child was owing to the immersion ; still, we must allow, 
 the Indians knew as weU as they. He was engaged in several battles, one of which 
 was the attack upon Saco in 1675. He was a brave Indiftn.— Drake's Ind. Biog. 286. 
 
 t Doney was a Saco sachem. He signed an Indian treaty in 1098. He once had 
 a captive by the name of Thomas Balcer. What Doney's fate was ia uncertain — 
 Drake's Ind. Biog. 308. 
 
 t Serogumba was a sagamore. 
 
ENGLISH STEATEGT. 63 
 
 or SO of them were hanged. Two hundred were sold into slavery, 
 while the hundred up-country Indians, including some of our 
 Pemigewassetts, were dismissed to their homes. Thither they 
 went, exceedingly well-pleased with their kind treatment, and 
 firmly convinced that their pale-faced entertainers were the most 
 ^onest,' reliable, and pious set of cut-throats with whom they ever 
 had the happiness to become acquainted. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HOW ACCOKDING to TRADITION THE PEMIGEWASSETTS WERE PRES- 
 ENT AT A GREAT COURT AT QnOCHECO, WHERE THE LAWS WERE 
 VERT LEGALLY EXECUTED AND JUSTICE DONE — ACCORDING TO 
 THE IDEAS OP CERTAIN EXASPERATED RED MEN. 
 
 The valiant deeds of Major Waldron and the biave cap- 
 tains at Quocheco were well remembered by the northern Indians, 
 among whoin were numbered the Pemigewassetts. They believed 
 that the pious Quocheco settlers and their allies had committed a 
 great sin. After thinking the subject over for ten years or more, 
 and after having had their thoughts quickened from time to time 
 by the Indian slaves, many of whom had returned, they came to 
 the solemn conclusion that it was their duty to take the law into 
 their own hands and see it properly executed. Accordingly they 
 planned an expedition to teach Major Waldron and his friends a 
 lesson, if nothing more. 
 
 The leader was Kancamagus ; and as he often sat down in the 
 Pemigewassett country, being a Pemigewassett chief when there, 
 we must give him a passing notice. He was " grant-son " of Pas- 
 saconawaj^ For many years he was chief of the Amariscoggins, 
 sometimes of the Pequawkees, and finally a Pennacook sachem. 
 At one time he was the firm ally of the renowned Worombo,* and 
 with him maintained a strong fort far in the wilderness, on the 
 
 * Woromljo was a sachem of the Amariscoggius. He had a fort on the river 
 bank. It was captured by Col. Chnrch in 1690, Sept. 14. Two of AVoronibo's chil- 
 dren were taken prisoners and carried to Plymouth'. Seven days after, Kancama- 
 gus and Worombo fell upon Church by surprise at Casco, Maine, killed seven of 
 his men and wounded twenty-four more, two of whom died. The Indians Avere 
 beaten off only after a long and desperate flght. He was a brave Indian. AVhat 
 became of him is uncertain. 
 
ENGLISH FErENDSHIP. 65 
 
 banks of the Androscoggin. He was abrave and politic chief, and 
 had a little of the forgiving spirit of his grandfather Passacona- 
 way dnd uncle "Wonalancet, but his mercy did not endure forever. 
 In person he was tall and well-proportioned ; he possessed great 
 strength, was fleet of foot, and had an eye like an eagle. 
 
 "When the gentle sachem Wonalancet fled away as he did to 
 the land of the Arosagunticooks, otherwise known as the St. 
 Francis Indians, with a portion of his tribe, Kancamagus took up 
 his residence in the fertile meadows of the Pennacooks. Cranfleld* 
 the English governor. at the time, did not like the idea of his 
 residing in the hunting grounds of his ancestors, and being a 
 scrupulous man he went to New York and entered into an engage- 
 ment with the gentle fighting Mohawks f to come and drive him 
 and his people away. Kancamagus heard of the design, and 
 addressed several letters to the "Honur Governor my friend," 
 and sent him presents of beaver-skins, but without much effect. 
 In fact, the governor was firm in his purpose ; the Mohawks sent 
 word that they were coming, and Kancamagus and his braves, 
 giving up the idea of taking their revenge just then, fled far into 
 the northern wilderness. 
 
 But he did not remain long away. When King William's 
 war broke out he was back again upon the banks of the Merri- 
 mack. Around the council fire they recounted the treachery at 
 Quocheco; how their brothers had some been butchered, others 
 sold into slavery ; some hung upon trees in Boston or shot down 
 in the streets at noon-day ; and how they had been burnt in the 
 wigwams by the dozen in time of peace ; and now, as the war- 
 times offered an excellent opportunity, the old plans for revenge 
 were fully determined upon. Under the trees on the banks of 
 the river they danced the war-dance — the war-paint was prepared 
 — and Amariscoggins, Coosucks, Pequawkees, Winnepissaukies, 
 Amoskeags, Pennacooks, Pemigewassetts, in fine all the Mpmucks 
 remaining, were ready to put their plans of revenge in execution. 
 
 But Major Waldron and his friends might have been saved. 
 When the plan was maturing, friendly Indians communicated it 
 
 * He waa authorized as early as March 22, 1683, by the Council of Massachu- 
 setts to do this. — Potter's Hist, of Man. 83. 
 
 fThe Mohawks were sometimes called Mauqnawogs, i. e., man-eaters. 
 
 E 
 
66 HISTOET or WAEKEN. 
 
 to Captain Thomas Hinchmau, of Chelmsford, Mass., and he im- 
 mediately dispatched a messenger to the governor. But the latter 
 was careless, heeded it not, thought uor cared but little about it. 
 
 June 27th, 1689, the -woods about Quocheco were full of In- 
 dians. Our valiant tribes had come down. Yet the inhabitants 
 mistrusted nothing; they felt secure, for as yet the governor's 
 messenger had not arrived with the warning. 
 
 Night came on, and two squaws, as the plan intended, went 
 to each of the garrison liouses and asked leave to lodge by the 
 Are. In the night, when the people were asleep, fhey were to 
 open the doors and gales and give the signal by a whistle, when 
 the Indians should rush in and take their tong-meditated revenge. 
 These squaws, in pairs, were admitted into every garrison but 
 one, and the people at their request showed them how to open the 
 doors in case they should have occasion to go out in tlie night. 
 Mesandowit, a chieftain under Kancamagus, was a guest of Major 
 "Waldron. At supper, with his usual familiarity, he said : " Broth- 
 er Waldron, what would yon do if the strange Indians should 
 come?" The Major carelessly answered that he could assemble a 
 hundred men by lifting his tinger. In this unsuspecting confi- 
 dence the garrison retired to rest. 
 
 When the gates were opened the signal was given. The In- 
 dians rushed in, and the butchery commenced. The Major, awak- 
 ened by the noise, jumped out of bed, and though advanced in 
 life to the age of eighty years, he retained so much vigor as to be 
 able to drive them through two or three doors; but as he was re- 
 turning for his other arms, they came behind and stunned him 
 with a hatchet, drew him into his hall, and seating him in an elbow 
 chair mounted on a long table, insultingly asked him, " Who shall 
 judge Indians now?" They then obliged the people in the house 
 to get them some supper, and when they had done eating they 
 cut the Major across the breast and belly with knives, each one 
 with his stroke saying, "I cross out my account!" They then 
 cut off his nose and cars, forcing them into his mouth ; and when, 
 spent with the loss of blood, he was fast faUing down from the 
 table, one of them held his sword under him, which quick put an 
 end to his misery. Five or six houses, and all the mills, were 
 burned ; twenty -three people were killed, and twenty-nine were 
 
SAVAGE GENEEOSITT. 67 
 
 carried away captive. Before the morning tlie Indians were oflE 
 to their fastnesses among the mountains. 
 
 Gov. Craniield's messenger arrived at Quocheoo that very- 
 afternoon, but too late to prevent the slaughter. . 
 
 An instance of generous forbearance on the part of a warrior 
 is related: Mrs. Heard was by chance fastened outside of her 
 husband's garrison house. She hid herself in the bushes near by, 
 so near that she witnessed the wild massacre and the burning of 
 the buildiiigs. A young Indian came towards her with a hatchet 
 as if to kill her, but when he looked in her face he turned away 
 with a yell and fled. When the four hundred were seized in 1676, 
 an Indian boy took refuge in her house, where she concealed him 
 until he was able to clTect his escape in safety. The young warrior 
 was that boy. He had not forgotten her, and her kindness to him 
 saved her life. 
 
 The Nipmucks had taken their revenge — their wrongs were 
 in part cancelled. 
 
 The colonies were amazed — awe-struck. Kancamagus was 
 outlawed,_and a price set upon his head. Captain Noyes, with 
 soldiers, marched to Pennacook, but the Indians had fled. Noth- 
 ing was found but soma corn, which was destroyed. Other sol- 
 diers went as far north as the White mountains, and so much 
 were the Indians pressed, as Acteon relates, that even the Pemi- 
 gewassetts were compelled to leave .their hunting grounds, and 
 hurry away to the head-waters of the Coimecticut and across the 
 border into Canada. 
 
 About this time the first Indian captives wore carriecl into our nortliern wil- 
 derness. In 1885, Isaac Bradley, aged 15, and WUliam Whittaker, aged II, were 
 taken prisoners and oai rled to VV innepissiogeelake.— Me. H. C. -Jd series, vol. i, 128. 
 
 In 1(J97 the celebrated Hannah Huston, was captured at Haverhill, Mass., and 
 went up the Merrinni(;l£ river towards our Pemigewassett country, as I'ar as the 
 mouth of the Coutoocook river. Here they lodged upon an island for sometime 
 and Mrs. Dustou formed the plan of killing tne wnole party. Two other prisoners, 
 Mrs. Heff and an English boy, readily agreed to assist her. To the art of killing 
 and scalping she was a stranger, and tliat there should be no failure in th» busi- 
 ness, Mrs. Uuston instructed the boy, who, from his long residence with them had 
 become as one of the Indians, to inqnire of one of the men how it was done. He 
 did so, and the Indian showed him without mistviistiiig the origin of the inquiry. 
 It was now March 31st, and in the dead of night following, this bloody tragedy was 
 enacted. When the Indians were in the rao'st sound sleep these three captives 
 arose, and softly arming themselves with the tomahawks of their mastei-s, allotted 
 the number each should kill; and so truly did they direct their blows that but one 
 escaped whom they designed to kill. This wa"s a woman whom they badly 
 wounded. There was also a boy, who for some reason they did not wish to harm, 
 and accordingly he was allowea to escape unhurt. Mrs. Duston killed her master, 
 and the boy, fjeonai'dson, killed the man who but one day before had so freely told 
 him where to deal the deadly blow and how to take offl a scalp. 
 
68 HISTOKT OF WARREN. 
 
 Kancamagus did not long remain idle. Captain Church, a 
 noted Indian fighter, had attacked "Worombo'g fort, captured it, 
 and with it tlie wife and child of Kancamagus. This stung the 
 chieftain to thfe quiclf. With "Worombo he fought Church at 
 Casco, killed se'jeu white men, and wounded twenty-four more, 
 two mortally, as we have before narrated. His wife and child 
 were then restored to him. 
 
 This famous Indian died about 1691, and tradition has it that 
 he was buried in the land of the Pemigewassetts. 
 
 All was over before the dawn of clay, and all things were got readj;" for leaving 
 this place of blood. All the boats but one were scuttled, to prevent being pursued, 
 and with what arms and provisions the Indian camp afforded, they embarked upon 
 the boat remaining, and sloAvly and silently took the course of the Merrimack river 
 to their homes, wiierc ihey all soon after ari^ived without accident. 
 
 Several other white captives were carried into the New Hampshire woods 
 about this time, and in this manner, probably, the first white persons entered the 
 Asquamchumauke valley. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONTAINIKG A SLIGHT ATTEMPT AT BIOGRAPHY, OK THE EARLY 
 LIFE OF ■WATEENOMEE, OTHERWISE WATTANDMON,* SOMETIMES 
 VULGARLY CALLED "WALTERNDMUS, LAST CHIEF OF THE PEMI- 
 GEWASSETTS. '* 
 
 In a wigwam beside the Asquamchumauke, long years ago, 
 as old Aoteon said, was bom a young pappoose, whose history is 
 better kuo wn than that of any other member of the Pemigewassett 
 tribe. At first, lashed to its cradle, it was borne about from place 
 to place by its mother, or hung upon a branch of a tree while she 
 Was at work. Then the boy ran by the bright stream in spring- 
 time, plucked wild flowers, aud chased the butterflies. As the 
 young Waternomee grew in years, he journeyed with his family 
 throughout the whble length and breadth of the Nipmuck terri- 
 tory. When he arrived at manhood he became the chief of his 
 individual tribe, and often went back to the old hunting grounds, 
 the land of his birth. 
 
 It was there Acteon first saw him. He said he was well 
 built, tall, "straight as a pickerel," a fine smooth face, and 
 with "an eye like a hawk." He was a good hunter, and was 
 much given to farming (hence his name), and could use a spear 
 better than any other man of his tribe. Ou the river he could 
 make his canoe fairly fly, and he had marched through the forest a 
 hundred miles in a day.f He was the admiration of his tribe, and 
 
 *The word Wattamimou means a farmer, or planter.— Potter, 258. 
 
 Theire were other Inrlians by the same name : One lived at Concord, long after 
 the death of the Pemigewassett chief. 
 
 tThey are generally a nick on foot, brought up from the breasts to running; 
 their legs being also from the womb stretched and bound up in a strange way on 
 their cradle backward, as also annointed. Yet they have some that excel ; So that 
 
70 HISTOET OF WAEEEN. 
 
 he soon bad great influence in every other clan among the whole 
 Nipmnck people.* 
 
 In 1G89 he is first mentioned in English history, as a brave but 
 kind-hearted Indian. .March 5th of that year " Watcrnumon, an 
 Indian who lived at Newbury," as he is described and his name 
 spelt, in a company of thirty or forty Indians made an attack upon 
 Andover and killed five persons. Colonel Dudley Bradstrcet and 
 family were his friends, and when there was danger of their being 
 killed, he rushed forward and preserved them. 
 
 The same year, in May, he went northward to his old haunts, 
 and he is reported by those who went to treat with the northern 
 Indians as one of the chief captains of Wonalancet. 
 
 At the attack on Quocheco, as ancient tradition has it, he was 
 present under Kancamagus, and witnessed one of the wildest 
 slaughters that ever happened on the New Hampshire frontier. 
 The part he took in it, however, is now unknown. 
 
 Then came ten years of peace, and the chief "Waternomee 
 went back among the mountains and made his home in the pleas- 
 ant hunting-grounds of his boyhood. 
 
 There was a beautiful planting place at the confluence of the 
 Pemigewassett and Asquamchumauke rivers ; good fishing waters 
 were at Sawheganet and Livermore falls, and round about was 
 the best of hunting in all the northern woods, Moose and deer 
 were in the valleys and upon the hills, and he got largo supplies 
 of beaver skins from the solitary beaver meadows and ponds, high 
 up on the streams, even to their very sources among the moun- 
 tains. "Waternomee was amost successful hunter, and he well 
 . ■ • ■ 
 
 I haveknowu many of them niii between I'ourscore or an hundred miles in a day, 
 and back within two days. They do also practice rnnning races, and commonly in 
 the summer they delight to go without shoes, although they have tliem hanging at 
 their baclss. They are so exquisitely sliilled in all the body and bowels of the 
 country Tjy reasons of their iiuutings, that I have often been guided twenty, thirty, 
 vea sometimes forty miles tlirough the woods a straight course, out of any path. — 
 Roger WiUiams' Key, 3 Mass. H. C. Hi. 
 
 * Waternomee, it is said, had as friends, wlio lived up and down the river, 
 Tohanto, Sagnrmoy, Weranumi)ee Sagurmoy, Paoohunte, Quangecun, Xasi'um, 
 Monamu.sque, and Pehaunguu. The l:itter was a well known warrior, and his 
 name was indicative of his character, Pehaunffun meaning, " Beware of Me !" He 
 was killed in a drunken frolic in 1732, at the age of 121 years, and was buried very 
 carefully — the Indians treading the dirt in hia grave, crying all the time like 
 maniacs, " He no get up," " He no come back now." They feared his gliost ■ft'ould 
 return from the land of shades to haunt them. 
 
 Drake more particularly locates the Nipmucks upon the Nashua river, a 
 branch of the Merrimack. He gives the following spellings of the uame : No jnats, 
 Nipnets, or Nipmuks.— Ind. Biog. 82. 
 
THE HOME OF GITCHE MANITO. 71 
 
 knew every pond and stream, and flasliiug waterfall in all his 
 pleasant country. 
 
 Acteon saw his wigwam fire blazing once by the mouth of the 
 Mikascota or Black brook, and heard the crack of his rifle, as he 
 shot some of the smaller game up by "Indian Eock." Then, as 
 he once travelled northward to the land of the Coosucks, he en- 
 camped, as the Indians were wont to do, by "Wachipauka pond, 
 the leapiug\watevs of Oak falls making pleasant music in his ears. 
 Tradition avers that Acteon told the story how Waternomee, with 
 a few other Indians, once followed the Asquamchumauke up to its 
 very source in the mountains. There they camped beside a beaver 
 pond, where the beaver, Tummunk, had built hou.ses. These they 
 did not molest, but set out, just as the sun rose, to go over Moosil- 
 auke to the " Quonnect.icut " vallej'. 
 
 Not often did the Indians climb the mountain, and they only 
 did it now to save time and distance. It was a hard ascent for 
 their moccasined feet, over the stones and through the hackma- 
 tacks, as they called the dwarf firs and spruces; but upon the 
 bald mountain crest the way was easier, and the little birds, 
 Psukses, were whistling and singing among the lichens and rocks. 
 When they reached the summit, the heaven, Kesuk, was cloudless, 
 and the view unobscured. 
 
 It was a sight, the like of which they had never seen before. 
 Great mountains, Wadchu, were piled and scattered in the wild- 
 est confusion in all the land; and silver lakes, Sipes, were spark- 
 ling; and bright rivers, Sepoes, were gleaming fron'i the forest. 
 
 As thoy sat upon that topmost peak, the wind was still, 
 and they could hoar the moose bellowing in the gorges below; 
 could hear the wulf, Maqnoshim, howling; and now and then the 
 great war-eagle, Keneu, screamed and hurtled through the air. 
 
 A feeling of superstitious reverence took possession of those 
 Indians as they drank in the strange sights and wild sounds, for 
 they believed that the peak was the home of Gitche Manito, their 
 Great Spirit. Does the unlettered Catholic have reverence at the 
 altar? — much more was the untutored savage filled with awe as 
 he stood in the very dwelling place of his God, afraid that the 
 deity would be angry at the almost sacrilegious invasion. 
 
 As the sun, Nepauz, was going down the western sky, a light 
 
72 HISTORY OP WAEEEN. 
 
 mist collected around the eastern peaks, and above all the river 
 valleys in the west, clouds, at first no larger than a man's hand, 
 began to gather. Soon hanging over every valley was a shower — 
 the heavens above them clear— the sun shining brightly upon the 
 vapor. Quickly the wind freshened, and the great clouds, purple 
 and gold and crimson above, black as ink below, hurried from 
 every quarter towards the crest of Moosilauke. Then thunder, 
 Pahtuquohan, began to bellow, and the lightning, Ukkutshaumun, 
 leaped from cloud to cloud, and streamed blinding down to the hills 
 beneath, while the great rain-drops and hailstones, crashing upon 
 the infinite thick woods, sent up a roar loud as a hundred moun- 
 tain torrents. 
 
 " It is Gitche Manito coming to his home angry," muttered 
 Waternomee, as with his companions he hurried down the moun- 
 tain to the thick spruce forest, Soshsumonk, for shelter. Such 
 scenes, the wildest exhibitions of nature, made the mountain sum- 
 mits to be dreaded, and he was a brave Indian who dared ascend 
 them.* 
 
 Through all his hunting grounds, never tarrying long in any 
 place, he travelled — building his wigwam now beside the fishing- 
 place, then by the maize-field, and then where game was plentiest. 
 Thus the years went by, and the Pemigewassett chief with all his 
 people lived happily and greatly increased in numbers. Their 
 range was far away in the wilderness, and their English friends 
 had as yet never invaded their homes. But this state of things 
 could not long continue, for causes were at work whereby war 
 would be brought about in the old world, and the Indians would 
 be again compelled to dig up the tomahawk in the new. 
 
 *For a vocabulary of Nipmnck words see Sclioolcraft, Tol. i. 291. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 HOW THE PEMIGEWASSBTTS ENGAGED IN QUEEN ANNE'S WAR, — OF 
 SUNDRY EXPEDITIONS — AND HOW SEVERAL PEMIGEWASSETTS 
 WERE SURPRISED AND SLAIN BY FIVE TERRIBLE MARQUAS, 
 LED BY THE BRAVE CALEB LTMAN. 
 
 \t HILE tlie eastern continent shook to the bloody tread of 
 the great Marlborough, and Eugene of Savoy, the primitive "sal- 
 vage" of the western world was playing his part on a narrower 
 though equally as bloody stage. Did those loving nations, Eng- 
 land and France, but set the sanguinary ball in motion, and the 
 peaceable forest children, instigated by pious emissaries, immedi- 
 ately dug up the tomahawk. 
 
 The iSTew England colonists had heard of the war commenced 
 in Europe, and well knowing its reciprocal influence and effect in 
 the new world, they immediately began to bestir themselves, to 
 avert as much as possible the storm thdt was sure to buret. They 
 conceived that it would be an excellent idea to make a solemn 
 treaty with their red-skinned foes, and keep peace if possible in 
 the great northern forest, where with numerous other tribes the 
 Pemigewassetts resided. Accordingly the good Gov. Dudley, 
 who at that time was ruler over the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 
 sent messengers to all the northern and eastern tribes and invited 
 their chiefs to meet him and his council on the peninsula of Fal- 
 mouth, Maine, to make a treaty of friendship. This accomplished 
 the red warriors at least would not'figlit on the side of the French. 
 
 On June 20th, 1702, they came together in great numbers.' 
 Mauxis and Hopehood,* from Norridgewolk ; Wauungunt and 
 
 * Wahowa, alias Hopehood, was boh of Robinliood. His career was a series of 
 warlike and bloody exploits. His attacks upon Berwick, Salmon Falls, and at Fox 
 Point, are among ibis ndost celebrated acts. At the latter place li whites were 
 
74 HISTORY OP -WARREN. 
 
 Wanadugunbueut, from Penobscot; Adiwaudo and Hegau, from 
 Pennacook and Pigwacket; Messambomett and Wexar, from 
 Amasconty, with two hundred and fifty men in sixtj--flve canoes, 
 all came to Falmouth peninsula. The several chieftains with their 
 adherents were well armed and mostly painted with a variety of 
 colors. It was a rude gathering there in the wilderness — the 
 Governor and his white friends, painted savages, rough wig- 
 wams, camp fires burning, and on the shore a fieet of birchen 
 canoes. All were seemingly afi"able and kind, although in some 
 instances causes of jealousy and distrust were not wanting. 
 
 But they did not proceed immediately to business. "Wattan- 
 umon,* otherwise "Waternomee, whom we so politely introduced 
 in our last entertaining chapter, as a chieftain from the northwest, 
 had not arrived, and the other chiefs were unwilling to proceed 
 until he came.f 
 
 After waiting several days, in a tent which had been fixed for 
 their lodgment, tlie Govei-nor made them a short brotherly speech, 
 saying he desired to settle every difl&culty which had happened 
 between them. 
 
 Captain Simmo, a warrior, replied as follows: "We thank 
 you, good brother, for coming so far to talk with us. It is a 
 great favor. The clouds fly and darken-r-but we still sing with 
 love the songs of peace. Believe my words. So far as the sun is 
 above the ea7'th are our thoughts from war or the least rupture 
 between us." 
 
 A belt of wampum was then presented to the Governor, and 
 they invited him and his white friends to the two pillars of stone 
 which were erected at a former treaty and called by the significant 
 name of the "Two Brothers," unto which also both parties went 
 and added a great number of stones. 
 
 Everything now seemed lovely. Many presents were given. 
 There was singing and dancing. ^Loud acclamations of joy were 
 heard, and the English began, to feel that Queen Anne's "War in 
 
 ■■killea, six captivated, (sic) ancl several houses burned. The pions Cotton-Mather 
 says this was as easily done "as to have spoiled an ordinary hen-roost." The 
 same author says that shortly after he went to the westward with a design to 
 bewitch another crew at Aquadocta into liis assistance. Some time aftnr he was 
 met by some Canada Indians, who, talking him to be of the Iroquois nation, slew 
 him, with many of his companions.— Drake's Ind. Biog. 302. 
 
 *He is mentioned in PeubaUow's Indian Wars as from Pigwaoket. 
 
 t Hubbard's History of Maine. 
 
FORTY POUNDS FOK A NIPMUCK SCALP. 75 
 
 Europe ■would not trouble them much in America. But they were 
 destined to be terribly mistaken, and quickly got an inkling of 
 what might happen. A parting salute must be flred. The very 
 polite — not a bit jealous — English wished to honor the Indians 
 by having them flre first, aud when they did so the English were 
 greatly alarmed at discovering that the guns of the Indians were 
 loaded with balls, which rattled terribly among the leaves and 
 dry branches of tlie trees overhead. Very greatly alarmed — and 
 this notwithstanding the curious fact that their own muskets were 
 likewise fully charged for service. 
 
 Some of the Indians furthermore had gently intimated that 
 certaia French Jesuits had recently come among them and en- 
 deavored to seduce them from their allegiance to the crown of 
 England, but without success, for, as they said, they were " as 
 firm as mountains, aud should continue so as long as the sun and 
 moon endured." 
 
 But all this was a pleasant kind of cheat. The gentle 'salvages 
 did not mean a word they said. They did not expect the warrior 
 "Wattanumon — our "Waternomee of the mountains — at^the treaty 
 of peace at all. He was to come at the head of a war party, and 
 Governor Dudley with his English friends were to be swept from 
 existence. Three days after they were gone back to Boston, two 
 hundred more French and Indians were sounding their war 
 whoop in the forest where the Two Brothers were erected. Six 
 weeks later, and Queen Anne's war had broken out in fury, ancj 
 the whole frontier was in a blaze. Not a house was standing nor 
 a garrison vinassaulted. Woe to him then whose musket bore no 
 lead. 
 
 War raged universally in New England, and our beloved 
 Pemigewassett tribe of course took a hand in it. So fierce were 
 the incursions of the Northern Indians that Massachusetts was 
 exceedingly alarmed. Her general assembly was convened, and 
 a law passed ofiering a bounty of forty pounds for every Indian 
 scalp that could be ijrocured. 
 
 So tempting an otfer could not long be withstood, and Capt. 
 Tyng, a brave Indian flgiiter, was the first to embrace the tender. 
 In thf deep mid-winter of 1703, he with his party went on snow- 
 shoes to the head-quarters of the Indians among the mountains, 
 
76 HISTORY OP WAKBEN. 
 
 and got five scalps. Massachusetts was prompt, and paid him two 
 hundred pounds for them.* 
 
 But the Indians took a sweet revenge for all this, and Haver- 
 hill, Deerfleld, and other settlements in Massachusetts were 
 attacked, and more than two hundred whites were killed and cap- 
 tured. Ample reparation for tive Indian scalps. 
 
 This would not dp. More than ever the colonies were alive 
 to the fact that the Indians must be punished and subdued. So 
 Major Hilton,t with five companies, and Captain Stevens with one, 
 ranged all the northern woods, went up the Pemigewasset and the 
 Asquamchumauke and eastward along the base of the "White 
 mountains, but not an Indian did they discover. 
 
 "Waternomee with his people were too careful for these march- 
 ing parties. The old men, women, and children were off to the 
 fastnesses of the mountains and the deep, impenetrable swamps, 
 where pursuit was useless. 
 
 But one man, at the head of five Marquas, Mohog, or Mohawk 
 Indians, accomplished more than the six great marching companies 
 together. By chance some of the Pemigewassetts had crossed the 
 highlands, as old Acteou reported, and had set down to plant on 
 the banks of the Connecticut. The Coosucks, with a strong fort, 
 were on the great meadows above them, and on the banks of the 
 stream below were numerous other families of friendly Indians. 
 Thus surrounded they thought themselves secure. 
 
 Some time in May, 1704, word came from Albany that the 
 Mohawks had discovered the fort upon the Connecticut river and 
 knew that the Coosucks were planting corn there. 
 
 June 6th, Mr. Caleb Lyman, a brave man, placed himself at 
 the head of five Mohawk warriors, and leaving JSTorthampton, 
 
 * Another party marched directlyup the Merrimack river to the Pemigewassett 
 land. The fourth day from home they discovered an Indian settlement a short 
 distance ii-om the river; and alter carefnlly reconoitering and finding that the 
 number of the Indians M^as less than their own, they advanced to the attack. The 
 Indians did not discover the English until they were close upon them, when they 
 were accidentally observed by a young warrior who cried, " Owanux, Owauux I" 
 — " Englishmen, Englishmen 1" This Irightened the other Indians, who, rising up 
 ,-quickly, were fired upon by the Englishmen, who killed eight upon the spot. The 
 ' rest immediately fled, and the company, with considerable booty and the scalps of 
 the slain Indians, returned home without the loss of a man. 
 
 fin the spring of 1704 Col. Winthrop Hilton commanded a party to scour the 
 woods to the heads of the Winnepisseogee and Pemigewassett, and was not only 
 this summer but most of the time, when not engaged in more important and dis- 
 tant expeditions, employed in ranging the li'ontier tVom Massachusetts to Maine. 
 —I Farmer & Moore's Col. 21S. 
 
CALEB LTMAN'S EXPEDITION. 77 
 
 Massachusetts, struck into the ■wilderness. They were soon in the 
 enemy's country. They found his tracks and heard the noise of 
 his guns in the woods. For nine days they pursued their course 
 northward. Then; discovering fresh tracks, they followed them 
 till they came to the river. Supposing that hostile Indians were 
 in the immediate neighborhood they halted, consulted what method 
 was best to pursue, and soon concluded to send out a spy — with 
 green leaves, for a cap and vest, to prevent his own discovery, and 
 to find out the enemy. 
 
 But before he was out of sight they saw two Indians at a con- 
 siderable distance in a canoe, and immediately called him back. 
 Soon after they also heard the firing of a gun up the river, upon 
 which they concluded to keep close until sunset, and then, if they 
 could make any further discovery of the enemy, to attack if pos- 
 sible in the night. 
 
 Sitting down concealed upon the south shore they looked out 
 upon the scene. The noble river swept round a little wood- 
 crowned height in the east, and then ran straight into the west, 
 till, meeting the lowlblnfi" on that side of the meadow, it turned 
 short and flowed away to the south. Before them was the long 
 reach of sparkling water, reflecting the green woods upon its 
 bank ; in the light fairy canoe, near where the river came out of 
 the forest in the east, were the two Indians spearing fish ; and 
 looking in over the green hills bej'ond them was the round, bald 
 top of Moosilauke, gemmed with snow fields not yet melted in the 
 Slimmer sun. Even the wood-thrush — sweetest songster of the 
 forest — was here; and with the frogs in the swamp, and the par- 
 tridges' drumming, and the warbling of the white-throated finch, 
 made melody in the solitude. 
 
 "When the evening came on they moved up the river, and at 
 the distance of half a mile saw a smoke and found where the wig- 
 wams were built. At two o'clock in the morning everything was 
 quiet, and the deadly Marquas with Caleb Lyman were within 
 twelve rods of the slumbering Pemigewassetts, 
 
 Here they met a difficulty which, as Mr. Lyman in his narra- 
 tive relates, nearly ruined their plan. For the space of five rods 
 the ground was thickh'^ covered with dry sticks and brush, over 
 which they could not pass without danger of alarming their enemy 
 
78 HISTOET OF WAKEEN, 
 
 and giving him a chance to escape. But while they were contriv- 
 ing liow they might compass their design, God — as the pious 
 Caleb* would have it — in his good Providence assisted them 
 with a miracle. A very small cloud arose. It gave a smart clap 
 of thunder and a sudden shower of rain descended. The Mo- 
 hawks with their leader rush forward, they clear the thicket, come 
 unperceived in full sight of the wigwams, and discover by the 
 noise that the enemy within are awake. Creeping still nearer on 
 their hands and knees, in a moment they are at the side of the rude 
 dwellings. Rising, they pour into them a murderous fire; then, 
 flinging down their guns, with their clubs and hatchets they knock 
 on the head every Indian they meet. Two only of the whole 
 number of Pemigewassetts escape, one mortally wounded, the 
 other, as was afterwards learned, unhurt. 
 
 On looking over the ground, seven Indians were found killed 
 on the spot, six of whom they scalped, leaving the other un- 
 touched, the Mohawks patriotically saying they would give one 
 scalp to the country. Each would then have one, which would 
 make him rich enough. 
 
 Then they took their scalps and plunder, such as gnus, skins, 
 etc., loaded-them into the canoes of the enemy, and started down 
 the river. The stars shone in the sky above, and the gibbous 
 moou, sinking behind the trees in the west, looked red. Owls 
 hooted in the forest, the frogs sang a lullaby in the grass and lily- 
 pads, and the muskrats splashed by the shore. When the sun 
 came up they were twelve miles down the river, and knowing 
 that more " strange Indians" were between them and home, they 
 broke up and abandoned their canoes, and took to the woods. 
 
 They were now a hundred miles from the white settlements ; 
 they had but one meal of victuals left, and as they soon came upon 
 the trail of thirty Indians they dared not hunt for a subsistence. 
 Caleb Lymau says that for five long days they marched, eating 
 nothing "but the buds of trees, grass, and strawberry leaves, 
 when, through the goodness of God, we safely arrived at North- 
 ampton, on the 19th or 20th of the aforesaid June." 
 
 The Great and General Court of Massachusetts, being humbly 
 petitioned, granted thirty-one pounds for these services. Why 
 *He was an elder of a church in Boston that sometimes himg witches. 
 
A MIBACLE. 79 
 
 they did not get £240, as they deserved, is move thau we can tell. 
 At any rate they merited it more than Captain Tyng-, for it was a 
 braver exploit. 
 
 The captain of the Marquas, Caleb Lyman, sagely concludes 
 "That iu consequence of this action the enemy werp generally 
 alarmed, and immediately forsook their fort and corn at Cowas- 
 suck and never returned to this day as we could hear oflf to renew 
 their settlement in that place." 
 
 That they were greatly alarmed there is no doubt, but that 
 the Indians did not leave this upper country just then is a fact 
 very well known to all great historians, For several more years 
 they sojourned here; and during the war fought a number of 
 great battles, as we shall be highly pleased to narrate. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 OF SEVERAL THINGS THAT HAPPENED DUKING THE PEOGEESS OF 
 THE WAR, AND HOW AS ONE OF THE RESULTS THE PEMIGE- 
 WASSETT TRIBE WAS DESTROYED AND THEIR HUNTING GROUND 
 — OF WHICH WARREN WAS A PART — MADE A SOLITUDE. 
 
 And now there was marchiug and hurrying through all 
 the wildwood. The Indians came down like wolves on the fold. 
 Hadley and Quabaug,* Nashua, and Groton were attacked. Then, 
 dividing into small parties, the red foe fell upon Amesbury, Hav- 
 erhill, and Exeter, and did much mischief. 
 
 Captain Tyng and Captain How entertained a warm and 
 slightly cordial dispute with them, but came off second-best, that 
 is, got whipped ; and then company after company of English- 
 men went northward, and tramped the forest through and through, 
 but had the poorest kind of luck in finding the head-quarters of 
 the Indians. The latter were off to the swamps, the morasses, 
 and the strongholds of the mountains. 
 
 Among those who ranged the woods was the brave Colonel 
 Hilton. He came upon a trail and killed four Indians. At the 
 same time he took a squaw alive, with a pappoose at her breast, 
 both of whom he preserved. She was of great service in conduct- 
 ing him to a body of eighteen Indians. These he succeeded in 
 surprising, about break of day, as they lay asleep, and slew all 
 but one, whom he made a prisoner. This was accounted a great 
 feat of arms. 
 
 One Captain Wright also ventured far into the enemy's coun- 
 try and fought the Indians with varying success. f 
 
 *Now Brooklield, Mass. 
 
 tPenhallow's Indian Wars, 1 N. H. Hist. (Jol. 60. 
 
LIEUTENANT BAKEE'S EXPEDITION. 81 
 
 Then the Indians, in the most terrible manner, would retaliate. 
 One party killed Colonel Hilton and another slew Major Tyng. * 
 They scalped the Colonel, struck their hatchets into Ms brain, and 
 left a lance in his heart. Major Tyng was rescued and carried to 
 Chelmsford, where he soon expired. 
 
 Colonel Walton, with two companies of men, hastened away 
 for revenge. He went to the ponds north of " Winnepisseocay " 
 lake, where there were places of general resort for fishing, fowl- 
 ing, and hunting. But he found no Indians — only a few deserted 
 wigwams; for, as Mr. Penhallow politely says, being so closely 
 pursued from one place to another, they removed to other nations, 
 leaving only a few cut-throats behind, which kept the country in 
 a constant state of alarm. 
 
 Thus, mutually killing and burning, the war went on with 
 varying fortune, the English, afterwards called Yankees; having 
 the poor luck to get the worst of it as a general thing, until near 
 its close, when an expedition was planned and a blow struck by 
 which our Pemigewassettp were annihilated. 
 
 In the year 1709, February 27th, Thomas Baker was taken 
 captive from Deerfleld, Massachusetts. They took him straight 
 up the Connecticut river, over the carrying-place to Memphrema- 
 gog lake, and from thence to the happy land of Canada. He was 
 ransomed a year afterwards, and came home well knowing one of 
 the routes to the haunts of the Indians. He also learned some- 
 thing during his captivity about the great tribes we have men- 
 tioned, their homes and hunting grounds, and in the spring of 
 1712 — the border war raging fiercer than ever — he raised a com- 
 pany of thirty-four men to fight some of the enemy, who lived in a 
 beautiful place he had heard of while in Canada. Thirty-three of 
 his company were white soldiers, and there was one friendly 
 Indian to guide them across the highlands. 
 
 Lieutenant Baker left Northampton,! Mass., in April, as soon 
 as the snow was gone, and pursued his old route up Connecticut 
 
 * Formerly Capt. Tyng. He had been promoted. 
 
 t In the county of Hampshire. 
 
 Lieut. Thomas Baker was born at Northampton, Mass., May 14, 1682. He 
 married Christine Otis, otherwise Margaret Otis, and lived once at Brookfield, and 
 alterwards at Dover, N. H. He died about 1753, of lethargy. Margaret Otis was 
 once taken prisoner by the Indians, carried to Canada, and was there called 
 Christine Otis by the French. 
 
 F 
 
82 HISTORY OF WAREEN. 
 
 riTcr. In four days he was upon the Cowassuck intervals. Snow 
 banks were still scattered about, and the eastern mountains were 
 white as winter. The friendly Indian had told him of the old 
 Indian trail up the Oliverian, and by nightfall they had looked at 
 the mighty precipice of Owl's Head mountain and were camped 
 on the shore of "Wachipauka pond. 
 
 The next morning, passing Oak falls, they proceeded down 
 the Mikaseota, as Acteon called it, now plain Black brook, and 
 discovering signs of Indians, who appeared to have been in the 
 neighborhood hunting, they marched all day on the right bank of 
 the Asquamchumauke with great caution. 
 
 At night Lieutenant Baker and his men camped without Are, 
 and ate a cold supper, for they knew they were in the immediate 
 neighborhood of the Indians. 
 
 In the morning early he sent out scouts to reconnoitre. These 
 cautiously advanced, and at about eight o'clock discovered numer- 
 ous Indian wigwams grouped in a circle upon the east bank 
 of the river.* Some squaws were at work near by, seeming to 
 be getting ready to plant corn. A few men were fashioning a 
 canoe and several children were playing among the trees upon 
 the shore. A large portion of the warriors, as was afterwards 
 learned, were away hunting. The scouts, after gazing upon 
 this scene a few moments, returned and reported their discovery. 
 
 The Lieutenant, after a short consultation with his men, now 
 moved forward with all possible circumspection. No sound — not 
 even the breaking of a twig or the snap of a gun-lock — warned 
 the Pemigewassetts of their impending fate. He chose his posi- 
 tion, and at a given signal his company opened a tremendous fire 
 upon the Indians, which carried death through their village, and 
 was as sudden to them as a clap of thunder. Some shouted 
 that the English were upon them, and that dreaded name echoed 
 from mouth to mouth, filling all with dismay. Many of the chil- 
 dren of the forest bit the dust in death, but those who survived 
 ran to call in the hunters. 
 
 The company immediately crossed the river in pursuit, but 
 all who were able to flee were beyond their reach. They fired the 
 
 * 1 Tarmer & Moore's N. H. Hist. Col. 138. 
 Wliiton's Hist, of N. H., 70. 
 
DEATH OF -WATEENOMEE, 83 
 
 wigwams, and as the flames streamed upward and the smoke 
 rolled aloft on the air, a shout from the Indians came sounding 
 down the valley, informing Lieutenant Baker that the warriors 
 were collecting to give him battle. 
 
 While the wigwams were being kindled, part of the company 
 were searching for booty. They found a rich store of furs 
 deposited in holes in the banks, in the manner bank-swallows dig 
 to make their nests. Having obtained these, Lieutenant Baker 
 ordered a retreat, knowing that the Indians would soon return, 
 and he feared in too great numbers to be resisted by his single 
 company. As they moved swiftly down the river, the sounds of 
 the war-whoop greeted their ears. This served to accelerate their 
 speed. Often it was repeated and each time grew nearer. "When 
 they had reached a poplar plain,* in what is now the town of 
 Bridgewater, a shrill, maddened yell, and a volley of musketry in 
 their rear, told Baker that the Indians were upon him, and that he 
 must immediately prepare for action. This they did by retreating 
 to a more dense wood. 
 
 The Indians, commanded by their chief, 'Waternomee — called 
 vulgarly by some historian, 'Walternumus — immediately pursued, 
 and, swarming on all sides, poured volleys of musketry into the 
 woods which concealed their enemies. On the other hand, the 
 little party, concealing themselves behind rocks and trees, plied 
 their muskets vigorously and with good effect. Balls rattled in 
 showers around, scattering twigs and branches of the trees in 
 every direction. 
 
 While the battle was going on, Waternomee, who was lead- 
 ing the Indians, accidentally encountered Lieutenant Baker. They 
 knew each other well, having met on the frontier and in Canada. 
 They saw each other at the same moment, and fired almost simul- 
 taneously. The ball from the sachem's gun grazed Baker's left 
 eye-brow, but did him no injury. Baker's bullet went through 
 the breast of the chief. Immediately upon being struck, with a 
 loud whoop, he leaped four or five feet high and fell dead. 
 
 Waternomee was richly attired, and Baker snatched his blan- 
 
 * Mr. Dearl)orn has visited that plain and seen and examined a number of 
 skulls which he supposed fell in that engagement. One or two of them were per- 
 forated by a bullet.— Power's Hist, of Coos, 171. 
 
84 HISTORY OF WAKEEN. 
 
 ket, which was covered with silver brooches, his powder-horn 
 and other ornaments, and hastened to join the main body of his 
 men.* 
 
 The Indians having now lost their chief, and a considerable 
 number of their warriors being wounded, and a few killed, 
 retired. 
 
 Lieutenant Baker also immediately collected his men and 
 again ordered a retreat, for he believed that the Indians, though 
 repulsed, would soon rally to the attack, and their numbers con- 
 stantly swell by those who would join them. On he went, allow- 
 ing his men no refreshment after the battle. For many miles they 
 travelled without food, until, hunger oppressing them, they de- 
 clared that they might as well die by the red men's bullets as by 
 famine. At length, upon crossing a stream in New Chester, 
 Lieutenant Baker, finding it useless to try to proceed further, 
 ordered a halt, and the men prepared to refresh themselves. 
 While building the fires to cook their food, the friendly Indian 
 who had acted as guide proposed a stratagem by which the war- 
 riors when they came up would be deceived, in regard to the 
 number of men in Lieutenant Baker's marching party. He told 
 each one to build as many fires as he possibly could in a given 
 time, and in roasting the meat to use several forks about the same 
 piece; then, when they were done, to leave an equal number 
 around each fire. This advice was followed, and after enjoying a 
 hasty meal they again moved swiftly on. 
 
 The Indian warriors, coming up shortly after, found the fires 
 still burning ; they counted the array of forks, and being alarmed 
 at the supposed number of the English they whooped a retreat, 
 and Baker and his men were no more annoyed by them on their 
 return. 
 
 "Without the loss of a man. Lieutenant Baker and his march- 
 ing party hurried down the Merrimack river to Dunstable, and on 
 th-s 8th of May, 1712, made application in Boston for the bounty. 
 They brought but one scalp, yet claimed pay for many more, as 
 they believed they had killed several Indians, but were unable to 
 
 * These trophies were kept among Captain Baker's descendants for many years. 
 Long alterwaras he used to sliow them to the Indians ; they would slied tears and 
 make gestures as though they would sometime kill liim when war once more arose, 
 s^ Genealogical Register. 
 
THE LAST OF THE PBMIGEWASSETTS, 85 
 
 get their scalps. The governor and council heard this statement 
 and allowed them twenty pounds, or pay for two scalps, and 
 wages for the Lieutenant and company from the 24th of March, 
 to the 16th of May, 1712.* 
 
 But this did not satisfy Lieutenant Thomas Baker and his 
 men. They drew up a petition and presented the evidence of the 
 Indians themselves, and on "Wednesday, June 11th, were allowed 
 twenty pounds additional for two more Indians proved to have 
 been killed. Captain Baker, in addition to a promotion in rank, 
 also received another honor. The stream on which the battle 
 commenced, and called by the Indians the " Asquamchumauke,"t 
 has ever since been known as Baker river. 
 
 On the retreat of the. Indians they visited the battle-field and 
 looked with sorrow on the once proud forms of their brothers. 
 After burying their dead, they went to the place of their formerly 
 beautiful village. Through fear the survivors had not collected, 
 and, as the warriors approached, their hearts were filled with 
 emotions far difierent from those which. but a few hours before 
 possessed them. All was ruin. 
 
 " No wigwam smoke is curling there, 
 The very earth is scorched and hare ; 
 And they pause and listea to catch a sound 
 Of breathing life, hut there comes not one — 
 Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound — 
 And here and there on the blackening ground 
 White bones are glisteniijg in the sun." 
 
 Here, too, the last sad offices were performed to departed 
 
 shades. This done, they erected a few temporary wigwams,' and 
 
 gradually the fugitives who had fled from the assault of the Eng- 
 
 Allowed to 
 
 Thos. Baker's 
 
 Company. 
 
 *"Eesolved that the sum of Ten pounds be allowed and paid 
 out of the Public Treasury to Thomas Baker, commander of a 
 company of marching forces in taie late expedition against the 
 enemy to Coos and from thence to the west branch of the Merri- 
 mack river and so to Dunstable, in behalf of himself and com- 
 pany, for one enemy Indian, besides that wliich they scalped, 
 which seems so very probable to be slain. 
 
 Consented to, J. Dudley." 
 (■" Wednesday, June 11th, 1712. 
 Additional Upon reading a petition trom Lieut. Thomas Baker, commander 
 
 allowance to of a party in a late expedition to Coos and over to Merrimack 
 Lieut. Thos.Ba- riverj praying for a further allowance for more of the Indian ene- 
 ker & Cora- J my killed by them than they could recover or their scalps, as re- 
 pany for ) ported by the enemy themselves. 
 scalps. ConcuiTCd with a resolve passed thereon, viz : That the sum of 
 
 twenty pounds be allowed and paid out of the Public Treasury 
 to the petitioner and Company. 
 I. Consented to, J. Dudley." 
 
 — Journal of the Mass. Legislature for 1712. 
 
 ■f Asc[Uamchumauke is from Asguam, water, Wadchu, mo\mt.am, and Auke,— 
 mountain-water-place. 
 
»b HISTORY ON WAEKEN. 
 
 lish were gathered together. A few days later the remainder of 
 their tribe joined them, and after a long council it was decided to 
 unite with the Arosagunticooks, or 8t. Fi'ancis Indians, as many 
 other eastern tribes were doing. It was hard to leave their pleas- 
 ant hunting grounds, but stern necessity compelled them, and in a 
 few days those dear and sacred places were solitary and deserted. 
 A few of the tribe remained about the shores and islands of 
 Squam lake, occasionally visiting Lake "Winnepisseogee, and there 
 dwelt, a passive people, until the settling of the towns around them. 
 Thus the Pemigewassett country, including the beautiful valley 
 of "Warren, once possessed by a brave people, became a solitude, 
 and for many years after was seldom visited, save by a few white 
 hunters, or straggling bands of hostile St. Francis, on their way 
 to or from the English frontiers. 
 
4.'.: 
 
 ^^*.a 
 
 ■P.!4 
 
 
BOOK 11. 
 
 TREATING OP INDIAN FIGHTS AND MASSACRES, EXPEDITIONS AND 
 EXPLORATIONS, RESULTING IN OPENING TO THE WHITE MAN 
 THE LAND OF THE PEMIGEWASSETTS, AND MAKING THE VALLEY 
 NOW CALLED WARREN — AND ALL THE ADJACENT COUNTRY — 
 A SAFE PLACE TO LIVE IN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF TWO WARS AND MORE THAN A DOZEN BATTLES. 
 
 In the previous book we have shown how the Indians were 
 dispossessed of our beautiful Asquamchumauke valley. But the 
 driving out of the red men did not render the land a safe place 
 for white people. Hunters and frontiermen equally were liable to 
 have their soalps taken off, or daylight made to shine through 
 them by a bullet, and in order that this history may be complete, 
 it will be necessary to relate the whole series of remarkable events 
 that opened to the hardy settlers our woodland paradise. Conse- 
 quently this second book must be one of general history, applying 
 alike to a large section of country of which the little territory of 
 Warren is the centre. 
 
 Now, in the first place, we have seen how all the Nipmucks 
 of New Hampshire had gone to Canada, except a few called 
 Pequawkees, and the Amariscoggins, and that these Nipmuck 
 braves in Canada formed a considerable part of the great Arosa- 
 gunticook tribe, sometimes known as the 8t. Francis Indians. 
 
88 HISTOET OF WAEEEN. 
 
 But under another name the Nipmucks had not forgotten the 
 wrongs which they fancied the English had done them, and their 
 priests, the French Jesuits, helped to keep their recollection fresh 
 upon these subjects ; for the Jesuits hated the Protestant English. 
 So when, in 1723, Bang "Williams' war was about to break out, our 
 Indians began to annoy their English neighbors, " killing their 
 cattle, burning their stacks of hay, and robbing and insulting 
 them." 
 
 In 1724 two men, Nathan Cross and Thomas Blanchard, were 
 taken captive at Old Dunstable, now Nashua, and started towards 
 Canada. Ten brave men went out in pursuit, under the direction 
 of Lieut. French, and were all killed beside the Merrimack river, 
 at Thornton Ferry, except Josiah Farwell, who took to his heels 
 and escaped. 
 
 Everybody was terribly excited at this, and the famous 
 Captain Lovewell raised a scout of thirty men and started north 
 into the woods for revenge. He also wanted a slight bounty of a 
 hundred pounds per scalp for every Indian he could kill. "With 
 his company he marched beyond Lake Winnepisseogee to the 
 Pemigewassett country, up towards the land to be called Warren, 
 and discovered an Indian wigwam in which was a man and a boy. 
 
 December 19th, 1724, they killed and scalped the man, and 
 brought the boy alive to Boston, where they received the promised 
 reward of two hundred pounds, and the Massachusetts Legislature 
 kindly gave them a gratuity of two shillings and sixpence per man 
 by way of encouragement. 
 
 By reason of this success Captain John Lovewell's party was 
 augmented to seventy. They marched again in midwinter, visited 
 the Pemigewassett land, found the dead body of the Indian they 
 had before scalped still lying in the wigwam, and then turned off 
 eastwardly towards the country of the Pequawkees. About 
 the middle of February the Captain discovered the trail of a party 
 of Indians, fresh upon the war-path. 
 
 February 20th, the tracks becoming fresher, the scout marched 
 with more wariness some five miles on, and came upon a wig- 
 wam but lately deserted, and pursuing " two miles further discov- 
 ered their smokes." This was near sunset, and the Indians were 
 encamped for the night. Lovewell's party laid in concealment till 
 
KING- WILLIAM'S WAK. 09 
 
 after midnight, 'when they advanced and discovered ten Indians 
 asleep round a large fire hy the side of a frozen pond. 
 
 Lovewell now determined to make sure work, and placing 
 his men conveniently, ordered a part of them to fire — five at a 
 time, as quick after each other as possible — and another part to 
 reserve their fire. He gave the signal by firing his own gun which 
 killed two of them ; the men, firing according to order, killed five 
 more upon the spot ; the other three starting up from their sleep, 
 two of them were immediately shot dead by the reserve. The 
 other, though wounded, attempted to escape by crossing the pond, 
 but was seized by a dog and held fast till they killed him.* 
 
 Then the brave company, with the ten scalps stretched on 
 hoops and elevated on poles, entered Dover in triumph and pro- 
 ceeded thence to Boston, where they received the bounty of one 
 hundred pounds for each out of the public treasury. 
 
 This success was hailed with joy and triumph throughout the 
 Provinces. Other expeditions were immediately set on foot. 
 Captain Samuel "Willard, with forty-seven able-bodied men, went 
 up the Pemigewassett river and looked up the Asquamchumauke. 
 He was gone thirty-five days, but did not find an Indian. Captain 
 Jabez Fairbanks also traversed the whole country south of the 
 White mountains, and went up the Asquamchumauke valley even 
 to Coos, but with no better luck. Colonel Tyng, of Dunstable, 
 also headed an expedition, and marched into the country betwixt 
 Pemigewassett and Winnepisseogee, but after a month's absence 
 returned without taking a scalp. 
 
 Lovewell was greatly elated with his success. He raised 
 another company and boldly marched through the southerly por- 
 tion of the Pemigewassett country towards Pequawket to obtain a 
 few Pequawkee scalps. Paugus was chief of the tribe, and his 
 
 name was a terror to the frontier. 
 
 " 'Twas Paugiis led the Pequ'k't tribe; 
 As runa the Ibx, would Paugus run; 
 . As howls the wild woll' would he howl; 
 ,A huge bear-skin had Paugus on." 
 
 On Friday, May 7th, 1726, they had reached the Saco river, 
 
 * These Indians were marching trom Canada, well furnished with new guns 
 and plenty of amunition, they had also a large number of spai'e blankets, mocka- 
 seens, aud snow shoes for the prisoners whom they expected to take, and were 
 within two days' march of the frontiers. The pond by which this exploit was per- 
 formed has ever since borne the name of Lorewell's pond.— Bellmap, 200. 209. 
 
 Penhallow adds : " Their arms were so good and new that most of them were 
 
90 HISTORY or WAEEEN. 
 
 and on the morning of the 8th (May 19th new style) Ensign "Wy- 
 man discovered an Indian on a stony point of land running into 
 a pond from the east. He had in one hand some black ducks he 
 had just killed, and in the other two guns. The Indian, seeing 
 death was his fate, as quick as thought levelled his gun, flred, and 
 Lovewell fell badly wounded. Ensign "Wyman, taking deliberate 
 aim, shot the poor hunter, and he was scalped by the chaplain. 
 The latter had been very anxious for the conflict, and in the morn- 
 ing thus patriotically prayed : " We came out to meet the enemy ; 
 we have all along prayed God we might find them ; we had rather 
 trust Providence with our lives, yea, die for our country, than tiy 
 to return without seeing them, if we might, and be called cowards 
 for our pains." 
 
 In the meantime Paugus with eighty Indians was watching 
 the English, and when the latter marched again by the way they 
 came, to recover their packs, he prepared an ambush to cut them 
 off or take them prisoners, as fortune should will. 
 
 When these Indians rose from their coverts they nearly encir- 
 cled the English, and at first offered to give the latter quarter. 
 This only encouraged Lovewell and his men, who answered: 
 " Quarter only at the muzzles of our guns 1" and then, rushing 
 towards the Indians, fired and killed several of them. But they 
 soon rallied, iiwfced the English to retreat, and killed nine of them, 
 Captain Lovewell with the rest. 
 
 The party then retreated to the shore of the pond, where they 
 had a brook on the right, a pile of large boulders on the left, and 
 to the north and front of them a swamp partly filled with water, 
 forming a long, narrow peninsula, only accessible from the plain 
 at the westerly extremity, over the pile of rocks. Here they 
 fought all day long. At one time the Indians ceased firing and 
 drew off among the pines at a little distance to pow-wow over 
 their success. They had got earnestly engaged in the ceremony, 
 dancing, jumping, howling, and beating the ground — in a word, 
 pow-wowing , — when the intrepid "Wyman crept up behind the 
 
 sold for seven pounds apiece, and each of them had two blankets, with a great 
 many mocoasona, which were supposed to he for the supply of captives that tliey 
 expected to have taken. The plunder was but a few skins : but during tlie march 
 our men were well entertained with moose, bear, and deer, together with salmon 
 trout, some of which were three feet long, and weighed twelve pouuda apiece." — 
 N. H. BUst. Col. vol. i. 113. 
 
lovewell's fight. 91 
 
 rocks and trees and fired upon the principal actor, killing him on 
 the spot. This man was supposed to be the celebrated chief, 
 "Wahowa. 
 
 The flght was then renewed and continued with greater 
 earnestness. Towards night John Chamberlin and Paugus both 
 went down to the pond at the same moment to wash out their 
 guns. They knew each othier, agreed to finish washing, and to 
 commence to load at the same time. In loading, Paugus got the 
 advantage ; his ball was so small as to roll down the barrel, while 
 Chamberlin had to force his down with his rod. Paugus, seeing 
 his advantage, quickly said, "Me kill yon!" and took up his gun 
 to prime. Chamberlin threw down his rod, and bringing the 
 breech of his gun a smart blow upon the bard sand, brought it to 
 his face and fired. Paugus fell pierced through the heart. Cham- 
 berlin's gun, being worn from long use, ptHmed itself, and the 
 knowledge of this saved the bold hunter's life. 
 
 Then the battle gradually ceased, ^nd at midnight all who 
 were able began to retreat. Lovewell went into the flght with 
 thirty-four men, but only fourteen ever lived to reach home. 
 More Indians than English were killed, and a party of fifty, who 
 went to this most terrible battle-field of Indian wars, found and 
 buried Captain Lovewell and many of his brave soldiers who had 
 died beside him. They also found and opened the grave of 
 Paugus. After this the Indians resided no more at Pequawket. 
 
 King "William's war closed soon after the opening of these in- 
 teresting adventures, and then the wilderness — hereafter to be 
 called "Warren — was solitary enough for a score of years, being 
 visited only by huntei's and trappers, Englishmen and Indians, 
 hostile and friendly by turns. 
 
 But in 1745 King George's war broke out, and then began 
 another scries of interesting adventures and great Indian cam- 
 paigns, the history of which every son of our town of "Warren 
 ought to know, because it relates some of the great events which 
 produced such happy results. ' 
 
 The first of these grand campaigns in our wild solitudes took 
 place in "King George's "War" shortly after the fall of Louisburg, 
 the Dunkirk of America, iu 1746, and when Benning "Wentworth 
 was the royal governor of New Hampshire. The French were 
 
92 HISTORY OP WAEREN. 
 
 Mghly exasperated to think that their strong fortress had been 
 captured by a few rough woodsmen under Colonel Pepperell, or 
 as they felt, " Colonel Pepper-them-well," and they immediately 
 resorted to their old method of warfare, to wit : to send a few of 
 their very gentle "salvages," to "scrape" a slight acquaintance 
 with the English borderers, and tp form, a lasting friendship by 
 sealing it in a gentle effusion of blood. 
 
 Governor Wentworth and his wise counsellors had a sort of a 
 presentiment, founded, like most other presentiments, on very 
 logical premises, that such might be the case, and so sent a ga^Tison 
 to Captain Jeremiah Clough's fort, in Canterbury. But the In- 
 dians, like deer,, scented the fort a long distance, slyly hied 'down 
 the Connecticut, and at the great meadow, now "Walpole, kindly 
 removed one "William Phipps ffom all trouble in this world, taking 
 only his scalp as a reward for their services, and then proceeding 
 to upper Ashuelot, now Keene, there feloniously and wilfully and 
 of malice aforethought committed the same outrage upon one 
 James Fisher. 
 
 As no one, pursued them to wreak revenge, the courage of the 
 Frenchman's humane allies, our Nipmucks, greatly increased. 
 That very season they went down the Merrimack on campaign 
 number two. They did not trouble themselves to visit the fort at 
 Canterbury, thinking it too bad to disturb the garrison there of 
 its quiet and repose. Near Suncook they thought to relieve the 
 monotony of their life by a little miscellaneous practice at target 
 shooting. Accordingly they found a couple of suitable marks in 
 the persons of James McQuade and John Burns, of Bedford, who 
 had been to Pennacook, now Concord, to procure corn, and were 
 returning home. McQuade was shot dead; but Burns, running 
 zigzag, and the Indians not being able to shoot round a corner, 
 escaped. The Indians were off to Canada before this great battle 
 was reported. 
 
 "When the news of this brilliant campaign reached Portsmouth 
 it is said Governor "Wentworth gnashed his teeth and stamped Ms 
 foot. "How dared the haughty foe to pass the impregnable for- 
 tress at Canterbury?" But he would meet them on their own 
 ground, that is, in the woods. The order was given, a company 
 of men was enlisted, and Captain John Goffe, of Harrytown, was 
 
KING GEORGE'S WAK. 93 
 
 detached by Coloiiel Blanchard to command the hazardous expedi- 
 tion. His company of thirty-four men was selected from the 
 large number who presented themselves. None were enrolled hut 
 such as were noted for courage and sagacity. The first of January 
 they started up the Merrimack on a scout. How far they went 
 we were never able to learn. Whether they proceeded as far as 
 Coos is very doubtful. "We cannot tell, though we wish we could, 
 whether they even went as far as the forks of the Merrimack, 
 where the golden salmon in the springs of olden time are said to 
 have parted company with the shad ; all we know is that they 
 scouted valiantly all the long winter, with excellent success at — 
 scouting; but not discovering even so much as one of the 
 moccasin footprints of the enemy, April 6th, 1746, they disbanded. 
 But the chiefs who led the renowned-war parties in the campaigns 
 of the previous season were heroes in the eyes of their own little 
 Arosagunticook nation at home, and many a brave fellow who 
 had rested on soft furs in his smoky wigwam all winter, now 
 stimulated by an abundant supply of " French pap," was burning 
 for deeds of glory. 
 
 Down through the wild Coos, about which the snowy moun- 
 tains were gleaming, they came on the run. Over the highlands 
 and down the Asquamchumauke they hurried, and on April 26th, 
 1746, like the crafty crusader, Bohemond, at the siege of Antioch, 
 contrived "to enter an open door of the garrison house in New 
 Hopkinton, now minus the "New,'' and plain Hopkinton. They 
 found all the people fast asleep, and easily took as prisoners Sam- 
 uel Burbank, his sons Caleb and Jonathan, Daniel "Wordwell, Ms 
 wife, and three children, Benjamin, Thomas, and Mary. 
 
 This splendid victory was the crowning achievment of cam- 
 paign number four. But a more blood-thirsty army, numbering 
 three braves, took Timothy Brown and one Mr. Moffatt prisoners, 
 at Lower Ashuelot, killed Seth Putnam at Number Four, and 
 made campaign number five full as brilliant as any other. 
 
 New Hampshire was now in a terrible state of alarm. There 
 was ruuning and riding through all the wild border. The stout- 
 est heart beat faster at the slightest noise after dark. Women 
 turned pale at the shriek of the night hawk, or at the bark of the 
 watch dog, and the naughtiest child in all the province, affrighted, 
 
94 HISTOET OP ■WAEREN. 
 
 would cower stiirat its mother's side at the bare name of Indian. 
 Captain Goffe, who was really a brave officer, of good ability, 
 was ordered to the frontier with a company of fifty men. In a 
 sorrowful yet firm letter, written from Pennacook to Governor 
 "Wentworth, he complained of the lurking ambuscade tactics of 
 the Indian enemy. But although he could not see the wisdom of 
 their movements, we of a later day can admire the skill and 
 bravery of the Arosagunticooks as much as the oblique move- 
 ments of Epaminondas, the new Greek fire, or the harrow-shaped 
 columns which Napoleon hurled with such terrible effect on his 
 foes. 
 
 Captain Goffe marched up the Merrimack, scouted along the 
 Pemigewassett, looked up the Asquamchumauke, visited all the 
 great " camping places •' in the adjacent country, and returned by 
 Lake Wiunepisseogee. J^ot an Indian could he find. But Gov- 
 ernor Wentworth was not to be thus thwarted by his very open 
 enemy that skulked through the woods. A very brilliant idea 
 took possession of his head. " To train in the troop has always 
 been considered about as good as to join the church," and . 
 the worthy Governor thought it very proper to patronize the 
 horse companies. So he ordered detachments of Captain Odlin's 
 and Captain Hanson's cavalry to proceed immediately to relieve 
 the forts at New Hopkinton and Canterbury. Prompt to respond, 
 the brave mounted men went up the east bank of the Merrimack. 
 Like a sweeping avalanche they rush on. No common obstacle 
 could check their swift, wild march. "Without a particle of doubt 
 the blight sun of the second morn would see them debouch from 
 the forest and with their glittering trappings rein up their pranc- 
 ing steeds, champing upon the impatient bit, before the massive 
 gate of the strong fortress of Canterbury. But how uncertain 
 are the things of this world. This brilliant expedition was des- 
 tined to be a sad failure. The gallant troopers slackened their 
 headlong course on the banks of the broad, deep Suncook river, 
 the breadth of which to-day is about fifty long feet, and the dark 
 depth about eighteen inches. No bridge spanned the surging 
 flood, and to ford it was impossible. For hours they attempted to 
 overcome this great barrier of nature, but in vain, and they were 
 forced to return on their trail. At a meeting of the Legislature 
 
INDIAN mCDKSIONS. 95 
 
 the Honorable Governor recommended that a bridge be constructed 
 across the mighty river. But though the cavah-y companies made 
 a glorious return, yet that the Indians might be thoroughly con- 
 quered, Captain Samuel Barr, of Londonderry, was also sent 
 north with nineteen men. He was out nineteen days, and met 
 with the same brilliant success as the other bold captains. As 
 New Hampshire would in no manner be behind her sister colonies, 
 a large number of soldiers were raised, to join a great expedition 
 to Canada. In after years it was known as the Honorable Gov. 
 Shirley's Quixotic success. As the expedition was a heavy body, 
 and slow to start, the soldiers were sent into quarters on the shore 
 of Lake 'Wiunepisseogee, where they were to fight the Indians. 
 But, instead of long marches through the pleasant solitudes they 
 enjoyed themselves immensely, hunting and fishing on the shore 
 of the beautiful lake — but not an Indian was seen.' 
 
 Notwithstanding all this marshalling in battle array, the St. 
 Francis braves, now including the entire Nipmuck nation and 
 some other savages, gallantly accomplished campaign number six. 
 June 27th they fought a successful battle at Kochester, with five 
 Englishmen, who were at work in a field. The Indians sent out 
 one of their number as a decoy, who drew the flre of the enemy. 
 They then charged upon their white!_foe and drove them with the 
 blunt points of their muskets into a deserted house. Here the 
 white men long held them in check ; but with true Indian cun- 
 ning they unroofed the house and then coolly shot and killed Joseph 
 Hurd, Joseph Eichards, John "Wentworth, and Gersham Downs. 
 John Richards, the only survivor, was taken prisoner. Reclining 
 for a short time upon a sloping bank, beneath a shady tree, in 
 which forest songsters warbled war-pseans in honor of their glori- 
 ous triumph, they recover their exhausted energies. Then, as the 
 sun bids good-bye to the fl.ashing zenith, the brave war-party rush 
 upon another company of laborers in a field near by. Again 
 glorious victory pei'ches on their banners, but the spoils were less. 
 All the English escaped except one poor lad named Jonathan Dooi-. 
 Long before night the Indians, with scalps and prisoners, returned 
 to the fastnesses of the deep wood. 
 
 Madam Rumor, with her thousand tongues, circulated an 
 account of this campaign in double-quick time. 
 
96 HISTORY OP WARREN. 
 
 New Hampshire men again flew to arms, Capt. Nathaniel 
 Drake, of Hampton, was ordered out, "withfifteenof his troopers 
 to scout at and about aSTottingham, fitted with their horses for 
 fourteen days." Capt. Andrew Todd, of Londonderry, with 
 twenty-three men, flew to Canterbury. Capt. Daniel Ladd, of 
 Exeter, with a company of foot, ranged the woods by Massabesic 
 lake to Pennacook, and returning scouted across the country to 
 Nottingham ; as usual, though scouting valiantly, not an enemy 
 was discovered. 
 
 By the first of August, Capt. Drake's brave troopers were at 
 home again, having sweat themselves and horses terribly doing 
 nothing. Capt. Todd had returned even before this, and Capt. 
 Ladd had dismissed his men until August fifth. 
 
 August tenth the Indians came to Pennacook, but Capt. Ladd 
 at the same time came also. 
 
 The Indians were keen enough to discover the fact, but Capt. 
 Ladd did not, consequently the former grew very religious, and 
 resolved not to fight, as it was the Sabbath. In this they did 
 difierently from many other great military peoples, who have 
 improved this day for battle. The Indians retired into a deep 
 black wood for solemn meditation. 
 
 The following day, Monday, they were fresh for the contest. 
 They made a snug little ambush on the path leading from Penna- 
 cook to Hopkinton. It was about half a mile from the church 
 which they did not attack the previous day. When a portion of 
 Capt. Ladd's company came along, rather irregularly, the Indians 
 gave them a warm welcome. Daniel Goodman had gone forward 
 to fire at a hawk, which sat on a dry stub by the path. Obadiah 
 Peters was resting under the rustling leaves of a poplar tree, while 
 the rest of the party behind walked leisurely up. "With the war- 
 whoop ringing, and the echo of the musketry reverberating from 
 the distant hills, the smoke curled slowly away through the trees, 
 and showed five men, drenching the mossy hillside with their 
 blood. Lieut. Jonathan Bradley, Samu-el Bradley, John LufFkin, 
 John Bean, and Obadiah Peters were dead ; but the quick eye of 
 the Lieutenant had caught sight of the Indians, and he killed, 
 before he received his death wound, the only Indian that fell 
 during this great war. 
 
MOKE INDIAN CAMPAIGNS. 97 
 
 With their dead comrade buried, howling and yelling, with the 
 scalps, and two prisoners, this hrave wild war party of forty 
 Arosaguuticooks returnecl to Canada. 
 
 In the language of one of the first historians of the times, this 
 campaign produced "dire consternation throughout all the province. 
 New Hampshii-e armed herself in her might." She was deter- 
 mined to defend herself. In the way she did it, she won an imper- 
 ishable glory. Forts and block houses sprung up all along the 
 frontier, a garrison was placed in each, and at the head of Little 
 Bay, in the present town of Sanbornton, Fort Atkinson was built 
 of i-ough stone, and strongly manned. If the Indians had only 
 attacked one of these, there is no doubt but that a most gallant 
 defence would have been made. But that was not the Indians' 
 style ; they did not care a rush for forts, blockhouses, or garrisons. 
 In the spring of 1747, they opened another brilliant campaign, 
 the eighth. On the morning of May 10th, they fell upon two men 
 at Suncook ; one they killed and scalped, the other escaped. At 
 night they flred upon four others, but, much to their chagrin, 
 missed them. By this time the settlers had all got snugly inside 
 the garrison house, and the Indians not believing anything was to 
 be made by attacking it, very quietly decamped. A few days, 
 afterwards scouts pursued them, as usual, and with the usual 
 success. 
 
 Campaign the ninth was disastrous to the Indians. They 
 approached Pennacook, and this time a scout did actually discover 
 them. But they were off like a smoke in a high wind, leaving all 
 their vast military train, to wit: things stolen, provision bags, 
 ropes for the prisoners, and blankets, in the possession of the 
 English. 
 
 Campaign the tenth was more successful. August 21st, they 
 took the house of Charles McCoy, in Epsom, captnved Mrs. McCoy, 
 stole all the apples off a single tree that composed their orchard, 
 burned the house, and then cleared for Canada by Coos interval 
 and Lake Champlain. Away went the English scouts after them, 
 with the same glorious success as ever. 
 
 Campaign eleventh was an attack on Hinsdale. They killed 
 several, took a number of prisoners, and achieved a splendid vic- 
 tory, without any scout to pursue them, 
 
98 HISTOKY OP WAHBEN. 
 
 Campaign twelfth they grew so heroic, on account of previous 
 success, that they even besieged Number Four, and somehow man- 
 aged to take several prisoners. 
 
 These were the great campaigns .of 1745-6-7. In 1748 there 
 was a little skirmishing with the enemy's pickets. Several men 
 were frightened, and possibly a few might have been hurt. But 
 the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle put an end to the war, and the brave 
 Arosagunticooks buried the tomahawk. 
 
 This border war was a source of great suffering to the English, 
 as well as mortification. Many of their number had fallen, and 
 many were pining in captivity. The Indians had the advantage in 
 the whole contest. But one of their number had been killed, and 
 they never had returned to Canada but once without a scalp or a 
 captive. The Arosagunticooks knew well where to find the Eng- 
 lish. The latter, brave as their painted enemy, looked in vain for 
 Indians. Like the Persians advancing on the Hellespont, the In- 
 dians were well acquainted with the country they had to pass. 
 The English scouting parties, like the Greeks, dare not venture 
 across the great wild solitudes of our beloved Pemigewassett land, 
 which stretched between themselves and the home of their enemy. 
 Captain Baker and Captain John Lovewell had fought the Indians 
 valiantly on their own ground, and could Captain Gofie have been 
 as successful iu finding them he would have fought equally as 
 well. But he and the other brave captains had wholly failed of 
 meeting them, and consequently could not fight them, and they 
 now retired to their farms with about as much glory, and feeling 
 about as well, as the noble lion in his lair stung half to death, 
 while all his despicable enemies, the wasps, were uninjured. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL SOLITUDE; AND HOW THERE WAS AN ATTEMPT TO 
 BUELD TWO FORTS ABOVE THE PEMIGEWASSETT COUNTRY, AND 
 WHAT CAME OP IT. 
 
 A few years now passed, and a deeper shade filled the 
 solitudes — the wilds of the Asqnamchwmauke — or, as modern 
 civilians delight to term it, Baker river, once the land of the Pem- 
 igewassett Indians. True it is that down by the grass-grown 
 intervals of Coos, where the Connecticut sweeps around the great 
 oxbow, then up the Indian trail by the wild, roistering Oliverian 
 brook, marauding parties of the French and Indians from St. 
 Francis, Canada, occasionally travelled ; but when they had gone 
 back the solitudes grew grimmer, and eveiy thing would have 
 been still as chaos and old night, but for the lowing of the antlered 
 moose and the howling of the wolf and panther. 
 
 This land of the Pemigewassetts, which included the little 
 territory of "Warren, together with the whole upper country once 
 inhabited by the Coosucks, our solitudes, was now debateable 
 ground, claimed both by^ the English and St. Francis Indians. 
 Scouts and captives who had been there said it was a delightful 
 region, and the old soldiers of Captain Baker deecanted wonder- 
 fully upon its being a perfect paradise ; and now that King 
 George's war was over, Nevr Hampshire men began to have 
 extraordinary desires for obtaining it. Besides, it was a great 
 strategic point, worth having if another war should arise ; for the 
 meadows of lower Coos had been a sort of a rendezvous for (he 
 Arosagunticook Indians, from which, in the wars just mentioned, 
 they had sallied forth down either the Connecticut or Merrimacl? 
 
100 HISTOKY OF WARKEN. 
 
 rivers. Consequently the public mind was greatly roused, the 
 attention of all was turned towards possessing this upper country, 
 in the exact centre of which was our little mountain valley, War- 
 ren, and a pleasant series of most entertainiug adventures was 
 carried on for the accomplishment of that purpose, as we shall 
 endeavor most faithfulh' to show. 
 
 The first thing that happened, as we have just intimated, was 
 an immense amount of talking. Then a petition, numerously 
 signed, was presented to the General Assembly of New Hamp- 
 shire. It prayed that a road might be surveyed and cut from 
 Bakerstown, a settlement that had been pushed far up on the 
 frontier, to the Coos intervals, and that two forts might be built, 
 one on each side of the Connecticut, for the benefit of settlers and 
 the protection of the lower country. The General Assembly was 
 deeply interested, and the Governor and Council most favorably 
 disposed. They had frcjtted and fumed through King George's 
 war, and now they were ready and willing to do almost anything 
 to keep back the dire and savage Arosagunticooks, and increase 
 the number of settlements and subjects. 
 
 Numerous plans for settling this upper country, building and 
 garrisoning forts, were presented. Finally in the winter of 1752, 
 the following very nice one was agreed upon : 
 
 A tract of land on Connecticut river was to be laid out into 
 five hundred suitable portions. It was then to be granted to five 
 hundred brave men. The conditions of the grant were- that they 
 should pay a small quit-rent and should occupy the lands imme- 
 diately. 
 
 Furthermore, two townships should be laid out, one on each 
 side of the river. A regular garrison should be built in each of 
 them. The latter should encompass fifteen or more acres of land, 
 in a square or parallelogram form. A line should be drawn 
 around their area, just as the ancients marked oat their cities, 
 and on it were to be built log hous°fes, at considerable distances 
 apart — and a log house was certainly to be erected at each corner. 
 The spaces between the houses were to be filled up with a palisade 
 of square timbers, making a wall so strong and high that the 
 nimble Arosagunticooks should not be nimble enough to leap over 
 it, even if they should be foolish enough to make the attempt. 
 
BUILDING AIR CASTLES. 101 
 
 111 the centre of this great square, and npon a rising plat of 
 ground, if such could be found, was to be built a strong and im- 
 pregnable citadel, such as the Greeks "and Persians were in the 
 habit of building within their cities. Here should be the granary 
 of the colony, and here should be the last refuge of the inhabitants, 
 if they should be driven from the outer enclosure. "Within hailing 
 distance on each bank of the noble river, either fortification was 
 to assist the other, in case of an emergency. 
 
 As an addenda to the above brilliant plan, a form of govern- 
 ment was prescribed. Courts were to be establishied, and justice 
 and equity were to be administered in all civil causes. That 
 everything might go smoothly, and that there might not be the 
 least possible chance for jar or discord, the governor-general of 
 these already renowned fortresses was to have the power to pro- 
 claim martial law at any time, and to put every inhabitant under 
 strict military discipline. The above plan having been matured 
 and decided upon, a committee was immediately chosen to carry 
 it into effect. This committee was composed of resolute and ener- 
 getic men. They quickly made all necessary arrangments. Part- 
 ings were hastily taken with kind friends and families, for it was 
 a hazardous enterprise upon which they were entering, and each 
 hurried to the rendezvous at Bakerstown, from which place they 
 were to make the desperate attempt to penetrate the dark soli- 
 tudes of the to them hitherto unexplored north. 
 
 It was a bright day when they set out. Old Winter had just 
 taken up his march to the double-quick-time tune of " The hot 
 sun's a coming," and all nature was bursting into life. On the 
 trees the young leaves were expanding, and the little wild-flowers 
 springing up among the gnarled roots lent a delicious fragrance to 
 the air. The birds carolled in the branches, making merry music 
 to cheer the woodsmen, or rather -the committee-men, as they 
 pushed their canoes up the Merrimack, toted them round the falls 
 of the Pemigewassett, and with setting poles drove them up the 
 "rips" of the Asquamohumauke. 
 
 Suffice it to say, that they must have left them in the shoal 
 head waters of the stream and then toiled slowly through the 
 woods by the old Indian trail across our valley to the Connecticut. 
 
 Here they rested themselves, as men naturally would, looked 
 
102 HISTORY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 over the land on the eastern bank of the broad stream, and then, 
 crossing to the western shore, ascended the rocky bluff to obtain 
 a better view of the country. Although rough woodsmen, they 
 could not have been insensible to the magnificence of the scene. 
 At their feet the Connecticut wound like a band of silver through 
 a seeming garden. Noble elms grew upon the river banks. Be- 
 neath their shade the wild deer sported and with their mottled 
 fawns beside them cropped the luxuriant herbage. A mighty 
 forest just clothing itself in young verdure covered the lesser hills 
 of New Hampshire, while far in the distance the great peaks of 
 the Haystacks shot up into the transparent ether. To the south, 
 the long, swelling summit of Moosilauke, still flecked with snow- 
 fields, lay mirroring itself in the blue heaven. They also noted 
 where the streams came down from the highlands and entered the 
 river; where lay the broadest and richest intervals, and where the 
 rising xilats of ground afforded the best sites for their forts. 
 
 Descending from the eminence that commanded such an en- 
 chanting scene, and was also so serviceable in showing the natural 
 facilities of the country, they selected the places for the forts and 
 located the townships. This done, and their provisions being 
 nearly spent, they hurried back to their canoes and fioated rapidly 
 down stream through the woods to the settlements. 
 
 They gave so flattering an account of the beauty, richness, and 
 fertility of the intervals that four hundred men were immediately 
 enlisted to settle this paradise of New England. Active prepara- 
 tions for the journey to this upper country were commenced, and 
 another autumn bid fair to have seen two forts gleaming witrf 
 bayonets on the banks of the Connecticut. 
 
 But how illusory are the plans of men. The Indians had 
 watched the acts of the committee with a jealous eye. Like men 
 of common sense, they judged the loss of their planting grounds 
 would be a serious evil. To counteract it and to preserve their 
 lands they commenced what was to themselves an entertaining 
 series of hostilities — but which meant death or captivity for the 
 poor whites. "We shall now endeavor to show how the migratory 
 would-be English colonists were for a time thwarted, and that 
 part of our pleasant land of the Pemigewassetts now called War- 
 ren hindered from being settled. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 GIVING AST ACCOUNT OF A HUNTING PARTY ON THE ASQUAMCHUM- 
 AUKE, HOW TWO YOUNG MEN WEHE CAPTIVATED IN THE MOST 
 CAPTIVATING MANNER, CONCLUDING WITH HOW ONE GOT HIS 
 BACK TICKLED WITH THE OIL OP BIRCH, WHILE THE OTHER 
 DID NOT — MUCH TO THE DELIGHT OF ALL CONCERNED. 
 
 The Indian runner must have been fleet-footed who bore 
 the news of the committee's acts at the Coos intervals to the village 
 of the St. Francis. Like a shower of toads, an old-fashioned, 
 time-out-of-mind war party, under the generalship of Acteon,* 
 some say Francis Titagaw, others the young chief. Peer, was hop- 
 ping over the logs and stealing through the thickets which lined 
 the banks of the Asquamchumauke almost as soon as the commit- 
 tee had gone in their canoes down the Merrimack. 
 
 Now it so happened that some of those daring spirits who 
 always delight to live upon the frontier, and are never contented 
 unless, lik6 their red-skin cousins, they were strolling through the 
 woods whether it paid or not, were trapping upon the Asquam- 
 chumauke, and along a little black mountain stream in the present 
 town of Eomney. They were brave fellows every one of them, 
 and their names, as is known to all who have read the oft-told 
 story, were "William and John Stark, David Stinson, and Amos 
 Eastman. 
 
 They had come up from their homes at Amoskeag falls, and 
 had worked most industriously at trapping. They had sable, 
 
 * Acteon was a Nipnmok Indian, and married an Arosagunticook woman. He 
 was sometimes called Capt. Moses. Hewas at onetime an associate with Wahowa, 
 and was the same Indian that in his old age sometimes made his liome with Colonel 
 Obadiah Clement. 
 
 Peer was a young chief. 
 
104 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 marten, mink, and beaver traps, set on three long ranges or 
 "lines," one up Stinson brook to the head waters of the Pemige- 
 wassett, another up the "South Branch" to the water shed of 
 the Mascoma, and a third far up the Asquamchumauke to Moosil- 
 auke mountain. They had been very successful in their avocation, 
 and had gathered furs amounting to more than five hundred and 
 sixty pounds in value.* But the long days had come; corn-fields 
 and potato-patches must be improVed, and so they made ready to 
 return. Another circumstance that quickened their departure was 
 the discovery of fresh, moccasined footprints on the Indian trail. 
 
 All day long they had worked diligently in gathering their 
 traps, and on the morrow they were to break up their camp. It 
 was nearly evening. The long shadows began to steal across the 
 water, and the last rays of the setting sun were streaming full 
 upon the face of craggy Rattlesnake mountain, when John Stark, 
 who was stooping to take a steel trap from the water, was startled 
 by a sharp hiss. Jumping up he saw the Indians, and the muzzles 
 of half a dozen muskets, staring at him within three feet of his 
 head, told him that escape was hopeless. 
 
 That night he lay bound among his captors, and in the morn- 
 ing was early roused to proceed down the river, where they were 
 to lay in ambush for the rest of the hunters. The latter had 
 guessed the cause of Stark's absence, and at the earliest dawn 
 packed their furs, traps, and camp equipage into their canoe and 
 started. Eastman was upon the shore, while 'William Stark and 
 Stinson guided the frail craft as it floated down in the rapid cur- 
 rent. The Indians easily captured the former, and then bid Stark 
 hail those in the canoe, aiid invite them to come ou shore. Stark 
 complied so far as to tell them to pull to the opposite bank and 
 then run for their lives, as the Indians had got him and would 
 have them too unless they were quick in getting away. 
 
 Curses and blows fell thick upon the head of the dutiful but 
 unfrightened hunter, and then the Indians leveled their muskets 
 to fire upon the retreating men. "Not yet, my friends," said the 
 belabored Stark, as he struck up their guns at the moment of dis- 
 charge. For this he got another shower of kicks and cufis, and 
 when a second time they attempted to fire he again endeavored to 
 * Potter's Hist, of Manchester, 277. 
 
EDNNING THE GAUNTLET. 105 
 
 stop them, but not so successfully as before. Stinson was kiUed 
 in the act of leaping- upon the shore, and fell backward, his blood 
 staining the clear water. The paddle in the hand of 'William 
 Stark was shivered with bullets, but leaping from the canoe like a 
 deer he took to the woods and escaped.* 
 
 The Indians in their usually polite and gentlemanly manner 
 now wished for a slight memorial of young Stinson to take to St. 
 Francis. They crossed the stream, dragged his body ashore, dex- 
 terously took off his scalp, and after giving John Stark a sound 
 beating for his daring interference, told the two captives to take 
 up what was to them a not very agreeable march to the happy land 
 of Canada. 
 
 The first night they camped on the Coos intervals, close by 
 the Connecticut. As he lay bound between two of his captors 
 John Stark could hear the murmuring of the river and see its dark 
 waters gleaming in the moonlight, as the full orb rose slowly up 
 over the bow-backed summit of Moosilauke mountain. 
 
 It was a long march up the Connecticut, across the highlands, 
 and down the sluggish St. Francis river to the St. Lawrence. 
 Meanwhile the Indians determined that the captives should run 
 the gauntlet when they reached the village, and so to beguile the 
 way they taught Eastman and Stark a sentence in Indian, which 
 they should recite during that interesting ceremony, the tenor ot 
 which was: " I'll beat all your young men!" 
 
 On their arrival two long lines of warriors were formed, and 
 between them the captives were to run. Each warrior had a club, 
 with the right to beat the prisoner as much as he chose as he passed 
 along. To each of the runners the Indians gave a pole about six 
 feet in length upon the end of which was stretched the skin of 
 some animal. Upon Stark's was a loon skin. Eastman's turn 
 came first. When the young Indians heard him cry out, " I'll 
 beat all your young men 1 " they cudgelled him most unmercifully, 
 and he came out of the lines more dead than alive. But young 
 Stark was made of different mettle. He marched up to the start- 
 
 *When the news of the capture of Eastman and Stark reached Eumford, a 
 party was raised, who proceeded to Baker rirer, found and huried the hodj- of 
 Stinson in the woods, and brought home one of the paddles of tlie canoe, which 
 was pierced with several shot holes. It was possessed a long time hy the Virgin 
 family. 
 
 Jacob Hoyt, Esq., says that in this party were Phineas Virgin, Joseph Eastman 
 (called deacon), and Moses Eastman.— Hist, of Concord, 193. 
 
106 HISTORY OP WAEEEN. 
 
 ing point with firm step, astonished the braves with the cry, " I'll 
 kiss all your young women!" and then bounded into the lines. 
 He knocked down the first Indian he met, and continued to lay- 
 about him with so much vigor that the astonished natives suffered 
 him to pass through with scarcely a blow. 
 
 The old men were pleased at the consternation of their young 
 warriors, and so greatly admired the bravery of Stark that they 
 wished to adopt him as their chief. But the hero of Bennington 
 had no notion of passing his life in the wilds of Canada, and 
 plainly told them so. Afterwards they bid him hoe corn. He 
 complied so far as to cut it up by the roots and then throw his hoe 
 into the river, declaring that such work was fit only for squaws. 
 This only heightened their admiration for him, and they did not 
 ask him to do any more work. 
 
 Late in the autumn Captain Stevens, of Number Four, and 
 Mr. "Wheelwright, of Boston, went to St. Francis .to redeem the 
 prisoners. For Eastman they paid a ransom of sixty dollars, for 
 Stark one hundred and three dollars, showing how much higher 
 they prized the courage of the latter above the timidity of the 
 former. 
 
 They returned home by Lake Champlain and Number Four — 
 Eastman to lead the life of an industrious farmer. Stark to plan 
 and execute new hunting or trapping excursions, to procure means 
 to pay his ransom, or to serve as guide through the wilderness 
 he had explored, all of which disciplined him for achieving those 
 immortal deeds in the old French war and the Revolution. "We 
 hear of him the next summer down in the wilds of Maine, trap- 
 ping on the Androscoggin ; but previous to this he was pilot for a 
 large party which made one more attempt to explore the north 
 country, that historical land containing our mountain hamlet — 
 Warren. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOW THE SALVAGES, SABATlS AND CHKISTO, STOLE TWO NEGROES 
 FKOM THE SETTLEMENT AT CANTEKBDRY, AND THE EXCITE- 
 MENT IT caused; TOGETHER WITH A GRAND RESULT BEFORE 
 HINTED AT. 
 
 The capture of the hunters and the murder of Stinson in 
 the Pemigewassett country caused the New Hampshire people 
 considerable alarm, and communicated in fact a little palpitation 
 of the heart to the Governor himself. But, like any other nine 
 days' wonder, it soon died away. Yet quiet only reigned for a 
 moment, and then the excitement commenced again. 
 
 There were two big, burly savages, who sometimes resided at 
 St. Francis, but more often on the head waters of the Merrimack. 
 Their names were Sabatis and Christo. Like most of the Indians 
 of that degenerate Indian time they would get drunk, and then 
 would boast of their wicked deeds done in the wars. They were 
 a source of terror to the women and children, and many a time it 
 was whispered at night when the family was gathered around the 
 huge old-fashioned flre-place, where the burning logs- were glow- 
 ing, how these men, stealing from the northern solitudes, had 
 buried their tomahawks in the settlers' heads ; and how SabatiS, 
 sleeping on the hearth as he was wont, would start and groan and 
 scream, as he said his victims did. Yet the settlers treated them 
 kindly, and for some time they shared the hospitality of two men, 
 Miles and Lindsey. 
 
 Now it chanced that two negroes were living in Canterbury, 
 the property of said Miles and Lindsey, and our red-skins, not 
 having the fear of the law before their eyes, and never having 
 
108 HISTOKY OF WAKKEN. 
 
 heard the teachings of certain abolitionists who lived at a later 
 day — how wicked it was to hold black chattels in bondage — at 
 onpe experienced a strong desire to appropriate said chattels to 
 their own use. Accordingly, like other men-stealers, they imme- 
 diately began to form plans to "captivate" the negroes. 
 
 It was a bright summer morning. Men were repairing to the 
 fields, and the two would-be kidnappers started for a stroll in 
 the woods. They met the negroes, asked them to show a path 
 that led to a certain locality, and the darkies, good honest souls, 
 complied. When they were a considerable distance in the forest, 
 the Indians seized the negroes, bound their hands, fettered their 
 little heels, and then, instead of taking them down south, like 
 kidnappers of a later day, they engineered the first underground 
 railroad, and started their chattels towards Canada. 
 
 But one night, when they were far on the road, one of the 
 negroes managed to unfetter himself, and in terse Indian nomen- 
 clature, "him run fast," and escaped to his "ole massa" again. 
 
 But the other negro was not so fortunate. His Indian captors 
 waded him across the "river of pines," the dark flowing Connec- 
 ticut, feasted his keen ideality on the wild beauties of the rolling 
 Green mountains, and delighted his vision with the sight of the 
 sparkling Lake Champlain. Sufla.ce it to say, the kidnapped dar- 
 key saw the frowning battlements of Crown Point, where his 
 humane captors sold him to a French ofiicer. Whether he was 
 redeemed or not is too insignificant a matter for this history to 
 investigate. 
 
 But one great result grew oiit of these Indian depredations. 
 Petitions were again circulated, signatures procured, and when 
 the great and dignified Assembly of New Hampshire — character- 
 ized then as now more by its size and numbers than by its ability 
 — met, it was memorialized. The petitioners humbly prayed that 
 a road might be marked, cut, and made, from the settlements on 
 the Merrimack, through the Pemigewassett land to the Coos 
 meadows. Then the forts" would surely be built. Then bristling 
 bayonets, gleaming over the bright waters of the Indian garden- 
 land, would keep those self-same Indians who pretended to own 
 the aforesaid garden— yearly planted with pumpkins, corn, and 
 beans — from committing their depredations upon innocent, brave 
 
A HIGHWAY DECREED. 109 
 
 hunters, sable trappers, and white squatters, who of right roamed 
 upon the frontier. In other words there should be a guard at the 
 Coos meadows, who, ever vigilant, should make the settlers feel 
 more secure in their new homes. 
 
 They never dreamed that the Indians could leave the Connec- 
 ticut higher up, and come down through the notch by the Hay- 
 stacks, where they could learn one lesson of stern grandeur from 
 the Old Man of the Mountain ; or that they could go round by the 
 green hills of the west and, crossing the Connecticut below, reach 
 the Asquamchumauke by Baker ponds. There were no such con- 
 tingencies about it in their minds; the forts once built, they 
 were safe. 
 
 But New Hampshire then, as now, was poor. It would be 
 great expense to cut the road and maintain the for.ts. But after 
 considering the matter for a long time, it was determined that so 
 weighty a petition could not be disregarded ; that the interests of 
 the State demanded immediate action; and so they voted to 
 assume the expense of cutting and making the road, and appointed 
 a committee to survey and mark the same. That committee con- 
 sisted of Zacheus Lovewell, of Dunstable, a relative of that 
 Captain LoveweU who fought Paugus ; John Tolford, of Chester, 
 a/iid Caleb Page, of Starkstown ; and they hired John Stark to 
 assist them. The Assembly sat in the winter of 1752-3, and in the 
 spring following the committee commenced the work — looking 
 toward the beloved land of this history. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 HOW THE EOAD WAS CUT THROUGH THE WOODS, AND HOW THE 
 
 GREAT AND MIGHTV NATION OF AEOSAGUNTICOOKS COMPOSED 
 
 OP ALL THE NTPMUCK TRIBES, INCLUDING OUK PEMIGEWASSETTS 
 AND SOME OTHERS — SENT A FLAG OF TRUCE TO NUMBER 
 POUR. CONCLUDING WITH A GENERAL BACKOUT. 
 
 The committee were no laggards. The General Assembly 
 of New Hampshire made a wise choice. They immediately ren- 
 dezvoused at Amoskeag falls, the place where John Stark lived, 
 and where daring spirits like Waternomee, Kancamagns, and 
 Passaconaway congregated in times long ago. Philosophers say 
 that associations form human character. Tell, amid his native 
 mountains, was brave and daring ; the inhabitant of India is cow- 
 ardly and effeminate. Consequently, the great rocky barrier at 
 Amoskeag, the white, foaming water, ever roaring, the northern 
 granite mountains — all conspired to make such men as John 
 Stark and liis friends. 
 
 The committee hired sixteen men, and Stark was to pilot 
 them through the Pemigewassett country to the Coos intervals. 
 Eobert Rogers, the most daring ranger of the old French war, 
 was one of the number. 
 
 It was March 10th, 1763, when the surveying party left Amos- 
 keag. The river was yet frozen over. Each man had a pair of 
 snow-shoes on his feet. His blanket, twenty-flve days' provision, 
 and his cooking utensils, were strapped to his back. Half the 
 party had guns. Almost all had axes or hatchets, and Caleb Page 
 carried a compass and other materials suitable for making a plan 
 of the survey. 
 
THE ROAD BLAZED TO COOS. Ill 
 
 Thus equipped they proceeded up the river on the ice as far 
 as Bakerstown, now Franklin, N. H. They stopped one night at 
 the most northern settler's hut, and rested their weary limbs on 
 the floor by the blazing hearth. On the bright ensuing morn, 
 when the sun gleamed on the myriad diamond points of the frozen 
 snow, and the red-crested woodpecker drummed a merry tune on 
 the hollow beech-tree, they struck into the woods. Their route 
 was now up the west bank of the Merrimack. A part of the com- 
 ■ pany would perform the day's march in the forenoon, construct 
 the camp, cut the wood for the night fire, prepare and cook the 
 provisions, and make everything as comfortable as possible for the 
 tired road choppers and surveyors. At different points on the 
 route they left a portion of their supplies, to be used on their 
 return. The snow was four feet deep; yet they pushed on with- 
 out faltering. Not a man lagged behind. One day,>in what is 
 now onr good town of "Wentworth, they started a moose. The 
 whistling balls of half a dozen rifles, in sailors' phrase, "brought 
 him to," and at evening, when night's shadows were creeping 
 through the forest, the gleaming knives of nineteen hardy border- 
 ers flashed before the campfire, as they carved out the choicest 
 morsels and over them cracked their merry jokes. In fifteen days 
 they had blazed a pathway through the wilderness, and were en- 
 camped on the intervals at Coos. 
 
 They occupied six days in returning, and when they disbanded 
 at Amoskeag on the 31st day of March, the great province of New 
 Hampshire, with Beuning "Wentworth for Governor, was indebted 
 to this indomitable surveying party in the sum of 68il. 5s. old 
 tenor. Caleb Page got 221. extra for surveying, and John Stark 
 more pay than his fellows, for additional work and services as 
 guide. 
 
 But our mighty Arosagunticook, or St. Francis tribe of red- 
 skins, heard of the act of the General Assembly of New Hamp- 
 shire almost as soon as it was passed. Although they had no gov- 
 ernor, they had a chief; if they had no legislature, they could sit 
 smoking around the council-fire, and debate matters concerning 
 their rude nation of eighteen hundred souls, in a manner more 
 dignified and grave than even the Koman Senate ; if they had no 
 money to pay the expense of an expedition to the English settle- 
 
112 HISTORY OF "WABKEN. 
 
 ments, still, theiv resolve once determined upon, they could find 
 daring, painted, tufted-headed desperadoes enough, to whom 
 the pleasureable prospect — the excitement of burning buildings, 
 groaning victims, sighing captives, and dangling scalp-locks — 
 would be a sufficient inducement to undertake such enterprise. 
 
 "With a little prompting from the French the war-council 
 decided upon war. But, be it said to their credit, they had learned 
 one principle of christian civilized warfare mentioned in the books 
 that treat of the laws of nations. That was, before open hostili- 
 ties were commenced in the usual ambuscade fashion, they deter- 
 mined to notify the enemy. Accordingly in the winter of the 
 passage of the act, even before our noted committee with its hardy 
 surveying party had performed its labors, six Indians, (for In- 
 dians in those days were as hardy as white men) braved the chill 
 winds of 'Magog lake, rustled the snow from the evergreen firs of 
 the swamps, and with a flag of truce suddenly appeared at the 
 fort in Number Four, now Charleston, N. H. 
 
 Captain Stevens, the commander received them in true military 
 style, even as did Cyrus the younger the Queen of Silesia, only not 
 quite so affectionately perhaps ; or the great Hannibal, Scipio ; or 
 Bonaparte, Lord Wellington. They fared sumptuoiisly upon the 
 good viands within the log fort, dined upon hearty moose-beef and 
 supped upon corn-cakes, washed down with sundry mugs of flip, 
 made hissing-hot with the old-fashioned loggerhead, which was 
 always kept at a white heat. 
 
 On the day following their arrival they stated their message. 
 Their orator, drawing himself up full height, asserted their title 
 to the corn patches and pumpkin fields at the long river of pines, 
 ' which runs through the meadows, under the shadow of the snowy 
 mountain, Moosilauke. " Our fathers," said he, "gave it to us. 
 We have never sold it, never bargained it for the deadly fire- 
 water. Why do you trespass upon itf Why wrongfully seek to 
 drive us from our inheritance? Already have your armed men 
 visited it. Already have forts been staked out upon it. We say 
 now, desist! Let not the English come to Cowass. If they do — 
 sure as the heavens above the mountain peaks shall blush in the 
 rosy morning, you shall have war, and it shall be a strong war! 
 Like a wolf on your flocks we will rush on your wives and child- 
 
A HOSTILE FLAG OF TRUCE. 113 
 
 ren; like a hurricane uprooting the forest, we will pluck you 
 from the soil!" 
 
 This message delivered, the Indians, jolly roisterers, managed 
 to dispose of sundry other mugs of flip, heated in the before-men- 
 tioned manner, cut numberless antics and capers around the rude 
 fort, and then -whooping a wild applause after their own peculiar 
 style, all of which signified that they liked good rum, took their 
 departure for the St. Lawrence. 
 
 Captain Stevens bolted and barred his fortress and posted a 
 stronger guard that night, and the next day, finding that all was 
 quiet, sent off a dispatch to Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, 
 informing him of the remonstrance and declaration on the part of 
 the Arosaguntioooks. 
 
 The honorable governor heard the message with astonish- 
 ment. Rather than the "tufted-headed salvages," should rush 
 down upon the frontier settlers, as the wild clansmen of Scotland 
 did upon merrie England, or as the Nipmucks who lived with their 
 dear French friends had been accustomed to do for the past hun- 
 dred years, the governor thought they had better be allowed to 
 retain the garden-patch at "Cowas." 
 
 With great haste he sent a messenger to Governor "Wentworth 
 with the news, who, after considering it for some time with his 
 council, came to the sage conclusion that whereas it was going to 
 cost a large sum of money to make the road, and also as it was 
 going to make the dire and dreadful "salvages" exceedingly 
 wroth, and furthermore as there was a great prospect that a terri- 
 ble war would shortly break out between France and England, 
 they concluded to abandon the very plan that, in any event, was 
 so necessary for their protection. 
 
 Thus the two forts were not built, the four hundred men never 
 went to Coos, the bayonets never gleamed over the still water, and 
 the tramp of the soldier-guard was never heard. The happy laud 
 of Warren also bid fair to have grown greener in her mountain 
 solitudes, the white man's footstep to have awoke no echo, his 
 cattle to have browsed in no valley, the bleat of his flocks to have 
 enlivened no hillside for the next half-century, had not an addi- 
 tional train of circumstances, wliich we shall mention in our next 
 chapter, just now commenced. 
 
 H 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HOW SABATIS AND PLAUSAWA FAEED IN THE HANDS OF PETEE 
 EOWBN, TOGETHEE WITH THE MIRACDLOUS OPENING OF THE 
 JAIL, CONCLUDING WITH A CAPTIVATING ACCOONT OF A WHOLE 
 FAMILY, WHO WERE POLITELY INVITED TO GO TO CANADA BY 
 THE GENTLE SALVAGES. 
 
 Every mau admires courage. Marshal Ney, "the brav- 
 est of the brave," was the envy of the world ; but even his daring 
 feats have many a time been equalled. Unfortunately, the heroes 
 acting on a more obscure stage, unlike the favored French, had no 
 historians, and are consequently forgotten. We do not pretend 
 that every savage is a hero ; but many an early pioneer of New 
 England can attest to deeds of fortitude and bravery that can 
 scarcely find a parallel. King Philip, civilized, would have stood 
 beside a Hannibal or an Alexander. Even our friend Sabatis, who 
 stole the negroes, furnishes us with a notable instance of physical 
 daring and moral heroism, or as a latter-day Yankee would express 
 it, of cheek, of brass, of impudence, truly astounding. 
 
 That kidnapper, that " brave," who wheedled away the poor 
 " darkies," the great and distinguished Sabatis, accompanied this 
 time by a new friend — Plausawa by name — without even a blush 
 on his red face, but with an assuming, air, dared to walk into the 
 highly peaceable and prosperous settlement of Cantei'bury, the 
 very next June after stealing the negroes. Hunters and trappers, 
 farmers, men from the woods, and men black from the " burnt- 
 piece," with their wives and innocent children, were alike aston- 
 ished. When they had somewhat recovered from their surprise, 
 they upbraided Sabatis with his treachery. 
 
THE LOGIC OP SABATIS. 115 
 
 "With a haughty air he said, "Me not to blame; St. Francis 
 Indians no make treaty with the English. No harm to steal nig- 
 gers ; white men steal niggers in Africa ! Red men same right to 
 steal niggers in 'Merica." 
 
 This was an irrefragible argument, equal to that learned from 
 the great Socrates by one Strepsiades, and the white settlers would 
 willingly have allowed him to be a keen logician if they could 
 only have had the pleasure of seeing him cantering fast away from 
 Canterbury. 
 
 But Sabatis would not go. He put on airs. Like other men 
 who think they have performed great feats, he became insolent in 
 his conduct, boasted in bragadocia style of what he had done, 
 threatened to butcher the inhabitants, flourished a glittering knife, 
 and like another Jack Falstafi", brave where was no danger, bran- 
 dished his tomahawk over the head of a defenceless woman. 
 
 But worse than this — some keen-eyed settler discovered that 
 he carried, secreted about his person, a collar and lines, nice con- 
 trivances with which to fetter captives, and then the whole settle- 
 ment was alive with the kidnapping affair again. "It might dp to 
 steal negroes,'' said an old farmer, "but 'pon honor it will never 
 do to steal white folks." Bjrag was a game that two could play at, 
 and some old soldier-citizens of Canterbury, who had seen service 
 at the siege of Louisburg, believed that they themselves would be 
 yet good for blows and even bullets. So when Sabatis commenced 
 his insolence again, he heard something that he had never heard 
 before in that settlement. Gleam of steel shone on steel, and the 
 cry of " Blood for blood! " greeted the ears of the tawny brave. 
 The frontier hamlet grew too hot for the St. Francis men, and one 
 July day they quietly decamped, this time without any prisoners, 
 crossed the bright Merrimack in a beautiful birch canoe, and took 
 up their residence in Contoocook, now Boscawen. 
 
 But they had not yet learned to be civil ; they were just as 
 insolent as ever. Plunder, captives, and scalps wei'e continually 
 on their tongues, and the whole settlement soon grew heartily sick 
 of them. They were the guests of two men, Messrs. Morrill and 
 Bowen. The iirst was a farmer, but Peter Bowen was a wild bor- 
 derer. He knew every trait of Indian character. A hunter and 
 trapper, he had passed half his life in the woods. He was well 
 
116 HISTOBY OP WABREN. 
 
 acquainted with the two Indians and their misdeeds, and knew 
 that they were hated by every settler. For years it was reported 
 how Bowen fought them in self-defence — but this was an idle tale 
 got up for effect. Bowen reasoned in this wise : "The Indians 
 have murdered a great many white men. They say they will 
 murder more. Only last year they stole the negroes. At any 
 moment my neighbor or myself is liable to be killed. Now to 
 protect them and my family, and to get a rich lot of furs — for the 
 Indians in question have two hundred pounds worth — I will put 
 the pestilent serpents oui of the way. Every one will justify the 
 deed, and I shall be the gainer." 
 
 So when Sabatis and Plausawa were about to leave the settle- 
 ment, Bowen invited them to have a treat at his house. Both 
 Indians got drunk, and Bowen drew the charges from their guns. 
 Tlien, when they departed, they went into the woods towards the 
 Merrimack. The Indians got separated some distance apart and 
 then Bowen attacked Sabatis. The drunken brave snapped his 
 gun at him, but Bowen sank a hatchet to the helve in his brain, 
 cut him with it several times in the back, and plunged a hunting- 
 knife into his heart. Plausawa coming up . begged for his life. 
 Bowen answered not a w6i'd, but killed him on the spot." 
 
 That night he left them by the path-side. The gibbous moon 
 looked through the trees upon their upturned, ghastly faces. The 
 wolf howled on the mountain as he scented their blood afar, and 
 the solemn owl hooted in harsh, discordant notes — nature's 
 requiem over wild spirits departed, whose earthly delight bad 
 been human butchery. 
 
 On the morrow Bowen returned with his son, scooped a shal- 
 low hole and threw the bodies in, slightly covering them with 
 earth and leaves. But wild animals and dogs dug them up, and 
 for years afterwards their white bones bleached by the road side 
 in the woods. 
 
 Indian hunters, who had come to the settlements to traffic, 
 heard of the murder of the two Indians, and bore the news to the 
 St. Francis. 
 
 The New Hampshire authorities also heard the story. As in 
 duty bound, the government officials clapped a legal hand upon 
 
 * I^ottei-'s Hist, oj' Manchester, 281. 
 
P0EITAN MOB LAW. 117 
 
 Morrill and Bowen. Like Paul and Silas they were borne away 
 to prison, yet for a very unlike cause. They were incarcerated 
 within the walls of the old jail at Portsmouth. That they might 
 not attempt the role of Jack Shepard, their limbs were placed in 
 iron manacles. They were indicted for murder, and were to have 
 their trial March 21st, 1764. 
 
 Telegraphic operators sometimes send messages without the 
 aid of a battery. The air, overcharged with electricity, produces 
 an almost magical effect upon the wires, and with hardly an effort 
 the thoughts of the operator leap thousands of miles away. Al- 
 though there was no telegraph at that time, still a- subtle and mys- 
 terious agency, almost as wonderful, seemed to be at work. It 
 pervaded every settlement. An ahnost uuexplainable attraction 
 seemed to impel men, and on the cold night of March 20th, as the 
 story is told, hundreds were threading their way through the dark 
 and the storm. Down by Dover Neck, along by Squamscott's 
 snowy banks they came, and up by the ocean shore, where the 
 waves were " roaring on the rocks." 
 
 At midnight scores of dark forms crouched under the walls 
 of the jail, and then simultaneously rushed at the gate, broke it 
 in, knocked the irons from the limbs of Morrill and Bowen, and 
 set them free. In the morning a thrill of excitement ran through 
 the community. Law-abiding citizens demanded their recapture ; 
 but the larger number rejoiced at their escape. The two men were 
 generally justified. The best men in New Hampshire had aided 
 them. Governor Wentworth offered a reward for their recapture, 
 but no man troubled himself to apprehend them. In a short time 
 they went wholly at large, and an arrest could not easily have 
 been made. If it had been, as in the case of James the Second, 
 every body would have been displeased with the captors, and 
 would have given the Indian killers a chance to run away again as 
 fast as they were able. 
 
 But something must be done to appease the Indians, who were 
 not so readily satisfied. New Hampshire therefore sent presents 
 to the relatives of Sabatis and Plausawa, and with them the blood 
 was wiped out — but not so with the St. Francis people. They 
 were enraged ; they muttered threats of vengeance. The retalia- 
 ting blow was planned, and " like a thunderbolt it fell on the 
 
118 HISTORY OF WAKEEN. 
 
 infant settlement, but a kind Providence partly averted its effects." 
 It was May llth, 1754, one of the brightest days of spring. 
 A party of thirty Indians, every one of them painted like a circus 
 clown, and with scalp-locks dancing in the wind, had come down 
 from Canada. Nathaniel Meloon and "William Emery, who lived 
 in Stevenstown, now a part of Franklin, discovered them the night 
 before. Emery was a wide-awake man, and he immediately took 
 his family to a garrison-house near by. But Meloon was dilatory, 
 and like the Mr. Slow mentioned in Mother Goose's melodies, was 
 given to procrastination. His family were all at home in uncon- 
 scious innocence, except one son, Nathaniel, Jr., who was at work 
 in a field near by. They were taking a hearty breakfast of bean 
 porridge, when they were startled by the wild whoop of the 
 Indians, who had captured the elder and slow Meloon, as he was 
 returning from the garrison. 
 
 The capture of the family was also but the work of a moment, 
 and then the painted demons, to speak in the respectful language 
 of earlier historians, brandished their tomahawks and flourished 
 their scalping-knives, as they proceeded to rip open feather-beds, 
 for the sake of the ticks, and to steal all the clothing and provis- 
 ion they could lay their hands upon. 
 
 In a wonderfully short time they served Emery's house in the 
 same manner and then, before the sun was very high, were all on 
 their way to Canada. 
 
 Meloon, junior, who had seen the Indians approach, fled five 
 miles as fast as his legs could carry him, to Contoocook, raised 
 eight men, and hurried back to the rescue. But he was too late. 
 Father, mother, sisters, brother, had been gone for hours.* 
 
 The people of Stevenstown and Contoocook were terribly 
 aroused by the Indian depredations. It was necessary to do some- 
 thing, and so Stephen Gerrish was dispatched to Portsmouth. On 
 the 17th of May — quick time in those days of tote-roads and 
 bridle-paths — he laid a petition before the Governor and Council, 
 signed by all the inhabitants, praying for assistance. 
 
 "Oh I how we wish the forts at Coos intervals had been 
 built," said one; "And the four hundred stout men with mus- 
 
 * Meloon and his family, with the exception of one child, Sarah, who died in 
 Canada, all got safe home abont four years afterwards, having experienced nimier- 
 OU3 hardships and many strange adventiu-es,— Potter's Hist, of Manchester, 283. 
 
MOKE MOUNTED KANGERS. 119 
 
 kets," added another; "Then our settlers would have beeii 
 secure," said all. But it was of no use to wish that. The next 
 best thing, however, could be done. What that was it took a long 
 time to determine. But finally, with great wisdom and foresight 
 on the part of His Excellency the Governor, and his council, it was 
 ordered that twenty mounted men — good cavalry soldiers — should 
 be sent to the woods of Contoocook and Stevenstown, riding 
 through underbrush and over windfalls, across marshes, bogs, and 
 fens, with what effectiveness must be very plain to every one 
 familiar with the (north woods of New Hampshire. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOW CAPTAIN PETEE POWERS MARCHED GALLANTLY THROUGH THE 
 PEMIGEWASSBTT COUNTRY TO THE LAND OF THE COOSUCKS, OF 
 A BEAVE EXPLOIT AND A HEROIC EETEEAT. 
 
 The wild moss-troopei-s — brave cavalry soldiers as they 
 were — scouted valiantly in the shaggy woods of Contoocook and 
 Stevenstown. For a month they galloped np hill and for a month 
 they galloped down. Not a red-skin was discovered, for with 
 their prisoners and plunder they had all gone to Canada. Yet we 
 would not detract a particle from the merit of the brav6 English 
 scouts. Captain John "Webster was leader, and a bold man was 
 he. James Proctor was lieutenant and Christopher Gould was 
 clerk. But their month's term of duty soon expired and they 
 returned home, having done good service in beating the bush 
 without catching the bird. 
 
 But the high functionaries of the royal province of New 
 Hampshire, so loyal to George the Third— for the reader must 
 recollect that our worthy ancestry once lived under a king — 
 were not satisfied with the results of the expedition. They had 
 been frightened out of the plan of building strong fortresses at 
 Coos, and now they believed it necessary to hold that territory 
 with companies of scouts and rangers. So another expedition 
 was immediately planned, and Captain Peter Powers, of Hollis, 
 N. H., was put in command. James Stevens was his lieutenant, 
 and Ephraim Hale, ensign. Both these latter were from Town- 
 send, Massachusetts. 
 
 And here, by the way, we must acknowledge our obligations 
 to the first historian of Coos, the Rev. Grant Powers, in most 
 
THE EXPEDITION ON THE MARCH. 121 
 
 respects truthful, yet not without family pride. This is plainly 
 exhibited when he tries to exalt Captain Petei-, his grandfather or 
 great-uncle — no matter which — into a distinguished traveller, like 
 Marco Polo of former times, or a Humboldt of later days ; or into 
 a great military hero and explorer, like John Charles Fremont, 
 who rode a woolly horse over a mountain 18,000 feet high ! But 
 we honor the historian for wringing from oblivion so many im- 
 portant facts of history that would soon have been lost forever. 
 
 Captain Powers was an active man . His company immedi- 
 ately rendezvoused at Eumford, formerly Pennacook, now Con- 
 cord, N. H. It was June 14th, 1754, when the last man of the 
 party arrived there. On Saturday, the 15th, thej'^ proceeded to 
 Contoocook, where they tarried over the Sabbath and went to 
 meeting, as good Christians should. ^ 
 
 Let us now pause here for a moment. It is no holiday excur- 
 sion upon which these stout hearts are entering. No one of all 
 the gallant heroes who had formerly headed expeditions against 
 the bloodthirsty Arosagunticooks, had ever penetrated much far- 
 ther north than the "White mountains ; but now Captain Powers 
 was going to eclipse all the historic deeds of previous brave Indian 
 fighters, to plunge further into the wilderness, and perform deeds 
 of glory that should render him immortal. 
 
 We have said they were all ready for a brave dash into the 
 northern wilderness, and so on Monday morning, the 17th, at the 
 first dawn, they put their baggage into their|canoes. By nine 
 o'clock A. M., a part on the shore, a part in their light barks, they 
 were hurrying up the Merrimack. The painted salvages were in 
 the upper country, and Captain Powers' men were eager for the 
 fray. They passed the forks, or " crotch" of the river, where the 
 " dark Aquadocta" mingles with the bright Pemigewassett, pushed 
 up the latter stream, toted their baggage and canoes round the 
 falls and camped the first night at the head of "the hundred rod 
 carrying place." 
 
 Beautiful weather greeted them in the morning, and they shot 
 rapidly up the winding stream, shut in by green woods. The 
 winds piped in the foliage, and the wood-thrush mingled his 
 sweetest melody with the roar of Sawheganet falls. Here they 
 saw great fat salmon shooting up the rushing waters. They 
 
122 HISTORY OF WABREN. 
 
 looked into the dark opening from whence came Squam river, 
 flowing- from the most beautiful New England lake ; gazed with 
 delight on the broad intervals of Plymouth, and saw in the dis- 
 tance the sharp Haystacks, yet wliite with winter's snow.* 
 
 They turned up the Asquamchumauke, otherwise called Baker 
 river, which came down from the west, and paddled their light 
 canoes rapidly along its crooked and sluggish course. The fourth 
 day, the setting sun half an hour high, saw them camped at the 
 foot of Rattlesnake mountain,! the most bold and precipitous peak 
 in the valley, and its towering cliffs echoed to the report of their 
 muskets, as they shot a moose for their supper. They left their 
 canoes in the shoal head water of the river, thought they would 
 try the west route to the Connecticut, and that night they camped 
 between the two Baker ponds in the present town of Orford. 
 
 Storms of "haile" and "heavy showers of raine" kept them 
 here for two days. This detention very much tried the patience 
 of the Captain and his trusty scouts. They were eager to cope 
 with the brave salvages, whom they expected to find at the head 
 of the long river towards which they were hastening. 
 
 But Captain Powers managed to while away the time, watch- 
 
 *" Wednesday, June 19ift, 1654.— We marched oii our journey, and carried across 
 the long canying place on Pemlgewassett river, two miles north-east, which land 
 hath a good soil, beech and maple, with a good quantity of large masts, rrom the 
 place where we put in the canoes we steered east, north-east, up the river about 
 one mile, and then we steered north-east one mile, and north six miles, up to 
 Sawheganet Falls, where we carried by about four rods; and from the falls we 
 steered about north-east to Pemigewasset interval, two miles, and from the beginning 
 of the interval we made good our course north four miles, and there camped on a 
 naiTow point of land. The last lour miles of the river was extremely crooked." 
 
 " TZmrsciay, J^iiTie 20Wfc. — We steered our course one tiu'u with another, which 
 were great turns, west north-west, about two miles and a hall', to the crotch, or 
 parting of the Pemigewasset river at Baker river mouth, thence from the mouth of 
 Baker river, up said river, north-west six miles. This river is extraordinarily 
 crooked, and good interval. Thence up the river about two miles, northwest, and 
 there we shot a moose, the sun about a half an hour high, and there camped." 
 
 [ This must have been in the town of Romney .] 
 
 " Friday, Juneilst. — We steered up the said Bakerriver with our canoes about 
 five miles, as the river ran, which was extraordinarily crooked. In the after part of 
 this day there was a great shower of 'hade and raine,' which prevented our pro- 
 ceeding further and here we camped : and here we left our canoes, for the water in 
 the river was so shoal that we could not go with them any further." 
 
 " Saturday, June, 2M.— This morning was dark and cloudy weather, but after 
 ten of the clock, it cleared off hot, and we inarched up the river, near the Indian 
 caiTying place, from Baker river to Connecticut river, and there camped, and could 
 not go any further by reason of a great shower of rain, which held almost all this 
 afternoon." — Capt. Peter Powers' Journal, Hist, of Coos, 18. 
 
 fPowers says the inhabitants of our vaUey can without doubt fix upon Capt. 
 Peter's several encampments with tolerable accuracy, and that it must be very 
 interesting to mark out the places which were thus occupied by swords and brist- 
 ling bayonets in 1754, whilst the whole country around remained an unbroken 
 wilderness — History of Coos, 19. 
 
REALITY VS. ROMANCE. 123 
 
 ing the clouds whirling around the summits of the lofty eastern 
 mountains, and writing in his journal of the broad and fertile 
 intervals, the beautiful white pine that grew upon them, and how 
 "' back from the intreval is a considerable quantity of large moun- 
 tains " which he looked upon with much- admiration. 
 
 Header, think of the forest stretching a hundred miles away, 
 unbroken l)y a single white man's clearing ; of the bright lakes, 
 the silver rivers winding through the woods ; of the wild and 
 savage beasts that roamed and howled and bellowed therein ; of 
 thg great shaggy mountains, " daunting terrible;" of the numer- 
 ous cruel murders committed on the frontiers by the Indians ; of 
 this company of stalwart hearts, camped in storm of "haile and 
 raine and thunder," beside these exceedingly solitary ponds in' the 
 basin of the great mountains, each man eager with trusty " Queen's 
 arm " to hurry further away into the wilderness, to fight what 
 were to them veritable " painted, red demons ; " perchance to be 
 slain, to be scalped, to be devoured by wolves, or to rot in some 
 cold swamp — and you have the romance of Captaiu Powers' 
 expedition. Truly one might expect heroic deeds from such brave 
 men. 
 
 On Tuesday, June 25th, they struck Connecticut river. Pro- 
 ceeding up the east bank they crossed the Oliverian, swollen by 
 the great rain, and pushed rapidly forward until they came to the 
 m.outh of the Ammonoosuc. Here they tarried a day, built a 
 canoe with which to cross the latter stream, and there dismissing 
 •four of the men who were lame, sent them in it down the Connec- 
 ticut to "Number Four.'' 
 
 From Ammonoosuc river they went tramping through the 
 woods northward, over John's river and over Israel's river, to 
 the beautiful interval of upper Coos. On this interval the brave 
 Captain left his soldiers to mend their shoes, and with two men 
 proceeded up the Connecticut " to see what they could discover." 
 
 Five miles on he met with an Indian encampment — a sight 
 that gladdened his very eyes — and found where not more than 
 two days before they had constructed several canoes. Like every 
 other great military hero, he was now eager for the contest; so, 
 musing on this sight for a few moments, he returned to his men. 
 They were soon mustered in battle-array. A council of war was 
 
124 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 held. That their shoes were worn out, that their provisions were 
 nearly gone, that they were foot-sore and lame, and that their hail- 
 pelted bodies were rheumatic — was all true. But notwithstanding 
 this, now was the time, and they determined to make a vigorous 
 campaign after the Indians, and if possible to eclipse the renown 
 of the bold cavalry troopers in the woods of Stevenstown and 
 Contoocook. To do this it was necessary there should be a change 
 of base. Strategy must be used, and this should be the great 
 plan : They would advance towards home on the double-quick ; 
 the "painted salvages" of course would pursue them; the bold 
 strategists would then make a deadly ambuscade, and there shoot 
 and capture the whole Arosagunticook army. 
 
 And here some skeptical reader may ask us where we got our 
 information. We can only reply, if this was not the "plan," what 
 was it? 
 
 But the Indians, obdurate pagans, did not pursue, although 
 Captain Powers advanced homeward most gallantly. We are sin- 
 cerely sorry they did not, for we are thereby prevented from 
 recording a most fierce fight, wherein Captain Peter and his 
 men would have won immortal renown, and some hallowed spot 
 on " the long river of pines" would have been as celebrated as the 
 mouth of Baker river or Lovewell's pond. 
 
 The last we hear of the war-party they are hurrying on 
 through the gap of the eastern mountains — the Oliverian* notch — 
 to their canoes waiting in the Asquamchumauke. No doubt they 
 reached home in safety, for we never heard anything to the con- 
 trary, told big stories of their brave exploits to the day of their 
 death, relating how they enjoyed themselves killing moose and 
 deer, and eating the same, how they saw the pleasant lands about 
 Moosilauke and the head waters of the Asquamchumauke, and 
 how they got well paid in " old tenor" money for these important 
 services. 
 
 In all probability the Governor thought this expedition would 
 aid materially in keeping off the Indians ; indeed, much more than 
 
 * Saturday, July 6.— Marched dowu the great river to Great Coos, and crossed 
 the river below the great turn of clear interval, and there left the great river, and 
 steered southby east about three miles and there camped.— Powers' Hist. of Coos, 31. 
 
 Powers says he knows no more of the homeward march. a?he journal ceases 
 at the point where he left the river. —Do. 32. 
 
A MANCEUVBE IN FLANK. 126 
 
 the two forts which were to have stood on the Coos intervals, or 
 the four hundred armed men who were to have held them, or than 
 even the two score of moss-troopers at Contoocook and Stevens- 
 town. But how great must have been his surprise at the shock- 
 ing deeds committed by the Arosagunticook braves in a very few 
 days after Captain Powers' gallant change of base, as will be 
 truthfully set forth in this brief history of Indian wars, in which 
 the armies marched and countermarched through our much loved 
 territory of Warren. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OP A GALLANT EXPLOIT ON THE NEW HAMPSHIKE FEONTIER, OF AN 
 EXCITED CAMP ON THE SHORE OF WACHIPAUKA POND, WITH 
 OTHER ENTERTAINING AND CDRIOLTS MATTER, VERY INTEREST- 
 ING TO KNOW. 
 
 Every cMld of New England has heard of the old French 
 war. It had much to do with the settlement of our mountain 
 hamlet, Warren — almost as much as the creation of the world, or 
 the discovery of America by Christopher Colon. The narration of 
 all its great and important events would be decidedly foreign to 
 our purpose, and (ve prefer to place ourselves immediately in 
 medias res, and only describe those extraordinary occurrences 
 that served to make the Indian corn-fields and pumpkin patches, 
 fishing waters and hunting grounds under the shadows of bald 
 Moosilauke, so well-known. 
 
 "War was declared iu Europe in 1753. A colonial congress 
 met at Albany, New York, in 1754, to devise means of defence. 
 Canada roused the Indians to further hostilities, and the New 
 Hampshire frontier bled again. 
 
 Like a wolf skulking about a sheep-fold, or a thief crawling 
 down chimney at night, thirty brave Indian fellows, armed cap-a- 
 pie, guns on their shoulders, scalping-knives in their belts, plumes 
 in their tufted scalp-locks waving like the white feather of Murat, 
 bright uniforms in the shape of dirty breech-clouts, and moose- 
 hide, moccasins, came down for open war. 
 
 'Twas the morn of August 15th. Jolly PhcBbus had just 
 cooled his hissing hot axletrees in tlie cold currents of the Atlantic,, 
 and was driving pell-mell up the eastern sky, when the above- 
 
MUBDEKS AT STEVBNSTOWN. 127 
 
 mentioned war party boldly marched into a little clearing in 
 Stevenstown. A one-story Jog cabin, with a cow pen and pig 
 sty near by, stood on one side of the small field. Mrs. Call, her 
 daughter-in-law, wife of Philip Call, and an infant of the latter, 
 were there. Mr. Call, and young Call, and Timothy Cook were 
 at work on the other side of the clearing." 
 
 The braves made directly for the house. Mrs. Call, like a 
 Spartan mother or a Roman matron, bravely met them at the door. 
 "Without a word the foremost Indian with a blow of his toma- 
 hawk felled her to the earth, and her warm blood drenched the 
 threshhold. Kicking her dead body aside they rushed into the 
 house. The young woman crept into a hole behind the chimney, 
 kept her child quiet, and escaped. 
 
 The father and son, and Timothy Cook, attempted to get into 
 the house before the Indians but did not succeed. They heard the 
 blow that knocked down Mrs. Call, her scream and death groan, 
 and the wild war whoop, and then, as the savages rushed towards 
 them they fled. Cook, like Horatius Codes, leaped into the river; 
 but unlike that Keman swimmer, did not reach the opposite Shore. 
 The Indians shot him from the bank. Dragging him from the 
 water they peeled off his scalp, served Mrs. Call's head in the 
 same manner, rifled the house, and then took to the woods. 
 
 The flying Calls notified the garrison at Contoocook, and a 
 party of eight immediately went in pursuit. The Indians as yet 
 had taken no prisoners, and without these to sell to the French 
 the expedition would be unprofitable. So one Indian got beside 
 a stump, another under a windfall, a third behind a greenwood 
 tree, and whole squads lay down beneath thick clumps of bushes 
 or the deep green branches of the flr copse. In other words, they 
 made a regular ambuscade; ' 
 
 But somehow the keen-eyed settlers discovered them at a dis- 
 tance, thanks to their good fortune, and ran away as fast as they 
 could, with the Indians in full pursuit. But one Enos Bishop, 
 who was not very nimble-footed, had the ill luck to be captured. 
 The rest of the party escaped. The captured man was then com- 
 pelled to go with the enemy, and was that day marched a long 
 way towards the captive's happy land, Canada. 
 * Potter's Hist of Manchester, 291. 
 
128 HISTOKY OF WARREN. 
 
 Now it chanced that one Samuel Scribner and one John Bar- 
 ]j6i-_-we won't accuse them of laziness— had left their haying 
 and clearing, and were looking after beaver meadows near New- 
 found lake. It was a hot afternoon and they were sitting in the 
 shade of a wide-spreading maple, by the shore of the bright, spark- 
 ling water, when the Indians suddenly came upon them. They 
 were so completely taken by surprise that resistance or escape was 
 hopeless, and much against their inclination they were compelled 
 to leave the crystal sheen, low set among the dark brown hills, 
 and grace the captors' train. 
 
 Tradition has it that the war party feared pursuit, and hurried 
 rapidly forward by the shortest route." The second night they 
 halted by a little lake called in the Indian tongue, as we have be- 
 fore said, "Wachipauka,t but by modern civilians, Header pond. 
 They built their camp and kindled their fire on the rocky beach. 
 On the opposite shore a precipitous peak shot a thousand feet into 
 the clear blue sky. During the evening hours the stars glimmered 
 on the cool night-air, the full moon shone brightly on the dark 
 water, and its rays glinted from the granite mountain. At mid- 
 night a black cloud spread across the sky, darkness grew grimmer, 
 and a thick fog from the Connecticut, that had crept up the gorge 
 of the Oliverian, settling dank and heavy on the craggy mountain 
 brow, made the night still more black. At this moment John 
 Barker rose silently among the sleeping Indians, glided over them 
 like a pale ghost, unbound Bishop, and gently endeavored to wake 
 him. Just then a wolf howled on the mountain top, a great owl 
 in a lofty hemlock answered back the wild cry, and a sudden gust 
 of wind whirled a shower of sparks into the dark shadows of the 
 woods. An Indian, dreaming perhaps of the land of shades, was 
 startled. He caught sight of the dim form of Barker bending 
 over his companions. Leaping to his feet he uttered the war 
 whoop. Across the lake the echo-god returned the wild battle- 
 shout, and every brave sprang for his musket and his tomahawk. 
 Barker was seized and doiibly bound, the other captives were 
 made more secure, and thereby a second Mrs. Duston tragedy was 
 
 *The Indians had a route by the lake, north, and they Imew the shortest paths 
 as well as tha white men. 
 
 Aoteon olten told this story. 
 
 t Wachipauka is from Wadohu, mountain, Sipes, still water, and auke. 
 
ESCAPE OP BISHOP. 129 
 
 prevented. There was no more sleep in the Indian camp that 
 night, and at the earliest dawn they were threading their way 
 down the wUd, roaring Oliverian, to the Connecticut. 
 
 In thirteen days they arrived at St. Francis village. Bishop 
 and his good friends rejoiced, for they were leg-weary, foot-sore, 
 and half-starved. Where l^ishop was placed is not told, but Scrib- 
 ner was sold to a Frenchman at Chamblay, and the valiant Barker 
 to a jolly man of the same race, who lived near the Indian village. 
 
 Enos Bishop practiced with his heels that year, and one night 
 ran away, as any other white man wonld have done under similar 
 circumstances.* But he had a hard time of it. After toiling for 
 eighteen days through the wilderness, suffering intensely from 
 fatigue and hunger, he reached Number Four, from whence he 
 returned to his family at Contoocook. Barker and Scribner were 
 shortly after redeemed. 
 
 Precisely in the same manner as when Meloon and his family 
 were captured, the inhabitants on the frontier were all terribly 
 frightened. Andrew McClary, of Epsom, a descendant of the 
 Scotch covenanters, was'deputed Mercury. Like the swift son 
 of MaisB, with winged feet he flew to Portsmouth and narrated 
 to the Honorable Governor and the worthy council the sad deaths 
 of Mrs. Call and Timothy Cook, the probable capture of the 
 missing men, and the great fight of the renowned eight, who went 
 out to see the Indians, while o)ily seven returned, and that every 
 family on the frontier, to the number of eight all told, had left 
 their fields, corn, hay, flocks, herds, and homes, and had come 
 down to the lower towns. 
 
 His Excelleijcy was astounded. The council looked aghast. 
 But they proved themselves equal to the great emergency. The 
 trumpet was not immediately sounded, but the decree went forth. 
 
 *Extract of a letter from an officer in Charleston, otherwise called Kiimber ' 
 Four, in the province of New Hampshire, dated October ith, 1756 : 
 
 " This day aiTived here one Enoch Byshop, an English captive from Canada, 
 who was taken from Contoocook about two years since. He left Canada twenty-six 
 days ago, in company with two other English captives, viz : WiUiam Hair, entered 
 into General Shirley's regiment, and taken at Osewego, (the other name nnlmown). 
 They came away from Canada, without guns, hatchet or flre-works, and no more 
 than three loaves of bread and four pounds of pork. As they suffered much for 
 want of provisions, his companions were not able to travel any further than a little 
 on this side of Cowass, where he was obliged to leave them last Lord's day, with- 
 out any sustenance but a few berries. Six men were this evening sent out to look 
 for them, but it is to be feared that they perished in the wilderness."— [Copied from 
 the New York Mercury of October 25th, 1758, in the library of the N. Y. Hist. Soc, 
 by JohnLibbey]. 
 
130 HISTOET or WAEREN. 
 
 But that they might show themselves men of deliberation and firm- 
 ness, they caused said decree to be entered on the council minutes 
 as follows: " Whereas, That the settlers might be encouraged 
 to return to their habitations and secure their cattle and harvests, 
 and to encourage other frontiers in that quarter, His Excellency 
 be desired to give immediate orders for enlisting or impressing 
 such a number of men as he may think proper, and dispose of the 
 same." 
 
 Governor "Wentworth acted. A detachment of Capt. Odlin's 
 troop of twenty horse, with an oflacer in command, also a like 
 ■ detachment of Capt. Stevens' troop, were ordered to Stevenstown 
 to guard the inhabitants on the frontier. 
 
 But Governor Wentworth was no fool. The idea did creep 
 into his head that a few foot soldiers, fitted out in the Indian style, 
 would be about as efiective in fighting the painted red-skins as 
 good cavalry troopers. "Whereupon he immediately issued a fur- 
 ther order to Colonel Joseph Blanchard, that he forthwith enlist 
 and impress fifty, or more men, if he thought that number insuffi- 
 cient, that he put them under an abld* and brave oflcer, one in 
 whom he could confide, and order them to march immediately to 
 Contoocook and Stevenstown. Then he added — and may be the 
 framers of the great constitution of the United States copied this 
 illustrious example when they inserted the clause whereby Con- 
 gress should vote supplies for the army, — " I have convened the 
 General Assembly. It wiU vote pay and supplies. The soldiers 
 shall not wtot." 
 
 Colonel Blanchard was a brave officer. He immediately per- 
 formed his duty. Our brave Captain John Gofiie, of Amoskeag, 
 marched to the scene of action. He behaved valiantly. For 
 many a hot summer day he scouted through all the wild border, 
 far up the Merrimack towards our beloved land, but not an Indian 
 did he encounter. 
 
 And here a great historian, a lover of that race whose council 
 fires have gone out, whose war songs are no longer heard, whose 
 name only is chronicled by their destroyers, exclaims with much 
 dignity and self-congratulation, that " the promptness of Governor 
 "Wentworth in this emergency, and the effective force detailed, 
 presei-ved the inhabitants of the Merrimack valley from any further 
 
POOE PROTECTION. 181 
 
 molestation," when in fact there was not an Indian within a 
 hundred miles of the place, and there did not choose to be. They 
 had accomplished their purpose, and laughing in their moccasins, 
 with dangling scalp locks and groaning captives they had gone to 
 Canada. 
 
 Men frequently buy a padlock for the stable door after the 
 horse is stolen. So New Hampshire afforded protection after the 
 blow was struck. 
 
 But if Governor Wentworth did protect the Merrimack valley 
 he did not the Connecticut, and he would have displayed his 
 promptness to better advantage if he had also sent a " scout " to 
 the latter place for a " preventive," as we shall immediately pro- 
 ceed to show. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ACCOUNT OF THE MANNER THE BEAVE AEOSAGUNTICOOKS OF ST. 
 FEANCIS PASSED CAPTAIN GOFFE ; THE CAPTURE OF THE JOHN- 
 SON FAMILY, WITH OTHEE INCIDENTS NO DOUBT VEEY INTER- 
 ESTING TO THE PAETICIPANTS ; TOGETHER WITH THE FIEST 
 CAMPAIGN OF THE OLD FEENCH WAR. 
 
 The St. Francis Indians, the great nation of the Arosa- 
 gunticooks, were cunning men. "Whether, like the Spartan youth, 
 their understanding was cultivated in order that they might suc- 
 cessfully practice craft, shrewdness, and honorable deception in 
 war is not recorded, but we rather suspect it was. Like the Spar- 
 tans also they had a terse brevity in their speech that might well 
 be termed laconic. But, unlike the Spartans, they were fond of 
 rough romance and poetry. There is no doubt of this. Many a 
 wild legend could their medicine man recount ; many a plaintive 
 air did the Indian lover sing, as with palpitating heart he wood his 
 dusky mate ; and they always went forth to battle with the war- 
 song pealing high. But the modest souls would never sing when 
 they came near the enemy. 
 
 Captain Goffe scouted up the Merrimack. He paddled his 
 canoe in the bright Pemigewassett and turned its prow up the 
 Asquamchumauke. He snuffed the winds laden with forest sweets, 
 as over bending woods and rustling leaves they came frolicking 
 on their way from the Haystacks. And on the very morn of the 
 day of his return, when Aurora stepped blushing like a modest 
 damsel into the eastern sky, and. the sunbeams were kindling in 
 purple and gold on Moosilauke's bald crest, about thirty mighty 
 savages were over the highlands in the Connecticut valley, and 
 
BOKN UNDEK DIFFICULTIES. 133 
 
 already were hurrying down " the long river oj pines." Two 
 days afterwards, August 29th, they were at Number Four. Downy 
 couches on the bosom of mother earth did not woo their slumbers 
 long. They were early risers. They leaped over the hedge on the 
 border of the woods before a white man was stirring or a blue 
 smoke curling from a cabin chimney. But a white family did stir 
 quickly in James Johnson's house two minutes afterwards. John- 
 son, wife, three children, and Miriam Williard, Mrs. Johnson's 
 sister, together with Peter Larabee and Ebenezer Farnsworth, 
 who were lodging there that night, with all the household provis- 
 ions and furniture to which the " war-hawks " took a fancy, consti- 
 tuted the spoUa optima. These captives and this plunder were 
 about as much as the war party could conveniently manage, and 
 so they concluded to instantly decamp. A? their appearance had 
 been sudden, their disappearance was more so. Not a white set- 
 tler knew of the dire catastrophe for a long time afterwards. 
 
 But the spoils were cumbersome, the children were young, 
 and Mrs. Johnson in a very critical condition, so they did not 
 travel very far that day. On the mOrrow, in the deep wilderness, 
 fifteen miles from her home, Mrs. Johnson gave birth to a daugh- 
 ter. The sailor, boy, born on the deep blue sea, has Neptune beat- 
 ing time with foamy trident to his own deep basso of thanksgiving 
 and praise at the christening, so that ever after the boy loves 
 the crested waves and the music of the winds piping in the 
 shrouds. So Ceres, the earth mother, assisted at the birth of the 
 forest child, and all the sylvan nymphs danced for joy, as they 
 crowned the little cherub with garlands of wild-flowers, kissed 
 dimples into her rosy cheeks and covered with nectar her glowing 
 lips. 
 
 The mother called the daughter " Captive." But whether in 
 after life she loved the wild woods, its cool dells and shaded grot- 
 tos, its deep green foliage, its singing birds, its wild wind sighing 
 through the branches, or its deep and awful roar in the storm — 
 like the voice of the distant ocean — we cannot say. All we do 
 know of her further is, that she lived to be married like other 
 women, and found a kind husband in one George Kimball. He 
 was a colonel of foot-soldiers; but whether serving in the militia 
 or in the wars we were never informed. 
 
134 HISTORY OF WABEEN. 
 
 The Indians may be called cruel savages for carrying off this 
 family and plundering their dwelling; but this time they can 
 not be called human butchers. As our readers must already know, 
 they did not dash out little Captive's brains against the nearest 
 tree ; on the contrary, they kindly cared for her, waited a whole 
 day for Mrs. Johnson, carried the unfortunate mother on a litter, 
 and afterwards it is said, though we somewhat doubt it, furnished 
 her with a horse. Like a man who would keep his ox well, or 
 like the master who would have fat sleek slaves, this was not all 
 done out of pure kindness of heart. On reaching Canada the In- 
 dians sold all the big captives — and little Captive also — to the 
 French for a good round sum. But an early historian of this sad 
 tale says that they met with great difflculties and experienced 
 great suffering at the hands of these polite descendants of the 
 noble Franks. After two long years, Mrs. Johnson, her sister, 
 and two daughters returned home. "Where went Larabee and 
 Farnsworth is not recorded. Mr. Johnson did not behave in a 
 manner satisfactory to the hospitable sons of Gaul, and so for 
 three years he was kindly suffered to pine in a Canadian prison. 
 At the end of that time he with his son had the good fortune to 
 return to Number Four by way of Boston. 
 
 But the eldest daughter had a different fate. Like many 
 another giddy damsel, she became deeply enamored of the things 
 of the new country. She became either so exceedingly wise or 
 foolish, we can hardly tell which, that she fell in love with a 
 shaved head, a straight gown, a white veil, a string of beads, a 
 Latin prayer-book, and a chapel bell, and in a nunnery concluded 
 to spend a portion of her days in the enjoyment of " those religious 
 festivities in which some priests, certain shaking quaker elders, 
 and not a few ministers, so much delight."* 
 
 If a messenger went to Portsmouth to tell of this hostile 
 inroad of the enemy, we are not informed of the fact. At any 
 rate no particular notice was taken of it. Settlers in the Connec- 
 ticut valley might take care of themselves or look to Massachusetts 
 for aid. New Hampshire could not now attend to them. The 
 times were pregnant with great events. Even the shrieking 
 
 *Thus wrote certain historians long ago; hut it must tie remembered that thev 
 hated all religious except their own, 
 
THREE ARMIES IN THE FIELD. 
 
 135 
 
 autumn blast portended horrid war. Mars, hot and fierce, leaped 
 across the Atlantic on an angry visit to the New World. All the 
 gods buckled on their armor and put themselves in battle array. 
 The mighty deep was lashed in fury, as hostile fleets swept over 
 it ; the pent-up fires in the earth beneath blazed anew under the 
 tramp of hostile squadrons, and the awful bolts of Jove thundered 
 at mid- winter in the heavens. v 
 
 Three armies, such as the western world had never before 
 seen, were put in rapid motion. General Braddock, accompanied 
 by "Washington, penetrated the southern wilderness. His destina- 
 tion was Fort Du Quesne, on the Ohio river. But he never 
 reached it. He perished, vdth three-fourths of his gallant soldiers, 
 in the dark forests of the Alleghanies, Governer Shirley led a 
 second army against Fort Niagara. With his cannon he was to 
 batter down its strong walls. But their roar never mingled with 
 the thunder of the mighty cataract near which stood the fortress. 
 The expedition was a failure. General Johnston led a third force 
 against Fort Edward. And here fortune favored the hero. ISfew 
 Hampshire furnished a regiment for his army, commanded by 
 Colonel Blanchard, of Dunstable, now Nashua, 
 
 How they rendezvoused at Stevenstown, and marched and 
 countermarched through our beloved Pemigewassett country, up 
 the Asquamchumauke, and across the land now called Warren 
 and so to the Coos country, we shall endeavor most faithfully to 
 narrate. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 TREATING OP THE ASSEMBLING OF THE KEGIMENT AND THE BUILD- 
 ING" OF THE LOG FORTRESS AT COOS, WITH OTHER INTERESTING 
 ADVENTUEES IN THE COUNTRY ABOUT LAKE CHAMPLAIN. 
 
 i-HE call to arms was sounded. Mars' messengers went 
 forth and New Hampshire was quick to respond. In the style of 
 the old Scotch poets it is related how from Strawberry Bank, 
 Boar's Head, and Dover Neck, came a company of hardy ship 
 builders, cod fishers, and fur traders, — men used to hard knocks, 
 to ocean's battling stornis, and cunning wiles of Indians. From 
 Squamscott's winding valley, Newichannock's bright stream, 
 and Pautuckaway's deep indented shores, came a company of stal- 
 wart farmers, full fifty strong. From Massabesic's blue waves, 
 the twin Uncanoouucks, and the falls of Amoskeag, came Fraziers, 
 McKenzies, Campbells, and Grants, Scotia's descendants, amount- 
 ing to two full companies. The latter were potato-planting men, 
 linen spinners, — besides numerous shad, eel, and salmon fishers — 
 all good tough fellows, used to shillalah fights, and not a few had 
 taken many a bout in the woods after the Indians. From the 
 pebbly-bottomed Nashua, the cloud-capped Monadnock, and the 
 frontier about bristling Kearsarge, came farmers, hunters, trap- 
 pers, and wild borderers. Captain G-ofie and Captain Moore, both 
 brave Derryflelders, men who never quailed beneath the Indian's 
 eagle eye (to put it grandly), and who loved the music of the 
 whirring tomahawlc and the singing shot, each commanded a 
 company. 
 
 Captain Robert Eogers, of Starkstown, now Dunbarton, whom 
 the war-cry of a thousand braves could not move a hair, marched 
 
THE "rangers." 137 
 
 at the head of seventy jolly bruisers, who were accustomed to fish 
 at Amoskeag falls. Noah Johnson was one of his lieutenants and 
 John Stark was the other. The latter was now a long, lank young 
 man, with a frame not encased in a coat of mail, but in iron muscle, 
 with a physique which could endure without a moment's sleep a 
 march of a hundred long miles through the snow when four feet 
 deep. "With these lieutenants, Rogers had the br.avest company of 
 the old French War. They were known as the "Eangers." They 
 carried but little baggage and were lightly armed; and as the 
 French employed the Indians, so were these employed by the Eng- 
 lish to scour the woods, to waylay the enemy, or to obtain supplies. 
 
 As Xerxes rendezvoused at Capadocian Critella, or the Greeks 
 of Cyrus the Younger at Sardis, so all these great companies, fully 
 equipped, with knapsacks on their backs, canteens and haversacks 
 at their sides, and old queen's arms on their shoulders, debouched 
 from the deep wilderness upon the broad Merrimack intervals at 
 Bakerstown, alias Stevenstown, now Franklin, N. H. Colonel 
 Blanchard, of Dunstable, as we have before stated, was the great 
 generalissimo or commander-in-chief. 
 
 There was a log fortress in the centre of the black stump 
 clearing at Stevenstown. The said clearing was afterwards a fine 
 field, owned by the Hon. Daniel Webster. Around the above- 
 mentioned fortress Colonel Blanchard mustered his regiment, 
 while all day long was heard the din of preparation, as the 
 sappers and miners and artisans were engaged in building ba- 
 teaux on the river bank. With these they were going to transport 
 their baggage along the navigable waters. 
 
 Governor Wentworth, as we have before shown, was an ex- 
 ceedingly learned man in the arts of war. He had sent good 
 cavalry soldiers, jolly moss-troopers, to scout through the wind- 
 falls and tangled thickets. He was also a man of taste and fond 
 of artistic beauty. This was very commendable, and he exhibited 
 it by building for himself a beautiful rustic residence on the shore 
 of Lake Winnepisseogee, from the silver surface of which as he 
 glided along in his sailboat he could see the gaged hackmatack 
 mountains in the great wild north. He now showed himself a 
 greater geographer than Ptolemy or Christopher Columbus him- 
 self, for he verily believed that Albany, the place to which he was 
 
138 HISTOKT OF WAKEEN. 
 
 to send the regiment, lay in the path of a direct line drawn from 
 Stevenstown to the north pole. Besides, all his council and con- 
 fidential advisers believed the same. So the order vf^as issued to 
 Colonel Blanchard, and that gallant officer in turn commanded 
 Captain Eogers to proceed with his rangers due north one degree 
 west to the upper Coos meadows, and there construct a fort for 
 the accommodsttion of the little army when it should follow. 
 
 The rangers left the old garrison house in the before-mentioned 
 field and followed the trail up the Merrimack. With their trusty 
 queen's arms on their shoulders, their hunting knives in their 
 belts, their wolf-skin caps, their bright red shirts, buttoned close 
 about their throats, their short sheep's-gray frocks tucked within 
 their moose hide or sheep-skin pants, and with real Indian moc- 
 casins on their feet, the rangers presented even a more picturesque 
 appearance than their painted foe, with tufted scalp-locks, dirty 
 breech clouts, and long-haired leggins. 
 
 They pushed up the Asquamchumauke, camped one night on 
 the shore of the cold mountain lake, Waohipauka, under the shadow 
 of precipitous "Webster Slide, and in six days reached the upper 
 meadows. They built ^the fort on the east bank of the Connecti- 
 cut, just below the mouth of the upper Ammonoosuc river, in the 
 present town of Northumberland. It was constructed of huge 
 logs from the dense wilderness and the summer winds now sighed 
 through the thick leaved trees and anon moaned around the pick- 
 etted palisades of the wooden fortress. 
 
 After they had completed the work of course there must be a 
 christening. So each ranger took a good swig of old "West India 
 from his canteen — thus pouring a libation to the sylvan deities. 
 Then an old soldier, mounting the topmost timber, delivered him- 
 self of a short speech, this being a part of the ceremony of 
 "naming the building," as was the old time-out-of-mind custom, 
 in which without doubt he remarked what a good geographer the 
 governor was, and ended by calling the stronghold. Fort "Went- 
 worth. Then the orator descended from the rostrum, and the 
 whole company joined in three lusty cheers, which awoke all the 
 bats, owls, and similar drowsy gods for many a league around. 
 They then sat down to a bountiful feast of corn cakes and fresh 
 
GOVERNOR "WENTWORTH'S GEOGRAPHY. 139 
 
 moose meat, of which last they had taken care to secure an ample 
 quantity. ' 
 
 On the morrow a messenger came. His Excellency had dis- 
 covered a slight mistake in his reckoning. He had come to the 
 sage conclusion that Albany lay nearer a line drawn due west 
 from Stevenstown to China than that to the north pole. Captain 
 Kogers received a different order. With his rangers he left the 
 ungarrisoned fort to slowly rot away under the shadow of the 
 white summits of Percy peaks, and marched directly to Number 
 Four. From thence with the rest of the regiment they struggled 
 through the wilderness over the Green mountains and joined Gen- 
 eral Lyman, who commanded the New England troops. 
 
 In the campaigns about Lake George, Crown Point, and Ticon- 
 deroga, the whole New Hampshire regiment, by their endurance 
 and daring, won an enviable reputation. But Rogers — who soon 
 rose to the rank of Major — far exceeded all the rest with his bold 
 rangers. They fought like heroes every man, when at the capitu- 
 lation of Oswego the savages butchered the captive English by 
 scores. They were the bravest of the brave, when at Fort William 
 Henry the butchery of Oswego was re-enacted with additional 
 scenes of horror. 
 
 The heroes of Charles the Twelfth never won brighter renown 
 than the New Hampshire contingent, when Rogers with only one 
 hundred and eighty of his rangers fell into an ambush of over 
 seven hundred French and Indians. At midwinter, with the mer- 
 cury below zero, in a dense forest, and with the snow four feet 
 deep, they fought all day long. The blood of many a poor fellow 
 stained the crystal snow, and at night the moon gleamed on the 
 crimson crust. In the twilight Rogers at the head of his few 
 comrades charged up the hill against the line of the enemy, broke 
 it, and escaped. A mile away over the ridge they met John Stark 
 coming to their relief. 
 
 He who fought at Trenton, the hero of Bennington, left his 
 blanket, his provision, and his soldiers to protect Rogers, and alone 
 pushed back on his trail forty miles through the wilderness to Fort 
 Edward. He reached it a little past midnight, obtained a company 
 of soldiers, also handsleds for the wounded, returned on his track, 
 and burst in upon Rogers' camp at a little past noon. John Stark 
 
140 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 had travelled a hundred and twenty miles in less than two days, 
 without rest and without a moment's sleep. 
 
 But the crowning achievement of the rangers was their de- 
 struction of the St. Francis village and their retreat through the 
 wilderness to the meadows of Coos, lying green beneath the 
 shadows of lofty Moosilauke. As this was the eflfective stroke 
 that opened our northern paradise, "Warren, to the white settler, 
 we shall endeavor to faithfully narrate all its most interesting 
 details. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 A LONG MABCH THROUGH THE WOODS ; A TEEKIBLE ATTACK ON AN 
 INDIAN VXLLAGE; a BLOODY BUTCHERY — AWFUL TO THE PAR- 
 TICIPANTS — BUT WITHAL VERY PLEASANT TO READ ABOUT. 
 
 lilKE Robin Hood's forest, like the villages of the Norman 
 freebooters, or in later times like Algiers, the rendezvous of the 
 Algerine pirates, numerous war parties for more than half a cen- 
 tury had continually been dispatched from the little village of St. 
 Fi-ancis to harass the English pioneers. Located at the confluence 
 of the St. Lawrence and the St. Francis rivers, it was of easy 
 access. From it they could proceed to Lake Champlain by the 
 river Sorrel, or ascend the river St. Francis, cross the highlands 
 to the Connecticut, and drop down the latter stream. Then, hang- 
 ing like a black cloud over the border settlements, they would 
 hurl their fury upon the defenceless inhabitants, and fly back with 
 scalps and captives, to receive their reward from the French. In 
 this manner they had made the Pemigewassett territory a danger- 
 ous abiding-place, and kept new settlers far away from the histor- 
 ical land of "Warren. 
 
 A long continued warfare had enriched the St. Francis village, 
 and forty dwellings, thrown together in a disorderly clump, pre- 
 sented a strange contrast to the ancient Indian wigwams. A small 
 Catholic church stood in the midst. In its steeple hung a bell 
 brought from France, whose clear tones summoned the villagers 
 to matin hymns and holy vespers. Within its walls waxen can- 
 dies shed their flickering light on golden crosses. Pictures of 
 patron saints hung on the dingy columns. In a niche behind the 
 altar stood a large silver image of the Virgin Mary, while in the 
 low gallery was a small but beautiful organ of excellent tone. 
 
142 HISTORY OF WAEREN. 
 
 Their worship here, as Lord Macaulay has perhaps unjustly 
 remarked, was what the Catholic religion ever is to the ignorant 
 and superstitious — an appeal to the senses and the passions rather 
 than to the understanding. Pictures, crosses, gorgeous altars 
 and images, charmed the eye. The beautiful strains of the organ, 
 now soft and delicate as the notes of an seolian harp, now rushing 
 and wild as the storm on the mountains, anon deep and heavy as 
 the muttering of distant thunder, enraptured the ear, while burn- 
 ing incense in the censer of the French friar who officiated, his 
 mystic words and chant accompanying, and the tolling of the 
 concealed bell, made the Sabbath worship most impressive, and 
 cast a strange spell over the wild spirits of the savage braves. 
 But the very pious French friar of St. Francis had other duties 
 besides ministering to the religious wants of the red men. It is 
 said that he was the modest, meek, and holy tool of the very hon- 
 est and peaceable French government. With his keen perception 
 of human nature, and his "good Jesiiitical qualities," he was to 
 the Indians what the legislative branch is in a civil government. 
 He voted war, and stirred up his devout church members to fight 
 the English, while the grand sachem, a brave chief — once person- 
 ated in the heretofore mentioned and renowned Acteon — was the 
 executive. For he, Hke most good Catholics, implicitly obeyed 
 the priest and led the war-parties. 
 
 As the conquest of Canada now appeared quite probable, it 
 was thought good policy to make peace with these Indians. Ac- 
 cordingly the British commander sent Captain Kennedy with a flag 
 of truce to arrange a treaty. But they seemed to have forgotten 
 how politely Captain Stevens had received them, and how they 
 had been entertained with sundry mugs of flip, when tlieir own 
 flag of truce was presented at Number Four. With a sort of Punic 
 faith or Roman honor, they seized the gallant captain and made 
 him their prisoner. 
 
 This proceeding enraged General Amherst. He resolved to 
 chastise them and teach them a short lesson in the law of nations 
 that seemed to have escaped their memory. For this purpose bfi 
 issued, September 13th, 1769, the following order: 
 
 "Maj. Ilogers: This night join the detachment of two hun- 
 dred I'angers yesterday ordered out. Proceed to Mississqui bay. 
 
DELENDA EST CABTHAEGO. 143 
 
 March from thence through the woods. Attack the settlements on 
 the south side of the St. Lawrence. Effectually disgrace and 
 injure the enemy. Let honor and success attend the English arms. 
 Eemember barbarities committed by the enemy's Indian scoun- 
 drels. Take deep revenge^- but spare the women and children. 
 Neither kill nor hurt them. "When you have performed this ser- 
 vice, join the army again."* 
 
 This order was worthy of a Spartan Cleomenes or Agesilaus, 
 and the way in which it was executed was equal to a feat of old 
 Scotch Mclan, or the sally of a horde of Tartars from their fast- 
 nesses on the steppes of Asia. 
 
 Rogers and his men struck camp that very night. Embarking 
 in bateaux, for ten days they kept directly down Lake Champlain. 
 The weather was delightful. The hardy rangers vigorously plied 
 their oars. When the wind was favorable they rigged a sail in the 
 prow. The stirring strains of a solitary bugle, echoing from the 
 indented shores and dying away upon the dimpling waves, cheered 
 them on. Night and day they kept on their course. No sleepy 
 Palinarius fell from the high-pointed stern. Each bark followed 
 that of Rogers, and every man, trusting him as a guiding star, 
 faithfully discharged his duty. But as they approached the outlet 
 they grew more cautious. At times they would hug close to the 
 shore, and then again would strike boldly across from headland to 
 headland, carefully avoiding the French cruisers that hovered 
 about the foot of the lake. 
 
 At Mississqui bay they left their boats and provisions in charge 
 of two trusty Indians and struck into the wilderness. There was 
 no road. They struggled through thickets, over fallen trees, and 
 forded streams now swollen by the autumn rains. At night of the 
 second day the boat guard overtook them. Four hundred French 
 and Indians had captured their bateaux, and two hundred were 
 now on their trail. This caused much uneasiness. Their mission 
 was before them. To abandon it would be disgrace. They -must 
 escape from the French who were hanging upon their rear to fall 
 upon and chastise the St. Francis Indians. Like the ten thousand 
 
 * It must be torne in mind that several hundred of the frontier settlers of New 
 Hampshire had at different times been killed by the savages, and the people of our 
 State very naturally hated this St. Francis ftiar. The Puritan writers of that day 
 gave him a very poor character. 
 
144 HISTOKT OF •WAKEEN. 
 
 under Xenophon they must fly before one enemy to fight and con- 
 quer another. 
 
 Lieutenant McMullen was dispatched across the country for 
 supplies, and then, as' related by an early historian, like Charles 
 XII dashing across the marshes of the Baltic, the rangers hurried 
 through the forest. For nine days they marched in a spruce bog. 
 Many a mile it was covered a foot deep with water. At the first 
 dawn they would breakfast, and long before the sun had chased 
 the shadows from the woods were far on their way. They scarcely 
 halted for dinner, but ate as they marched . When the twilight 
 faded and the stars came out, they would stop and construct a kind 
 of hammock to secure them from the water, and lay down to sleep 
 in their pole and bough beds, rocked by the winds that sighed and 
 soughed through the evergreen spruces. 
 
 The fifth day Captain Williams was accidentally burnt with 
 gunpowder, and returned with the sick and hurt. The little 
 party, reduced to one hundred and forty-two men, now pushed 
 on with vigor, and in five days came to a river fifteen miles from 
 the St. Francis. It was several rods in breadth, and flowed with 
 a strong swift current. A raft could not be pushed across it, and 
 the men must struggle through by fording. The tallest were 
 placed up stream, and holding by each other that rope of human 
 beings, writhing and swerving in the rushing torrent, toiled 
 across. The remaining distance was good marching ground, and 
 on the evening of the twenty-second day, a scout having climbed 
 a large hemlock, discovered the church spire of the village gleam- 
 ing through the tree tops. 
 
 Rogers writes in his journal that he ordered the rangers to 
 encamp and refresh themselves, and at eight o'clock, taking with 
 him two officers, he reconnoitered the town. He found the Indians 
 celebrating a wedding. There was feasting on the village green. 
 The old forest-arched canopy resounded to the merry song. The 
 sprightly dancers with jokes and laughter kept time with nimble 
 feet to the wild music of an Indian drum, blending with the 
 quicker notes of a half-civilized violin. Like the exultant Trojans, 
 when they had drawn the wooden horse within their walls, they 
 seemed to celebrate their own destruction. 
 
 At two o'clock in the morning Rogers says he returned to his 
 
EETKIBUTION AT LAST. 145 
 
 camp, that he found it buried in shimber, and that before waking his 
 command he sat down a moment to rest. The fires of the village 
 had gone out; the shouts of the Indian revellei-s had died away, 
 and not a footfall disturbed the silence. To him the moment was 
 impressive and awful. He could almost hear the solitude creep- 
 ing down the St. Francis river, only broken by the water kissing 
 the pebbly shore, or by the mournful howling of the Indian dog 
 upon the bank, sending his monotonous cry after the cloud shad- 
 ows, as they flitted like phantoms over the starlit water. 
 
 But duty forbade delay. Eousing his men at three A. M., he 
 advanced within five hundred yards of the village. Ordering the 
 rangers to halt and lighten their packs, he formed them for action. 
 In the manner of true Indian warriors they wait for the most 
 favorable moment. The stars glimmer less brightly through the 
 trees, and the rosy dawn of morning tinges the eastern sky. It 
 was the time when deep sleep bound the limbs of the tired Indian 
 fastest, when Rogers gave the signal, and those hundred and forty- 
 two men, in three divisions, rushed forward with horrid yells, 
 hurled the blazing fire-brands into the dwellings, and shot down 
 alike men, women, and children. 
 
 The lurid glare of the blazing habitations showed more than 
 six hundred human scalps, with hair fluttering in the fire-made 
 breeze, stretched upon poles — savage trophies of the border war. 
 The sight filled the men with rage, and they rushed with redoubled 
 fury to the slaughter. Some of the Indians, leaving their dwel- 
 lings, fled to the river and leaped into their canoes. The rangers 
 pursued, sank their frail craft and shot or drowned those endeav- 
 oring to escape. Others concealed themselves in the cellars and 
 lofts of their dwellings and preferred to perish in the fiames. Two 
 of the strongest rangers, Bradley and Farrington, came to the 
 door of the wigwam where the wedding had taken place. They 
 threw themsel+^es violently against it, burst it from its hinges, and 
 Bradley fell headlong among the sleeping inmates. The Indians 
 were filled with consternation, but seizing their arms fought brave- 
 ly for a few moments, when the rangers pouring in overxDOwered 
 and slew them.* Rogers writes that the first beams of the morn- 
 
 * Hi3toiy of Conooi-d, Jf. H., 104. 
 
146 HISTOEY OF WAEBEN. 
 
 ing sun pierced the mingled smoke and fog that rolled slowly down 
 the valley of the St. Francis ; that the spire of the blazing church 
 glistened for the last time in the bright sunlight, then, tottering 
 for an instant, fell with a loud crash, the bell uttering a mournful 
 peal — the last sad requiem over the doomed village of St. Francis. 
 
 At seven o'clock in the morning the work was done. Like 
 Ilium, the Indian hamlet smoked to the ground. Two hundred 
 Indians lay half consumed in the embers of their dwellings, or 
 staiued the noble river with their blood. Of aU the inhabitants 
 but twenty women and children wei-e alive. Retaining five of 
 these as guides, Rogers suffered the remaining fifteen to depart.* 
 
 Only one of his men had fallen and but five or six were 
 wounded. Five English captives who had been sometime with 
 the Indians escaped during the fight. Thej^ reported that three 
 hundred French and Indians had encamped the previous night 
 four miles down the river, and were already moving to the scene 
 of action. 
 
 Rogers had retreated before them to fall like a thunderbolt 
 upon the St. Francis, had accomplished his purpose, and with the 
 enemj^ more than double his number still following him like a 
 blood-hound, must now plunge into an unbroken wilderness. 
 Ordering his men to secure the small quantity of corn which they 
 found in three remaining outbuildings, for there was no other 
 provision, he began to retreat. As the forest closed around the 
 rangers, hiding the smoking ruins from their view, the shouts of 
 the enemycoming rapidly up quickened their flying footsteps. 
 
 * We have not been able to learn with certainty the fate of the St. Francis Mar. 
 It is probable, however, that he made good his escape. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE RETEEAT AND ITS HOREOES, THE CAMP ON THE COOS INTEEVAL 
 UNDER THE SHADOW OF MIGHTY MOOSILAUKE, CONCLUDING 
 WITH A BEAUTIFUL AND GOLDEN TRADITION, THAT HAS BEEN 
 REPEATED ABOUND THE FAEMER'S FIRESIDE FOE A HUNDRED 
 TEARS. 
 
 MaESHAL JUNOT defeated and dispersed the Turkisli 
 army at Nazareth, and Mount Tabor saw the Miisselmen flying- 
 before the gallant Kleber; yet famine and the plague drove 
 Napoleon's brave soldiers from Palestine. So the hardy rangers, 
 who never quailed before any human foe, now met in the deep 
 forest an enemy more terrible than the half-blood Frenchman or 
 the maddened savage. True it was that three hundred of the lat- 
 ter still hung like ravenous wolves upon their trail, joining addi- 
 tional horrors to ghostly famine. Yet the starving rangers hurried 
 on through the pathless woods, over rugged mountains, with no 
 landmarks to guide them, while the old forest roared and rocked 
 in the cold October storm. Nor did they always advance. Their 
 guides were treacherous. For three days, as the record reads, 
 they wandered about in an almost interminable swamp. The 
 fourth day they returned on their retreat so much that they struck 
 the trail of the enemy that was following them. 
 
 The French and Indians were well provisioned. The rangers 
 were worn down ; famine preyed upon their emaciated forms, and 
 at any moment they were in danger of falling into the deadly am- 
 buscade. There was but one hope. The famishing party divided 
 itself into nine small companies, each with a leader.* It was 
 
 * Rogers led one of the parties; Lieuts. Philipe, Campbell, Cargill, and Far- 
 rington, Ensign Arery, Sergeant Evens, and Dunbar and Tnmer, led the others. 
 
148 HISTOET OP ■WAEEBN. 
 
 agreed that the one which should enoountei- the enemy should, like 
 a forlorn hope, fight till the last moment, while the others, warned 
 by the contest, might escape. Having separated, in half an horn- 
 volley after volley told that one of the companies was sacrificing 
 itself for its companions.* Hurrjdng forward to meet death in a 
 more terrible form, they left their brave comrades to waste away 
 in the damp mosses of the swamp. 
 
 Memphremagog lake, sparkling like a gem in its forest setting, 
 saw them boiling and eating their powder-horns and shot-pouches. 
 When these failed their moccasins furnished another tough morsel, 
 from which they gathered strength to drag on with bleeding feet 
 through the wilderness. 
 
 At the end of the eighteenth day one party struck the Con- 
 necticut river at upper Coos, mistaking it for lower Coos. Bradley, 
 he who was so brave in the fight at St. Francis, was among them. 
 He was a native of Concord. He said if he was in full strength 
 he should be in his father's house in three days. He took a point 
 of compass which at lower Coos would have brought him to the 
 Merrimack, but in fact led directly over the White mountains. A 
 ranger and a mulatto man accompanied him. The next year a 
 party of hunters found in one of the deep mou-ntain gorges a man's 
 bones; by them were three half-burned brands piled together. 
 Silver brooches and wampum lay scattered about— plunder from 
 the St. Francis— while a leather ribbon, such as Bradley wore, 
 bound the long black hair to the whitening skull. No arms were 
 by him and no signs of companions. f 
 
 The remainder of the company made a hurried march down 
 the river, for the current was too wild for rafts. Where the 
 Ammonoosuc, coming from the south, and seeming to beat back 
 the dark waters of the Connecticut as they svirge through the 
 " Narrows," Rogers had appointed a rendezvous. Here they ex- 
 pected to find relief. General Amherst had indeed dispatched 
 
 *It -n-as tbe party led by Ensign Avei-y which was oyertaken by the enemy. 
 Besides those liilled, seven of his men were taken prisoners, hut two of them 
 escaped. Lieut. George Campbell's pai-tv, and Sergeant Evens' pai-ty saved their 
 lives by eating Avery's dead soldiers, 'who had sacrifloed themselves that the 
 others might escape. This act of Ensign Avery's men, yielding.up their lives that 
 the others might live, is one of the most noble recorded in history. 
 
 tTradition has it that Bradley started with two or three men, but they never 
 reached home. It is snpposed they all perished with hunger and coW amid the 
 snows of the wilderness.— History of Conoonl, 104. 
 
ACT OP A CO-WAED, 149 
 
 Lieutenaut Stevens with provisions, directing him to remain till 
 the rangers arrived, but reckless of his duty he returned at the 
 end of two days, carrying everything with him. He had been 
 gone but a short time when the first party came upon the interval 
 and found his camp-iires still burning. They discharged their 
 muskets to bring him back. He heard them^ and thinking it was 
 the enemy, hurried on the faster. Despairing, they eat their last 
 morsel of food, and then laid down in Stevens' deserted camp and 
 awaited their fate. 
 
 That night Lieutenant Philips brought in his party. Philips 
 was a half-blood Indian, his mother being a wild Mohawk. The 
 Earl of Loudon commissioned him lieutenant, and throughout 
 the whole seven years' war he was a gallant leader of the rangers. 
 Yet his party suffered terribly. Day after day, as the story is told 
 by himself, they continued to retreat without a morsel of food. As 
 they reeled through the woods it seemed as if the dry limbs of the 
 trees shrieking in the wind was the voice of ghostly famine croak- 
 ing over them "like the boding owl of destruction. "When their 
 emaciated forms seemed just ready to sink down they determined 
 to kill a St. Francis prisoner who was with them. A draft of 
 human blood and a feast of human flesh, or death — this was the 
 dreadful alternative. But that afternoon they killed a muskrat, 
 which they divided amongst themselves, and human life was 
 spared.* 
 
 Sergeant Evens, another leader, came in with his company on 
 the following morning. Their sufferings if possible were even 
 more terrible. The sergeant used to tell how for days and weeks, 
 they wandered through the woods. Birch bark, gnawed with 
 ravenous teeth, and roots dug with long bony fingers, only kept 
 away death. In the cold swamp, through which they staggered 
 delirious, they stumbled upon the mangled remains of their slain 
 companions. Almost every man, as if he were a ravenous beast, 
 gorged himself upon human flesh. Evens' feelings revolted and 
 he refused to eat. But his soldiers laid in a supply, and a few 
 nights afterwards, when the chills of death seemed creeping over 
 
 * Philips did not remain long on the Coos intervals. He took the old Indian 
 trail up the Oliverian, reached the Asquamchumauke, and followed down the river 
 home to Concord, N. H.— History oi' Concord, 200, 
 
150 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 him, he took a steak of his comrades' flesh from the knapsack of a 
 sleeping ranger, roasted it upon the coals, and years afterwards 
 pronounced it " the sweetest morsel he ever tasted." 
 
 Lieutenant George Campbell, who led another company, said 
 that his men suffered severely. For four days not a particle of 
 food passed their lips. . "Without a guide and ignorant of the coun- 
 try, they wandered they knew not whither, like a ship upon a 
 stormy ocean, without compass or star to direct. The weak in 
 mind were driven mad by despair and suffering ; the weak in body 
 laid down and died. Eating leather straps and the covers of car- 
 touch boxes, tough food, did not appease the dire hunger that con- 
 sumed them. At length their resources were all gone, and not a 
 ray of hope gleamed through the bars of their forest prison. 
 Death had laid his fearful grasp upon them, and it seemed as if 
 the last man must perish. October 28th but half the party were 
 alive. A few hours more and these must die. But a ghasth' 
 relief came to them when thej' least expected it. A ranger cross- 
 ing a stream slipped from a log. His foot disturbed the leafy cov- 
 ering that had fallen upon the water and he caught sight of some 
 human bodies scalped and horribly mutilated. The furious hunger 
 of these famishing men knew no restraint; they did not even wait 
 for a fire with which to prepare their ghastly banquet, but ate like 
 beasts of prey. Then, collecting carefully the remnants, they 
 pursued their journey. 
 
 At this time Rogers also came with his party. During the 
 whole retreat he had shown himself a hero, and now when his 
 men were perishing he constructed a rude raft, and with Captain 
 Ogden and an Indian boy started to float down to Number Four 
 and obtain supplies. The famishing rangers saw him disappear 
 around a long sweeping bend of the river, and then lay down to 
 wait ten days, at the end of which he had promised to return. 
 The hours went slowly by — a week passed — and those men sat in 
 the smoke, of their flres and listened to the wind sighing about 
 their camp. As their forms grew more attenuated, their faces 
 more haggard, and their eyes and cheeks more sunken, they would 
 reel into the woods to gather roots and bark, coarse food to keep 
 the last spark of life from going out. 
 
 Across the open meadow was a lofty mountain, and the early 
 
MOOSIXAUKE. 161 
 
 snows of autumn glistened in the sunlight upon its summit. 
 Old settlers tell the story how two of the rangers, one of them 
 hy name Robert Pomeroy, had hunted on the streams beyond 
 that mountain in bygone days. With their companions dying 
 around them and death staring them in the face they resolved to 
 cross it and go home. One night, when the rest of the band were 
 asleep, they took from a knapsack a human head, cut oif pieces, 
 roasted them upon the coals, satisfied their hunger, and at the 
 earliest dawn departed.* 
 
 Late in the afternoon they were standing upon the summit of 
 Moosilauke mountain. They stopped to rest and to gaze upon the 
 wildest scene that ever met their eyes. Mountains like mole hills 
 were scattered through the great northern country. To the east, 
 peak after peak shot thousands of feet into the clear ether. Look- 
 ing South, the mountain upon which they stood seemed the wild 
 . head of the deep wilderness. Scattered through it were gleaming 
 rivers, flashing ponds and silver lakes, while at its foot, a hundred 
 miles distant, a bright line on the horizon showed where the blue 
 sea was dashing. "Westward, range after range of lofty wooded 
 mountains stretched far away, like the rolling billows of a tempest 
 tossed ocean. And then all the forest for a hundred miles around 
 was one glorious blaze of brilliant colors. Every autumn hue and 
 tint imaginable shone resplendent, as though the hand of the 
 Divine Artist had woven together myriads of gorgeous rainbows 
 with which to mantle this hitherto unseen solitude. 
 
 Half an hour later they saw the sun sink slowly down and 
 gild every range of mountains with golden rays of glory. The 
 clouds that lay along the horizon sparkled in roseate tints, while 
 the horizon itself, appearing like a golden plain in continuation 
 of the earth, changed soon, first to green, and then to a cold 
 ashen gray. As the crescent moon, at first pale but with growing 
 brightness, together with a single star of large magnitude, appeared 
 over the summits of the snowy eastern mountains, Pomeroy, be- 
 
 * David Evens said that one nigtit, while the men of his party were asleep in 
 the camp, his own cravings for food were so nnsupportahle that he awoke from 
 sleep, and seeing a large knapsack belonging to one of his comrades, opened it in 
 hopes to find something, to satisfy his hunger ; that he found in it three human 
 heads; thaf he cut a piece from one of chem, and broiled and ate it, while the men 
 continued to sleep. But he said he would sooner die of hunger than do the like 
 again. He observed that when their distresses were greatest they hardly deserved 
 the name of human beings.— History of Concord, 195, 
 
152 HISTOET 01' WARKEN. 
 
 numbed with cold, sank down saying he must sleep." His com- 
 panion tried to rouse him but in vain, and Jearing for his own life 
 hurried down the mountain. The wolf howled in the great gorge 
 that night and the wild echoes were roused by the panther's cry. 
 But the ranger heeded them not, and when the last twilight had 
 faded from the western sky he in turn sank down exhausted at the 
 foot of the Seven Cascades. 
 
 The legend further relates in a beautiful manner — and surely 
 this can be nothing but a legend — how the ranger seemed to be 
 dying ; and when the stars shone bright above him and the moon 
 looked in through the trees and lighted up the white foam of the 
 ■ cascades, distant music coming nearer seemed to mingle with that 
 of the water, and his quickened senses heard fairy harps joined 
 with faiiy voices, and saw fairy feet dancing in the silver spray. 
 Elfin kings and fairy queens whirled in the mazy dance for a mo- 
 ment and were gone. And then came a troop of nereids, with 
 long dishevelled hair and eyes lustrous as the stars that shone 
 above them, to bathe in the clear crystal fountain. For an instant 
 they seemed to hold sweet dalliance with the sparkling water and 
 then floated awaj' in the thin mist that hung over the great wood 
 and turbanned the distant mountain. Day seemed breaking, and 
 the bright sun looked in from over the eastern hills upon a crowd 
 of mountain genii, who chanted' their matin hymns in their wild 
 lock-hewn temples, and then mounted up on viewless steps to offer 
 incense on their rainbow altar, golden in the flood of rosy light, 
 and glistening in the diamond drops of the waterfall. 
 
 As a dark, cloud stole across the skj'^, veiling the moon, the 
 scene changed. The shrieks, of the dying Indians at St. Francis, 
 the mournful peal of the chapel bell, the retreat, the famine, the 
 terrible feast upon human heads, the dying comrade upon the 
 mountain top, himself perishing by the torrent, — and then, seen 
 for a moment, the picture of a dark form bending over him — and 
 the famishing ranger was unconscious. 
 
 The next morning the sun, glorious in his splendor, gleamed 
 on the seven cascades of the gorge. There was no wind, and the 
 
 *EobertPomeroy, a ranger from Derrylield, * * * perished in the -Boods 
 \,* ^*, """"S*'''''"'^'''" ■*'*'"'■'' * * * and his bonea were found years after 
 about tlie sources uf the Merrimack. They were identifled by his hair and some 
 personal effects that had not decayed.— Potter's Hist, of Manchester, 336. 
 
THE LONE HUNTEB. 153 
 
 bright flashing waters as they leaped down seemed to hymn a lofty 
 pEean of praise in the solitude. It was a far, wild country, one in 
 which seemingly no human foot had ever trod. Yet there was 
 one being even here. An old hunter from the frontier had pene- 
 trated this wilderness to trap otter, beaver, and sable. He had 
 constl-ucted a rude camp for himself by the side of Gorge brook. 
 In the great meadow over the ridge he set his steel traps for 
 beaver, and built Indian culheags for sable by his spotted line on 
 the mountain side. It chanced that he was visiting the latter that 
 morning. He discovered the footsteps of the ranger who had 
 crossed his line, and following them found him almost insensible 
 at the foot of the cascades. Bearing him to the camp he nursed 
 him back to life, and for a few weeks he assisted the hunter in his 
 duties. 
 
 One day, as the early settlers relate the golden tradition, the 
 ranger stopped to quench his thirst at a little mountain rill. As 
 he kneeled to sip the sparkling water he saw shining in the sand 
 at the bottom what appeared to be bright grains of gold. Picking 
 up a handful of these he tied them in a corner of his handkerchief 
 and after heaping a small monument of stones on the bank, 
 departed. The particles thus collected, on being shown to a jew- 
 eller, proved to be pure gold, and he received for them fifty 
 dollars. But although careful search has since often been made 
 neither the monument nor the golden stream has ever again been 
 discovered. When the snow began to fall in the valley the hunter, 
 accompanied by the ranger, returned to the settlements. 
 
 The remaining companies of the rangers came straggling in 
 upon the intervals. As one by one they died — the allotted ten 
 days not yet passed — despair seated itself on the conritenances 
 of all the living, and they prayed once more that Rogers might 
 return. 
 
CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 HOW THE SURVIVING RAKGEES ALL GOT SAFELY HOME, AND HOW 
 THENCEFORWARD THE PEMIGEWASSETT LAND, CONTAINING THE 
 PLEASANT LITTLE TEEEITOKY OF WARREN, BECAME VERT SAFE 
 COUNTRY IN WHICH TO SOJOURN. * 
 
 Robert ROGERS' journal, written by himself, gives a 
 succinct account of Ms exploits in the old French war. It relates 
 how at his departure from the intervals to obtain help he laid down 
 with his two companions on their rude craft, by far more primeval 
 than that on which sailed Jason and his mythical companions in 
 search of the golden fleece, and for hours floated swiftly down in 
 the rapid current. Yet he fails to narrate the fact — for it is pre- 
 sumed that every one should know as much — that the river was 
 swollen by the autumn rains, and that the streams from the high- 
 lands on either hand poured in their turbid floods. Neither does 
 he mention the bright hues spread over all the woods ; nor the 
 wild geese which, noting the strange craft on the water, cackled 
 at them from the sky ; or that at night bears halloed from the hills 
 and muskrats swam splashing along the shores. 
 
 Even Ompompanoosuc, a western stream, heaving with its 
 muddy tide, was unnoticed, and they were only roused from their 
 lethargy by a dull but fearful roaring ahead. Starting up they 
 saw a thin mist rising from the falls which their raft was rapidly 
 approaching. Their oars were too small to manage their unwieldy 
 craft in the now eddying and boiling current. A few moments 
 more and they must go over. Death stared them in the face. But 
 they had met it in a thousand forms and though famishing they 
 would not yield. Leaping into the water, after a hard struggle 
 
AN INDIAN RAFT. 165 
 
 they gained the shore. Their raft, pausing a moment on the 
 brink, leaped like a thing of life into the wild vortex, and was 
 dashed in pieces. 
 
 Wet, cold, and starving, with much difficulty they reached 
 the foot of the falls. To proceed by land was impossible ; yet 
 Eogers' indomitable spirit never sank. Bidding his men hunt for 
 food, he went to work in true Indian style and kindled a fire. In 
 three days he had burned down and burned off trees sufficient for 
 a raft, and bound them together with withes. In the meantime 
 his companions had procured a red squirrel and a single partridge 
 — just sufficient to kefep soul and body together — and on the morn- 
 ing of the fourth day they placed themselves upon the new raft 
 and once more glided swiftly on. The genii of the waterfall 
 seemed to scream after them through the mist, bidding them make 
 no delay, for the famishing rangers were roasting human flesh far 
 back in the cold shadows of Moosilauke mountain. 
 
 "White river was passed, and in another hour they heard the 
 roaring of Wattoqueche fall. Eogers this time was on the watch 
 for dangers ahead. Paddling their raft ashore, Ogden guided it 
 over the fallg with a long withe-rope of hazel bushes, while 
 Kogers swam in and secured it. This raft was their only hope ; 
 with it lost their fate was death. All night without food they 
 floated down the stream. Morning showed them a clearing. 
 Shortly after men came to cut timber on the river bank, who 
 discovered and assisted them. 
 
 Rogers' first thought was for his rangers who were dying one 
 by one at Coos. Several canoes were immediately fitted out, and 
 manned by strong arms they shot like arrows up through the 
 forest that shut in the Connecticut. In four days the suffering 
 rangers saw them pull round the headland where ten days before 
 their leader had disappeared. Resting for a day only, Rogers 
 went up the river to meet his men and again share their fortunes. 
 It was a strange sight, that silent voyage down the blue stream ; 
 those rude boats, freighted with men whose matted beards, sunken 
 eyes, and hollow cheeks told of the horrors they had endured. 
 
 On the fifth day of November the last living ranger had 
 arrived at Number Four. Gathered around their leader at the 
 fort they seemed moi'e like ill-dressed corpses than like human 
 
156 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 beings. Delaying a few days to recruit their exhausted energies, 
 Rogers placed himself at their head and hurried away across the 
 Green mountains to Ticonderoga and Crown Point to take part in 
 the closing scenes of the war. 
 
 Perhaps some would like to know the subsequent history of 
 Major Eogers. To narrate all of the events of his after life would 
 be altogether foreign to our purpose. When Wolfe defeated Mont- 
 calm on the plains of Abraham, and the flag of old England was 
 unfurled above the battlements of the strongest fortress in Amer- 
 ica, the major went to the far west. He scouted sometime in the 
 woods about Detroit, searching for Indians', and then made an 
 expedition on the ice up Lake Huron, towards Michilimackinac. 
 At the close of the war he. went to Europe, and thence to Africa, 
 where he fought two battles under the Dey of Algiers. For a 
 further account of his life we would refer to " Rogers' Journal," 
 published by himself, a very old and rare work, the author of this 
 veritable history never having met with but one copy. 
 
 Rogers himself and his rangers never forgot their memorable 
 visit to Coos, and years afterwards' many of them found a home in 
 the scene of their suffering. 
 
 The work was now all done. There was no more fear of the 
 Indians, and our beloved Pemigewassett land, including the town 
 of Warren, the history of which we are trying so hard to write, 
 was now destined to undergo a great change. A more glorious 
 era was about to dawn upon the great wild nortli of New Hamp- 
 shire. 
 
 As this second book was designed only to treat of the border 
 wars by means of which the old hunting grounds of the Pemige- 
 wassetts became known and opened up for settlement, we shall 
 here necessarily put an end to our narrations of bush-fights, cap- 
 tivities, and explorations, and shall endeavor in onr next to tell 
 how our own "Warren — one of the wildest of the northern ham- 
 lets — was established and occupied. 
 
BOOK III. 
 
 OP THE BIRTH OP A MOUNTAIN HAMLET, OR THE PEECISE AND 
 ACCURATE HISTOfer OP THE ACTS OP SIXTY-SIX DISTINGUISHED 
 MEN, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE PROPRIETORS OP WARREN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CONCEENIN& A GREAT SHAGGY WOOD AND NUMEROUS HUNTERS 
 THEREIN, AND THEN OP A SWEET LITTLE FEUD BETWEEN THREE 
 ROYAL GOVERNORS AND HOW ONE OF THEM POLITELY EUCHRED 
 THE OTHERS, MUCH TO THEIR DELIGHT. 
 
 The old French war was ended. The Indians were no 
 longer feared. Rogers had crushed them. A vast extent of forest 
 country now lay open to the colonists. Our little mountain ham- 
 let — not yet called "Warren — was in this mighty wood, in which 
 there were no openings save those made by the hurricane, the 
 flood, or the Indian's Are. Camel's Hump and Mt. Mansfield 
 looked down upon the lesser heights of the Green mountains ; the 
 White hills rose out of the woods like islands in a sea, and Mts. 
 Aziscoos and Katardin stood high above Umbagog and Moosehead 
 lakes, which had mirrored them for centuries. Otter creek, 
 Onion river, and the Lamoile, flowed from the wilderness to the 
 west ; the Connecticut, the Merrimack, and the Saco came down 
 from the mountains of New Hampshire, and the Androscoggin, 
 the Kennebec and the Penobscot from, the bright lakes of the east. 
 The Indians, as we have before shown in this most veritable 
 
158 HISTORY OF -WAEEEN. 
 
 history had nearly all left this umbrageous wilderness ; but the 
 " wild beastes," so accurately described by that early, celebrated, 
 and very chaste historian, John Josselyn, Gent., such as bears, 
 wolves, panthers, moose, deer, loupcerviers, and sweet-smelling 
 "squnckes," remained. 
 
 My gentle reader, without doubt you know already that the 
 little tract of tei-ritory at the head of the Asquamchumauke val- 
 ley and surrounded by lofty mountains was in the very heart of 
 this great, wild, beast-filled wilderness. The far-sighted glance of 
 the eagle, soaring aloft above the crests of its mountains, scarce 
 penetrated to the distant confines of civilization. The nearest far 
 apart settlements in New England were mostly along the sea- 
 coast and on the banks of the largest rivers. Up the Merrimack 
 the clearings had crept as far as a place called Bakers town, after- 
 wards Stevenstown, and now Franklin, N. H. On the Connecti- 
 cut river the most northern settlement was around that little log- 
 fort which we have known in the book preceding as Number Four, 
 at present the town of Charleston. For a hundred and fifty years 
 the French had lived in the St. Lawrence valley and their settle- 
 ments branched off into this wilderness on the banks of the 
 Chaudiere, the St. Francis, and the Sorelle. To the east. French- 
 men lived on the river St. John, and westward were scattered 
 openings beyond Champlaiu and by the great lakes. It was hun- 
 dreds of miles across this forest, east and west, north and south. 
 
 Yankee men of that heroic age were as fond of hunting as any 
 who live at the present day. Even those not quite so brave spirits 
 who had hitherto been compelled to stay at home through fear of 
 the Indians, could now take up their march with perfect impunity 
 into the woods, to hunt and to trap all that wild ferocious game 
 which John Josselyn, Gent., has so particularly described to us in 
 his veracious history. 
 
 The last of September— in this climate the most delightful 
 month of the year — now saw hundreds of men, old and young, 
 
 " The iidld-cat, luceru, or luceret, or oimce as some call it, is not inferior to 
 laml). Their gi'ease is very sovereign for lameness npon taking cold." 
 
 " The squnckfi is almost as big as- a raccoon, perfect hlack and "white, or pye 
 bald, with a bnshtail like a fox, and offensive carrion. The urine of this creature 
 is of so strong a scent that if it light upon anything there is no abiding of it. It 
 will make aman smell though he were of Alexander's complexion, and so sharp, 
 if he do but whisk his bush which he pisseth upon in the face of a dogg hunting of 
 him, and if any of it light in his eyes, it will make him almost mad with the smart 
 thereof."— John Josselyn'e 2 Voyages to New England. 
 
THE HUNTERS' PARADISE . 159 
 
 leaving their wives and sweethearts and journeying to those 
 pleasant solitudes in the wooded valleys beside the sylvan brooks, 
 rivers, and lakes. They were accustomed to go in boats up the 
 streams as far as possible, often following the same routes that 
 Capt. Peter Powers sailed, rowed, and poled over, or that Col. 
 Joseph Blanchard, Maj. Tolford,. and Capt. John Goffe traveled. 
 "We can imagine them leaving their canoes, gun in one hand, axe 
 in the other, and a great pack made up of steel traps, spare shirts, 
 feeting, and provisions, in all more than a hundred pounds weight 
 strapped upon their backs, and toiling through the woods and 
 over the mountains in search of beaver meadows and sable ranges. 
 They would build for themselves pleasant little cabins beside some 
 musical stream, and here they would hunt till the snowflakes flew. 
 Then, toting their traps and rich peltries back to their canoes, they 
 would paddle rapidly down the swift current of the now swollen 
 streams to their homes again. 
 
 Such were the human inhabitants of our very interesting 
 forest just after the closing of the " Seven Years War;" and such 
 were the only visitors of our mountain bounded valley. By these 
 hunters every stream of the wilderness was explored, every 
 meadow and valley noted, mountain gorges traversed, and even 
 the mountains themselves ascended. 
 
 Hitherto the propensity of the Yankee people to emigrate and 
 take up new lands, to clear farms, build log cabins to be succeeded 
 by pine board palaces, had been restrained as we have already 
 hinted by a terror of the Indians. But noV a new instinct seemed 
 to have taken possession of the multitude. Like the mutterings 
 preceding the destruction of Jerusalem, an ominous voice seemed 
 to say, " Let us depart hence," but the departure was for a very 
 different reason. The wild lands of the north were on every 
 tongue. All the hunters we have mentioned, all the wild border- 
 ers, all the explorers, and all the seven years war men who had 
 marched and campaigned through that section, told almost fabulous 
 stories of its richness and fertility. 
 
 The world has seen many an exodus. But the flight of the 
 Jews from Egypt was very unlike that about to be seen in south- 
 ei-n New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The wild Asiatic hordes, 
 hurrying from the northern table-lands to the south and west, fur- 
 
160 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 nished hardly a pa,rallel case. There they moved as a vast army, 
 conquering the lands they coveted and making serfs of the 
 original dwellers of the soil. Here, however, they seemed desir- 
 ous to go one by one into the wilderness ; fathers with their fam- 
 ilies; and young men without families, each for himself, caring for 
 nobody, thinking only of future fields and meadows full of black 
 stumps and logs, rich pastures with the same attractive features 
 and no end of cobble-stone pyramids added, out of all which 
 should come great gains and much happiness. 
 
 But we would not detract one iota from the merits of our 
 forefathers. Let no one think they resembled the squatters of the 
 present day, or that they occupied the lands without leave or 
 license. They had great respect for law, order, and the rights of 
 property. Much as they desired rich homes for themselves, not a 
 family would move into the wilderness until they had acquired a 
 title to the lands they wanted. But who owned the lands ? "Who 
 could give them deeds? Who could insure them a perfect immun- 
 ity from being considered trespassers, and protect them from writs 
 of ejectment and perplexing lawsuits in which some men so much 
 delight? These were very interesting questions, and upon them a 
 great discussion arose. All the provinces began to talk of the 
 great discoveries of Christopher Columbus, of the seizure of the 
 different portions of America by the several nations of Europe, 
 of the portictn old England modestly took, that of the Virginia 
 company, the Dutch West India company, the Massachusetts Bay 
 company, and the grant of that famous little tract of land, made 
 by the last named company to John Mason, and then about the 
 entertaining lawsuits instituted by said Mason's heirs against other 
 claimants of the soil of the province once known as Mariana, 
 otherwise Laconia, and finally New Hampshire. 
 
 At last the very wise conclusion obtained possession of men's 
 minds that the land belonged to the crown, and to the crowu they 
 began to look for grants. Then came the question, " Through 
 what channels?" — and upon this the distinguished rulers of New 
 Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York each set up their claims 
 to the land in question, and each announced to the people that he 
 was the person to issue grants. 
 
 It is said that three proclamations were pvit forth by the rival 
 
A QUARREL AMONG CrVTLIANS. 161 
 
 goyernore stating this fact, and by this means all the people of the 
 several provinces were clearly enlightened . The dilemma waxed 
 more diflB.cult. The law-abiding citizens became more and more 
 impatient, and like the ass between two bundles of hay, they 
 might wait forever. 
 
 To relieve the public mind of the great suspense that was now 
 hanging over these mighty provinces, embassies were dispatched 
 to England to obtain a settlement of the great question. "Who 
 went on this important mission, and when they went or returned, 
 it is not for this veracious history to chronicle. Suffice it to say 
 that they did return and made so satisfactory a report that the 
 whole matter seemed more befogged than ever, and things did not 
 advance a particle. 
 
 The several royal governors grew more belligerent than before. 
 They eyed each other like dogs watching a bone, each jealous of 
 the other. So furious did they become that even grim visaged 
 war with its horrid front seemed portending. An old historian 
 said the moon looked like blood, that a comet appeared in the 
 heavens, and meteors flashed across the sky. Provinces hitherto 
 peaceful among themselves, content to fight only a common foe, 
 Indian or French, now seemed ready to gird on their armor for 
 internecine strife. Of the two methods of settling boundary lines 
 — one by arms, the other by compromise — it seemed at one time 
 highly probable that the former might be chosen. 
 
 But the fates decreed otherwise, and determined that neither 
 method should be followed. While the royal governors of Mas- 
 sachusetts and New York were contending with high words, and 
 seemed almost ready to come to blows and broken heads, New 
 Hampshire's greatest and best ruler continued to add fuel to the 
 flames of contention now brightly burning, and also sub rosa took 
 time by the forelock, boldly cut the gordian knot for himself, and 
 before a rumor of what he was doing had gone abroad, made hun- 
 dreds of grants to actual settlers, leaving his two dear friends the 
 governors nothing to flght about, and so shot far ahead of them in 
 worldly riches and gubernatorial fame. How this was accom- 
 plished we shall immediately proceed to show. 
 
 K 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 OP A FINE OLD GOTEHNOR OF TE ANCIENT DATS AND OF HIS KOTAL 
 SECRETAET. HOW THESE TWO WORTHIES BOU-T GOLDEN CAS- 
 TLES IN THE AIR AND FINALLY GREW QUITE RICH. 
 
 BENNENG WENTWOETH, whom we have many times 
 before mentioned, was the son of John Wentworth, one of the 
 former royal lieutenant-governors of the province of New Hamp- 
 shire. He was installed in oflB.ce with great ceremonies and 
 rejoicings on the 13th of December, 1741. It is recorded how a 
 mighty cavalcade escorted him into that great seaport town, Ports- 
 mouth, and how he was received amid the joyfal acclamations of 
 thousands of people who assembled to welcome him. This is 
 probably the partly truthful and the partly poetical language of 
 the distinguished historian ; but we can well pardon his veneration 
 for one of the most honorable governors of his loved State.* 
 
 Had our royal ruler consented to have lived till the present 
 time we might have presented a faithful portrait of his character, 
 appearance, and habits ; as it is, we shall be under the necessity of 
 giving him but a passing notice. 
 
 Governor "Wentworth was a fine gentleman, " all of ye olden 
 time," and in the matter of dress was fastidious. On state occa- 
 sions he appeared in powdered wig, three-cornered hat, blue coat 
 with buff facings and bright buttons, breeches rather broad in the 
 
 *Benning Wentworth was a descendant of Elder William Wentworth, ofDoT- 
 er. Lieut. Governor John Wentworth had fourteen children : 1st. Beuning, after- 
 wards governor; 2d, John, Judge of Probate of Portsmouth ; 3d, Hunting; 4th, 
 William; 5th, Samuel, father of Mrs. Gov. John; 6th, Mark Hunting, father olT 
 Gov. John; 7th, Daniel; 8th, Ebenezer; 9th, George; 10th. Hannah, maiTied Sam- 
 uel Plaisted and Theodore Atkinson; 11th, Sarah, married Archibald McPhedris; 
 12th, Mary; 13th, Elizabeth; 14th, Rebecca, married Thomas Packer. Benuing 
 Wentworth was councillor from 1732 to 1741, when he became governor, and re- 
 mained in ofloe till May, 1767 — History of Chester, 54. 
 
BENNING WENTWORTH. 163 
 
 seat and tight around the leg, long stockings, sharp-pointed shoes, 
 silver knee and shoe-buckles, an immense frizzle around the neck, 
 and a shirt bosom set forth with eiioi-mous ruffles. 
 
 In education he was superior to most men of his time, having 
 spent several years at Harvard University and received all the 
 honors of that renowned institution. Probably geography was 
 not then taught, or he never would have made those lamentable 
 mistakes in reckoning latitude and longitude, which as we have 
 before shown in this most delectable history cost so much blood 
 and treasure. 
 
 He made but few laws, but he took great care that these 
 should be well understood and executed, as we have seen in the 
 case of Peter Bowen and his friend, when they went scot free on 
 account of public opinion. 
 
 As a warrior he was peculiarly great and fortunate, although 
 we have no knowledge that he ever fought a battle in his life. He 
 preferred rather to plan mighty campaigns and trust to his distin- 
 guished generals to execute them. Cavalry soldiers were his fav- 
 orites, and the desperate charges of his bold wild horsemen through 
 the dark woods of the north are facts well known in history. 
 
 Governor "Wentworth reigned long and well, much to the sat- 
 isfaction of his loyal subjects, and bid fair to have held his posi- 
 tion till the day of his death but for his love of wealth and that his 
 great gains excited the envy of other ambitious and avaricious 
 men of the province. 
 
 The governor had a worthy secretary, who had been a friend 
 and acquaintance of his boyhood, they having attended the same 
 school and hunted birds' nests and stole apples together on holi- 
 days. At a later day his honorable secretary — the "Right Hon- 
 orable Theodore Atkinson, Jr.," — had married Benning "Went- 
 Tvorth's sister, and the governor having an eye for the advantage 
 of his relations — like many another high in office before aiid since 
 his time — had given his brother-in-law an appointment. They 
 pulled together kindly, and Secretary Atkinson held his place till 
 the honorable governor was obliged to retire. 
 
 We have been thus particular in mentioning these two men, 
 high functionaries of the royal province of New Hampshire, be- 
 <caTKe to the bravery of the one and the faithfulness of the other is 
 
164 HISTOKT OF WAEEEN. 
 
 due the creation of our little dependant democracy — Warren. 
 They stood godfathers at the hirth of our mountain hamlet, and 
 must not be forgotten. 
 
 Some men act from principle and sink self, the motive that 
 actuates them being purely philanthropic ; but like angels' visits 
 they are few and far between. Selfishness is generally the ruling 
 motive. Thus Governor Went worth and his precise secretary saw 
 a golden opportunity before them and interest whispered that it 
 must be improved. Dreams of how they could make a howling 
 wilderness blossom as the rose ; broad intervals and rich hillside 
 pastures covered with flocks and herds ; nice farm houses, great 
 barns filled with hay and grain, and an industrious population ex- 
 ceedingly eager to pay a large sum in quit rents, burst upon their 
 vision, and they were not slow to take advantage of the oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 "While the discussion was going on, and the governors of New 
 York and Massachusetts were considering the case, Governor 
 "Wentworth, as we have already intimated, commenced the grand 
 work of giving titles to the land. He secretly gathered together 
 all the surveyors of the surrounding country and set them at work 
 to survey the richest portions of our great wilderness. On each 
 side of the Connecticut river three tiers of townships were laid 
 out, and before the worthy rulers of the neighboring provinces 
 were aware of it thf sections had nearly all been granted to intelli- 
 gent and enterprising men, who were making every efibrt to settle 
 and cultivate the same. 
 
 "We cannot stop to tell of the mighty wrath that waxed hot in 
 royal bosoms when the acts of Governor "Wentwortli were report- 
 ed ; how Massachusetts finally relinquished her claim, and how 
 New York by fraud established hers ; nor how the rough back- 
 woodsmen on the borders and among the Green mountains con- 
 tended with the avaricious "Yorkers," who were encouraged by 
 old England, for long years, until they established their indepen- 
 dence and Vermont became a State by itself. "We leave such 
 things to graver and more prosy historians. 
 
 Governor "Wentworth, thrice happy, thrice blessed, now made 
 himself a great favorite with all his people — for a short time. All 
 the wild moss-troopers, all the heavy infantry that had served in 
 
OUE DAYS AEE AS THE GRASS. 
 
 16^ 
 
 the old French and Indian wars, all who had money iu their pock- 
 ets wherewith to pay good round fees, were now suddenly enriched 
 by the good governor. All they had to do was to draw up a peti- 
 tion, get the requisite number of signers, go to the governor with 
 a nice bag of gold, and a charter was sure. 
 
 Our respectable secretary had a hard time of it, writing out 
 all the charters and recording them in the book kept for that piir- 
 pose, but many a weary day he toiled on for fees which were great 
 and for reservations which were greater. Their coffers were well 
 filled, their purses were heavy, and their broad domains extended 
 on every hand. Our royal governor reserved for himself five hun- 
 dred acres of good land in every township, and his diligent secre- 
 tary's name always appeared in the list of grantees. Then there 
 were the quit-rents of money and numerous ears of corn, stipula- 
 ted to be paid in all coming time. And the governor and his 
 worthy secretary longed for the day when they should revel in 
 their palaces on the shores of the silver lake Winnepisseogee, and 
 with fieet horses and baying hounds follow the deer, or with costly 
 equipage roll along busy and jn-osperous thoroughfares. What 
 vistas of joy and grandeur opened on their delighted vision. 
 
 Wild contentions with the "Yorkers," and the envious avarice 
 of others, destroyed their bright air castles. But all these and 
 many other things were necessary to bring our little mountain 
 hamlet into existence. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHAT JOHN PAGE, ESQ., DID, OK HOW HE PROCUKED A EOYAl 
 CHARTER OF OUR MOUNTAIN HAMLET, WARREN, CONFERRING 
 MANY GLORIOUS PRIVILEGES, AND ONLY A FEW CONDITIONS, 
 VERY EASY TO BE COMPLIED WITH. 
 
 Not "far from Portsmouth, the residence of " Old King 
 George's" royal governor, Benning Wentworth, is the little town 
 of Kingston.* One of the most prominent persons of the latter 
 town was John Page, Esq. He was a man of intelligence, of ex- 
 tensive acquaintance, and always prompt to take advantage of the 
 times. In personal appearance he was nearly six feet tall, broad, 
 square-shouldered, and would weigh one hundred and eighty 
 pounds. He had a square-set face, keen grey eyes, light hair and 
 sandy whiskers. His dress was neat and he wore short breeches, 
 long stockings, and on Sundays silver shoe and knee buckles. 
 
 He had served as selectman, had represented his town in the 
 general court, and had also engaged in trade and speculation. He 
 was a man who would act when occasion presented itself, and 
 now when speculation in land was rife he was wide awake for his 
 share of the profits. It was an easy thing for him to draw up a 
 petition, and it did not bother him riiuch to gel sixty odd men 
 possessed of means to sign the same. No less than eight men of 
 his own name — including John Page, Jr., a son of course ; Colonel 
 Jonathan Greeley, mine host who kept the village inn, with his 
 relatives, Jonathan Greeley, 2d, Andrew Greeley and Joseph 
 Greeley, Esqrs., also Moses Greeley, of Salisbury, Mass.; True- 
 woi-thy Ladd, who kept the country store ; the Hon. Dr. Josiah 
 
 * Since divided into Kingston and East Kingston. 
 
THE CHAETER GRANTED. 167 
 
 Bartlett,* afterwards a member of the Continental Congress ; John 
 Hazen, John Parker, George Marsh, and Thomas Pierce, four val- 
 iant captains who had commanded companies in the old French 
 war, were among the petitioners. 
 
 Armed with this petition, and carrying in his saddle-bags a 
 little purse, containing a hundred pounds or more in gold, he 
 mounted his dark bay horse one fine morning, just as many other 
 men at that time who wanted grants of land were doing, and rode 
 to Portsmouth. He had no difficulty in gaining access to His 
 Honor the Governor, and when he had shown his petition, signed 
 by the best of the king's subjects who lived in Kingston, and had 
 jingled his little purse of gold in the gubernatorial ear, His Excel- 
 lencyj was delighted to grant a charter. He could not find it in 
 his heart to refuse such honorable men, and withal so brave sol- 
 diers. How wonderfully does gold grease the wheels of all enter- 
 prises. 
 
 "My secretary shall write you a charter immediately," said 
 His Excellency, and the Hon. Theodore Atkinson, Jr., was called 
 and directed to proceed with the work. Theodore, the secretary, 
 smiled as he said to John Page, Esq., that he would be delighted 
 to place his own name among the list of the honorable grantees. 
 Esquire Page could only reply that he would be most happy to 
 have him, and then the governor rang the bell and directed the 
 sei-vant to bring three bowls of rich punch, in which they were all 
 very much pleased to drink each others' health. 
 
 In the meantime the charter was duly written out, signed by 
 Benning "Wentworth, the great seal affixed, handed to a clerk to 
 be recorded, and John Page, Esq., bidding the governor and his 
 secretary good day, mounted his horse and went home. 
 
 Warren then had a legal existence. It had been marked on 
 the map and named nearly two years previous, and was then polit- 
 ically conceived. The lUh of July, 1763, was its birthday. 
 
 John Page, Esq., told his friends the grantees what he had 
 done and promised them, as the governor had him, that they 
 
 *Josiah Bartlett was a physician, torn at Amesbiiry, Mass., in Noyember, 
 1729. He commenced practice m Kingston, N. H., became an active politician, a 
 member of the provincial legislature, also of the committee of safety, in 1775, and 
 at the close of that year a member of the continental congress. He was afterward 
 a judge and then governor of Kew Hampshire, and died in May, 179S. He was at 
 one time a Colonel. 
 
168 HISTORY or TVAEKEN. 
 
 should have the charter in a few days. But they were destined to 
 wait. They could not hurry the governor, and his secretary, 
 " The Rt. Hon. Theodore Atkinson, Jr.," had so much business 
 on hand that neither he nor his clerks could possibly find time to 
 complete the work of recording the charter of Warren until the 
 28th January, 1764. The original was then forwarded to John 
 Page, Esq. 
 
 That night he met his friends the associate grantees at Colonel 
 Jonathan Greeley's inn.* He showed the prize, and they all 
 seemed exceedingly well-pleased. It was written in a nice round 
 . hand, the parchment was excellent, a blue ribbon was attached, 
 and the great seal of the royal province gave it regal dignity and 
 legal consequence. t 
 
 * Pour roads meet in East Kingston, N. H., one pair running north and sovith, 
 the other east and west. On the latter, one-l"ourth ol' a mile west of the four cor- 
 ners was the Colonel's hotel. It stood on the north side of the road. In ft'ont 
 undulating fields sloped up to the top of the low wooded hills in the south, whUe 
 to the north they gradually declined a mile away to the low bottom land. For fifty 
 rods in front of the house the road is level, beginning to descend to the eastern 
 valley by the great rock on the lelt, and to the western by the old burying-place. 
 On this road our old proprietors tried the speed of their horses after town meet- 
 ings. West of the house was the orchard. The house itself was a large two-story 
 building, eaves to the road, built in the style peculiar to those days. Two square 
 rooms in front— the south-east one the bar room— a long dining-hall or kitchen in 
 the rear, and behind was a dairy and cook room. There was a long unfinished hall 
 up stairs, over the dining room, filled with beds for lodgers, and in ft'ont two fur- 
 nished chambers. The bar roo^i and dining hall were ceiled with wiiite pine 
 boards, but the parlor and chamber walls were " hung with rich paper." The 
 house was built over about twenty years ago, but the same materials were used, 
 and to-day the doors, the windows, the casmgs, are all the same as when Colonel 
 Greeley, John Page, Dr. Bartlett, and Jeremy Webster first assembled at the propri- 
 etors' meetings. In the back room is an old chest of drawers, and a cupboard ; also 
 the " Dairy " used by Colonel Greeley's family. 
 
 t CHAKTEK : 
 
 Province of New Hampshire, George the Third, by the Grace of God, of Great 
 Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, cfc. 
 
 To all persons to whom these presents shall come, greeting : Know ye that we 
 of our special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, for the due encourage- 
 ment of settling a new plantation within our said province, by and Math the advice 
 of our trusty and well beloved Benning Wentworth, Esq., our governor and com- 
 mander-in-cliief of our said province of New Hampshire in New England, and of our 
 conncil of the said province, haveupon the conditions and reservations hereinafter 
 made, given and granted, and by these presents for us our heirs and successors do 
 give and grant in equal shares unto our loving subjects, inhabitants of our said 
 province of New Hampshire and our other governments, and to their heirs and 
 assigns forever, whose names are entered on this grant, to be divided to and 
 amongst them into seventy-two equal shares : AH that tract or parcel of land situ- 
 ate lying and being within our said province of New Hampshire, containing by ad- 
 measurement twenty-two thousand acres, which tract is to contain almost six miles 
 square and no more ; out of which an allowance is to be made for highways and 
 unimproved lands by rocks, ponds, mountains, and rivers, one thousand and forty 
 acres IVee ; according to a plan and survey thereof, made by our said governor's 
 order and returned into the secretary's oflce and hereunto annexed, butted and 
 bounded as follows, viz: Beginning at the northwesterly corner of Eomney, 
 thence running north twenty-four degrees east five miles and three-quai'ters of a 
 mile; thence turning off and running north filty-eight degrees west, six miles and 
 one half mile to the southeasterly corner of Haverhill; thence south twenty 
 
THE TEXT OF THE CHAETEK. 169 
 
 In the manner of the most standard novelists we would here 
 pause and invite the gentle reader to look With us over the 
 shoulders of John Page, Esq., Col. Jonathan Greeley, and their 
 numerous friends the grantees, at this mighty instrument : 
 
 G-eorge the Third, by the Qrace. of Qod, of Great Brit- 
 ain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. 
 
 Such was its heading; and we must remember that they lived 
 in good old provincial times and that George III was their king. 
 How glad they are that Governor "Wentworth has been so good to 
 them. He has given them thirty-six squai-e miles of territory, and 
 
 degrees west five miles and three-quarters of a mile; then turning off again and 
 running south fifty-nine degrees east six miles to the comer of Eomney begun at; 
 and that the same be and hereby is incorporated into a township by the name of 
 Waeren, and the inhabitants that do or shall hereafter inhabit the said township 
 are hereby declared to be enfranchised with and entitled to all and every privilege 
 and immunities that other towns within our province by law exercise -and enjoy; 
 and further, that the. said town as soon as there shall be fifty families resident and 
 settled therein, shall have the liberty of holding two fairs, one of which shall be 
 holden on the [ ], and the other on the [ ], annually; which fairs are not 
 
 to be continued longer than the respective [ ] following the said [ ] ; and 
 
 that as soon as the said town shall consist of fifty families amarket maybe opened 
 and kept one or more days in each week, as may be thotight most advantageous to 
 the inhabitants ; also that the first meeting for the choice of town officers , agreeable 
 to the laws of our said province, shall be held on the second Wednesday of Febru- 
 ary next, which said meeting shall be notified by John Page, Esq., who is hereby 
 also appointed the moderator of the said first meeting, which he is to notify and 
 govern, agreeably to the laws and customs of our said province; and that the 
 annual meetingforever hereafter for the choice of such officers for said town shall 
 be on the first Wednesday of March annually : To have and to hold the said tract 
 of land, as above expressed, together with all privileges and appurtenances, to 
 them and their respective heirs and assigns forever, upon the following conditions, 
 viz: 
 
 1st. That every grantee, his heirs or assigns, shall plant and cultivate five 
 acres of land within the term of five years for every fifty acres contained in his or 
 their share or proportion of land in said township, and continue to improve and 
 settle the same by additional cultivation, on penalty of the forfeiture of his grant 
 or share in said township and of its reverting to us our heirs and successors, to be 
 by us or them regranted to such of our subjects as shall efl'ectually settle and culti- . 
 vate the same. 
 
 3d. That ,all white or other pine trees within the said township fit for masting 
 our royal navy be carefully preserved for that use; and none be cut or felled with- 
 out our special license for 'so doing first had and obtained, upon penalty of the for- 
 feiture of the right of such grantee his heirs and assigns to us our heirs and suc- 
 cessors, as well as being subject to the penalty of any act or acts of parliament 
 that now are or shaJl hereafter be enacted. 
 
 3d. That before any division of the land be made to and among the grantees a 
 tract of land as near the centre of said township as the land will admit of shall be 
 reserved and marked out for town lots, one of which shall be allotted to each gran- 
 tee, of the contents of one acre. 
 
 4th. Yielding and paying therefor to us our heirs and successors, for the space 
 of ten years to be computed from the date hereof, the rent of one ear of Indian 
 com only, on the twenty-fifth day of December annually, if lawfully demanded; 
 the first payment to be made on the twenty-fifth day of December, 1763. 
 
 5th. Every proprietor, settler, or inhabitant shall yield and pay unto us our 
 heirs and successors yearly, and for every year forever from and alter the expira- 
 tion of ten years after the above said twenty-fifth day of December, namely, on the 
 twenty-fifth day of December which will be in the year of our Lord, 1773, one ehil- 
 
170 
 
 HISTOKT OP WABKEN. 
 
 divided it into seventy- two equal shares. The number of acres 
 is twenty-two thousand, all good and excellent land. By the way, 
 they have never seen it yet, but then certainly most of it must be 
 good, for has he not made an allowance for highways and unim- 
 proved lands, by reason of rocks, ponds, mountains, and rivers, 
 one thousand and forty acres free ? 
 
 How accurately it is bounded. Eomney is its southeast cor- 
 ner, and Haverhill its northwest corner ; so we know that both 
 Eomney and Haverhill have been already located and surveyed. 
 
 ling proclamation money, for every hundred acres he so owns settles or possesses 
 and so in proportion lor a greater or less tract of the said land, which money shall 
 be paid by the respective persons abovesaid their heirs or assigns, in our council 
 chamber in Portsmouth, or to such officer or officers as shall be appointed to 
 receive the same, and this to be in lieu of all other rents and seiTices whatever. 
 
 In testimony whereof we have caused the seal of our said province to be here- 
 unto affixed. Witness Bennine Wentworth, Esq., our governor and commander- 
 in-chief of our said province, the 14th day of July, in the year of our Lord Christ 
 one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three, and in the third year of our reign. 
 
 [L. S.] B. WENTWORTH. 
 
 By His Excellency's command, with advice of Council — 
 
 T. Atkinson, Jun., Secretary. 
 
 Province of New Hampshire, Jan. 28th, 1784. 
 
 Recorded in the Book of Charters, No. 3, pages 78, 79. 
 
 T. Atkinson, Jtxn., Secretary. 
 
 THE NAMES OF THE GRANTEES OF WAKKEN: 
 
 John Page, Escj^ 
 Jona. Greeley, Esq., 
 James Graves, 
 Joseph Blanohard, Esq., 
 Capt. .Tohn Hazen, 
 Epnraim Brown, 
 Joseph Page, 
 Belcher Dole, 
 Reuben True, 
 Stephen Webster, 
 John Darling, 
 Capt. John Parker, 
 Jona. Greeley, 2d^ 
 Enoch Chase, 
 Lemuel Stevens, 
 Abel Davis, 
 Capt. George Marsh, 
 Ebenezer Morrill, 
 Trneworthy Ladd, 
 William Whitcher, 
 Ebenezer Collins, 
 Ebenezer Page, 
 James Nevins, Esq., 
 
 Samuel Page, 
 Moses Page, 
 John Page, Jun., 
 Ephraim Page, 
 Enoch Page, 
 Benj. French, Jun., 
 Aaron Clough, Jun., 
 Silas Newel, 
 David Morrill, 
 Nathaniel Currier, 
 Benjamin Clough, 
 Henry MoiTill, 
 Jacob Hook, Esq., 
 •Josiah Bartlett, 
 Joseph Whitcher, 
 Reuben French, 
 Samuel Osgood, 
 Thomas Trae, 
 David Clough, 
 Daniel Page, 
 Peter Coffin, Jun., 
 William Parker, Jr., Esq., 
 
 Ebenezer Stevens, Esq., 
 
 Dier Hook, 
 
 Philip Tilton, 
 
 Nathaniel Fifleld, 
 
 Andrew Greeley, 
 
 Jacob Currier, 
 
 Samuel Dudley, 
 
 Joseph Tilton, 
 
 Francis Batchelder, 
 
 Joseph Greeley, 
 
 John Batchelder, 
 
 Jacob Gale, 
 
 Abraham MoiTill, 
 
 Jeremy Webster, 
 
 " The Et. Hon. Theodore 
 Atkinson, Jun., Esq.,"* 
 
 Nathaniel Barrel, 
 
 Samuel Graves, 
 
 John Marsh, 
 
 Moses Greeley, of Salis- 
 bury, 
 
 Andrew Wiggin, Esq., 
 
 Capt. Thomas Pierce, 
 His Excellency Benning Wentworth a tract of land to contain five hundred 
 acres, as mai-ked B. W. on the plan, which is to be accounted two of the with- 
 in shares. One whole share for the incorporated society for the propagation of 
 the gospel in foreign parts. One share for a glebe for the Church oi England, 
 as by law established. One share for the first settled minister, and one share 
 for the benefit of a school in said town forever. 
 
 Province of New Hampshire, Jan. 28th, 1764. 
 
 Recorded in the Book of Charters, No. 3, page 80. 
 
 T. ATKINSON, Jun., 
 * 1 N. H. Hist. Col. 282. 
 
 Secretary. 
 
MAP OF THE SAID TOWNSHIP. 
 
 171 
 
 The next fact that meets the eye is, " That the same be and 
 hereby is incorporated into a township by the name of 
 
 WAEKEN : 
 
 John Page, Jr., must here have asked his venerable sire wh^ 
 it was so called. Tradition has it that John Page, Sr., replied 
 that he had conversed with the governor about the origin of the 
 name, and that His Excellency informed him that the surveyors 
 of the "King's Woods,'' who had visited the township to estab- 
 lish the lines, reported that it was a beautiful land, full of rabbits, 
 where nature had seemingly appropriated a piece of ground to 
 their breeding and preservation . 
 
 Dr. Josiah Bartlett, who was learned in Indian as well as 
 medical lore, interrupted and said he supposed it must be a place 
 granted by the Gitche Manito, the Indian god who had his home 
 
172 HISTOET or WAEEBN. 
 
 on the summits of the lofty mountains round about, to the red 
 sons of the forest in -which to keep all their " beastes," fowls, and 
 fish; "For," said he, " all the jolly hunters say that the woods are 
 full of moose, deer, bear, and other game, that wild ducks swim 
 on the rivers and ponds, and that every stream is alive with the 
 speckled trout and golden salmon ." 
 
 John Page, Esq., further said that His Excellency told him 
 that he was also influenced to bestow the name, Warren, upon this 
 tract of wild, mountainous country, out of respect for his friend. 
 Admiral "Warren, of " Louisburg notoriety." He wished to honor 
 the admiral, because he had greatly aided the New Hampshire and 
 Massachusetts troops in wresting that almost impregnable fortress 
 from the French. 
 
 Now we desire to caution our readers against putting too 
 much faith in the above very plausible traditions. We have a 
 pretty theory of our own in relation to the matter, and it is but 
 natural that we should want to give it a place in this most ambi- 
 tions history. It is this: Old England has a borough named 
 "Warren, and there was then a town of "Warren in nearly every 
 other royal province, and it was and is extremely fashionable to 
 bestow this beautiful name, signifying a rabbit borough, upon a 
 handsome and fertile tract of country ; therefore His Excellency, 
 imitating the mother-land and the royal governors of other loyal 
 provinces, named this beautiful and fertile grant, given to John 
 Page, Esq., and sixty-five others — "Warren. 
 
 We cannot conclude this subject of etymology without notic- 
 ing the opinion of the learned Deacon Asa McParland, so long the 
 able editor of the New Hampshire Statesman, and a member of the 
 New Hampshire Historical Society. He gravely asserts that the 
 town is named for and after General Joseph Warren, who fell a 
 martyr for his country at Bunker Hill.* But as General Warren 
 was but a stripling in 1761, and probably unknown to our good 
 governor, and as the battle of Bunker Hill was not fought until 
 fourteen years after Benning Wentworth had retired from office, 
 and even his loyal successor had taken French leave of his most 
 royal province, we can but conclude that our most wise editor 
 was entirely correct in the matter, and would enjoin upon our 
 *See files of the New Hampshire Statesman. 
 
THE PLEASUKES OP HOPE. 173 
 
 readers fo put the utmost confidence in the learned deacon's 
 opinion. 
 
 Having thus profoundly shown how the name of our little 
 hamlet originated, we will proceed to examine with John Page, 
 Esq., and the numerous other grantees, into the further mysteries 
 of their great and mighty instrument, the chai'ter. 
 
 The next fact learned is that the future inhabitants of said 
 township — once called in the charter " a new plantation " — are 
 hereby declared to be enfranchised with and entitled to all and 
 every privilege and immunity that other towns within " our prov- 
 ince " exercise and enjoy. 
 
 This was kind. But His Excellency, the geographer, was 
 determined to do more for John Page, Esq., and his friends than 
 was customary. The governor loved them exceedingly ; they had 
 been so good as to bring a larger bag of gold than was usual. He 
 therefore ordered "The Et. Hon. Theodore Atkinson, Jun., Esq." 
 to insert the provision, " That as soon as there shall be fifty fam- 
 ilies resident and settled in town they shall have the liberty of 
 hblding two fairs." This would make the land sell better. 
 
 It was a glorious privilege, and all the grantees imagined — 
 and some of them had excellent imaginations — how like old 
 Derryfield or the fairs of England and Ireland, or like the Olym- 
 pic, Pythian, Isthmian or Nemean games of classic Greece, their 
 semi-annual gatherings should be held, when the farmers could 
 sell and swap horses, run horse and foot races, wrestle and box, 
 climb slippery poles, and pursue greased pigs ; while at even-tide 
 the youths and maidens should dance on the village green, or wit- 
 ness the wild acts of improvised athletes, and listen to the sweet 
 songs of wandering minstrels. 
 
 That there might be no doubt concerning the governor's sin- 
 cere friendship he also caused to be inserted the authority " That 
 a market may be opened and kept one or more days in each week, 
 as may be thought most advantageous to the inhabitants." 
 
 What a happy idea was this : The village green should be 
 alive with horses, beeves, sheep, and hogs, with loads of hay and 
 grain and wood, and long rows of stalls where marketmen and 
 marketwomen, carrying well filled baskets, could buy and sell 
 poultry, fish, meats, and vegetables of every sort and kind. • 
 
174 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 But there must be a few conditions. The privileges must not 
 be all on one side. If the grantees do not hasten, the town will 
 not flourish with a rich and teeming population, and the quit- 
 rents, ears of corn, and proclamation monej'' will not come in fast 
 enough, and the royal governor and his secretary cannot ride in 
 their coaches and build, their palaces on the shore of the smiling 
 lake as they would like. So it was stipulated: 
 
 1st. That every grantee for every fifty acres he owns shall with- 
 in the term of five years plant and cultivate five acres of land. 
 
 2d. That all pine trees fit for masting our royal navy shall be 
 carefully preserved. 
 
 3d. That a town lot one acre in size shall be laid out near the 
 centre of the town for each grantee. 
 
 4th. That for ten years each grantee shall pay the rent of one 
 ear of Indian corn annually. 
 
 6th. That after ten years each grantee shall annually pay for 
 every hundred acres owned one shilling proclamation money. 
 
 "We are thus particular to put all these conditions into our 
 most important history because it must be remembered that th§ 
 governor put them all in the charter. 
 
 Then in the most gracious manner possible the governor 
 reserved for himself only one lot containing five hundred acres, 
 and he was very particular to have it marked on the little plan of 
 the town accompanying the charter. But he had the misfortune 
 to locate it in a very poor place, owing no doubt to his great skill 
 in geography. Wachipaulca pond, the precipitous face of Web- 
 ster Slide mountain, and the blueberry patch on its summit, con- 
 stituted the good gentleman's reservation. 
 
 Governor "Weutworth was an excellent man. He belonged to 
 the high church of England, and withal was piously inclined. So 
 he told his brother-in-law the honorable secretary to reserve one 
 whole share "for the incorporated society for the propagation of 
 the gospel in foreign parts," " one share for a glebe for the Church 
 of England as by law established," and "one share for the first 
 settled minister." 
 
 But not an acre did he give to the witch-hanging, ear-crop- 
 ping, cheek-branding, bundling puritans, as he called them, nor 
 to the Scotch covenanters. Not he ! He did not believe in them. 
 
ONE SHARE FOR EDtTCATION. 175 
 
 But he did believe in education, and was very Trilling to do 
 something for coming generations, especially when other people 
 paid the expenses; and so he ordered in addition that "one share 
 should be appropriated for the benefit of a school in said town 
 forever." 
 
 How satisfactory were all these conditions, provisions, and 
 reservations, and how well John Page, Esq., Colonel Jonathan 
 Greeley, and all their friends felt that night. Visions of broad 
 acres and riches without limit, accruing from great sales of land 
 and from rents, floated before them. The entire brood was reck- 
 oned up before a single chicken had burst the shell, and with 
 characteristic liberality drinks and viands were ordered up. 
 Bowls of hot punch and mugs of good old fashioned flip circulated 
 freely, and with song and jest and shout the time flew fast. The 
 moon had gone down in the west and the stars were dimming 
 when these future lords of the soil separated for their homes. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF EAGER MEK — HOW THET HELD SEVEKAL MEETINGS —ALSO OP A 
 GAT AND FESTIVE CORPORATION DINNER — CONCLUDING WITH A 
 POWERFUL EFFORT TO OBTAIN A SURVEYOR OP THE " KING'S 
 WOODS." 
 
 Now there shall be no more delay. The longi summer and 
 autumn had passed, and part of the winter had gone, since the 
 visit of John Page, Esq., to Portsmouth, and it did seem to the 
 anxious grantees that the Et. Hon. Theodore Atkinson, Esq., had 
 not the slightest regard for their feelings and desire for gain, else 
 he would have recorded and forwarded the- charter sooner. No 
 more time should be- lost ; a meeting must forthwith be called. 
 At the gathering at the inn of mine host. Colonel Jonathan Gree- 
 ley, the grantees one and all had importuned John Page, Esq., to 
 make all possible haste, post the notices, and let them, the eager 
 grantees, immediately assemble. 
 
 John Page, Esq., did so, agreeably to the provisions of the 
 charter, and in just ten days after it was recorded, on February 
 8th, 1764, Colonel Jonathan Greeley's lively inn was honored by 
 the great initiatory meeting. 
 
 The proprietors of our little mountain hamlet assembled in 
 full numbers. Even Moses Greeley, of Salisbury, was present. 
 At ten o'clock A. M. they were ready for business, and John Page, 
 Esq., as directed by the charter, called the meeting to order. 
 
 It was held in the long dining hall back of the parlor and the 
 tap-room. A bright fire was blazing on the open hearth, there 
 were benches around the hall on which the men were to sit, while 
 some of the more chilly gathered standing about the fire. An old 
 
THE riEST PKOPEIETAEY MEETING. 177 
 
 table was placed upon a little platform at one end of the hall, and 
 by it sat John Page, Esq. Rapping' upon it with his knuckles he 
 called the meeting to order and immediately the hum of conversa- 
 tion ceased. 
 
 From the time of his return from Portsmouth he had kept 
 close possession of the charter, and now drawing it forth he pro- 
 ceeded to read it at length. When he had finished a buzz was 
 heard about the room, as is usual at town meetings, but Esquire 
 Page again rapped upon the table and proceeded to remark that 
 the first business in order would be the choosing of a town cleric; 
 and the proper way to proceed would be to elect him by ballot. 
 He therefore requested that written ballots might be prepared and 
 forwarded. Upon counting them it was found that Jeremy "Web- 
 ster had received the whole number, and it was declared that 
 Jeremy "Webster was unanimously elected. In a like manner 
 Jeremy "Webster, Colonel Jonathan Greeley, and Lieutenant James 
 Graves wore chosen selectmen. It was then voted that the annual 
 meeting of the proprietors of "Warren should be held on the first 
 "Wednesday of March, and that the next one should be held at the 
 inn of mine host. Col. Jonathan Greeley, on the 7th of March, 
 1764, that date falling on the said first "Wednesday. The meeting 
 was then dissolved. 
 
 Bat the proprietors did not disperse. It was the first corpora- 
 tion meeting and there must be a corporation dinner. John Page, 
 Esq., himself says that two long tables were set in the very hall in 
 which the meeting was held. The plates, knives, spoons, pewter- 
 platters, mugs, and service, all brought from England, were 
 arrayed with mathematical exactness. Roast beef, spare ribs, 
 turkeys, and chickens ; chicken pies, plum puddings, mince pies, 
 apple pies, cakes, sauce, and savory viands of all kinds, including 
 without doubt sundry pots of baked beans contrasted with huge 
 loaves of Indian meal bread, fairly caused the festive board to 
 groan. 
 
 John Page, Esq., also says that he himself sat at the head of 
 one table, and Col. Jonathan Greeley at the other, and that each 
 man carved for himself, as was the fashion in "ye ancient time." 
 As beef, pork, and fowl rapidly disappeared, what cheer was 
 there — what jokes they cracked — how rich they felt — and how 
 
 L 
 
178 HISTOET OF WAREEN, 
 
 fast flew the time. And then the hissing hot punch -was brought 
 in, and first of all, every one standing, they drank King George's 
 health. Then the song, the jest, the laugh, and the health of our 
 good governor was not forgotten. To each other long life, hap- 
 piness, and riches were drank, and the short hours flew swiftly by 
 until one by one our worthy proprietors had drank themselves 
 sober and had departed their several ways, The expense of this 
 and all other meetings was paid out of the proprietors' stock.* 
 
 It was a worthy company that took supper at Col. Greeley's 
 inn. The presence of the Rt. Hon. Theodore Atkinson, Jun., the 
 Hon. Josiah Bartlett, afterwards governor of New Hampshire, 
 Col. Jonathan Greeley, a man of much influence, John Page, Esq., 
 and a host of other good and notable men, made a most respecta- 
 ble meeting. 
 
 Of course not many plane were made, for according to the 
 vote another meeting was soon to be held, at which a programme 
 was to be fully discussed and adopted. 
 
 Consider for a moment this first meeting of our, forefathers. 
 All northern New Hampshire was then a wilderness. The little 
 hamlet of "Warren was chalked on the map, but there was no road 
 to it or through it; nothing but an Indian trail. A few settlers 
 had just set themselves down by the Connecticut river, at the 
 Coos intervals, and twenty miles away the Hobarts and the "Web- 
 sters were building the first camps on the Pemigewassett. King 
 George ruled the British empire, and the western world but com- 
 posed his royal provinces. The king's head ornamented all the 
 coin of the realm, and even on Jonathan Greeley's sign was 
 painted the English coat of arms. No dreams of independence 
 flitted through their brains then; all were loyal subjects. 
 
 Riches were what the proprietors wanted, and so when the 
 first Wednesday of March, 1764, came they were nearly all present 
 and eager for action. How avarice will spur men on. 
 
 The meeting being called to order in the same old hall, John 
 Page, Esq., was chosen moderator; Jeremy Webster, cleric; Jos- 
 eph Whitcher, constable; Capt. Ephraim Brown, Col. Jonathan 
 Greeley, and Jeremy "Webster, selectmen; Capt. Stephen "Webster, 
 Joseph Page, and Ebenezer Stevens, surveyors of highways ; and 
 
 * See Proprietors' Eeoords. 
 
SCAECITY OF SUEVETOES. 179 
 
 that there might be uo delay they determined to choose a com- 
 mittee to run the lines round about the township and view the 
 land. For this purpose they chose John Page, Esq., Lt. James 
 Graves, Col. Jonathan Greeley, Capt. John Hazeu, and Captain 
 Stephen "Webster. They were authorized to procure a surveyor 
 and other necessary assistants and to proceed immediately to the 
 business. Our first annual town meeting, at which these fourteen 
 men were immortalized by being elected to such important offices, 
 was. then adjourned. Every one now believed that the work 
 would go bravely on and that soon the land would be all sold and 
 settled — and then how rich they would be. 
 
 Our valorous committee, chosen to run the lines and view the 
 lands, did indeed go to work in a bold and enterprising manner. 
 They made application to every trusty and skillful surveyor in the 
 country, but to no purpose. They were all engaged running 
 town lines and lotting lands for other proprietors. The committee 
 even made sundry and divers journeys across the border to the 
 land of Massachusetts Bay to see if they could find one, but with- 
 out any better success. The whole summer went by, and when 
 autumn came they were thoroughly convinced that among other 
 requisites a considerable sum of money was necessary to secure 
 the services of so important a personage as a surveyor had now 
 got to be. 
 
 Accordingly a third meeting was called and held on the 17th of 
 September, 1764, when it was voted, "That a dollar (or its equiv- 
 alent in paper currency,) be paid upon each right in order to fur- 
 nish and pay the fore-mentioned committee when they should act 
 for running the lines about the township." That there should be 
 no mistake this time, Col. Jonathan Greeley was chosen treasurer, 
 to collect and pay out the money for that purpose. 
 
 But prosperity did not smile upon them. Although the hon- 
 orable committee labored with all their might, still no surveyor 
 was procured. The year went by and nothing was done. 
 
 Consequently when the selectmen, as in duty bound, on the 
 19th of February, 1765, warned another meeting to be held on the 
 6th of March following, they inserted au article in the warrant, 
 "To vote what the proprietors will further do relative to the com- 
 mittee chosen last year and the business they were to transact." 
 
180 HISTOET OF WABKEN. 
 
 This was the mighty question. Every grantee considered it 
 most thoroughly. At the 6th of March meeting, held at the inn of 
 Col. Jonathan Greeley, they voted unanimously "That the propri- 
 etors' committee run the lines ahout the township as formerly 
 determined ; they arc to begin the work about the first of June 
 next, and to proceed in the business as fast as possible, and if they 
 need assistance they are hereby authorized to get it." 
 
 Now they will surely act— no, gently, not yet. They cannot 
 get a surveyor any more than last year, although the most strenu- 
 ous efforts are made. The summer again ^oes by and the lines 
 are not run. Some of the proprietors who had paid liberally were 
 indignant, and said this would not answer. 
 
 The last of August the rulers of the proprietary, otherwise 
 the distinguished selectmen for that year, call another meeting. 
 It is to be held on the second Tuesday of September, 1765. The 
 proprietors were alarmed. They had contributed to the little 
 purse of gold for the governor, they had paid for corporation din- 
 ners, they had been assessed for contingent expenses ; these had 
 all been outgoes, but not a penny had they received. Besides, the 
 conditions of the charter, especially that one requiring that the 
 town should be settled in five years, had not been fulfilled, and 
 if much more precious time was wasted all would be lost. The 
 proprietors met as directed, this time at Jacob Currier's inn, in 
 South Hampton, and not at Col. Greeley's; but they did nothing 
 but talk. After a long discussion they adjourned to meet again in 
 one week at the same place. 
 
 Being met again and the meeting called to order, John Page, 
 Esq., said that he had some good news to communicate. He then 
 announced that by good fortune the proprietors' committee had 
 secured the services of an excellent surveyor and assistants. This 
 piece of information was greeted with applause, and the whole 
 proprietary felt so good that both flip and punch were ordered up 
 and every one drank to his heart's content.f 
 
 It was then voted that when the meeting adjourn it be to meet 
 on the third Tuesday of October, 1765, to hear the further report 
 of the committee. Some one then suggesting that they had better 
 
 * See Proprietors' Keoords. 
 t Proprietors' Keoords. 
 
A SDEYETOR FOUND AT LAST. 181 
 
 meet at Col. Jonathan Greeley's again, a motion to tliat eflfect was 
 passed with almost an unanimous vote, only a few of Jacob 
 Currier's friends dissenting, as they wanted him to have the 
 profits of the meetings. But the majority remembered the good 
 things in Col. Greeley's larder and bar; they believed also that the 
 good will of his place had much to do with success. Thus the 
 hope of gain combined with a longing for thp flesh-pots of Egypt 
 succeeded. 
 
 There shall be no more delay. The committee, no longer fur- 
 nished with excuses, must act at once, and we shall now have the 
 pleasure of accompanying the valiant little surveying party far to 
 the north for a delightful stroll in the great wilderness of the 
 future town of "Warren. 
 
CHAPTERIV. 
 
 HOW THE LINES WERE RON ROUND ABOUT WARREN — A CAMP IN 
 THE FOREST — A ROARING, RAGING EQUINOCTIAL STORM WORTH 
 SEEING, AXD A REPORT OF THE WHOLE AFFAHt BY SURVEYOR 
 LEAVITT. 
 
 And DOW John Page, Esq., and his associates move in 
 their work, and Benjamin Leavitt, the excellent surveyor whom 
 they had hired, together with his assistants, are soon ready. 
 
 The committee accompany him, and one bright morning we 
 find the little surveying party breaking camp beside Stinson pond, 
 on the east side of Mount Carr, and wending their way by the 
 blazed line to the northeast corner of the town of Eomney. 
 
 They found and established that point of our little mountain 
 hamlet. Its lines had before been chalked on the map, but now 
 its bounds were to be set up, and the trees blazed to show the 
 course . 
 
 They first traced the east line, following along upon the 
 eastern slope of Mount Carr. At noon they halted for dinner on 
 the shores of Glen upper pond. No clearings were visible. There 
 are none to be seen to-day. The same wildness, the same solitude 
 witnessed by John Page, Esq., Benj. Leavitt, and their associates, 
 when they stood by that little circular pond a hundred years ago, 
 exists there now. The deer and the bear then came to drink of 
 its water. The bear drinks thei-e to-day, and the mottled fawn 
 and the antlered buck now crop the grass upon the moist shore 
 the same as then. There were moose there then, but there are 
 none there now. 
 
THE BOUNDAKT LINES RUN. 183 
 
 At night they camped on the side of Mt. Kineo. The morrow 
 saw them across Cushman mountain to the northeast corner, saw 
 them traveling down the slope of Mt. Waternomee, on the north 
 line, to the Asquamchumauke river. That night they camped by 
 the roaring torrent. The third day they crossed the spur of 
 Moosehillock, passed the head waters of Berry and Oliverian 
 brooks, climbed the precipitous "Webster Slide, and sundown 
 lound them camped by a little stream that flowed down into 
 Tarleton lake. Across the lake or around it, down over Piermont 
 mountain, leaving Eastman ponds to the east and including them 
 in Warren, to the southwest corner, and there they camped the 
 night of the fourth day. Eastward over Sentinel mountain, across 
 Martin brook, then so called from a hunter who had trapped upon 
 it, and over the spur of Beech hill to the Asquamchumauke river 
 again. Here the quick eye of Surveyor Leavitt noted the old 
 Indian trail. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. Leaving 
 their surveying instruments in a safe place they followed the trail 
 up the river for two miles, crossed the mouth of Black brook — 
 the Mikaseota— and at the end of the ridge between the brook 
 and the river they camped for tlie night. 
 
 Tradition, that most trustworthy historian, has it that while 
 they were cooking their supper John Page, Esq., followed up 
 Black brook a few rods to where there was a little white fall leap- 
 ing over the mica slate rock, and shot a deer which had come 
 there to drink, the sun being about half-an hour high. The sur- 
 veying party had an extra supper that night. Flashing knives 
 carved out the choicest morsels, and by their campflre that gleamed 
 through the woods they sat for long hours telling old legends and 
 bloody tales of Indian wars. 
 
 The next morning they crossed the valley and climbed the 
 hill, came back and followed the trail to Kunaway pond, then 
 back and up the valley to Berry brook. At night they had re- 
 turned to their camp again on the end of the ridge. The land in 
 the valley was good, and the great pine trees on the plain, where 
 the common is now, some of them more than two hundred feet 
 high, in whose cones they heard the autumn wind sighing, were 
 the objects of their esxjecial admiration. But they could only 
 admire them. The surveyor of the king^s woods had marked 
 
184 HISTOEY OF WAEKEN. 
 
 tbem with the hroad arrow, and they could only be used for 
 masting the royal navy. 
 
 They had gone to sleep, their camp-fire burning brightly in 
 the darkness. Hours of quiet went by, when suddenly John 
 Page, Esq., started up. "What was that? "Was it the howl of the ■ 
 wolf, the cry of the catamount, or the well-nigh forgotten but 
 terrible whoop of the savage? He listened for a moment but 
 heard nothing save the murmer of the brook and the river, which 
 united just below them. Soon a flash of lightning lighted up the 
 forest, followed by the low deep rumble of thunder behind the 
 western mountain. A moment more, others having been aroused, 
 and a sharp flash blinded their eyes, followed by another, which 
 in turn was succeeded by a crash "of thunder louder and more 
 stunning than any they had ever before heard. Mount Carr 
 echoed back the terrible peal, and then the rain poured down in 
 torrents. 
 
 Our little surveying, land-locating, fortune-hunting party 
 were now all wide awake. Their fire was out, their camp leaked, 
 and almost in less than no time they were drenching wet. For 
 the rest of the night they sat there in a delightful condition of 
 shiver. They thanked their lucky stars for their good fortune, 
 that they had only got a good wetting and nothing more, and 
 without doubt they said their prayers and made sundry pious 
 ejaculations during those luminous and happj' hours. But they 
 did not swear. 
 
 "When the morning dawned they found that the wind was 
 blowing from the northeast, that black clouds were hurrying 
 across the sky from Moosehillock to Mount Carr, and that the 
 thunder shower was but the prelude of the storm. It was no use 
 to break up the camp then — everything was too wet. They made 
 a fire, dried their clothes, breakfasted on the remains of the veni- 
 son, longed for a dish of delicious punch to wash it down, and 
 then tightening the camp and gathering more firewood waited as 
 best they might for what could not be helped. 
 
 By ten o'clock A. M. the wind was howling in the woods and 
 the rain fell fast. All day long they sat there, managing one way 
 and another to pass away the time, while Surveyor Leavitt made 
 notes in his journal to assist him in writing his report. 
 
A STOEM AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 186 
 
 When tie sun went down a new sound arose. As the evening 
 hours wore on, it seemed as if all the storm spirits had leaped from 
 the waterfalls in the ravines of Mount Carr, and were joining in 
 one grand psean, louder than the mightiest roar of the ocean. 
 The Indians' god, Gitche Manito, with the whole host of lesser 
 aboriginal divinities, assisted by Jupiter Tonans, Vulcan, Pluto, 
 and every other heathen god, seemed mingling their voices in one 
 continuous roll of thunder through the huge mountain forests. 
 John 'Page and his companions had heard the roar of the ocean in 
 a storm, but never a sound like this. People of Warren some- 
 times hear the same now, when the equinoctial storm of autumn 
 comes late, or when the winter breaks up suddenly and the melt- 
 ing snows and warm rains turn the mountain streams to torrents. 
 - In the morning the storm was over. A bright fire made them 
 comfortable, the last of the venison was cooked for breakfast, and 
 when the white mists from the waterfalls were climbing out of the 
 ravines and chasing each other over the wooded crest of Mount 
 Carr, and the wind had shaken the rain from the trees and bushes, 
 they hurried back down the trail to the spot where they had left 
 their surveying instruments. They crossed the now roaring 
 Asquamchumauke and climbed over the eastern mountain. The 
 line was finished that day, and night found them back in their old 
 camp by Stinson pond. Four days more and they were at home 
 making up their report. 
 
 On the third Tuesday of October, 1766, the proprietors met 
 again. Col. Jonathan Greeley's long hall and cosy tap-room 
 seemed like home to them. The meeting having been called to 
 order, John Page, Esq., chosen moderator, and Jeremy Webster, 
 clerk, they passed the following vote: "That we receive and 
 accept the report of the committee we sent to the township, and 
 give the committee, Jeremy Webster, Esq., Col. Jonathan Greeley, 
 and John Page, Esq., the sum of sixty-four dollars for their time 
 and expense in going up to Warren to run the lines about the 
 township and viewing the land." * 
 
 The report of the committee has not come down to us in form, 
 but tradition says that the committee told the proprietors that our 
 beautiful little hamlet was located among great mountains " daunt- 
 
 * See Proprietors' Keoords. 
 
186 HISTORY OP WAKEEN. 
 
 ing terrible;" that to all «OMm(^ appearances "loud roaring divels" 
 lived among said mountains ; that silver rivers and streams ran 
 through it, and upon the borders around it vrere sparkling lakes 
 and ponds. They might also have stated that on Patch brook (not 
 then having a name) was an old beaver meadow where the grass 
 grew wild, and that there was another meadow larger and better, 
 at the outlet of Runaway pond. 
 
 Perhaps they might have further made mention of the fact 
 that on the slopes of Beech hill and Picked hill were immense 
 maple groves where sugar might at some later day be made, but 
 this we can only conjecture. SufS.ce it to say that the committee 
 made an exceedingly interesting report, that the proprietors were 
 miglitily well-pleased thereat, and immediately took other and 
 more determined steps to accomplish the settlement of the town. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONDITIONS HARD AND TERRIBLE — A ROAD MADE OF AN INDIAN 
 TRAIL — RICH LOTS OP LAND DRAWN BY LOT, AND HOW MEN 
 FELT RICH BUT ANXIOUS. 
 
 " 1st, That every grantee for every fifty acres of land he 
 owns in Warren township shall within the term of five years 
 plant and cultivate five acres of land." 
 
 Like the sword suspended by a hair over the head of ter- 
 rified Damocles, so the above condition of the charter was forever 
 hanging over our worthy proprietors. The very first condition — 
 it must be fulfilled. A failure, and the little hamlet of "Warren 
 was lost to them. The other conditions could be easily complied 
 with. The pine trees fit for masting our royal navy could be pre- 
 served ; the town lots could be laid out ; the rent of one ear of 
 Indian corn only could be yielded ; and the one shilling proclama- 
 tion money could be " deposited in our council chamber at Ports- 
 mouth " without difSculty. But in performing our first condition 
 — there was the trouble. 
 
 Wliat shall be done? It must be planted and cultivated in the 
 space of five years. This not done and the charter is forfeited. 
 
 We have seen how the lines were run and went with the com- 
 mittee to view the lands. It was necessary to set up the bounda- 
 ries so that the proprietors of other towns should not trespass upon 
 our woody territory. That the proprietors, owners, and would-be 
 settlers might journey thither without difficulty, a road must be 
 cut. But two years had passed already and one had not as yet 
 been begun. Perhaps the worthy proprietors waited for those of 
 
188 HISTORY OF WAEREN. 
 
 other townships on the river below to cut out. their roads, so that 
 it might be more easy to get to the boundary of "Warren to begin 
 theirs ; perhajps they had no money in the treasury to pay for the 
 work ; perhaps they thought there would be such a spontaneous 
 rush to buy their lands that there would be no need of their doing 
 anything. But time dispelled the first and last of these illusions. 
 
 The year 1765 was nearly passed ; almost half the time given 
 for the settlement was gone, when at a proprietors' meeting held 
 late in autumn it was voted to pay for clearing a public road 
 through the township, and a committee was chosen to attend to 
 the same. It consisted of Col. Ebenezer Stevens, Col. Jonathan 
 Greeley, Jacob Hook, Esq., Samuel Page, Esq., John Page, Jun., 
 John Page, Esq., and Capt. Ephraim Brown.* The road once 
 cleared, and then emigrants would flock to the land of the hills. 
 Our mountain hamlet would certainly be settled, and the first 
 requirement of the charter fulfilled. 
 
 But that there might be no failure in this matter of cultivation 
 and settlement, they determined to divide a portion of the land 
 into lots and distribute them among the several grantees. Then 
 each one would have a separate personal interest, and would labor 
 with move energy for the settlement. Accordingly at the annual 
 meeting in 1765 it had been voted that a division of home lots 
 should be made by the above-mentioned road committee, to con- 
 tain eighty acres each, respect to be paid to quality as well as 
 quantity. 
 
 But this vote was all for nought. The season went by, and 
 late in autumn, the proprietors being again met, they voted to lay 
 out a home lot to each grantee, containing one hundred acres to 
 the lot, as convenient as may be. That there might be no repeti- 
 tion of failure they further voted to raise money to defray the 
 charges of laying out the same, and also instructed the road com- 
 mittee to lay out said lots. The vote to raise the funds to pay for 
 the work was the best vote passed. The work must now move. 
 Something will surely be accomplished. 
 
 We have seen how difficult it was for our former committee to 
 procure a surveyor. The one headed by Col. Ebenezer Stevens 
 
 *See Proprietors' Eeoorrls. 
 
 17S5. The proprietors voted to raise money to defray the charge of clearing 
 the public road now about to be laid out through the township of Warren. 
 
AN INDIAN TRAIL MADE USEFUL. 189 
 
 encountered the same obstacle. Procure a surveyor they could 
 not. The year 1766 passed, and nothing was done. The grantees 
 waited for their committee to act, and did not even call a proprie- 
 tors' meeting. Individually they exhorted the committee to work 
 — but all to no purpose. 
 
 As we have before said, and as every wide-awake proprietor 
 knew, the time for fulfilling the first condition of the charter was 
 fast flying, and their claim to the little mountain territory seemed 
 slipping from their grasp. The spring of 1767 came. Only one 
 year of the five given was now left. The work must be done at 
 once or all would soon be lOst. At this critical juncture of affairs 
 John Page, Esq., rallied. A meeting of part of the committee 
 was held at the usual place. Col. Jonathan Greeley's inn, at which 
 it was emphatically redetermined to run the lines, locate the road, 
 and lay out the lots. 
 
 To accomplish all this a surveyor must be had, and John Page, 
 Esq., said he was happy to inform the committee that Benjamin 
 Leavitt, who had formerly run the lines, could be procured. Sam- 
 uel Greeley, Fry Bayley, Abraham Morrill, Samuel Page, Joseph 
 Eastman, and Jacob Morrill were to be his associates. They were 
 to perambulate the boundaries and lay out the first division of lots. 
 
 It was spring time when the surveying party and the commit- 
 tee chosen to clear the road came to "Warren. Thej' established 
 themselves in the old camp on the end of the ridge between the 
 Mikaseota or Black brook and the Asquamchumauke or Baker 
 river, and while Surveyor Leavitt went over the lines again and 
 was laying out the lots, the road committee attended to their 
 duties. 
 
 And now our worthy readers will naturally inquire what kind 
 of a road they made and where it was located. "We have no doubt 
 concerning the truthfulness of the reply we shall give, for we have 
 the facts vouched for by many of the ancient settlers and also 
 recorded by history itself. Our indefatigable committee did not 
 locate any new road — they simply cleared out the old Indian trail, 
 and made it into a tolerable bridle path. 
 
 This Indian trail was a very ancient way, about as much so as 
 the old Eoman roads. For centuries back the Indians had followed 
 it. "Wonalancet and his friends had journeyed over it nearly a 
 
190 HISTOKT OP ■WAKEEN. 
 
 hundred years previous to the little improvement undertaken by 
 our committee. "Waternomee knew every rod of it. Arosagun- 
 ticook warriors had led their captives on it northward to Canada.* 
 Capt. Baker's "marching party" had hurried down it to fight the 
 Indians at the mouth of the Asquamchumauke. Capt. Peter 
 Powers t made use of it in his glorious retreat, and along its wind- 
 ings Robert Rogers had marched Ms whole company of rangers. 
 It was the shortest road to the sea board, and those in a hurry to 
 reach the lower country have always traveled it. 
 
 Many a hunter, trapper, and explorer journeying northward 
 in those piimitive times availed themselves of its facilities. The 
 Rev. Grant Powers, a most truthful historian, narrates how 
 the very first settlers Avho came up the Merrimack valley to Coos 
 employed it. In April, 1762, he says that Col. Joshua Howard, 
 Jesse Harriman, and Simeon Stevens engaged an old hunter at 
 Concord to guide them through the wilderness. They came 
 west of Newfound lake, in Hebron, followed up the northwest 
 branch of the Asquamchumauke or Baker river into Coventry, 
 and down the Oliverian to the Connecticut. They performed the 
 journey in four days from Concord. { 
 
 Most of these things happened when the Pemigewassetts, the 
 Coosucks, or the Arosagunticooks had a right of way over it. But 
 this very summer, after our committee had so much improved it, a 
 lady, solitary and alone, took a romantic journey along its woody 
 windings. The story is this — a simple tale — told in an ancient 
 record : Thomas Burnside and Daniel Spanlding were journey- 
 ing with their families to settle at the upper Coos. At Plymouth 
 one of Mr. Spaulding's children was so badly burned as to be 
 unable to proceed, and Mrs. Spaulding was left behind to attend 
 to it. Her husband and friends having gone she became lonesome 
 and resolved to follow them. A friend living at Plymouth had 
 agreed to accompany her through the woods with a horse thirty- 
 four miles to Haverhill, but he left her at a house in Romney, the 
 last one, nine miles on, and turned back. Mrs. S. was not discour- 
 
 *Acteon's Narrative. 
 
 t Powers' History of Coos, 46. 
 
 f'Someoftlie early settlers of Harerhill and Newbnry took the same route 
 to Plymouth, kept on the north side of Bak,er river into Coventry, and then down 
 the Oliverian."— Powers' History of Coos, 169. 
 
A TTOMAN AND CpiLD IN THE WOOD. 191 
 
 aged ; with her child in her arms she proceeded. She waded 
 through Baker river, which was low from drouth, and all day 
 long toiled up the blazed path to Warren. Across Black brook 
 and up the meadow she met two men, whom she tried to avoid by 
 stepping out of the path. They saw her and endeavored to per- 
 suade her to turn back, and among other things told her that she 
 must " wade through a part of Wachipauka pond where there was 
 nothing to direct her." But she still persisted. In the course of 
 the afternoon a heavy thunder shower passed over and thoroughly 
 wet both mother and child. She continued travelling until in the 
 darkness the track could be no longer followed. Then quietly 
 seating herself by the side of a tree she leaned agsiinst it with her 
 child in her arms, and there rested without sleep till morning. It 
 was a lonely night. The rumble of Oak falls echoed through the 
 leafy wood, the whippoorwill sang in the alders by the brook, and 
 the bullfrogs in the neighboi-ing pond croaked and "chugged" the 
 whole night long. 
 
 At early dawn she continued her journey and soon arrived at 
 the pond, through part of which she waded waist deep. Fortune 
 favored her and she found the path on the opposite shore without 
 difficulty. She also waded the Oliverian which, to use her own 
 language, " looked wild and terrifying," being probably swollen 
 on account of the shower of the preceding d&j. Pushing rapidly 
 on at eleven A. M. she reached the settlements on the Connecticut.* 
 
 "Where tlirough Warren did the Indian trail run — that most 
 ancient way over which Indian kings and princes of mighty tribes 
 had travelled, and where Mrs. Spaulding took her romantic jour- 
 ney? It followed up the west bank of the Asquamchumauke to 
 the mouth of the Mikaseota or Black brook, crossed the latter 
 stream and followed up its east bank, going some of the way just 
 where the road is located now, to the neighborhood of Beech hill 
 bridge, where it crossed to the west bank and continued along the 
 same to its source in "Wachipauka or Header pond. Crossing the 
 pond at the outlet it continued round the east shoi-e to the head, 
 over the little summit, down the slope of "Webster SUde mountain 
 to the Oliverian, and down the latter stream to the Connecticut. 
 
 The surveyor and his party did even better than our road 
 
 * 1st Farmer & Moore's Historical Collections, 85. 
 
192 HISTOEY OF WAEREN. 
 
 committee. Benj. Leavitt with his assistants, as we said before, 
 perambulated the old lines and then proceeded to lay out the lots. 
 They began on the south side of the town and laid out the first 
 division. The crest of Mount Carr, where the hackmatacks grow, 
 they did not think worth spending any time upon, but Surveyor 
 Leavitt spotted his lines across Hurricane brook, and washed 
 down his dinner one day by a draft from "Diana's bowl," which 
 is carved in the rock at the top of "Wolf's Head falls. 
 
 They made nine ranges in the first division, and as high as 
 eleven lots in a range, as can be seen by looking at any old plan of 
 the town. The land was lotted as far north as the " Meven mile 
 tree,'' so called, which stood beside the Indian trail, and is often 
 spoken of in the proprietors' records. This work accomplished 
 the whole party, road clearers and surveyors, returned to the 
 southern country. 
 
 Benj. Leavitt, Esq., took his time. He made up his report 
 carefully, drew an accurate plan of his survey, and when the com- 
 mittee to notify proprietors' meetings notified said proprietors to 
 meet on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 1767, he was ready to hand it in. The 
 meeting was called for that purpose. Art. 2d of the warning was, 
 " To hear a report of a committee returned from running the lines 
 of said township, and as they have laid out part into lots, to see if 
 the proprietors will vote to accept it." At the meeting held on 
 said day it was voted to allow the committee for their services in 
 the sum of twenty-one pounds and four shillingsi* 
 
 Thus the lots were laid out, the report made and accepted, 
 and it now remained to divide the land. After due consideration 
 it was voted that it should be distributed by lot, and that one man 
 should draw the lots for the whole proprietarj'-, and also voted that 
 the moderator was the man to draw said lots. The meeting then 
 adjourned for half an hour, the slips of paper were prepared, and 
 being again met the lots were drawn. 
 
 At the drawing Thomas True got the first lot in the first 
 
 * 1767, Nov. 17. Voted that we allow tlie committee above mentioned in full for 
 their services, as followeth, viz : 
 
 To Try Bayley, i days at 5 shillings per day, i; 
 
 " Benj. Leavitt, Surveyor, U days ate shillings per day, 4J 4 
 
 " Abraham Morrill, H days at 5 slilUings per day, SI 10 
 
 " Samuel Page, 11 days at 5 shillings per day, 2J 16 
 
 " Joseph Eastman, 11 days at 5 shillings per day, il 15 
 
 " Jacob Mon-Ul, 14 days at 5 shillings per day, Zl 10 
 
 " Samuel Greeley, 14 days at 5 shiUmgs per day, Zl 10 
 
TEMPUS FUGIT. 193 
 
 range, Ebenezer Stevens got the second lot in the first range, and 
 so on until all were drawn. The names of the drawers were then 
 entered respectively upon the original plan and this constituted 
 their title to the land. It was real estate which did not come to 
 them either by 'descent, purchase, escheat, forfeiture, execution, 
 or directly by grant. The land was granted to the proprietors as 
 a corporate body, divided by lot, and when so divided each gran- 
 tee had a good title, which he could alienate either by deed or 
 devise. In the old proprietors' records are recorded the drawings, 
 the divisions, the ranges, the number of the lots, and the names 
 of the proprietors by whom they were drawn. Thus was the land 
 in our beautiful mountain territory most equitably divided. 
 
 At an adjourned meeting, held November 26th, 1767, it was 
 voted "that we will raise nine shillings on each right in addition 
 to what has been already voted to be raised, to defray the charges 
 that have arisen on account of laying out the lots." Our worthy 
 proprietors, now severally rich in lands, were yet compelled to 
 pay somewhat for the privilege of being considered rich land 
 owners. But the distinguished .grantees were now perfectly cer- 
 tain that the town would be settled and cultivated and the first 
 condition of the charter fulfilled. So much were they of this 
 opinion that they passed by without notice an article in the war- 
 rant of the meeting to be held in November, 1767, which was to 
 vote "what encouragement they will give to any person who 
 will undertake to build a saw mill in said town the next year." 
 There was no need of spending their money for such a thing. 
 They also passed by without action another article in the warrant, 
 as they did a similar article at the meeting the previous spring, 
 which was "to vote what encouragement they will give to forward 
 the settlement of the township." There was likewise no need of 
 . this — the condition would be fulfilled sure. 
 
 But there were some not so sanguine ; the time was almost 
 out. If terms could not be made with His Excellency the Gov- 
 ernor, then time, taxes, treats, dinners, and purses of gold would 
 all be lost, and they would get no profit whatever from their spec- 
 ulation. Something, thought the wiser, must be done, and upon 
 this thought they acted. What they did we shall proceed to show 
 in our next chapter. 
 
 M 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOW THE PKOPRIETOKS' PROSPECTS GOT DESPERATE, SO MUCH SO 
 THAT THET WERE WILLING TO GITE AWAT SOME OP THEIR 
 lands; HOW PHILLIPS WHITE CAME TO THE RESCUE — GOT 
 THEM OUT OF A TERRIBLE DIFFICULTY, AND FINALLY PROCURED 
 A NEW CHARTER — WHICH ENDS THIS BOOK AND INTRODUCES 
 US TO AN ALTOGETHER NEW LIFE IN WARREN. 
 
 Long and faithfully have we toiled over the Proprietors' 
 Eecords, extracting therefrom, as a bee honey from a flower, every- 
 thing sweet and beautifal. Our duty as an accurate and truthful 
 historian compelled us to do this — as a sample of which witness 
 the disagreeable passages of the last chapter — and our most com- 
 prehensive history would never be complete without such consci- 
 entious regard for facts. 
 
 John Page, Esq., and the most energetic of our venerable 
 proprietors, were now very anxious about the township. They 
 must work or the charter would be forfeited, and all the line-run- 
 ning, lot-locating, and road-making would go for nothing. Ac- 
 cordingly at a proprietors' meeting held the 2d Tuesday of May, 
 1767, the question of what should be done came up, and among 
 other things it was determined to send a committee to the new 
 governor to obtain if possible a longer time in which to fuLflU the 
 first condition of the charter. Col. Jonathan Greeley and the 
 Hon. Dr. Josiah Bartlett were chosen as the committee. 
 
 We have said they were to treat with the new governor. His 
 Excellency Banning "Wentworth had been compelled to resign, 
 and his nephew, John Wentworth, had been commissioned in his 
 place, under date of August 11th, 1766, as " Governor of New 
 
A NETV GOVERNOR. 195 
 
 Hampshire and Surveyor of the King's "Woods in North America." 
 He had been installed in oflB.ce with even more pomp and cere- 
 mony than Benning Wentworth himself. On the morning of his 
 entrance into Portsmouth^we have it on the authority of one of 
 the best historians — all the bells rang a regular double-bob-major, 
 the cannon of the forts and batteries thundered till their brazen 
 throats were hoarse, and the numerons ships anchored in the 
 stream and at the wharves flung out aU their bright bunting, flage, 
 and streamers to the harbor breeze. 
 
 Col. Greeley and Dr. Bartlett found no difllculty in gaining 
 access to His Excellency. He was a jolly soul and loved to wel- 
 come company, especially when he could see a fee in prospect. 
 The committee laid their case before him in the prettiest manner 
 possible ; told him of the great diflculties which they had met ; 
 that there were no roads, that it was far in the wilderness, and 
 that men could not be found to settle all the towns which had been 
 granted. 
 
 Governor "Wentworth sympathized with the committee and 
 sought to console them by ordering up three bowls of " creature 
 comfort." After drinking enough to remove their melancholy, 
 Governor "Wentworth told them to go on as weU as they could, 
 just as though their time was not out and would not be out, and 
 he would do what was right in the matter. But His Excellency, 
 like his uncle Benning, was exceedingly fond of the root of all 
 evil, and so he told the committee that he thought that by and by 
 they would need a new charter, gently intimating that considerable 
 expense generally attended the granting of such new instruments. 
 
 Our committee were exceedingly well pleased with their 
 reception by the young governor. They went home and reported 
 their success to the proprietors individually, no meeting being 
 called, and as the season was nearly passed — the fall rains had 
 come and the winter was coming soon — they concluded they had 
 better wait until the next annual meeting, and not try to do any- 
 thing that year. But when the winter was gone then they would 
 act. There would be three beautiful spring months before July 
 14th, 1768, and in that time they could accomplish wonders. Be- 
 sides, they would send the committee to the governor again, and 
 they had no doubt but that they could get excellent terms from him. 
 
196 HISTORY OP 'WARREN. 
 
 During the early part of the winter they discussed numerous 
 plans, and when the annual meeting of 1768 came they adopted 
 one very much in vogue among the proprietors of various other 
 townships and were thus prepared to act most efficiently. As a 
 preliminary to their grand plan they passed the following votes: 
 
 1st. To give to each family, to the number of tweuty-flve,' 
 that shall settle in said township before the first day of October 
 next, 1768, fifty acres of land. 
 
 2d. That the first settler shall take his first choice of the fifty 
 acre lots and so each in their order. 
 
 3d. That each family that shall settle agreeably to the above 
 vote by the first day of October next shall have six pounds lawful 
 money. 
 
 And they did not stop here. To show their decided deter- 
 mination to clear and cultivate the land, and not forfeit their title 
 as grantees, they chose another committee to finish clearing the 
 road through the town. It was a strong committee chosen for 
 that purpose, and consisted of Mr. Samuel Page, Col. Jonathan 
 Greeley, Lieut. Joseph Page, Phillips White, Esq., Ensign Jacob 
 Gale, Jacob Hook, Esq., and Mr. Enoch Page. This committee 
 really worked sometime on the road, and also laid out the land as 
 above voted for the settlers, and at another meeting they were 
 allowed five shillings a day for their time.* 
 
 All that men could do by voting was now done. They shall 
 surely succeed this time. Everybody is going to work. So each 
 one thought as he waited for his neighbor ; but as is usual in such 
 cases, where each depends upon the other, nothing at all was done. 
 Our committee did not even go again to the mountain territory of 
 "Warren before the fatal day of July 14th, 1768.t 
 
 That day came and the charter was forfeited. All legal right 
 was gone. The only hope of the proprietors now lay in executive 
 clemency. Col. Jonathan Greeley and the Hon. Dr. Josiah Bart- 
 lett had got encouraging promises from the governor, and on these 
 they relied. 
 
 * Feb. 6th, 1769. " Voted to give those that worked clearing the road thro' 
 Wan-en five shillings a day for the time they worked on said road." 
 See Proprietors' Records. 
 
 t But the committee did go to Wan-en, where they worked sometime durine 
 the season of 1768. ^ 
 
TERMS OFrEBED TG SETTLEKS. 197 
 
 Yet our proprietors had done as well ae most of those of other 
 townships. Benning Wentworth had granted towns and made 
 himself rich in so doing. John "Wentworth's great plan was to 
 regraut them and make himself equally rich. 
 
 The committee saw His Excellency again. This time as be- 
 fore he promised them fair things, and again gently hinted at the 
 great expense which usually attended the regranting of charters. 
 
 Again they went home encouraged and determined to work. 
 Another proprietors' meeting was soon called. They paid those 
 who had worked on the road. They voted six shillings a day to 
 those who had been engaged laying out the lots. They farther 
 voted to those who should settle in said town lands and money. 
 They agreed to give "ten more settlers" who should settle in said 
 township fifty acres of land and six pounds in money to each, or 
 one hundred acres of land without any money, which the said set- 
 tlers shall choose ; and further voted that said land "shall be laid 
 out on the road which is cut through said town." * At a subse- 
 quent meeting it was voted that Col. Jonathan Greeley, Lieut. 
 Joseph Page, and Mr. Enoch Page be a committee to lay out said 
 lots and agree with settlers. 
 
 These several things were done as an earnest of their good 
 intentions, and they then voted that Col. Greeley and Phillips 
 "White, Esq., go to the new governor and treat with him for a new 
 charter. 
 
 Phillips "White was not one of the original grantees. We 
 first find his name in the Proprietors' Eecords, March 14th, 1768, 
 as having been chosen one of a committee to get the road cleared 
 through our mountain territory. He had become possessed of a 
 certain portion of the lands by heirship ; he had bought out the 
 rights of a few of those grantees who had become discouraged in 
 the enterprise, and afterwards, for meritorious services, the gran- 
 tees themselves gave him several large tracts of land located east 
 of the new reservation, and upon the side of Waternomee moun- 
 tain. Next to John Page, Esq., he had become one of the most 
 prominent men among the grantees. He held all the important 
 offices of the proprietary, was entrusted with all the funds, served 
 on all the principal committees, and during his long life frequently 
 * See Proprietors' Keoorda. 
 
198 ■ HISTORY OP. WAEKEN. 
 
 came to "Warren to look after his own interests and those of the 
 other proprietors. He had much wealth and good common sense, 
 and therefore much influence. He was just the man to go to the 
 governor with mine host, Col, Jonathan Greeley.* 
 
 Col. Greeley had learned the way to the governor's heart. He 
 told Phillips White, Esq., what must be done, and Phillips White, 
 Esq., was prepared to do it, and to become the saviour of the pro- 
 prietors' inheritance. How?— by his gold. If Benning Went- 
 worth liked the musical jingle of the filthy lucre, so also were the 
 ears of John Wentworth delighted with it. 
 
 It was on a cool September day that our new committee rode 
 their two strong saddle horses to Portsmouth. They had no diffi- 
 culty in gaining access to His Excellency, and the latter was glad 
 to see the proprietors' committee. Well he might be — for he 
 knew that when Phillips White, Esq., came something was certain 
 to be accomplished. The governor rang his bell and a servant ap- 
 peared. He ordered four bowls of punch just as before, and as was 
 always the custom called in his secretary, the Rt. Hon. Theodore 
 Atkinson, Jun., Esq., — who was not dead yet nor out of office 
 either — and they then began to discuss the subject of a new 
 charter. 
 
 All the difficulties which the grantees had encountered were 
 enumerated; how a mistake had been made in surveying the 
 grant, whereby the proprietors of other towns had claimed a con- 
 siderable portion of the lands; how much difficulty they had 
 experienced in cutting roads in such a far foreign land, and how 
 
 * He was a member of the Continental Congress, 1782, 1783. Also a member of 
 the Committee of Safety, from Jan. 20, 1776, to Jan. 20, 1777, and from Dec. 27, 1781, 
 to the autumn of 1782. 
 
 "In 
 
 Memory of the 
 
 Hon. Phillips White, Esq., 
 
 Who departed this Life 
 
 June 24th, 1811, in the 
 
 82d year of his age." 
 
 The above was copied from his gravestone, a plain slate stone slab, April 20, 
 1865, in South Hampton, N. H. The following is on the gravestone of his wife : 
 
 " Mrs. Ruth White, 
 
 Comfort of 
 
 The Hon. Phillips WiniE, 
 
 Died July 9th, 1797, 
 In the 69th year of her age." 
 
A NEW CHARTER GRANTED. 199 . 
 
 much trouble they had found in getting settlers for the township. 
 "Hundreds of other towns," said Phillips "White, Esq., "have 
 been granted and all of the other proprietors have met with the 
 same difllculties as the grantees of Warren ; in fact," said he to 
 the governor, " have we not succeeded as well as nine-tenths of 
 the proprietors of other townships, and have you not given them 
 new charters? Will you not treat us as well as you have them?" 
 
 The governor acknowledged the fact, ordered his secretary to 
 make a minute of what was required, and then in the blandest 
 manner possible suggested that the surveyor-general would be 
 under the necessity of making new plans, the secretary would 
 have a great deal of writing to perform, and of course a small 
 amount of funds would be necessary. 
 
 Col. Greeley and Phillips White, Esq., both had the same 
 thought and assured him the money should be forthcoming. The 
 governor was much pleased and said, "You shall have the new 
 charter, and that soon." 
 
 ■ His visitors thanked him and went home. They thought they 
 should get the charter in a few days, but they were again destined 
 to wait. The year went by, the winter and spring of 1770 passed, 
 and the summer was nearly half gone before they were no'tifled 
 that it was ready for them. 
 
 Phillips White went to Portsmouth for it. Like John Page., 
 Esq., he carried a bag of gold. He counted out the yellow sover- 
 eigns to the governor, to Col. Atkinson, to the surveyor, and to 
 the surveyor-general — in all for the procuring of a new charter 
 the sum of seventy-eight pounds one shilling. It also cost the 
 proprietary for the further expenses of its committee the sum of 
 seventeen pounds four shillings.* The governor was happy to 
 
 April 29, 1773. " Voted to give Col. Greeley for services done the proprietary 
 one huiidred and twenty-five acres of land in tlie northeast corner of the township 
 to begin at the said northeast corner and to run southerly on the line of said town 
 290 rods, thence westerly 69 rods, thence northerly 290 rods to the northerly line of 
 the town, thence easterly on said line 69 rods to said northeast corner." 
 
 Also, " Voted to give Phillips White, Esq., for services done the proprietary, 
 400 acres of land in the northeasterly part of the township, to begin at the northerly 
 line of said town adjoining the land voted to Col. Greeley, thence southerly by said 
 Greeley land 290 rods, thence westerly 221 rods, thence northerly 290 to' the north 
 line of the town, thence easterly 221 rods to the bound first mentioned." 
 
 See Proprietors' Records. 
 
 *For obtaining the new charter: "Voted to pay, March 26, 1771, to Phillips 
 White, Esq., 7J 18s; to Col. Jonathan Greeley, lillls; to Josiah Bartlett, Esq., 
 22 12s. See Proprietors' Records. 
 
200 HISTOET OF "WAEEEN. 
 
 welcome Phillips White, Esq., a second time. His were golden 
 visits. 
 
 . This second charter was not so long as the first. It recited 
 the diflBculties the proprietors had met. It included the prayer 
 for more land, and then prescribed the bounds of the township, 
 stating that they were made by actual survey by "Isaac Eindge, 
 our surveyor-general of our lands within the province of New 
 Hampshire." But the great point gained by the charter was that 
 the proprietors should have four years more in which to clear and 
 • settle our wild mountain hamlet. All the remaining conditions 
 were the same as before, and the young and gallant governor was 
 very careful to stipulate that all the rents due to us in our council 
 chamber in Portsmouth shall be paid. The great seal was affixed, 
 the charter signed by His Excellency, and Phillips White, Esq., 
 returned with it to the proprietors. 
 
 How great was their joy I They were saved. Col. Greeley's 
 little taproom and long dining hall saw a merry time on the night 
 'Squire White returned with the charter from Portsmouth. The 
 health of everybody in general, but of P. White in particular, was 
 drank. Influence and gold had been their salvation. Now they 
 were sure there would be no failure on their part. Individuals 
 went to work on their own responsibility, and some of the land 
 was actually cleared and cultivated. But they never succeeded in 
 fuljilling the first condition of their charter. True they accom- 
 plished much ; but when four yeai'S more had passed they incurred 
 another forfeiture. They would undoubtedly have again lost the 
 township — or have been compelled to pay roundly for a new title 
 — had not the Revolutionary war, which was their salvation after 
 the year 1774, providentially occurred. 
 
 But we will here put an end to this third book and now pro- 
 ceed to more congenial themes in the fourth. To continue 
 further the history of the proprietors, separate from that of the 
 settlers, would only serve to involve everything in inextricable 
 confusion. 
 

 
BOOK lY. 
 
 WHICH RELATES HOW OTTR Wn,D MOUNTAIN HAMLET WAS CULTI- 
 VATED AND SETTLED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF DIVERS AND SUNDRT SOUNDS HEARD ON THE HEAD WATERS OF 
 THE ASQUAMCHUMAUKE, AND OF TWO HOTELS IN WHICH NOT 
 A DROP OP "grog" COULD BE GOT, EITHER FOR LOVE OR 
 MONET. 
 
 ThEEE are a few great eras in the history of all civilized 
 communities. The entrance of the Israelites into a land flowing 
 with milk and honey, their deliverance from Babylon, and their 
 dispersion by Titus, are some of the distinguishing epochs of thait 
 people. The founding of Rome by Eomulus and Eemus, the 
 sacking of Troy, the destruction of Carthage, — are extraordinary 
 events in the history of other nations. So the year 1767 is one 
 of the most distinguished in the chronology of our little mountain 
 hamlet. 
 
 Its position was chalked on the map in 1761. It was granted 
 to John Page and sixty-five others in 1Y63, and the year 1767 is the 
 date of its actual settlement. 
 
 The old year 1766 is dying. Let us pause on the threshhold of 
 1767. During all the time of Queen Anne's war, of LoveWell's 
 wai", of King George's war, of the Seven Years' war, when scalp- 
 ing parties hastened along the Indian trail down the Asquamohum- 
 
202 HISTOBT OF WAEEEN. 
 
 auke, and drafted men were hurrying through the woods in search 
 of their red foe, and further back than the memoi-y of man run- 
 neth, Warren was a wilderness. It is in this case on the last 
 night of 1766. There is no clearing, no house, no human being. It 
 lies a cold, crisp, terrible solitude in the heart of a vast forest. 
 
 The low winter sun, the last of the year, has gone down in a 
 blaze of glory ; the twinkling stars are glowing in an ebon sky, 
 and Venus, just on the edge of the horizon, is hastening down the 
 impearled pathway of the sun. The evening hours fly swiftly by. 
 It is chill, freezing cold, and the very silence is oppressive. No 
 sound comes up from the Asquamchumauke ; it is ice-bound. 
 "Waternomee falls, on Mount Carr, and the "Seven Cascades," 
 between the two peaks of the mountain, are silent. They are ice- 
 falls, frozen as they leaped, and the moon gleaming on them makes 
 them glorious, as though their mighty columns were pillars of 
 ruby, amythyst, jasper and gold. Moosehillock — king of the 
 mountains — stands up in awful silence amid the lesser peaks 
 around him. 
 
 But hark I — the howling of a pack of wolves comes sounding 
 down the valley, and no human ear is there to hear it. At night 
 they will feast upon one of their own number. Another sound! 
 The moose and deer in their yards tremble as they listen to it, and 
 the old crow who has lived for a century amid the thick hem- 
 locks of this unbroken forest nearly topples from his roost. It is 
 the terrible, almost human cry of the catamount. But even this 
 lion of the American forest is soon stilled, — it is so cold. There 
 is a moaning in the air. Is it the wind sighing in the leafless 
 branches of the forest? Is it the aurora borealis snapping its elec- 
 tric streamers and crackling its flaming pennons athwart the sky? 
 Is it a troop of pale ghosts, shades of departed Indian warriors, 
 charging through the air across the valley to the distant mountain 
 side? But it is still now for a moment and you see only the 
 gnarled trunks of the trees standing like grim sentinels in the 
 shadows of the great mountains, and the cold snow shroud of 
 mother earth. 
 
 Listen again — for it is never long silent in this mighty wood. 
 Hear the cry of the wolves once more, the terrible voice of the 
 catamount, the bark of the fox in the spruce swamp, and then at 
 
PENXT "WISE AND POUND FOOLISH. 203 
 
 intervals again that strange, unearthly noise, coming from one 
 cannot tell where. The wind perhaps? — may be the sound from 
 the polar light, perchance the troop of ghosts, the spirits of the 
 departed. 
 
 What a terrible solitude it is ; never broken, an ocean of 
 woods full of dark streams, wild torrents, shaggy hills, and great 
 mountains. But there shall never be another new year's night 
 like this in our mountain hamlet. Before 1767 passes a change 
 will come. Be easy for a moment, most critical reader. We have 
 written the above that you might have some faint idea what a 
 place "Warren was just before civilization came to it. But we will 
 now come down from our lofty stilts and plod along at our usual 
 pace. 
 
 The Indians had taken French leave of the Asquamchumauke 
 or Baker river valley nearly fifty years before, and had gone to 
 Canada. The era of border wars and savage ambuscades, of 
 scalping knives, war-whoops, and "pow-wows'' had passed. 
 Even hunters and trappers were not so numerous as formerly, as 
 game became less and less plentiful. The time of proprietors, 
 surveyors, line-markers, lot-locators, and road-clearers had ar- 
 rived, and treading close upon their heels would come the frontier 
 settlers. 
 
 Did it never occur to our readers during their progress through 
 the third book of this most delectable history that our venerable 
 proprietors might have been a little too avaricious for their own 
 good? The first four years after the granting of the charter by 
 Governor Wentworth passed rapidly away without their even so 
 much as making an offer of either lands or money to any one who 
 would settle in their mountain territory., The proprietors of other 
 townships were shrewder by far, and offered both lands and money 
 to those who would locate on and improve their "grants." The 
 consequence was that many towns further in the woods had num- 
 erous settlers, while our lovely little hamlet remained a howling 
 wilderness. Perhaps John Page and the associate grantees thought 
 the land was so fertile, the woods so beautiful, the hills so inviting, 
 the mountains so sublime, the game so plenty, and the streams and 
 ponds so well stocked with the speckled trout and golden salmon, 
 that there would be. a mighty rush of settlers eager to occupy our 
 
204 HISTORT OP WAKEEN. 
 
 woodland paradise, and that they should make an immense amount 
 of money by the sale of their lands even before they were lotted. 
 But they were most thoroughly disabused of this idea about the 
 time they lost everything by forfeiting their charter. They learned 
 to their great cost that in order to sell any portion of their land 
 they must first give away some of it ; and they also got another 
 "cute idea" through their heads — that they would have to pay a 
 good smart bounty to any man, to induce him to receive a portion 
 of the land even as a gift, and engage to seittle on it. The reason 
 of this was that there was much more land to be settled than there 
 were settlers in all New England. 
 
 But experience, that high-priced schoolmaster, taught them 
 the above lesson, and in 1767 they went to work in a more com- 
 mon sense manner. At two consecutive meetings this year the 
 subject of bestowing lands and bounties was discussed, but it was 
 not fully determined whether they would give them or not. Yet 
 the rumor of what might be expected to be done went abroad, and 
 as a portion of the lands had already been laid out into lots by the 
 proprietors' committee, a few enterprising young men began to 
 turn their attention to them. 
 
 But before proceeding further we must consider briefly what 
 took place on the king's great highway which the proprietors had 
 caused to be cleared through "Warren. We should not record this 
 slight jotting of history, but that we consider it will prove a 
 great benefit to posterity, and so we piously note it down. 
 
 The first human habitations in Warren, of which we have any 
 correct knowledge, were the wigwams of the Indians ; the next 
 the rude camps of hunters and trappers, and following them the 
 camps of our former surveying parties. 
 
 But when the spring of 1767 came, when the sun ran high and 
 the warm showers descended, when the buds on the trees expand- 
 ed, and the speckled adder tongues pierced up by the snow banks 
 through the moist mat of leaves on the ground ; when millions of 
 flowers were developing, and the delicious yellow dandelion grew 
 blooming so sweetly on the grassy river bank, — then it was that 
 travelers journeying to the lovely Coos country through the land 
 of the Pemigewassetts, built beside the committee's road, or rather 
 the Indian trail, two exceedingly fine and hospitable hotels, even 
 
■WAT STATIONS FOB TRATELLEES. 205 
 
 before a single white man had moved into the township. One of 
 them was located beside the trail, on the west bank of the As- 
 quamchumanke, and the other upon the shore of our little moun- 
 tain pond, Wachipauka.* 
 
 They were only one-story high, a low one at that, and were 
 built in the most economical manner. Two crotched stakes, each 
 about six feet long, were driven in the ground about seven feet 
 apart; a pole was placed horizontally in the forks for a "plate;" 
 two others some twelve feet long each were then placed with one 
 end on the horizontal pole and the other on the ground, serving 
 for rafters ; on these were fastened the ribs for the roof, and then 
 the top and right angled triangled sides were covered with spruce 
 bark. Before the open front, which generally faced the southeast, 
 the Are was built. 
 
 Although there was neither landlord nor landlady, chamber- 
 maid, cook, or waiter, .hostler or errand boy about these one- 
 roomed hotels, still they were most welcome inns to the weary 
 traveller. If he could not find provisions in them, still they 
 'afforded him comfortable shelter, with a soft bed of moss and 
 hemlock boughs, and the dry punk, flint and steel, could always 
 be relied upon with which to kindle a cheering Are. "Whether or 
 not the bar was well stocked with the good creature we are not 
 succinctly informed ; but we fiave no doubt the guests would have 
 raised the most congenial spirits, provided their own backs had 
 been stouter. Their dispositions were certainly good enough, and 
 their stomachs sufficiently strong, to have brought the requisite 
 store of " old rum" that distance into the wilderness. Pocket pis- 
 tols of approved construction were not unknown even in those 
 days, and the canteen or bottle-shaped gourd slung to the side of 
 the sturdy woodsman who set his face towards the mountains con- 
 tained often a more potent restorative than pure spring water. 
 "Who knows but that these "flrst hotels" of "Warren saw many a 
 night of jovial revelry in the year 1766 ? 
 
 * " It may be proper for me to state in this place that our forefathers had taken 
 the precaution to Duud camps on the route from Haverhill to Salisbury, one camp 
 in every twelve or fifteen mUes, and each was supplied with fireworks and fuel, so 
 that a traveller could soon kindle him a fire, and ne had the boughs of hemlock for 
 his bed."— Powers' Histoiy of Coos, 72. 
 
 They had two camps on the Height-o'-Land, one on the very summit and one by 
 the brook running from Eastman pond into Tarleton lake. The camp by Eastman 
 brook was in Piermont.— History of Coos, 117. 
 
206 HISTORT or TVAEEEN. 
 
 Taverns then there were, two of them, by the old Indian 
 trail in those early times ; but who cleared the first land, erected 
 the first cabin, and brought civilization to 'Warren, we will tell in 
 our next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ABOUT JOSEPH PATCH, THE FJBST WHITE SETTLER OF ■WAEEEN, 
 AND HOW HE HAD A FEW HDNGET VISITORS WHICH ATE UP 
 ALL HIS PKOVISIONS. 
 
 Adam was the fli'st man, Eve the first woman ; Noah and 
 his sons peopled the earth after the flood ; Columbus discovered 
 America ; Captain John Smith explored New England,* and 
 
 JOSFPH PATCH 
 
 was the first bona flde settler in the township of "Warren. 
 
 Some men are born great, others achieve greatness, and some 
 have greatness thrust upon them ; and thus it is the good luck of 
 Joseph Patch, by happening to be the first settler of our mountain 
 hamlet, to be immortalized in this delightful histoiy. 
 
 It was in the autumn of 1767 that he first came to "Warren to 
 live. He had imbibed a passion for hunting in his earliest boy- 
 hood and it was to gratify this taste that he built for himself a 
 hunter's camp, the last of September, beside one of our wildest 
 mountain torrents, Hurricane brook.f 
 
 He was a young man not yet twenty-one years old. He had 
 brown hair, blue eyes, light complexion, a pleasing expression of 
 countenance, and was very agreeable in conversation. He was of 
 a middle stature, well formed, muscle hard and compact, would 
 weigh about one hundred and fifty pounds,iand was capable of 
 great endurance. He had courage, and was cool and collected in 
 
 * New England is that part of America which, together with Virginia, Mary- 
 land, and Nova Scotia were hy the Indians called (by one name) Wingadacoa,— III 
 Series Mass. Hist. Soc. Col. Vol. 3, 239. 
 
 t Jacob Patch's statement. He was a son of Joseph Patch, 
 
208 HISTOET OP WAKEEN. 
 
 the hour of danger. It is told how he lay sleeping upon his bed 
 of spruce boughs one dark night in his half-open camp, when the 
 low growling of the dog at his side awoke him. The fire, which 
 he had left burning when he went to sleep, had gone out, and all 
 was black darkness in the woods. Only the rustle of the leaves 
 overhead and the low murmur of the brook on the smooth-worn 
 stones disturbed the silence. Looking cautiously out he could see 
 nothing. His dog continuing to growl, he put his hand on the 
 hound's back and found that the hair was as stiff as bristles. 
 Again he looked out, and happening to raise Ms eyes he saw 
 gleaming in the branches of a low maple what seemed two balls 
 of flre. He knew what it was : only the eyes of a catamount 
 could glow like that. He felt the cold sweat creeping over him, 
 but realizing his danger he recovered himself, coolly picked up his 
 gun, took deliberate aim and fired. There was a wild howl, a 
 dead fall, a terrible struggle for a moment, biting the earth and 
 rending the bark from the trees, and the ferocious animal was 
 dead. The hunter's courage had saved his life. The catamount 
 was preparing to spring upon him, and had he done so Patch 
 would have been torn in pieces. He built a bright fire for the 
 remainder of the night and in the morning had the pleasure of 
 skinning the largest catamount he ever saw.* 
 
 In personal appearance he was the real backwoodsman. He 
 had a cap of wolfskin, the hair considerably worn off; no vest or 
 coat, but a short sheep's gray frock, which he tucked inside his 
 moosehide breeches ; a coarse tow shirt, no neck-tie, woollen 
 stockings, and the real Indian moccasins on his feet. His dress 
 was stout and would not easily be torn among the trees and under- 
 brush through which he hastened. 
 
 Patch was "born of poor but respectable parents" in HoUis, 
 N. H. His father's name was Thomas Patch. His early educa- 
 tion was much neglected, he having attended school but a few 
 months in his life. His boyhood had been passed on his father's 
 farm, and he had been in the habit of gaining a few pence in 
 autumn by building culheag traps on the banks of his native 
 streams, to catch mink and muskrat, and he was also skillful in 
 setting steel traps for foxes. 
 
 * Mrs . Hobart Wy att said she heard Mr. Patch frequently relate this adventure. 
 
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT IN •WARREN. 209 
 
 When the mania for occupying northern lands first came on 
 he accompanied the Hobarts and "Websters, liis townsmen, into 
 the wilderness. He at first resided in the family of Mr. Hobart, 
 in Ne'tv Plymouth, of whom he bought some land. But avarice 
 and cupidity got the better of his employer's morality, and he 
 cheated Patch out of it. In after years Hobart repented and to 
 ease his own conscience gave our first settler two cows in payment.* 
 Patch afterwards worked for David "Webster, inn keeper, a short 
 time, and was often employed as a guide through the woods to the 
 Coos intervals. 
 
 Just west of the main carriage road now running through the 
 town, just east of the railroad and on the south bank of Hurricane 
 brook, Joseph Patch built his hunter's camp. Game was plenty. 
 Great fat salmon were swimming in the river, and trout that 
 would weigh several pounds apiece sported in the brooks. There 
 were partridges in abundance, and thousands of rabbits had here 
 a warren — so that there need be no lack of something to eat. 
 One might hunt, ti?ap, or fish at pleasure. Wolf, bear, moose, or 
 deer could be shot, and beaver, otter, sable, fox, mink, or muskrat 
 captured for a I'ich store of peltries. These were the inducements 
 that brought Joseph Patch to Warren. 
 
 Could you have stood by his camp a hundred years ago you 
 would have felt that you were a long way in the wilderness, that 
 you had somewhat of a rural house to stop at, that there was 
 plenty 6f wood to burn and that there was a great chance for 
 clearing before there could be any very fine farms. You would 
 have seen hanging upon or fastened to the great pine trees around 
 the skins of all the various animals above mentioned, drying with 
 the fiesh side out, the many-colored tails pendant presenting a gay 
 and attractive appearance. 
 
 Joseph Patch had seen, at Plymouth, the proprietors' commit- 
 tee, that came to Warren the previous spring, and he had heard 
 them say that in all probability landin Warren would be given by 
 the proprietors, either in the fall or the next spring, to any one 
 who would settle upon it, and that the first settler would have his 
 first choice of lots. He had lost what he had purchased at Ply- 
 mouth, and one day, as the story goes, recollecting what the com- 
 
 *. Jacob Patch's statement. 
 
210 HISTOET OF WAKKEN. 
 
 mittee had said, he thought it might be an excellent idea to select 
 the lot where he had built his camp. After thinking of the sub- 
 ject for some time he finally concluded as he had possession— 
 which by the way is esteemed nine points in law — that committee 
 or no committee, gift or no gift, he would have it if possible and 
 remain where he was. 
 
 The next step was to choose a spot for clearing, and the first 
 week in October he fell an acre or more of trees. The Indian 
 summer dried them, and setting them on fire he got an excellent 
 burn. Before snow fell he had cleared the ground ready for 
 planting the next spring. This first opening in the forest— the 
 initial acre clearing— was just east of the "Forks" school-house, 
 sometimes called Clough school-house. It was in the corner of 
 this lot that he planted the first apple tree that ever grew in "War- 
 ren. Patch next cleared a small piece of land a few rods south- 
 west of his camp. 
 
 It now became necessary to change his hunter's camp into a 
 cabin, so he dug himself a cellar, stoned it, built over it a log 
 shanty, covered it with spruce bark and tightened it with moss. 
 A chimney of flat stones was built on one side, over a capacious 
 fire-place; his door was made of rifted boards, hewed down with 
 his axe, and an opening in the wall, closed at will with a shutter 
 made in the same manner as the door, admitted the light. 
 
 On the top of a' great pine stump, cut smoothly for the pur- 
 pose, he built of stones and earth a tolerable Dutch oven. Thus 
 furnished he was ready for the winter. 
 
 The remains of the apple tree which he planted, the old cellar 
 fallen in, and the stump on which he built his oven, are yet to be 
 seen.* 
 
 in addition to these labors lie had good success in hunting. 
 He found several beaver meadows, one on Black brook, one on 
 Berry brook, and one on Patch brook. There was a beautiful pond 
 on the latter stream, formed by a dam built of poles and mud, as 
 only beavers can build a dam, and on the shores were numerous 
 
 *Jaool) Patch's statement, 1S57. 
 
 Jonathan Clough's statement. Mr. C. showed likewise the apple tree, the cellar, 
 and the pine stump on which Patch built his OTen. A ruler IVom the trunk of the 
 apple-tree he first planted is in existence. It was made by Amos F. Clough, in 
 1856. The trunk is nearly all gone, b\it new sprouts have grown up, marking the 
 place of the old tree. 
 
PATCH AT HOME IN THE WOODS. 211 
 
 picturesque, conical little mud domicils, full of various apart- 
 ments opening only into the water, in which the beavers lived. 
 It seemed too bad to destroy the habitations of these almost half- 
 human and industrious villagers. But such thoughts never enter 
 the head of a hunter, and Joseph Patch was very successful and 
 took great pleasure in trapping these diligent animals. His mink 
 and sable lines were also very productive. Thus he passed his 
 time till the streams froze up and the snow flew. 
 
 Then he constructed a sled and took a journey " down 
 country " to sell the rich product of his hunting. Necessaries pur- 
 chased and he returned to his cabin in the wilderness. 
 
 It is winter now. Joseph Patch is alone in a great forest. 
 His nearest neighbor is a Mr. Davis, who lives in that notable 
 tract of country, since inhabited by a proud, good-feeling people, 
 called after our royal governor, Wentworth. Alexander Craig* 
 lived in Eomney — now called Eumney on account of the immense 
 amount of "good rum,'' said to be " excellent for sore eyes," kept 
 and drank by the jolly roisterers who have inhabited that fair 
 region. There was quite a settlement at Plymouth — not the Ply- 
 month of Cape Cod Bay, where pious ministers with vinegar 
 faces. preached to witch-hanging congregations — but Plymouth, 
 
 * Ephraim Lund "built the first saw and grist mill in Plymo.uth, near "where 
 Cochran's mills now are. Mr. Dearborn says that in 1765 James Heath, from Can- 
 terbury, Daniel Brainard, Esq., and Alexander Craig made settlements in Romney . 
 Soon after a Mr. Davis mored into Weutworth, and Joseph Patch into Warren. He 
 says that he knows that these were the first settlers in these towns, but will not be 
 positive as to the year they made their entrahce. — Powers' Hist, of Coos, 172. 
 
 " March 1, 1775. This may certify that Joseph Patch is entitled to one hundred 
 acres of land in the township of Warren, by his settling in said town, agreeably to 
 a vote'of the proprietary of said tovraship in the year 1773. We agree that he shall 
 have lot No. 19 in the 9th range in the second 'division in sa'id township for the 
 same. P. WHITE, 
 
 EBENEZBR STEVENS, 
 Committee in the year 1774 to lay lots for settlers." 
 
 Jan. 18, 1787. *' Voted that Joseph Patch have liberty to pitch one lot in lieu of 
 that he formerly pitched in said town for a settler's lot, which happens to be in 
 Coventry by the running the last lines." 
 
 June 28, 1787. " Voted that Joseph Patch.have lot No. M in the third range of 
 lots laid oat for settlers' lots, and for lots taken into other towns by a new line ; it 
 being in lien of one that was taken into Coventry that was given him for settling in 
 said town." 
 
 ' See Proprietors' Records. 
 
 JOSEPH PATCH'S FAMILY KECOED. 
 
 He married Anna Merrill. She was bom Dec. 38, 1756. 
 
 Daniel, born February, 1778. .Tacob, born August 13, 1786. 
 
 Joseph, Jr., bom April, 1780, William. [He was a lame man and, 
 
 David, bom 1782. taught school on Pine hill.] 
 
 Anna, bom 1784. Stephen, bom August 2, 1796. 
 
 Thomas, 
 
212 HISTOKY OF WARREN. 
 
 N. H. Daniel Cross and Mr. John Mann had founded the mighty 
 town of Orford, sometimes vulgarly called Oxford, owing proba- 
 bly to the huge oxen raised there. The Koots, Crooks, and 
 Daleys had set down in the territory named Pieraiont, which ex- 
 tends westward quite to the Varsche, or fresh, or Connecticut 
 river, as the Dutchmen call it. There were numerous families 
 squatted on the rich meadows of the Coosucks, but not a human 
 being lived in old Coventry — the land where blueberry hills 
 abound— or in Peeling, or in Trecothick, great wilderness regions 
 beyond the eastern mountains. Patch was veritably alone. Yet 
 the solitude was not so terrible as it was a year before. True he 
 heard the howl of the wolves every night, except when the tem- 
 pest was so loud as to drown it. Catamount tracks were seen in 
 the snow, and he bolted his door and fastened his one shutter 
 tightly when in the darkness its terribly human cry, freezing the 
 blood, came sounding through the forest. There were yards of 
 wild deer on the hills and in the ravines from which the spring 
 torrents rushed, and Joseph Patch also saw yarded by the Asquam- 
 chumauke great wild beasts, or moose, which John Josselyn, 
 Gent., describes as " Creatures, or rather if you will. Monsters of 
 superfluity." "A full-grown moose," to use his own language, 
 "is many times bigger than an English oxe, their horns, as I have 
 said elsewhere, very big, (and brancht out in palms), the tips' 
 whereof are sometimes found to be two fathoms assunder, (a 
 fathom is six feet, from the tip of one finger to the tip of the 
 other, that is four cubits ) , and in height from the toe of the fore- 
 foot to the pitch of the shoulder twelve foot, both of which has 
 been taken by my sceptique readers to be monstrous lyes. If you 
 consider the bredth that the beast carrieth and the magnitude of 
 the horns you will be easily induced to contribute your belief." 
 One of these "monsters of superfluity" our first settler killed for 
 the sake of the meat, and a shot now and then furnished delicious 
 venison, equal to any procured from an English park. He buried 
 the greater part in the snow, to remain frozen for future use, and 
 dug it out when wanted. One night his dog, lying by the fire on 
 the hearth, barked. He listened and heard out in the woods the 
 howl of a pack of wolves coming. They were famished and food 
 they must have. They growled about the house, snapped at the 
 
THE WOLVES AS FOEAGEES. 213 
 
 closed door, and mounted by the snow bank upon the bark roof. 
 Patch thought there was danger they might come down the chim- 
 ney, so he piled his morning wood on the fire, making the smok- 
 ing flue a difficult place of ingress. All at once there was a sharp 
 bark, a howl, then a hurry, then growling, snapping, snarling 
 like hungry dogs, and the man in the cabin knew that his visitors 
 were making most free with his moose meat and venison. He 
 was content, for he was aware that when that was gone he would 
 get a clean riddance of his ravenous friends, the wolves, and then 
 with his long barreled gun he could easily replenish his stock of 
 provisions. The next day however, as a matter of pr.ecaution, he 
 strengthened his roof.* 
 
 Thus the weeks went by, with plentj-- to eat and nothing to do 
 but chop his firewood, or hunt up the valley or on the mountains 
 for a day, accompanied by his faithful dog, or a trip to Plymouth 
 now and then, to learn the news and to obtain supplies, which he 
 drew to camp upou a hand-sled ; with an occasional visit from his 
 distant neighbors in the wild bordering regions, or a call from 
 some northern traveller, — thus passed the winter. The spring 
 came with its warm sun, melting snows, wild mountain torrents, 
 roaring river, expanding buds, green grass, bright woodland 
 flowers, and then — road-committee, surveying, lot-locating party, 
 and last, though best of all, cheering neighbors, as the next chap- 
 ter will show. 
 
 * Samuel Merrill's statement; said he had heard Patch tell this story otten. 
 
 Joseph Patch moTed to the north bank of Patch brook and had his house on 
 the east side of the old Cooe road. His son, Joseph Patch, Jr., Irailt the house 
 now [ 1870 ] occupied by Jonathan Eaton, and lived in it until he sold it to Mr. 
 Eaton. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HOW EIGHTEEN FAMILIES AND TWO SINGLE GENTLEMEN CAME TO 
 WAKREN TO RESIDE AND AMUSED THEMSELVES BUILDING CABINS, 
 CLEARING LAND, HUNTING MOOSE AND DEER ON THE HILLS, AND 
 FISHING IN THE CLEAR RAPID TROUT STREAMS. 
 
 A.ND now the solitary places shall be made glad, and the 
 wilderness shall blossom like a rose. How it all happened, who 
 came to do it, the order of their coming, and the time when they 
 came, will constitute the unity of this most welcome chapter of 
 "Warren's history. 
 
 We have seen how our worthy proprietors in the spring of 
 1768 began to put forth the most prodigious efforts to save their 
 well-timbered lands up among the hills. "We remember how at 
 the annual meeting it was voted to give each individual who 
 should settle in town prior to October 1st, 1768, fifty acres of land 
 and six pounds in money ; how the road-clearing committee came 
 up to "Warren, how they were to lay out the twenty-five lots of 
 land in such place as they thought proper, and how each family 
 who should settle as above should have one of the lots, the first 
 settler to have his first choice, and so each in his order. 
 
 This was the tempting bait. It had the desired effect. Dan- 
 ger of losing everything was why it was thrown out, and persons 
 wishing to become -real estate holders as well as pioneers on the 
 frontier, eagerly caught at it. 
 
 I have heard my uncle* say, and he was -well versed in such 
 matters, that the first family that settled in "Warren was from 
 Portsmouth, N. H. He said that in the spring of 1768, before the 
 
 "'Benjamin Little. 
 
THE FIEST FAMILY SETTLED. 216 
 
 snow was hardly gone, Mr. John Mills, with his wife and their 
 son John, several other children and Mr. Mills' sister, with one 
 horse on which they rode by turns and on whose back was borne 
 a decidedly small stock of household furniture, and also driving, a 
 cow along with them, came journeying up the bridle-path to 
 TVarren. The proprietors had offered the land and Phillips White 
 had persuaded Mr. MiMs to come on as a settler. 
 
 His was the first choice of lots. He chose one that was 
 bounded west by the Asquamchumauke, and through the meadow 
 on the east flowed Patch brook. On the ridge which once formed 
 a part of the second of the three geological terraces in the Asquam- 
 chumauke valley, just south of the river bridge in the lower vil- 
 lage, and east of the great railroad bridge, he selected the site of 
 his cabin. It was a frail habitation, erected on the very day of 
 his arrival, but it served as a shelter during the summer. Upon 
 one side he built a stone fire-place, and a chimney of small sticks 
 and mud. Household furniture he had next to none, and he was 
 under the necessity of manufacturing some. 
 
 He made a rustic table, but a good one as my uncle testified, 
 by splitting a large ash tree into several thin pieces, smoothing 
 them with his axe, and then pinning them side by side to two 
 other pieces which ran in opposite directions in the form of cleats. 
 This he fastened to one side of the cabin, supporting it by small 
 posts driven into the ground for legs. But be had a more novel 
 method for making chairs, and it was the one generally practiced 
 by the first settlers. The top of a spruce or fir tree was selected, 
 upon which several limbs were growing ; this was split through 
 the middle, the limbs cut off the proper length for legs, and after 
 smoothing to suit the fancy the chair was complete. Sometimes 
 the body of the tree was cut nearly off, and then quite off at a proper 
 distance, the wood split down and quite a comfortable back left. 
 These made durable chairs, and the instances were rare in which 
 it became necessary to send them to the cabinet maker for repairs 
 — especially to have the legs glued in. 
 
 Bedsteads were made by boring two holes into the log walls 
 of the cabin, about six feet apart. In these were driven two sap- 
 ling poles, the ends of the same being supported by posts. For 
 cords elm bark was used. 
 
216 HISTOKY OF WAKEEN. 
 
 A little, hard-meated, leathern-sided, wiry man, with gray 
 eyes and grizzly hair, was John Mills. His son John also was as 
 tough as tripe, and taken both together they were just the men to 
 make a settlement in the wilderness. 
 
 Almost the first thing they did after erecting their rude cabin 
 was to tear out the logs in the beaver dam and drain the pond. 
 Here wild grass grew, which, together with a few turnips, 
 eked out with birch and hemlock browse and such other rough 
 fodder, was sufScient to keep the horse and cow during the 
 winter. All summer their little stock pastured on the badks of 
 the river or browsed in the woods. Then the men cleared a few 
 acres of land to the south and east of their cabin, where they 
 planted corn, turnips, and pumpkins, and a large quantity of beans, 
 which served as the basis of that favorite dish, bean porridge, 
 with which they so often regaled themselves. The seed was 
 almost all obtained at Plymouth and Haverhill. 
 
 John Mills was proud of his little farm. His field was then, 
 and is now, a place of beautiful springs, of swift and crystalline 
 brooks. Above them dances in the fresh June breeze, frisky and 
 festive,— warbling, chirping, singing — the little black -backed, 
 white-breasted, gay and jolly bob-o'-lincoln, making all the time 
 music sweet and loud enough to burst his slender throat. In the 
 trees that hang over the waters, and upon the banks, the thrush 
 and the robin build their nests, and send out over the green sward 
 the merry song, or at evening their long plaintive carol, while in 
 autumn the hill and mountain eastward burst into a crimson blaze 
 of beauty. 
 
 Mr. Mills also changed work with Mr. Patch, by helping 
 the latter clear and plant, while our hunter-settler, with a rifle 
 which he bought the last winter, paying for it in furs, procured 
 moose meat and venison for his neighbor.* 
 
 Now it so happened that there was journejang northward to 
 find a home in the forest a certain Irishman recently from the 
 Emerald isle, named James Aiken. "With his wife and two child- 
 ren, one night in May, he stopped at our public hotel on the west 
 
 *The old settlers used to tell how the wolves howled about John Mills' house 
 the first winter he lived in town, and looked into his only window, putting their 
 noses against the window-pane, and staring at the famUy as they sat by the great 
 ire-place in the evening; hut Mills' folks were not to be frightened by such 
 visitors. 
 
a.N ACCmENTAL NEIGHBOB. 217 
 
 ■bauk of the Aequamchumauke. The next morning the sun came 
 up hot and the weather was sultry. Nevertheless the family 
 shouldered their packs and began their journey. For a time they 
 got along well, for the tall trees through which the path ran 
 afforded an agreeable shade, and the rippling of the river and 
 Black brook — the Mikaseota — made mellow music in their ears. 
 But wlieii they arrived on the ridge between the brook and the 
 river the trees were more scattered, and the sun, which had got 
 higher, shot his vertical rays directly upon their heads, making 
 the day intolerably hot. "Bejabers," said James Aiken, " in 
 faith I can't stand this ; " and the rest of the family being some- 
 what of the same mind, and also slightly foot-sore, they came 
 to a halt near the present site of Warren depot. The river looked 
 pleasant and the meadow beyond inviting, and our traveller 
 thought he might journey to the world's end and not find a better 
 place or a more pleasant home. But the fact that he did not own 
 a foot of the land made him hesitate. But in a moment it was all 
 right, "For," said he, " an' surelj"^ we shan't be seen here in the 
 woods, if we only get a good distance from the path." 
 
 Resuming their packs, they left the old Indian trail, crossed 
 the river, climbed out of the meadow half a mile to the east, and 
 on the second plateau or terrace, just beside a clear babbling 
 brook, they chose a spot for their cabin. It was built that very 
 day of posts and bark, and served as a shelter till the frosts came 
 and the leaves fell, when they erected a strong cabin of hewed 
 logs, better than any they had ever had in old Ireland. The 
 cellar that they dug, though now nearly filled up, is yet to be seen. 
 The next moi'ning Aiken climbed up on to the ledgy hillside 
 east of his cabin, as my old uncle * told me, where he could get a 
 good prospect, and was greatly surprised to see a blue smoke curl- 
 ing lazily out of the forest, and floating away above the trees half 
 a mile to the south of him. "Be jabersl I have got neighbors," 
 said James Aiken, and being a genial soul he was not long in 
 making their acquaintance. 
 
 A foot-path blazed through the wood to the proprietors' high- 
 way, and another to John Mills','were the only roads ever built to 
 the Irishman's cabin. 
 * Benjamin Little. 
 
218 HISTOHT OF WAKREN. 
 
 James Aiken was thus the third settler in "Warren ; and Mr. 
 John Mills had still another neighbor just to the north of his 
 own location. 
 
 Joshua Copp, Esq., the fourth settler, came to Warren from 
 Hampstead, N. H., the last of May, 1768. He chose a lot laid out 
 by the committee, and built his cabin on the southerly slope of 
 Red Oak hill, forty or fifty rods north of Martin brook, which 
 runs at its base. 
 
 Copp was broad-shouldered, square-built, with an open, intel- 
 lectual countenance, and was always a man of much influence. 
 He was energetic and hard-working, and that summer would often 
 come home to his dinner of bean-porridge, from the woods where 
 he had been burning a piece, with his short frock and long-legged 
 breeches crusted with ashes, and his face smirched with coals. 
 His table, around which gathered his wife and five children, 
 besides himself, was made of a single board, which he hewed 
 from an immense pine tree. Often. there was but one dish upon 
 it. a large wooden bowl, which he also made, and it would hold 
 ten quarts. This was filled with bean porridge — the best meal of 
 victuals in his shanty. Furnished each with a wooden spoon, the 
 whole family would eat out of it at once.* 
 
 In Mr. Copp's house Joshua Copp, Jr., was born, February 
 25th, 1769, — "Warren's first white son. But we never heard that 
 Mrs. Copp, his mother, ever received a lot of land or other bounty, 
 as was customary in those times. f 
 
 * The settlers made bean poiTidge by boiling tbe beans veiy soft, thickening 
 the ligaor, and adding a piece of salt pork to season it. A handful of corn was 
 sometimes jiut in. It is said — 1 do not vouch for its truth — that when the ffood man 
 was going awaj; with his team the woman would make a pot poiTidge and freeze it 
 with the string in, so that he could hang it on his sled-stake, and when he wanted 
 to bait he might cut off a piece and thaw it. 
 
 t JOSHUA AND SALLY (Poor) COPP'S FAMILY EECOED. 
 
 He was bom m Hampstead, May 11, 1741. She was born in Kowley, Oct. 27, 1741. 
 MaiTied, Sept. 19, 1758. 
 
 Molly, born July 16, 1759. Mehitable, bom May 15, 1773. 
 
 Elizabeth, born April 14, 1761. George Washington, bom August 28, 
 
 Moses, bom Feb. 22, 1763. 1776. 
 
 Eliphalet, bom Feb. 27, 1765. Samuel, born AuJ. 9, 1778. 
 
 Sarah, born March 25, 1767. Benjamin Little, born Sept. 12, 17S0. 
 
 Joshua, Feb. 25, 1769. Nat;QanielPeabody,bom June23, 1783. 
 
 Susannah, born March 29, 1771. William Wallace, bom April 3, 1786. 
 Benj. L. died November 23, 1798. 
 
 Oct. 19, 1797. "Voted that Phillips White, Esq., have a lot marked on'the 
 plan, ' Phillips White, N,' adjoining on lot No. 13, laid out to the right of Belcher 
 
ANOTHER BEAVEE POND DRAINED. 219 
 
 Esquire Copp drove a cow into the wilderness. During the 
 summer she could live well enough, feeding by the broolt and in 
 the woods, but in the winter she must have hay. His neighbor, 
 Joseph Patch, told him there was a beaver pond on the Mikaseota 
 or Black brook, and around the sedgy shore wild grass grew in 
 great abundance. 
 
 It was a June day -v^hen he went to the valley of Runaway 
 pond, where was the little tarn of the beavers. He left the pro- 
 prietors' road, which ran some forty rods to the west, and pro- 
 ceeding noiselessly through the woods came to the water's edge. 
 A wood duck with her brood was swimming on its surface ; sand- 
 pipers, uttering their querulous " weet, weet," ran through their 
 reedy haunts ; a blue heron was watching for fish at the outlet, 
 and by the head of the pond, on the blasted peak of a great pine, 
 an eagle stood out against the sky. He saw the long row of 
 beaver huts opposite, and a single beaver, watching him, sank in 
 the water and disappeared, leaving scarcely a ripple. Following 
 along the shore a wild-cat sprang across his track ; the blue heron 
 at the outlet flew away ; the duck with her brood dove and rose 
 farther off toward the head of the pond, then dove and rose again 
 still further away, and the eagle screaming soared aloft in mighty 
 circles till lost in the deep blue. For a moment only he paused ; 
 then with his axe he cut a lever, pried out some of the logs in the 
 dam — the gurgling water rushing through assisting him — and 
 before night the beaver pond was gone forever. In August he cut 
 a large quantity of grass upon this made meadow, stacked it, and 
 with the help of his neighbors drew away upon haudsleds the 
 ensuing winter what the moose and deer did not eat. 
 
 Mk. Ephkaim Tkue came from somewhere down country, 
 but from what town never could be learned, even from the oldest 
 
 Dole, with a gore of land lying near unto said lot ; and a lot No. 17, in the first 
 range of lots laid out, for those lots which were out oil' by the late lines, and drawn 
 to the right of William Parker, Esq., for a lot he the said White gave to Joshua 
 Copp, Esq., for settling in the town." 
 
 Joshua Copp died in Warren about 1804. He was buried near the outlet of 
 Runaway pond, beside the old Indian trail. The precise spot is unlmown. There 
 let him rest in an unmarked grave " till the last trump shall call him back to life." 
 
 WiUiam Wallace Copp, youngest son of 'Squire Joshua, was a veiy smart man. 
 He became a merchant in Montreal and imported his goods. He went on a sailing 
 vessel to England and no tidings were ever received irom him afterwards. He is 
 said to have been the best-lookmg man in the country, had a fine intellect, and was 
 given to theological discussions. He wrote apowerlul pamphlet onpredestination 
 and free agency. His death has always been a mystery. 
 
220 HISTORY OP "WAEEEN. 
 
 inhabitants. He settled a short distance north of Mr. Aiken, iu a 
 place long known to the villagers of our mountain hamlet as " over 
 the river." Mr. True was a strong, stalwart man, and had a large 
 family, bis wife being much more prolific than the red-headed 
 spouse of his neighbor Aiken. I have heard my grandmother say 
 that her mother told her — and there is no doubt of the truthful- 
 ness of the story, for my great-grandmother was a most excellent 
 woman — that once upon a time she went to Mr. True's a-visiting. 
 On her arrival she found no one at home, Mr. True and his good 
 dame being at work in the woods clearing. Seating herself upon 
 a stool she soon heard a slight noise, and looking carefully about 
 she saw some half a dozen flaxen, towy heads, peeping from 
 under the bed watching her, but not one could she coax to come 
 out. Mrs. True coming iu shortly after, excused herself and child- 
 ren, saying, "Lorl they see people so seldom they are as wild as 
 partridges." One man, after listening to this anecdote, was heard 
 to say that the fact afforded food for the contemplation of serious 
 and pious persons, as to whether man, like the ass, kept in soli- 
 tude, would not quickly return to his naturally wild state. We 
 may add that these children afterwards made smart men and 
 women. 
 
 This season the proprietors' committee was in town, clearing 
 the road, and also running the lines about the lots. Travellers 
 journeying to and from the northern settlements were plenty, and 
 our five settlers often travelled to Plymouth or Haverhill for sup- 
 plies, carrying them to their homes on their backs. Thus passed 
 the time, and this year no more settlers came. 
 
 In the winter of 1769, at a meeting of the proprietors, it will 
 be remembered that a vote was passed to give to each of ten set- 
 tlers "who shall move into town this year fifty acres of land and 
 six pounds in money, or one hundred acres of land without the 
 money, as they may choose," each making his selection in the 
 order of his settling. A committee, consisting of Col. Jonathan 
 Greeley, Lieut. Joseph Page, and Mr. Enoch Page, was chosen to 
 lay out the lots and agree with settlers. The proprietors also 
 began to talk much about building a saw-mill, to supply the inhab- 
 itants with boards, thus making them as comfortable as possible. 
 This had the desired effect, and two more brave men came to town. 
 
A SINGLE GENTLEMAN AEEIVES. 221 
 
 John "Whitchee, the sixth settler, came from Salisbury in the 
 spring of 1769. He was unmarried, and was travelling about the 
 world in search of his fortune. Some say that Moses Greeley, of 
 Salisbury, persuaded him to come on and make a settlement in 
 order that the most possible might be done to fulfil the first condi- 
 tion of the charter. But this don't matter ; all that we care for is 
 the fact that he really came. He was a red-haired man, with light 
 blue eyes, muscles of steel, a heart as brave as a lion, and just the 
 fellow to fell trees and commence a wilderness settlement. He 
 located himself on Pine hill, built a cabin, and in the fall went 
 back down country to see his sweetheart, Miss Sarah Marston.* 
 The proprietors afterwards gave him the lot he chose by direct 
 vote. 
 
 John Moekill was a friend of Mr. "Whitcher, and he came to 
 "Warren along with him. Mr. Morrill had a family, and being of 
 a speculative disposition, he bought out 'Squire Copp. The latter 
 had procured the lot containing his beaver meadow, and he imme- 
 diately erected a cabin there and moved into it, being the first 
 settler in the valley of Runaway pond. John Morrill was a lively 
 genius, and was sure to create a wide-awake neighborhood. In 
 short he was a sturdy, obstinate, bustling little man, and it was 
 lucky he moved into the woods, for he always managed to keej) 
 every one about him on the qui vive. He also had a good store of 
 worldly goods, which he contrived to bring to "Warren by making 
 sundry down country journeys. This property was well taken 
 care of, for he was of a saving turn, as evidenced by his always 
 wearing an old greasy pair of moosehide breeches for the sake of 
 economy. As we have before intimated he was continually given 
 to trade, and before he had been in town a year he swapped farms 
 with another settler. 
 
 And now came the tug of war — the great struggle of Ufe and 
 death for the proprietors, whether or not they should get a new 
 
 *jOHir AND SAEAH (Marston) whitcher's familt eecokd. 
 He was bom at Salisbury, Mass., June 19, 1749. She was bom October 14, 1748. 
 Mm-ieiJ, Dec. S, 1770. 
 .Joseph, born Not. 10, 1772. "'^ Obadiah, born Oct. 11, 1784. 
 
 Eeuben, born Dec. 30, 1773. Batohelder, bom Aug. 3, 1787. 
 
 John, bora Aug. 10, 1775. Obadiah, 2d, bom April 23, 1789. 
 
 Betty, born Oct. 3, 1778. Jeremiah, bora Jan. 29, 1790. 
 
 Sarah, born, Oct. 17, 1779. Eebecca, born Dec. 19, 1795. 
 
 Henry D., bom Oct. 30, 1782. 
 
222 HISTORY OF ■WABEEN. 
 
 charter, as we have before shown. To succeed they must make 
 strong, desperate efforts; settlers must be procured faster and 
 other improvements for a new settlement must be pushed rapidly 
 on. Accordingly the grantees of Warren made the king's high- 
 way broader ; laid out a new road over the Height-o'-land to Hav- 
 erhill Corner, and discontinued the old route by Wachipauka pond ; 
 a new division of lots was located ; large bounties * were offered 
 for settlers, and even to those who would only " fall trees " in 
 town ; and it was proposed to give thirty pounds to any one who 
 would erect a saw-mill and supply the inhabitants with boards. 
 But all this was to no purpose, for the settlers did not come. 
 Three years went by before another family sat down in Warren. 
 
 Obadiah Clement came from Sandown, N. H., in the year 
 1772, and settled on the northwesterly side of Runaway pond val- 
 ley. Mr. Clement, in after years a militia colonel, was a large, 
 stout man, about five feet ten inches in height, would weigh one 
 hundred and eighty pounds, and was as quick-motioned as a cat. 
 He was born at Kingston, N. H., the 19th day of February, 1743, 
 O. S., and married Sarah Batchelder, Aug. 27th, 1765.t He was 
 
 * March 25, 1771. "Voted to give each family that shall settle in town this pres- 
 ent year sixty acres of land, agi'eeahly to the vote of lastyear." 
 
 At the same meeting, " Voted to give to .each person as shall fall trees in the 
 township of Warren this year half a dollar per acre."— See Proprietors' Records. 
 
 " Voted that Phillips White and Mr. Samnel Page be a committee to agree with 
 settlers." — Do, 
 
 t OBADIAH AND SARAH (Batchelder) CLEMENT'S FAMILY KECORD. 
 
 He was horn at Kingston, Feb. 19, 1743, O. S. She was horn June 30, 1747. Mar- 
 ried Aug. 27, 1766. 
 Anna, horn at Sandown, Apr. 19, 1707. Obadiah, bom in Wan-en, Feb. 28, 1775 . 
 Job, bom Dec. 13, 1768. Obadiah, 2d, born Feb. 10, 1776. 
 
 Mehitable, born Feb. 27, 1771. Batchelder, born Feb. 15, 1782. 
 
 Daniel, bom March 7, 1773. Moses H., bom Feb. 12, 1784. 
 
 Married Sarah Baker, of Suncook, Sept. 9, 1788, who was bom Aug. 36, 1750, 0. S. 
 Sarah B., bom Sept. 9, 1789. Joseph B., born May 8, 1794. 
 
 Batchelder, bom June 30, 1791. Joseph, bom Oct. 26, 17S8. 
 
 Lovewell, born April 13, 1793. 
 Col. Obadiah died, aged 67, in 1829. Sarah Batchelder, his wife, died Jan. 1, 1786. 
 Obadiah, first child of that name, died Lovewell, died May 22, 1793. 
 March 25, 1776. Joseph B., March 26, 1705. 
 
 ■ Batchelder, died Jan. 24. 1786. 
 
 April 20, 1772. " Voted to give every man that moves into town this year one 
 hundred acres of good land." 
 
 " Voted to give half a dollar per acre for eveiy acre of trees that shall be fell in 
 Warren this year." 
 
 "Phillips White, Esq., Col. Jonathan Greeley, and Bbenezer Tucker were 
 chosen a committee to agree with settlers." 
 
 " Voted to defend the proprietors or others who may settle under them in 
 making improvement on the disputed lands in said town." 
 
 See Proprietors' Keoords. 
 
THE riKST HOTEL IN ■WAEKEN. 223 
 
 a cooper by trade, and worked at the business more or less during 
 Ms whole life. He lived for a short time in Sandown, N. H., and 
 while there speculated somewhat in saw-mills, as a sort of recrea- 
 tion. He bought his land of Col. Jonathan Greeley, and by him 
 was induced to come to Warren. He built a large cabin at the 
 forks* of the_ bridle paths, where one ran west over the Height-o'- 
 land and the other north by "Wachipauka or Header pond. He 
 took great pains building it, hewed the logs down smooth, made 
 it twice a& wide and twice as long as any other cabin in town, had 
 two good large rooms, with bedrooms, cupboard and pantry along- 
 side, and in the rear a shed made of poles and bark. The chim- 
 ney had two capacious, cavernous fire-places, all built of stone, 
 one in each room. There were four bed rooms in the garret, 
 parted off or separated from each other by a frame-work of poles 
 covered with spruce bark. The house itself was covered with 
 long, shaved shingles. It had doors of hewh boards, a floor of 
 square hewn logs, firm and solid, and each room on the ground 
 floor was lighted by a small window, the flve-by-seven glass for 
 the panes having been brought up from down country on the back 
 of a horse. "When the cabin was finished and furnished a hotel 
 was opened, and Obadiah Clement was "Warren's first landlord. 
 
 My great-grandfather t used to tell what a mighty fine build- 
 ing Col. Clement's hotel was, which grew up so suddenly in the 
 wilderness. The old gentleman related how he travelled up the 
 bridle-path one afternoon t(5 see the landlord and get some of the 
 good things with which his bar was always well stocked. Enter- 
 ing the little clearing, which seemed a sort of island in the woods, 
 
 *At first they only had a spotted line over the Height-o'-Land to Haverhill 
 Corner, and Col. Chas. Johnson and others lost it one night, as they attempted to 
 follow it through by feeline the spots on the trees, and had to lie in the woods until 
 morning. Eer. Grant Powers says : " It was not the expectation of the people of 
 Coos that they should ever have a road through to Plymouth for loaded teams, hut 
 their hopes rested on Charlestown for heavy articles; and the first time an ox-team 
 went through it was effected by a company who went out expressly for the purpose 
 with Jonathan McConnell at their head. The expedition excited much interest 
 with the inhabitants at home, and the progress of the adventurers was inquired for 
 from day to day; and when they were- making Haverhill Corner upon their return, 
 the men went out to meet and congratulate with them, and as they came in the 
 cattle were taken possession of in due form, and conducted to sweet-flowing foun- 
 tains and well-stuffed cribs for the night. Their masters were served in the style 
 of lords, and their narration of the feats of ' Old Broad ' at the sloughs, the patient 
 endurance of ' Old Berry ' at the heights, and the stiff hold-back of ' Old Duke ' at 
 the narrows, were listened to by their owners with the liveliest demonstrations of 
 joy."— History of Coos, 118. 
 
 t Joshua Copp, Esq. 
 
224 
 
 HISTORY OF WAEBEK. 
 
 he sat down on the trunk of a tree to cool and rest himself. Even 
 to him, a rough backwoodsman, there was much of beauty in the 
 jjlace. The green fields lying so peacefully in the for'est, wliich in 
 one place jDushed forward its scattered trees, in another retreated, 
 here sprinkling them out thinly, and there hanging their masses 
 of dark foliage over the low-roofed buildings. -The cabin, so 
 quiet too ; a few wild-flowers, crane's-bill, and honeysuckle grow- 
 ing by the door and open window; a flock of geese cropping the 
 grass, and the cows coming home out of the forest to *be milked, 
 the bell on the leader, slung to her neck with a leathern strap and 
 buckle, sounding so quaint and woodland-like, made all resemble 
 some bright land of the poets, full of Arcadian beauty. Then 
 there was a ringing of steel-shod hoofs, and as two travellers on 
 horseback winding out of the woods by the bridle-path proceeded 
 across the field, he looked up and saw the low stone chimney of 
 the cabin smoking, and the shadows stretching out longer from 
 the top of the mountain across the grain and the grass land and 
 over the forest. "But the best of all," said the good old man, 
 "Obadiah Clement treated me handsomely that night." 
 
 Col. Clement had the most fertile farm in town, and on his 
 open meadow, which gave evidence that the Indians had burnt it 
 over and planted it long years before, he cut hay enough to keep 
 his cow and yoke of steers. He got corn at Haverhill, and salt 
 and such other necessaries at Plymouth. These he brought home 
 on his back. Fortune favored him in procuring a supply of meat. 
 Opening the door one morning before the rest of the family were 
 stirring, he saw a moose feeding among the black stumps of his 
 little clearing. He had a gun, plenty of powder, but not a bullet 
 in the house. Yet he did not hesitate long. An old military coat 
 that some friend had worn in the French war furnished great brass 
 bell buttons, and he rammed home three of them. Priming the 
 old "queen's arm" he took deliberate aim and fired. One of the 
 buttons pierced the heart and the moose running a few rods fell 
 dead. Col. Clement was standing in his door at the time, and the 
 loud report woke up in great fright the whole family, till then 
 sound asleep; but they soon ascertained what was the matter. 
 That morning they had the choicest morsel, the under lip, for 
 breakfast, and all winter long they rejoiced over the happy shot. 
 
NEW ACCESSIONS. 225 
 
 Col. Clement's younger brothers came on and worked for him 
 durmg the summer, and the next year, 1773, — 
 
 Jonathan Clement* came to "Warren as a settler. It was 
 Enoch Page, one of the proprietors, that furnished him a home in 
 our mountain hamlet. He gave Mr. Cleihent the lot of land lying 
 between Col. Clement's and 'Squire Copp's, and he built his cabin 
 a short distance northwest of the spot where the road from Pine 
 hill did intersect with the old turnpike. In September Mr. Clem- 
 ent went down country, got married, and moved his young wife 
 home. Dolly, his first child, was born Nov. 4, 1774, in Warren. 
 
 Keuben Clement, the other brother, lived with Jonathan 
 many years. Reuben was the tallest of the three, standing six feet 
 in his stockings, and was an active, athletic man, but sometimes a 
 little crazy. When the fit was on him he would stalk through the 
 woods from cabin to cabin, carrying a cane as high as his head, 
 stout enough for a lever and with the branches paVtly left on, for 
 all the world like the one borne by the witch Meg Merillies. On 
 such occasions he would dress himself in his best, a suit brought 
 
 *JONATIIAJr AND HANNAH (Page) CLEMENT'S TAMILT KECORD. 
 
 He was born Jan. 3, J753, at Santlown, N. H. She was born Dec. 23, 1756. Married 
 
 Sept. 24, 1773. 
 Dolly, born Nov. i, 1774; died Nov. 18, Page, born May 1, 1787; died Aug. 11, 
 
 1779. 1789. 
 
 Jonatlian, Jr., born Aug.23, 1776; died .Tohn, born April 30, 1789. 
 
 Sept. 23, 1777. Page, born Aug. 29, 1790. 
 
 Hannah, born Feb, 20, 1778 ; died Oct. Dolly and Eleanor, July 25, 1792. 
 
 30, 1779. SaUy, born June 20, 3794. 
 
 Jonathan, 3d, born Oct. 12, 1780. John, born July 17, 1796. 
 
 Hannah, born Jan. 27, 1783. Benjamin, born Nov. 25, 1798. 
 
 Ephraim, bom Feb. 12, 1785. Daniel, born Dec. 3, 1801. 
 
 " Wentworth, Oct. 31, 1796. This may certify that Jonathan Clement, of War- 
 ren, is entitled to Lot No. 8 on which he now lives, for settling the same, according 
 to former votes. Accepted and' allowed. PHILLIPS WHITE, 
 
 ENOCH PAGE, 
 
 Committee." 
 
 Oct. 20, 1786. "Voted that Enoch Page, Esg., have Lot No. 2, laying south of 
 the No. on which Jonathan Clement now lives, m consideration of a lot he drawed 
 for said Clement to settle on." 
 
 See Proprietors' Records. 
 
 April 29, 1773. " Voted that such private ways as Phillips White; Esq., Capt. 
 William Haokett,- and Ensign Enoch Pag;e shall think proper to be cleared this 
 present year, shall be done at the charge of the proprietary." 
 
 " Voted to give 100 acres of land to each of ten families who shall actually set- 
 tle in town the present year." ■ 
 
 Joseph Patch claimed his land under the above vote, as it was the best offer 
 that bad been made. 
 
 " Voted that the said committee to clear out private ways beacommittee to lay 
 outlets for settlers, and the family that first moves into town to take his first choice, , 
 and so as they move in." 
 
 See Proprietors' Records. 
 
 Joseph Patch did not settle on and never lived on the lot of land he got, as will 
 be seen by examining the Proprietors' Records. 
 
 
 
226 HISTORY OF WAKREN. 
 
 from down country. His glittering- knee-buckles, whicli fastened 
 his short tight breeches to his long stockings, his blight silver shoe 
 buckles, his coat slung on his arm, his long jacket unbuttoned, 
 the collar of his linen shirt loose and flowing, his long hair stream- 
 ing in the wind, and his bright ej'e, restless and flashing un^r 
 his cocked up hat, made liim seem some weird man of the woods. 
 Eenben Clement had a friend and familiar companion who came 
 to Warren along with him. 
 
 SiAiEOiT Smith was the niau',— and all of his neighbors as long 
 as he lived believed that he was an adept at the black art. Of him 
 it was alleged, "That some orloomy iiight, like those chosen by 
 ma<;icians to invoke spirits, lie had called np the devil at the cros-? 
 i-oads «herc four roads met in his native town, and to obtain 
 iiuperhuman powers had sworn to be his liege man, and had then 
 kissed Satan's cloven hoof." "Wonderful were the feats he could 
 perform. Sometimes, from sheer malice, he would saddle aud 
 bridle one of liis neighbors, and ride and gallop him all over the 
 country round. Then turning jack-oMantern, with counterfeiting 
 voice he would call some loitering person through woods, around 
 marshy ponds into tangled thickets, and leave him lost in the cold 
 damp swamp. The butter would not come, and he was in the 
 churn; the cat mewed and jumped wildly about the house, and 
 he was tormenting her; tlie children behaved strangely, and he 
 had bewitched them. Smaller than a gnat, he could go through ■ 
 the key liole ; larger than a giant, he was seen at twilight stalking 
 through the forest. He could travel in the thin air, aud mounted 
 on a moonbeam could fly swift as the red meteor over the woods 
 and the mountains. 
 
 ■Without doubt all this was pious scandal, worthy of the old 
 Pnritans, for Simeon Smith was a good man, and in spite of their 
 superstition compelled the respect of his neighbors. He came to 
 Warren in February, 1773, bringing his family and worldly efliects 
 in a one-horse vehicle, known among farmers as a "jumper." He 
 settled on Red Oak hill, aud lived for a time with that restive 
 little backwoodsman, Mr. John Morrill. Mr. Smith was likewise 
 a small-sized man, smart to work and quick-motioned. He had a 
 large familj'', two or three boys old pnough to help, and before 
 another winter lie had a comfortable cabin of his own. 
 
THE GEEAT NORTHERN DIVER. 227 
 
 Ephbaim Lund was tlie next settler. Pie came from Ply- 
 mouth, N. H., where he had built the first saw-mill for the pro- 
 prietors of that township, and he erected a cabin and cleared a 
 few acres on the south shore of Tarleton lake. The place where 
 he lived was long known as Charleston, but whj^ it was so called 
 no one has ever been able to tell. It rained a few days after he 
 first came to Warren, succeeded at night by a thick fog. A little 
 past sunset he was startled by the wildest cry he ever heard. It 
 seemed as if some one lost in the woods was hallooing in despair. 
 He got his gun and starting towai'ds the lake discharged it several 
 tiiiies, that thp report might guirip the losi one to lii.= cabin — but 
 NO per^.oii .'ame. WliOAvasir;' \\'li:il liad liiiiJiMMied':' ,'\ tPWil:i>- 
 at'ter li<' heard rhc hallooing ugaiii. ;iri(l going through the woods 
 to the rocky shore he learned tliat the sound that startled him so 
 was the cry of "the great northern diver." He had never heard 
 or seen the bird before, and was now perfectly satisfied that when 
 told that any one could "halloo like a loon" that such person's 
 voice must be most loud and terrible, especially if it was heard 
 by a man solitary and alone, on a foggy night,, and in the dark 
 woods. 
 
 Joseph Lund, his brother, came shortly after, and settled near 
 liira. He was a good-natured, kind-hearted man, and it is said 
 that' he was of middle stature, broad-shouldered, rather bandy- 
 legged, browa-complexioned, carroty -bearded, hairy-bodied, big- 
 bellied, and flerji^-red-noscd. Dame Bumor has it- that he loved 
 good milk toddy and was not averse to whisky punch. He wore 
 a long, home-made frock, coming down half-way from his knees 
 to his heels, and he was accustomed to girt a half-inch rope, twice 
 drawn tightly around him, as some said to keep liis well-filled 
 belly from bursting. Then ho talked loud on some occasions, but 
 at times his tongue was rather thiclc, ajid it bothered people to 
 understand him. Ho was a good shot, and when he travelled in 
 the woods always carried his gun with him. 
 
 It is told how returning home from Wentworth one day in the 
 fall, he saw a large bull moose drinking from the river, near the 
 foot of Red Oak hill and not far from tlie present south line of the 
 town. He immediately fired at the animal, but the ball only stag- 
 o-ercd it. lustantlv recovering itself it dashed out of tlie water, 
 
228 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 • 
 
 leaped up the opposite bank, and disappeared in the tliick woods. 
 Mr. Lund hastily reloaded, rushed through the river, saw that it 
 was stained with blood, and following the easy trail for a few 
 rods met the moose, which had turned to face him. Again he 
 fired and again the animal fled. This continued till he had lodged 
 six bullets in its body, when he succeeded in dispatching it. It 
 was a prize, and supplied meat for both of the Mr. Lands all 
 winter. 
 
 Mr. Lund was also an excellent trapper as well as hunter, as 
 the following strictly historical anecdote will show. Tradition 
 relates that he drove a few sheep to "Warren, the first ones ever 
 kept in town, but he found it rather an unprofitable investment, 
 for the reason that the bears killed so many of them. They had to 
 be yarded every night, and during the daytime they would fre- 
 quently come running to the house pursued by these black-coated 
 gentry. One afternoon he found the remains of one that had been 
 killed, and wisliiug to take revenge he gathered and placed them 
 by the end of a hollow birch log. Inside the log he sat the gun in 
 such a manner that when the bear began to' eat the mutton he 
 would discharge the gun and receive the contents in his own head. 
 Mr. Lund heard the report of his old queen's arm in the night, 
 and rising early the next morning he went to learn the result. 
 He found a very large bear lying dead a short distance from a heap 
 of half-roasted mutton, while the log was a pile of burning coals. 
 Among these was the gun, minus the entire wooden fixtures, 
 with the barrel, lock, and ramrod essentially ruined. This was 
 a great loss to him, but he often recounted with much glee the 
 manner in which he swapped his gun for a bear.' South from the 
 Lunds, and on the eastern shore of Eastman ponds, — 
 
 TnoMAS CLAKKf began a settlement. He was tall of stature, 
 fair-complexioned, with black hair and a keen black eye, his 
 aspect between mild and stern ; of few words, slow in speech, not 
 easily provoked, and soon pacified. Another man, just his oppos- 
 ite in appearance, for contraries love companionship, came to 
 AVarren with him. 
 
 *Mr. Stephen Lund's statement. 
 
 tVoteil, Oct. I'J, 1797, that Phillips White have a gore of land running on Pier- 
 mont line, marked on the plan " Phillips White," in consideration of his settling 
 Thomas Clark. — Proprietors' Records. 
 
YOUNG WHITCHEK CI.IMBS MOOSEHILLOCK. 229 
 
 Isaiah Batcheldek was broad-faced, of a ruddy complexion, 
 rolling eyes, with a lai'ge belly, and a lover, of fat living. He 
 built a log hut for himself south of Mr. Clark's, but did not move 
 into it with his family till the next season. These two men 
 received their land from Warreu's most energetic proprietor, at 
 that time living, Mr. Phillips White. 
 
 Chase WhitchIie came next. He was born in Salisbury, was 
 a relative of Mr. John "Whitcher, who was as yet bur only settler, 
 on Pine hill, and although a mere boy he took possession of a lot of 
 land in the north part of the town, fell a few acres of trees, and 
 built himself a log camp covered with bark. He was sent by the 
 proprietors, they observing that he was a resolute youth, that they 
 might if possible fulfill the to them terrible iirst condition of the 
 charter. 
 
 Chase, the boy settler, was a tall, bony, raw-built fellow, with 
 a spare face, red hair, and a hard head, and he could hunt as well 
 3,3 the best of them. Mink, muskrat, and otter he caught by the 
 foamy, roistering Oliverian ;* beaver he trapped at Beaver-meadow 
 ponds, the head waters of the wild Ammonoosuc, and his sable 
 lines ran here and there upon the sides of the mountains. Then 
 it is said he "was fond of the occupation indicated by his given 
 name — that in autumn he loved the chase. The cry qt his old 
 hound-dog in the woods was music to him, and following a moose 
 one day he climbed over Moosehillock, being the first settler that 
 ever stood on its bald summit. 
 
 At another time he was chasing a wild buck, which ran 
 down on the rocky crest of Owl's Head mountain. 'Whitcher 
 heard the baying of his old bloodhound in the distance, at regular 
 intervals, each time coming nearer, and cocking his rifle got behind 
 a rock, thinking to shoot the stag as he passed. He did not have 
 to wait long. The deer burst out of the thin woods fifty rods 
 away, too .far oflF for a shot, and bounded towards the edge of the 
 precipice. He whistled to the old dog following closely behind, 
 whose three wild yells rang out regularly upon the clear moun- 
 tain air, but could not niake him hear. Neither deer nor hound 
 
 » " In regard to naming Oliverian brook I hare no legal knowledge. Tradition 
 says that in early times a man named Oliver and another person were crossing the 
 stream, that the first fell in and the other gave the alarm hy crying ' Oliver's in.' 
 Hence the name, OlweHan."—B.oseii, S. Baker. 
 
230 HISTOKY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 heeded where they were going, and when they reached the brink 
 of the mountain, in 'the excitement of the moment the hunter held 
 his breath, as he saw the buck unable to stop, and the great black 
 hound, intent only on his prey, both leap far out over the edge of 
 the precipice, then falling swift as lightning disappear in the 
 abyss a hundred fathoms down. 
 
 In an hour the young man had climbed down through the 
 woods by a roundabout way to the foot of the mountain, where 
 he found the deer dead, and his hound with one leg broken and 
 otherwise terribly Jbruised. The dog had lighted on the top of a 
 great pine, which broke the force of bis fall. In time he got well, 
 but could never again be. induced to run another deer on the top 
 of Owl's Head mountain . 
 
 Mr. Whitoher lived in his camp but a portion of the time. 
 The rest he spent at Mr. John Whitcher's, and down-country, till 
 1777, when he married Miss Hannah Morrill,* built him a nice 
 cabin of hewn logs, and moved his young bride home. 
 
 William Hjkath lived in town about Ibis time, but had no 
 particular place of residence. He was one of those curious, non- 
 descript sort of persons, to be found in every back settlement, and 
 there is no country village but has his prototype. He would work 
 out a few days here and a few somewhere else, and then would 
 fell trees on a lot he had selected, saying he was going to settle 
 down. He delighted to hang round Obadiah Clement's bar-room, 
 and he would spend a whole day at any place where he thought 
 they would give him a drink. He had sharked it about the world 
 picking up a living without paying for it, and by long fasting at 
 times had become a tall, lank, hungry looking sort of fellow, 
 swift of foot and long-winded. He had the wolf-skin cap and 
 
 * CHASE ASD HANXAH (Morrill) WHITCHEE'S FAMILY KECOKD. 
 
 He was born Oct. 6, 1753, at Salisbnrv, Mass. She was bom June 19, 175S, at Ames- 
 bury. Maxriecl July 6, 1777. 
 J-evi, born Sept. 23, 1779. Jacob, born June 22, 1791. 
 Polly, born Jan. 22, 1781. Miriam, born March 18; 1794. 
 AVilliam, born May 23, 17S3. Hannali, born March 16, 1796. 
 Mollv, born April 16, 1785. Martha, born July 18, 1798. 
 Chase, .Ir., born Sept. 6, 1787. David, born Jan. 15, 1803. 
 Levi, 2cl, born Aug. 31, 1789. 
 
 William WhitcBer, son of Chase Whitcher, was the father of Ira Whitcher, 
 Chase Whitcher, Daniel Whitcher, and other sons, all now living at North lieu- 
 ton. His family wore all tall in stature, of more than ordinary intelligence, 
 and the sons active and iufluentiai business men. " There were more than a hun- 
 dred feet of Wliitchers in William Whitcher's family." 
 
WILLIAM HEATH COMES TO GEIEl". 231 
 
 m 
 
 short frock of the settler, but his belt, leggius, and moccasins, 
 gave him an Indian look, and his hair hanging straight in gallows 
 locks made him look more sharky, so that in appearance he was 
 an ugly customer to deal with. It is told however that he chanced 
 one day to meet at Col. Clement's tavern our mettlesome little 
 settler, Mr. John Morrill, and being well pickled — or in plain 
 English drunk — he managed to get up a fight, and Mr. Moi-rill 
 being sober gave him a good beating as he deserved. 
 
 When William Heath sobered off his chagrin was great to 
 think he had been vanquished, and he immediately left the settle- 
 ment and buried himself for a month in the deep woods. When 
 he came back, to take off the edge of his absence, he said he had 
 been a hunting. But the two combatants were soon friends again. 
 Thus "William Heath passed his life,_ and when the Eevolutiou 
 broke out he was one of the first off to the wars. 
 
 Mk. Stevens Merrill * was the father-in-law of our first set- 
 tler, and before coming to Warren lived in Plaistow, N. H. Mr. 
 Patch had called at Mr. Merrill's house when he had been down 
 country to sell his furs and get supplies, had fallen in love with 
 young Miss Annie Merrill, and when she was a triile more than 
 sweet sixteen they were married. Ho moved his young wife home 
 and she was the prettiest flower in all the wilderness. She had 
 sparkling black ej-es, rosy cheeks, cherry lips, raven tresses in 
 abundance, and in form was light and agile as a doe. 
 
 In 177.5 Mr. Merrill, who did not like the political complexion 
 of the country, concluded to go where he could find peace and quiet, 
 
 * STEVENS AND SARAH (Chase) MEIiP.lLL'S FAMILY RECCED. 
 
 Jonathan, born Dec. 13, 1752, at New- Mary, boru May 13, 1762. 
 
 bui-y, Mass. .Joseph, born Sept. 24, 1764. 
 
 Sarah, born Sept. 23, 1754. Ruth, born March 8, 1767. 
 
 Anna, born Dec. 28, 1763. Caleb, boni April 4, 1789. 
 
 Susannah, June 4, 1759, at Plaistow, Betsey, May 15, 1772. 
 
 N. H. Hannah, boi'n Oct. 9, 1775. 
 
 Sarah, the first wife, died April 30, 1794. Mary, the second, died August 21, 1804. 
 
 Hannah, died Nov. 21, 1806. Caleb, died June 8, 1808. 
 
 Nathaniel Merrill and his brother John came from England and settled in New- 
 bury, Mass., 1635. Nathaniel married Sunannah Gordon. 
 
 Nathaniel, .Jr., born 163S, maraed Joan Kinney. 
 
 Peter, born 1667, married Sarah Bazzelton. 
 
 Abel, born 1697, married Ruth. 
 
 Stevens, born Jnne 10, 1731, married, 1st, Sarah Chase; 2d, Mary Noyes. 
 
 .Joseph, boru Sept. 24, 1764, married Sarah Copp. 
 
 Susan C., born July 30, 1808, maii'ied Jesse Little. 
 
 Stevens Merrill was bom in Atkiuson, N. U., lived at Newbury, Mass., then at 
 Plaistow, N. H., then settled in Warren as above. 
 
232 HISTORY OF ■WABRIiN. 
 
 and so moved to our woodland paradise. He bought the lot of 
 land on which James Aikin lived, and built a log house on the 
 river bank, a few rods southeast of the present depot, and just 
 south of the west end of the Bixby bridge. 
 
 Stevens Merrill was a straight, medium-sized man, had a lean 
 face, a thin straight nose and blue eyes. Mr. M. was a Quaker, 
 did not believe in war, and had no sympathy with the colonists. 
 He was stern of aspect and slow in speech, and the children were 
 afraid of him. He was inflexible, had a mind and will Of his own, 
 and could not be bent from his purpose. Courage he possessed 
 to a remarkable degree, and neither man, wild beast, lior devil 
 could frighten him. His cattle used to run in the woods. One 
 day they got lost, and after hunting a long time he found all near 
 Hurricane brook, except one ox and a heifer. Driving them up 
 the bridle-path he heard the ox lowing in the woods on the right. 
 He knew there was trouble. Going back to his son-in-law's he 
 procured a stout pitcltfork, then followed through the woods till 
 he found the ox in the meadow near Patch brook, guarding the 
 heifer, which a large bear was trying to kill. The heifer was 
 very badly scratched and bitten. Assisted by the ox, Mr. M. 
 attacked the bear, the largest one he ever saw, and after a hard 
 fight succeeded in driving it away, but did not kill it. The same 
 bear killed cattle in Romuey and the towns below, and was itself 
 eventually killed by a hunter. 
 
 Jonathan Merrill, Esq., a son of the above, came to "VYar- 
 ren with him. He hved for a time with his brother-in-law, and 
 his son Stevens, afterwards the richest man in town, was born in 
 Mr. Patch's cabin. 'Squire Jonathan Merrill was one of the 
 smartest men that ever lived in Warren. He was six feet tall, of 
 a lordly mien, straight as an arrow, and had an eye like a hawk. 
 He was perfect in the science of human nature, knew when to 
 drive and when to coax, and had a large stock of soft soap, which 
 he generally dealt out with a liberal hand. Like his father, he 
 was a Quaker of the straightest sect ; wore a broad-brimmed hat, 
 and a long drab coat ornamented with great wooden buttons, 
 called by some " matheman buttons." As soon as his father had 
 finished his large log cabin he moved home with him, where he 
 lived through life. 
 
THE BEST DRESSED MAN IN TOWN. 233 
 
 Joshua Meekill, Esq.,* followed his friends and relatives 
 into the wilderness. He bought the lot of land immediately- 
 south of 'Squire Copp, and built his log hut at the foot of Beech 
 hill, a few rods north of the bridge over Black brook. 
 
 He was small-sized, straight, lithe, and agile, and withal was 
 an excellent horseman. "As straight as Uncle Joshua," was a 
 speech common among the settlers. He was also a tough, sturdy, 
 weather-beaten, niettlesome, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, gen-- 
 erous-spirited little man. He would never give up when he had 
 entered a contest, and he battled for iive-score years with Old 
 Father Time, only yielding when the snows of more than a hun- 
 dred winters had whitened his head. He was the best dressed 
 man in town, and it would have done you good, kind reader, 
 to have seen him, could you only have lived in those times. He 
 would frequently dress himself in his best on some week day, 
 when nothing particular was going on, and then would call round 
 on all his neighbors to show how pretty he looked. Perhaps he 
 wanted to advertise his wares, for repoi't has it that he was once a 
 tailor by trade. f On such occasions he wore a very short-waisted 
 coat of dark color, with short tail-flaps, a wide-rimmed hat — 
 
 JONATHAN AND SUSANS AH (Eaton) IIEKRILL'S FAMILY KECOKD. 
 
 Samuel, born Feb. 28, 1774, at Plais- Susannah, boi'n April 2, 1786; diefl 
 
 tow ; died Deo. li, 1815. AprU 28, 1813. 
 
 Stevens, bom Mar. 15th, 1776, at War- Euth, bom .June i, 1788; died Feti. 9, 
 
 ren ; died May 12. 1813. 1790. 
 
 Isaac, born Aug. 4, 1778. Betsey, born Nov. 21, 1780. 
 
 Hannah, born May 24, 1781. Mehitable, bom Sept. 8, 1792. 
 
 Sarah, born Jan. 28, 1784. Polly, born March 10, 1794. 
 Susannah, wife of 'Squire Jonathan, died Dec. 26, 1813. 
 
 Voshua'and mehitaele (Emerson) jiekrill's family eecopd. 
 He was born May 27th, 1739, in Sfewbury, Mass. She was boi-n Aug. 28th, 1741, in 
 Hampstead, N. H. Man-ied Feb. 19, 1760. 
 Kuth, bom Nov. 23, 1760, in Hamp- Euth, born Aprils, 1766. 
 
 stead. Hainiah, bom April 28, 1771. 
 
 Abigail, bom Nov. 6, 1762. Joshua, bom July 17, 1776, at War- 
 
 Mehitable, bom June 1, 1764, at San- ren. 
 
 down. 
 Abigail died April 1, 1764. The fii-st Euth died June 18, 1764. 
 
 At a proprietors' meeting held .July 8, 1789, " Voted that Maj. Joseph Page have 
 a hundred acre lot of land, which was surveyed by Mr. Josiah Burnham on the 
 16th August, 1787, in consideration of his settling Mr. Joshua Merrill in said town." 
 Joshua Merrill was a brother of Stevens Menill. 
 
 t Nearly all the cloth he made up in those good old days was homespun. The 
 sheep kept by the settlers were of a coarse-wooled kind. This wool was carded 
 with hand-cards, whioft was a very laborious work for the women. Sometimes,. to 
 make it more cheerful, they would have a iee, or wool-breaking. It was nearly as 
 much work to card as to spin it, and a woman's " stent " for spinning was five 
 skeins a day, for which the usual price was flJty cents and board per week. The 
 
234 • HISTORY OP WAKREN. 
 
 rim full ten inches wide — hip breeches fastened at tlie knee with 
 buckles, color dark; long stockings, blue and white, and fastened 
 by a loop to one of the breeches buttons, and buskins of wool or 
 leather, tied with sheep-skin strings, over his thick, double-soled 
 ox-hide shoes. His jacket was of the same material as his coat 
 and breeches, with large flaps over the pockets, and for cold 
 weather he had a great coat with very long cape and no waist, 
 buttoned with four or five " matheman buttons." Tlie sleeves had 
 very wide cuffs, eight or ten inches at least, and two great buttons 
 on each. "When he had this suit on, and was mounted on his great 
 black stallion which he used to ride, he would dash through the 
 woods along the stony bridle-path like a wild Arab. He was 
 known all over the country round, and everybody would say, 
 "There goes Farmer Joshua, the politest and best dressed man in 
 the State." 
 
 Mr. "William Butler was omi^loyed by the proprietors to 
 come to "W^arrenHo perform a piece of work which we shall be 
 most happy to mention hereafter. He was born in Brentwood, 
 April 24th, 1757, and married pretty Mehitable Mills,*. Mr. John 
 Mills' sister. "William Butler was a handsome man, with round 
 features. He was five feet eleven inches tall, straight, well-pro- 
 wool spun, and- it was woven in the old hand-loom. The most common cloth 
 was " sheep's gray," the wool ol' a black sheep and a Ayhite sheep spun and woven 
 together. Then they had I'nlled cloth, dressed by a clothier down conntry. Some- 
 times they made heavy waled cloth .and dyed it with bai-k at home. The women 
 in winter wore " baize," dyed with green or red, and when it was pressed it was 
 called pressed-cloth. 
 
 Nearly every good honsewil'e Avould have a blue vat in the form of a "dye-pot," 
 in which, instead of dissolving the indigo .at once with sulphuric acid, it was put 
 into a bag and dissolved gradually in urine. What a beautiftil smell when our 
 grandmothers wrung out from the dye-pot. Here stockings and aprons and the 
 yarn for blue frocking was dyed. 
 
 Our lirst settlers began to raise Ilax almost as soon as they moved into town. 
 After tlic flax was "pulled" the seed was thrashed off, then it was rotted, and 
 about the first of IMarch, before sugaring, " got out." Fii-st the flax was broken in 
 the "flax-break," then it was "swingled" on tlie swingling-bo.ard; a very smart 
 man would swingle forty pounds a day. " Combing" came next; the " tow" was 
 got out and then the flax was ready to put on the " distaff." The buzzing linen- 
 wheel made music in the old kitchens, and " two double-skeins " was a day's work 
 for a smart woman. "When the cloth was woven it was bucked and then belted 
 with a maple beetle on a smooth flat stone. Shirts, sheets, pillow-cases, and nice 
 dresses were made of the cloth. Small girls spun the " t-wingling-tow " into Avrap- 
 ping twine and with it bought notions down country. Older girls made " all tow," 
 " tow-and-liuen," or " all linen " stuff to barter foi' their " fixing out." 
 
 Farmer .Joshua made all the fine clothes our early settlers had. 
 
 * WILLIAM AND 5IEH1TABLE (MUlS) BUTLEK'S FAMILY EECOKD. 
 
 He was born April 21, 17f>/', in Brentwood. She was born Jam. '23, 175G, in Ports- 
 moutli. Married Feb. 15, 1779. 
 Betsey, born Feb. lo, 1780, in Warren. Stephen, born Aug. 23, 1785. 
 Mary, born April 1, 1782. Sally, born Mav S, 1787. 
 
 William, Jr., born JNIay 11, 178:). Dolly, bom Aug. 30, 17S8. 
 
HINCHSON THE HERMIT. 235 
 
 portioned, and would weigh more than two liuudred pounds. 
 Like Cliase "Whitcher, he was very young when he came to "War- 
 ren. He was a gentleman farmer, lived several years with Mr. 
 Mills, did not like to work very hard, preferred to oversee his 
 hired help, and spent much of his time buying and selling cattle 
 and trading horses. He was a good calculator, made money, and 
 eventually got rich. 
 
 There was another man came to Warren about these times, 
 but no one can precisely fix the year. 
 
 John Hinchson was "Warren's first hermit. He built a hun- 
 ter's camp for himself southwest of Mr. Patch and on the easterly 
 bank of -Patch brook. The life he led was tliat of a wild Indian. 
 A hound-dog, named "Wolf, was his only companion. In the sum- 
 mer he spent the time fishing, catching salmon and trout, with 
 which the river and brooks abounded. One fall it is said he went 
 over the mountaius hunting — catching beaver by Glen ponds, in 
 Fox Glove meadow, and on Moulton brook — and other seasons 
 he travelled far away across the Pemigewassett valley to the head 
 waters of the streams among the "White mountains. In the win- 
 ter he hunted moose and deer, which afibrded an abundance of 
 provision. Sometimes he would be gone a year or two, no one 
 knew where, and then would come back to his old haunts again. 
 
 Thus "Warren was settled ; and living in the fairy realms of 
 her antiquity, these were her first settlors. Laws, churches, 
 schools — they had none; and from all restraints or taxation they 
 were wholly free. Happy days were theirs ; plenty to eat and 
 drink, work enough to do, keen appetites, seldom sick, and with 
 neither doctors, lawyers, nor ministers to support. How deligiit- 
 ful to dwell on their history, abiding in a woodland town, sur- 
 rounded by great mountains, and beyond them trackless forests, 
 that seemed to shut out all the cares and vanities of the wicked 
 world. But all this is too beautiful to last long. Dame Fortune, 
 ever blowing a Shifting gale, lively, changing scenes are soon to 
 come. How the lives of the settlers checkered up, and "Warren 
 right merrily, like bursting flowers dancing into life to the music 
 of spring birds, changed about into a fine old country town, where 
 ambitious men lived, is most interesting to know. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OP HOW THE EAELY SETTLERS OF OUR MOUNTAIN HAMLET TOOK 
 GREAT THOUGHT ABOUT THE MANNER THEY SHOULD BE SHEL- 
 TERED, AND WHAT THEY SHOULD EAT, AND OF THE BtjILDING 
 OP MILLS ; CONCLUDING WITH THE MIGHTY LEAPS OP THE SAL- 
 MON AND A DELECTABLE SWIM BY THE BOYS. 
 
 Our dignified, worthy, and aristocratical body, the distin- 
 guished proprietors, had done pretty well, but had not obtained 
 the fifty families as settlers. There Avas great danger of their 
 again losing their charter, but the political troubles with the 
 mother country for a time removed attention from themselves, and 
 as we have before remarked, in the end the Revolution proved 
 their salvation. In its turmoils they were forgotten and they 
 saved their lands. 
 
 Ill our mountain hamlet the twenty settlers, constituting the 
 eighteen families, made a most agreeable but a very rustic neigh- 
 borhood, and they had a most rustic style of living. The rude 
 hunter's camp, the log cabin, — often without glass windows, the 
 rough opening that admitted the light closing sometimes with a 
 wooden shutter^-the door of rifted boards, the floor of rough 
 poles frequently covered with bark, the chimney a cob-work of 
 sticks, plastered with mud, the great fire-place built of stones, and 
 all the furniture as plain and simple as the house, — such were the 
 homes found by our early settlers in the days long ago. 
 
 Think of these frail tenements, growing np like wild flowers 
 in the wilderness, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. 
 There is no road north or south, only a bridle-path, and that not 
 half as good as the one now running to the summit of Moosehil- 
 
A SAW-MILL IS BUILT. 237 
 
 lock. But few of the cabins were located even beside the bridle- 
 route, and a blazed path led through the woods to them; and for 
 years the forest trees locked branches above them. JN'either yard 
 in front, nor fence nor wall behind, nor garden gate. The honey- 
 suckle grew sweetly by the door, and wild sumach and blackberry 
 bushes flowering in their season, and the golden-rod, and white 
 birch intertwining with the mountain ash, sprang up by the open 
 window. Near by the cabins were the little clearings — one, two 
 or five acres, no man more than ten acres. But few sheep were 
 kept then ; a cow, a yoke of steers, sometimes a horse, constituted 
 the settler's stock. Often bears broke down and ate the corn, or 
 a moose or a deer were seen feeding on their little improvements, 
 and at night, when the gibbous moon shone in the sky and looked 
 in upon the cabin among the trees, the early settlers retiring to 
 rest would hear the wolf* howling on the mountain, and the sol- 
 emn owl hooting in harsh discordant notes, — wild music heard Ta 
 the solitudes which had been but just invaded. 
 
 All this is nov/ very pleasant to contemplate, but the good 
 men of 'Warren did not then exactly like it. They longed for 
 something better,— something like what thej'' had left in old Hol- 
 lis, Hampstead, Sandown, Atkinson, Plaistow, and Salisbury, the 
 towns from which they had emigrated. Framed houses, covered 
 with sawn boards, was one of the requisites to satisfy the heart's 
 desire, but they could not be had without a saw-mill. The pro- 
 prietors had offered a bounty for building one, and Mr. Stevens 
 Merrill was the man energetic enough to undertake the work. 
 
 At the " little white fall " on Black brook, where John Page, 
 Esq., once shot a deer, he chose his mill site. The dam was built 
 of great pine logs, and a pretty pond of five or six acres gleamed 
 in the woods at the foot of Beech hill. Three great rocks stood 
 out of the water among the trees on its western shore, and a green 
 wooded cape shot far down towards the centre. The mill itself 
 was simply a heavy frame of hewed logs, unbearded of course, 
 and the roof was covered with long shaved shingles. Then there 
 was a pause in the work, — the mill irons must be brought up from 
 
 * W^olves. — The year 1786 was a remarkable year for wolves. They swarmed 
 down from the north through all the couutiy. Moses H. Clement used to tell how 
 his mother took him to the door one night to hear the wolves howl. They would 
 come round the barn after sheep but could not get in. Many were killed. 
 
288 HISTORY OF WABEEN. 
 
 Jown coiTiitry and a saw must be procured. Col. Obadiah Clom- 
 eiit went on foot to Boscawen for the last, and brought it all the 
 way fifty miles to Warren on his back. He made the journey 
 through the woods over the rough bridle-path in three days. 
 Another settler brought up some of the smaller irons, but the 
 crank could not come till winter. Mr. Merrill, Col. Clement, and 
 his brother Reuben went for it and drew it to TVarren on a great 
 wide-runnered, frame- work handsled. made for that very purpose. 
 In the s])ring the mill was finished, and the music of its wheel 
 driven by fourteen feet waterfall, tlse click of the cogs on the log- 
 iViime. .'iikI tlic clip ol' llic >inv giuiwiiiL:- (lirnngli (lip pini;s, wbicli 
 ihr sc'l.rlcvs- -;i\vf>r] lip ip;j:ar«il('.-.- "I'llip •• hioini ai'i-O"' mark" upon 
 iliciii. .-i.)uiiil(_'fl foi- the lir.-( tiinp iliidiijrli tlie pleasant Avoods oi' 
 Warren . 
 
 There is a stirring little anecdote connected with the old mill 
 which the kind reader may bolicvo or not, as the highly veracious 
 gentleman Vfho related it said lie was not quite sure but that it 
 occurred somewliere else down east after all. It is told by him 
 how one spring "Squii'e Jonathan Merrill was at work sawing", 
 and every morning he would miss the lard with which he greased 
 the machinery, and sometimes it would be gone at noon. One 
 day lie brought down a large quantity of it, and thinking he heard 
 the thief prowling in the thick swamp woods that grew by the 
 bog a few rods east of the mill, he placed the dish on the long log 
 he was sawing, hoisted the gates and started towards home. 
 Looking back he caught sight of something crossing the logging 
 path, and stealing rouud so that he could look into the mill him- 
 self he saw a great black bear sitting upon the log, back to the 
 saw, eating the grease. Presently the saw came so close it 
 scratched his back, but Bruin only growled and hunched along. 
 Again it bit liiin, and tills time smarting with pain he turned 
 quickly round, reared on his hind feet and clasjicd the impudent 
 iron intruder on his dinner with his fore-paws, to give it a death- 
 hug. But now he caught a tartar ; he gnawed a file. Down came 
 the saw, sti'oke after stroke in rapid succession, till the black- 
 coated thief was literally sawn in two. ' It is proper to inform the 
 reader that the bear died, after having given the saw blade a coat- 
 ing of very excellent oil from his own greasv carcass. Over all 
 
THE PALACES OF OUR FOREFATHERS. 289 
 
 ■which, like the boy pelting the frog, 'Sqiiire_ Merrill shod no tears ; 
 and whether true in whole or in part the incident has more than 
 once served to "point a moral and adorn a tale." 
 
 High up in the northeast corner of Warren is situated a pretty 
 little sheet of water. As we have somewhere hinted, the Indians 
 called it Wachipauka, but the later generations of our mountain 
 hamlet delight to term it Meader pond. It is yet right in the 
 heart of the woods, and from its eastern shore sjjrings a handsome 
 forest-covered cape. On the north Webster Slide shoots sharp up a 
 thousand feet, its top crowned by silver\- birch and waving pine : 
 the crannies of its rocks radiant witli the bhieberry, harebell, 
 liclieit, and othci' raoonlaiii flowers. On a \i'arni .-uinnier day ilic 
 water reflecting the rich foliage of tho yet undisturbed forest, i- 
 ruffled only by the great speckled trout jumping or the wild duck 
 swimming; but. when the autumn winds come the blue water 
 cnrling smiles upon the mountain-face and laughs at the bald head' 
 of Moosehillook, looking in from the distance over the great 
 wood. 
 
 Black brook — (he Mikaseota — comes down from Wachipauka 
 pond. Its waters turn the wheel of our first saw-mill, and the 
 logs cut up furnish the inhabitants with lumber. 
 
 And now the great naked log" walls, the massive, lumbering 
 doors, tlie floor of logs hewed down, the rude style of construct- 
 ing bed and board shall disappear, and the second generation of 
 settlers' houses come. One story high, and a low one at that; a 
 great stack of a chimney of stone — then afterwards containing 
 brick enough to build a modern brick house — right in the centre; 
 two square rooms in front, a long kitchen behind; at one end of 
 this, bedroom and entry : at the other, buttery, stairway, and cellar 
 way; an iinflnished attic where the children slept, parted off 
 sometimes by blankets, oftcner by spruce bark, one portion for 
 the boys the other for the girls. These were the palaces our fore- 
 fathers were anxious to get. 
 
 Oue of these stands jnst at the foot of that steep hill known 
 as the Blue Ridge, and is probably the oldest framed dwelling 
 house in town. This was the dwelling built and occupied by 
 Joshua Copp, Esq., and formerly stood a quarter of a mile west 
 of its present location, near the spot where he tirst erected his 
 
240 
 
 HISTORY OP WAKKEN, 
 
 ihumble cabin. The first framed dwelling, as we have before 
 ■stated, was erected by Mr. Joseph Patch, by the roadside on the 
 northerly bank of Patch brook.* Latterly the more aristocratic 
 well to do among our fathers built large, double, two-story houses 
 
 *THE OLD BARN AT THE H05LANS PLACE, BUILT BY JOSEPH PATCH AEOtTT 176S. 
 
 of which the old red house built by Stevens Merrill and now 
 standing near the depot is a sample. 
 
 For this great enterprise, the building of a saw-mill, the pro- 
 prietors, Jan. 15th, 1784, long after, voted to allow Mr. Merrill 
 twelve pounds,* to be paid him as soon as collected, in money or 
 in certificates, and so much did our mountain pioneers rejoice that 
 for several years they excused Mr. M. from Paying taxes on his 
 mill. 
 
 A tight roof to cover their heads was exceedingly nice, but 
 good corn cakes and wheaten loaves were also what they craved ; 
 these were difl3.cult to be obtained. It was hard to travel to 
 Haverhill or Plymouth for a grist, and the proprietors realizing 
 that this was an important thing for the town, oflTcred a bounty for 
 building a grist-mill. "William Butler accepted the proposition. 
 Across the Asquamchumauke, just below where the great railroad 
 bridge now spans its waters, he built a huge dam. The mudsill is 
 still to be seen, an object of wonder to the boys who go to swim 
 in "the old deep hole," as it is termed; and the holes drilled and 
 
 See Proprietors' Eecords. 
 
THE FIRST GRISTMILL. 241 
 
 cut iu the great rock on the western shore show where were tlio 
 fastenings of the dam. One at a time the rude millstones were 
 drawn up from down countrj- by "William Butler, with four men 
 to assist him, just as the crank of the saw-mill came, and early in 
 1776 the first settlers brought their grains, products of a virgin 
 soil, to be ground, and waited for their grists listening to the buzz 
 of rude mill stones mingling their music with that of the wheel 
 which now for the first time vexed Asquarachumauke's waters. 
 
 The proprietors were well satisfied with William Butler's work 
 and afterwards voted to allow him eighteen pounds for building 
 the mill, to be paid him as soon as collected. * 
 
 We have said the boys go to swim in " the old deep hole." A 
 great historical fact would be lost to all the coming countless gene- 
 rations did we fail to record that young John Mills, Jr., and Jo- 
 seph Merrill, Stevens Merrill's son, andMoses Copp, sou of 'Squire 
 Joshua, and other boys also went to swim in " the old deep hole," 
 now made doubly deep by "William Butler's mill dam. The woods 
 were very thick all around it and not a house was visible, so no 
 delicate sensitive nerves could be shocked. Jumping out of their 
 moosehide breeches and tow shirts the boys ran over smooth peb- 
 bles of mica slate and shining quartz, green hornblende and frag- 
 ments of porphyritic trap, little dreaming of the virgin gold lying 
 concealed beneath them which would only be discovered a hun- 
 dred years later, and plunged into the clear sparkling water. 
 John Mills, Jr., could swim the whole length of the pond to the 
 dam. Here he would rest himself and look over into the foam- 
 ing pool below, where the salmon congregated and out of which 
 thfey would leap up through the falling water, swift as the rush of 
 Indian arrows through the sky, nine perpendicular feet into the 
 pond above. "William Butler said he had seen the salmon shoot 
 up over the dam many a time. 
 
 Swimming ashore young Mills and his companions would sit 
 down in the shadow of the great hemlocks and wide spreading 
 beech trees and watch the white fleece-like foam, formed where 
 the roaring Asquanachumauke lost itself in the pond. It was a 
 pleasant place to pass a summer afternoon'. The wood thrush and 
 the robin were singing overhead, the partridge drummed on an 
 *See Proprietor's Records. 
 
242 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 old decaying' log i>p in the pines by Indian rock; a blue jay was 
 ducking its crest and hustling the water with its wings; on the 
 shore a sand piper crying weet, jumped up on a great stone, then 
 ran fast.by the water under the bending grass ; hoar hound, cranes- 
 bill and honey suckle lent a delicious fragrance to the air and 
 bright clouds mirrored in the clear water were floating away and 
 losing themselves in the deep blue beyond old Mount Carr and 
 Moosehillock mountain. 
 
 But these were only the beauties of the pond fit for the boys to 
 look at ; the utility of the grist mill joined with that of the saw- 
 mill constituted one of the mighty agents which wrought such 
 great changes in our mountain hamlet. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 NAKRATING HOW TWO MEN, STEVENS MERRILL AND JAMES AIKEN, 
 LOVED EACH OTHER, — HOW THE LAWS WERE EXECUTED AND A 
 HOUSE BURNED UP, CONCLUDING WITH A PIOUS INQUIRY WOR- 
 THY OF ALL GOOD CHRISTIANS. 
 
 \t E have said lively changing scenes arc soon to come. But 
 let US not be in a hurry to enter upon them. Pause a moment! 
 These are the halcyon days of our little mountain hamlet. Eight 
 beautiful summers have come and gone since it was settled. Our 
 pioneers are living all this time in the most rustic simplicity. 
 There is nought to disturb them, nought to make them afraid. 
 There were no doctors to physic them to death, no ministers to 
 preach war and bloodshed instead of peace and love, and no pet- 
 tifogging lawyers to send caitiff scouts, catch-polls, and bum-bailiffs 
 to distrain, to attach, and to arrest. In fact there was not a 
 lawyer, sheriff, judge, court, or jailor within sixty miles of our 
 little hamlet among the hills. Neighbor loved neighbor, the 
 golden rule was observed, and peace, happiness, and good will pre- 
 vailed, and all was harmony serene. It was a place of which 
 poets loved to sing — of old woods, clear rushing streams, wild and 
 lofty mountains, where even the gods would dwell. 
 
 But wait, perhaps everytliing is not quite so nice after all. 
 Men are human even here. Either civil law or club law must pre- 
 vail in every community, and we shall soon see that in the ab- 
 sence of civil law they sometimes used the club right freely in 
 our good old mountain town. 
 
 James Aiken, as previously described, was a lusty Celt from 
 
in HISTOKY OF •WARREN. 
 
 the Emerald Isle, and Stevens Merrill was a medium sized man, a 
 Quaker of the straightest sect, stern in aspect and slow in speech. 
 We have before said that they both settled on the same lot of land ; 
 the first a gentle squatter, the second had purchased it of the lordly 
 proprietors and had a good warrantee deed of the premises. It 
 was natural that one having a good comfortable cabin and a few 
 broad acres nicely cleared should waut to stay; aud that the other 
 having an excellent title bought with liis own hard cash should 
 want the first to leave. Consequently there would be a dignified 
 reserve between the two lords of the soil. 
 
 "When they first met the Quaker gently hinted to the Celt that 
 he had no title to his land. He did not take the hint. At the next 
 cordial interview Mr. M. said, " Thee must leave." Aiken " did 
 not see it." Next time, a week or so later, Stevens Merrill told 
 him, " Thee have got to go, and if thee do not," said he, " I will 
 serve a process on thee, a writ of ejectment." At this Mr. Aiken 
 
 laughed politely, then said decidedly, "D d if I will go." 
 
 Quaker blood, so peaceful, now boiled like a little pot on hearing 
 this so profane, so unchristian reply, and he inwardly determined 
 to have his rights, legally if he could, by hook or crook if neces- 
 sary. They did not speak at the next meeting, only eyed each 
 other askance. 
 
 Aiken knew by the appearance of things there was trouble 
 brewing and so kept close at home to protect himself and property. 
 
 But in process of time it became absolutely necessary for him 
 to go down the valley to the neighboring land of Weutworth, 
 where his brother had settled, for supplies, lie went very quietly 
 one morning, away round through the woods down on the east 
 side of Patch brook, next to the foot of the liill, so no one would 
 see him. But he was not so fortunate as could be desired. Our 
 keen eyed hunter, Joseph Patch, was looking about his premises 
 and by chance saw him. He knew what his father-in-law wanted, 
 how hard he had tried to get a writ of ejectment, but could not 
 very well do it on account of distance, bad roads, aud expense, so 
 he hurried away to tell him that this was the time for the strategy 
 devised, the opportunity to execute a splendid flank movement. 
 
 Stevens Merrill made no delay. He forded the river and 
 crossed the meadow. 'Twas a bright autumn day. A lagging 
 
QUAKER VS. CELT. 246 
 
 wind blew over the plain, rustling the beeches and maples. On the 
 edge of the clearing he stopped to reconnoitre; the cabin stood 
 in the centre, a little brook was babbling beside it, three children 
 were playing at the door j and the buzz of a linen wheel was heard 
 within. 
 
 " It is a bad job," he said tohimself, " but it will be worse if 
 it is delayed." Entering the cabin hetold Mrs. Aiken she mnsfc 
 leave. " An faith I won't," said she. " But thee will," said' Mr. 
 M. " I'll see abolit it," said she, and sprang for an axe that stood 
 in the corner. But Stevens Merrill was too quick for her. He 
 wrenched it from her grasp and then affectionately ejected her 
 from the cabin. The children screamed and Mrs. A. threatened 
 vengeance. But it was no use. Mr. M. began to pitch the things 
 out, and seeing his determination they picked np their extra 
 clothing and trudged away down the bridle path to John Mills' as 
 fast as their legs would carry them. 
 
 He moved all the rest of the furniture out carefully, even the 
 linen wheel and the pots and kettles that hung on the stout lug 
 pole* in the great Are place, carried them to a safe distance and 
 then set Are to the cabin. The wind freshened, the smoke curled 
 up aud floated away over the woods, the flames roared and leaped 
 about, and in an hour the pleasant dwelling was a mass of black- 
 ened ruins. 
 
 When James Aiken came back they told him the news at 
 John Mills'. He was terribly mad and swore that he " would 
 have revenge — that old Merrill had committed arson — that he 
 should be locked up between the four walls of a prison — that he 
 was the devil's own and the regular son of a dog mother," to 
 speak politely what the Celt said plump and plain. 
 
 Stevens Merrill kept a watch about his own cabin every night, 
 himself, sons, aud son-in-law, by turns, until their friend had 
 
 * In the chimney, across the flue, was the lug pole, made of green, heech or ma- 
 ple li'om two to four inches in diameter, and on which were hung hooks and tram- 
 mels of wrought iron, so constructed.as to toe raised or lowered to suit the con- 
 venience of the pots and kettles suspended thereon for culinary purposes. These 
 lug poles were liable to be burnt by the fire which blazed beneath and broken by 
 the weight suspended on them, and in due time gave place to the crane which was 
 constructed of iron and fastened on ^ne side to Xhe chimney jamb, while the end 
 swung over the Are with the hooks and trammels on it.— Jacob Patch's state- 
 ment. 
 
 Stevens Merrill drove Aiken off and burnt his cabin.— Deacon Jonathan Clem- 
 ents' statement. 
 
246 HISTOET OP 'WAEBEN. 
 
 moved his goods away and had gone to his brother's in "Went- 
 worth. Even then he did not feel quite safe, for he knew he had 
 not done jast right taking the law into his own hands. 
 
 James Aiken afterwards went back down country. "When 
 people came down he would ask if " Stevens Merrill had gone to 
 hell, for if he had not," said he, " hell no need to have been 
 made ;" a pious remark, showing the deep love he had for his gen- 
 tle friend. 
 
 Our Quaker settler from this time forward cultivated the 
 Irishman's iield and took pains to obliterate his memory. But 
 the old cellar, now almost filled up, yet remains to mark the spot 
 where this dire calamity happened, and the little brook running 
 down on the second of the geological terraces and near which 
 stood the Irishman's cabin, bears his name and is called Aiken 
 brook even to this day. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MOUNT CAKK, ITS ANCIENT INHABITANTS ; AND THEN OF THE GRAND 
 OLD HUNTINGS THAT WERE HAD ABOUT IT, 'VCITH A BEAUTIFUL 
 MOOSEHILLOCK DESCRIPTION THROWN IN FOR VARIETY. 
 
 Mount C AER is a grand old mountain . It rises 3 ,506 feet 
 above the ocean, is covered with a dense forest even to the summit 
 and occupies a part of the following four townships : The ancient 
 Trecothick, now Ellsworth, Romney, now called Eumney, as 
 aforesaid, "Wentworth, and our own mountain hamlet. 
 
 It derives its name from the following cii'cumstance, which 
 we prefer to tell as it was told years ago, and the reader without 
 doubt will think it a " delectable tale." " Wlien the country 
 was first settled and its geography but little known, a certain Mr. 
 Carr, wishing to proceed from Trecothick to "Warren, attempted 
 to cross the mountain. At the time he started the sky was free 
 from clouds, and every appearance gave sign of pleasant weather 
 But soon after he entered the woods there arose a terrific 
 shower, common to mountainous regions, and when it had rained 
 a short time, instead of clearing away, a thick fog set in com- 
 pletely enveloping the mountain. 
 
 At the commencement of the shower Mr. Carr crept under 
 the trunk of a large tree that had fallen across a knoll, and as the 
 rain continued to fall more violently he concluded he would be 
 compelled to remain there over night. The log above his head 
 was an immense hemlock, and peeling some of the loose bark 
 from the trunk he sat it with sticks of rotten wood against the 
 sides of the tree, more efiectually to shield himself from the fall- 
 
248 HISTORY OF WARKEN. 
 
 ing- water. Ho had no means of lighting a Are, and as he had 
 gained a considerable elevation when night came on, he felt cold. 
 He had only taken provisions enough for his dinner, and as he 
 sat, hungry and shivering, the scene to liim was a solitary one. 
 The rain as it fell upon the green leaves or sifted through the 
 boughs of the hemlock and spruce, kept up a confused paltering, 
 sifting noise, and as it grew dark he laid down and tried to sleep, 
 listening to its doleful music. But this was almost impossible, 
 for as a drowse would steal upon him some great owl overhead 
 would hoot ominously, and as its rough music died away the 
 other inhabitants of the forest took up the strain, and he heard 
 the hoarse howl of the wolf, and the long-drawn halloo of the bear 
 echoing in the forest. 
 
 Thus the night passed away, its long hours seeming like weeks, 
 until at last the dark misty light of morning began to dawn, 
 and the huge, gnarled trunks of the trees appeared through the 
 thick fog. Numb with cold, he arose and resolved to make an 
 effort to find his way out of the woods. He started up the moun- 
 tain, and traveled, as he thought, until he had reached the top. 
 He then descended until he arrived at the foot and began to have 
 hope that ho should find the settlement, but he was doomed to 
 disappointment, for he had traveled but a short distance before he 
 began to ascend again. He then tried to retrace his steps but it 
 was of no avail, and after wandering about for a long time he 
 found himself standing upon the shore of Glen pond. It still 
 rained, and the descending drops made strange music as they 
 struck upon the smooth surface of the little mountain lake. 
 
 He now made up his mind, as it was near night, to remain 
 here until the following day, and building a light camp by the 
 side of a rock, passed a much more dreary night than the first. 
 Cold, wet, shivering, and sleepless as he lay by the side of that 
 sheet of water, he heard the hoarse croaking of the frogs ming- 
 ling with the voices of his serenaders of the previous night. 
 When the morning broke it had ceased raining aud although foggy 
 he was able to distinguish the position of the sun when it rose, 
 . and thereby learn his points of compass. 
 
 Two nights had now passed, he had not tasted food, and hun- 
 ger was oppressing him. To satisfy it he tried to catch some 
 
A LEGEND OF MOUNT CAEE. , 249 
 
 fish, bat after a few inefiectual attempts he gave it up. As he 
 stood looking at the water he saw swimming about and hopping 
 along the shore numerous. frogs. A hungry mau will eat almost 
 anything. Carr caught a number of them, cut them up with Ms 
 knife, and made a hearty meal upon the raw flesh or fish. 
 
 Feeling now much refreshed he attempted again to find the 
 settlement. Taking a westerly course he once more found him- 
 self upon the top of the mountain. The clouds hung thick around 
 making it impossible to distinguish any object a few feet distant. 
 But proceeding cautiously he began to descend, as he believed 
 upon the opposite side. For a number of hours he slowly went 
 down, crossing in his course several streams now swollen with 
 the rain until he reached the level country. Here after wander- 
 ing about some time he began to think that he should be obliged 
 to spend another night in the woods, but as he was looking around 
 for a convenient camping place, the sharp ringing of a settler's 
 axe greeted his ear, and proceeding towards what was to him the 
 joyfu) sound, he soon emerged iuto a recent clearing. In the cen- 
 tre stood a snug cabin and he quickly found himself within its 
 hospitable walls, where he was generously provided for, and after 
 somewhat recovering from his fatigue, related his adventures in 
 the woods. Gradually the story circulated through the neighbor- 
 ing settlements and the people gave his name to the mountain upon 
 which the adventure happened."* 
 
 Dr. Jackson says the mountain is composed of granite, which 
 having been erupted through the mica slate lying upon its sides 
 forms a cap on its summit. But after the most diligent search by 
 several very distinguished geologists the granite is as yet undiscov- 
 ered. Nevertheless, it is a most singular formation. A hun- 
 dred different kinds of rock are found upon it, and some most in- 
 teresting minerals, among which are tourmaline or schorl, garnets, 
 quartz crystals of a lovely hue, amythyst, beautiful as the sum- 
 mer rose, and last but not least are scattered all over it small par- 
 ticles of pure virgin gold. 
 
 *Carr was a Mend of Alexander Craig who settled in Eomney and who had 
 relatives liWng at the time in Piermont. 
 
 Samuel Knight related how two hoys from Ellsworth in these early times came 
 over Mount Carr in the winter, barefoot, and camped one niglit near Batohelder 
 hrook, before they reached the settlements in Warren. 
 
250 , HISTOKY OF WARREN. 
 
 A dozen beautiful, white foamy streams come rushing down 
 its sides, among which may be mentiotaed Martin brook, brandies 
 of Stinson brook, Moulton brook, Batchelder brook. Patch brook, 
 and that most beautiful of all streams, Hurricane brook. On the 
 latter are those little, white tumbling waterfalls which for so many 
 years were almost unknown but are now so much admired. 
 
 By these it is said in old times lived the fairies. It was here 
 on the rich carpets of green moss they danced in the moonbeams 
 and sang an accompaniment to the falling waters. The deep, 
 mossy-rimmed basin, set with gems, and carved in the rock high 
 up on the mountain side might have been their bathing font, and 
 in it even Kobin Goodfellow and Queen Mab might have per- 
 formed their ablutions. The Indians had a beautiful tradition how 
 the fairies stole the children away and gave them fiiiry bread to 
 eat which changed them into fairies. Then said they there was joy 
 for the little folks as they revelled in the green embowering woods; 
 and the elfln king and the fairy queen ruled long and well in the 
 old centuries. But the period when they existed has melted into 
 the mellow twilight of ages and all these joyous revellers are 
 gone forever. 
 
 Now it is said there are some so skeptical that they don't be- 
 lieve the fairies ever lived there at all, that the whole story is but 
 a pleasant myth told to please the children. Be this as it may 
 their reputed haunts were frequently invaded about those times. 
 Our rustic pioneers loved fresh meat and a store of rich peltries, 
 and the woods of Mount Carr were scoured for the supply. 
 
 When the autumn came and the maples, birches, poplars, arid 
 ash were clothed in all their crimson splendors in the glens and 
 on the mountains, the gun was roused from its slumber, the dogs 
 howled in ecstacy on the hills, and the time for partridge shooting, 
 mink, beaver, and sable trapping, and deer and moose hunting had 
 come. Joseph Patch " was in his elemeut then." Chase Whitcher 
 was on the hunter's path, Obadiah Clement's gun resounded in 
 the woods, and even fat "William Butler joined in the profitable 
 pastime. 
 
 Patch is a happy hunter. He is threading his way along the 
 Asquamchuraauke towards the wooded mountain. He steps from 
 hummock to hummock in his little pasture, brushes the blue and 
 
A SHREWD OLD FOX. 261 
 
 gold flowered hardhack aside, and rustles the fallen leaves with his 
 heel in the woods. He shall hear the roar of the torrent, the mu- 
 sic of the waterfall ; shall wind around the reedy shores of the 
 fir skirted Glen ponds, and at night lie down to sleep on his bed of 
 soft boughs by his camp fire. His youngest son relates that at one 
 time he came home with fifty-three mink, sable, fisher-cat, and bea- 
 ver skins, caught in a single week in his Indian culheags and steel 
 traps. Old Deacon Jonathan Clement said that Chase WMtcher 
 caught in one season a hundred and forty dollars' worth of beaver, 
 on the head waters of Black and Berry brooks. The old beaver 
 dams and little grass grown meadows where their ponds were are 
 still to be seen. Obadiah Clement could shoot more partridges 
 than any other man in the hamlet. He had a brisk little dog to 
 scare them up and then shot them on the wing. 
 
 Joseph Patch also had a good supply of steel traps and there 
 was not a man in the whole country who could catch more foxes 
 than he. He baited them on a bed, as it is called, and late in the 
 fall was sure to get one almost every morning. But once he found 
 an old fox almost as cunning as himself. When he would go to 
 his " bed " he would find Ms bait gone, Ms trap sprung, but not a 
 fox to be seen. This happened many times even though his trap 
 was set in the most careful manner. But there was one thing he 
 always noticed, — his trap invariably had a stick in its jaws. One 
 day he set it verj^ carefnlly and then picked up and carried away 
 every stick more than two inches long he could find in the vicinity. 
 His plan proved successfnl. The next morning he found a hand- 
 some silver gTay fox caught by the nose. The stick with wliich it 
 attempted to spring the trap was too short. Reynard seemed to 
 realize his situation. He looked up in the hunter's face imploringly, 
 as much as to say, " please let me go tliis time." But Patch could 
 not think of it. With one blow he dispatched him though he often 
 said afterwards he never regretted the killing an animal more in 
 his life.* 
 
 *l'his etorj; was told the author by Mr. Davirt Smith. He said Patch related 
 it to him with his own lips. BeDjamiu Little's statement also. 
 
 Anson Merrill sai(J that Patch once saw a bear in his corn, near Patch hrook: 
 got within twenty rods and then cotild not see his game well, so he stood on a hill 
 of corn and raised himself on tip-toe and fired. The bear ran but Patch found 
 that he had drawn Wood and following along beside the brook lost the trail. A 
 week later, it being warm weather he scented him and found his game dead on the 
 banks of the stream. 
 
262 HISTOEY OF WAKREX. 
 
 Jolin Hinchson, his neighbor, had two beautiful fleet-footed 
 door hounds. One of them was named "Wolf. Patch prevailed 
 upon him to sell him the latter and then he could rival his friend 
 Whitcher in the chase. My uncle who remembered the history of 
 John Mills so well, said that early settler got a good supply of 
 venison one day, the would-be product of Patch's hunting. He 
 heard the sonorous yelling of the old houud coming down the 
 ravine by Rocky falls, on Patch brook ; soon the antlered buck burst 
 from the woods, tiew across the Uttle clearing and made for the 
 mill pond on the river. Mills was ready with Ms gun, and as the 
 stag swam rapidly down across the pond he lodged a charge of buck 
 shot in its throat and before Patch came up the game was hid in 
 the grist-mill, while the hunter was left to infer that the deer had 
 crossed the river and escaped, John MOls all the time maintaining 
 a pious silence, somewhat after the manner of the Quakers. 
 
 Pause here, gentle reader ! drop a tear for the fate of Patch's 
 fleet deer hound, "Wolf. As the j^ears rolled on he grew old. His 
 bajdng was heard no more on the hills, his feet bomided no more 
 thi'ough the woods. Gray with age he could only lie on the hearth 
 by the warm fire. One day Patch said half in earnest to his boys, 
 " I guess you had better take old "Wolf out and shoot Mm, he is no 
 use to any one." The dog looked up sorrowfully, seeming to un- 
 derstand what was said and then slowly left the house. That night 
 they hunted for him, and called him ia vain. The next day they 
 found him in a deep pool of Patch brook, drowned. 
 
 If Patch suspected his friend Mills of appropriating the vem- 
 son he could easily forgive him as he sometimes practised such 
 tMngs himself. Strangers from a distance would come to hunt and 
 wantonly destroy large quantities of game much to the annoyance 
 of the good settlers of the hamlet. These marauding parties, los- 
 sel scouts, shouting would often come rusMng down from the hills 
 with guns and deep-mouthed baying hounds, waking every echo in 
 the old wood. It was then that the Merrills, "WilUam Butler, Mills, 
 Patch and Hinchson, hastening would intercept the deer or moose, 
 and kill and conceal it before the fierce intruders could come up. 
 Then there would be a sharp contention, threats, and sometimes 
 blows, but the invariable result was that the game loving invaders 
 would be sent fast flying back across the border with huge fleas in 
 
MOOSEHILLOCK. 253 
 
 theiv ears.* Romney men and the sojourners among the hills of 
 Trecothick were thus taught to feel a deep love for the " honest 
 "WaiTenites," as they most respectfully termed our early pioneers. 
 Chase "Whitclier, while following a moose, was the first settler 
 who visited the summit of Moosehillock. It is said that Joseph 
 Patch also, while hunting one bright, clear autumn day climbed the 
 mountain. He had no companion save his dog. Stillness and soli- 
 tude were there, hiU and ravine, sky and valley, everywhere mag- 
 nificent, the outline everywhere bold, grand, and sublime. No ani- 
 mal life was to be seen, only two fearless, strong winged eagles were 
 soaring over the great gorge down which roars Tunnel brook. 
 White quartz rocks and gray slates, among which bloom the hare- 
 bell and lichen, and to wMch the mosses cling, cropped out all 
 around liim ; then there was the graveyard of the stunted skeleton 
 trees Idlled by the frost and the fire and bleached white ; beyond 
 was the rich green of the mazy, impenetrable hackmatacks ; in the 
 zone below the deep brown of the spruce and hemlock, and in the 
 deep valleys at the mountain foot, the bright yellow, the flashing 
 crimson, the purple and gold of the forest, while above was the 
 azure sky, and in the far distance the blue water of the ponds, the 
 lakes, and the ocean. It was a wild scene, " crags, knolls, and 
 mounds confusedly hurled " far as the eye could reach. In the east 
 the highest of the Waumbecket Methna, the Indian name for the 
 White mountains, gleamed wliite with the first snow, while in the 
 west the sharp peaks of the Adirondacks shone bright above the 
 flashing waters of Lake Champlain. But he hurried away for he 
 felt a strange indescribable awe at a sight such as he had never 
 witnessed before, and the hackmatacks were thick and the way over 
 them long and difl5.cult. 
 
 But it was only in the winter when the snow lay four feet deep 
 in the woods of the valley and on the mountains that the moose 
 could be hunted successfully. We have it on the authority of Ja- 
 cob Patch, son of Joseph Patch, that our hunter on snow shoes was 
 foUovnng the Asquamchumauke, otherwise Baker river, high up on 
 the side of Moosehillock mountain. It had snowed that day and 
 
 * Esq. Jonathan Merrill once whipped a gallant Komney hunter with his ox 
 goad, " inaking>him yeU good," when said hunter accused hiui of stealing a deer. 
 Stevens Merrill by good luck got a moose once in the river behind his house 
 which somebody's dogs had chased down from the mountains. 
 
254 HISTOEY OF WAKREN. 
 
 the way was slow and heavy. Late in the afternoon he discovered 
 a yard of moose. Trying Ms gun he found it so damp be could 
 not use it. This was a gi-eat disappointment but he was not to be 
 cheated of his game so easily. Cutting a long pole he lashed his 
 hunting knife to one end of it, cautiously approa,ched the moose and 
 cut the ham strings of three of the best of them. This done he 
 found no difficulty in dispatching them. The rest escaped. Of 
 course he dressed them, hung the heavy quarters high up in the 
 trees, and then hauled them home at his leisure. 
 
 But the most liistorical of all the gi-and old huntings that have 
 come down to us was one that happened that very winter of these 
 primitive times. Chase Whitcher had been across the mountains 
 to Glen ponds to fish for trout through the ice. Coming home he 
 found a great yard of moose. There were more of them than any 
 one man wanted, and he generously told his neighbors of the dis- 
 covery. Then they began to plan the way of capture and a day to 
 put it in execution was set when every man should be ready for the 
 work. 
 
 Simeon Smith, andMorrill from Red Oak hill, Hinchson, Patch, 
 Mills, and Butler, all the Merrills, Joshua Copp, and Obadiah Clem- 
 ent, both the Whitchers and others started for the yard early 'one 
 bright morning. It was up the side of Mount Carr in the glen 
 through wliioh Patch brook flows, and over the northern mountain 
 spur, like Bonaparte over the Alps, more than 3,000 "feet up, in the 
 mid winter snow. There was a hard crust and the sunlight stream- 
 ing through the trees flashed on the myriad icy particles. A part- 
 ridge whirred away from before them into the snow covered firs, a 
 rabbit that was eating spruce burrs leaped past, and both were un- 
 heeded either by hunters or dogs. It was ten o'clock when they 
 reached the yard. The first sight showed them that it was no or- 
 dinary one. It was on the mountain side, on the Black hill beyond, 
 and ran down by Glen pond, across the valley to the side of Mt. 
 Kineo. The Black hill had been crossed and recrossed a hundred 
 times from base to summit. A hundred parallels girdled the hill 
 around, intersecting the perpendiculars, and all were hard and 
 deeply trodden paths, so hard a moose could not be tracked in them, 
 so narrow a man could not run in them. It was a mazy labyrinth 
 and to attempt to thread it was to give the animals an opportunity 
 
A GRAND MOOSE HUNT. 255 
 
 to escape. The moose could ran ten to fifteen miles an liour 
 through the devious windings, browsing and eating as they ran, 
 and neither dogs nor men could come up to them. Therefore this 
 little army of hunters, out on this grand hunting excursion, imme- 
 diately separated. They went round on either side each' leaving 
 the other at a considerable distance, then they cautiously entered the 
 yard ; when a gun was fired they let loose the dogs ; their yel- 
 ling was, wild music in the woods, accompanied by the noise 
 of the moose pounding away at a hard swinging trot, their broad 
 antlers resounding as they sometimes hit a tree, their wide-spread 
 hoofs craclding at every step as they fled from their pursuers. 
 
 And now all are on the tip-toe of expectation. Each man be- 
 lieves he is sure of his game. Captain William Butler is deter- 
 mined to bag one. But v?^hen the mightiest animal he ever saw 
 went swinging by he found he had the moose fever, and instead 
 of stopping his game, the old bull answered the crack of his gun 
 with a bellow and bounded out of sight in a moment. It did not 
 even leave the trace of blood on the snow, much to our excellent 
 marksman's delight. Simeon Smith halloed with exceeding joy at 
 the sight of one and forgot to fire at all. Morrill called him a fool 
 and forgot to fire himself, and Stevens Merrill was so greatly pleased, 
 or had the fever so bad that he fired in the air, probably philosophi- 
 cally thinking the ball might strike one when it came down. But 
 Chase "Whitcher brought down a moose the fii'sttiVne trying, Joseph 
 Patch had the same good luck, and Obadiah Clement had the good 
 fortune to shoot two. The others did not succeed in getting a shot. 
 
 Four moose were as many as they cared for, or could well take 
 care of. So the dogs were called and the rest were suffered to 
 escape. The work of skinning and dressing was quickly accom- 
 plished, and the product loaded on the light, broad runnered hand- 
 sleds which they had brought with them. 
 
 It was hard work coming over the mountain, and before they 
 
 arrived at the summit William Butler's rotund body was too heavy 
 
 for his legs, and he laid down in the snow from exhaustion. His 
 
 good friends rubbed him smartly, placed him upon one of the sleds, 
 
 John Marston, who lived at the Summit, tiraL hoiiee xip High street, once went 
 on one of these grand moose hunts. He was pretty hungry and dranlj two quarts 
 of moose marrow. It made him terrible sick, liked to have killed him, and the 
 party had to build a Are and stay in the woods all nigbt. The next day they drew 
 him home on a hand sled.— Nathaniel Bichardson'a statemeui. 
 
266 . HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 covered him warmly with their frocks and drew Mm home too, the 
 heaviest moose, as they said, of tlie whole lot. Going down the 
 mountain he playfully asked Stevens Menill if a moose lived in the 
 moon? a stupid joke that Mr. M. cou.ld not see. 
 
 There was feasting and merry making in the settlement after 
 that, and the grand hunt known as "the one when Captain Butr 
 ler's legs gave out," has not yet been forgotten. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF A PROVISION FOR RELIGIOUS MEETINGS ; GRANDILOQUENT DESCRIP- 
 TION OF OlfE AND HOW IT CLOSED WITH A CUP OP SWEET COM- 
 FORT AND PEACE, AS WAS THE CUSTOM IN ANCIEN'T TIMES. 
 
 LiKIE one of the old knights of the middle ages hurrying 
 abroad to avenge the wrongs of a wicked world, but at times paus- 
 ing under the cool embowering shades, and by babbling brooks in 
 green meadows to enjoy the delights of life, so we hastening to the 
 bustling confusion and the turmoil of thg great events of our im- 
 mortal history, are fain to pause a few moments to revel in the 
 halcyon sweets in this the twilight age of our mountain hamlet, 
 before plunging into the wild scenes of the coming troublesome 
 times that are sure to follow. 
 
 Benning "Wentworth, peace to his ashes ! had a pious resjject 
 for the Church of England, a Christian desire for propagating the 
 gospel in foreign parts, and a right good willfor the support of 
 preaching. Consequently he inserted in the charter that a certain 
 portion of the lots among the hills should be set apart for the sup- 
 port of the church, preaching, and the missionary cause. 
 
 Our excellent proprietors were prompt to second the good in- 
 tentions of the ancient governor. At the very first division of the 
 lots, No. 2 of the 4th range was drawn for the support of a 
 minister ; No. 2 of the 8th range for the society for prppagating 
 the gospel; and No. 1 of the 9th range as a glebe for the Church 
 of England, as by law established.* 
 
 *In the subsequent divisions of land other lots were drawn for the abore 
 purposes, for a list of which see appendix. 
 
 Q 
 
258 HISTORY OP WAEKEN. 
 
 And the first settlers on the hillsides and in the pleasant valley 
 of* the hamlet were just as desirous of a little religious food as the 
 royal governor and the lordly proprietors were to impart it. 
 Therefore they began to cast about for a minister to expound the 
 scriptures and break the bread of life to them. 
 
 It is told how the first religious meeting was held one Sabbath 
 out in the broad open air, and the Rev. Mr. Powers, of Haverhill, 
 N. H., preached the discourse. He and the Rev. Mr. Ward, of 
 Plymouth, were the only ministers who resided in the wild regions 
 round about our beloved valley for many years, and a minister and 
 public Sabbath worship were rare in those primitive times." 
 
 It was summer when the meeting was held. Spring is gone, 
 when the com was planted and the children set to scare away the 
 crows that came to pull up the tender shoots. The snow drop, the 
 primrose, the cowslip, and the violets are gone ; but the vnld rose 
 has come, the elder is in blossom, the raspberi-y is red in the hedge 
 by the brush fence, and the unripe blackberry is turning to a rich, 
 luscious, and jetty black. Haying time has come, the mowers have 
 been at work among the stumps and logs cutting the heavy burden 
 of grass. The green swaths have been spread to dry by the meriy 
 boys and gii'ls, the haycocks have been heaped high, and upon the 
 rude sled to which the steers have been yoked it is drawn to the 
 barn. But the scythes, rakes, and forks had been laid aside, the 
 steers unyoked and turned away in the pasture that Saturdaj^ night 
 and aU made ready for the Sabbath. 
 
 My grandmother said that Sunday was a bright, beautiful day. 
 "When the sun rose over the gi'eat mountains and the mighty wood, 
 all the world seemed hushed and still. As the hours crept on the 
 people began to assemble. The spot chosen for the meeting was 
 on the ridge of land tliat formed the barrier of Runaway pond, and 
 west of Black brook, the Mikaseota. They came by the blazed 
 paths through the woods from every little clearing. Nearly all 
 walked then; there were but few saddle horses and no carriages. 
 Some of the men and the boys and girls are barefoot. They are 
 
 * When Mr. Powers saw young men felling trees * * * he would call 
 to them and say it' Providence favored him, he would preach to them in that place 
 on such a day and at such an hour. These were welcome propositions generally, 
 and if there were other settlements near they were informed of the appointment, 
 and Mr. Powers at.the hour specified woiU'd find his hearers seated on stumps 
 and logs all ready to receive the word. — Histoi-y of Coos. 17. 
 
FIRST RELIGIOUS MEETING. 259 
 
 di-essed in their everyday garments ; Sunday clothes they have none. 
 The men are in their shirt sleeves, their frocks slnng across their 
 ai-ms in case it might pin. You would particularly notice Stevens 
 Men-ill and his intelhgent black eyed wife. He was a man ad- 
 vanced in years, dressed differently from most of the rest, for he had 
 Ids Quaker suit on, and was in the habit of speaking out in meeting 
 if the sermon did not suit him.* There was Mr. Simeon Smith, 
 from Red Oak hill, also.somewhat advanced in life. He was always 
 noticed to be a little .nervous at meeting. His wife had heated the 
 large Dutch oven that morning, and put in an iron pot of beans- and 
 an earthen dish of Indian pudding, to bake in their absence, and 
 be ready for supper when they returned. His neighbor John Mor- 
 riU comes along vsith him, and his wife, a fleshy woman, has on 
 her arm, as do nearly all the rest, a bag filled with nut cakes and 
 cold meat for a luncheon. You will see coming; up from Hur- 
 ricane brook, Joseph Patch and his young wife, the daughter of 
 Stevens Merrill. His neighbor, Mr. Hinchson, who lives alone in 
 the woods, the hunter and trout and salmon catcher, accompanies 
 Mm. William Butler also comes, the young man fat and portly. 
 His wife, Mehitable, and John MiUs, Sr.,'and John Mills, Jr., are 
 all on hand, as the saying is. 'Squire Jonathan, as he was known 
 in latter days, is there also with his wife and children. Ephraim 
 True comes from " over the river." He has waded across for there 
 is no bridge. Along with him is his wife and half a dozen small 
 childi-en, the latter still shy and wild just like young partridges. 
 Joshua Merrill, who lived to be a hundred years old, who was a 
 tailor by trade, was there with his family, from the foot of Beech 
 hill. He wore a three-cornered cocked hat on that day, small 
 clothes, neatly fitting, and tight stockings, with huge knee buckles 
 and silver shoe buckles. He was an exception, as we have said 
 before, and was always the best dressed man in town. Joshua 
 Copp, dignified and grave, with liis vrife and several children was 
 there. Obadiah Clement, always religiously inclined, with his 
 
 * Some one was once preaching at Jonathan Clement's inn. Mr. Clement sat 
 inside the bar with his fiat on. The minister suddenly changed his discourse, 
 from preaching to the saints, and began to talk to the wicked. Mr. Clement jumped 
 up, shouted amen I and said he thanked the Lord that the minister was preaching 
 to the sinners. John Abbott rose at once, and in pious accents advised the minis- 
 ter not to dwell long on that subject, as there was only one sinner present, and 
 that one was shut up in the liquor bar, where he couldn't do any hurt.— Miss 
 Hannah Enighf s statement. 
 
260 HISTORY OF WAKEEN. 
 
 brothers, Jonathan and Reuben,* and their families was present. 
 Isaiah Batchelder, the Clarks, and the Lunds, with theii- wives and 
 children were down from Tarleton lake, a long journey for them. 
 And even Mr. Chase Whitcher, from his home in the basin of 
 mountains at the north part of the town, had traveled all the way 
 down and was present with his relatives Reuben and John "VVhitcher , 
 from Pure Mil, and the families of each. 
 
 Parson Powers in those days wore a black kerseymere cOat, ^ 
 silk breeches and stockings, three-cornered hat and fleece-hke 
 wig, a white band and white silk gloves. With what dignity did 
 he walk among that little crowd of rough backwoodsmen. How 
 meekly they stood aside to let him pass, although Stevens MerriU 
 was'nt much afraid of Mm. Wliat was Ms pulpit? No Mgh box 
 like those of ancient days ; but it might have been a large pine 
 stump cut smoothly on the top for the purpose . It might have been 
 a platfoi-m of poles placed evenly upon two logs. Above Ms head 
 was no pyramidal sounding board, but in its stead were mighty 
 columns of towering trees, surmounted by capitals of wavy splen- 
 dor. There were no lofty walls supported by Doric or Corinthian 
 columns around Mm ; no windows painted with images, but in 
 their stead were arcMvolts of leaves rustling and sighing in the 
 wind ; arcMtraves of mighty branches that rocked in the grand 
 choms of storms, arches of blue with heavenward opemng win- 
 dows painted with rainbows and the golden glories of sunset. 
 There were no cushioned pews, nor altars gaily decollated and set 
 with precious stones, but their seats, were cushioned with forest 
 flowers, their chancel was of flowering banks with balustrades of 
 evergi'een ; their altar was gemmed with pebbles and crystals of 
 mica and spangles of emerald moss. Such was the temple in 
 wMch the tirst settlers, perhaps bhnd to the beautiful, worsMped. 
 Did they have singing at their meeting? Of course they did; 
 but who took the lead it is impossible now to tell.f Whether as 
 was the custom of the day, some one acting as deacon read the 
 
 * Eeuben Whitcher was a new comer about these times. 
 
 t " One of the first choristers of Warren was Captain Stephen Richardson. He 
 always wore to meeting short hip breeclies, and long white stockings with silver 
 shoe and knee huclsles. He had a watch pocliet exactly in front, in the waist-hand 
 of his hreeches, and a long heavy silver chain, key and seal at the end, attached 
 to his gi'eat ' hull's eye watch,' hung dangling atwixt his legs almost down to his 
 knees. He used his pitch pipe freely, heat time Uistily with his feet, swayed hack 
 
AN OLD-TIME SUNDAY NOON. 261 
 
 fli-st two lines, and another tooted on the pitch pipe and then led 
 off with his voice, or wliether as in our prayer meetings now, they 
 all joined in one of those wild, religious hymns, such as the old 
 Scotch Covenanters were wont to raise in their mountain fastness, 
 or the persecuted Clmstians sang in the catacombs of Rome, it is 
 also impossible to teU. They had no musicalinstruments then, but 
 if they had listened they might have heard the winds sighing an 
 accompaniment in the woods, the mm-muring anthem of the neigh- 
 boring brooks and distant river, or perhaps if it were a hot 
 summer afternoon the grand diapason of thunder peeling in the 
 gorges of the mountains. 
 
 The noontime of that Sunday must have been an interesting 
 occasion for our settlers. Their luncheon eaten and they sat down 
 in knots and groups to talk oyer the events of the day. The state 
 of the country was discussed then the same as now. The old 
 French war, the tyranny of King George, the Stamp Act, the Tea 
 Party, all came in for their share. Perhaps some of them went to 
 Joshua Copp's cabin, for that was then the most central part of 
 the settlement, and there sat down and drank of his nice cool 
 water from the neighboring spring. Mrs. Coppwas a neat woman, 
 her floor ever nicely sanded, her pewter on the open dresser bright 
 and glistening. They talked of the weather, of the births, of the 
 maiTiages, engagements, health, sickness, and deaths, those among 
 themselves, and particularly of those among then- friends down 
 country ; the land from which they had emigrated, for which they 
 yearned, and to which they made frequent pilgrimages. 
 
 After the sendees Parson Powers went home with Obadiah 
 Clement to enjoy the hospitality of Ms house and spend the night, 
 and he did it right merrily. As the story goes, and sitch was the 
 custom in those days, a good glass of the dear creature was brought 
 forward, just as soon as he had crossed the threshold, to clear the 
 reverend throat. ' "When night came he had a different Idnd of bev- 
 erage to make him slumber quietly and induce pleasant dreams.* 
 
 and forth as he stiiig, the watch chain vibrating in nnison with the tune, while all 
 the little boys and girls present tittei-ed and laughed at the comical sight." — Miss 
 Hannah Knight's statement. . 
 
 Colonel Stevens M. Dow said tliat he had sung with Captain E., and that the 
 Captain was an excellent singer. 
 
 * Elder Curi'ierwho lived in Wentworth sometimes preached in Warren during 
 the last years of the' eighteenth century. 
 
262 HISTORY OP WARREN. 
 
 In the morning the best the house afforded was served up for 
 breakfast, then an excellent glass of punch was quaffed and away 
 rode the divine of these wilderness settlements on his strong little 
 horse over the Height-o-land, round Tarleton lake, across which a 
 light winged breeze was blovsdng, through Piermont woods, to the 
 Coos intervals, as they were known in those times. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 wae! how it beared its horrid front and its din resounded 
 EVEN across the boundaries of warren, together with 
 what part our early settlers took in it. 
 
 It was a bright June day. Joseph Patch was at work 
 clearing a little pasture on the ridge that forms the western foot of 
 Picked hill. It was hot ; the sun hung high in heaven, and Patch, 
 pausing to rest, sat down on a long hemlock log to eat his luncheon 
 and quaff a draught of spruce beer. Suddenly there was a strange 
 sound in the air — was it thunder behind the western mountains, 
 the faint rumble of a pent up earthquake, or was it only a partridge 
 drumming in the thick pine woods ? He Ustened and again and 
 again heard it. It was not the partridge's drum, not the thunder, 
 nor the earthquake — what was it? 
 
 At noon he spoke to his family about it, but they had not no- 
 ticed it. At night he talked with his neighbors ; John Mills had 
 also heard it, and so had Stevens Memll, but none could tell what 
 it was. 
 
 A week went by and a strahger journeying through the valley 
 northward told them that a great battle had been fought at Bunker 
 Hill, and that thousands of men were hurrying to join the rebel 
 army under General Washington. 
 
 Before night every settler in the hamlet had heard the news. 
 It is a hundred and twenty miles as the crow flies, to Bunker Hill. 
 There could be heard the booming of cannon all that distance. 
 Now in a clear day the gi'anite shaft which commemorates that 
 
aJ^/^W^^^GLA^-- 
 
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION BEGUN. 265 
 
 who served in the war of the Revolution. But in the process of 
 time the whole subject gradually unfolded itself. One of the first 
 steps was the finding the census of 1775.* Then "Warren and 
 Piermont were classed together for enumeration. The population 
 of both towns was at that time one hundred and sixty-eight persons, 
 and of these, although the war had but just commenced, fifteen 
 men were serving in the army. Now there were about twenty 
 families in "Warrpn, and allowing five persons in a family which is 
 nearly the average, one hundred of the above population belonged 
 in "Warren. We can safely say one half of it did and by the same 
 rule can claim half the soldiers. But we are modest and don't 
 claim but five as that is all that we can hear of. Perhaps there 
 were more. 
 
 And now excitement prevailed throughout the land ; the notes 
 of preparation, the din of arms, the clangor of the sti-ife resounded 
 ■ to our hamlet among the Mils. Speculators and sutlers were abroad, 
 and Daniel Grilman came to town buying all the moose skins he 
 could find, which he manufactured into moosehide breeches and 
 sold to the Continental Government at eighteen shillings a pair.f 
 The quartermaster was abroad, and the great Committee of Safety 
 appointed for the whole State of New Hampshire contracted with 
 Joshua Copp, Esq., our settler on the banks of Runaway pond, to 
 notify the various towns of Grafton county and collect their quota 
 of beef for the use of the Continental anny.f Something to drink 
 for the soldiers was necessary, and ,as there was no distillery in 
 "Warren, PhilUps "White, the good, kind hearted proprietor we have 
 mentioned so many times before, generously advanced the amount 
 to be furnished by the settlers of his townshiiD, which was " nine 
 garlins and two quarts of West Indea rum."** But the strangest 
 thing that happened this year was the appointment of John Balch 
 " to ride post'' through all the northern country and through our 
 
 * The following is the entiy under the head of Piermont and Warren, In the 
 census report of 1775, Tiz : Males under sixteen, 52 ; Males from sixteen to fifty, 28 ; 
 Males above fifty, -4; Males in the army, 15; Females, 69; Negroes and Slaves , 0. 
 Total, 168. Firearms fit for use 1 ; do. wanting, 31; pounds public powder, 16; do. 
 private powder, 0.— N. H. Hist. Coll. Vol. 1, 235. 
 
 t Thursday Oct. 31st, 1776. Agreed with Mr. Danl Gilman for 100 coarse 
 Moose Hide Breeches, at 18s, — N. H. Hist. Coll. Vol. vii. page 63. 
 
 t " March 8; 1783. Ordered the Treas to pay Joshua Copp, Colt, of Beef, 
 Graiton, five pounds fourteen shillings, for time and ISxpences, &c., to notify Towns 
 of the time to receive Beef."— N. H. Hist. Coll. Vol. vii. page 317. 
 
 ** See Vol. i. Town Clerk's Boot. 
 
266 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 mountain hamlet of course. He was appointed by the aforesaid 
 Committee of Safety, and was to set out from Portsmouth on 
 Saturday morning and ride to Haverhill by way of Conway and 
 Plymouth, thence down the Connecticut river to Charleston and 
 Keene, and to Portsmouth again in fourteen days, and was to 
 receive seventy hard silver dollars, or their equivalent, for every 
 three months' service. For the whole seven long years of the 
 revolutionary war John Balch rode post. 
 
 We are told how one night the storm and darkness overtook 
 him in the woods this side of Plymouth. All the long, black hours 
 he stopped in one of our old " hotels," and only came riding past 
 Stevens Merrill's just as the rising sun was flashing among the 
 waterfalls and sending the night mists down the glens. But most 
 often he came to "Warren in the blight forenoon, when the woods 
 were cheerful and the rough clearings inviting. As hp dashed 
 along the stony bridle path he would blow a blast on liis post 
 horn, rousing the old wood and waking the echoes. Then he 
 would laugh to see what a turn out there would be from the log 
 cabins ; the good man and his wife, all the flaxen headed children, 
 and even the cat and dog, the geese, turkeys, and chickens, and 
 sometimes the old horse, cow, and hog, each seeming eager to 
 know why 
 
 "Johnny Balch, blowing a blast both loud and shrill, 
 Dashed through the woods and galloped down the hill." 
 
 But most generally the family wanted to hear the news and the 
 jolly post rider was nothing loth to give it.* 
 
 But the summer went by and the autumn came, and our settlers 
 learned that Schuyler and Montgomery with a small force had 
 advanced by lake Champlain against Montreal, and Arnold at the 
 head of a thousand men had tramped through the Wilderness to 
 the St. Lawrence. Then during all the winter hardly anything 
 was heard from the boys in the army. 
 
 In the spring of 1776 there was another call for troops, and 
 news came, after Arnold failed, of a threatened invasion from 
 Canada. All the frontier was in excitement at this, and there was 
 a great demand for arms. The Conmaittee of Safety endeavored 
 to furnish a supply, and they let Chase Whitcher, our boy settler, 
 *For an account of John Balch's riding post, see Vol. vii. N. H. Hist. Coll. 
 
THE WABEIORS OF WAEEEN. 267 
 
 have money enough to buy thirteen guns, for that number was 
 needed in the hamlet. He gave security to pay for the same when 
 called for, and then loading them upon his horse trudged beliind 
 his faithful beast, and brought them all safely to "Warren.* 
 
 These guns were faithfully distributed among our settlers. 
 Even Stevens Men-ill was offered one, but he said he did not 
 believe in war and would not flght on either side and so would not 
 have it. Jonathan Clement and Joseph Patch also refused to take 
 a gun even as a gift. 
 
 It is told, with how much truth we cannot say, that Joshua 
 Copp and Simeon Smith went away to the regions of upper Coos 
 about this time to serve with Captain Eames, a renowned military 
 chieftain, said to have once resided in the neighboring province of 
 Wentworth. Captain Eames, with Ms company, had built a fort 
 at Coos, and was ordered in the autumn of 1776 " to engage ten 
 men through the winter as scouts." Copp and Smith, tradition has 
 it, served on this scout. They had seen the supplies, consisting of 
 two barrels of gunpowder, eight hundred pounds of lead for bullets, 
 six hundred flints, and blankets for forty soldiers, and aU other 
 necessaries sent by the Committee of Safety. They were loaded on 
 the backs of a train of pack horses which journeyed along the 
 rough bridle path northward, " and were for the use of the troops 
 on the western portion of this colony at Coos." t They rendez- 
 voused one night at Obadiah Clement's little tavern, at the foot of 
 Height-o-land, and the next morning as they marched away Copp 
 and Smith resolved that they would see before the snow flew what 
 kmd of service they would have in tlie wild upper country. 
 
 The folks at home had heard from John Balch, the post rider, 
 all the news of the years' campaigns. The disasters on Long- 
 Island and the losses along the Hudson made everything seem 
 black enough ; but in the mid winter word came of the great victory 
 of the battle of Trenton and the rebels took heart again. { 
 
 * " Aug. 5th, 1776. Ordered the Eeoeiver General To pay Mr. Chace Witoher of 
 Warren, Twenfy-four pounds to buy Arms and Amunition, he Giving Security to 
 pay the Same when Demanded."— N. H. Hist. CoU. Vol. vii. 55. » 
 
 A gun cost 36s. 
 
 t See Vol. vii. N. H. Hist. Coll. 
 
 j In 1776, ColonelWilliamTarletou who once lived in Warren, was a sergeant 
 in Edward Everett's company. 
 
 The same year, .Toseph Lund was in Captain James Osgood's company.— See 
 Records in the olDce of Secretary of State, Concord, N. H. 
 
268 HISTORY OF WABEEN. 
 
 The next year war came to our frontier in earnest, and the 
 dwellers in the land of the Coosncks got a slight taste of it. Even 
 onr pioneers snuffed the battle from afar. Burgoyne began his 
 invasion from Canada, proceeding by Lake Champlain, and the 
 greatest excitement prevailed through all the wild border. Hith- 
 erto there had been only a Committee of Safety for the whole State, 
 but now danger was so imminent that a committee of safety, 
 inspection, vigilance, or correspondence, whatever it might be 
 called, was formed in nearly every town. These co-operated with 
 the State Committee rendering it efficient service. The towns thus 
 became, in a measure, separate provinces, or rather independent 
 democracies, each contributing all the aid it could to the great 
 cause. 
 
 The Committee in this northern country, as elsewhere, met at 
 stated intervals and acted in a legislative, executive, and judicial 
 capacity. The conduct of all suspicious persons was inquired into ; 
 numerous arrests were mafle, and imprisonments and banishments 
 frequently followed. They even took the subject of confiscation 
 in hand and the property of many individuals who were not 
 "truly loyal" escheated to the State. 
 
 We never could learn that the great committee of Warren 
 ever did much in these matters, but the committees of Plymouth 
 and Haverhill, neighboring democracies, were often terribly exer- 
 cised. For instance we find it recorded that the State Coimnittee 
 tliis year received a letter from the committee at Plymouth "in- 
 forming that several strangers, well dressed, had been discovered 
 at a very unfrequented place in the wood, whom they supposed 
 were engaged in a bad design." The State Committee immedi- 
 ately ordered search to be made and the strangers apprehended if 
 possible. Whether they were arrested or not we never learned. 
 
 It is also written down that at Haverhill, in the "Cohass" 
 region, was a great tory, Mr. Fisher by name, who was compelled 
 to exile liimself to some foreign land. His farm on the intervals 
 the said committee gently took into their possession, cultivated 
 it with the soldiers stationed at the Cohass, and eventually sold the 
 land and devoted the proceeds to the " rebel cause," as King George 
 was pleased to term it. 
 
 But if Warren's Committee of Safety did not do much in the 
 
BOUNTIES TO SOLDIERS. 269 
 
 direction we bave indicated, tliere were some in town who worked 
 for the " patriot cause " in a private capacity, and some who worlsed 
 for the good of their own pockets. 
 
 In the journal of the Committee of Safety it is also written — 
 " Friday July 4th, 1777. Ordered the E. G.* to let John Mills have 
 out of the Treasry £25, to pay bounties to men he enlists, for 
 which he is to be acctble." f 
 
 How many men John Mills enhsted we never learned, but 
 report has it that Jonathan Fellows, who had just come to town 
 and John Mills, Junior, went away to the war about these times, 
 perhaps stimulated to patriotic deeds by this very £25. And it 
 would not be at all unlikely that John Mills enlisted men in the 
 regions round about, as many another recruiting oflS.cer has done 
 at a later day. Fellows, and Mills, Junior, it is told, were at the 
 battle of Bennington, the latter being iirst lieutenant in the fifth 
 company of Colonel Nichol's regiment.J 
 
 But it is not written in the Committee of Safety's book, and 
 perhaps that honorable body never found out, what Stevens Mer- 
 rill and his son Jonathan did. Whori the cry, " the British are 
 coming," was heard, Mr. M. and his son, who were always true to 
 the royal government, scented gold from afar and prepared to put 
 a fair proportion of it in their own pockets. They quietly went 
 to work and bought up a considerable number of beef cattle of 
 the settlers and obtained others from the wooded pastures in the 
 neighboring lands, and then when they had learned from the well 
 dressed strangers " discovered in the very unfrequented place in 
 the wood," at what time a British guard would be at the rendez- 
 vous, over beyond the Connecticut river among the Green moun- 
 tains, they set oflf one blight night with the whole herd. They 
 drove the beeves to Haverhill by the old Indian trail, now an 
 unfrequented way, a path in which there was no danger of meeting 
 any one, and when the gray of the morning came on, halted in a 
 secluded glen two miles or so from the mouth of the Oliverian. 
 
 * B. G. means Eeoeiver General. 
 
 t See N. H. Hist. Coll. Vol. vii. 104. 
 
 j John Mills was first a 2d Lieutenant in Colonel Timothy Bedel's regiment, 
 fourth company, in 1776. This regiment was marched to Canada, and at a fort 
 called " The Cedars" was disgracefully surrendered; then in 1777 he was 1st Lieu- 
 tenant of the fifth company, in Colonel Moses Nichol's regiment, and was pi'esent 
 with his' company at the battle of Bennington, and last was Captain of the fourth 
 company, in Colonel Daniel KeynokVs regiment, in 1781.— See Kecords in the office 
 of the Secretaiy of State, Concord, IS. H. 
 
270 HISTORY OV WARREN. 
 
 All day long they kept the drove together and on the second night, 
 with some assistance, swam them across the Connecticut. Morning 
 found them in the yards of the rendezvous. Fat cattle were valu- 
 able then, and on the fourth day our loyal settlers were safe at 
 home again, with their pockets well lined with British gold. 
 Obadiah Clement and others wondered what became of the cattle, 
 but years went by before they learned of ^he profitable and some- 
 what wild adventures in which their neighbors were engaged. 
 
 Some folks are ready now to cry out; Cowboys! Tories! 
 Traitors! Devils! they ought to have been hung! and a good 
 many other like pious ejaculations. Be easy for a moment ; Stevens 
 Merrill, from the manner in which he viewed the great questions 
 of that day, from his own stand point, was a true patriot. He 
 believed the colonists were wrong, that King George was right, 
 and that the war would ruin the country. He himself loved his 
 native land, and was loyal to his king. He firmly believed his 
 opinions were correct, his conscience pointed out the path of duty, 
 and then as always through life he endeavored to follow it. Had 
 the result of the contest been different the rebels would have been 
 in the wrong, deserving the halter, and himself the true patriot. 
 Success makes the hero, failure the traitor. 
 
 But if our tory friends performed a night march to the Con- 
 necticut, at the head or tail of a horned cavalcade, many another 
 body proceeded through the woods to the same destination, but 
 for a far different object. There was hurrying to and fro through- 
 out all the country, and a large number went marching to the land 
 of Coos. Captain Eames took up squads of men, but Captain 
 Bedel marched at the head of a whole company along the rough 
 bridle path.* He had a fife aud drum, and the musicians made 
 exceedingly pleasant music, sweet to hear among the woods of 
 "Warren. Then he had a continental flag, carried sometimes in the 
 centre of the column, which fluttered most beautifully in the leafy 
 forest. All the. men as a general thing camped near Obadiah 
 Clement's inn, marching the whole distance from Plymouth in a 
 single day, and the train of pack horses used to carry supplies and 
 ammunition, almost eat our poor landlord out of house and home. 
 Sometimes he got his pay, but oftener he did not, and when he did 
 * See N. H. Hiet. Coll. Vol. vii. 
 
SACKIFICES OF THE SETTLERS. 271 
 
 it was the old Continental cun-ency, that eventually proved worth- 
 less. But he kept good natured and always rejoiced at the success 
 of the coloilies.* 
 
 Captain Eames and Bedel .did good service guarding the rich 
 meadows on the " long i-iver of pines," otherwise Dutchman's 
 Varshe, or fresh river. But they never had a fight ; not a red coat 
 came to disturb them. Still they kept the town quiet, and made 
 friends with the Coosuck Indians, as they were instructed by the 
 great Committee of Safety. 
 
 All this happened right at home, but our hardy mountaineers 
 were exceedingly anxious all this season, 1777, to hear the news 
 from the army. When they learned of the battle of Benning- 
 ton, Stark, to them, was the greatest man living, and joy was un- 
 bounded. There were some who did not like the news, but they 
 were shrewd, and said nothing. Again when word came of the 
 surrender of Burgoyne, most of the good settlers almost went into 
 ecstasies ; our silent friends were inwardly as mad as March hares. 
 At the close of the year the prospects of the colonists were 
 not so good. Another winter passed, the winter of Valley Forge ; 
 the spring came, and with it the darkest year of the war. News 
 from the army was scarce ; what they did hear was bad, and the 
 inhabitants of "Warren seemed divided and estranged. 
 
 And now in the colonists' darkest hour happened the greatest 
 event of the war — to the Warrenites. Hostility came to the dwel- 
 lers of the hamlet. It transpired in this wise. The soldiers who 
 guarded the " Cohass " frontier were enlisted for short periods. 
 Consequently discharges followed rapidly, the veterans returned 
 home, and raw recruits hurried to the log forts, stockades, and 
 block houses, so valorously guarded by Captains Eames and Bedel. 
 There was a continual passing of troops, and as these soldiers, as 
 before mentioned, never found a foe in the front, being anxious to 
 achieve some deed of greatness, looked sharp for one in the rear. 
 
 Some folks never can mind their own business, and no man, 
 who is a man, is without his enemies. Joseph Patch, our fl.rst set- 
 tler had his, and to the valorous soldiers, who mai-ched and counter- 
 marched along the bridle path, they reported that Patch was a tory. 
 When he was at home no passer by dared meddle with him. But 
 * Jamea Clement's statement. 
 
272 HISTORY OP WAEREIf. 
 
 work must be done, and in autumn he was often away hunting. 
 At such times Mrs. Patch with her children would go for a day or 
 two to her father's, Mr. Stevens Merrill's. On one occasion when 
 her husband was looking after Ms sable traps and exploring for 
 beaver meadows over Mount CaiT, Mrs. P. saw two or three 
 soldiers hurry across her father's clearing, and disappear in the 
 woods towards her own dwelling. Then- appearance made a 
 strong impression upon her mind, so much so, that half an hour 
 afterwards she went out, and looking towards her own home, saw 
 a dense black smoke rising like a cloud above it. Screaming, she 
 gave the alarm, then hiu-ried down the bridle path. But she was 
 too late. The fire had burst from the roof; the flames leaped up 
 hot and fierce, and the smoke, a great black column, towered hun- 
 dreds of feet above and then floated away over the great forest and 
 disappeared beyond the mountain. Twenty minutes later and the 
 house, which was the best one in town, was almost wholly con- 
 sumed. One of the soldier boys had set fire to it with Ms pipe, as 
 was afterwards learned, and then they valorously marched on. 
 Mr. Patch had a large quantity of provisions, including several 
 barrels of moose meat, also a considerable store of rich peltries, all 
 which were totally destroyed. Nothing was saved from the house 
 except "a little iron picking pan," partly melted by the fire, 
 which the family kept for many j-ears as a memento of one of the 
 great events of the war.* 
 
 Lumber and materials were plenty, there were willing hands 
 to aid in the work, and before winter set in another house rose like 
 the phoenix from the ashes. The bam with its contents did not 
 burn and Patch was nearly as comfortable as before. 
 
 Now many people will ciy shame. But we would say as be- 
 fore, wait a moment. Don't blame the soldiers. Such things 
 must be expected in time of war. They always happen — and 
 for our own sake and your pleasure, Christian reader, we are 
 almost glad that they do. Without such a dire catastrophe we 
 should not have had this brilliant episode for om- most entertaining 
 history. 
 
 But we must pause here. A new era dawns upon our moun- 
 tain hamlet. Hitherto the lordly proprietors had cut all the roads, 
 *.Taoob Patch's statement. 
 
THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA. 273 
 
 fought out all the boundary feuds, had sent men to build mills, had 
 made appropriations for preaching, and had looked after all the 
 interests of our little State just as a parent watches his child. Not 
 a farthing for taxes, not a day's labor on the highways, hardly any- 
 thing paid for the broad acres in the valley and on the hill-side, 
 not a soldier furnished for the war we have been describing, except 
 such as went from pure patriotism with poor pay, and most often 
 no bounty; the early settlers were free as the wind. 
 
 But our little town was fast expanding into strength and 
 beauty ; and the former royal province, at present the Republic of 
 New Hampshire, which as yet had paid no attention to the smiling 
 hamlet, now believing that a good revenue might be derived with- 
 out much trouble, like a fond lover began to pay court and com- 
 mence suit to the bright and happy township among the hills. 
 
 How our pioneer settlement thus suddenly became an ample 
 democracy in which the citizens made sundry laws and appointed 
 the judicial and executive officers, but still acknowledged a slight 
 allegiance to the State, composed like the Amphictyonic council of 
 the great association of democracies, will be told in the most 
 entertaining manner in our next. 
 
:\ vi 
 
 
 /! 
 
 
 'I ' 
 
 1 , *, • 
 
BOOK V. 
 
 CONCERNING THE inGHTT MABCH OF EVENTS IN THE GKEAT CIVIL 
 HISTORY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF THE ORGANIZATION OP THE HAMLET, AND HOW CERTAIN MEN 
 ACEHEVED IJIMORTAL GLORY BY GETTING ELECTED TO TOWN 
 OFFICE. 
 
 Vv HEN in the course of human events one certain body 
 feels a regard for another, tliere immediately begins to be made 
 sundry strong efforts to inform the regarded party of the remarka- 
 ble feelings experienced. Smiles, sighs, tender glances, and little 
 gentle pressures of the hands are given if the parties are in the 
 immediate neighborhood of each other. But if distance intervenes 
 or extreme modesty prevails; then fond missives are indited and 
 borne by the fleet post, communicating the heavenly passion, — all 
 which is intensely interesting to the immediate parties but deoid- 
 'cdly ridiculous to outsiders. 
 
 • The latter method — the tender missive — was the one adopted 
 by our young and vigorous republic ; but not from any feeling of 
 modesty. It was distance that forced the sending of a tender 
 epistle to our coy little hamlet that Mtherto had nestled so quietly 
 and almost unnoticed among the hills. A go-between in the 
 person of the great Committee of Safety, and a few other patriotic 
 
276 HISTORY OF ■WAHEEN, 
 
 agents* had wMspered the information that the young hamlet was 
 beautiful and fertile, and growing in wealth, and thus the interest 
 was excited. 
 
 What was the tenor of the exquisite billet-doux forwarded? 
 " To the right about face, forward march — wake up, quick-step — 
 take your place in the great family of small States." Short and 
 sweet ! But such was love's language in the war times of which 
 we write. Every thing then had to bend and every nerve be 
 strained, that the great Committee of Safety might have money 
 and the soldiers be armed, equipped, and fed. Warren must do 
 her part, must show her love for the young republic, although she 
 might be a little shy and backward, by contribiiting her mite to 
 the patriotic cause. 
 
 Representations, therefore, were made to the Great and Gen- 
 eral Court of New Hampshire, that -it was their duty to attend to 
 the matter, in order that a generous revenue might be forth- 
 coming. 
 
 That honorable bodj' acte^. The machinery of legislation was 
 immediately put in operation and a statute manufactured. It is 
 very interesting, and reads somewhat like a romance ; thus — 
 
 •'III the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and 
 seventy-nine." 
 
 •' An Act to ascertain the proportion of public taxes npon several 
 towns and to enable them to collect the same." 
 
 Thus it opens in a heroic strain. Then follow the several 
 whereases, to wit: 
 
 " Bath, Canaan, Wentworth, and Warren, have not paid their 
 proportion of taxes. 
 
 " This has been represented by agents. 
 
 " It is owing, 1st, to the unsettled state of the country; and, 
 'id, that some of the towns have no town ofllcers. 
 
 " Therefore that it may never happen again, — 
 
 "be it enacted. 
 
 " \st. That the State Treasurer issue his warrant for the whole 
 tax, State and Continental. 
 
 * Obadiah Clement was the principal of these. 
 
THE FIRST TOWN MEETING. 277 
 
 " 2d. That it be assessed the same as on the first day of April 
 last. 
 
 " 3d. That the town of Warren pay twenty shillings for each 
 £1,000 raised in the State, 
 
 " 4:th. That Samuel Emerson, of Plymouth, is commanded to 
 call a town meeting in TVarren, and preside until a moderator 
 shall he chosen." 
 
 This bill was passed to be engrossed, June 22d, 1779. It was 
 signed by John Langdon, Speaker of the House ; Meshech Weare, 
 President, approved it, and it was examined by Ebenezer Thomp- 
 son, Secretary of State. 
 
 Samuel Emerson, who dwelt upon the east bank of the 
 Asquamchumauke, where it runs a slow and lordly river, felt 
 highly complimented when he heard of the great honors thrust 
 upon him, and he promptly began his duties. 
 
 July 12th, 1779, he posted a notice warning the inhabitants of 
 our pleasant township to assemble ;* and on, the 28th of the same 
 month, the true men of "Warren were on hand at the inn of mine 
 host, Obadiah Clement, ready for business. Our tory friends did 
 not attend ; they forgot that the meeting was to be held that day. 
 
 But steady here — with great dignity and profound gravity! 
 The mighty events of history should not be hurried over. How 
 important is the first assembly of the hamlet. It is an auspi- 
 cious moment, a new birth for the town ; an entrance upon a 
 higher life. A web of circumstances is to be woven about the 
 citizens that shall change the whole course of their aspirations and 
 ambitions ; that shall furnish a field on which they may achieve 
 distinction, as legislators, executive ofllcers, and judges. 
 
 Did the wise men as they went to that meeting from their 
 
 * Names of the Legal Voters of Warren for the Year 1780. 
 
 Isaiah Batohelder. Joseph Kimball. Joseph Patcli. 
 
 Vfilliam Butler. Ephralm Lund. Simeon Smith. 
 
 Daniel Clark. Joseph Lund. Ephraim True. 
 
 Thomas Clark. John Marston. Moses True. 
 
 Jonathan Clement. Jonathan MerriU. Chase Whitoher. 
 
 Obadiah Clement. Joshua Men-ill. John Whitcher. 
 
 Eeuben Clement, Stevens MerriU. Reuben Whitoher. (1) 
 
 Joshua Copp. John Mon'ill. 
 
 Gardner Dustin. Nathaniel Niles. 
 
 (1) July 8, 1787.— Voted, That Mr. Moses Page have one hundred acres of land 
 laying northerly on Josiah Bartlett's Esq., in the sixth range, first division to be 
 laid out in the same form as other lota in said range, in consideration of his set- 
 tling Mr. Reuben Whitoher in said town.— Proprietor's Records. 
 
27S HISTORY OF WAKKEN. 
 
 fields where they had beeu haying among the charred stumps and 
 logs, realize its importance? Did they know as they assembled 
 in Obadiah Clement's old log bar-room, where the soldiers of the 
 Revolution hastening to the camp or journeying home from the 
 war, were wont to stop; where good milk-toddy, whiskey-punch, 
 flip, and egg-nog, could always be had, and where in winter the 
 old fashioned loggerhead was always kept at a white heat, that 
 this was the beginning of a long series of meetings that should 
 continue even down to our time? Did they think that in that 
 identical bar-room, varnished and painted by the smoke of pitch 
 knots and tobacco pipes, would arise those celebrated political 
 parties — the Patch party, the Merrill party, and the Clement 
 party— which always existed in town, down to the era of the 
 " Know Nothings ;" that it would be here that they would learn 
 to love office, its honors and emoluments, to spout and talk and 
 wrangle about the laying out of roads, the constructing of bridges, 
 the clearing of training fields, the locating of school houses, and 
 the building of meeting houses? Perhaps they realized it, and 
 perhaps they did not. 
 
 But certain it is, that when the hour of ten was shown by the 
 sun-dial which Obadiah Clement had fixed by his door, 'Squire 
 Emerson in the most dignified manner, called the meeting to 
 order. He knew his business, and he thought he knew himself. 
 A moderator, as commanded by the statute, was first to be chosen. 
 " Please forward your ballots, gentlemen," said he. But not a man 
 moved. They hadn't a ballot. Then the 'Squire explained and 
 some one asked Col. Clement for paper and a pen. He had the 
 pen, but said he did not think there was any paper iu the house. 
 Some one suggested there was birch bark by the fire-place, and ye 
 dignified chairman said that would do. It was cut in little slips, 
 the names written, and the ballots forwarded. It did not take 
 long to count them, and the chairman declared Joshua Copp unani- 
 mously elected. 'Squire Emerson, after administering the oath of 
 office, whispered in Mr. Copp's ear that a clerk was necessary, and 
 'Squire Joshua, in the style of his great predecessor, said, " Please 
 forward your ballots, gentlemen, for town clerk." This time they 
 knew how to do it, and Obadiah Clement having every one, was 
 also declared unanimously elected. 
 
FIRST DEMOCRATIC COURT. 279 
 
 Then there was a pause; no one knew exactly what was 
 wanted, or who would he suitable for the offices ; and after a little 
 .general discussion, and considerable private talk, they concluded 
 to adjourn to the twelfth of August next, as the day to finish the 
 business of the meeting, and obey the requirements of the great 
 statute so kindly passed for their benefit. 
 
 The morn of August 12th came. The pati-iots of Warren 
 assembled, aiid even a few of those loyal to King George, who 
 were not in the habit of saying much, looked in upon the meeting. 
 But every thing was cut and dried beforehand, as is often the case 
 for town meetings of later years, and it took but very few minutes 
 to elect Obadiah Clement, Joshua Copp, and Israel Stevens, 
 another new comer, selectmen; Simeon Smith, constable; and 
 William Butler, Reuben Clement, aud Thomas Clark, surveyors of 
 highways. Then, as this was all the business that could legally* 
 come before the meeting, they adjourned without day." 
 
 Another thing might also be established, and as it was imme- 
 diately done, it is proper to mention it here. It was the opening 
 of a Court. In it Judge Joshua Copp f presided for a long time 
 with dignity, aud dispensed exact justice. As he grew in years 
 Judge Jonathan Merrill succeeded him, and was noted for firm- 
 ness and the energy with which he enforced his decisions. This is 
 well illustrated in the celebrated case, Isaac Clifibrd versus John 
 Morrill. Clifibrd sued Morrill for the value of a hog which he had 
 sold him, and the case was returned before his honor Judge 
 Merrill. Each had a lawyer from some distant land, and after a 
 full hearing, the case was decided for the defendant. The first 
 time afterwards the Judge met Mr. C. the latter would not speak, 
 but gxunted like a hog at his honor. The same thing happened 
 the next time they met ; whereupon Judge M.if turned short about, 
 
 ■ * See Vol. i. Town Clert'a Eecorde. 
 
 \ First Marriafjein Warren. — Esqujre Joslftia- Copp ped'ormed nearly all the 
 maiTiage ceremonies while he held ofBce. He married John Marston, the first ■ 
 marriage in town. The latter had no money and was to pay a bushel of heans in 
 advance. He only carried lialf a hushel, got married and trusted too for the other 
 lialf; and would not pay hecause he said his wile kicked him out of bed, and he 
 had to lie imderneath. Marston moved to Eonmey and was a drunken man. 
 Weld, who kept store, paid him in rum to i-un naked through the street. Weld's 
 wife horsewhixDped Marston, making the fur fly good, and then wliipped her hus- 
 band too. 
 
 X Esquire -Jonathan was a man who could shake folks, if he was smiling and 
 smooth as oil. When he .and his father witii tlieir I'amilies were moving to War- 
 
280 HISTOET OF WAEREN. 
 
 seized uncle Isaac by the collar, shook him nearly out of his boots, 
 got an apology out of Mm in double quick time, and only released 
 him when he had promised to behave well in the future.* 
 
 But more often when the parties were not satisfied with the 
 decisions of our distinguished jurists, they took an appeal and 
 carried the case to a court of higher powers and broader jurisdic- 
 tion, established by the great Eepublic of New Hampshire, in 
 some place far across "Warren's borders. f 
 
 But the highest of all the rights and privileges that could now 
 be exercised, was that of sending a minister, ambassador, or pleni- 
 potentiary extraordinary, commonly termed the representative, to 
 the Great and General Court we have mentioned, which like the 
 aforesaid renowned Amphictyonic council, made the general laws 
 which were for the government of the numerous proud little 
 democracies of the republic. By so doing they secured the high 
 honors thus conferred, and had a voice in equalizing the light bur- 
 dens of taxation imposed. 
 
 Thus the work was done. The assemblies, otherwise called 
 town meetings, were short but they answered the pm-pose, and our 
 grand little hamlet was organized a healthful State. It was to pay 
 a light tribute, as we have seen, in the shape of State and Conti- 
 nental taxes, for protection, to the great Republic that had such a 
 kind regard for it, but in other respects was whoUy free. 
 
 Still there was no danger, even if it had not been compelled 
 to pay a farthing. Its mountain boundaries were a safeguard and 
 a barrier against neighboring territories, and the wild mountain- 
 
 ren, they met a man who wouldn't turn out. High words ensued, and then the 
 'Squire and the stranger took off their coats and went at it. The stranger got a 
 thrashing, and Stevens Men-ill whose religion forbade him to fight, turned the 
 stranger's horse out of the road, and they went on their way rejoicing. 
 
 * Isaac Clifford of Wentworth, was in Col. David Hobart's regiment from Deo. 
 7, 1776, to March 1777. He was the son of Isaac Clifford of llingston, N. H., who 
 maiTied Sarah Healy and then moved to Komney . Isaac Clifford, of Eomney , was 
 the ancestor of aU the Cliffords in the Ascmamchumaulie valley. Hon. Nathan 
 Clifford, one of the Judges of the United States Supreme Court, is one of the 
 family.— See Hist, of Chester, p. 493. 
 
 t Whipping Posts and S'tocts.— Warren never had these useful machines for 
 preserving the peace and inculcatinggood order. But our friends down at Plym- 
 outh did. At the latter place. Col. WiUiara Webster, " the old man of aU," had 
 charge of them, and it is said he could lay on twenty lashes as handsomely as any 
 man that ever lived. By an act passed in 1701, a penalty was Inflicted for profane 
 swearing, of sitting in the stoolis not exceeding two hours, and for a second 
 offence, not exceedmg three hours; for drunkenness, to sit in the stocks three 
 hours. Theft miglit in some oases be punished by whipping, not exceeding twenty 
 stripes. The stocks and whipping were legal penalties, by an act passed in 1791 
 and in force in 1815. 
 
THE LITTLE BEIEF AUTHOEITIES. 281 
 
 eers of old Peeling, and the land of Trecothick and the other 
 surrounding regions, seldom durst venture across them. 
 
 Yet it was a high honor as we intimated before — worth a 
 thousand times the small pittance rendered — to have all the 
 machinery of State running within its territory. As in old Rome 
 the consuls, so in our mountain town the selectmen were the high 
 functionaries and rulers, taking precedence of each other in the 
 order of their election. And then, afterwards elected or appointed 
 the judges who presided in the courts, the great ambassador or 
 representative, the treasurer who kept the money in a ponderous 
 "safe" — his pocket, — the custodian of the peace, the mighty 
 constable, the superintendents of the great public roads, the high- 
 way surveyors, the conservators of the royal game, called deer 
 keepers, the tythingman who kept order on the Sabbath, the 
 gatherer of the revenue or tribute, styled the tax collector, the 
 hog constables, politely termed hogreeves,* who put yokes upon the 
 necks, and rings in the noses of swine — each well filled his sub- 
 ordinate place and helped continue the State. 
 
 Of course now the citizens of our beautiful hamlet, especially 
 those loyal to King Greorge, fondly appreciated the eiforts of the 
 kind go-between, the great Committee of Safety, and the other 
 patriotic agents, who had contributed so much to bring about this 
 healthful organization, and gently reciprocating the fond affection 
 of the young and vigorous Republic of New Hampshire, exerted 
 every energy to become a great and powerful democracy, much to 
 the benefit of themselves and their neighbors round about. 
 
 * flbffreewes.— Charles Bowles was the first hogreeve in Warren. By an act of 
 George t, 1719, it was enacted that no yoke shall he acoonnted sufficient that shall 
 not be the depth of the swine's neck, and half so much helow, and the sole or 
 bottom three times as long as the thickness of the swine's neck. The ringing was 
 to insert a piece of iron wire through the hog's nose, bring the ends togetner, and 
 twist them so that it should project about an inch above the nose, which would 
 prevent rooting. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 HOW THE REVENUE WAS KAISED TO CAEKY ON THE WAR MUCH 
 TO THE DELIGHT OE SEVERAL PATRIOTIC GENTLEMEN CALLED 
 TORIES, AND WHAT SOLDIERS WERE FURNISHED TO FILL WAR- 
 REN'S quota; and OTHER VERY INTERESTING AND ENTER- 
 TAINING MATTER. 
 
 The young Eepublic wanted money ; the good citizens of 
 "Warren knew it ; Samuel Emerson, of Plymouth, had instructed 
 them how it must he raised ; the selectmen wanted to try the new 
 democratic machine, and they immediately called a town meeting 
 for that purpose. August 28, 1779, it was held. G-ardner Dustin 
 having been chosen moderator they refused by vote to accept a 
 plan of government sent them by the Continental Congress and 
 then voted to raise one hundred and fifty pounds to lay out on 
 highways and one hundred pounds to defray town charges.* 
 
 And now the selectmen, as assessors, went to work imme- 
 diately. They traveled from clearing to clearing, the little islands 
 in the woods, for the forest was the rule and the oj)enings the 
 exceptions in these bright primitive days ; they counted the horses 
 and neat cattle, and estimated the broad acres of arable, mowing 
 and pasture lands, and then carefully calculated each man's pro- 
 portion. The lists made out, they were placed in the hands of 
 Simeon Smith, constable, for collection, he fllhng the office of tax 
 collector as well.f 
 
 Simeon Smith was a man of perseverence, but he found his 
 
 * This was depreciated currency — tlie old Contineutal money. 
 t For tlie first inventories of Warren, and tax list, see Appendix. 
 
A "public vandue." 288 
 
 task a cUfflcult one. Same paid willingly, and some resolutely 
 declared they would not pay at all. He coaxed and flattered, but 
 all to no avail. Then he determined to try what virtue there was 
 in law. In right good earnest he went to work. He took the 
 hardest cases first. Stevens Merrill, the stern, silent man, was the 
 toughest customer. His whole tax was 2QI 15s lid, and he 
 declared he would not pay it. So Simeon Smithftook his cow by 
 distraint, and advertised it for sale by posting a TOtice in Obadiah 
 Clement's bar-room. It read as follows: — 
 
 "to be sold at a 
 
 PUBLIC VANDUE 
 
 at the highest bidder, at the house of Mr. Obadiah Clement, an 
 innholder in "Warren, the 21st Ascy of December, at six o'clock, P. 
 M., One Cow. Artical of sale to be seen at time and place by me 
 the subscriber. 
 
 SIMEON SMITH, Constable. 
 Warren, Dec. 18, 1779." 
 
 Then the conditions are set out at length, something] as 
 follows : — " A cow to be sold ; no man to bid less than a pound ; 
 if two persons bid at the same time, then the cow to be set up 
 again ; cash or money to be all paid down : if the buyer won't pay, 
 then he shall forfeit the cost of the vandue. Obadiah Clement 
 apinted vandue master and dark of the sail." 
 
 But Simeon Smith had to look sharp or he would not be able 
 to keep that cow to sell. Stevens Merrill was on the watch to 
 retake her. Three nights. the constable had her in possession, and 
 each night he had to post a guard over her. The first night two 
 men at the price of ten shillings each, stood sentry ; next, one man 
 performed the duty through all the dark hours for the same 
 amount, and the third night two strong men mounted guard, and 
 also had a large force at convenient distance, who would come at 
 call to assist them if necessary. There was great danger, and 
 people were afraid of Stevens Merrill, for he was brave as a lion, 
 and his son Jonathan as cimning as a fox. In the still hours of 
 night they might come and" steal the cow away. And so they 
 
284 HISTORY OP WAREEN. 
 
 -watched, but the " terror " of the mountain hamlet did not come.* 
 
 December 21, 1779, the cow was sold, being struck off to 
 Eeuben "Whitcher, the "hiest" bidder, for ninety pounds. Mr. 
 M. received all the money except what was necessary to pay taxes, 
 costs, and charges. 
 
 Jonathan Clement was as obdurate as Mr. Merrill. He was 
 determined not to pay, and there was also a special " vandue " for 
 the sale of some of his property. 
 
 All the rest of the few contrary citizens now saw that our 
 constable was in earnest, and so paid up. But such things often 
 happened afterwards. The very next year Jonathan Merrill and 
 Joshua Merrill had some of their ewe sheep sold, and a little after, 
 Joseph Patch had " so much of his good ingUsh hay sold as would 
 pay his taxes," and somebody else had the exquisite pleasure of 
 seeing their two " puter platters " auctioned off" for their rates.f 
 
 The next year Col. Clement was himself constable, having 
 taken the place of Joshua Merrill, who backed out of the honor. 
 Col. C. collected and paid over an immense sum of money to Maj. 
 CMld, for supplying the troops to the westward, and also furnished 
 a large sum to the Committee of Safety.t Thus the sinews of war 
 
 * SIMEON SMITH'S ACCOUNT. 
 
 £ S. d.f. 
 
 The aoompt of my feeas for distraining 10 
 
 To two keepers one knight 1000 
 
 To one keeper one knight 10 
 
 To two keepers one night 1000 
 
 To one knight ID 
 
 one keeper one knight _ . . . . 10 
 
 To evidences to tendering the Overplus money that is'dne to the said 
 
 Merrill 1 16 
 
 To expenses of the cow & binder charges and expenses for keeping . 18 10 
 
 21 6 
 Tax • ( U 17 11 2 
 
 ^^^ j 14 17 11 2 
 
 t Tor account of these sales, see Town Clerk's Records, Vol. i. 311 to 3U. 
 
 X " Thursday March 8th 1781. Ordered the Treasr to Discount with Obadiali 
 Clemens, Constable for Warren, One thousand and five hundred pounds, old 
 Emission, being so much paid to Major Child by order of the Committee of Safety, 
 agreeable to his Receipt of the 10th of Ooto 1780 for surplying the Troops at the 
 Westward, £1600."— N. H. Hist. CoU. Vol. vii. 252. 
 
 Cold Winter. 
 The winter of 1780 was terrible cold. There were forty days, thirty-one in 
 March, that it never thawed on the south side of the house. 
 
 DarJc Day. 
 May 19, 1780, was the dark day. The sun was seen at rising, but it was soon 
 obscured by clouds and smoke, and it became so dark that fowls went to roost and 
 candles were lighted. 
 
HOW THEY OPERATED THE " DRAFT." 286 
 
 were procured and the Continental Congress and the young 
 republic satisfied. 
 
 But something else beside money must be had. Men to fill up 
 the army were absolutely necessary. We have seen what a num- 
 ber, considering the whole population, had gone voluntarily, but 
 now, though the will was good, the country was weary and drafts 
 must be made. The soldiers had got to come, and the citizens in 
 their democratic capacity were ready to furnish them. 
 
 The selectmen also called a town meeting for this purpose. It 
 was held July 10, 1780. They all felt very patriotic in Obadiah 
 Clement's old bar-room. The good " old west endea rum " made 
 them stomachful and brave, and they voted without a dissenting 
 voice " that the soldiers shall be raised by a rate for that present 
 time." Also voted Obadiah Clement, Joshua Oopp to be a com- 
 mittee to provide soldiers for the town, " and to exbmp those 
 
 THAT HAVE DONE TURNS IN THE WAR, Tn,L OTHERS HAVE EQTJn,L 
 TO THEM." 
 
 This was done in the selectmenship of Joshua Copp, Thomas 
 Clark, and John "WTiitcher, and our committee assured by these 
 high rulers that aU their expenses should be promptly paid labored 
 bravely to hire a soldier, for only one was wanted then from the 
 town. They succeeded and Caleb Young* went as "Warren's levy 
 into the Continental army. He was but a youth who happened to 
 tarry a few days at Obadiah Clement's inn, and a few pounds for 
 a bounty and several mugs of flip, in which the hissing logger- 
 head had been thrust, made the young man exceeding brave and 
 caused him to greatly desire " to hear drums and see a battle." 
 
 Next year the town had to furnish another man. March 7, 
 1781, t " Voted, that the selectmen be a committee to provide one 
 soldier for three years, or during the war." This time the task 
 was more difficult, but Col. Clement who was now the first " in 
 the triune of mighty governors " yearly chosen, called selectmen, 
 bent aU his energies to the work and accomplished it. 
 
 Charles Bowles, a young stalwart man, of dark complexion, 
 
 * Caleb Toung enlisted July H, 1780. 
 
 t The new voters in the year 1781, were— 
 
 Chaxles Bowles. Amos Heath. Henry Sunbnry. 
 
 Jonathan Foster. John Hinohson. William Tarleton. 
 
 Joseph French. Peter Stevens. William Whitemai). 
 
286 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 having some of the blood of Ham flowing in his veins, and his 
 hair slightly "kinky," had just settled on the top of that fertile 
 ridge over which wound the Height o' land road towards Tarletou 
 lake. He had also made another opening in the woods in the 
 north part of the town, near the line of old Coventry. He was a 
 good man, religiously inclined, somewhat given to preaching, and 
 when his patriotism was roused, as only Obadiali Olemeut knew 
 how to rouse it in those days, was decidedly in favor of the war. 
 In the time of the town's sorest need, he came to the rescue, pock- 
 eted a good fat bounty, as is the custom in all times when it is to 
 be had, and as many another had done, shouldered his musket and 
 went marching away to the wars. 
 
 When the contest was over, he came back, got married, set- 
 tled down, labored hard week days, preached with unction on the 
 Sabbath and raised up a large and respectable family of children. 
 , It was his boast through life that he fought his cpuutry's battles 
 bravely." 
 
 * Charles Bowles was at the battle of Bemiingtou, in Col. David Hobait's 
 Regt. His Captain was Jeremiah Post. He enlisted Jnly 2i, 1777, and was dis- 
 charged Sept. 25, 1777, having served two months and three days. B[e received in 
 all tf pounds and 8 shillings, and traveled to Xo. i, 72 miles, and from thence to 
 Bennington, 112. 
 
 Col. David Holiart was from Plymouth.— See Sec. State's Records. 
 
 CHARLES BOWLES' OEKTIlrlCATE. 
 
 " in the year 17S1 i, Charles bowles, made a pitch of one hundred aker lot of 
 land by order of the Committee of Coventry Avbich lot w^as Savaidby Josiah Burn- 
 ham by order ol said Committee in the aforesaid eighty one i went to worls and fall 
 trees and made me a house on said lot— then i was called into the ar-my in 17831 
 w^ent to work with some hands with mo and cleared and soed one bushel and half 
 of grain and in October 1780 i moved my family thare whare i have made my home 
 ever since till i sold my euterest to Obadiali Clement and said Lot hath never been 
 claimed by any other person till this day as I have ever heard 
 
 CHARLES BOWLES." 
 
 Charles Bowles was claimed by the town of Andovev, N. H., as a part of their 
 cxuota,May 8, 1782, but that town did not get him. — Sec. of State's Records. 
 
 FAMILY KECORD OP CHARLES AND MOLLY (Cor.'jSS) BOWLES. 
 
 He was born Oct. 20, 1760, at Hanover, Mass. 
 
 She was born Mch. 3, 17S8, at Salem, N. H. 
 
 Married Apr. 14, 1784. 
 
 James, born Deo. 19, 1781, at Warren, K. 11. 
 
 Molly, bornDeo. 12, 1787 at Warren, N. H. 
 
 Chaiies, born Jan. 24, 1789, at Warren, N. H. 
 
 Elenor M., born May 18, 1792, at Warren, N. H. 
 
 Jesse, boru Feb. 2ti, 1795, at AVarren, !N. H. 
 
 Euna, born May 17, 1797, at WaiTen, N. I-I. 
 
 Hannah, born Mch. 3, 1799, at Warren, N. H. 
 
 Jonathan, bom Jan. 13, 18U1, at Warren, N . H, Died Aug. 23, 1S03. 
 
 Sarah, boru May 20, 1803. 
 Charles Bowles afterwards became a Free-will Baptist minister, and is now 
 one of the saints of that church. A volume of some 300 pages printed matter has 
 been published, giving a history of his wonderful powers and eloquence as a min- 
 ister. He was a mulatto. 
 
ADDITIONAL SETTLERS. 287 
 
 111 1782 * the same thing happened to the town again, and 
 Henry SHAW,t a new coiner who paid the great tax in town that 
 very year, of three shillings and nine pence, also' went to the war 
 from onr hamlet. He got a snug little bcfunty of sixty-nine pounds 
 fifteen shillings, lawful money, for enlisting. Wliat became of 
 him we are not informed ; but it is certain he never returned to 
 Warren. 
 
 Now this was all on account of the organization — what the 
 town was obliged to do according to law. But a hundred other 
 things were done about these times, many of which are exceed- 
 ingly interesting to us, who live in " this latter and degenerate 
 age." 
 
 Moses Copp,t son of 'Squire Joshua Copp, though a mere boy, 
 had been in the army a great deal, and was noted for his daring 
 and bravery. He was at "West Point when Arnold sold himself to 
 the British. David Merrill, a strong muscular man, who mar- 
 ried 'Squire Joshua's daughter, but did not then live in town, 
 assisted in rowing Arnold to the hostile man-of-war that received 
 him. He was paid a large sum of gold for his services, — not very 
 meritorious ones as most folks think at the present day. 
 
 The great Committee of Safety admired William Heath, our 
 lank rawney hunter of fighting proclivities, and paid him £18 for 
 depreciation.** 
 
 * The new settlers in 1782, were,— 
 
 Jonathan Harbord. Gordon Hutchins. Hemy Shaw., 
 
 Barnabas Holmes. . Moses Noyes. Nicholas Whiteman. 
 
 Wi-KEEW, August 26, yr. 1782. 
 t " Henet Siiaw. Received of the selectmen of wan-en Sixty Nine pound fllteen 
 shillings Lawful money as a Bounty for inlisting to serve in the Continental anny 
 three year for the town of WaiTen from the time he pass muster I say received per 
 me 
 
 his 
 test JOSHUA MEEKILL HENRY M SHAW 
 
 JOSHUA Copp mark 
 
 A true copy Exmd ■ 
 
 Attest Joshua Copp, ) Selectmen 
 
 William Butler, > of 
 Stephen Eichaedson, ) Warren." 
 Henry Shaw. Warren, 1782, Aug. 28th. 
 
 1787 Reed an ox'der on the Treasurer for twenty pounds. 
 
 JOSEPH PATCH. 
 —See Sec. of State's Records. 
 t Moses Copp maiTied a daughter of John Mills, and after the war, moved 
 away to Canada. He had several sons. One settled in Iowa, (Btirlington,) and at 
 liis death lef% a property of more than one hundred thousand dollars. Moses Copp 
 was entitled to a pension, but never got it because he lived in Canada. He was 
 accustomed to scold about it. 
 
 ** See N. H. Hist. CoU. Vol. vii. 
 
288 HI8T0EY Oy WABBEN. 
 
 Eight at home Mrs. Joseph Patch had another pleasant adven- 
 ture in which she exhibited the pluck of her father, and the 
 shrewdness of her sharp brother Jonathan. One day when her 
 husband was away, an old soldier called at the house and walked 
 in without ceremony. Mrs. P. and her children were at dinner, 
 and the stranger helped himself. Then he became saucy and 
 impudent, and when he was proceeding to offer her some pergonal 
 indignity, saying he would burn the house if she resisted, she 
 drew herself up firmly and said to her little boy, "Go to the barn 
 and tell your father to come in instantly. I'U see if I am to be 
 abused in my own house." The ruse worked admirably. The son 
 started on his errand, and the old straggler, who had heard of 
 Patch and did not care to meet him, rushed out of the house and 
 disappeared in the thick woods in the shortest time possible. 
 
 But the saddest thing was the death of JEphraim Lund. He 
 had served three years and then re-enlisted during the war. It was 
 ia a battle in the south, shortly before CornwaUis' surrender, that 
 he met his death. He died bravely ; a comrade placed the green 
 turf above him, and dropped a tear on the new made grave. The 
 spot where he is lying is unmarked and forgotten ; and his little 
 clearing where he lived, the green woods upon Mt. Mist, and on 
 the shore of Tarleton lake, know him no more forever. 
 
 Many other men who came to Warren shortly after the contest 
 closed, also served in the war. Of these, Joseph French and 
 Samuel Khight, who were at the battle of Bunker HiU, are per- 
 haps the best remembered.* 
 
 While the town was thus gallantly raising men for the army, 
 other great events were transpiring in the wild but pleasant regions 
 beyond the western mountains. When Burgoyne had marched 
 down by Lake Champlain, the inhabitants on the long river of 
 pines, the Connecticut, had been terribly frightened, and leaving 
 homes, crops, and cattle, had hurried away into the eastern inte- 
 
 * other revolutionary soldiers who lived in Warren, are Asa Low, Jacob Low, 
 Luke Libbey, the latter served seven years and six months, was taken prisoner, 
 carried to England and ke^t there foui'teen months. John Abbott, he served seven 
 years and was a drum-major, and Reuben Batchelder. Mr. Batohelder never got 
 a pension. He would tell in his old age how he suffered in the war, and then cry 
 about it. He was a prisoner, and came so near starving that he had to eat the very 
 leather breeches which he wore. Hem'y Sunbury who lived on the Height-o'land, 
 was a Hessian in the British army, and was taken prisoner at the surrender or 
 Burgoyne. 
 
THE HAMPSHIRE GRANTS. 289 
 
 rior, where buried in the fastnesses of the mountains, and in the 
 deep woods, they felt that they were safe. But in the closing days 
 of the war when many of the Green-mouiitain boys were away 
 fighting bravely under Washiagton and Greene, frights came 
 oftener to the dwellers of the New Hampshire Grants, as they 
 were known in those days. To understand these terrors fully it 
 will be necessary for us to write a few dignified pages. 
 
 New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York as we told in 
 the history of the old proprietors, each laid claim to the Vermont 
 territory. The people of that hilly country wanted to be admitted 
 into the confederation, and the Continental Congress did not dare 
 do it for fear of offending, these other important States. The 
 would be State of Vermont was slightly discontented at this ; the 
 British government knew it, and now when the prospect of fail- 
 ing in subjugating the rebels was every day becoming more 
 apparent, it was thought to coax her away along with the " Ca- 
 nuck" country and the land of the "Blue-noses," and oontiaueher 
 a pleasant British province. 
 
 For this purpose agents with British gold in plenty in their 
 pockets, travelled the whole country through. The few who were 
 venal, they bought, but the most were faithful to the rebel cause. 
 To capture the leaders of the latter class and to give the tories who 
 were frequently rather roughly handled, revenge, marauding par- 
 ties consisting of French, Indians, and loyalists, hurried to the 
 Connecticut valley. Then there were the wildest kind of panics, 
 and men, women, and children, ran away. Nearly all would go, 
 and at times the Coos country would be nearly deserted. 
 
 The Committee of Safety made every effort to render assistance. 
 A large number of soldiers were raised to defend the land of the 
 Coosucks, and Captain Absalom Peters* who chose the neighbor- 
 
 . * Captain Absalom Peters graduated at Dartmouth College in 1780. His health 
 failed him and he settled on a fai-m in Wentworth, N. H. In Oct. 1780, a great 
 alarm was occasioned by the d-estrnotion of Eoyalton, Vt., ami from a report that 
 4,000 British troops had crossed Lake Champlain with the intention of proceeding 
 to the Connecticut river. At this time Captain Peters marched at the head of six 
 companies from the noi-thern part of New Hampshire to Newbury, Vt., the place 
 appointed for the rendezvous, and on his arrival was aid to Maj. Gen. Bailey which 
 he sustained till the close of the war.— N. H. Hist. Coll. Vol. iii. 245. 
 
 Captain Peters lived in Warren in 1793, and had at that time living with him a 
 " little nigger boy " liamed Prime. One very rainy day he told I'rime to get the 
 cows; but "young sooty" wouldn't, ami unbeknown to Captain Peters, hid under 
 the barn. About dark the Captain went after them himself and hallooed for Prime 
 aJl over the pasture. He drove them up and hallooed "little nig " in the barn-yard, 
 but got no answer. While milking, Captain P. happened to turn his head and saw 
 
 s 
 
290 HISTORY OF WABBEN. 
 
 ing land of Wentworth for his home, went marching through our 
 hamlet to the rescue, at the head of six companies. Hundreds of 
 pounds of powder and balls, a thousand flints and more, tin ket- 
 tles, borax, New England rum, flies, and a screw-plate, were 
 forwarded to " Cowass," to the care of Col. Charles Johnson and 
 Maj. B. Whitcomb. They put all these munitions of war and men 
 to good use, and did guard duty most valorously. 
 
 But they could not do every thing ; they could not prevent a 
 panic, and to provide for that, our township of Warren went to 
 work bravely. The citizens enlarged their houses, increased the 
 number of their beds, raised more provisions, cut more hay to put 
 in their barns, and then last of aU called a town meeting to provide 
 for emergencies in case of " great alarums." 
 
 "Without a dissenting voice they determined March 22, 1780, in 
 order to receive then- neighbors properly, who generally came 
 pretty much out of breath, " to lay up a stock of provisions to he 
 delt out as it appears to be wanted." " Voted to raise two hun- 
 dred wait of flour and two hundred wait of beef for this present 
 year, to be dealt out in case of alarum." " Chose Joshua Copp 
 and Obadiah Clement a Committee to provide the towns stock of 
 provisions."* 
 
 Having thus handsomely provided for their friends, then, if 
 the terrible foe should pursue across the highlands by Tarleton 
 lake or up the wild roistering Oliverian, ovir mountaineers were 
 also prepai'ed to receive him in a manner which would not be 
 quite so agi-eeable. They procured a good stock of lead, powder, 
 and flints, scoured up their muskets, and bloodshed would have 
 followed had the Britishers only ventured within the border. The 
 ' Coos neighbors often came to "Warren ; but King George's troops 
 and allies, never. 
 
 And now "Warren had a different kind of warlike excitement. 
 
 Prime's white eyes and teeth looking out from under the bam. Peters was mad. 
 He took Prime into the house, stood him on a case of drawers and told him to 
 answer in the same tone he used. First, Peters whispered the word " Prime," and 
 Prime answered back in a wliisper. Then he raised his pitch until he shouted so 
 that he could be heard half a mile, and " little sooty" strained himsell' so much 
 trying to impwer, that he looked white in the face and was. well punished. The 
 neighuors win) heard \\\to ;,',--oaUy :imu''<ri, nnrt it is said that Prime was a good 
 buy ;'nii nevyr hid under the b;ir!i nxJiiii. 
 
 (Japtain J'etevK Kcnerally Nwiit bavcfoot. When i-lectod to the legislature by 
 the town of Weutworlh, ho wore sl.oes; but lie i-aM it m:irti- his fci't >•» tender it 
 took more than six months to touglioii them. 
 
 * Titwni Clerk's ftecords, \ ol. i. 7. 
 
COLONEL GREELEY AEEESTED. 291 
 
 "When the tide of battle was rolling through the south and Gen. 
 Greene was winning glory, fighting with Cornwallis, John Balch, 
 who still rode post, brought the news that our great Committee of 
 Safety were trying Col. Jonathan Greeley, one of the old proprie- 
 tors " for practices inimical to the United States." Our citizens 
 were greatly roused by the intelligence, for Col. Greeley had been 
 one of their best patrons. But when they learned that he had been 
 found guilty and sentenced to give a bond for his behavior to Gen. 
 Folsom, and was confined to his own house and a certain portion 
 of the highway, eighty rods or so in length, limited by the flag- 
 stafi' on the east and the old bui-ying ground on the west, they 
 were almost as much excited as when they heard of Gen. Stark's 
 great victory at Bennington. But Col. Greeley did not long 
 remain in confinement. He had good friends on the committee 
 and they well remembered what a fine fellow he was as mine host 
 in old East Kingston, and they soon let him off easy.* 
 
 But in nine days this affair was an old story, so fast did events 
 hasten in these troublesome times. Something new came almost 
 every day and when the fortune of war hung trembling in the 
 balance and victory inclined first to one side and then the, other, 
 away up in this northern country, in the vrild forests of the New 
 Hampshire Grants, discontent was fomenting, treason to the young 
 republic of New Hampshire was hatching, and a power in the 
 west, almost like Satan in Heaven, was trying to draw off one- 
 third of New Hampshire's beautiful towns, Warreu among them, 
 lying in the vicinity.of Connecticut river. Who did it? It was 
 the deUghtfuI-would-be-Green-mountain State ; that could not get 
 admitted to the Union, that was determined not to go with old 
 England, and so was planning how a free and independent repub- 
 lic she might set up for herself. 
 
 All the territory and the greatest population possible was 
 essential in the highest degree, and so, as has been softly insin- 
 uated, in imitation of the fond mother country, agents from west 
 of the Connecticut crossed that bright stream and labored in all 
 the bordering eastern towns. Their logic was powerful, and their 
 tongues persuasive, and a score of young democracies were almost 
 influenced to cast their lot with that of the young empire to the 
 
 * N. H. Hist. Coll. Vol. vii. 
 
292 HISTORY OP WAKREN. 
 
 Avest. So much progi-ess was made that a convention was called 
 to meet at Charleston, N. H., and the townships agreed to send 
 delegates. 
 
 "Warren was wide awake. Still business must be performed 
 in a manner that should comport with the solemnity and dignity 
 of the occasion. A town meeting was called. It was held Jan. 
 3d, 1781, and was " to see if the town unll send one man to attend, 
 on the convention to be held at Charlestown on the third Tuesday 
 of January, inst., at one o'cloch afternune, according to anenno- 
 tifloation sent from the county of Chester."* 
 
 After a long discussion chose Obadiah Clement to attend the' 
 convention at " Charlestown, No. 4," and as it was very important 
 whether they should belong to the great " Amphictyonic council," 
 of the east or to that of the west, a committee consisting of the 
 most dignified and influential men of the hamlet, was chosen to 
 instruct the delegate elect how he should act. It consisted of 
 Joshua Copp, William Butler, John Whitcher, Thomas Clark, and 
 Isaiah Batchelder. 
 
 They performed their duty faithfully, and in mid winter Col. 
 Clement mounted on his strong black stallion, rode awaj' through 
 the woods, over the mountains, down the Connecticut to '' Charles- 
 town, No. ■!." 
 
 Col. Clement attended the Convention thoroughly. What 
 transpired has never been fully written in any history. Like the 
 transactions of the old Hartford Convention, or the mighty mys- 
 tery of the Iron Mask, its acts will never be known. 
 
 Suffice it to say, our delegate heard ' all that was to be said, 
 pondered upon it deeply, and then came home. He was not 
 pleased, and plainly said so. To cross the mountainous Height- 
 o'-land, to ford the Connecticut, to climb the Green mountains 
 that they might reach the future capital of the 'would be empire, 
 was not so easy as to ride down the banks of the delightful 
 Asquamchumauke and Merrimack, to the bright lands from which 
 they had emigrated, to the homes and pleasant associations of 
 childhood, and the happy intercourse of those with whom they 
 had done business for years, and with whom by far they had 
 rather be united as members of a great Amphictyonic Council. 
 
 * Town Clerk's Records, Vol. i, 8. 
 
THE FIEST EEPEESKNTATIVE. 293 
 
 So oui" grand little hamlet among the hills gave her western 
 friends the go-by and determined to remain as she wag. 
 
 But Col. C. did not feel quite right in relation to the " Charles- 
 town No. 4," Convention. He felt he was not aiding the cause in 
 the least which of all others was most dear to him. So, to ease 
 his conscience, he went to woi-k, like a triie lover of office, to get 
 elected Representative to the Great and General Court of New 
 Hampshire. Warren, "Wentworth, and Coventry, were then classed 
 together, and Dec. 11, 1782, the free and independent voters of 
 these several towns being met at the house of our friend Joshua 
 Merrill, familUarly called farmer Joshua, Obadiah Clement was 
 chosen Representative. That night " he felt complete." He was 
 the first man in Warren to enjoy this high and immortal honor. 
 
 The Great and General Court met at Exeter, N. H., in those 
 days, and at the opening of the session. Col. C. was as usual 
 promptly on hand to attend to his duty. And he did it faithfully. 
 The war of the revolution, although rapidly drawing to a close, 
 was not as yet finished ; much remained to be done, and our pat- 
 riotic Representative was not behind hand in voting men and 
 money. He was for pushing on until independence was fully 
 secured. His constituents sustained him in this, and afterwards 
 gave Mm a triumphant re-election. 
 
 And now what a proud satisfaction our citizens possessed if 
 they could only see it. They had done their duty, and were more 
 than ever prepared to move on in the grand march of democracies, 
 well knowing that the taxes were all raised promptly, the men for 
 the army all furnished and more too, supplies of provisions, 
 moose-hide breeches, ammunition, and "West India rum, always 
 forthcoming, and herself and representatives loyal to the core, and 
 as true to the New Hampshire repubKc, her lover, as the needle to 
 the pole. 
 
 Soldiers in the Revolution. — The I'ollowing men served in the war of the Kevo- 
 lution, going from Warren at or about the date given : 
 
 William Heath, 1775; Eeuhen Clement, 1775; Joseph Whitcher, 1775 ; Ephraim 
 Lund, 1775; Joshua Copp, 1775; Simeon Smith, 1775; Chase Whitcher, 1776; John 
 Marston, 1776; (1) .Tohn Hinchaon, 1776 ; Joseph Lund, 1776 ; Jonathan Yellows, 1777 ; 
 John Mills, Jr., 1776, 1777, 'and 1781; Moses Copp, 1779; David Merrill, 1779; Caleb 
 Young, 1780; Charles Bowles, 1781; Henry Shaw, 1783; William Tarleton, 1782. (2) 
 
 (1) John Marston was' in Captain Joshua Hayward's Company in 1776. He 
 settled in Warren before 1780. Alex. Craig was Lieut, of a Company. 
 
 (2) William Tarleton was Captain of the 8th Company of Col. Timothy Bedel's 
 regiment, raised in 1778, and doing duty on the northern frontier. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FIRST FUNERAL OF A WHITE MAN^ IN WAKREN ; OR HOW 
 JOHN MILLS DIED AND WAS BURIED. 
 
 Joshua COPP, Jr. was the first white child born in 
 Warren. John Marston was the first man maliied; but eleven 
 years went by after the settlement, before old father Time on spec- 
 tral wings, with hour-glass aiid scythe, lighted down in our 
 Asquamchumaiike valley, and claimed a victim. 
 
 It happened thus : John Mills, the first settler, who brought his 
 family to Warren, was engaged " falling a piece" on the west side 
 of the river by Indian Rock, near old Coos road. He was a very 
 smart chopper, and his son. Captain John Mills, who was at home 
 from the war on a furlough, was helping him. They had notched 
 or partly cut more than two acres of trees, but had not brought 
 one to the ground. Then they fell a great pine upon a clump of 
 spruces ; this broke them down, and they falling broke down their 
 neighbors, and so, like boys setting up bricks the whole forest 
 that had been notched was driven to the ground. This was called 
 " driving a piece," and two smart men would fell several acres a 
 day. 
 
 But unfortunately a large pine had not been sufficiently 
 notched, and it stopped the di'ive. John Mills, Senior, ventured 
 under to cut the pine ; it fell before he could escape, a limb struck 
 him on the head, and instantly he was dead. 
 
 The son bore his father home on his shoulders, laid him upon 
 the bed and summoned the neighbors. Thev came and tried to 
 
THE FIKST DEATH IN WAKREN. 295 
 
 console the grief-stricken family. But they almost refused to be 
 comforted. There was sorrow and sadness, and wretchedness, 
 and tears in that humble log cabin, and they felt that now the 
 father was dead, the world was hardly worth living for, and that 
 they too, might as weil die. Captain John Mills, Jr., had seen a 
 thousand men dead on battle-fields, but never had death come 
 home to him so terribly before. 
 
 The third day was the funeral. How long and lonely and 
 teiiible were the hours of waiting. But the time came at last, and 
 all the neighbors began to assemble. There was no minister in 
 town, no church, no tolling bell ; but 'Squire Joshua Copp read a 
 chapter in the Bible, a hymn "was sung, and then he ofiered a 
 prayer. » 
 
 The coffln was brought out and placed on a bier under the 
 trees. Sunlight and shadow, fit emblems of the hour, flickered 
 over the scene, not more breathless, hushed, and solemn, than 
 were the voice, step, and heart of those sympathizing neighbors. 
 
 The rough coflBln lid was turned back and they approached one 
 by one to take a last look of the remains ; then sunk away into 
 the silently revolving circle. The mourners presently came out 
 and indulged a tearful, momentary, final vision, and the lid was 
 closed. Col. Obadiah Clement took the charge. The bier, carried 
 on the shoulders of four men, was followed by the relatives, and 
 then the friends — every family in town were friends then — came 
 two and two abreast. 
 
 There was no graveyard in our hamlet, and they carried John 
 
 Mills down the bridle-path, the road was on the other side of the 
 
 Asquamchumauke then, to the cluster of hard pines on the river 
 
 bank." Here beneath the deep shade, the first grave of a white 
 
 man in Warren had been dug, and here was the first burying 
 
 ground of the settlers. There was no fence, no tomb stones, nor 
 
 turfy mounds, no choir, no singing at the burial, but the wind 
 
 sighing in the scattered pines, and the voice of the murmuring 
 
 river seemed a requiem to the departed. 
 
 * The little woods where .) ohn Mills was buried was used for a gi-aveyard for 
 more than twenty years. Then Pine hill burying groiind was laid out, and the 
 place where John Mills and his kindred lie sleepmer, fell into vandal hands. To- 
 day, few persons know or dream that the unsightlj^ spot on the river bank, where 
 wild brakes and bushes are growing, and gravel is dug for the roads, is the last 
 resting place of Warren's second settler. The graveyard was on the east bank oi 
 the river, about thirty rods below the old deep hole. 
 
296 HISTORY OF WABEEN. i 
 
 As they approached, the meu took off their hats, the four bier- 
 men lowered the coffin by leathern straps, and then all looked in. 
 'Squire Copp, as the last obsequiel act, in the name of the bereaved 
 family, thanked the people for their kindness and attention to the 
 dead and the living, and the procession returned to the house. 
 
 Mrs. Stevens Merrill, Mrs. Joseph Patch, and other women, 
 had cooked a plain dinner of pork and beans and Indian pudding 
 for all. The mourners had a little spirit to take, but Stevens Mer- 
 rill went to the well for pure water for the others to drink. They 
 had no pumps then, and he found the long sweep piercing the 
 skies ; the bucket swinging to and fro in the wind.' He reached 
 up and caught it, and grasping the pole drew it down hand over 
 hand until the iron bound vessel almost touched the limpid water. 
 He paused ; the mouth of the well was shaded and narrowed with 
 gi'een mosses and slender ferns, which bore on every leaf and 
 point a drop of water from the waste of the bucket. Below the 
 calm surface of the water appeared a reversed shaft, having its 
 sides begemed with the moss-borne drops which with a singular 
 effect of darkened brilliancy, shone like diamonds in a cave. 
 Through a small green subterranean orifice he could look into the 
 nethermost, luminous, boundless space, a mysterious, etherial 
 abyss, an unknown reahn of purity and peace below the earth, the 
 mirror faintly revealing the bright heaven above, the place to 
 which, as he believed, the pure spirit of John Mills had gone. 
 Then he drew up a bucket full of clear water, spattering on all 
 the rocks, and returned to the house where dinner was waiting. 
 
 The meal over, each friend tiied to say a comforting word 
 and then went mournfully home, fully realizing that there was no 
 spot on earth where men could live forever, and that death swift 
 and sudden, had stricken down one of their number in Warren. 
 How soKtary and dreary was that house of mourning when all the 
 friends had gone away home from the funeral. 
 
 A week later and Captain John MiUs' furlough was out, and 
 he went away again to the wars. Captain William Butler had 
 married a sister of the deceased man, and henceforth he was the 
 head of the family. 
 
CHAPTER lY. 
 
 ABOUT A. GRBAT AEMT IN "WABKEN ; HOW IT MAKCHED AND COUN- 
 TER-MARCHED; OF THE PRETTY NAMES IT WAS CALLED, AND 
 HOW IT WAS SUBSISTED. 
 
 In these troublous times when all was dire consternation 
 along the border, and the sounds of war came from every quarter, 
 it was necessary to keep up a powerful military force throughout 
 the country. Measui'es, therefore, were immediately taken to 
 organize the whole people into companies, regiments, and divisions, 
 and the citizens of Warren must become soldiers, of course. 
 
 The scenes and experiences of the old French war and the 
 Revolution gave a martial turn of mind, and when the order came 
 to form a military company in our mountain hamlet, they went at 
 the work with alacrity. 
 
 February 8, 1780, Obadiah Clement was commissioned Cap- 
 tain of the 9th Company of the 12th Regiment of militia, at this 
 time commanded by Col. Israel Morey. No sooner was the docu- 
 ment placed in his hands than he immediately began with his 
 usual energy to organize his company. He quickly procured 
 commissions for Lieut. "William Butler and Ensign Ephraim Tme, 
 and then when the time arrived he warned the good inhabitants 
 of Wan-en, who had much increased in numbers, to meet for May 
 training, armed and equipped as the law directs. 
 
 The place where they were ordered to assemble was in the 
 
 dry little field situated about half way between Farmer Joshua's 
 
 «and 'Squire Copp's ; and on that third Tuesday of May, familiarly 
 
2p8 HISTORY OF WABKEN. 
 
 known as " Little Training Dajr," every man, woman, and child, 
 almost, came together to execute and witness the mighty military 
 evolutions that were to be performed. 
 
 It was one of the brightest of May mornings, a sunshiny 
 breezy day, balmy in hollows and dells, and on southern uplands, 
 but fresh blowing on the ridges and along the northern mountain 
 slopes. There was music in the air, for the robins sang in the 
 maples, and the blackbird and the wood thrush warbled the sweet- 
 est melody in the white flowering sugar plum and the wild cherry 
 trees. Then the red squirrel chattered in the spruces, and the 
 hairy woodpecker rat-tap-tapped on the hoUow beech tree, or on 
 Farmer Joshua's sap-buckets, not yet gathered; the partridges 
 drummed on the hill-side, and the little chipmonk — the striped 
 squirrel — sunning itself by its burrough, startled by the children, 
 uttered the sharpest notes. Overhead the swallows, on twittering 
 wings, skimmed along the blue sky, or diving down with arrowy 
 msh, laved for an instant their wings in the cool water of Black 
 brook — the Mikaseota — and flew away to their nests in the log 
 barns of the settlers. There were flowers opening by the path, 
 violets springing up by the hedges, dandelions growing on grassy 
 banks, moosemissa, white and odorous, skunk cabbage, adder- 
 tongues putting out in the shadows of the trees, making the air so 
 fresh and sweet smelling, while the children, shouting and laugh- 
 ing, chased the first golden butterfly, hunted birds' nests and snail 
 shells, and turning over stones and old logs, explored the haunts 
 of thousands of ants, just thawed out into life. Then they found 
 the blue-tailed skink, the salmon colored salamander and the crim- 
 son-spotted triton, along the high, warm banks of little runnels, 
 and by the loud rill that comes down from Beech hill woods.' 
 
 But hark ! the drum-beat is heard in the little training field, 
 and the shrill notes of the fife go piercing through the forest. 
 Captain Obadiah Clement is giving the note of command in clear 
 ringing voice, and every loiterer is hui-rying to see the company 
 drill. 
 
 It is a beautiful training field, full of charred stumps, and here 
 and there a great black log heap not yet wholly burned up. But 
 Captain Clement managed to find a clear space to di'aw up his» 
 whole company in single file, and then the work commenced in 
 
THE OLD TIME MILITIA. 299 
 
 good earnest. The lieutenant and the ensign tooli their places, the 
 sergeants and the corporals were properly posted, care being taken 
 not to select too many, as it was necessary to have some privates 
 as well as officers ; for the whole company did not number more 
 than forty men, though every man and boy old enough to do mili- 
 tary duty was present, except those who were away in the army, 
 and Stevens Merrill and Jonathan Clement, who declared " they 
 would not train in such a string-bean, slam-bang, flood-wood, light 
 infantry company as Col. Clement had; they would pay a fine 
 first."* 
 
 Captain Clement told his grandson, Jim Clement, all about 
 what beautiful uniforms they wore. Some had cocked hats, and 
 some woodchuck and wolf skin caps, with the far well worn off"; 
 one or two had nice straw braided hats which their wives and 
 mothers had made them. And then there were all lands of coats ; 
 some of which had been in the army ; many had short frocks of 
 every day wear, and some did not have anything over their rough 
 tow shirts. Their breeches were almost invariably of one kind, — 
 moosehide, home tanned, — a kind not easily worn out, untorn and 
 no holes in the seat. Moccasins were worn on the feet, but some 
 of the men, as it was. a warm day, were barefoot; their tough 
 soles being less liable to be hurt than the moccasins themselves. 
 They had belts of every sort and kind, canteens of various pat- 
 terns, priming wires and brashes, and well worn cartri^e boxes 
 that had seen service in the old French and Indian wars, and some 
 in the Eevolution now going on. Their guns were of almost every 
 pattern, muskets, fowling pieces, one or two old match locks, 
 queen's arms, and some were the very guns also that Chase 
 "Whitcher had prociu'ed from the Committee of Safety. 
 
 Captain Clement said he was better dressed than the rest. He 
 had prepared himself for the occasion. His hair was not pow- 
 dered, and he had no wig on his head. But a w;hite cockade 
 glistened on his three-cornered cocked hat, silver epaulettes 
 rounded off" his shoulders, his coat was faced with blue, a scarlet 
 sash ornamented his waist, and his yellow buckskin breeches were 
 
 * A poor excuse was better than none. It was not safe for them at that time 
 to say they would not train witli rebel soldiers, and so they called the company aU 
 manner of names, and said it was so mean they would not be seen in it. 
 
800 HISTORY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 graced with silvei' lacings. He made a fine appearance, and as his 
 said grandson, " Jitn," well expressed it, " He felt complete." 
 
 " To the right face," was one of the first commands, and the 
 men looked " eveiy which way." " Eyes right," the Captain sung 
 out, and they aU looked at him. " Shoulder arms," — the accoutre- 
 ments rattled and jingled, and up went musket, rifle, fowling- 
 piece, match lock, old queen's arm, and the three or four bayonets, 
 gleaming " like rotten mackerel by moonlight," flashed in the bright 
 spring sun. " Shoulder arms," he shouted again in a sharp tone, 
 for some had hold of the breech, some by the small part of the 
 stock and some by the lock ; but every man looked blank, and did 
 not shoulder arms. Then he showed each man how to do it, and 
 soon they could carry arms and present arms, ground arms and 
 arms aport, mthout the least difliculty. 
 
 " Music !" ordered the captain, and the drums beat again and 
 the fife flourished wonderfully. "Mark time!" and their feet 
 moved up and down in the most remarkable manner. " To the 
 right face "— " To the left face "— " Forward,"— " File in platoons," 
 " Into sections," " Into divisions !" And then they marched and 
 counteiinarched in single file and double file, and four abreast in 
 quick time, in slow time and in no time at all. Then they wheeled 
 round the log heaps, and flanked the stumps, and circled round 
 the edge of the clearing next to the woods, where stood the 
 trunks of the old trees that had been Idlled by the fire. For four 
 long hours they thus manoeuvered, until all were convinced they 
 understood the whole thing perfecth% and could go through every 
 sort of tactics ever thought of since by Scott or Hardee. 
 
 Oh ! how brave and valorous they all were ! Captain Clement 
 was lord of all he sui-veyed. The mighty rulers of the town, the 
 selectmen, in their official capacity, had nothing to do with this 
 training. Even Simeon Smith, the great constable from Red Oak 
 hill could not interfere, and Judge Joshua Copp was a sergeant in 
 the ranks. The men from Trecothick and the neighboring regions 
 of Romney, Wentworth, and " Pearmount," said to be present as 
 visitors, had nothing to do about it. Only the great Committee of 
 Safety, and Col. Israel Morey, the superior officer, could command 
 our brave and valiant captain in any manner whatever. 
 
 And now it was high noon and very warm ; and the company 
 
A VALOKOUS FEAT OF ARMS. 301 
 
 being tired, tliey were dismissed for dinner. This consisted of 
 corn-cakes, boiled moose meat, nut-cakes and such other fixings in 
 great store, which wives, sisters, and sweethearts, had brought. 
 The huge repast finished with a relish, and washed down with a 
 " little good west endea," they sat down to rest and became spec- 
 tators themselves. The women gathered in knots and groups 
 under the trees, chatted and gossipped as only women can, and 
 the boys and gu-ls, enjoying themselves, played " goal " and " tag," 
 and " pizen," and " hide and seek," and " blind man's buff," and 
 '"igh spy," and "wolf," and shouted, and yelled till the woods 
 rang with echoes. 
 
 The music struck up again, the drum-call was beat, and each 
 man sprang to arms. Once more all the evolutions were gone 
 through with, and then they thought they would see how they 
 liked the smell of powder. The guns were loaded, the command 
 was heard, " Make ready, aim, fire!" and bang went the whole of 
 them. Again they loaded, and again they fired, greatly to the joy 
 of themselves and all the rest of the people assembled. 
 
 Captain Clement would tell the pleasant story how young 
 Moses True, a new comer, and some relation to Ensign Ephraim, 
 who lived " over the river," inspired by extra potations of good 
 grog, was filled with exceeding valor and wanted to show what he 
 could do. So the company halted and he loaded up his great mus- 
 ket with a mighty blank cartridge. Turning away his head, he 
 fired most intrepidly into the air; but the blundering weapon 
 recoiled and gave the valiant Moses an ignominious kick which 
 laid Mm prostrate with uplifted heels on the lap of mother earth. 
 The company, seeing that he was not much hurt, applauded him 
 with the most uproarious laughter, much to his great delight, [of 
 course. But the discharge made an immense noise; great echoes 
 came back from all the wooded hills around, and even the green 
 heads of MooseMllock and Mount Carr, and the other neighboring 
 mountains, looked in with wonderment on the scene. 
 
 "When the shadows were lengthening, and the old ti'ees on the 
 edge of the dealing began to seem distant,, withered, and dark, 
 with not a leaf to shake in the breeze. Captain C. halted his com- 
 pany again, and in a short speech invited them up to his house for 
 refreshments. They accepted his invitation with a loud cheer, and 
 
302 HISTORT OP WAKREN. 
 
 " single file, forward, march," was a pleasing command. Cap- 
 tain Clement with drawn sword takes the lead; the music fol- 
 lows ; the flfer first, the tenor drummer second, and the bass drum- 
 mer next, all playing as loud as they can. Then Ensign Ephraim 
 Time marches by the colors, a red silk bandana handkerchief upon 
 a pole impi'ovised for the occasion, near the centre, while fat Lieut. 
 William Butler brings up the rear ; the children running before 
 shouting as usual ; the women and visitors following behind. Up 
 the bridle path by Joshua Copp's, across Ore-hill brook, and up 
 Black brook, in half an hour they are at Wan-en's little hotel, 
 Captain C.'s inn. 
 
 The Captain's entertainment was plenty of pudding, pork and 
 beans, with an abundance of the good creature to wash them 
 down. Pails of toddy were passed about. Old and young men 
 and the middle aged all di-ank that day, for it was the fashion, and 
 even some of the boys tugging at the slops got fuddled and tight. 
 
 As they went in, their spirits got elevated, and they made bar- 
 room speeches and sang patriotic songs, which were gi-eeted with 
 shouts of applause. Then their courage increased and their 
 strength came and they "pitched quoits" and tossed great logs, 
 and lifted at " stiffheels." Lieut. Butler was the strongest man, 
 and he picked up every person who would lay down. A ring was 
 foiTued and they wrestled " to backs," at " side holts," and at 
 " arms length." Joseph Patch, our first settler, was the spryest, 
 smartest man. They could not kick his shins nor tread on his toes, 
 and he succeeded in laying every one who dared step into the ring 
 squarely on his back ; making both shoulders touch the ground at 
 the same time. He was great at "the cross buttock play" as it 
 was called. 
 
 Wlien they had ate all they possibly could, and drank all the 
 punch' they could carry, Captain Clement formed them in line 
 again, thanked them for their excellent behavior as soldiers, and 
 then they broke ranks in the common form, which is well under- 
 stood by mihtary men. 
 
 At home safe, they were all much pleased, with their captain 
 especially, also with the other officers, said they had had an excel- 
 lent time, and wished " little training day " might come every 
 monthjin the year. 
 
A DOTJBTrUL COMPLIMENT. 803 ' 
 
 So much were they rejoiced that at the very next town meet- 
 ing, held July 10, 1780, they determined to put a merited compli- 
 ment on record, which stands even to the present time, and is as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Voted, That when the officers of the miUty belonging to the 
 town are called up on that thay bee paid equill from the town. 
 In thare rank as soldiers highered by the town for that year."* 
 
 An excellent vote, exceedingly grammatical and well spelled. 
 
 * Town Clerk's Records, Vol. i. 7. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THANKSGIVING DAT ; OE HOW THERE WAS FEASTING, DANCING AND 
 MERRYMAKING IN OUR HAMLET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 And now the war is over, and the piping times of peace 
 have come.* How glad all the people are ! From the poorest man 
 that trapped in the woods and fished in the streams, farmers, me- 
 chanics, merchants, ministers, doctors, lawyers. Committee of 
 Safety, and even President Meshech "Weare himself, all rejoiced 
 exceedingly. Such an occasion must not be passed by without 
 appropriate celebration, and President "Weare appointed a thanks- 
 giving day to be observed in all the little democracies of the State. 
 The proclamationf went forth; copies were sent to every town 
 and the one that came to Warren was posted in Obadiah Clement's 
 little bar-room, so that all could read it. Thanksgiving days had 
 come before ; but the occasion had never been so great as now, 
 even since the first one, which took place June IS, 1632, and the 
 good people of our mountain hamlet, like all the rest of the coun- 
 try, resolved to celebrate it with the utmost ^clat. The "Warren 
 folks did not nor never have kept Christmas or Good Friday or 
 Easter, and they had no " goodings nor candles, clog, carol, box or 
 hobby horse," neither did they ornament their places of worship, 
 
 * The final definitive treaty of peace between the mother country and colonies 
 was signed Sept. 3, 1783, at Paris. 
 
 t Thanksgiving day was on the 2d Thursday of December, 1783.— See Proc. in 
 Sec. of State's office. 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY IN YE OLDEN TIME. 305 
 
 for they thought all such things to be " Heathenrie, Devilrie, 
 Dronkensie and Pride." Yet they must have some sort of festival, 
 when they could celebrate in the most festive manner ; they must 
 pay some fealty to the universal gala sentiment. 
 
 The morn of that day was waited with expectation, and the 
 greatest eagerness. What mirth and hilarity should prevail! 
 Col. Clement sent a rude ox team clear down country for supplies, 
 and a stock of the good creature for the occasion. Capt. "William 
 Butler was determined to have a grand tui'key shoot and a raffle, 
 and the young men and maidens of the hamlet planned to have 
 something else that should please them as well. 
 
 Every thing was just so through all the towns in the State and 
 even the clerk of the weather, as the old tale runs, grew amiable 
 and determined to introduce a novelty for the occasion ; accord- 
 ingly long before, the dawn of the happy day, he marshaled the 
 snow makers who live, it is said, somewhere in the neighborhood 
 of Greenland, and set them about their business. From midnight 
 till morning they were actively engaged in sifting a delicious 
 whiteness upon«the gi'p.y autumnal bosom of our mother earth. 
 They whitened the trees and the fields ; they ooveyed the long 
 shingled roofs ; they sprinkled it like feathers upon the log walls 
 ■of the cabins and against the four-by-six panes of glass, introduced 
 just about this time into the settlement. In fact they worked like 
 heroes all night to make everything look bright and beautiful as 
 possible for the morning. Everybody felt when they woke up in 
 iappy surprise that, 
 
 " The fairies all bright 
 Came out that night, 
 As of a season long ago : 
 And their feet on the ground, 
 Had a tinkling sound, 
 As they scattered the milk-white snow." 
 
 The little boys and girls clapped their hands with delight, and 
 marshaled out on the hill-side for a grand snow-ball and coasting- 
 frolic. In the woods the tracks of the wild game were beautifully 
 distinct and the delighted sportsman hurried away in the early 
 morning to get his share of the partridges, joyfully listening to 
 the " deep-mouthed blood hounds' heavy bay, resounding " in the 
 distance, and the echoes of the fowling pieces as they brought 
 down the birds on the "wing, to make partridge pies for dinner. 
 
 T 
 
306 HISTORY OF WAKREN. 
 
 About nine o'clock in the forenoon, all the men and boys were 
 hurrraig away to "WiUiam Butler's turkey shoot. It was out in 
 the little field that John Mills and son cleared, by the bubbling 
 sand-rimmed springs northeast from his house. The captain had 
 a fine lot of turkeys reared with great care, to keep them from the 
 foxes, and he set them up twenty-five rods away for shot guns, and 
 forty rods for rifles. The hunters of that time were better marks- 
 men than those of the present day. A sixpence a shot, payable in 
 silver or its equivalent — a high price — was what each had to pay. 
 K he had not asked it he would not have made much, for Chase 
 Whitoher, Joseph Patch, and Obadiah Clement were there, and 
 they seldom fired without bringing down a bird. They did not 
 have to lie down and sight slowly over a rest, but brought their 
 guns rapidly np to their eyes and fired. 
 
 Simeoij Smith was there also, making dry remarks, and Reu- 
 ben Clement, the weird man, now rather taciturn, was seated on 
 the top of a great stump watching the scene. Before him was the 
 crowd, a jargon of voices, and an occasional shout. There was 
 the report of rifles, the running to and frp of mpn and boys, dis- 
 putes about shots, wrangling and wresthng, the smell of gun- 
 powder, and the blue smoke curling away among the-trecs. He 
 saw the brooks which rippled and murmured as they ran from the 
 springs through their white and shining snow-covered banks, and 
 the river that tossed and heaved as it hurried on among its snow- 
 capped boulders and sent a dull su^Uen roar to the neighboring 
 hills. On his right, blue forest-covered Mount Carr shone white 
 and glistening under the morning sun as a frosted cake, while in 
 the norUi, above the huge trees of the almost interminable forest, 
 old Moosehillock in snow rears his rugged forehead. Every one 
 before him seemed to feel well, and many a man who could not 
 shoot a turkey, carried one away which he had won at the raffle. 
 
 . At home the wives and comely buxom daughters were maldng . 
 mighty preparations for the feast. The door-yards had been 
 picked up and set in order, the house had been cleaned, the floors 
 scrubbed white, the beautifully ceiled walls were of spotless 
 purity, and the newly scoured pewter on the open dresser gleamed 
 and flashed in the bright light of the great kitchen fire-place. 
 
 The turkeys and other barn-yard fowl's were killed and pulled 
 
THANKSGIVING COOKBET. 307 
 
 yesterday ; the partridges brought in this morning are made ready. 
 And then, what a mixing of puddings of the richest composition ; 
 what pies are made ; pumpkin, custard, apple, and mince, minus 
 the raisins, but plenty of sweetening, for they made maple sugar 
 then as now in great abundance ; the chicken and partridge pies, 
 the best of all. What cakes of transcendent brilUance, and bread 
 of the most exquisite fineness, from flour ground at "William But- 
 ler's mill. The oven door opens and shuts, well stuffed turkeys, 
 and pies, and cakes, and bread, go in, and odors most delicious' 
 and mouth-melting, inexpressible, fill the house. "What glowing 
 looks were there. "What speculations, contrivances, and anticipa- 
 tions in those milk-and-honey flowing kitchens. They have found 
 the richest cheese in the whole cheese-room by tasting, and the 
 purest and sweetest butter is moulded in small cakes, and im- 
 printed with patterns of the most elegant figure. In fine, what 
 eflbrts are made that all should experience the wonders and 
 delights of this our dehcioas little mountain Canaan. 
 
 It is told how on that day there was visiting and merry-making, 
 that Joseph Patch went home to his father-in-law's, Mr. Stevens 
 Meriill's and that Joshua Copp and Joshua Merrill, also went 
 down there to eat thanksgiving supper. Then all the Clements 
 assembled at Col. Obadiah's, all the "Whitchers at John's on Pine 
 hill ; Simeon Smith and his friends were social on Red Oak hill, 
 and theClarks and the Liinds had a merry-making over at Charles- 
 ton,* and down by Eastman ponds. 
 
 The good man and his wife went to these hilarious meetings of 
 families, parents and children, grand-parents and grand-children, 
 uncles and cousins, riding double on the good old horse that had 
 done them so much service in the woods; often cari-ying the 
 youngest children in their arms, while the elder children trudged 
 along the rough bridle-paths on foot. What a welcome they got ; 
 what lively salutations. The horse went to the barn, — " Come in !" 
 — ofi" came hats, caps, bonnets, shawls, and great-coats, — "Sit 
 
 * CliarUston.—'M.v. Nathaniel Libbey, on reading the adyanoe sheets of this, 
 work, said he knew why Charleston was so called, that it was named after Charles, 
 Bowles, who once lived in that delectable region. Bowles only stopped there a 
 short time, and said he was frightened away by the immense buU-frogs which 
 Inhabited Tarletonlake; that erery night he could hear them singing oat, " Charles' 
 Bowles I Charles Bowles I We are a coming, we are a coming I Don't run, don>t 
 run!" — and that he would not stay there for the whole district. His friei(ds, 
 laughed at him and called the place Charles' town— Cha,rleston , 
 
308 HISTORY OF WARKEN. 
 
 down!" —chatting' and talking and asking after the health of this 
 one and that one all the time. 
 
 The men go out for an hour while the table is being set ; they 
 go about the little clearings — the arable land, the mowing and 
 pasture are shown, and the questions, how much they can raise ; 
 how many trees they shall fall next year; how the young apple 
 and plum trees flourish ; and whether or not the climate is too cold 
 for them ; what huntings they would have this winter ; what fine 
 steel traps and guns and smart powder they had got, and a host 
 of others were all freely discussed. 
 
 In the house the hostess shows the women folks round — to 
 the cheese and butter room ; to the weave room where such nice 
 cloth is made, and then they talk about fattening calves and rear- 
 ing poultry ; the growing of vegetables, of fruit, and flowers, and 
 of the nice things they would get from down country, when their 
 husbands went down to Portsmouth and Newburyport with the ox 
 teams, carrying the butter, cheese, and wheat, the sheep's pelts, 
 moose and deer skins, and all the rich peltries, the product of their 
 husbands' hunting in the woods. 
 
 In an hour the settlers, (joking that they are[^afraid of their 
 wives' tongues if they did not come back in season ; that they did 
 not want any dinner, not a bit ; they were only afraid of getting a 
 scolding,) make their appearance. 
 
 And now all are seated around the table. "What a dinner! 
 The great mealy potatoes are smoking hot, the fat turkey cai-ved 
 in the most admirable manner, the rich gravy steaming beside it, 
 and the venison on Stevens Merrill's board, furnished by Joseph 
 Patch, a most tempting dish. How excellent is the stuffing, what 
 cool crystalline water to drink, and what good " old west endea," 
 out of the stone bottles famished by Col. Clement, so exhilerating 
 to set them all aglow. 
 
 How much they eat ; how fast the bounteous store disappears ! 
 One would think no respect could be paid to the chicken and par- 
 tridge pie, the plum pluddings, sweet cakes, pies of all kinds, most 
 delicious sauces, m^ple honey, butter and cheese, the nicest and 
 richest. But he would be greatly mistaken. They share the same 
 fate as the first course, disappearing amid the most hearty laugh- 
 ter, sharp jokes, and " mother wit of the keenest kind." 
 
EVENING RECREATIONS. 309 
 
 Supper over, the hours fly swift, passed with pleasantries and 
 glowing conversation. By sunset they are all safe at home again. 
 Every body in the township has enjoyed this thanksgiving; all 
 have feasted to their heart's content; there is not a poverty 
 stricken cabin in the hamlet. 
 
 In the evening the young boys and girls of neighboring fam- 
 ilies get together and pass a pleasant hour, plajring " blind man's 
 buff," " run round the chimney," and " button, button, who has 
 got the button?" 
 
 But the older youths and blushing maidens, and the young 
 men and their wives, as we said before, had determined to spend 
 the evening in another way. It was dark when they began to 
 assemble in Obadiah Clement's great kitchen and little bar-room, 
 the only inn in the hamlet. The windows were all bright-lighted, 
 as they came out of the woods in the Kttle clearing. Entering 
 they found a great fire burning in the cavernous flrc-place. A 
 huge green back-log, five feet long, a great forestick of half the 
 size, and a " high cob-work of refuse and knotty wood," blazed 
 and roared, and crackled, sending up a bright and golden flame, — 
 the black smoke hurrying away out doors all the time through the 
 great flue of the immense stone. chimney. They sit down to 
 warm themselves. The wood sings, the sap drops on the hot 
 stones hissing and crackling and great red coals roll out on the 
 hearth, glimmering, sparkling, glistening. 
 
 Moses Copp and his handsome sister, Sarah, with several 
 other brothers and sisters, came first; and Joseph Merrill and 
 some of his sisters, Captain Butler and wife, and pretty Anna 
 Mills who lived with them, Joseph Patch and wife, two sons of 
 Simeon Smith, and others from that neighborhood; some of 
 Ephraim True's grown up children, who used to be as wild as 
 partridges, Chase Whitcher and his wife, from the Summit, 
 and numerous others came, for unity and harmony once more pre- 
 vailed now the war was over. 
 
 Reuben Clement, who could not keep away from the turkey 
 shoot, must also attend the ball ; but all the evening stubbornly 
 refused to dance, for he was an odd genius, as we have gently 
 intimated before. 
 
 The hall was the long unfinished kitchen, having its naked 
 
310 HISTOET OF WAREEN. 
 
 timbers overhead, ornamented with boughs of spruce and hemlock 
 and festoons and wreaths of evergreen. Tallow candles in wooden 
 blocks were placed in the distant corners, that eyery part might 
 be well illuminated. 
 
 How pretty they were all dressed ! What a variety there was 
 too. There were styles that had come into being in the backwoods, 
 and old styles, and new styles, and no styles at all. There were 
 flashy prints, bought down country, good blue woolen dresses, 
 and tow and linen skirts of beautiful colors, and striped and 
 checked linen waists. All had necklaces of gold, glass, or waxen 
 beads. Their head-dresses were simple and plain, oftenest their 
 hair neatly arranged without ornament. Their shoes were of the 
 best pattern, sometimes striped with a white welt. 
 
 The belles of the evening were Anna Mills and Sarah Copp. 
 The latter wore a bright blue woolen dress, a little short with a 
 red border at the bottom, a white linen apron, with flowers 
 elaborately wrought with her own needle on the lower corners, 
 pure white woolen stockings, a pair of neatly fitting moccasins, 
 tight laced about the small, well turned, delicate ankles; her 
 plump arms bare, a golden clasped bracelet on one of them ; on 
 her neck, a string of gold beads; her dark and shining hair 
 close braided and only ornamented with a sprig of evergreen 
 twined in one of the heavy plaits. Her complexion was clear, 
 bright blue ej^es that sparkled, white regular teeth, lips of cherry 
 red, and plump rosy cheeks. Anna Mills was also plainly but 
 neatly dressed. She was light and agile in form, as the wild doe ; 
 had flashing black eyes, and a wealth of raven tresses. Both were 
 much sought after, and they never lacked a partner for the dance. 
 
 The young gentlemen of the settlement were also dressed in 
 the most remarkable manner for a ball. Moses Copp had on a 
 portion of his old Continental uniform. Col. Clement, mine host, 
 wore his military coat, and Jonathan Clement kept on his hat, an 
 immense one, through the whole occasion.* Then the short frocks 
 
 * Wearing a fio«.— Jonathan Clement almost literally always wore his hat. He 
 kept it on at meal times, at town meetings, in religious meetings, and in presence 
 of every one he met, high or low. It was the first article of clothing he put on in 
 the morning, and the last he took off at night. N. Libbey went to Mr. C.'s tavern 
 at midnight for a pint of rum, rapped at the door, and when said landlord oanie, 
 the only article of dress he had put on was his hat. But the sheriff knocked it off 
 for him in high Court one day, to his infinite disgust, and Mr. C. had a fearful 
 hatred of courts ever after. — Nathaniel Libhey's statement. 
 
THE OLD FASHIONED BALL. 311 
 
 were present, tucked out of the way inside of the moosehide and 
 buckskin breeches. There were long stockings and many a pair of 
 silver shoe and knee buckles, and the tough moosehide moccasins 
 were the easiest things in the world to dance in. Their hair was 
 not powdered, they had no wigs ; our settlers did not take to such 
 things ; but Col. Clement, as did some other elderly men at the 
 time, wore a queue, handsomely tied with an eel skin. 
 
 But they were a happy company if they were rather oddly 
 dressed. There were smiles and jokes, and bright sayings, and 
 when Moses True, the youth who made such a heroic noise on 
 " little training day," took his seat upon a high bench in the back 
 entry-way, at the farther end of the kitchen, violin in hand, the 
 whole party leaped up at the wagging of his fiddle-stick, and took 
 their places on the floor. Then soft music arose in Obadiah Clem- 
 ent's old kitchen, and happy hearts and nimble feet kept time to 
 the merry strain. 
 
 By-and-by they had a slight refreshment, and the " milk toddy " 
 and " egg-nog," mild drinks, were passed round and disappeared 
 in vjst quantities. On this their spirits rose. The young men 
 shuffled and kicked most vigorously, and now and then gave a 
 hearty smack, in all honesty of soul, to their buxom partners. 
 Then they used the step* called " shuffle and turn " and " double 
 trouble," and out many a lively fantasy as the short hours wore 
 rapidly away. 
 
 Late in the night some of the dancers got tired and two young 
 gentlemen, Jonathan Harbor d and Nicholas Whiteman, who had 
 recently come to town, laid down by the bar-room fire to rest 
 themselves. Eeuben Clement, who had watched them all the 
 evening, said in a quiet way that he " knew they must be fatigued, 
 exceedingly weary, they could not be tight, nothing of the kind, 
 for they had not drank mbre than a quart of good rum, each." 
 
 The cock crowed in the barn ; the shrill cry was answered 
 from the nearest farm-yard, down at Jonathan Clement's, and then 
 the dancing ceased, for Moses True, the good fiddler, was more 
 tired than all the rest. 
 
 Some who resided farthest away, resolved to stay all night 
 and go home by daylight. But those who lived down the valley 
 towards Red Oak hiU, were pff in the shortest time possible. 
 
"312 HISTORY OP -WAEEEN. 
 
 Some rode on horseback, but the most walked ; and Joseph Mer- 
 rill waited upon Sarah Copp, and Moses Copp went home with 
 Anna Mills. Now and then they were startled by the cries of the 
 wild denizens of this new country. An owl hooted from a great 
 hemlock by the path, there was a wild-cat crying over by Black 
 brook, the Mikaseota, and a wolf howled in Beech hill woods. 
 Yet it was only Nature's music to the settlers. They did not fear; 
 they loved the beautiful night, for the crescent moon was not yet 
 set behind Sentinel mountain in the west; the dark vault above 
 them was powdered with stars, and they saw Aldebaran, Lyra, 
 Orion, and the Pleiades, holding their silent course through the 
 heavens. 
 
 There was not much labor performed in the settlement next 
 day, for nobody got up very early that morning. Yet every one 
 was content, and always maintained that this was the happiest 
 Thanksgiving ever known in Warren. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TECE FIKST SCHOOLS OF WAEEEN ; OE HOW THE YOUNG IDEA WAS 
 TAUGHT TO shoot; AND OP A OEKTAIN OH, MUCH USED IN YE 
 ANCIENT DAYS. 
 
 V ENERA.BLE and much to be respected are ye worthy 
 men of ancient times, who had the public good, the prosperity of 
 the State at heart. Benning Wentworth and the honorable pro- 
 prietors of our mountain hamlet, next to the cause of religion, as 
 we have before mentioned, believed in public education. So in 
 addition to the other reservations in the charter for great and good 
 purposes, the excellent governor provided that one share in the 
 township of "Warren should be reserved " for the benefit of a 
 school in said town forever." 
 
 The proprietors, as before, seconded the governor's good inten- 
 tion, and in the drawing of the lots. No. 3 in the 9th Range, 1st 
 Division, and No. 16, in the 7th Range, 2d Division, were devoted 
 to the cause of education.* 
 
 Yet it was many years before any revenue could be derived 
 from the lands thus appropriated, and the children of the hamlet 
 would have grown up in the most lamentable ignorance if they 
 had waited for an education till the lots got productive. 
 
 Our sturdy settlers, before whose strokes the forest bowed, 
 could aU read and write, as is well attested by the old documents 
 that have come down to us, and they could not bear the thoughts 
 that their darling oflfspiing should be deprived of a good educa- 
 tion. 
 
 * other lands were set apart for school purposes, for account of which see 
 Appendix. 
 
314 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 Yet they went at the work in rather of a negligent and dila- 
 tory manner; now and then supporting a private school in some 
 settler's cabin, and then letting whole years go by without any 
 school at all. But now the town being so well organized, they 
 began to agitate the subject of opening a public school. But it 
 was only agitation at lirst, and then an attempt which was a fail- 
 ure. At the annual assembly of the citizens, otherwise called the 
 town meeting, for 1781, held March 22, it was " put to vote to see 
 if the toWn would raise money to higher schooling, and it passed 
 to the contrary."* The same thing happened at the town meeting 
 held March 6, 1782. The inhabitants felt as though the burdens of 
 taxation were heavy, and they could not afford to raise money in 
 addition to what they had to pay to build roads, to furnish soldiers, 
 to raise town supplies, and pay the State and Continental taxes. 
 Some said — and there are always a few of that>ort in eveiy enter- 
 prise — " O, why can't we have private schools? We have always 
 got along well enough so far with those." 
 
 But next year, when they could see the war dravdng to a 
 close and peace beginning to dawn, they voted almost unanimously 
 to raise six pounds sterling " to higher schooling this year." At 
 a subsequent meeting held May 5, 1783, " voted to lay out tMs 
 money that is raised this present year, in hiring a woman school;'' 
 also "voted to begin said school the twentyeth of May enstant." 
 And finally, " voted to keep said school at Stevens Men-ill's for this 
 present year." 
 
 In those times the selectmen were charged with the duty of 
 hiring a schoolmarm and providing her a suitable boarding place. 
 They immediately commenced their labor. First they looked over 
 the hamlet, but found no one qualified whom they could engage. 
 They then journeyed in the neighboring lands — to Wentworth — 
 where they met with no better success, and thence on horseback to 
 the region called Oxford, now Orford. There they hired Miss 
 Abigail Arling, and she promised to be on hand at the appointed 
 time, May 20. Returning home, they fitted up tlie school room in 
 the most substantial manner. It was in one end of Mr. Merrill's 
 barn, — a rough school house but good enough for the hot summer. 
 
 * Town Clerk's Records, Vol. i. 
 
THE FmST PTJBLIC SCHOOL. 315 
 
 A rude table and chair for the schoolmarm was set on one side by 
 an open place where a window should be. There were no desks 
 for the scholars, and the seats were planks placed upon rough logs. 
 
 First day of school in the country — who does not recollect it? 
 The scholars are up bright and early in the morning, faces washed, 
 hair combed, dinners and books packed up ready to be off the 
 moment they can get permission, so as to get the first choice of 
 seats. It is so now; it was so then ; and from the Height o'land. 
 Pine Mil, Runaway pond, and the Summit, the childi-en that morn- 
 ing trudged merrily along the bridle paths and tote road. They 
 did not think so much of traveling a short distance then, as now, 
 and they could walk by the paths easier than the settlers in the 
 land of Trecothick, now Ellsworth, could come up by Glen ponds 
 and over Mount Carr, as they often did, visiting. What if a moose 
 was killed that very summer near the mouth of the Mikaseota, and 
 Joshua Merrill shot a wolf by Cold brook, that came howling along 
 down from Blue ridge, and they themselves tracked bears in the 
 muddy path ; they did not mind it much, for they were used to 
 such things. They were bom in the woods; the hills and the 
 valleys, the wild flowers of summer, the mottled fawns and young 
 rabbits that lived among the evergreens, and the swift waters of 
 the glens were their live-long-day companions, and they went 
 happily home to their bean-porridge supper and a bed as simple as 
 their garments. The young Copps, the Clarks, and the Lunds, 
 the Whitchers, Trues, Patches, Clements, and Merrills, made a 
 numerous school, and they liked the schoolmarm, for she was 
 gentle and good and did not anoint their backs much with the oil 
 of birch, to sharpen their wits. 
 
 They did not have many visitors nor any superintending or 
 prudential committee ; but one day when the golden rays of the 
 sun streamed through the great cracks of the bam, reflecting the 
 myriad of particles ever floating like things of life in the air, and 
 the swallows were twittering in their nests on the ribs of the roof, 
 Stevens Merrill, who had been swingling flax in a shed near by, 
 followed by his dog, looked in. An involuntary murmur of sur- 
 prise and gladness went round the school-room, for the children 
 could sec through the netted tow and whiteish down that covered 
 his hat, clothes, and face, like a thin veil, a happy smile of ap- 
 
316 HISTORY OF WAKBEN. 
 
 proval, -wMch they did not always get from him. Their studies 
 were as simple as their school-room. It did not require " much 
 book laruiag" to teach school in those days. The Psalter and 
 Primer were the only books used, and "readin', ritin', and 'rith- 
 metic," the latter learned by rote, were the only accomplishments 
 required. 
 
 Abigail Arling received three pounds for teaching that school 
 twelve weeks. "William Butler was paid two pounds fourteen 
 shillings for boarding the schoolmai-m, and Stevens Merrill got six: 
 shillings Vent for his school-room.* 
 
 Once begun om- settlers did not falter in the work. The next 
 year they foi'med themselves into a union district, voted to build 
 them a school-house in which to teach the young idea how to shoot, 
 chose a building committee who called upon each man for labor 
 and lumber as fast as wanted, and in less than six months the 
 house was tiuished and furnished. 
 
 It was a framed building with rough benches and desks for the 
 scholars. A huge stone fire-place occupied one end, and the walls 
 were sealed with white pine boards, instead of being plastered. 
 It was located by the tote road, a little above the present raih-oad 
 crossing, north of the depot, and was right in the heart of the 
 wilderness. t 
 
 Nathaniel Knight taught the first schoo^in it ; and to him three 
 families sent twenty-five scholars. He was an excellent teacher, a 
 splendid penman, and the most authentic tradition has it that he 
 appUed the birch in the most magnificent manner, as was common 
 in old times. Yet he had a pleasant winning way with him, and 
 the scholars liked his school and its surroundings. 
 
 He commenced in the autumn; but before the term closed 
 the snow came, and then the boys took their sleds of broad run- 
 nered, frame work pattern, along with them, often giving their 
 
 * Aug. 28, 1783. Paid to Abigail Arling, thi'ee pounds for twelve weeks' 
 
 schooling 300 
 
 Paid to William Butler, two pounds fourteen shillings time for boarding 
 
 school mistress . 2 14 
 
 .lOSHIIA MERRILL, j sp,p„hiien 
 WILLIAM BUTLER, ( selectmen. 
 
 David Craig once got ttoee shillings room rent for a school.— Selectmen's 
 Records, Vol. i. 
 
 t The windows were of mica or isinglass, which was obtained, as tradition has 
 it, on Beech hill. Good isinglass or mica is now worth $12,000 per ton. 
 
NATHANIEL KNIGHt'S SCHOLARS ENJOY THEMSELVES. 317 
 
 little sisters a ride, and at noon-time, just as the boys go to Beech 
 hiU now, they went out on the hill-sides, — the sharp pitch down to 
 the moat,* or to the long deoUvity down to- the ban'k of Black 
 brook, for a coasting frolic. 
 
 When the crust was hard and sparkled in the winter's sun, 
 then boys and girls together enjoyed the exciting sport. Up hill 
 nimbly climbing ; down hill flying swift as an arrow, scranching 
 and goring the frozen snow. The wind wMstles by their ears, 
 their hair streams far back as they come down on their light- 
 winged sleds, and the fine grail craunched and scored by the run- 
 ners, glances up in their faces and furzes their clothes and hair. 
 They leap the hollows and mount the swelling ridges, gliding on 
 swifter, faster, surer, than the snug trimmed yacht before a spank- 
 ing breeze flies through the troughs and over the crests at sea. 
 
 Nathaniel Knight also taught the following summer, and the 
 children loved besides the school the pleasant woods full of sweet 
 sounds, and dancing brooks, and cold crystalline springs, all 
 about. 
 
 It is very interesting for young persons to know — elderly peo- 
 ple need not-read this — that in these ancient times, just the same 
 as now, the scholars often went up at the nooning to the foot of 
 Mt. Helen, sometimes called Keyes ledge. Here -they traveled 
 beside Cold brook, which made music with the mossy rocks in its 
 bed; and they crossed by the tree bridge, from under which a 
 pewee flew, chirping as it left its nest. They saw flies and spiders 
 and long legged creepers dancing and jumping on the surface as 
 though their feet were cold in the chill water, and down near the 
 bright sandy bottom were half a dozen shy, speckled trout, their 
 bright eyes glancing as they lay almost motionless in the current. 
 Tall birches grew on the banks, and poplars and maples, and here 
 and there great pines shot out, like tall sentinels, a hundred feet 
 above them. 
 
 The scholars came up here to get the young checkerberry, its 
 red plums and flowers. It was a cool nice place for a summer 
 noon, full of birds. A wood thrush sang sweetest by the edge of 
 
 * The moat is a cold spring situated down the bank, and a little south and east 
 I'rom the town house. James Dow named it the Sioat, and for many years got his 
 water to drink there. Owing to recent freshets which have changed the river's 
 course the spring is now in the riyer bed. 
 
818 HISTOKY OF •WAKREN. 
 
 the clearing ; clinging to the breezy top of a white birch, a robin 
 chanted its sweetest madrigal ; a little yellow poll, perched on a 
 rastling beech tree, whistled, and chattered, and chanked, as 
 though it would burst its throat; a blue jay in a cluster of sapling 
 pines screamed sharp and shrill, then itself flew away up the steep 
 hill-side, as an old owl, disturbed in the shadows, hallooed and 
 whooped in affright. 
 
 They got great handsfull of checkerberry, tied up with a little 
 root of the gold-thread, a pocket full of red berries and bunch 
 plums that grew under the pines. They also found partridge 
 berries on evergreen vines, and unripe bluebeiTies. Then they 
 made a nice bouquet for the teacher, gathering the beautiful pur- 
 ple cranesbill from where the fire had newly burned in the woods, 
 bright purple twin flowers and star of Bethlehem fi-om a cool 
 grassy recess in the forest, and from Joseph Merrill's new fleld 
 red clover, yellow buttercups, white daisies, and deep blue violets. 
 Then they wove in blue-eyed grass, mosses that grew together 
 familjr like, star grass and brown sorrel. 
 
 One day, as the story goes, — and it is an important bit of his- 
 tory that should not be forgotten, — the larger boys and girls 
 started for the summit of Mt. Helen. They wound slowly along 
 among the stately three-leaved ferns that overhung the flowers 
 like elm trees, through blueberry bushes and beds of yellow 
 brakes, a music box where numberless crickets and grasshoppers 
 keep up a perpetual lulling murmur, following sort of a path trod 
 by hedgehogs, wild deer, and bears, till they came to the open 
 ledge upon the summit. Around them were scattered red oaks, a 
 few hemlocks, great pines, and among the rocks, blueberries, this- 
 tles, and bind weed were growing. 
 
 The woods shut out the view of the mountains to the north- 
 ward ; but east and west the sky seems i-esting on the lofty crests, 
 and adown the valley where Black brook, the Mikaseota, flashes in 
 the sunlight, and Baker river winds like a silver line through the 
 forest, far in the south is seen the round, bald top of old Mt. Car- 
 digan. The clouds floated away in the inellow sky above it ; audit 
 is here through the rifts the sun first shines, and the first bit of blue 
 sky appears after a storm. 
 
 Farmer Joshua had a pasture then, cleared at the foot of the 
 
KEYES LEDGE OTHEEWISE MT. HELEN. 319 
 
 Steep precipice on the right, and from it came the music of the 
 well remembered cow-bell, minghng with the lowing of cattle, 
 and the bleating of sheep. Then there was the cawing of crows 
 in a clump of hemlocks, where they had their nests, the whimper- 
 ing of hawks overhead, and their sharp shrill scream at intervals ; 
 by them swarms of flies wheeling in circular squadrons buzzed a 
 lullaby ; the tree-toads and hylodes chimed in with trilling chirup ; 
 the locusts made melody in the' branches, and the flying grasshop- 
 pers with trapsing, quivering wings, gave out a pleasant note like 
 mowers sharpening their scythes in haying time. A robin by 
 tiny Cold brook, sent up to them " his long, sweet, many-toned 
 carol." From the warm swamp near by, came the chubbing, 
 grumming, croaking, crooling, trilling melody of the frogs, and 
 through the woods, just audible from the farthest distance, the 
 voice of Asquamchumauke's waters. And then all the time odors 
 sweet smelling, and perfumes magnificent, from the blooming- 
 swamps, the flowering trees, the brakes and the ferns, the millions 
 of wild flowers and gi-asses in the pastures and fields came floating 
 up on the gentle breeze to regale and delight the senses. Amidst 
 all these charms of nature, perhaps unnoticed but felt, the scholars 
 made a sort of pic-nic, eating their dinner under the shade of the 
 wide-spreading beech trees, and quenching their thirst from a pail 
 of pure sparkling water brought up from Cold brook. 
 
 One of the numerous other visits which has been made to the 
 ledge since that olden time,, deserves especial mention in this his- 
 tory, for it then got a new name which seems most likely to cling 
 to it. . The scholars begged an afternoon as a holiday, and then all 
 marching two and two, wound their way to the summit. Here 
 they gathered flowers in the woods, sang songs, told stories, and 
 played plays. On the large flat rock the older boys and girls 
 formed for one of the simple country dances, and to the meny 
 music of their voices kept time with nimble feet. When they 
 were tired of this, as some tell the story, they feasted on the abund- 
 ant collation which they had brought. Then a rude stone altar 
 was erected ; the fragments gathered up and placed upon it, a rus- 
 tic throne built, and on it was seated the most beautiful girl of the 
 party, named Helen, crowned as queen, with a garland of ever- 
 green and wild roses. All the youths and maidens joined hands 
 
320 HISTOBY OF ■WARREN. 
 
 in a circle around her ; the master of the ceremonies lighted the 
 fire, the flames leaped up devouring the offeilng, a libation of pure 
 Cold brook water was poured and then all dancing around in the 
 circle sang : — 
 
 " The MU shall he called Mt. Helen, 
 The hill shall he called Mt. Helen, 
 The hill shall he called Mt. Helen, 
 Henceforth and forever more," 
 
 until the ofiering was consumed, the fire went out and the blue 
 smoke from the white down-like embers and ashes no longer 
 curled away in the summer breeze. 
 
 Long years passed before a new school-house was built to 
 take the place of this first one, and then another was erected only 
 because numfcer one was too small. James Dow moved Wan'en's 
 oldest school-house away to Pine hill, where it did good service for 
 a whole generation. 
 
 From this first union district, the germ sometimes called the 
 " Centre District," sometimes the " Village school on the Ctreen" 
 have sprung first Runaway pond district* othei-wise known as the 
 Weeks district, in the school house of which for many years the 
 town meetings were held ; and then in their order came the now 
 defunct Charleston district,^ Beech hill district, Pine hill district, 
 the Summit, Height o' land, East-parte, The Forks, sometimes 
 called Clough district in " Patchbreuckland,'' Streamy valley or 
 Sawtelle district, and Moosehillock district on the south-western 
 mountain spur. J 
 
 * " Uper scholl house," first mentioned in 1792, in Town Clerk's Records Vol. i. 
 
 t Nathaniel Merrill taught school in Charleston in 1795, at old Mr. Lund's. 
 Nathaniel Merrill was the son of Eev. Nathaniel Merrill, and settled on Beech 
 hiU.— Selectmen's Records, Vol. i. 
 
 X School Districts. — " Voted, March 26, 1793, to have two districts. Voted at 
 same meeting to begin the puhlic school the first of Aug. next." 
 
 June 2, 1794. — " Voted that all to the east and south of Mr. Batchelder's 'Squire 
 Copp's and Col. Clement's shall belong to the loer school house, & the rest to the 
 uper one, as far as it did extend last year." 
 
 " Voted to begin the public school the first of September, at the upper school 
 house, & the first of August at the Loer school-house in said town." 
 
 School districts were as follows in 1806: — ^^ Voted, The first disti'ict begin at 
 Wentworth line, thence north as far as outlet of Runaway pond, thence on Pine 
 hill road as far as Mr. Batchelder's, and on East-parte road far enough to include 
 Mr. Knight, Mr. Ramsey, and Timothy Cliflbrd. The second district to take all on 
 Beech hiU. The third to take all upon the main road to Piermont line, including 
 Mr. Batchelder. The fourth district to take all Charleston. The fifth district to 
 take fl'om Ma. Batchelder's on Pine hill to Coveutiy line. The sixth district to 
 take all the inhabitants on East-parte road east of Mr. Ramsey's. The inhabitants 
 of this town are divided and defined accordingly." 
 
 1812.— Paid James Williams for building a school house in the East-parte, 
 $94,00. 
 
EABLY SCHOOLMASTERS. 
 
 321 
 
 In these primitive schbol-houses, Nathaniel Knight, before 
 named, Nathaniel Merrill, David Badger, a wandering pedagogue, 
 Josiah Burnham,* (sad vras his fate for he was hung at Haverhill 
 jail,) and master Abbott, not yet quite forgotten, all knights of 
 quill pens and the birch and ferule, to make the young idea shoot 
 quick, taught with marked success. Then came Lemuel and 
 Joseph, Benjamin and Moses, Nathaniel 2d and Eobert E.Merrill, 
 Jesse and Jonathan Little, and David Smith, keen witted, shrewd, 
 and long headed, and each did honor to the profession. f 
 
 From these schools,— aw.d may they continue, forever — have 
 gone out some who were brilliant, and some who were dull, of 
 course ; yet none but who could read, write, and cipher, and all 
 sharp and keen enough to compete with the best and smartest of 
 this whole shrewd, swapping, peddling, jockeying, guessing 
 yankee race. 
 
 * Josiah Bumliam took his pay for teaching ill produce. He taught in 1795. 
 This unfortunate gentleman was not born in Warren. 
 
 Thomas Whipple. 
 Robert Burns. 
 Luke Aiken. 
 George W. Copp. 
 Master NeweU. 
 Anson Merrill. 
 Levi B. Foot. 
 Jacob Patch. 
 Wm. B. Patch. 
 Stephen Batohelder. 
 John L. Merrill. 
 
 t School/masters. 
 
 Ezekiel Dow. 
 Stevens M. Dow. 
 Job E. Merrill. 
 Isaac Merrill. 
 Russell F. Clifford. 
 William Merrill. 
 Moses Davis. 
 .Joseph Fellows. 
 Reuben B. French. 
 David C. French. 
 
 John French. 
 Calvin Sweat. 
 Michael P. Merrill. 
 Russell K. Clement. 
 James M. Williams. 
 Horatio Heath. 
 Ira Merrill. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 Albe C. Weeks. 
 William Merrill. 
 
 IT 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOW SABAH WHITCHEK WAS LOST IN THE WOODS; WHAT HAP- 
 PENED AND HOW THEY HUNTED FOR HEK, TOGETHEK WITH A 
 EEMAKKABLE DREAM, AND HOW A BUSHEL OF BEANS SUD- 
 DENLY DISAPPEAKED. 
 
 It was the most beautiful Sabbath of June, 1783. Quiet 
 pervaded the haunts of men. The clatter of the mills had ceased, 
 no rude cart rumbled along the stony path, the voice of the 
 ploughman was not heard, and the woodman's axe was hushed . 
 and still. A mellow softness pervaded the air, the woods, and the 
 waters, and a thin haze of the most delicious and tender blue, 
 rested upon the mountains. All nature seemed in worship. The 
 leaves murmured melody in the light breeze, the brooks sent up 
 the gentlest music from the mosses of their stony beds, the clouds 
 like silent nuns in white veils worshipped in the sunbeams, and 
 the birds sang psalms. 
 
 And yet there was no religious meeting in our mountain 
 hamlet. The settlers with their families sat down in their homes 
 or reclined in the shade of the trees about their dwellings, reading 
 their bibles or engaged in silent meditation. 
 
 On Pine hill, Mr. John "Whitcher dreamed the morning hours 
 away, and then suggested to his wife that they pay a visit to Chase 
 Whitcher, their relative, who lived by the wild roistering Oliverian 
 at the Summit. The idea was agreeable to Mrs. "W"., and in a few 
 minutes they were ready for the pleasant walk along the bridle- 
 path through the woods. 
 
A LITTLE GIRL LOST. 828 
 
 Their little girl, Sarah, not yet four years old, lispingly asked 
 her mother if she could go, but was told she must stop at home 
 with the other children, and they would bring her something nice 
 on their return. 
 
 And then they walked rapidly away across the ridge, and 
 down toward babbling Berry brook, admiring not a bit the dewy 
 wild flowers in the path, and hardly noticing their delicious per- 
 fumes as they crushed them beneath their feet. In an hour they 
 were at Chase "Whitcher's by the Oliverian. 
 
 The day was spent most agreeably. The new fields of full 
 blown clover and honeysuckle, and on the borders of which the 
 bright purple cranesbill was just blooming, were alive with the 
 music of the vireo, blackbirds, and the wood-thrush, and the mild 
 fairy-like hum of the myriads of wild bees sipping their nectar 
 from the delicious flowers. Among the grasses they found the 
 sweetest veild strawberries, and they passed the hours talking of 
 the wonders of the deep forests where they would go hunting in 
 autumn, speculating how high was the mighty precipice of Owl's 
 head, and what an abundance of blueberries were growing on its 
 summit. 
 
 It was only when the sun was sinking behind Webster-slide 
 mountain in the west, that they said good by, asked Chase "Whitoher 
 and wife to come and see them and then hurried for home. 
 
 It had hazed up in the afternoon, and as they climbed the gen- 
 tle slope of Pine hill night overtook them, and the few stars that' 
 shone out struggled through the rifts of the rainy clouds and the 
 moon was scarce seen at all. But the bright light that streamed 
 from their cabin window was cheerful and made their home doubly 
 inviting. 
 
 " "What made you leave Sarah up at the Summit?" said one of 
 the older children almost as soon as they entered. 
 
 " We did not leave her," instantly replied the father, aston- 
 ished. 
 
 " She is certainly not at home. Where can she be? " each one 
 exclaimed, and then the dread reality burst upon them in a mo- 
 ment. Lost ! lost ! Sarah is lost in the woods ! 
 
 Mr. Nathaniel Richardson tells that the ruddy face of Mr. 
 Whitcher turned pale, but he said, " Trust in the Lord;" that Mrs. 
 
324 HISTORY OF WABEEN. 
 
 "Whitcher's countenance lighted up with afright, and the other 
 cliildren gathered closer to them, not knowing what to do. Reu- 
 ben Whitchei' who was present, seized the dinner-horn and started 
 instantly for the woods. Mrs. Whitcher followed him, then came 
 back and with the older children went to Mr. Stephen Richardson's 
 to spread the alarm. The father seemed as if smitten down, then 
 agitated paced to and fro in front of the house, then hurried away 
 in the woods alone. The nearest neighbors came, shouting and 
 hallooing in the forest ; then built great tires that gleamed through 
 the trees. Thus passed the night. 
 
 When her parents were gone httle Sarah followed after them, 
 then missed the path and wandered away in the woods. 
 
 As she — "Mrs. Dick French" — told the story in after years, 
 it was a new world for her ; the giant forest extended itself inter- 
 minably, and the huge old trees looked as if they grew up to the 
 skies. Among their roots was the young wood sorrel, its beautiful 
 white flowers with brown spots about the stamens ; then she gath- 
 ered handsful of wild peony with deep red flowers, with leaves 
 that curled over the purple and yellow flowers of the adder 
 tongues, like Corinthian capitals. In the branches above were 
 strange birds that she had never seen before. The Canada jay, 
 called sometimes carion bird, because it robs the hunter's traps 
 almost before his back is turned, with slate colored back and white 
 breast, sent its strange wild note deep in the forest. Large owls 
 in hooded velvety sweep, flew by her. Squirrels chattered and 
 scolded one another, and their companions the partridges clucked 
 before her, or flew away with heavy, rumbling flight. Once an 
 eagle screamed above her ; and she started back aflrighted as a 
 wild cat sprang past. 
 
 All day long she wandered on ; her little hands full of flowers, 
 her mind fllled with a strange indeflniteness, hoping continually to 
 find her father and mother. But she did not meet them, and no 
 cart tracks, no cow paths, no spots or blazes on the trees were to 
 be seen. 
 
 Despairing, at last exhausted, her feet scratched and bleeding 
 by the underbrush, she sank down on the thick moss by the great 
 rock that stands by the old beaver meadow, at the foot of the Cas- 
 cades on Berry brook. " It is night now. Darkness has come 
 
A STRANGE BEDFELLOW. 325 
 
 down on the woods. She is alone. The wind is heard on the 
 mountain. The torrent pours down the rocks. No hut receives 
 her from the rain, alone in the thick woods of thei valley. Kise 
 moonfrombehind thy clouds. Stars of the night arise. Give light 
 to her, sitting alone by the rock of the mossy stream." ; 
 
 Something is coming. She hears a strange sound; the under- 
 brush is crackling, a black form appears in the darkness. Fright- 
 ened the tears roll down her cheeks. It is a great shaggy black 
 bear. He came close to her, smelt of her face and hands, and 
 licked the blood from her feet. She was no more afraid of him 
 than of her own great dog at home, and dared to stroke his long, 
 brown rose, and put her arm about his neck. Then he lay down 
 beside her, she placed her head upon his shoulder and alone in the 
 thick woods, with the dark clouds of the sky for a covering, she 
 was quickly asleep.* 
 
 Two days afterwards the foot prints of the child and the bear 
 were found in the sand and mud of the brook. 
 
 None slept in John "Whitcher's house duidng the long hours of 
 that terrible niglit. The father was out in the woods, the thildren 
 sat down with woe pictured on their faces, while the mother 
 would not suffer a door or a window to be closed, but listened to 
 ever}' sound, and started at every leaf. 
 
 In the morning, the exciting rumor of " John Whitcher's 
 child lost and supposed to have perished in the woods," seemed to 
 speed itself, on the wings of the wind, sounding along the borders 
 of Beech hill, startling the wild solitudes of the East-parte region, 
 arousing the rugged yeomanry of the Height-o'-land, the brave 
 boys of Runaway pond and Patchbreuckland, charging them all 
 to pack up their dinners and hurry away to the search in the 
 woods. 
 
 In an incredible short time all the dwellers in the hamlet were 
 moving towards Pine hUl. Col. Obadiah Clement left his oxen 
 yoked, mounted his horse and galloped svsdft away up the bridle 
 path, passing Jonathan Clement and 'Squire Copp, with their sons, 
 who, leaving their hoeing, were hastening in the same direction 
 with tin dinner horns in their hands. Joshua Men-iU, Joseph Mer- 
 rill, Stevens Merrill, and 'Squire Jonathan, seized their axes and 
 * Sarab Whitcher's, othenvise Mrs. Dick French's, own statement. 
 
326 HISTORY OF WAKBEN. 
 
 ran. Joseph Patch, with his long barrelled gan, and. his neigh- 
 bors, came up at a rapid pace, and a little later in the day, Lunds, 
 Clarks, and Tarletons came over the mountain. 
 
 All day long they hunted. Col. Clement and his friends went 
 • down through the maples to Black brook, and Kelly pond, then 
 climbed up by Oak falls, and beat the woods as far as "Wachipauka 
 pond under Webster slide. 'Squire Copp blew a loud blast with 
 his horn on the shore. " No response came from the far glimmer- 
 ing passionate sound but its own empty echo," hurled back from 
 the mountain face. 
 
 Stevens Merrill and others, with Joseph Patch crossed Berry 
 brook and went through the darkest forest to the very foot of 
 MoosehUlock moimtaiu. 
 
 Chase Whitcher, Stephen Richardson, and a host of others 
 hunted along the bridle path, and then explored the Oliverian up 
 what is at present High street, as far as the dark passes on either 
 side of Black mountain. The women and children hunted for long 
 hours, but in vain. 
 
 The night came, and one after another the parties returned 
 empty"from the search. Despair seemed to have taken possession 
 of the grief-stricken parents, and a feeling of sadness pervaded the 
 whole settlement. 
 
 On Tuesday morning the entire town renewed the search. As 
 the day wore away, people began to arrive from the neighboring 
 lands. They came from Wentworth and Bomney, from Orford, 
 Piermont, Haverhill, and Newbury. At night, one of the last 
 men to come in, reported that he had found the track of a child 
 and of a bear on Ben-y brook. " She is torn in pieces !" " She is 
 eaten up !" every one said, and Mrs. Whitcher was nearly frantic. 
 
 The next day they searched on the Summit, going over the 
 ground thoroughly ; but night brought no success. " She is hope- 
 lessly lost." " She will never be found." Yet at the earnest 
 request of the agonized mother they promised to continue the 
 search one day more. 
 
 Thursday the woods were alive with the people hunting. The 
 long hours slowly wore away, when about noon a Mr. Heath who 
 had walked the whole distance from Plymouth, came to the house. 
 Mrs. Stephen Richardson who was cooking a bushel of beans for 
 
THE LOST FOUND — A SINGULAR DREAM. 327 
 
 the people's supper, and Mrs. Obadiah Clement, were alone at 
 John Wliitcher's. Mrs. Whitcher was still searchingin the woods. 
 " Give me some dinner," said Mr. Heath, " then show me the 
 bridle-path to the north, and I will find the child." Wliile he was 
 eating, he stated how he heard last evening that little Sarah 
 Whitcher was lost, and that three times in the night, he dreamed 
 that he found her lying under a great pine top, a few rods to the 
 south-east of the spot where the path crossed Berry brook, 
 gTiarded by a bear.* 
 
 The women smiled, but partly believed it might be so, for 
 people had different notions then from what they entertain now. 
 Some believed in witches, ghosts, and goblins, and all had a 
 certain kind of faith in dreams ; at any rate the women wished his 
 dream might prove true ; they felt so sad at the loss of the child ; 
 they wished so much it might be found. 
 
 Just then Joseph Patch came into the clearing, heard Mr. 
 Heath's story, and said he would accompany him. 
 
 An hour went by ; the sun was going down on the last after- 
 noon of the search, wMch would be given up that night, and every 
 one felt that little Sarah was lost forever. 
 
 Suddenly a gun was heard ; every soul in the clearings and 
 the woods hstened. Another report, then another. It is the 
 agreed signal of success. " Thank God ! the child is found." " Is 
 it dead or alive ?" 
 
 They found her just where Mr. Heath said they would ; but 
 no bear was to be seen. When she woke up, she said,. " I want to 
 go to mother. Cany me to mother.'' When asked if she had 
 seen any one, she said " a great black dog stopped with her every 
 night."t 
 
 Joseph Patch took up the half famished child in his arms and 
 earned her home. On the bridle-path they met many people, and 
 they ran before, hun-ahing, waving their hats and green boughs to 
 tell the good news, how all on account of a wonderful dream the 
 child was found alive. Some said the bear guided her to the path. 
 
 * Samuel MeiTill, who resided at the Eaet-parte, and lived to he 84 years old, 
 often told about the lost child. He believed in Mr. Heath's dream as much as in 
 his own existence. There were hundreds of people in Warren of the last genera- 
 tion who believed implicitly in Mr. Heath's di'eam. 
 
 t Nathaniel Richardson's statement. 
 
328 HISTOKY OF WAKREN. ' 
 
 Mrs. "WTiitcher was so overjoyed that she fainted. Mr. Whitcher 
 could not say a word, but smoked Ms pipe as hard as he could, to 
 keep his feeUngs down, and the rest of the children were so glad 
 that they cried and laughed by turns. 
 
 Tradition has it that the Rev. Mr. Powers was present and 
 offered a prayer of thanksgiving, and then all the people sang Old 
 Hundred. However that may be, we know that they ate all the 
 baked beans * that Mrs. Richardson had prepared, and everything 
 else they could find cooked on Pine hill. Then they blew their tin 
 horns as though the 4th of July had come ; shouted and hurrahed 
 again and again, while those who had guns fired volley after voUey 
 tiU all the powder in the settlement was burned, so much did they 
 rejoice that the lost child was found. 
 
 * Nathaniel Richardson, son of Stephen Richardson, also gave many incidents 
 ahout the search, and told of the beans. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF A MIGHTT BATTLE FOUGHT BETWEEN TWO AMBITIOUS OFFICE 
 SEEKEKS, AND HOW EACH GAINED THE VICTORY MUCH TO HIS 
 GBEAT DELIGHT. 
 
 -A.T the organization of our little democracy, "Warren, Col. 
 Obadiah Clement, being in sympathy with the government, imme- 
 diately took the lead in town affairs, and held it for several years. 
 But when the war was over, others began to aspire for the honors 
 of place and position, and naturally envied the Colonel. The most 
 prominent of the aspirants was 'Squire Jonathan Merrill. For live 
 years he had sought ofB.ce, but in vain, for Obadiah Clement knew 
 well how to kill him off — only having to tell what a tory he was 
 iu war times, to sink him out of sight in every election. 
 
 But this would not last always, and 'Squire Jonathan, who as 
 we said before, was as cunniag as a fox, went shrewdly to work 
 to beat the Colonel and gain the honors of ofllce. " I'll fix him," 
 said he. " I'll make him hate the town, and the town will then 
 hate him." This is the way he did it : 
 
 Colonel Clement had a bill against the hamlet for services. It 
 wa^ for a journey to Exeter to get the town incorporated; for 
 drafting and notifying " Grand Jurors," and for recording iu the 
 town books. In all it amounted to nine pounds eleven shillings 
 and three pence. 
 
 'Squire Jonathan heard of it and slyly whispered round telling 
 every body in a confidential way that it was too large ; that the 
 
330 HISTOKY OF WARREN. 
 
 town was too poor to pay it. In other words, he appealed to the 
 avarice of the people most effectuall}-. 
 
 Col. C. was first in the mighty triumvirate of town governors 
 for that political year, 1785-'6, and it was the third year of his 
 selectmensliip.* Likewise he was and had been for the last six 
 years, the great scribe or mighty town clerk, and having been 
 ambassador or Representative to the Great and General Court, and 
 also a high commander in the military forces, he naturally felt 
 Mmself to be the most important man in the hamlet. 
 
 'Squire Joiiathan labored with Col. Clement's associates in 
 power, and they being near relatives to the 'Squire, the first the 
 father, and the second the brother-in-law, he succeeded most effec- 
 tually in making them thinlv the same as he did about the bill. 
 
 So when the day of settlement of town matters came, they 
 refused to allow the Colonel's account. The latter labored with 
 his associates sometime, but with no effect, for he had two stub- 
 born men to deal with; and then when he could not succeed, 
 parted from them in a huff; in other words he was exceedingly 
 wroth. "Pay, you must," said he. " Pay, we won't," said they ; 
 and so the matter waxed worse and worse. 
 
 This was what the cunning 'Squire wanted. He was pleased, 
 and openly expressed his deUght. Col. C. heard of his adversary's 
 remarks, and his anger was fiercer than ever. 
 
 One more effort was made, one more meeting was held, but 
 with no better success than before. 
 
 The Colonel had all the town books, both the selectmen's and 
 the clerk's, and he was determined to hold them until he should 
 get his pay. If he could not have his rights, he would make a 
 storm in the political sky. He would hold on to all the records and 
 prevent an assembly of the people. If he could not rule, no one 
 else should. 
 
 'Squire Jonathan made a few more aggravating remarks, and 
 the storm burst. When asked to call a meeting on the Ides of 
 March, Col. C. raged, stamped his foot, and then with a look of 
 fierce determination, cried, " Pause !" and there was a pause. The 
 wheels of government in our mountain hamlet stopped. The 
 proud ship of State no longer sailed on. She was foundered on 
 
 * Stevens Merrill and Joseph Patch were the other Selectmen. 
 
AN INTERREGNUM. 331 
 
 the rocks of that discord to which 'Squire Merrill had so cunningly 
 directed her. The waves of destruction beat over her, threatening 
 to rend her in pieces. 
 
 And now occui-red an interregnum* similar to those which hap- 
 pened in the early days of the mighty Roman Empire. There 
 were no powerful rulers, no great scribe, no superintendent of 
 the public roads, no gatherer of the revenue, and no taxes. Every 
 thing seemed to have returned as it was at the time when the 
 revolutionary war was raging. 
 
 "What should be done? It was a great question, powerfully 
 discussed by those interested, but months went by and no action 
 was taken. 
 
 At last the matter was brought to the attention of the Great 
 and General Court, and the Legislature took the question in hand. 
 
 The great mother of tovras could not see any of her children 
 commit suicide. So after a long time spent in solemn considera- 
 tion, a resolution was framed and passed, going through both 
 houses of the legislature the same day, June 24th, 1786, whereby 
 Absalom Peters, the barefooted military captain who marched at 
 the head of six companies, to the Coos intervals, was empowered 
 to call an assembly in "Warren, for the choice of town oflBcers, and 
 preside therein during the whole election, f 
 
 But the wise legislature forgot one thing, taxes, and had to 
 pass another resolve, Sept. 24, in order that the State might get 
 her share of the revenue. 
 
 A. Peters called tha meeting, and presided therein in the most 
 proper manner. f But the spirit of the citizens ran high. They 
 marshaled around their leaders, and fought for victory. Each side 
 marched up to the ballot box in solid column. On counting the 
 votes, it was found that Obadiah Clement and his friends had won 
 every time ; electing Joshua Copp, Stephen Eichardson, and "Wil- 
 liam Butler, great rulers or selectmen, Joshua Copp, scribe or 
 clerk, and Jonathan Clement, consei'vator.of the peace or consta- 
 ble. 'Squire JonathanTfand his friends felt cheap enough, and 
 
 * It happened in 1786. 
 
 t Town Clerk's Becords, Vol. i. 21. 
 
 t The meeting was held July 19, 1786. 
 
332 HISTORY OF WAEEElSr. 
 
 silently went home.* But Jonathan Merrill did not give up even 
 in the hour of his seeming defeat. He went to work twice as hard 
 as ever. So persistently did he talk upon the subject of Col. Clem- 
 ent's bm, that even the new selectmen, the Colonel's Mends, did 
 not dare to pay it, for fear they should be indicted for mis-spend- 
 ing the people's money, and the Colonel was more enraged than 
 ever. 
 
 This was just what the 'Squire wanted, and although he was 
 defeated|again at the annual election in 1787, still he managed to 
 have a meeting called July 27th of that year, and succeeded in 
 getting himself, with Joshua Merrill and Lieut. Ephraim True, 
 appointed a committee to settle with Mr. Clement, and procure 
 from him aU the town records. That every thing might seem fair, 
 it was " Voted, that a settlement might be made, if it could be 
 done consistently 'with justice." The meeting was then adjourned 
 to August 6, to hear the report of the committee. 
 
 'Squire Jonathan went to work as slick as " ile." But he did 
 not get a settlement; he did not want to. 
 
 At the adjourned meeting he reported as follows : First, not 
 to aUow anything for going down to get the town incorporated ; 
 and — 
 
 Second, to pay eighteen pence for legally drafting and notify- 
 ing jurors. 
 
 But they knew Col. C. would not accept this, and so they 
 chose Stevens Merrill and Lieut. Ephraim True a committee to 
 settle with him, or to follow suit or suits at law, if he commence 
 one or more against the town, to final end and execution. " Now 
 we will teach him how it is done," said 'Squire Jonathan. Col. C. 
 heard of the remark, and how mad he was. 
 
 By chance they met. One to have seen them would have said 
 " surely they do love each other." Determination seated itself on 
 their countenances. Eage flashed from their eyes. "You miser- 
 able tory," growled Col. C. " You old thief and extortioner," 
 hissed 'Squire M. through his teeth. Then Col. C. shook his cane 
 threateningly. 'Squire M. doubled his fists belligerently. And 
 now grim visaged war smiled approvingly, and Saultenbattery, 
 
 * Old men used to say that it was the toughest flght they evei' saw at town 
 meeting. 
 
AN IMPENDING CONFLICT. 338 
 
 one of the ancient goddesses, grinned with malignant satisfaction. 
 
 Blows would have fallen swift, and the battle waxed hot had 
 not Stevens Merrill, the man of iron firmness, and Joshua Copp, 
 who had been watching the impending conflict, interfered and said, 
 " Gentlemen, thee must stop, thee can't fight in this town." 
 
 This rencountre only made matters worse. But the Colonel 
 did not plunge wheels lover head into lawsuits. He had more 
 shrewdness than that ; he quietly went to work and induced some 
 one else to get up some pleasant little suits against the town ; to 
 wit, he got all the public highways indicted, and thus raised the 
 d — 1 generally.* 
 
 "With so much avidity did the Colonel prosecute his schemes, 
 so many suits did he institute, that the town was perfectly sick, 
 and was glad to cry, hold, enough. At a regular town meeting, it 
 was " Voted to dismiss the committee appointed to fight Col. C, 
 and that Captain William Butler and Joshua Copp, friends of the 
 Colonel, take the certificate that is in the selectmen's hands, and 
 lay it out discretionary if wanted in carrying on the lawsuits com- 
 menced against said town for the repairing of roads, and to pay 
 Col. Clement's demands on said town." Thus they were going to 
 come a flank movement on road suits, by making friends with the 
 prime mover of them.f 
 
 This ended the war, and Col. Obadiah, iu one sense, gained 
 the victory. But it accomplished all that 'Squire Jonathan desired. 
 It made Mr. Clement exceedingly unpopular, and he never could 
 get elected to any ofllce of consequence again ; the only one he ever 
 held afterwards being that of moderator at some special meeting. 
 
 * Not. 27, 1790. — " Voted to pass over the 4th article in the warning, which was 
 to see what the town will do on account of being presented."— Town Clerks' Re- 
 cords, Vol. i. 43. 
 
 t Allowed constable Copp fifteen pounds sixteen shillings, new emission, it 
 being for three pounds nineteen shillings silver money, which said Copp paid Oba- 
 diah Clement that was due to him from the town. 
 
 JOSHUA MBERILL, ) spipotmpn 
 WILLIAM BUTLEE, ] selectmen.. 
 — Selectmen's Eeoords, Vol. i. 
 
 "May 10, 1791.— Voted that Capt. William Butler and JoshnaCopp should take 
 the certificate that is in the selectmen's hands, and lay it oiit discretionary if want- 
 ing in carrying on the lawsuits commenced against said town, and to pay Obadiah 
 Clement's demand (jn said town."— Town Clerk's Records, Vol. i. 45. 
 
 Names of the legal voters who had come into tovm from 1782 to 1788, inclusive : 
 
 Nathaniel Clough. Samuel Knight. John Stone. 
 
 Caleb Homan. Levi Lufkin. Elisha Swett. 
 
 Enoch Homan. Stephen Lund. Aaron Welch. 
 
 Nathaniel Knight. Stephen Eichiirdson. 
 
334 HISTOItY OF WAKREN. 
 
 Yet this contest was pvoliflc of mig-hty results. From it 
 sprang two great parties, the Clement party, and the Merrill party, 
 that fought each other with powerful tenacity for more than two 
 generations. When the sons of Joseph Patch became voters, a 
 tldrd party sprung up that achieved some success, and was called 
 the Patch party. It frequently held the balance of power. 
 
 'Squire Jonathan was now able to succeed, and by striving, in 
 the course of years, held all the important offices in the gift of the 
 people, although Col. Clement at the head of the Clement party 
 often said that he frequently had the pleasure of giving the 'Squire 
 and his friends a sound drubbing at the polls. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONCERNING A GREAT BOUNDARY FEUD, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 
 
 ii-ND now when the wilderness blossoms hke a rose and good 
 settUng lauds begin to be of some consequence, the proprietors of 
 the grants made in Provincial times under Gov. Benning Went- 
 worth, having many of them surv^ed the Revolution, commenced 
 to bestir themselves and look shari) after their interests. Mighty 
 boundary feuds began to arise, for neighboring peoples set on by 
 their patrons the proprietors, did not always observe the old max- 
 im of " cursed be he who removeth his neighbors' land-marks," 
 and the citizens of Warren found that their friends across the fron- 
 tiers began to show an inclination to trespass on their fertile pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 In fact they had some excuse for so doing, for in laying out 
 the townships, in 1760 and in 1761, " the sui-veyor of the King's 
 woods," employed by the Governor, had not been very, careful to 
 make the lines of townships correspond. Consequently settlers 
 upon them did not know exactly where the lines were, nor in what 
 town they lived, and so did not scruple to conduct themselves in 
 rather a lawless manner. 
 
 In a short time, great complaints began to arise, and the town 
 of Warren thus finding herself encroached upon, by means of the 
 selectmen, mighty rulers, and the lordly proprietors, who of course 
 took a lively interest in the matter, immediately entered into 
 negotiations with the neighboring powers round about. It is a 
 tradition often related that by dint of numerous diplomatic mis- 
 
336 
 
 HI.STOKV OF WAUKEN. 
 
 sions a meeting of inaiiy of tlie town proprietors and numerous 
 boards of seleetnien was lield at Plymouth, about 1778. 
 
 It was a jolly old meeting. They treated themselves on grog, 
 and swallowed all the various kinds of liqttors mixed in those days, 
 and tlien, when prett}' well tired up, proceeded to business. A 
 chairman and clerk wei-e choseu, and tiien charters, survejs, and 
 
 OLD BOUNDARY LINES. 
 
 plans of townships, Averc prodtrced. Each delegation had a 
 speaker of its own and wanted to be heard tirst, and cried out, our 
 lines run so aud so, our charter says so and so, our lots arc located 
 so aud^so, and so on, ad injiiiitum. The chairman called to order, 
 but it was no use. Confusion, a goddess, got contused. Babel 
 seemed Jto have arrived, and when all was olatter-and-bang, the 
 meeting broke up in the most dignitied aud wonderful manner. 
 
THE LEGISLATURE INTEEFEEES, 337 
 
 But it is a historical fact, on record, that the delegates went 
 home and considered. Some of the wiser ones drew up a petition 
 to the legislatui-e, to have a committee appointed to settle the 
 boundaries, and circulated it. It was extensively signed, and when 
 presented to the Great and General Court, that body immediately 
 acted, and appointed a committea for that purpose.* 
 
 Said committee were nearly four years performing their duties, 
 and they had numerous meetings at which many boards of select- 
 men and proprietors' committees appeared. They also employed 
 several surveyors to run the lines and set up the bounds,- and only 
 made their report to the Legislature, Sept. 24, 1784, which report 
 was approved and the bounds thus established. f 
 
 Strange work the Court's committee as they were called, made 
 with our young and vigorous township. They actually pushed it 
 up a considerable distance to the north and east. Think of it. A 
 whole township moved. Piermont and "Wentworth on the west 
 and south, got large slice's of territory. But "Warren got more — 
 clipping of large portions of Old Coventry, Peeling, and Treco- 
 thick. But Warren gained no settlers. Wentworth and Piermont 
 did. Warren lost on the west, Isaiah Batchelder and Thomas 
 Clark, and on the south, Simeon Smith, Peter Stevens, Joseph 
 Kimball, and Lemuel Keezer. Besides it lost of unsettled laud 
 four lots into Coventry, eight into Wentworth, and fifteen into 
 Piermont. The four taken by Coventry were on the nolth-west 
 corner ; but Warren got far more land from Coventry on the north- 
 east boundary than it lost. 
 
 And now that the lines were changed, the losses and gains 
 must be settled. This was not easily done, and a war about pay- 
 ments arose hot and earnest. Blows did not come for they feared 
 
 * The Committee was appointed by an act of ttie Legislature passed Oct. 23, 
 1780, and it consisted of Ebenezer Thompson, Joseph Badger, Ebenezer Smith, 
 Levi Dearborn, and John Smith, Esquires, and they, or the major part of them, 
 were authorized to survey Eomney, Wentworth, Warren, Plymouth, Campion, 
 Piermont, and Orford. 
 
 t BOUNDS or WAKKBN. 
 
 " Warren.— Beginning at a bass tree, being the north-west corner bound of 
 Eomney, thence north, 24 degrees east five and three-fourths miles to a maple 
 tree ; thence north about 74 degrees west, eight miles to a beech tree, being the 
 south-east comer of Haverhill; thence 6 J degrees west, five and one-half miles to 
 a beech tree, the north-east corner of Orford, thence on a straight line to the bound 
 began at." 
 
 These are supposed to be the present boundaries of Warren. 
 
 y 
 
338 mSTOKT OF -WAKKEN. 
 
 the great central power, the mother of towns; but litigation, such 
 as the old Greeks loved so well, was i-ife. Warren did not resort 
 to it, but entered into negotiations with the far lands of "Went- 
 worth, Piei-mont, and Orford. 
 
 Meeting after meeting was held by the proprietors to settle up 
 the diflculties. Committees without number tried their hand at 
 the matter. The first chosen June 17, 1785, consisted of Enoch 
 Page, from down country, and our citizen, Captaru William But- 
 ler ; but they did not accomplish anything. Then Major Joseph 
 Page, another down country gentleman, was associated with Capt. 
 Butler. They went into a minute investigation of the whole matr 
 ter, and made a full report, much to the satisfaction of the proprie- 
 tors. Oct. 20, 1786, Capt. William Hackett was chosen a committee 
 to settle with Gen. Moulton, agent for the Proprietors of Piermont, 
 on account of land given to Messrs. Batchelder and Clark. But 
 he did not succeed, and afterward Major Joseph Page, by order of 
 Warren Proprietors, laid out two hundred acres on Green moun- 
 tain, now called Sentinel mountain, to satisfy the claims of our 
 western power.* 
 
 Then other settlements had to be made. The town of Went- 
 worth got more than four hundred acres in Warren, on account of 
 what Warren's Proprietors had given of Wentworth lands to set- 
 tlers. A goodly lot in WaiTen had to be given to Orford, on 
 account of the pretty quadrilateral on the south-east corner, which 
 the proprietors had also given away to a settler, but which belonged 
 to Orford town. Perhaps some may maliciously think Warren 
 was more to blame about boundary feuds than her neighbors, but 
 we must positively assure them that it was not so. 
 
 In the matter with Coventry, now Benton, the conclusion was 
 'arrived at that the changes or swops were about equal, although 
 there was some difficulty in relation to the Bowles lot, so called 
 from Charles Bowles, who served in the war and afterwards was 
 a celebrated revivalist, that Coventry's Proprietors had given away, 
 but which actually belonged to Warren. 
 
 Now that the boundaries are set up with stability, the proprie- 
 
 jijtlai* " June 28, 1787.— Voted, That Capt. William Hackett give Gen. Moulton, 
 agent for Piermont, immediate notice to make his pitch of 200 acres of land in 
 Warren, in consideration of that quantity taken into Piermont, settled by ThOB. 
 Clark and IsaiaU Batchelder, by the lOtb of October next, and that if he doth not 
 
JOSIAH BUKNHAM'S SURVEY. 339 
 
 tors came to the conclusion that a new survey of the whole terri- 
 tory was actually needed. The Leavitt survey, running as far 
 north as the eleven mile tree, the Cummings survey, the Rindge 
 survey, would not answer at all, and they immediately contracted 
 with Josiah Burnham, school-master, to make an accurate plan of 
 the town. He entered vipon the work, but it was a long time before 
 he finished it. He re-run the lots, established the range lines and 
 surveyed the divisions, making everything harmonize as much as 
 possible with the old surveys, the proprietors' drawing of lots and 
 the former sales by deed. 
 
 But he did not lay down the roads and brooks, nor trace the 
 course of the river ; neither did he indicate the locality of the 
 ponds, and the mountains. He had no taste for such things. 
 
 But he was accurate as far as he went, and his plan has been 
 the foundation of every map of the hamlet made since. May 4, 
 1795, the proprietors accepted his work and paid him a vast sum 
 for doing it. 
 
 Thus the lines were settled and peace prevailed once more 
 along the borders. It continued for more than fifty years, and was 
 only disturbed by old Peeling and Trecothick, who grew jealous 
 of our vigorous democracy, and raised another boundary feud, as 
 will be related in a subsequent book of this history. 
 
 make said pitch by said time, thenCapt. Haokett to lay 200 acres of equal goodness 
 as near the line of Piermont as conveniently may be, and make return thereof at 
 the adjournment of this meeting."— Proprietors' Records. 
 
 * See Proprietors' Records for fiiU notes about lands taken into other towns. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 or THE MIGHTY REQUISITES 3S1ECESSABT TO MAKE A PEEFECT BE- 
 MOCEACr ; ALL GEAPHICAILT POETRAtED IN THE MOST ATTEAC- 
 TIVE MANNEE. 
 
 Does any one -wisli to know what are the requisites to 
 make a perfect community, a complete town organization, then 
 let him in addition to what we have already stated, read this chap- 
 ter of our no less great than modest history, and a tolerable idea 
 can be obtained. 
 
 And first of all, after houses, mills, and cleared lands, good 
 roads were greatly needed and our vahant citizens went bravely to 
 work to build them. The old proprietors' highway, partly follow- 
 ing the route of the Indian trail, did not suit them, and so they 
 surveyed a new road over Red Oak hill, through " Patchbreuck- 
 land," across the Asquamchumauke or Baker river, through the 
 centre district, over the Mikaseota or Black brook, along the basin 
 of Runaway pond, and winding away over the Height-o'-land by 
 Tarleton lake to Piermont. It was four rods wide, and aftei-wards 
 was a great thoroughfare, the first ox teams from Coos passing 
 over it soon after it was built, to the sea-board, a circumstauce ' 
 most pleasingly narrated by Rev. Grant Powers, the distinguished 
 historian of the " Cowass country." 
 
 And then a road, now discontinued, was laid out on the west 
 side of the Asquamchumauke, following the old Indian traU and 
 the proprietors' first highway from Wentworth line to the mouth 
 
THE OLD HIGHWAYS. . 341 
 
 of Black brook, for the accommodation of Nathaniel Clough, who 
 had just settled on that Side of the river. 
 
 From Black brook bridge over Beech hill to Wentworth line 
 another was cut for the benefit of 'Squire Abel Merrill,* a new 
 settler on the hill among the beeches arid maples. 
 
 Leading from the last at a point where now stands Beech hill 
 school-house, a fourth road ran away to the west high up on the 
 side of Sentinel mountain, to accommodate Mr. Amos Little, t 
 who was at this time clearing a beautiful and fertile spot in the 
 woods, a delightful breezy sunshiny nest on the hiU, from which 
 he could overlook the valley and out upon the panorama of great 
 eastern mountains . 
 
 The selectmen also hurried to lay out a road over Pine hill 
 from Chase Whitcher's by John Whitcher's down to the " Society 
 school-house,"t as it was sometimes called, in the Centre district. 
 For several years Aaron "Welch,** who lived near where the ceme- 
 
 * ABEL AND TAMAE (Kimball) MEEEILL'S FAMILT BECOBD. 
 
 Benjamin, bora Oct. 19, 1784. Josepli, boiii Feb. 16, 1798. 
 
 John, bom Mch. i, 1786. William, bom Apr. 10, 1800. 
 
 Daniel, bom Mob. 2t, 1788. Ira, bom July 17, 1803. 
 
 SjiUy, bom Mch. 9, 1790. Tamar, born Mch. 9, 1805. 
 
 Polly, born Mch. 28, 1792. Hannah, born Apr. 3, 1807. 
 
 Betsey, bom June 9, 1794. John L. born May 8, 1810. 
 
 Samuel L. boi-u Apr. 10, 1796. 
 Names of those voters who moved into town in 1789 ;— 
 
 John Abbott. Ebenezer Hidden. Abel Merrill. 
 
 John Badger. (1) John Hidden. Eichard Pillsbury. 
 
 Samuel Fellows. Amos Little. 
 
 Jonathan Fellows. Silas Lund. 
 
 (1) John Badger was a ourions genius. He once ran away ta avoid his credi- 
 tors, and they went after him and brought him back. Then he acquired considera- 
 ble property, ran away again,-but his debtors didnot got go alter him to bring him 
 back. He scolded and said he thought it was a poor rule that would not work both 
 ways. 
 
 tAMOS AND BETSEY (Kimball) LITTLE'S EAmLY KECOKD. 
 
 Sally, born May 31, 1787, at Plaistow. William, born .June 19, 1802. 
 
 Tamar, born Aug. 25, 1789, at Warren. Jonathan, bom June 8, 1804. 
 
 James, bom Sept. 6, 1791. John, bom Mch. 7, 1806. 
 
 Benjamin, bom Sept. 22, 1793. Judith and DoUy, twins, bom Feb. 
 
 Betty, bom Aug. 31, 1795. 25, 1810. 
 
 Amos, bom Dec. 15, 1797. Kimball, bom Jan. 8, 1815. 
 
 Jesse, born July 4, 1800. 
 
 1 1. " Voted to allow Stevens Merrill f,(l-4r-e, Capt. Wm. Butler 5 shillings, and 
 Ensign Co|)p 3 shillings, for their services as a committee, laying out a road from 
 Coventry line to the Society school-house, on Coos road." 
 
 " Voted- to lay out the road through Mr. Aaron Welch's land, near the bank of 
 the river, direct as is convenient from his house to the Society school-house." 
 
 ** AAEON AND BETTY WELCH'S FAMILY EEOOSD. 
 
 Moses, bornDec. 10, 1788, at Warren. Oliver, bom April 15, 1799. 
 
 Aaron, bom Sept. 8, 1791. Thomas, born Aug. 18, 1801. 
 
 .Tudith, bom May 19, 1793. Lois, bom May 19,' 1804. 
 
 Betsey, bom Apr. 18, 1795. Sally, bom Feb. 20, 1807. 
 Samuel, bom May IS, 1797. 
 
342 HISTOBT OF WARBEN. 
 
 tery is now, by vote in public assembly, was allowed to have two 
 gates upon it. 
 
 Then one was laid out for Christian "William Whiteman round 
 the east side of Tarleton lake ; another from Height-o'-land road 
 across Runaway pond valley to Pine hill road, and yet another 
 from said Pine hill road across Berry brook, through Streamy 
 valley, far into the East-parte regions. Samuel Knight, who had 
 served in the wars, built his cabin beside it.* It was a frail dwell- 
 ing, and through the crevices of its roof blew the summer winds, 
 and the stars shone in at night. Knight was a man of pleasant 
 adventures, and a narrator of wild and startling traditions. He 
 found where the Indians lived in the valley and tm-ned up their 
 stone arrow-heads with his plow. He had been a brave man in 
 his country's battles, and exhibited nerve in his encounters in the 
 woods. 
 
 These were the principal highways, but as the years went by, 
 roads were laid out up into Moosehillock district, to acconmiodate 
 James and Moses "Williams, Caleb Homan,t and Samuel Merrill, 
 who had settled in that section ; up Patch hill, towards Glen ponds, 
 for the benefit of Mi-. Reuben Batchelder and Capt. Stephen Flan- 
 ders, who had settled in the East-parte country ; round the tbot of 
 Moosehillock to the Summit ; up High street, through the North 
 woods; from Pine hill road, up towards "Webster-slide Mt. by 
 Wachipauka pond, to convene Mr. Paul Meader, a new settler in 
 this part of the hamlet ; down Heigh1>o'-land road by Eastman 
 
 * SAMUEL AND SAKAH ^Bradley) KNIGHT'S PAinLT EECOED. 
 
 He was bom in Plaistow, Feb. 21, 1757. Sarah Bradley, his wife, was bom in Plais- 
 tow, Aug. 23, 1760. Married Aug. 20, 1778. 
 
 Susannah, born May 26, 1779. Abigail, born Apr. 16, 1790. 
 
 Abigail, born Apr. 7, 1782. PoUy, born Oct. 21, 1792. 
 
 Married Mary Men-ill, Aug. 26, 1784. Betty, bom Apr. 30, 1795. 
 
 Nathaniel, born Apr. 20, 1785. Euth, bom July 17, 1798. . 
 
 Stevens, bom May 9, 1786. Hannah B., bom July 16, 1801. 
 
 Sarah, born Feb. 3, 1788. 
 New voters in 1790 :— 
 
 Amos Clark. James Little. Thomas PiUsbury. 
 
 John Gardner. Daniel Pike. C. WiUiam Whiteman. 
 
 t CALEB AXD EUTH (MerriU) HOMAN'S family EECOED. 
 
 Married, Jan. 18 1789. Joseph, born Oct. 11, 1797. 
 
 Sally, born Aug. 10, 1789. Maiy, born July 14, 1800. 
 
 Joseph, born Apr. 23, 1792. Died June Euth, born Feb . 26, 1803. 
 
 29, 1794. Mary, bom June 6, 1806. 
 Susanna, bom Apr. 29, 1795. 
 New voters in 1791 :— 
 
 David Badger. Enoch Page. 
 
 Joseph Knight. Dr. Joseph Peters. 
 
A WILD-CAT OVEKCOME WITH A GOADSTICK. 348 
 
 ponds to Piermont, and up Patch brook on to Picked Ml], where a 
 son of Joseph Patch had built a cabin and commenced a clearing. 
 
 These roads were gems in themselves, being so much better 
 tha,n none at all ; but however good, they were often presented to 
 the grand jury by indignant men, who jolting over them thought 
 they ought to be indicted and thereby made better. 
 
 Then an attempt was made to lay out a road to old Treoothick, 
 now Ellsworth, across the depression between Carr and Kineo 
 mountains, and by Glen ponds ; but it was never accomplished, 
 much to the detriment of fishermen who wish to visit those beau- 
 tiful sheets of water.* 
 
 On these roads have happened many a strange adventure 
 worthy of record in this remarkable history. Ox teams, as we 
 have said before, drawing ponderous freights to and from the 
 Cowass country; great canvass covered teams, drawn by eight 
 horses, coming all the way down from the traditionaiy land of 
 Canada ; riders upon horseback, like Johny Balch, who carried the 
 mail and blew a horn in the woods, and long trains of pungs and 
 two horse sleds with jingjing " coffee bells " and shouting drivers, 
 coming from the high north country in winter, used them. 
 
 Once Mr. Samuel Flanders slew an enormous wild cat that 
 was devouring a goose on the Height-o'-land road by Tarleton 
 lake. The hungry beast was too fond of poultry to have a prudent 
 regard for its own safety, and Mr. F. not having a thought of 
 danger, with a large goad stick attacked the cat and with a single 
 blow killed it. 
 
 Races have been run upon them, when they were not in so 
 good a condition as they now are. "When the East-parte routef 
 
 *Paid Abel Merrill and Joseph Patch $1.00 each for meeting selectmen of 
 Ellsworth and examining a route Tor a road. — See Selectmen's firsst book. 
 
 Wew Voters.— In 1792, Uriah Cross, Josiah Magoon. In 1793, Ahram Alexander, 
 Thomas Boynton, .John Chase, David S. Craig, Daniel Welch. In 1794, Stephen 
 Badger. In 1795, Stephen Flanders, Barnabas Niles. 
 
 t John Loir lived on the East-parte road. He was a very neat farmer, and 
 would follow the man who reaped for him and cut up the stray etalks of grain 
 which the reaper would leave about the stumps and rook heaps, with his jack- 
 knife. 
 
 He had the very economical habit of laying in bed all day, winter times, and at 
 dark would yoke up his team and go into the forest after a load of wood. He 
 would often work all night at his busmess. Mv uncle Anson one bitter cold night 
 saw him starting out with his cattle at 9 p.m., for a load of wood. 
 
 John Low, one winter, found two bushels of swallows in a hollow birch tree. 
 They were torpid when found, but were lively enough after they had laid before 
 the Are a short time. John Libbey and Nathaniel Memll sawthese swallows. ( ?) 
 'Squire George Libbey affirmed that he saw these swalloWB.( ?) 
 
344 HISTORY OP WAEEEN. 
 
 was first cleared, Mrs. Samuel Knight, Mrs. Caleb Homan, accom- 
 panied by several other women, and a young man by the name of 
 Webster, who was from Landaff, went to Mi-. Stephen Flanders' to 
 pay the family a visit. On their return home when they arrived near 
 the bridge over what is sometimes called Mooseliillock falls near 
 East-parte school-house, Mistresses Knight and Homan challenged 
 young Webster, who was mounted on a very fleet horse, to a race. 
 At first he did not like to consent, but they strongly urged him 
 and he acquiesced. Whipping up, they went over the rough road 
 for the distance of a mile and a half, at almost lightning speed, 
 when Webster who had the fastest horse proved the winner, much 
 to the chagrin of the racing ladies. Mr. W., when an old man, 
 remarked in telling the story that he had rode over that piece of 
 road many times since, but never a quarter so fast as then. 
 
 Soldiers have marched over them. Many a time on little train- 
 ing day, flood-wood, slam-bang and string-bean companies, and 
 others that were entitled to more respect, have right-wheeled and 
 left-wheeled upon them. Col. Moses H. Clement,* son of Col. 
 Obadiah, marched a whole regiment alopg the Height-o'-land, or 
 old Coos road, the first one that ever mustered in Warren. 
 
 Battles have been waged upon them. The fiercest one was 
 fought one night when it was " dark as ]3itch," by Samuel Knight 
 and a terrible foe. It had lightened, thundered, rained, and 
 hailed, " like great guns,'' and Mr. K. who was dripping wet in 
 his camp by Silver rill, resolved to go home to his boarding place 
 at Joseph Merrill's inn. At the foot of the hill, near Berry brook 
 bridge, something stopped him. There was a low deep growl and 
 directly before him, seemingly, two balls of fire flashed in the 
 blackness. He shouted, and the bear, for such was his enemy, 
 leaped upon him grasping him with its fore paws and soratqhed 
 Mm fearfully. It was a critical moment, but Knight's right arm- 
 was free, and quick as thought he pulled a knife from his pocket, 
 opened it with his teeth, and thrust it with desperate force into the 
 
 MOSES H. AND TAMAR ^Little) CLEJIENT'S FAMILY EECOKD. 
 
 EuBseU K., born Apr. 19, 1809. Sarah, born Dec. 29, 1822. 
 
 Hazen, born Dec. 14, 1811. William, born Jan. 26, 1825. 
 Elizabeth, born reb. 28, 1814. Died Daniel Q., born May 31, 1826. 
 
 Jan. 27, 1815. Eliza, born Jan. 20, 1888. 
 
 James, born Nov. 10, 1815. John, born Aug. 12, 1830. 
 
 Josepli, born Apr. 3, 1818. Tamar J., born Deo. 4, 1832. 
 Amos Little, bom Dec. 12, 1820. 
 
A BEAE KILLED WITH A JACK-KNIFE. 345 
 
 side of the bear. Luckily it pierced its heart, and instantly relax- 
 ing its hold, it fell upon the ground and expired. Knight was 
 severely torn by the claws of the bear, and sitting down by Ms 
 dead enemy concluded to remain there during the night. But the 
 clouds shortly broke away, the stars came out, the moon shone 
 brightly, and changing his mind, he hurried home. 
 
 Eeturning the next morning with his friends, he found a bear 
 of the largest class which gave evident tokens that she was 
 engaged rearing her young. This probably induced her to attack 
 Mr. K., something she would not have done under any other cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Men have died on them. Richard Pillsbuiy, who lived in 
 ■Wentworth, had been to Haverhill on foot one cold stormy winter 
 day. Climbing Eed-oak hill at night, on his return, he became 
 chilled through, lay down in the road and died. In the morning 
 his dog came to the door of his home and howled, then seemed to 
 look towards the road on the hill. They followed and found him 
 there. Friends and neighbors carried him home, then buried him 
 in the grave yard by the mossy stream, — " down on the east side." 
 To-day he is almost forgotten, and soon would be lost to the 
 memory of men forever, did we not here record his death. 
 
 In order to make these roads really serviceable, bridges were 
 wanted and must be had over the little meadow streams, across 
 the mountain torrents, and spanning the river. Most of these were 
 easily built ; but the great work of that time was the building of 
 the large bridge over the Asquamchumauke, near the mouth of 
 Black brook, the Mikaseota. The citizens of Warren had sent a 
 letter to the proprietors, praying for aid, and the godfathers of the 
 hamlet generously voted nineteen pounds ten shillings and seven 
 pence to build the bridge. On the third of March, 1784, at a pub- 
 lic meeting, Jonathan Merrill, Joshua Copp, and Joseph Patch, 
 were appointed a committee to perfoi-m the work, and authorized 
 to proceed as far as the money would go. They commenced the 
 work at once. They labored themselves, they paid Stevens Mer- 
 rill three pounds for plank to put on it, and Obadiah Clement two 
 pounds seventeen shillings and one penny, for Iabor,\besides vast 
 sums paid to other individuals. 
 
 That the work might go on bravely, they purchased at the 
 
346 HISTOKT OF TVAKKEN. 
 
 price of sixteen shillings, a little old rum " to wet their whistles 
 and strengthen their muscles." Moses True, it is said, once carried 
 the great stone jug to Stevens Merrill's, who kept the pure " west 
 endea," to get it filled. Mr. M. was away, and he went iuto the 
 kitchen. It was a sight that met his eyes not often seen in these 
 degenerate days. Mrs. Merrill was mounted on the loom, which 
 stood in one corner of the room, smoking and weaving with all 
 her might, the fumes of her tqbacco pipe mingling with the whiz 
 of the shuttle, the jarring of the lathe and the clattering of the 
 treadles, while buzz, buzz, went the rapid wheel, and creak, creak, 
 the windle from which run the yarn that her grandchild, daughter 
 of 'Squire Jonathan, was quilling. . 
 
 But Moses True was a dauntless youth. " Come down, " said, 
 he, showing the jug. At first she was not inclined to accommo- 
 date him ; but he persisted, and she put up a gallon of the good 
 creature that was so much needed in those days.* 
 
 How they worked when they got the exhilerating drams of 
 good grog. How the axes flew in the great pine timbers, how the 
 mallets resounded as the mortices were made, how the augurs bit 
 as they gnawed through the wood, turned by strong arms, and 
 how the shovels went as they dug great trenches ui the bottom of 
 the stream in which to place the mud sills on which the bridge 
 would stand. 
 
 They drank better rum in those days than now. There was 
 not so much strychnine in it. Besides, there were no temperance 
 societies then ; the ministers drank themselves. 
 
 But when the bridge was raised they drank lots of the good 
 creature. The great rulers of the town, the selectmen, paid Joshua 
 
 * 1784.— Paid Stevens Merrill for plank to build the bridge over Baker river, 
 
 three pounds. 
 Paid Stevens Merrill for rum to raise the bridge, eiglit shillings. 
 " Obadiah Clements, two pounds seventeen shillings one penny, in ftiU pay 
 for work done on the bridge over Baker river. 
 Ordered Constable Butler to pay Ephraim Tnie eight shillings, it being for 
 rum that he found to build the bridge, which sum is to be taken out of his note that 
 he gave to the town. 
 
 OBADIAH CLEMENT, j cplertmen 
 SAMUEL IO,IGHT, ( selectmen. 
 
 Paid to Joshua Merrill sixteen shillings, it being for two gallons of rum that he 
 found for the town to be spent in raising the river bridge, which is to be allowed to 
 him on the former account. 
 
 March.27, 1786.— Paid Obadiah Clement frivo pounds two shillings and eleven 
 pence, it being due to him for work done on the bridge over Baker river. 
 
 JOSEPH PATCH, j qpipptmpn 
 WILLIAM BUTLfeE, i Selectmen. 
 
HOW PATCH beook; was bridgbd. 347 
 
 Merrill sixteen shillings for two gaUons that he furnished, and 
 eight shillings to Ephraim True for one gallon found by him ; all 
 for the purpose of raising. Three gallons I Wonderful to relate, 
 with this powerful assistance, they got the bridge up without difl- 
 culty, and then the work stopped ; the funds were all spent. 
 
 July 6, at a town meeting, the report of the distinguished com- 
 mittee was accepted, and then, that the enterprise might go on, 
 voted to finish the bridge at the town's expense. That the work 
 might be done at reasonable rates, "Voted to let the finishing of 
 the bridge to the lowest bidder," and Col. Clement having bid five 
 pounds, it was struck off to ihim. There was some planking and 
 considerable grading to be done, but before the summer was over 
 the great work was complete. 
 
 But the building the bridge over Patch brook was a greater 
 work than the one over the Asquamchumauke. A mighty freshet 
 happened about these times; somebody said "a cloud broke on 
 Moosehillock," the river overflowed its banks and spread out across 
 all the intervals. Of course a portion of the river water ran do wn 
 the valley of Patch brook, and the shrewd citizens thought a 
 bridge would certaialy be needed from high bank to high bank, 
 and they proceeded to erect one immediately. It reached from the 
 Forks school-house twenty rods away to the spot where the little 
 bridge now spans the rill af the foot of the northern bank. Twenty 
 pounds sterling the town appropriated March 18, 1790, to com- 
 mence the work, and chose Joseph Patch, Stephen Richardson, 
 Stevens Merrill, and Joshua Copp, a committee to lay it out. 
 
 It only made a beginning. Next year in meeting assembled 
 the citizens enacted, after the manner of other great legisla^ve 
 hodies, that they would appropriate " as much of that money as 
 was raised to lay out on the highways as will finish the bridge near 
 Joseph Patch's house." 
 
 Then the work glowed and the mighty structure advanced ; 
 the money was all laid out. There came a halt, and the bridge 
 was not finished. The year 1792 came. Not a drop of river water 
 had flowed down Patch brook valley for three years. The wan-ant 
 for the assembling of the democracy that year contained the fol- 
 lowing article: — "To see what method the town wiU take to 
 finish the bridge." 
 
diS HISTOET OP WAEEEN. 
 
 At the meeting- when the article came up to be acted upon, 
 some shrewd citizen who was given to doubting suggested that he 
 doubted very much if the bridge was needed at all ; that he guessed 
 the ground where the water did not run " was safer to travel upon 
 than planks, and a mighty sight cheaper." He was heard by the 
 assembled wisdom in silence, and the projectors of the long bridge 
 looked grave and wise as owls. Some one suggested that the mat> 
 ter better be postponed to a future day, and thus it was disposed of. 
 
 The half completed bridge stood all summer a silent monu- 
 ment of the great freshet and the sageness of men. Next year it 
 is recorded that " Long Patch bridge " is yet unsettled for, but no 
 action was taken in the matter. By some mishap, while the citi- 
 zens were deliberating what to do with it, in the hot summer a 
 spark of fire fell upon the work ; the flames leaped up devouring 
 sills, posts, stringers, and planks, and the noble work was gone 
 forever. 
 
 Two short bridges were afterwards erected in its place which 
 are continued to tMs day.* 
 
 And now, roads and bridges complete, travel through our ham- 
 let much increased as was hinted before, and the business of tav- 
 erning grew to be the best in town. Lemuel Keezer,t who lived 
 on the southern border, immediately opened a hotel and kept it for 
 a long time. Stevens Merrill had accommodations for man and 
 beast; his son, Joseph Merrill, opened a hostelrie on the plain 
 
 *Tlie river flowed under Patch brook bridge again in 1858 ; also in 1866 and in 
 1869. 
 
 t Lemuel Keezer's tavern sign had a dove painted on one side and a serpent 
 on the other. When asted why he had such a sign, he replied that it represented 
 himself; that sometimes he was a serpent, hut more often ne was a heavenly dove. 
 
 Keezer was a most remarkable man, and very keen wdthal, as our readers will 
 learn in a subsequent part of this history. He once had two of his relatives stop 
 with him over night. They had a gay time, and when they harnessed up in the 
 morning they thanked him for his hospitality, but he never minded them and said 
 we will settle the bills at the bar, gentlemen. They were surprised and said they 
 thought they were cousins. Keezer's eyes twinkled, and he said just pay the 
 money, gentlemen, and then we will be cousins. 
 
 Keezer set scythes in his orchard to cut the boys who stole his fruit. One 
 Amos Clark, a cunning youth, found " the man trap " on a moon-shiny night, and 
 drove it to the heel into the ground, Keezer piously forgave the trespasser, and 
 spent two hours digging the scythe out. 
 
 Keezer hired Peter Martin and Albert Hogan to fall trees for him. He took 
 Martin aside, gave him a bottle of rum, and told him Hogan was going to sweat 
 him. Then he took Hogan aside, gave him a bottle of rum and told him the same 
 story. Martin mistrusted, but Hogan put in terribly all the forenoon. In the 
 afternoon Martin explained Keezer's little game, and then the men drank their 
 rum together, and had a sweet time, much to the landlord's delight. 
 
THE OLD POLITICAL POT-HOUSES. 349 
 
 "Where the common is now ; Jonathan Clement kept an inn at Run- 
 a-way pond ; Obadiah Clement continued in the same business just 
 above him, and Col. Tarleton kept an excellent house high up on 
 the western marche by the shore of Tarleton lake. 
 
 These taverns flourished wonderfully, and the proprietors all 
 arrived at considerable wealth. The landlords had comely daugh- 
 ters for waiting maids ; strong armed sons to attend the great ox 
 teams that stopped to bait or rest over night, or to groom the sad- 
 dle horses of gentlemen who patronized them. 
 
 Then the bar-room, furnished with the best of drinks, milk- 
 toddy arid egg-nog, and numerous other kinds, with its great wood 
 fire and loggerhead at white heat, was an excellent loafing place 
 for the nearest neighbors. They assembled here to learn the news 
 from travellers, hear the gossip of. the country round and discuss 
 politics. The Merrill party and the Clement party had each hotels 
 of their own, and there they held their caucuses. 
 
 These inns of those old days were good ones, the table was 
 always well set, the cream the sweetest and richest, the butter and 
 eggs always fresh, vegetables and everything else nice, clean white 
 beds, snowy linen sheets, well swept floors, all was bright and 
 neat as strong hands could make it.* 
 
 With good roads, bridges, and hotels, population began to 
 increase, and a hundred clearings shone bright in the woods. 
 Beech hill, Height-o'-land, the Summit and East-parte, were alive 
 with settlers. 
 
 Better mills were other most important requisites, wanted to 
 accommodate the inhabitants. And Moses H. Clement, son of 
 Col. Obadiah, bought out Steveiis Merrill and William Butler, and 
 moved the grist-miU where the sons of Joshua Copp long had 
 tended, up to the mouth of Black brook where Stevens Menill 
 first built a dam. He also had a saw-mill, and afterwards put in a 
 wool carding machine. That he might have a good supply of 
 water, by leave of the town he cut a canal irom Baker river to 
 Black brook, and built a stone dam across the former stream. His 
 canal went under the highway just at the railroad crossing above 
 the depot. 
 
 * Some of the teamsters, especially the Scotch from Vt., would carry their own 
 Tictuals and drink, and eat by the bar-room ire, much to the disgust of the land- 
 lord. 
 
360 HISTORY OF WAKREN. 
 
 The new (Joiners wanted town affairs well conducted ; they 
 considered it a gi-eat requisite. So they bought new town books, 
 Ephraim True purchasing some for the selectmen, paying there- 
 for five pounds and two slnllings ; and Obadiah Clement bought a 
 town clerk's book in which he made the first records. He gave for 
 it two pounds ten shillings •' lawful money." 
 
 Then that justice might be done and no mistake, they pur- 
 chased a '' law book " as a legal requisite. Horrid thing, many a 
 defeated client has said after having become satisfied that a little 
 law, as well as a little learning, is a dangerous thing. 
 
 Out of the law book and from ancient tradition, common law, 
 they learned that for troublesome estrays and trespassing cattle, a 
 Pound was an excellent institution, a very requisite thing ; and 
 straightway they went to work to obtain one. For the first few 
 years they used the best barn yards of the settlers, voting to have 
 it first in one and then in another, until at last they were tired of 
 that style and were determined to build a real gentdne Pound. And 
 first a plan was necessary, and an admirable one was soon fur- 
 nished. It is included in the following "enactment" of the 
 democracy. "Voted to build a Pound on the 'Parade' near 
 Joseph Merrill's inn, of good suitable pine logs locked together, 
 tliirty feet square within walls, eight feet high, the upper logs 
 hewed triangular, underpined with stone six inches high, with a 
 good, suitable door, hanging with iron hinges with a staple, hasp, 
 and padlock, and furnished to the exception of the selectmen." 
 Said Pound was bid off to Joseph E. Marston, at $19.50. But 
 strange to say, it was never built. The whole thing flashed in the 
 pan, and in despite of good intentions, law-book and all, the citi- 
 zens have gone on as they begun, using somebody's barn-yard for 
 a Pound every year since. 
 
 That every body might be honest, and that there might be no 
 cheating in weights and measures, which by the way is the mean- 
 est kind of cheating, our little State among the hills, deeming it 
 necessary to make a perfect State, voted to purchase a standard of 
 weights and measures, a very necessary requisite. "We are accu- 
 rately informed that one dollar and twenty cents was paid for the 
 measures, and thirty dollars for the weights. 
 
 Also that the roads might be well cleaned out, paid one dollar 
 
AEEIVAL.OF A YOUNG PAUPER. 351 
 
 and fifty cents for a set of drills. "With these a little blasting was 
 frequently done. 
 
 Then for the sake of* some heraldry, pomp, and ceremony, a 
 stamp, seal, or device, was procured as an absolute and grand 
 requisite for the good of the State. B^it it was as plain as 
 Democratic institutions generally are, a simple 
 With this, eveiy thing belonging to the town 
 
 TT" 
 
 should be accuratelj^ marked as well as known ; besides, the sealer 
 of weights and measures should stamp it upon every thing he 
 inspected, that people might know they were exactly correct, and 
 that he had done his duty. 
 
 In the town were some gamesome fellows, as w^ have often 
 hinted in these interesting pages, and in our most historic times 
 they were greatly afraid that all the game would be destroyed. 
 So that they might enjoy the pleasure of hunting in after years the 
 same as formerly, they deemed it an absolute requisite to choose 
 in 1791 Jossph Patch and Jonathan Clement " deer keepers."* 
 
 Tradition has it that for long years they did their duty faith- 
 fully, keeping the game all to themselves, and outside hunters far 
 away from the goodly land of "Warren. 
 
 "With the abundance of inhabitants came some who were 
 wretchedly poor. But the first pauper in Warren was not a very 
 aged person . Every body said this was not. a requisite to make a 
 perfect community ; that it was very unnccessaiy ; but they could 
 not help themselves. In fact a certain young, marriageable dam- 
 sel, worshiping the goddess of love, without the aid of a shower 
 of gold, or the machinations of a river god, all of a sudden saw 
 fit to enrich the world with a bantling, whom no fast young man 
 was willing to father. It created an immense sight of talk all over 
 town. The knowing young folks tittered when they heard of it ; 
 the old ones looked grave and indignant. " Who is the father of 
 it? "Who will support it? What will become of it? " Such were 
 the remarks heard every day. 
 
 The child was born ; the mother called on the town for help. 
 
 * Deer Keepers.— ^j an act of Uth of George 11., it is enacted that no deer shall 
 ■be killed from the last day of December to the first day of August, annually, under 
 the penalty of ten pounds ; and in case of inability to pay, to work forty days for 
 thehrst offence, and fifty days for subsequent oflences. Aiy venison or skin newly 
 killed was evidence of guilt. 
 
 In 1758, towns were autborized or required to choose two suitable persons 
 
352 HIBTORY OF WAEKEN. 
 
 "What in the woi-ld shall we do?" said the selectmen. " Call a 
 town meeting," said 'Squire Jonathan Merrill ; and one was called 
 to consider this momentous subject. 
 
 The following articles were in the warrant for the meeting, 
 posted up Nov. 10, 1788, at Jonathan Clement's inn : — 
 
 " Secondly, to see what measures shall be taken for the maiu- 
 tainance of the child which is cast on the town's charge." 
 
 " Thirdly, to see what measm-es best to be taken to prevent 
 others fi'om being chargeable to said town." 
 
 At the meeting the subject was gi-avely discussed by the 
 elderly gentlemen present, much to the delight of Moses True and 
 a few other young bucks, and then they voted to choose a commit- 
 tee to see whose right it is to support the child which is become a 
 town charge. This was followed by the following extraordinary 
 vote, viz: — " Voted that William Butler, Stevens Merrill, and Mas- 
 ter Nathaniel Knight, (he was a school master,) for a committee to 
 take care of the child above mentioned till they peruke the law and 
 make a return to the town — at the adjournment of this meeting — 
 whose right it is to support the child." 
 
 The committee did "peruse the law," and at the adjourned 
 meeting reported that after enquiry found the gi-and-parents' right 
 to support the child. 
 
 Then there was a pause. 'Squire Joshua Copp took the floor 
 and after a few grave and pertinent remarks moved that the whole 
 matter be postponed fourteeli days, and it was postponed. Whether 
 or not it was ever taken up again, or what became of "the stray 
 child pauper," neither record nor tradition has told us. 
 
 But certain it is that nearly two years after, the following 
 action was taken that may throw some light on the matter. March 
 18, 1790. — " Voted to allow Constable Whitcher's account for con- 
 veying Dorathy Clifford through town, which is £0-13-10, five 
 shillings of which sum to Mr. Jonathan Clement for expense at his 
 house, and four sliilUngs and two pence to Ensign Moses Copp for 
 his trouble with said Dorathy Clifford." 
 
 Oh ! the charming fair young Dorathy ! How grand you must 
 
 annually, whose peculiar office it shall lie to prevent as much as may be the breach 
 of this act. They shall have full povper of search, and may break locks or doors of 
 any place where they may suspect game is ooncjaled.— History of Chester, 44S. 
 
HOW PAUPEKS WERE CAKED FOE. 353 
 
 have felt, being conveyed " thro' town " by Constable 'WMtclier ! 
 Who was there to see ! Did you, peerless one, ride on a gaily 
 caparisoned charger, or were you conveyed in a lordly, dignified 
 ox cart, the only vehicle in the hamlet? This latter fact has also 
 passed from the memory of man. 
 
 But the citizens of Warren were not to be served in this man- 
 ner again. They acted upon the third article in the warrant. At 
 the first meeting they voted to warn out — which was the fashion 
 in those days — such persons as appear liable to become a town 
 charge, and that there might be no danger voted to warn out Reu- 
 ben Whitcher if he appears likely to become an inhabitant. At the 
 adjourned meeting, " Voted to warn out the widow Mills' two chil- 
 dren, now resident at Ensign Moses Copp's." 
 
 This had an admirable effect for several years ; but in process 
 of time another pauper came, and poor Betty Whittier had to be 
 maintained by the young democracy. Mr. Enoch Davis, who lived 
 by Davis brook, in the East-parte regions, influenced by the nice 
 little sum of one hundred and thirty silver dollars, generously 
 took her home, and gave his bond to the selectmen to maintain her 
 as long as she lived.* 
 
 Warren as an independent State has ever treated her poor in 
 the kindest manner, getting the best- of homes for them by hu- 
 manely setting them up at auction, and striking them ofi' to any 
 one that would keep them cheapest, and at the least expense to the 
 town. 
 
 That they might not seem barbarous and heathen, they felt 
 that one of the solemn requisites of civilized life was a proper 
 observance of the forms of paying respect to the dead. That their 
 funerals might be conducted with the highest degTee of propriety, 
 they determined in a public assembly of the citizens to purchase a 
 pall or grave cloth. 
 
 The rulers of the town w6re entrusted with the duty of ob- 
 taining it. They procured a very nice one for sixteen dollars and 
 fifty cents, silver money. f Obadiah Clement, ever public spirited, 
 
 * 1805. — " Voted to choose a committee of two persons to settle with Mrs. Stone 
 [widow .Joshua Copp,] about the maintainance oi Betsey Whittier, or prosecute as 
 they shall thiuk best tor the town. Chose Dr. BzraBartlett and Lieut. Abel Merrill 
 for the above committee."— Town Clerk's Eeoords, Vol. i. 167. 
 
 t March 17, 1803.—" N. B. Jotm Abbott is not to be taxed for said pall."— Town 
 Clett's Eeoords, Vol. i. 134. 
 
 'W 
 
354 HISTOKT OF WAKEEN. 
 
 with the aid of his brother Jonathan, had anticipated the action of 
 the people by buying a small burying cloth or pall for their friends 
 and neighbors, and the next year the town purchased theirs also, 
 at an expense of five dollars. For several years these emblems of 
 funereal pageantry were kept at the inn of Mr. Joseph Menill. 
 
 But that the pall might not often be wanted, and funerals be 
 rare, the good citizens of Warren thinking it of the greatest neces- 
 sity, induced Dr. Joseph Peters, a relative of Captain Absalom 
 Peters, to move into town and have a care after the physical health 
 of the people. "Warren's first physician came to town in 1791, and 
 took up his residence with Mr. Stevens MerriU. He was a well 
 educated man, of genial temperament, and was much beloved by 
 almost every body, particularly the women. But being also of a 
 roving disposition he did not abide long in the valley among the 
 hills. Whence came Dr. Peters the Lord only knows ; where he 
 went, the men said, "perhaps the d — 1 can tell." 
 
 He was succeeded by Dr. Levi Root, another eminent practi- 
 tioner, who remained in town about three years, from 1795 to 1798. 
 
 Then Dr. Ezra Bartlett* came, and being a college bred young 
 gentleman, of great promise as a physician, and withal a son of 
 Dr. Josiah Bartlett, one of the old proprietors, a signer of the 
 Declaration of Independence, and a member of the Continental 
 Congress, he easily rooted out Dr. Root, and had the whole town- 
 ship, with all the country round, as a field for practice. He settled 
 on the fertile uplands of Beech hill. Just to the southward of Amos 
 Little. 
 
 *rA5nLT KECOED OF EZBA AND HANNAH { GaU) BARTLETT. 
 
 Laura, bom Oct. 20, 1799, at Warren. Hannah, bom Jan. 7, 1805. 
 
 Josiab, bom Oct.25,1801. Died Sept. Levi, bom Oct. 4, 1806. 
 25, 1802. Mary, bom Aug. 22, 1808. 
 
 Josiah, bom May 8, 1803. Sarah, born Apr. 23, 1810. 
 
 New voters in 1796 :— 
 
 Nathan Barker. Joseph Jones. John Weelse. 
 
 James Harran. William Kelley. 
 
 Olney Hawlcins. Dr. Levi Boot. 
 
 New voters in 1797 :— 
 
 Benjamin KeUey. Jesse Niles. Joseph Orn. 
 
 New voters in 1798 :— 
 
 Dr. Ezra Bartlett. Asa Low. Abial Smith. 
 
 James Dow. 
 New voters in 1799 :— 
 
 Benjamin Brown. , Benjamin Gale. James Williams. 
 
 New voters in 1800. 
 
 Daniel Davis. Samuel .Jackson. , Jacob Low. 
 
 Job Baton. Luke Llbbey . Abel WiUard. 
 
EAELT PHTSIQAIfS. 355 
 
 Dr. Ezra Bartlett was a distinguished man in Ms day, often 
 representing the towns ofWarren and Coventry in the Legislature. 
 He was a side justice in the Court of Common Pleas, a Senator in 
 the New Hampshire Senate, and a member of the Governor's 
 council. No man for fifty miles away could compete with him as 
 a physician, and he was an excellent surgeon, as well. 
 
 The children loved him, but they looked upon his house with 
 a sort of dread, for they had heard the strange story how he had 
 the body of Josiah Bumham, who was hung at Haverhill jail, there 
 preserved in alcohol in a glass case. It was said by the knowing 
 ones that he bargained with Burnham for his body, giving him for 
 it all the liquor he could drink before the day of execution. Be 
 that as it may, Dr. Bartlett always had medical students, for he 
 had excellent facilities for study, and some of them afterwards 
 ranked high in professional life. Two of them. Dr. Thomas 'Whip- 
 ple and Dr. Robert Bums, were members of Congress, the first 
 holding the office for eight years. 
 
 The doctor gave a mighty impetus to town afiairs, showing 
 what were the necessary requisites for a perfect democratic com- 
 munity ; the roads were better ; the schools were better, the farms 
 were better ; and he set a good example by building a nice house for 
 himself, after which every man in town aspired to pattern. So 
 much was he admired that many children born at this period were 
 called Ezra Bartlett. 
 
 Dr. Bartlett also considered that it was one of the much 
 desired requisites that there should be no boundary feuds among 
 the good citizens of Warren, and perplexing lawsuits arising 
 therefrom. That they might not be harrassed with these evils, he 
 determined that the bounds should be well kept up, and shrewdly 
 went to work to accomplish it, and obtain a plan of lots for the 
 town. The proprietors, as already related, had one. How much 
 good a man of refined tastes and edtication can do in any commu- 
 nity. He quietly went to work and got an article inserted in the 
 warrant for town meeting, to see what the citizens would do about 
 procuring a plan. At the annual assembly of the people it was 
 determined to elect a committee to provide one, and chose Joseph 
 Patch, Nathaniel Clough, and Samuel Knight for that purpose. 
 
 Under his guidance they immediately went to work and ob- 
 
866 HISTOKT OF WAEKEN. 
 
 tained copies of all the old suiTeys and plans, (particularly that of 
 Josiah Buruham,) which were so admirably made during the time 
 of the old proprietors' boundary war. With this material for a 
 basis, Dr. Bartlett lent himself to the task, and produced the beau- 
 tiful and excellent plan of "Warren that now stands as the frontis- 
 piece in the Proprietors' Records. He worked a week making it, 
 and then, — what do you think! — he only charged the town one 
 dollar for his services. Cheap enough most people would say ; 
 but then some grumbled about it even at that, as is always the 
 case. The committee received twenty-eight dollars and thirty- 
 eight cents for their services. 
 
 To accomplish all these necessary requisites and make Warren 
 a flourishiDg democracy, required money, and as we have gently 
 intimated, the town contrived each year to . raise a fair amount, 
 easily from the most, by process from a few. 
 
 Sometimes it was paid with paper bills, the old continental cur- 
 rency, once or twice in new emission money — a sort of promissory 
 notes founded on real estate and loaned on interest ; but these run 
 down and became worthless sooner than the old continental cur- 
 rency, — imd frequently in produce ; the citizens in the selectmen- 
 ship of Joshua Copp, EphraimTrue, and Nathaniel Koight, voting 
 that the town charges b» .paid in wheat at Jive, rye at four, and 
 corn at thi-ee sliillings per bushel. The selectmen were likewise 
 paid in this way for their services, and it was the commonest of 
 things to purchase their English and West India goods, by barter- 
 ing their produce. 
 
 For the first three years of the town organization taxes were 
 reckoned in depreciated currency, raising £500 in 1781, then they 
 were computed on a specie basis, assessing in 1782 but £4 1-2 
 silver money, to pay town charges, and in 1797 taxes were made 
 up in dollars and cents.* 
 
 Simeon Smith was the first collector, as we have said before, 
 and then they had a different one almost every year, and all con- 
 ducted in the most faithful manner. But Daniel Patch did not do 
 quite so well. He was fond of fine clothes and fast horses, and 
 
 * Aug. 25, 1794.—" Voted to let the oertiflcate raoney lay on interest, unless it 
 wiU turn for fourteen or fltteen shillings in specie on the pound."— Town Clerk's 
 Records, Vol. i. 68. 
 
ABSCONDING TAX GATHEREES. 357 
 
 when he got the town's money he was not very careful to keep it 
 separate from his own. When pay-day came he found himself in 
 hot water. He tried to borrow and could not; he was afraid they 
 woiild call on his bondsmen; that Ms own property would be 
 attached ; that he would be indicted by the grand jury and mulcted 
 in damages or imprisoned. 
 
 He did not want any of these things to happen ; but he could 
 not see how to escape. The days went by and the clouds were 
 thickening, and the stoim howled in his political sky. 
 
 There was but one way ; he must fly before the sarcasm, the 
 jeers, the maledictions, anathemas, and curses — the people's wMrl- 
 wind. 
 
 At the winter's sunset. Patch harnessed his team. " He drives 
 two thin-maned, high-headed, strong-hoofed, fleet-bounding horses 
 of our hills. Harnessed to the sleigh, they champ the iron bits, and 
 the tight checks bend on their arching necks. They fly like the 
 wreaths of mist over the streamy vale. Thewildnessof deer 
 was in their course; the strength of eagles descending on their 
 prey." A day — and they are a hundred miles away. 
 
 A long time afterwards the citizens learned that Daniel Patch 
 was seen late the next afternoon driving through the streets of old 
 Haverhill, Mass. That was all the tidings of him. 
 
 But his bondsmen had to pay up, much to their great delight, 
 what the faithful collector had spent, and then they levied on his 
 goods and chattels, and got their own pay. After this, Mr. P.'s 
 friends settled up the whole affair, and he returned, paid every 
 dollar like an honest man, and became one of the best of citizens.* 
 
 Such things never come single, and Abel Willard, another 
 collector, following the above illustrious example, absconded with 
 the town's money. He went to the west of the Green mountains, 
 and the town did not succeed in getting it back from Mm quite so 
 well as from Daniel Patch. 
 
 That there might be tranquility with all the world without, 
 
 * Daniel Patch was a man ol' fine intellect, was agreeable in conversation, 
 thougli somewhat given to metaphysics. 
 
 DANIEL AND BETSEY (^Hall) PATCH'S FAMILY KECORD. 
 
 JosephjH. born May 27, 1809. Louisa M. bom Nov. 16 1S19. 
 
 Daniel, B. born Jan. 20, 1812. Marinda F. born June 8, 1822. 
 
 Betsey, W. born Jan. 29, 1816. WiUiamD. Mc. Q. bornMarchSl, 1825. 
 Mabala, born Ang. 23, 1817. 
 
358 HISTOET OF WAEEEN. 
 
 and peace within our mountain hamlet, our young democracy took 
 a lively interest in political affairs. They voted for Gen. "Wash- 
 ington for President, for members of Congress, and air the other 
 foreign officers, helping to maintain a republic without as well as 
 a democracy at home. 
 
 But that which interested them most, creating profound dis- 
 cussions and calling for the exercise of the discreetest statesman- 
 ship, was the adoption of, first, the articles of confedei'ation, then 
 of the Federal Constitution, and frequently afterwards of whether 
 or not it should be amended. 
 
 "Warren's citizens, on mature deliberation of these momentous 
 subjects, generally voted nearly unanimously either one way or 
 the other, always believing that the destiny of the whole country 
 hung upon their action. They were thus called upon to save their 
 country some twenty times in the course of a few years. 
 
 But we cannot close the final chapter of this book, and let 
 down the curtain upon the last years of the eighteenth century, 
 without recording as a faithful historian what our good citizens of 
 "WaiTen thought to be the highest and grandest eequisite to make a 
 perfect democratic community. 
 
 They early made great efforts to accomplish it. In the select- 
 menship of Jonathan Merrill, Thomas Boynton, and Aaron Welch, 
 they chose a committee consisting of Joshua Copp, Eeuben Batch- 
 elder, Joseph Patch, Thomas Boynton, and John "Whitoher, to 
 report where it would be convenient to set a meeting house, and 
 what measures were best to be taken to erect the same and procure 
 the preacliing of the gospel. But the committee, living in different 
 parts of the town, could not exactly agree where the best place 
 was. It took them so long to find a spot that they spent all their 
 energies upon that part of the subject, and the whole thing fell 
 through. 
 
 But such a subject could not slumber long, and as a result of 
 deep thought, 'Squire Joshua Copp, in March, 1798, made a liberal 
 proposition to the town. The citizens were much pleased, and 
 voted to accept a piece of land from him, situated on the easterly 
 side of his farm, and on the north side of the highway leading 
 to Haverhill, for the purpose of erecting a meeting-house thereon, 
 which was to be of the same size as the one in the neighboring 
 
A MEETING-HOUSE IN PROSPECT. 369 
 
 province of Romney, and for a burying ground and training field.* 
 
 Chose Joshua Copp, Esq., Joseph Patch, Stephen Eichardson, 
 Obadiab Clement, and Levi Lufkin, a committee to provide timber 
 for the meetingrhouse, to be drawn the ensuing winter. Each 
 individual was to pay for the house according to his proportion of 
 taxes, and all should hold themselves ready to work on the build- 
 ing after three days' notice from the committee. 
 
 And now the very town sweat with the work in prospectu. 
 What a splendid house we shall have ; soon it will be all complete. 
 
 But tod many cooks spoil the broth. Things did not go on 
 any better this time than before. There was a hitch. The com- 
 mittee did not work well together. Another town assembly was 
 called. The citizens assembled. A great discussion arose. It 
 waxed warm. The meeting broke up, nothing was done save to 
 dismiss the subject, and the fire of religious enthusiasm seemed to 
 go out. 
 
 But it did not ; it only slumbered. How it kindled afresh and 
 burned vrith a steady flame until all were tried and purified, or 
 ought to have been, and the mighty work accomplished, we will 
 show in the first chapters of our next great book. 
 
 * This was the same spot where the first little training was held. 
 
OUR GEAKDMOTHEKS' PASTIME. 
 
BOOK VI. 
 
 IN WHICH THE MIGHTY MARCH MENTIONED AT THE BEGINNING OF 
 BOOK V. IS CONTINUED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW SEVERAL RELIGIONS CAME TO WARREN, OF TYTHINGMEN WHO 
 FINED MEN FOR TRAVELING SUNDAY, THEREBY MAKING THEM 
 EXCEEDINGLY HAPPY, CONCLUDING WITH AN ACCOUNT OF A 
 CAMP-MEETING WHERE SEVERAL PIOUS YOUTH SOUNDED A 
 HORN IN THE NIGHT, AND DISTURBED THE SLUMBERS OF THE 
 GODLY. I 
 
 Aj^OTHER century has come. One generation of white 
 men, the Indians' successors in the Asquamohumauke valley, has 
 passed away. A second is stepping upon the stage. Many things 
 are being left behind, and new fashions and ideas are making their 
 way to our settlemeait among the hills. A different pattern of 
 dress has.been adopted, the style of cooking and living has some- 
 what changed, new houses have been constructed, and the blazed 
 path, bridle path and tote road have given place to the broad, beaten 
 way, as we wrote in the last book, upon which rumble the wheels 
 of Obadiah Clement's little Dutch vehicle, the first four wheeled 
 wagon that had ever come to town. 
 
362 HISTOEY OF WAREEN. 
 
 SometMng else is coming. We hinted at it in the last chapter. 
 It is told as follows : — 
 
 One day in July, 1799, a solitary horseman was seen riding up 
 the road. He stopped at Joseph Merrill's inn, baited his horse, 
 and while he was eating his own dinner casually dropped a few 
 words upon religious matters. They seemed to make but little 
 impression, and saying something about stony ground and hard- 
 ness of heart, he rode away over Pine hill to the Summit. That 
 horseman was the Rev. Elijah R. Sabin, a missionary of Method- 
 ism. Hundreds of them were riding the country through, preach- 
 ing in the houses, the barns, in the forests or out in the broad open 
 air, anywhere they could get a congregation to hear them, bring- 
 ing new religious ideas to the people. 
 
 That night he stopped with Mr. Chase Whitcher by the wild 
 roistering Oliverian. The morrow was the Sabbath, and after the 
 morning meal a meeting was suggested. Mr. Whitcher was 
 pleased with the idea. A messenger went to the settlers on Pine 
 hill ; down on old Coventry meadows, and to Mr. Eastman's, the 
 first settler of High sti-eet. 
 
 B}'^ ten o'clocls, quite a congregation had assembled, and under 
 the maples — they grow there now — by the laughing stream, the 
 first religious meeting was held on the Summit. They had no 
 choir ; but the revereud man sang in clear sweet voice, one of those 
 wild revival hymns of John Wesley, which were then waking 
 men's souls tlirough all the land.* His discourse took powerful 
 hold on his little congregation, and before he left this vaUey, hol- 
 lowed between five peaks of the mountains, he had laid the foun- 
 dation for a society, and formed a class consisting of three mem- 
 bers — Chase Whitcher, Dolly Whitoher, afterwards the widow 
 Atwell, and Sarah Barker. When he was gone his words were 
 not forgotten. Many believed his doctrine was true and before 
 the year passed niore than thirty persons had joined the class. 
 
 Out of this mountain valley, over the hills, spread the reli- 
 gious enthusiasm, great numbers getting converted. It even went 
 
 * Singing.— The singing of tbe early Methodists was glorious, heavenly. Then 
 the music was adapted to the words, and every word could he distinctly under- 
 stood, and the ideas came home to the listener with spiritual power. Now-days 
 the words are stretched and sti-ained to flt the music; not one of them can be 
 understood j the ideas are lost, and the whole, as a general thing, is a senseless 
 jargon painful to hear. 
 
"behold a miracle." 863 
 
 over the Heighlro'-land, and a large class was formed in Charles- 
 ton, near Tarleton lake. So firmly was Methodism planted that it 
 has survived in Warren three-fourths of a century. 
 ^ During the summer season for many years the Methodist 
 meetings were held in a barn belonging to Mr. Aaron Welch, and 
 in the winter in his house or in the houses of the neighbors in the 
 immediate vicinity.* 
 
 It was at Aaron "Welch'sf barn people loved to assemble ; not 
 to show their fine clothes so much as bow, for they then dressed 
 in homespun, but the most to worship. Sometimes the boys went 
 to see the girls ; but the girls never to see boys. A few went for 
 fun, and a very few for mischief. One time they had a quarterly 
 meeting there. Old John Broadhead, a powerful preacher, and 
 Kev. Messrs. Felch and Hedding were present. Rev. Mr. Felch 
 was preaching; somebody had been " cutting up shines,'' and Mr. 
 F. was mad. He began telling how mean the people were, how 
 some were fornicators, and some thieves and drunkards, and how 
 one was so mean as to even steal the snapper of his, the reverend's 
 whip. Capt. Wm. Butler immediately interrupted and said, "he 
 wanted to hear him preach, and not blackguard." Another man 
 sarcastically remarked that " he, Felch, no business to be a horse- 
 jockey, and have a fine whip, if he didn't want the snapper 
 stolen," — a mean remark, as all good christians can testify. At 
 any rate Rev. Mr. Felch heeded Capt. Butler, immediately changed 
 the subject of his discourse, and preached Christ and him crucified, 
 with such excellent effect that several were converted that very 
 
 *The Demi's Doings. — One winter they had preaching InDeaoon Welch's house. 
 Quite a lot of folks were sitting on the trap-door, and they got to shonting, Glory I 
 Hallelujah I Amen I Good I Just then the Devil broke the ti'ap-door, and half a 
 dozen men and women fell into the cellar. Mrs. Samuel Knight went into a fit, 
 and several of the sisters rolled on the floor in the most wonderful manner. Some 
 wicked youth present smiled, the Devil was pleased, and the minister preached no 
 more that day.— Miss Hannah Knight's statement. 
 
 A Miracle. — There was a meeting at farmer Joshua Merrill's in the early times, 
 and Mr. Isaac Merrill, son of 'Squire Jonathan, crawled up the stairs and sat over 
 the heads of some of the congregation. The preaching was so powerful he got to 
 sleep, .and while dozing lost his balance and fell down amongst the people. He 
 struck plump on his head, his feet in the air; then in about a minute he pitched 
 over, jumped up quickly and ran out of the house iminjnred, all the folks follow- 
 ing him. Every one believed it was a miracle, and so great was the awe that they 
 had no more preaching tiU next Sunday, when a new and more powerflil minister 
 arrived in the settlement.— Miss H. Knight's statement. 
 
 t Mr. Welc h lived near the present village cemetery, where Mr. Samuel Mer- 
 rm, Capt. Joseph Merrill, and Robert E. Merrill, have aU lived. Said house was 
 once occupied by the town's poor. 
 
364 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 day. Ministers of the present time would do well to imitate — 
 preach religion rather than politics — and seek to plant more of a 
 christian spirit in the community. 
 
 But there we-re some who would not join the Methodists.. 
 Opposition is a good thing for any enterprise, if there is not too 
 much of it. Certainly it helps a church along and always exists 
 where men are left free to think for themselves. We almost he- 
 heve opposition is a divine institution, and Stevens Merrill, the 
 man who did not believe in the revolutionary war, was now the 
 person to exercise it in Warren. He was a Quaker, and had no 
 faith in those whining, canting Methodists, as he impiously 
 termed them. He " shouldn't jine nohow!" But still he loved 
 preaching when it suited him, which was not often the case. He 
 was blunter than Capt. Butler. "You lie, Nat!" "What is the 
 use of your lying that way ?" were exclamations that once greeted 
 his own brother, Nathaniel, a Congregationahst, who was preach- 
 ing to the people that had assembled in the bar-room and kitchen 
 of Mr. Merrill's tavern. The Rev. Nathaniel was as determined 
 as his brother, and such exclamations did not disturb him. 
 
 In the year 1802 a minister came to town of a different faith, 
 and by chance he stopped at Stevens Merrill's. He was a mission- 
 ary of a new religious order; the Free-will Baptists, one of the 
 products of the western world. Sunday following, he preached in 
 the house of his host, to the great delight of Mr. M. He was 
 highly pleased with Mr. Boody and Ms doctrine, and as he was an 
 aged man, and thinking he might die when Mr. Boody was far 
 away, he resolved to have his funeral sermon preached before Mr. 
 B.'s departure. Accordingly he signified his intention to the Rev. 
 gentleman, who, complying, a day was appointed, and the sermon 
 preached from 2 Timothy, 4th chapter, 6th, 7th, 8th verses: " For 
 I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at 
 hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I 
 have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
 righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me 
 at that day; and not me only, but unto all them that love his 
 appearing." From this text it is said the Rev. Mr. Boody preached 
 an excellent discourse, and Mr. Merrill and his friends were well 
 pleased. It is handed down that Mr. M. smacked his lips with 
 
THE TYTHINGMEN AT WORK. 365 
 
 delight several times as the reverend gentleman drew a vivid pic- 
 ture of his host entering the portals of heaven and taking a seat 
 among the blest, and after the services were over, as they did not 
 have any corpse or coflcln, he treated his minister and the whole 
 congregation to the very best his house afforded, not even omitting 
 to furnish good flip, punch, and egg-nog ; a generous custom in 
 those days, which laid many a man low. Mr. Merrill died two 
 years after, in 1804, aged seventy-seven years." 
 
 No religious society of the Free-will Baptist order was formed 
 at this time ; but Rev. Joseph Boody and other ministers of like 
 faith continued to. visit Warren, and about 1810 a society was 
 organized under the charge of Rev. James Spencer. The first 
 members consisted of Samuel Merrill and wife, of the East-parte, 
 James Dow and wife, Caleb Homan and wife, Aaron "Welch and 
 wife, True Stevens and wife, Mrs Betsey Ramsey, and Mrs. James 
 Williams. Elder Spencer labored with the society for many years. 
 
 And now religious enthusiasm filled the town and aU the 
 regions round about. Stricter laws were passed for the observance 
 of the Sabbath, and tythingmenf were appointed in almost ^very 
 h0,mlet to compel the people to keep the Sabbath holy. Many 
 were the instances when pious hands were laid upon wicked trav- 
 elers. Old Deacon Jonathan Clement had been traveling down 
 country ; returning, the tythingman of Boscawen arrested him 
 traveling on the Sabbath, and fined him Monday morning, costs 
 
 * James Dow and Samuel Merrill, both heard Stevens Merrill's funeral dis- 
 course. 
 
 f By an act passed in 1715, it was enacted that no taverner or retailer should 
 suffer any apprentice, servant or negro, to drink in his house ; nor any inhabitant 
 after ten o'clock at night, nor more than two hours ; nor suffer any person to drink 
 to dmnkenness, nor others than strangers to remain in his house on the Lord's 
 day; uuder a fine of five shillings. 
 
 The second section provided that the selectmen should see that at least two 
 tythingmen should be annually chosen, whose duty it was to inspect all licensed 
 houses, and inform of all disorders to a justice of the peace, and also inlbrm of all 
 who sell without license, and of all cxu'sers and swearers. Each tythingman was 
 to have a black stafl' two feet long, with about three inches of one end tipped with 
 brass or i>ewter, as a badge of office. The penalty for not serving when chosen 
 was forty shillings, and in default of payment or want of property was imiuison- 
 ment. 
 
 By an act passed Dec. 24, 1799, for the better observance of the Lord's day, and 
 repealing all other acts for that purpose, all labor and recreation, traveling, and 
 rudeness at places of public worship on the Lord's day, are forbidden. Tavern- 
 ers are forbidden to entertain inhabitants of the town. The tythingmen had power 
 to command assistance, and forcibly stop and detain all travelers, unless they 
 could give sufficient reason. The tythingmen were required to inform of aU 
 breeches of the act, and their oath was sufficient evidence unless invalidated. — 
 History ot Chester, iSO. 
 
366 HISTORY OK 'WABKEN. 
 
 and all, eleven dollars. He came home with religious enthusiasm 
 tingling on every nerve of his body. Some maliciously said he 
 was madder than a March hare. James Dow, then a young and 
 vigorous man, for many years was chosen tythingman of "Warren. 
 Old Mr. Page, of Haverhill, was desecrating the Sabbath by driv- 
 ing his horse and wagon through the town, and said Dow gently 
 laid his hand upon him and stopped, seized, and detained him, and 
 prevented him from traveling, as aforesaid. Monday, Page was 
 fined, and he went home feehng complete. 
 
 John Varnum was chosen»to this high office, and he arrested 
 some Scotchmen, teamsters from Vermont, and had them fined, 
 and then all the tavern keepers were mad, for it hurt their busi- 
 ness to have travelers thus waylaid. Tavern keepers with nice 
 bars had influence, and henceforth only those who lived in the 
 most remote parts of the town, were chosen " grab-men," as they 
 were facetiously termed. 
 
 One year " Old Potter," who- lived by the road loading to 
 "Wachipauka pond, was chosen ; but the town clerk, Mr. Anson 
 Merrill, tried to cheat him out of his high honor, by neglecting to 
 make a record of his election. Many men were indignant on 
 account of Merrill's official malfeasance.* 
 
 With two. rival societies in the full tide of success, and the 
 tythingmen well preserving the peace, meetings without number 
 were held. In Merrie England, and on the low lands of Holland, 
 and along the ba.nks of the Rhine, it had been the practice for cen- 
 turies to hold meetings in the suburbs of old cities, by neglected 
 grave-yards and among shady mountains. This practice must 
 needs be revived in America, and the Methodist brethren estab- 
 lished " Camp-meetings." One must be held in Warren, and the 
 pleasant pine woods near Pine hill school-house was selected for 
 the occasion. Inspiring woods ! They thought they could wor- 
 ship better there. There, Adam and Eve enjoyed their pastime 
 and sought repose; there, the Am orites and Assyrians learned to 
 pray ; there, Hertha the Goddess of the Angles, had her lovely 
 residence ; there, the Druids thought everything sent from heaven 
 that grew on the oak ; there, Pan piped and satyrs danced ; the 
 
 * Potter was for many years a town pauper, and Mr. Merrill only tried to pre- 
 vent him from gaining a residence. 
 
THE PINE WOODS CAMP-MEETING. 367 
 
 fawns browsed, Sylvanus loved, Diana hunted, and Feronia 
 watched; there, the stately castle of the feudal lord reared its 
 head, the lonely anchorite sang his evening hymn, and the sound 
 of the convent' bell was heard ; there, Robin Hood and his merry 
 men did their exploits, and King Eufus was slain ; there, the ward 
 of dryads, the scene of fairy revels and Puck's pranks, the haunt 
 of witches, spirits, elves, hags, dwarfs, the Sporn, the man in the 
 oak, the will-o'-the-wisp, the opera house of birds, and the shelter 
 of beasts. The green, sweet-smelling, suggestive, musical, sombre, 
 superstitious, devotional, mystic, tranquiHzing woods, was the 
 place of all others for the camp-meeting. 
 
 It was early in the cool September that it was held ; delega- 
 tions came from nearly every society in the whole conference, and 
 white tents in good numbers sprang up beneath the pine trees. 
 There were booths outside the circle of tents for the sale of candy, 
 gingerbread, more substantial eatables, and withal, in sundry jugs, 
 kegs, and spiggots, was a good deal of " the good creature," to 
 keep out the cold from the hearts of the lukewarm, and to raise 
 the spirits generally. Qp a smooth plat of ground were long 
 rows of seats made of boards, plank, and slabs, placed on pins 
 driven into the ground, for the congregation, and on a little knoll 
 in front, was a raised platform, 'with a box around it, for a pulpit. 
 Above this were the thick, dense branches of several large pine 
 trees, which served as a canopy to keep off the sun and rain. At 
 night, in front of the tents, great fires were kindled for cooking 
 and to keep the worshipers warm. 
 
 More sinners than saints came to these meetings, and one of 
 the great objects was to convert the ungodly class. The more con- 
 verted, the greater the success of the meeting. In the morning 
 came early prayer-meeting, then breakfast, then two sermons iu 
 the forenoon, dinner, two sermons in the afternoon, supper, then 
 evening prayer meeting and to bed. Joseph Boynton led the sing- 
 ing. He sometimes gave out the tune, read two lines, the choir 
 and congregation sung them, then two lines more were deaconed 
 off, and so on through the hymn. Sometimes the choir sung by 
 itself. Boynton, who was class leader for many years, a great man 
 in the church, and lived on the turnpike, first house up the hill 
 beyond the Cold brook, had a pitch-pipe made of wood, an inch or 
 
868 HISTORY OF WAREEN. 
 
 two wide, something like a boy's whistle, with which he pitched 
 the tunes, much to the delight of all who heard. The presiding 
 elder summoned the brethren to each exercise by a loud blast on an 
 old fashioned tin horn. One night some " wicked " youth, among 
 whom, it is said, though we do not vouch for it, were Robert 
 Burns, Thomas Whipple, Nathan Clifford, Joshua Merrill, Anson 
 Merrill, and Jacob Patch, besides numerous others, stole the horn 
 and went sounding it through all the woods, first on the north, 
 then on the south, then east, then west, while for long hours the 
 presiding elder, several ministers and a whole host of deacons 
 went chasing through the forest, trying to find the vile thieves, as 
 they piously termed them, who were disturbing the slumbers of 
 the godly. But they did not catch them. 
 
 One day elder John Broadhead had preached. He was a pow- 
 erful man of more than ordinary eloquence. Then there was a 
 call to come forward for prayers. The choir sang one of their 
 sweetest hymns, then paused. Just at that instant a flock of black- 
 cap titmice with their white sides glowing in the sun, alighted in 
 the gi-een pines overhead, and appearing to take up the strain, sang 
 so sweetly that they seemed bright messengers from heaven. The 
 electric current was complete, excitement filled every breast. 
 Glory to God ! said elder Broadhead. Amen ! shouted the whole 
 congregation. The hymn was taken up again, and when it ceased 
 a hundred rose for prayers. And then there was praying and 
 shouting, and singing, such as never was heard in the woods of 
 "Warren before. One young female was so wrought upon that she 
 fell down and rolled upon the ground, kicking up her heels 
 towards the blue sky. Some said she was in a trance seeing 
 
 Accident. —Lfem-ael Keezer, innkeeper, went to this fii'St camp-meeting on Iiorse- 
 back. Wlien he had nearly got there, his horse threw him off and hurt his shoulder 
 badly. At the meeting, one ol" the ministers asked Keezer if he wanted to see 
 God, and he only auswered that his shoulder pained him badly. The minister 
 repeated the question the second and thii'd time, and got precisely the same an- 
 swer; but when he i3ut the question the fourth time, Keezer got mad and very 
 imprudently and impiously replied that he " didn't know the gentleman, and didn't 
 care a d — m either." 
 
 One day Captain Daniel invited Elder Wood, a minister, to share the hospitali- 
 ties of his house, and mtroduced him to Mr. Keezer. " Elder Wood, Elder Wood," 
 exclaimed Mr. It., snutQug his nose, " that is the stinkiugest wood I ever saw;" 
 much to Captain Daniel's delight, for he Avas very pious and had great respecf7for 
 liis minister. 
 
 Keezer was gifted in grayer. When the minister put up with him, he would 
 pray at night and the minister in the morning, or vice versa, and when the reverend 
 was gone he would ask the women folks if he didn't beat the minister at praying? 
 K. was proud of his gift and liked to be praised. 
 
THE MEMBERS GEEATLT REFRESHED. 359 
 
 heaven ; but young Dr. "WTiipple wickedly held hartshorn to her 
 nose to her great delight, and quietly said she was only a little 
 "hysterica." 
 
 Thus the meeting went on for a week, more than two hundred 
 were converted, and when it broke up each went to his home 
 thanking the Lord that he had prospered him so much. Several 
 other camp-meetings have been held in ■ Warren since, the last 
 being in the young maple woods on the river island just east of 
 the depot. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF GRAND HUNTINGS, FOWLINGS, AND FISHINGS, CONCLUDING WITH 
 HOW A 'SQUIKE, A DOCTOR,. AND A MINISTER, WERE PERFECTLY 
 DELIGHTED TRYING TO CATCH EVERY FISH IN WACHIPAUKA 
 POND. 
 
 The learned Puffendorf says all animals were wild ; Gro- 
 tius says all were tame. Common law takes middle ground, and 
 leaves it to the judgment to say what were wild and what were 
 tame. Cei'tain it is that all the animals, birds, and fishes of War- 
 ren were wild enough before the advent of the white settlers, and 
 many were the exciting times had capturing and destroying them, 
 as we have before remarked. 
 
 The most formidable of all these animals was the panther, 
 otherwise called painter, and sometimes catamount, whose cry 
 would make the Indians' blood feel cold ; the wolf and bear came 
 next, then the two wild cats known as the loup-cervier and the 
 bay lynx. Of deer, as John Josselyn, Gent., would say, there 
 was the stately moose, the caribou, ^- hard to catch, — and the 
 common red deer. Others, and they are all interesting, are 
 the raccoon, wolverine, otter, sable, mink, muskrat, fisher-cat 
 ermine or weasel, black or silver-gray fox, red fox, beaver, 
 hedgehog, woodchuck, gray, black, red, striped and flying squir- 
 rels, rabbit, rat, mouse, — several kinds — four varieties of mole, 
 bat, and last and sweetest of all, the skunk. 
 
 The panther was a rare animal, only one ever having been 
 killed in town, and that by Joseph Patch one night as he lay in 
 
MOUNT CUSHMAN. 371 
 
 Ms camp by Hurricane brook. "Wolves were for years more plenty. 
 Our first settler once started one in Stephen Richardson's field on 
 Pine hill, and followed it down near Patch brook, where he killed it. 
 Old 'Squire Burns, of Romney, caught the mate to it in a trap. 
 This pair had killed many sheep. . 
 
 But years before the town was settled, an adventure with the 
 wolves took place in the East-parte regions of a far more startling 
 kind. Long before the country was settled, a hunter by the name 
 of Cushman was trapping upon one of the eastern mountains. 
 One day, after being busily engaged in his labor, he entered his 
 camp, and night had scarcely begun to come over him, when the 
 melancholy howl of the wolves struck on his ear, the mournful 
 echoes of which were repeated through every part of the forest. 
 Every moment they seemed to approach nearer, and soon his camp 
 was surrounded by a pack of the hungry creatures. Snatching 
 his gun, he scrambled up a small sapling near by, just in time to, 
 save himself, from their jaws. Being disappointed of their prey, 
 they howled and leaped about in mad fury. Cushman now 
 thought he would treat them with a little cold lead, and aiming at 
 the leader of the pack, fired. The wolf gave a wild howl, and 
 leaping several feet into the air, fell to the ground and was torn in 
 pieces by his hungry companions. Loading his gun, he fired at 
 another which shared the same fate. Again he fired and killed a 
 third, when the wolves seeing their numbers decreasing, and hav- 
 ing satisfied their appetites upon one of their own species, fled, 
 and Cushman was no more annoyed by them that night. The 
 mountain upon which this happened took the hunter's name, and 
 is called Mt. Cushman to the present time. 
 
 Bears were more plenty than wolves, and for thirty years after 
 the settlement of Warren, they were seen almost every day. 
 Stephen Richardson had I fine flock of sheep, but he had to yard 
 them every night. Yet this did not always save them. Once in 
 early evening a lar-ge bear, known as " old white face," carried 
 away two sheep, leaping with them ^ver a wall five feet high. 
 " Old" white face" was the terror of the whole country and trav- 
 eled up and down the valley oftener than any hunter or flshennan 
 has ever done. Johu Gould, who lived in the East-parte, had been 
 out to " the road," as it was called. Coming home in the early 
 
372 HISTORY OF "WAEKEN. 
 
 evening, at the mouth of Batohelder brook, in Sawtelle district, he 
 thought he met tliis bear. He was terribly frightened, threw his 
 little white dog at the ferocious creature, and with his teeth chat- 
 tering, ran back to Mr. Samuel Knight's as fast as his legs would 
 carry him. Here he stopped all night, slept on the floor by the 
 fire, and in the morning in company with Mr. Knight, went to the 
 spot. They found on the place where he said he saw the bear, 
 only a great hemlock stump. Knight laughed at him; Gould felt 
 exceedingly fine. But two days after. Knight and a man named 
 Ramsey killed a bear, and Gould claimed that as the one he saw. 
 
 Daniel Patch, son of Joseph, had been down to deacon Ste- 
 vens' blacksmith shop, on Red-oak hill, to get a three-year old colt 
 shod. Coming back at evening down the hill, the bear called " old 
 white face,'' jumped into the road behind him and gave chase. 
 The colt scented him, pricked up his ears, and, frightened, ran. 
 Young Daniel clung to the colt's mane and there was a wild race 
 on Red-oak hill road. The steel shoes of the colt rang on the 
 rocks, the sparks of fire flashed in the darkness and it was only 
 when the boy passed Hurricane brook bridge and came into "War- 
 ren's first clearing, that the bear gave up the chase. When Daniel 
 Patch got home it was hard for the father to tell which was the 
 most frightened, the boy or the colt.* 
 
 About this time occurred the last moose hunts in "Warren. A 
 Mr. "Webster, who lived over the Height-o'-land, one autumn was 
 out hunting for moose. He started one in Piermont, and followed 
 him by Tarleton lake into "Warren. Here he took an easterly 
 cou.rse, evidently designing to cross over the lower ranges of 
 mountains and make for Moosehillock. "When he reached the 
 summit of "Webster slide the dogs came up with him and pressed 
 him so hard that he took a southerly course upon the top of 
 the mountain till he arrived upon the edge of the precipice. The 
 dogs were close upon him, and as he turned they made the attack. 
 
 * Hears. — Mr. George Bixby once killed a bear on Beech hill, with a good stont 
 cane. It had been an excellent season for berries of all kinds, and the bear was 
 so fat that it could hardly walk. 
 
 A bear followed Mr. Samuel Knight and his wife as they were going home. 
 There was a figure-four trap near where is now Levi F. Jewel's mill. The bear 
 looked into it and got caught, Mr. K. and wife being not six rods away at the time. 
 
 Bears, more or less, are caught every year in Warren, even at the present 
 time. The principal bear catchers now living in Warren are Joseph Whitcher, E. 
 Bartlett Libby, Amos L. Merrill and Isaac Tifleld. 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOOSE. 373 
 
 It was a hard fight. As they leaped at him, the antlered monarch 
 of the New Englaud forest tossed one upon his horns, and when 
 he fell it was over the precipice. Another dog caught the moose 
 by the throat, and a third seized him on the flank. Eound and 
 round they went, the noble animal in vain trying to shake them ofi". 
 They neared the very edge of the precipice. The rock on the 
 brink was slippery, and the hoofs would not cling to it. Back I 
 Back ! A hoarse panting, a dire swinging to and fro, and then the 
 rock was standing naked against the sky; no living thing was 
 there, and moose and hounds lay shattered far below. 
 
 Webster followed to the edge of the precipice and saw the 
 place of encounter. He was not long in determining the result, 
 and half an hour later he found them all dead at the foot among 
 the boulders and debris. From this circumstance the huge cliflf 
 rising sharp from Wachipauka pond received its name — "Webster 
 slide. * 
 
 Early in the spring of 1803 the last of these animals ever 
 known in this section was killed. Joseph Patch's supply of moose 
 beef had run short, and he tried his gi-own up sons, Joseph and 
 Daniel, to go with him after more ; but as they refused, he took his 
 son Jacob, then about seventeen years old, wlio wanted to go. At 
 the Easl^parte Stephen Flanders joined them, and the three on 
 snow shoes, for the snow was four feet deep, proceeded through 
 the forest, up the Asquamchumauke ou the north bank. They 
 crossed the Big brook near where the bridle-path ■ up Moosehillock 
 crosses it now, and half a mile beyond on the plain through which 
 rushes Gorge brook, they found where moose had browsed. Fol- 
 lowing the trail they crossed the latter stream, now buried in snow, 
 and Patch sent his son and Captain Flanders around the spur of 
 the mountainf after more browse, and following on they all came 
 together on the crest where they found " floats." 
 
 It was now late in the afternoon, and the little party stopped 
 to consult. They were far in the woods, and young Jacob thought 
 it was a lonesome place to spend the night. Looking about he saw 
 rabbit tracks in the snow; he heard black-cap titmice sing " chick- 
 
 * Mr. George Libby says that tbe above story is not exactly correct, that Mr. 
 Webster came very near falling down the mountain face himself, and afterwards 
 gave a gallon of rum to have the mountain named for him. 
 
 t Sometimes called Black hiU . 
 
374 HISTORY OF WABEEN. 
 
 adee " in the leafless branches, the sweet note of the brown creeper, 
 as spirally he climbed the huge trnnks of the great spruces, and a , 
 hairy woodpecker rattling on an old dead hemlock. Just then a 
 flock of pileated woodpeckers flew by, screaming as their scarlet 
 red heads flashed over the snow, and then it was still for a 
 moment. 
 
 From the appearance of the " floats," Joseph Patch knew that 
 they were in the immediate vicinity of the moose, and for fear of 
 frightening them they did not dare to build a camp nor light a fire. 
 So they made a large bed of evergreen boughs, thick and warm, 
 and when night came on, they wrapped their blankets about them 
 and -with their dogs lay down to sleep. Nice bed, beautiful place, 
 and splendid night. What if it had happened to snow or a south- 
 ern rain come on? But it did notj and the hunters lay on their 
 sweet smelling couch, and listened to the wind singing through 
 the leafless branches and the evergreens and saw the northern 
 lights flash blue and red up to the zenith, pouring their crimson 
 dyes upon the frozen snow. As the night wore away the north 
 star looked down upon them, and Andromeda, Cassiopea, and the 
 Great Bear, wheeling aronnd the pole, shone bright through the 
 crisp, frosty air. Jacob Patch said in his old age that he never 
 enjoyed a night's rest better in his whole Kfe than that one in the 
 winter snow, and that he ate his breakfast from their almost frozen 
 provisions with as keen a relish as he ever knew. 
 
 At the earliest dawn they started on the trail, keeping their 
 dogs quiet behind them, and traveling two miles they found the 
 moose in a large yard beside a little mountain stream. There were 
 three of them, a bull, a cow and a calf. Patch shot the calf, Flan- 
 ders fired at the bull and missed, when Patch fired again and 
 killed him. The cow started ofi" at a fast trot down Baker river. 
 The dags followed, a bull dog and a hound,* yelping, yelling, and 
 baying, till the woods rang with echoes, and the men running after 
 
 * They used to have good dogs in those days. Esq. Abel Merrill once had a 
 dog and a pup, and wanted to sell one of them. A man came to buy, and Abel 
 said the old dog, Bose, was as good a dog as ever was in the world. Then said the 
 man, I will take the puppy. " But, but," said 'Squire Abel, " the puppy is a little 
 mite better." 
 
 *^ Bose is the best dog in the worlds but the puppy is a little mite better," was a by- 
 word in Warren for a long time after.— Anson Merrill's statement. 
 
THE AMERICAN CAEIBOCJ. 375 
 
 as fast as they could. A mile away, and the old moose turned to 
 flght the dogs and Patch coming up'flrst, shot her. ;, 
 
 As they were dressing them, three other men, who by a sin- 
 gular coincidence were hunting in the valley, came up and claimed 
 the ;noose. Patch was a little covetous, and. as his neighborly 
 hunters from over the mountain were exceedingjy saucy, he would 
 not give them a bit of the meat. But our hunter and Captain F. 
 had to stky and watch their captured game while young Jacob 
 went for sleds and help with which they brought home the pro- 
 duct of theii' morning work. Thus perished the last of that race 
 of animals in our mountain valley, so many of which at one time 
 lived about Moosehillock mountain. 
 
 In old times it was a common thing for the best hunters to 
 station themselves behind a tree or rock by Eocky falls on Patch 
 brook or Waternomee falls on Hurncane brook. Then they would 
 send men with their dogs sweeping across the sides of Mt. Carr'to 
 start wild animals, and often deer and moose would come flying 
 down the beds of the streams, when the hunter in ambush would 
 shoot them. 
 
 Chase Whitcher once got behind the great rock at the foot of 
 "Waternomee falls, and sent John Marston with a hound onto the 
 mountain. The latter, on snow shoes, climbed up near the very 
 top of Mt. Carr, and there started his game. But it was only for 
 a moment that he saw it, — a giant deer, beautiful beyond anything 
 he had ever seen before. 
 
 That deer was of the variety called the American Caribou,* 
 the fiercest, fleetest, wildest, shyest, and most untameable of the 
 deer tribe in the whole world, and are only shot by white hunters 
 through casual good fortune. The hound bayed and followed ; 
 but it was a useless chase, for the Caribou's feet were like snow 
 shoes, and he ran as no other animal could. One might as well 
 think to pursue the hurricane as to follow him. He seemed Uke 
 the ship of the winter wilderness outspeeding the winds ambng 
 hil native pines and firs. 
 
 ' WJiitcher heard the baying of the hound far up the mountain, 
 
 : ^ : — 
 
 * The Caribou averages from fourteen and a half to flfteon hands high, is taller 
 than ordinary horses, aria is more thaii a match for a wolf or a panther in a 
 flght. (?) 
 
376 HISTOBT OF WAKREN. 
 
 then crouched close behind his rock. As he waited the sun shone 
 out clear, lighting up the frosting of ice on the great rocks, and 
 making the fantastic icicles hanging pendant on the birch and 
 spruce to throw forth a thousand brilliant shades and lyies, and to 
 sparkle like gems. 
 
 Soon he heard the mighty beast flying down the bed of the 
 torrent, and he involuntarily cocked his gun, and a moment after 
 held his breath as he saw the great antlers of the bull flash through 
 the trees. 
 
 The Caribou paused on the cUff, hesitating to jump; then 
 catching the fresh scent, snuflfed the air, dilated his flashing eyes, 
 shook his branching horns, and gathered himself up to bound 
 away on the right. 
 
 It was too late, the sharp crack of "WMtcher's rifle awoke the 
 echoes, and the Caribou shot forward far over the brink, and fell 
 dead at the foot of the falls. 
 
 Whitcher had seen tracks of this fleetest, wildest deer, on other 
 occasions, but never before or suice has a white hunter shot a 
 Caribou in "Warren. 
 
 Deer have always been more or less plenty in Warren, and 
 hardly a winter passes, but that a few are caught. In early times 
 they were seen in the fields almost every day. Joseph Patchf 
 used to relate how as he was coming home from the East-parte 
 soon after the road was built, a deer stood drinking by Silver rill 
 at twihght, a will-o'-the-wisp playing around his branching horns. 
 Patch gave a low whistle, the buck suufied the air for a moment 
 then bounded away in the darkness. 
 
 Of the other four-footed beasts that have hved in the Asquam- 
 chumauke valley, many have been hunted for their furs. The fox 
 has generally been esteemed the best ; and the music of baying 
 hounds has been the delight of many a hunter's heart. Trappers 
 in the forest have built culheags and set steel traps for sable, otter, 
 mink, martin, ermine, and muskrat, and old Mr. Vowell Leathers, 
 a gipsy descendant, who lived on Beech hill, used to catch skunks 
 
 t Joseph Patch, when adyanoed in years, followed a deer on snow shoes, all 
 one day, as fast as he could, then at night laid down on the snow without a fire, 
 and got cold. It settled in his hips, and our hunter was lame ever after. He could 
 stand up and swingle flax aU day long. He learned the shoemaker's trade, and 
 was good at it ; hut he never could mn on snow shoes in the woods afterwards. 
 Yet he was good at " still hunting " as long as he liyed. 
 
BIEDS OF WAEKEN. 877 
 
 to obtain their pleasant odor. He thought it decidedly superior to 
 musk, cologne, or otto of roses, and he once placed one of these 
 sweet smelling creatures under a certain lady town pauper's bed, 
 kindly remarking that it smelt far better than she did, and was 
 much to be preferred by all refined people, — a remark highly com- 
 plimentary to the lady. 
 
 Of aU the birds that abound in "Warren , the black-cap titmouse, 
 sometimes called chickadee, is deservedly the greatest favorite. 
 Why? Because he has a beautiful song, does a great deal of good 
 and no harm, is very plenty, and stops with us all the year round. 
 His feathers are as warm as wool, are immensely thick as com- 
 pared with his whole body, and he is so sprightly that he could not 
 be cold, no matter what might be • the weather. A whole flock, 
 clinging, backs down like pirouetting fairies to the breezy tops of 
 the pine trees, swinging in the wind on the outermost end of the 
 slenderest boughs of the birch, singing all the time, chickadee, 
 chickadedee, in the sweetest notes, making a lively party, and music 
 that causes us to love the bright days of winter. 
 
 When the low southern sun is hid in murky leaden clouds, and 
 the snow flakes begin to spin round in the freshening gale and the 
 storm spirit is roaring on the mountains, then the white flashing 
 bodies of the snow-buntings, who were hatched on the snowy 
 isles of the frozen ocean, in nests of reindeers' hair, lined with soft 
 down of sea ducks and the warm fur of the white foxes, hurrying 
 before the storm, bring a weird feeling and a sort of a supersti- 
 tious awe to the cliilly traveller. Along with them come the gos- 
 hawk, light winged, from Greenland; the snow owl and the 
 Acadian owl, his companions, and the Bohemian chatterer, that 
 incessantly sings when the sun shines on his home, the eternal 
 snows and glaciers about the pole. On mild winter days, in our 
 hamlet, the shrike, cross-bUls, mealy red polls, lesser red polls, 
 pine grosbeaks, Arctic woodpeckers, brown creepers, nut hatches, 
 make busy parties in the spruce swamps, while on the borders of 
 the fields, and about the barns, is heard the screaming of jays and 
 the cawing of crows. 
 
 Spring brings a host of eagles, hawks, owls, woodpeckers, 
 cuckoos, thrushes, wrens, kingfishers, humming birds, warblers, 
 swallows, orioles, blackbirds, sparrows, finches, buntings, and 
 
378 HISTORY OF WAKREN. 
 
 many others, among whom is the red-eyed vireo, one of the most 
 welcome of the summer singers, for he sings all day long, no mat- 
 ter how dark the weather or hot the sun. . 
 
 For the sportsman, the beautiful wood duck, the black duck and 
 sheldrakes swim in the ponds and river, and in autumn the wild 
 goose crying " hawnk-honck-e-honck,'' as he flies through the sky, 
 often lights in Tarleton lake. But never yet has sportsman. lived 
 in Warren who knew how to hunt upland plover, or the woodcock 
 that breed every year in the meadows of Runaway pond, and 
 along the shores of some _of the sedgy streams. That kind of 
 shooting belongs to another generation. 
 
 Among the darkflys andi;hick hackmatacks of the mountains is 
 found the spruce grouse, sometimes called the Canadian grouse. 
 They have a beautifuj plumage, but are not considered good eating. 
 They are very remarkable for their manner of drumming. They 
 leap up from the earth and beating their wings rapidly against 
 their sides, rise spirally some fifteen or twenty feet into the air, 
 then slowly descending in the same manner, they all the time pro- 
 duce by the rapid motion of their wings a low rumbling sound 
 like distant thunder which in a still day can be heard nearly a mile 
 away. 
 
 The rufied grouse is a larger bird, much more plenty, is more 
 sought after, and affords the most savory dish for the table. This 
 bird is generally known as the partridge, is very numerous, and in 
 fact cannot be exterminated. Their di-umming, which every one 
 has heard, is the call of the male bird to his harem of attendant 
 wives, and is beautifully done. Standing up proudly on an old 
 prostrate log, or flat rock in a spruce copse, he lowers his wings, 
 erects his expanded tail, contracts his throat, elevates the two tufts 
 of feathers on the neck, and inflates his whole body, something in 
 the manner of a turkey-coek, strutting and wheeling about in great 
 stateliness'. After a few manoeuvres of this kind, he begins to 
 strike his stiffened wings in short and quick strokes, which become 
 more and more rapid until they run into each other, resembling 
 the rumbling sound of very distant thunder, dying away gradually 
 on the ear. Morning and evening in the spring of the year is their 
 favorite drumming time. Warren has had a host of good par- 
 tridge hunters, from Obadiah Clement down to Benjamin Little, 
 
FISHING. " 379 
 
 Kussell Merrill, Benj. K. Little, and Amos ]^. Merrill, who lives in 
 the East-parte region. .. 
 
 Some years wild pigeons are very plenty, and at thp com- 
 mencement of the present century flocks miles in length and 
 breadth, darkening the sun, would fly for days over our valley. In 
 autumn when beech-nuts abounded, our hunters and their friends 
 feasted on wild pigeons.* 
 
 "Warren's streams and ponds abound in fish, and flshermen 
 have always been more plenty than hunters, trappers, or fowlers. 
 Minnows, dace, eels, suckers, pQut, pickerel, and trout, swarm the 
 waters in great numbers; but pickerel and trout are the most 
 sought after; The latter were much larger formerly than now. 
 
 Mr. Samuel Merrill, familliarly known as " Uncle Sammy," a 
 man beloved by every body, was one of the first . fishermen in the 
 head waters of the Asquamchumauke. He had settled high up on 
 the side of Moosehillock mountain. The woods were thick about 
 his clearing, shutting out the view back of his cabin ; but Moose- 
 hillock looked in upon him from the north, and east, the crests 
 of the mountains swept round him in a circle to the south-west. 
 Morning and evening he could hear the roar of the river in the 
 gorge just beyond the eastern edge of the clearing. 
 
 He used to tell how a July night of those garljr times had been 
 showery, and in the morning, rising early, he saw a faint blue line 
 of mist which hovered over the bed of the long rocky ravine, 
 floating about like the steam of a seething cauldron, and rising here 
 and there into tall smoke like columns, probably where some 
 steeper cataract of the mountain stream sent its foam skyward. 
 1 As the sun came up the mists rapidly dispersed from the lower 
 regions, were suspended for a short time in the middle air in 
 %road, fleecy masses, then melted quickly away in the increasing 
 Brightness of the day. 
 
 " The flsh will bite this forenoon, and I will see the river," he 
 said^ " and the land beyond." He had bought his hooks down 
 
 * Anson Merrill said he saw pigeons, year after year, so aick flying over War- 
 ren tliat tliey looked like a black cloud. 
 
 Fowling Anecdote. — Joseph and Orlando, sons of Joseph Boynton, who lived 
 on the ridge above Cold brook, once found a partridge sitting on,ner nest. Orlando 
 got the gun and he and Josepli went out to shoot the bird: but their father think- 
 ing it too bad to shoot a sitting bird, run ahead and scared the partridge up. Or- 
 lando saw liim and heard the heavy flight. He was mad and hallooed to Joseph 
 what his fattier had done. Josepjvlie was madder still, and with the most filial 
 
380 HISTOEY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 country, his wife had spun him a linen line, and he had buckshot for 
 a sinker. Digging some worms by the path that led to Ms house, 
 he traveled away over the brook to the northeast, through the 
 thick hemlock woods, a mile and more, to the river bank. At the 
 base of this descent, four hundred feet perhaps below, flowed {he 
 dark arrowy stream — a wild perilous water. As clear as crystal, 
 yet as dark as the brown lichens, it came pouring down among the 
 broken rocks, with a rapidity and force which showed what must 
 be its fury when swollen by a storm among the mountains ; here 
 breaking into a wreath of rippling foam, where some unseen ledge 
 chafed the current, there roaring and surging white as December's 
 snow among the great round headed boulders, and there again 
 wheeling in sullen eddies, dark and deceitfiil, round and round 
 some deep rock-rimmed basin. 
 
 Going down the bank two beautiful spruce grouse, their scarlet 
 feathers gleaming in the morning sun, clucked, clucked, chur-r-red, 
 and then disappeared in heavy flight down among the great trees 
 of the ravine. 
 
 At the water edge he cut a beautiful birchen pole, fastened his 
 line upon the end and adjusted a worm upon his hook. Delicately, 
 deftly the bait danced in the clear water across the foamy, crystal 
 eddy to the hither bank, then again, obedient to the pliant wrist it 
 circled half round the limpid basin, then stopped for a moment in 
 a little mimic whirlpool, where it spun round and round just to 
 the leeward of a gray granite boulder. It was only for a moment, 
 and the gay tail of a trout flashed in the sunshine, then a swirl on 
 the surface, a quick turn of the wrist, the barbed hook was fixed 
 and the most beautiful fish of the northern waters spun round and 
 round for a moment in the air, then quickly unhooked was strung 
 on the forked birch twig cut for the purpose. The hook was 
 rebaited, another and another were caught, then down stream leap- 
 ing on the great round boulders, he stopped again at a second 
 edying basin, adjusted his bait, and hurrying now in the wild 
 excitement, caught brace after brace, taking no note of time till 
 the shadows crept out over the deep gorge and a heavy rumble up 
 
 affeotion, and in the most pious manner, shouted ont,"5'/too<,s/iooiif/ted — d old cuss." 
 His lather heard liim and mildly said, " Orlando, if you do I'll take your hide off;" 
 and Orlando didn't shoot.— Eussell K. Clement's story. 
 
BIFTY MILES OT TROUT WATEB. 381 
 
 in the great basin of tlie mountains told that a thunder shower was 
 coming on. 
 
 A hedgehog had come down by the stream to drink, but he 
 heeded him not. A winter wren, darting quick as a mouse in and 
 out among the roots of a fallen tree, had warbled a trilling fairy 
 song to him ; a white throated flnch had sung soft and sweet from 
 the top of a beautiful green spruce that shot up like a cone at the 
 head of a little island where the stream divided and rushed rap- 
 idly down on either side, and just then a great shaggy black bear 
 came from the woods and laying down in the cold water lapped 
 his fill, and sozzled and tossed the clear crystal fluid to his heart's 
 content. Merrill never disturbed him; but with fish, as many as 
 he could conveniently carry, scrambled up the steep bank and 
 hurried away home. In his old age he would tell what a wetting 
 he got going home from his first fishing excursion in the Asquam- 
 chumauke. 
 
 Fish have been caught in Glen and Wachipauka ponds, and 
 Tarleton lake, that would weigh over four pounds each,* and I 
 have seen them myself, caught from the Joseph Merrill pond, that 
 would weigh three pounds. Who does not like to fish? In my 
 youth I fished in the dear old mill-pond and tiny Cold brook ; but 
 in after years in the wild mountain stream and on the sylvan 
 lake. 
 
 There are more than fifty miles of trout streams in our moun- 
 tain hamlet,t any mile of which can be reached and well fished 
 any day, in the season, from Warren common. Patch brook, Hui- 
 ricane brook, Batchelder brook, Davis brook, Libby brook. East- 
 branch brook, the Asquamchumauke, Gorge brook, Big brook, 
 Merrill brook. Berry brook. Black brook, (the Mikaseota,) Ore hiU 
 brook, and Martin brook, also the Oliverian, afibrd more than fifty 
 thousand genuine red-spotted trout with pink sides and silver belly 
 and tri-colored fins, white, black, and red, each year. Who does 
 not love to follow the clear streams running over sandy bottoms 
 
 * Wm. H. Fisk, of Manchester, N. H., once caught a trout out of Patch hrook 
 that weighed over four pounds. A fish hawk sat on a neighboring ti'ee looking at 
 him and evidently had been watching the same game. When Mr. Fisk bagged the 
 beauty the hawk flew away with a scream, seeming much disappointed. 
 
 t CyiTis C. Kimball, in his day, fished a portion of the Asquamchumauke so 
 much that the fish were spring poor all the year round. He amused himself 
 chasing them over the rooks when they wouldn't bite. 
 
382 HISTORY OF WAREEN. 
 
 where they abound. Your trout delights m cascades, tumbling 
 bays and weirs. Generally he has his hole tinder roots of over- 
 hanging trees, and beneath hollow banks and great boulders in the 
 deepest parts of the stream. The junction of little I'apids, formed 
 by water passing round an obstruction in the midst of the general 
 current is a likely point at which to raise a trout ; also at the roots 
 of trees, or beside great rocks, or in other places where the froth 
 of the stream collects. All such places are favorable fi)r sport, as 
 insects follow the same course as the bubbles, and are there sought 
 by the fish. Generally they lie head up stream, not even wagging 
 the tail or moving a fin. fhousands of pounds of fish are also • 
 taken from our ponds each year, yet they never seem to grow 
 scarce, and each season brings its accustomed product. 
 
 "Warren has known some pot fishers, real murderers of the 
 finny tribe ; and once upon a time, as the fairy stories ■ begin, sev- 
 eral lovers of fat trout resolved to capture every one in "Wachi- 
 pauka pond. Dr. Alphonzo G. French, Rev. A. W. Eastman, and 
 Absalom Chfibrd, Esq., were the principal actors. But they 
 invited their friends John 3. Batchelder, Newell Barry, Newell 8. 
 Martin, and several other less important personages, to go with 
 them and share in the spoils. Accordingly, armed with wash- 
 tubs, mackerel kits, and syrup holders, one bright summer morn- 
 ing they all repaired to the pond. 
 
 The plan was to fill a large stone jug with powder, attach a 
 fuse and -sink it in the water ; one of the number on a raft should 
 light the fuse, and the others with a rope, should pull him ashore. 
 The explosion would kill every fish in the pond; they would float . 
 on the surface and the greedy fishermen could pick' them up at 
 their leisure. Absalom Clifford was to touch ofi' the fuse, and Dr. 
 French and Rev. Mr. Eastman were to land him before the explo- 
 sion. The others would get behind great trees in the woods. 
 
 The plan is perfected ; the raft is floating on the still water 
 and the rope extends to the shore. 
 
 Absalom Clifford touched oflf; a light smoke curled up from 
 the burning fuse. 
 
 Pull, shouted the man on the raft, and the doctor and the min- 
 ister pulled. '•' Pull ! Pull ! or I shall be blowed up," screamed the 
 fuse lighter, and the man of physic and the man» of the gospel 
 
AN EXTKAOKDINABT FISHING ADTENTUKE. 383 
 
 pulled, — pulled with all their might. But alas the rope broke ; a 
 terrible explosion was soon to follow, they could not die there , 
 and the doctor and the reverend fled far into the deep woods. 
 
 A. Clifford knew his danger, there was no escape, and taking 
 one last lingering look of mountains and green woods around, lay 
 down on his raft, closed his eyes and resigned himself to his 
 fate. 
 
 Soon the pdwder burned; but there was no terrible explosion, 
 only a few bubbles on the surface and then all was calm and 
 still. 
 
 A long time after, the doctor, the minister, the hotel keeper, 
 and the farmers, came creeping back. Absalom sat bolt upright 
 on his raft. He was now as brave as a lion, and spoke many 
 gentle words to the bold rope pullers who had left him to die 
 alone. 
 
 They felt " cute enough." 
 
 Absalom, with a piece of board paddled himself ashore, and 
 the party gathering up all their tubs, kits, and holders, and cover- 
 ing them with green boughs in their wagons, wended their way 
 to their homes, exceedingly delighted with the many congratula- 
 tions of their friends over their success, and the almost miraculous 
 escape of A. Cliflford. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 now THE TURNPIKE WAS BUILT, AND OF DIVERS THINGS THAT 
 HAPPENED THEREBY. 
 
 I^EW things came fast to our hamlet among the hills, at 
 the beginning of the present century. In the last chapter of the 
 preceding book, we enumerated many of them, and at the com- 
 mencement of the present, told of the new religions that came to 
 town. In the land of the Coosucks, far to the northward, the 
 people were similarly blessed, and having a great desire for a 
 further supply of useful commodities, began to make efforts for 
 the building of better roads on which they might come. 
 
 About this time a mania had arisen for turnpikes, throughout 
 the whole land ; people believed they would be profitable invest- 
 ments, and every body knew they would help develop the country. 
 Nearly twenty of the roads had been chartered and built in New 
 Hampshire, and December 19, 1805, a charter of the old Coos, 
 turnpike was obtained. The enterprising people of Haverhill 
 Corner — they don't live there now — were mainly instrumental 
 in procuring it, and the corporation* the ensuing spring, engaged 
 the services of Gen. John McDuiFee, a distingtiished engineer of 
 those times, and the survey was immediately commenced. 
 
 * The turnpike corporation consisted of Moses Dow, Absalom Peters, Joseph 
 Bliss, David Webster, Jr., Asa Boynton, Charles Johnston, Alden Sprague, Moody 
 Bedell, William Tai'leton, John Page, and Stephen P. Webster. The first meeting 
 was called by Col. William Tarleton and Stephen P. Webster, by publishing a no- 
 tice in the Dartmouth Gazette. 
 
 The " Coventry turnpike" was chartered December 29, 1803, but it was never 
 built. 
 
THE COOS TURNPIKE SUEVETED. 385 
 
 There were two points at which it must terminate. Haverhill 
 Corner on the west, and Baker river, the Asquamchumauke, "near 
 Merrill's mill " on the east, and it mast be the straightest and short- 
 est line, rf it did run plump over the mountain long known as the 
 Heigh t-o'-land. Surveyor McDuffee looked over the route first, and 
 then commencing at Haverhill Corner, ran southeasterly towards 
 the Asquamchumauke in Warren. He was all summer perform- 
 ing the work, getting the bearings, estimating the grade, driving 
 the stakes, and cutting bushes. Thomas Pillsbury of Warren was 
 one of the surveying party, and helped carry the chain. Then the 
 general made np his plan, and in the au.tumn of 1806 advertise- 
 ments were posted for proposals to bftUd sections of one hundred 
 rods each, on the whole line. 
 
 Joseph Patch, Jr., and his brothers, contracted for and built 
 from the commencement at the narrow point between Baker river 
 and the Mikaseota or Black brook up to the Blue ridge. Joseph 
 MerrUl took the job cutting through the high embankment of Run- 
 away pond. It required a great amount of labor and much time, 
 and before it was finished the people thought it wati a blue job for 
 Mr. Merrill, hence the name Blue ridge. Amos Little built the 
 hundred rods above Blue ridge, over the Mikaseota, and one of 
 the Clements the section above that. Captain William Butler also 
 built a section. 
 
 In 1808, the turnpike approaching completion, a toll-gate was 
 constructed and located where the road crosses the outlet of Tarle- 
 ton lake. Here was a narrow ravine and there was no way to 
 proceed except through the gate. Mne pence was the toll for a 
 horse and rider, one shilling for a horse and wagon, one and six 
 pence for a two horse wagon or sleigh, and three shillings for large 
 teams.* 
 
 The people who lived beside it were pei-mitted to travel upon 
 
 , it at a small cost; they working out their highway taxes upon it in 
 
 part payment.f Joseph Merrill'was superintendent of repairs for 
 
 the south division. Several roads not being longer needed were 
 
 now thrown up. J 
 
 *ror an extended table of tolls, see charter in office of Secretary of State. 
 
 t Bach man had to work a day and a half on the turnpike to pay for what he 
 used it.— Gen. M. P. Merrill's statement. 
 
 tVoted to discontinue from Bowles' to the old Potash, (so called,) near Mr. 
 Weeks' so long as the public can pass on the turnpike, free from " towl." 
 
 Y 
 
886 HISTORY or ■VTAKKEN. 
 
 And now, when the road was opened, how the people rejoiced ! 
 It would bring new life to the town ! Their property would be of 
 higher value, and the world at their doors. 
 
 These bright expectations were fully realized ; travel greatly 
 increased. Great teams, as they were called, canvass covered 
 wagons, drawn by eight or ten horses, went rumbling by every 
 day in long trains, almost like caravans in the East. Going north 
 they invariably hired all the horses and oxen at the foot of the 
 Height-o'-land that could be found, to help them up. My uncle, 
 Anson Merrill, said that when a boy, he had been to the top of the 
 Height a hundred times or more to take back the oxen or horses. 
 Four shillings or four-and-six-pence was the price of a yoke of 
 cattle or a span of horses over the mountain. The highest point 
 on the road where they dismissed the boy, was about two thousand 
 feet above sea level, and a barn now standing on the turnpike sum- 
 mit is a real water-shed, the rain and melting snow running from 
 one roof flowing into the Connecticut, that from the other roof 
 into the Merrimack. In winter two-horse pungs, with jingling 
 bells and shoutiiig drivers, came from the fertile Mil-sides of Ver- 
 mont, and made trains miles in length on the winter road. Num- 
 erous pod teams, or one-horse sleighs, also joined the great 
 caravan to the seaboard. 
 
 It' was a romantic trip these pungs had to Dover, Portsmouth, 
 and Newburyport. Mr. Saniuel Merrill,* "Uncle Sammy," who 
 lived in the East>parte regions, used to narrate his adventures 
 " going down by the sea." "When the deep snow had come and the 
 weather was cold, he loaded up his great steel-shod, — shoes of 
 steel more than an inch thick, — market pung. "Whole hogs, 
 frozen stiff, apple-sauce, butter, cheese, poultry, feetings, mink, 
 fox, sable, fisher-cat, and bear skins, caught by his boys, sheep's 
 pelts, and all the various articles of country produce, make a heavy 
 load. Then he would take a whole trunk full of pies, cakes, cold 
 
 Voted to discontinue the old road from the north side of Coventiy road to the 
 turnpike above Mr. Swett's as above. 
 
 voted to discontinue from Joseph Merrill's to the sa-\v-mill as above. 
 
 Voted to discontinue from Captain Craige's house to Jonathan Clement's inn. 
 Captain Craige lived in Joshua Merrill's house on the west side of the Mikaseota. 
 —Town Clerk's Records, Vol. i. 190. 
 
 * Samuel Merrill was the son of Rev. Nathaniel Merrill, a very able Congrega- 
 tional minister. Nathaniel was a brother of Joshua and Stevens Merrill, early 
 settlers in WaiTeu. 
 
FREIGHT AND TEAVEL TO THE SEABOABD. 387 
 
 meat, cold fowl, and cheese, for Mmself, and several bushels of 
 oats for his horses. He did not like to pay much money to the 
 thousand and one landlords who kept hotels and furnished drinka- 
 bles all along the road to the markets, which were known as places 
 down countiy. Just think of the little man mounting the semi- * 
 circular step behind the sleigh for the start, amid the tender good- 
 bys and kind wishes of those who were to stay behind, and who 
 must now pass days and perhaps weeks, if drifting snow or a 
 " January thaw" should intervene, before the old mare and her 
 four year old colt should make their appearance, coming up the 
 • hill home again. " Out to the road," and he joined the throng 
 coming down the turnpike, and was lost in the hurrying caravan. 
 At the market towns he bought salt, spices of all kinds, steel traps, 
 powder, shot. Ashing tackle, and a host of coveted luxuiies, and 
 then he was off for his home again. The old mare and the four 
 year old colt turned out of the throng and off the turnpike road 
 instinctively, and was there not joy in the household that night 
 when he unloaded his treasures. James Williams, his neighbor, 
 had a two-horse market sleigh, as did Joseph Patch, Jr., Captain 
 Butler, Obadiah Clement, and several others. There were like- 
 wise numerous pod teams owned in town, that made annual pil- 
 grimages down country with the rest. 
 
 Freighting and travel to the seaboard so much increased, on 
 account of the turnpike, that one or two new taverns were opened 
 in town. Mr. Nathaniel Clough* had one near the south line of 
 Warren, Captain Butler and Jonathan Clement each kept one in 
 the valley of Runaway pond, and Col. Tarleton, Joseph Merrill, 
 'Squire Jonathan Menill, and Lemuel Keezer,f still continued their 
 hostelries and bought hay and grain of all the farmers in the country 
 round. 
 
 The old turnpike road had a lively history for a quarter of a 
 
 * FAMILY KECOED OF NATHANIEL AND BETTT (,Kees:er) CLOUGH. 
 
 Jonathan, bom Deo. 28, 1790, at War- Amos, bom May 12, 1797. 
 reu. SaJly, bom Apr. 28, 1799. 
 
 Nathaniel, bom Aug. 17, 1792. Betsey, bom Feb. 18, 1803. 
 
 WUliam, bora Sept. 5, 1794, ^ Juliana, born Oct. 6, 1813. 
 
 t Lemuel Keezer in his old age got Captain Daniel Merrill to live with him and 
 take care of him. Captain Daniel among other things agreed to furnish Mr. Kee- 
 zer a pint of good mm a day during Ms natural life. Captaiu Daniel was also a 
 deacon, and Keezer used to say of him, "Now then Daniel always hangs up his 
 deaconship on a peg at home, when he goes out biiying cattle, and don't take it 
 down again tiU Saturday at 4 p. m. 
 
a«8 HISTOKT OF -WABKEN. 
 
 century, and on it has happened many a fond adventure. The 
 Height-o'-landers were in old times a jolly, jovial, hilarious set of 
 roisterers. The Days, especially, who once lived there, were fond 
 lovyers of good grog, and many a break-neck ride they took with 
 ■bottle and bag, a stone in one end of the bag to balance the bottle, to 
 the hotels in the valley of Runaway pond, and on the banks of 
 the Asquamchumauke, to obtain the " good creature." It is told by 
 superstitious people that they used to see ghosts on the road going 
 home o' nights. 
 
 But the wildest adventure, a terrible ride, happened on the 
 turnpike about the year 1812, soon after the road was first opened. 
 A teamster of short and stout frame from northern Vermont, used 
 to drive four powerful black horses, freighting to the seaboard. 
 In the hot summer he would travel nights and rest daytimes. He 
 left Tarleton's hotel by Tarleton lake one evening to go over to the 
 Asquamchumauke valley. He came through the Tamarack swamp 
 by the pond, climbed the highest summit and went down to the 
 top of the sharp pitch where commence the cascades of Ore-hill 
 brook. Here he cliained his wheel, mounted his load and started 
 down. He had not proceeded a rod when the chain broke. The 
 horses could not hold the heavy load and it forced them into a run 
 down the hill. It was dark as pitch, he could not see to rein his 
 team, he could not hold them, and their speed accelerated every 
 moment. The sparks flew from the steel-shod hoofs, and long 
 trails of light flashed back in the darkness as the wheels rumbled 
 over the rocks. As the speed increased, ghosts seemed to shriek 
 out to him from the murky air, and he could almost see their eyes 
 flashing like meteors, — in fact he did see stars, although the whole 
 sky was covered with thick clouds, for just at the foot of the hill 
 where the road turns to the right before crossing the stream, the 
 wagon struck a rock, breaking nearly every timber in it. The 
 leaders cleared themselves and ran, the hind horses were thrown 
 down and one of them killed, while the driver was thrown from 
 the load against a stone, and one of his legs was broken in three 
 places. 
 
 ' He shouted for help, but there was no house within a mile of 
 the spot, and no one came to his assistance. To stay there was to 
 die in agony, and to move did not increase his pain. On liis hands 
 
A TEKKIBLE EBDE. 389 
 
 and knee he crawled to Ms team, cut the harness of the living 
 horse and got him up. Mounting him he rode to Jonathan Clem- 
 ent's inn, a mile and a half away, roused the family, and was 
 assisted into the house. "When a light was brought, his hair, dark 
 before, was found to be white as snow. 
 
 The horses that ran were found standing quietly under the 
 tavern shed. Dr. Bartlett set the teamster's broken limb, and 
 every thing possible was done for the unfortunate man, but it was 
 four months before he was able to walk a step.* 
 
 For a whole generation the turnpike corporation flourished 
 and paid good dividends to the stockholders. Then the feeling 
 became prevalent that a road should be built by which the steep 
 hills and mountains might be shimned. After a long contest one 
 was built and travel ceased over the Height-o'-land. The tavern- 
 keepers in the valley of Runaway pond and on the shore of Tarle- 
 ton lakef then took down their signs, and the places once bustling 
 with the activity of teamsters, stage-drivers, and travelers, became 
 almost solitudes. 
 
 Still the old turnpike did good service for the dwellers beside 
 it of a second generation ; but to-day, riding over it, it seems 
 like a monument of a people past and gone. Especially did it 
 seem so when in the spring of 1868, in company with my esteemed 
 Mend, Mr. James Clement, we came down from Cross' iron 
 mine, through the Tamarack woods by Tarleton lake. It was a 
 cloudy, wet evening the last of May ; the lonely farm house be- 
 side tlie road was deserted, not a human being was to be seen, 
 but from the swamp and dripping wood came the warbling melody 
 of the winter wren, the sweet song of the white-throated spar- 
 row, and trilling sweeter, richer, and far more beautiful than 
 all the rest, the mellow, flute-like notes of the wood thrush. 
 
 ■Reader, riding over the old turnpike, remember that once this 
 solitude was the busiest and most traveled thoroughfare in all 
 northern New Hampshire. 
 
 * Dr. Jesse Little's statement. 
 
 t The old sign of Colonel Wm. Tarleton, that creaked for more than half a 
 century in the winds that blew over Tarleton lake, is still (1889) in existence. When 
 taken down it was nailed upon an inside stable door, where the writer saw it in 
 1869. . It was made of a broad oaken hoard and was beautifully painted. On the 
 top oi the visible side is the name of WiUiam Tarleton, and the date 1774 at the 
 bottom. Between the name and the date is an excellent likeness of Gen. Wolfe 
 with drawn sword and full uniform. Woll'e was the hero at that time, and Wash- 
 ington and his generals were hardly known. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ABOUT THE 1812 WAE ; OF DKAFTING AND TOLTTNTEEEING, CLOSING 
 WITH A GRAND MtTSTEE WHEN WAEEEN'S HILLS HEARD LOUDEE 
 MUSIC THAN EVEE BEFOEE. 
 
 In the selectmenship of Jonathan Merrill, Benjamin Merrill, 
 and Joseph Merrill, high functionaries of Warren, the second war 
 with Great Britain broke out. It originated in a series of aggres- 
 sions made upon our commerce by British naval commanders, they 
 claiming the right to search our ships and of impressing our sea- 
 men. This presumption having been carried on with a high hand, 
 a number of our vessels having been iired into, the United States 
 mad? a declaration of war. 
 
 In New Hampshire Gov. Plumer, by order of the President 
 and the Secretary of War, commanded five companies of soldiers 
 from the first brigade of the New Hampshire militia to proceed to 
 Portsmouth for the defence of that seaport, and upon representa- 
 tions of the people in the north part of the State that there was 
 danger of predatory incursions of the enemy from Canada, and 
 that contraband trade was rife on the ft'outier, defrauding our 
 government of its revenue and furnishing the enemy with sup- 
 plies, another company was ordered to the north to be stationed at 
 Stewartstown, N. H. Brig. Gen. John Montgomery was com- 
 manded to furnish the company from the sixth brigade, and he 
 immediately ordered each company of the several regiments com- 
 posing it to furnish its respective quota. 
 
 By his order the military company of Warren was compelled 
 
THE 1812 WAR. 3-91 
 
 to fui-nish ten men to seiTe six months. They were to be drafted 
 July 27th, 1812, and each member of the company having been 
 notified, they met on the parade in front of Joseph Merrill's inn, 
 for that purpose.* 
 
 It was a day of great interest to all the people of Warren. 
 There was not much sleep iu town the night before, and every 
 military man was up bright and early. 
 
 But they did not find fair weather. Those who were up before 
 the sun said they saw the rain gathering around the head of Moose- 
 hillock, and the red stars trembling between the flying clouds. At 
 day break it was evident a great rain was coming on. The wind 
 was north-east and the echoing woods of the valley even seemed 
 to foresee the storm. Soon its spirit was heard roaring in the dark 
 forests of Mount Can- ; and men at their breakfast saw the ragged 
 clouds hurrying across the heavens, their edges tinged with light- 
 ning ; saw the winds roU them along the mountain sides, and heard 
 the deep thunder echoing over the crests. By eight o'clock it was 
 pouring in torrents and the brave members of the "Warren military 
 company looked solemn as they assembled on the parade amid the 
 rain that came down on the north-east wind.f "War was some- 
 thing new for that generation, and the men who should go might 
 be killed on the battlefield, or die of lingering disease in the 
 hospital. 
 
 Still, at ten o'clock the company was formed in line at "the 
 beat of drum, the command of forward march was heard, and 
 they marched to the floar of the great barn connected with the 
 inn.t 
 
 Here they were paraded in line. The captain made a short 
 speech, telling them that volunteers were better than drafted men, 
 
 * 1809. — " Voted that the selectmen he a committee to provide powder and hall 
 as the law directs, the ensuing year."— Town Clerk's Eeoords, Vol. i. 
 
 tPaid Nath. Clough and others for lahor, timber, and plank, for repairing 
 highways in the Forks district. No. 1, after the great freshet, $29.8.5. 
 
 .Joseph Merrill and wife went to James Williams' at the Bast-parte just after 
 the volunteering. It rained two more days ; all the hridges were carried away and 
 he had to leave his wife, horse, and wagon, and come all the way home on foot, 
 keeping on the north hank of the river. 
 
 J Stephen Richardson was a captain of militia about this time. He was an 
 excellent officer, and his son, Nathaniel Eicliardson, relates what a fine appear- 
 ance he made when dressed in his uniform. The son says his father was a gay 
 feeling man, and when he stepped on training days he was so light eggs would not 
 break under his feet. 
 
392 HISTORY OF WABREN. 
 
 and that it would be more honorable to the company for the requi- 
 site number to volunteer. Then the tenor drum played for volun- 
 teers, and eight men immediately stepped forward. Two others 
 were soon obtained by the offering of small bounties, and George 
 Libbey, Richard Whiteman, Nathaniel Libbey, NatKaniel Richard- 
 son, Ephraim Lund, Daniel Pillsbury, Joseph Pillsbury, Jacob 
 "Whitcher, Obadiah Whitcher. and Jonathan "Weeks, were the ten 
 men who constituted Warren's quota.* 
 
 Addison Patch, Anson Merrill and several other boys, sat on 
 the hay-mow that day, listening to the music of the company band 
 mingled with that of the rain rattling on the long shingles of the 
 roof, and witnessed the volunteering. 
 
 Captain Ephraim H. Mahurin of Stratford, N. H., commanded 
 the company, John Page, Jr., was Lieutenant. Perkins FeUows 
 was ensign, and George Libbey of Warren was one of the ser- 
 geants, while Richard Whitefnan who lived and died at Warren 
 summit, was first corporal. The whole company was raised from 
 the old 13th regiment, which at the time of the breaking out of the 
 war was commanded by Lieut. Col. John Montgomery, John 
 Kimball of Haverhill, Major of the first battalion, and Daniel 
 Patch of Warren, Major of the second battalion. 
 
 The company immediately proceeded to its rendezvous by 
 Indian stream, in Stewartstown. But as good fortune would have 
 itjHhey saw no bloody fight, and achieved no high honors on the 
 battle-field. Yet they had lively times building block-houses and 
 chasing after smugglers, whom they never caught. Part of the 
 company under Lieut. John Page, >vho was afterwards governor 
 of New Hampshire, went down through Dixville notch to Errol 
 dam, ostensibly to protect the settlers of that locahty from the 
 Indians, of whom old Metalic was chief and the whole tribe, but 
 in fact to prevent a few enterprising Maine men from driving cat- 
 tle up the Megalloway river to Canada, and there selling them to 
 the British forces. 
 
 The party had exciting times jperforming their duties, and the 
 
 * John Abljott went for HaverViill as a drummer, and Perkins Fellows, 
 calling himself I'rom Pievmont, went with Warren's volunteers. Perkins Fellows 
 married a daughter of Jonathan Clement, inn-keeper. 
 
 " Let Richard Whiteman hare when he went as a soldier, $5.00."— See Select- 
 men's Records, Vol, i, 
 
A SECOND DEAFT. ' 393 
 
 brave commander, Lieut. John Page, got so terrifically lame, Sept. 
 12, 1812, chasing- Maine cow-boys through the woods, that he did 
 not get well during the remainder of his term of enlistment. But 
 Sergeant George Libbey said he had the best time catching the 
 great five pound trout on the falls of the Androscoggin river, and 
 shooting wild fowl that congregated in great numbers on the clear 
 waters of Umbagog lake. Jan. 27, 1813, the time of their enlist- 
 ment was up and "Warren's men, if they did enlist on a terribly 
 rainy day, all came home safe and sound, well pleased with their 
 exploits on the noi-thern frontier. 
 
 "Warren had some ambitious men. Tristram Pillsbury went 
 into the western army, John Abbott went away, joined some regi- 
 ment and died while in the service.* Major Daniel Patch was a 
 private and fought at the battle of Bridgewater, where he was 
 wounded. But David Patch gained more distinction as a soldier 
 than any other nativ^ of "Warren. He enlisted in some other State, 
 got a commission, fought in several battles, got promoted for 
 bravery, and commanded a regiment as a colonel, at the battle of 
 Sackett's harbor. f Here he was taken prisoner, carried to Halifax, 
 and was so badly treated that he was attacked by consumption. 
 "When peace was declared, he came home, and shortly after died. 
 To-day, he is lying in an unmarked and almost forgotten grave in 
 the village burying ground. 
 
 In 1814, numerous British men-of-war appeared off the coast 
 of New Hampshire, and so great was the panic they created, ttiat 
 Governor Gilman ordered the entire body of the New Hampshire 
 militia, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, "to hold themselves in 
 readiness to march at a moment's warning. "{ Many companies 
 were immediately ordered to Portsmouth, and a draft was once 
 more to be had in "Warren. Four men was the quota of our little 
 hamlet this time, and the mighty rulers who were elected this year 
 in our little democracy, Jonathan Merrill, Abel Merrill, and Joseph 
 Patch, Jr., were ordered to see that the men were forthcoming.' 
 
 Again the company which bore such euphonious names as the 
 slam-bang company, the string-bean company, and the old flood- 
 
 * John Abljott died of scarlet fever, April 13, 1813, at Concord, N. H. 
 t David Patch was wounded at the battle of Sackett's harbor. It is doubtful 
 about his ever having held a commission as colonel. 
 t Adjutant General's Report, 1868, part 2d, p. 130. 
 
394 HISTORY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 wood company, was warned to appear on the parade in front of 
 Joseph Merrill's inn. It was a bright day this time, Sept. 27, 1814, 
 when they assembled, and the men were drawn up before the 
 tavern door. Once more there was a harangue for volunteers, 
 once more the drum rolled out a patriotic strain, and when it 
 ceased, four men, Moses Ellsworth, Stephen "Whiteman,* Cotton 
 Batohelder, and another,! all " little rants of men," a little over 
 four feet tall, stood valiantly forth, each anxious to be one 9f his 
 country's defenders. 
 
 'Squire Jonathan and his companions in ofBce were indignant. 
 " To send such soldiers will be a disgrace to the town,", said they; 
 " They shall not go, the draft shall proceed." Accordingly the 
 name of each man on a slip of paper was placed in a hat, and when 
 well shaken up, Joseph Patch, Jr., drew, forth four of them. 
 Stephen Whiteman was in luck. He, with John Copp, William 
 Merrill, and Obadiah Whitcher, were drafted to go. But William 
 Merrill, son of Joseph Merrill, inn keeper, would not be a soldier, 
 and Daniel Pillsbury went as his substitute. 
 
 Perkins Fellows, who Uved over the Height-o'-land, was also 
 on hand again and went with the quota of Warren. They helped 
 to make up a company which was commanded by Captain John 
 D. Harty, of Dover. Perkins Fellows was first Lieutenant, and 
 by his influence Daniel Pillsbury was first corporal, and Obadiah 
 Whitcher third corporal. These men had gay times down at 
 Portsmouth, by the side of the " deep blue sea," where thpy went 
 fishing, catching sheep's heads and cuttle-fish, and the only hazar- 
 dous service they saw was when some shiney nights they made 
 raids upon pig-styes and hen roosts. John Copp and Stephen 
 Whiteman were great on a raid. At the end of sixty days they 
 were all disoharg'ed and came safe home. 
 
 When peace had been declared, and the war was over, there 
 
 * FAMILY KECOED OF WILLIAM AND MEHITABLE {Merrill) WHITEMAN. 
 
 Stephen, born Aug. 12, 1784. Betsey, 1)0™ May 24, 1792. 
 
 Richard, born June 24, 1786. Hannah, bom June 17, 1794. 
 
 Levi, born Apr. 8, 1789. 
 
 Mrs. Whiteman died March 29, 1798. She was a daughter of Farmer Joshua. 
 
 William Whiteman was a Dutchman, 
 
 t John Copp was tlie fourth little man who volxmteered.— Stephen Whiteman's 
 statement. 
 
 Mr. Whiteman said John Copp was not so tall as he was. Jesse Eastman who 
 lived a long time in the Kast-parte regions, went from Coventry and carried his 
 own gun. 
 
THE OLD-FASHIONED MUSTEK. 395 
 
 was great Joy in all the land, but the military spirit did not die out. 
 Little training day in May, and muster day were more anxiously 
 expected than ever, and great was the enthusiasm on such occa- 
 sions. 
 
 The old 13th regiment, composed of the companies of "Warren, 
 Benton, Haverhill, Piermont, and Orford, was now in all its glory. 
 Moses H. Clement, of "Warren, was Colonel, James Eogers, Lieut. 
 Colonel, and James R. Page, Major. Col. Clement had been a 
 captain of infantry, a captain of cavalry or troop, as it was gener- 
 ally called, and now he had got to be a colonel of a whole regiment. 
 "What a high honor, thought he, and "Warren shall share it. So 
 when the annual muster-day came, all the troops were commanded 
 to meet on the "parade," in front of Joseph Merrill's inn, in our 
 little democracy^, 
 
 "Who of those who lived in the last generation, does not 
 remember what a time they had going to muster. It was the great 
 day of the year. Every body was up by one o'clock a. m., on that 
 morning. All the country round was aUve; men, women, and 
 children, hurrying away by thousands over the hills and through 
 the valleys in the morning dawn, to muster. "What shouting, 
 what running of horses, what a caravan of peddlers, traveling 
 through the country, going tlu'ough a whole brigade of musters. 
 
 Every one must be on the ground at sunrise at the' beating of 
 the reveille, when the companies would be formed. All around 
 the parade, booths, victualing tents, and showmen's tents had 
 sprung up in the night like Jonah's gourd.- These would reap a 
 harvest on that eventful day. The whole field north of the parade 
 was thrown open for the muster, and the line was always formed 
 where the railroad embankment is now. "What rivalry was there 
 to be the color company, to be the escort company. How gay was 
 the troop, and what splendid uniforms some of the infantry com- 
 panies had. 
 
 The whole regiment with colors flying marched that day with 
 its dashing colonel at its head, along the broad turnpike road. 
 Two dozen drums were beating all at once, a dozen fifes wei-e 
 shrilly playing, the brass band joined its inspiriting strains and the 
 two cannon of the artillery company on the field, helped make mu- 
 sic for the regimental march. The forests awoke in echoes, all the 
 
896 HISTOKT OF WAEEEN. 
 
 hills gave back the sound, and the wooded mountain crests taking 
 up the melody of war, bore it far across the borders to the dwell- 
 ers beyond Glen ponds in the ancient lands of Trecothick and of 
 old Peeling, along the banks of the Pemigewassett. Those kind 
 neighbors of ours over the mountains, who come to Warren about 
 as often as the Chinese, never forgot the music of the regimental 
 muster, and even now on winter evenings, tell their grandchildren 
 of it. 
 
 Col. Obadiah Clement, father of Col. Moses, looked on vnth 
 ambitious eyes, and a fatherly pride, and said it reminded him of 
 the time when they had the first little training on Blue ridge, by 
 the bank of the Mikaseota, now called Black brook. Besides many 
 of the soldiers of the Revolution were also there ; Col. Stone, an 
 old pensioner who had married the vpidow of Joshua Copp, and 
 was engaged making a perpetual motion, Samuel Knight, Jacob 
 Low, and Asa Low, and many others, together with the soldiers 
 of the 1812 war, all said it was the finest muster they ever saw.* 
 Especially were they pleased when at the review and inspection 
 the General of the Brigade came upon the field, and every soldier 
 stood up straight and did his prettiest. , 
 
 In the afternoon they had a sham fight, and the side that had 
 the artillery company won the victory, and then even Moosehil- 
 lock's bald head echoed back the fray. There were also several 
 smaller fights where there was not much noise, but a few broken 
 heads and black eyes, all induced by good whisky ; but we won't 
 say much about these as the actors did not want any record made 
 of their glorious achievements. 
 
 Thus passed the day. The children and spectators eat ginger- 
 bread, nuts, candy, honey, and drank new cider and something 
 stronger, bought wares of the peddlers, watched the march, 
 reviews, and drills, and looked at the shows. 
 
 At night they went home, and aU the peddlers who had sold 
 at auction, and hallooed and yelled till their throats were sore, all 
 
 * Jacob Low ■would twit his ■brother Asa Low of stealing his money, and 
 when he would ask for it to buy tobacco, the latter would say, " Chaw tow, Jake, 
 chaw tow." Jacob would then piously call Asa a d— d traitor, and said he no busi- 
 ness to draw a pension, if he did ko to the war. Asa had properW and could not 
 get his pension for many years. Jacob Low was at the battle of Bunker hill, and 
 helped Are a cannon thirteen times at the British, and then run with the rest. He 
 said he, himself alone, moved the cannon back and forth behind the breast work 
 with a " handspike" as he called it. He was once a member of Gen. Lee's body- 
 
THE PAKADB IS DISMISSED. 397 
 
 the show-men and victuallers, had pulled up stakes and were off 
 to the muster that would be held somewhere down the river next 
 day. 
 
 The soldiers too, all hurried away as soon as they got their 
 silver half dollar, and the drams and the fifes, and the bugle of the 
 troop was heard no more for several years in Warren.* 
 
 One man was certainly happy on the night of the muster, — 
 Joseph Merrill, inn-keeper, for he had made $200 clear profit, that 
 day, a large sum for those times. 
 
 Many musters have been held since in "Warren, but none better 
 or more successful than the one when Moses H. Clement was 
 Colonel. 
 
 guard. In Warren lie lived with Amos Little several years, but died at Jo. Boyn- 
 ton's, just above the Cold brooli on tlie old turnpike. Gen. Joseph Low of Con- 
 cord, once Adjutant General of N. H., was a jiephew of^Tacob Low. 
 
 Jacob said Asa deserted once, then got ashamed of himself and came skulking 
 back. 
 
 * Paid Abel Merrill for what he expended for the soldiers on regimental mus- 
 ter day, with adding twenty-flve cents for each soldier belonging to the cavalry 
 ajid artillery companies, $12.10.— Selectmen's Eeoords, Vol. i. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 HOW THE FIRST COVERED STAGE ACCOMPANIED BY SWEET MUSIC 
 RAN THROUGH WARREN, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST POST- 
 OFFICE, AND WHO DELIVERED THE LETTERS. 
 
 GrKBAT eras happen in the histories of all nations. They 
 may not be fully realized, they may be hardly perceived at the 
 time, but the consequences are felt and appreciated through the 
 whole life of the State. 
 
 Our little democracy had experienced important events, and 
 its discovery by white men, its name, its settlement, its first town 
 meeting when the people assembled to choose rulers, raise reve- 
 nue, and make proper enactments, were all turning points in our 
 hamlet's existence. Now was to come another. What was it? 
 says our. expectant reader. Be patient and we will relate it. 
 
 The first post-rider up the Asquamchumauke, through "Warren, 
 as we have told, was John Balch of revolutionary times. Several 
 others followed him in rapid succession, whose names and memo- 
 ries are now forgotten. Then at the commencement of the present 
 centuiy, Col. Silas May can-ied the mail through town, — on horse- 
 back with his good horn slung at his side, a worthy successor to 
 Johnny Balch, he " dashed through the woods." 
 
 When the turnpike was built he drove a small Dutch wagon, 
 like that Obadiah Clement first brought to town, and then he blew 
 his horn louder and more than ever. He also commenced a new 
 business in addition to carrying the mail. For a ninepence he 
 would do small errands as far away as Portsmouth, and would 
 
^,ft^^y 0-<il^e^, 
 
THE FraST MAIL WAGON m TOWN 399 
 
 carry small bundles and distribute them all through the coun.try, 
 where he went. For the agreeable part of these small jobs, the 
 pay, he blew his clear, ringing horn as he passed every dwelling. 
 Twice a week the inhabitants saw him climbing up the turnpike, 
 twice a week they saw him disappearing down the valley of the 
 Asquamchumanke . 
 
 Once he got snowed in at "Warren, and was obliged to stop at 
 Joseph Merrill's inn over the Sabbath. Let us stop therewith him. 
 'Twas a neat bar-room, Joseph Merrill's. The floor was white, 
 the old clock ticked in the comer, and the very attractive bar stood 
 in the north end, its long row of decanters on the shelf behind, 
 clean tumblers and mugs, nice toddy-sticks, and bright drainer. 
 But the crowning glory of that bar-room is not the white floor, 
 not the neat bar with its attractive contents, nor yet the clock tick- 
 ing so musically in the corner ; but it is the old-fashioned fire- 
 place with its blazing embers, huge back-log, and iron fire-dogs, 
 that shed glory over the whole room, gilds the plain and homely 
 furniture with its light and renders the place a true type of New 
 England in " ye olden times." Joseph Merrill's boys, and he had 
 many of them, roasted apples, which swung round and round 
 upon strings before the bright fire of that Saturday evening. Po- 
 tatoes so rich and mealy, buried deep, were drawn from the ashes 
 on the hearth for the colonel's supper, and Sunday afternoon the 
 wife of our host turned the spit before the golden hue of the blaz- 
 ing embers, on which the turkey roasted, filling the room with 
 delicious odors so suggestive of a dainty repast. Other farmers 
 aU over town had a kitchen fire just as beautiful. 
 
 There was no meeting-house in town then, no meeting that 
 snowy Sunday. For a long hour Col. May sat gazing in silence 
 into the fire, and conjuring up all sorts of grotesque, fanciful ima- 
 ges from among the burning coals. No fabled genii, with magic 
 lamp of enchantment could build such gorgeous palaces or create 
 such gems as one could discover amid the blazing embers of the 
 old fashioned fire-place. How pure was the air of that bar-room! 
 The huge fire-place with its brisk draught, carried off all the im- 
 purities of the atmosphere and left it life-giving and healthful, not 
 such as we breathe now as we huddle around the air-tight stoves. 
 "When the colonel got tired of this, he got up, walked about. 
 
400 HISTORY OF WAKREN. 
 
 then went to the little crypt like hole in the wall, just to the right 
 of the blazing hearth, where he found some half-dozen books, — 
 the Bible, Baxter's Saint's Everlasting Best, Pilgrim's Progress, 
 Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver's Travels, well read hooks of the 
 last century ; but how entertaining on a snowy day. These served 
 to while away the long hours, and make his stay pleasant. 
 
 It was hard climbing the Height-o'-land Monday, and Col. May 
 got through to Haverhill, only after great ox-teams had first broke 
 the road. 
 
 But carrying the mail in a one-horse Dutch wagon was not 
 what the people in this northern country wanted. They had heard 
 of som^hing better, and they longed for the rumbling old thor- 
 oughbraoed coach, such as Morrie England had possessed for a 
 hundred years, such as were becoming the fashiou down country. 
 In all the towns from Concord to Haverhill, the matter was talked 
 about, and in the spring of 1814, Robert Morse, of Romney, led off 
 iu the enterprise. In each town a subscription paper was circu- 
 lated, and a considerable sum having been raised, a coach and 
 horses for the route were bought.* 
 
 A change of horses were stationed at Franklin lower village, 
 another at Newfound lake, and another at Morse's village, in 
 Romney. t When all was arranged the coach, four horses attached, 
 
 * Mrst Stage.— One was put on in 1811, but it only run a short time, and then 
 " bust up." Lemuel Keezer, Benjamin MeiTill, Abel Merrill, Amos Little and 
 Colonel WUliam Tarleton, took stock in this first enterprise. Philip Smart drove 
 the stage. Caleb Merrill got in debt to -the line, $1.20, for carrj^ing bundles from 
 Warren to Plymouth. This stage was " to run from Haverhill to Concord via 
 Plymouth Court House." 
 
 t Lemuel Keezer once kept the stage horses at his tavern. To save work, he 
 had some wooden harrows made and would put them under the horses at night, 
 teeth up, so that they could not lie down and get dirty. This saved a great deal of 
 work, and withal wis very kind to the horses— so Keezer told his nostler. 
 
 Keezer once had the toothache — very painful. It made him " holler." He went 
 to old Doctor Thos. Whipple to have it pulled. Dr. Whipple commenced to cut 
 round it. With the terrible aching and tlie pain of cutting, Keezer conld not re- 
 strain himself, and he shut his teeth down on the doctor's fingers till the blood run. 
 The doctor with a struggle got free, and then applied his old fashioned cant-hook 
 tooth-puller. With a turn of the wrist he held Keezer's head for a minute so tight 
 he could not move, looked him square in the face and exclaimed, " Now Keezer 
 bite I d— mye, bite I" 
 
 Keezer need to compliment Captain Daniel Merrill with whom he lived,— said 
 the captain was born in the afternoon, that he never got .round with his work till 
 afternoon ; that he never got to meeting till afternoon, and that he wouldn't ^o to 
 heaven tul afternoon. He also said Captain D. was the best farmer in towUj lor in 
 the fall he always leit the plow in the furrow, ready to hitch right on to in the 
 spring. 
 
 Captain Daniel used to plague Keezer about going to see the widow Pudneyas 
 he called her. Keezei' didn't like it, and said he would come it on the captain. So 
 one day he came running into the house all out of breath, and told him that his 
 son John, who was iip m the woods after a load, was tight between two trees. 
 
THE FIRST STAGE COACH. 401 
 
 left Concord for Haverhill. Robert Morse, the father of this enter- 
 prise was on board, and also some of his friends, as invited guests. 
 
 It was a romantic ride for tliose passengers who first " dead- 
 headed" it free, through this upper country. The intervals in 
 Salisbury, now Franklin, where Daniel "Webster spent his early 
 years, were delightful. The Pemigewassett roared through the 
 deep ravines of Bristol, Newfound lalce shone bright as when 
 Samuel Scribner and John Barker, hunting beside it, were carried 
 away by the Indians, and the Asquamchumauke wound calm and 
 clear, kissing the pebbles on its shore, around the foot of Rattle- 
 snake mountain, as when Captain Tolford's men or Captain Pow- 
 ers' men killed moose on its banks. 
 
 But where the mountains, their lofty peaks lost in the clouds, 
 sloped down to the very river, which had now become a wild and 
 foamy stream, where the green woods covered all the hills, and 
 the clearings in the valley grew rare, there the beauties of the ride 
 were fully appreciated. 
 
 Col. Silas May was a great horse man. His coach rattled over 
 the bridge on the southern border of Warren, and when he crossed 
 Hurricane brook and hurried over Patch brook, he came by 
 Joseph Patch's, reining his mettlesome team with one hand, while 
 with the other he held the bugle on which he played strains so wild 
 and exhilerating that all the echo gods in the ravines of the hills 
 and mountains, woke np and answered back the music. Nearly 
 the whole of the inhabitants in town turned out to see the strange 
 sight of a covered coach, for it was something new; perhaps they 
 would have turned out any way, for all loved the beautiful airs 
 played by Silas May. All the way up over the Asquamchumauke . 
 again, past where the depot is now, it was a fine young apple- 
 orchard then, he played martial airs ; Napoleon over the Alps, and 
 "Washington's March, till he reined in his horses before Joseph 
 Merrill's inn. The latter was greatly pleased to see the stage; he 
 had worked hard for the enterprise. 
 
 Again on the way, they passed the Blue ridge, crossed the 
 
 Daniel with a bottle of rum, jumped on to his horse bare back, and run him all the 
 way up there; found .Tohn all right, and went back mad enough, and asked Kee- 
 zer what he meant lying so. Keezer said he didn't lie ; winked his eye and asked 
 Daniel where John could be in the woods, if he wasn't between two trees. As the 
 captain went out Keezer meekly said, " Rov) do you do, Mrs. Pttdney:." 
 
 Z 
 
402 HISTOKY OF WAKEETir. 
 
 Mikaseota, or Black brook, and climbing the Height-o'-land by 
 flashing Ore hill stream, our driver enlivened the broad and beau- 
 tiful turnpike road with Lady Washington's reel, Money-musk, 
 and Blue Bonnets over the Border. The Summit passed, they saw 
 a light winged wind blowing across Tarleton lake, and heard the 
 roar of the brook at the outlet. When within half a mile of Hav- 
 erhill, by some accident a linch-pin was lost from the end of one 
 of the wooden axles ; but as the wheel did not come off, owing to 
 May's skill in driving, they succeeded in reaching Haverhill Corner 
 without.replacing it. 
 
 Another stage route had been established from Concord to 
 Haverhill, via Lebanon, this same season ; but the route through 
 Warren was so much shorter that Col. May could easily reach 
 Haverhill Corner three hours earlier than the other stage. 
 
 Numerous drivers have since been employed on this route, all 
 genial good fellows whom the whole community hked. The names 
 most familiar and not yet forgotten by the old men of Warren are, 
 Caleb Smart, Archibald McMurphy, George S. Putnam, Peter 
 Dudley, Sanborn Jones, Thomas P. Cliflford, Jabez Burnham, 
 Eleazer Smith, William Wright, Peabody Morse, John Sanborn, 
 James Langdon, Samuel Walker, Wm. Wash. Simpson, Seth 
 Greenleaf, and H. B. Marden. Twice a week each way the stage 
 run at first, then three times up and three times down, and finally 
 up and down every day, and sometimes two or three stages both 
 ways a day, when there was a rush of travel. 
 
 AYith the stage a love of news increased, and the people 
 desired a post-ofiice and a post-master of their own. For a long 
 time they had to send to Plymouth to mail a letter ; then the peo- 
 ple of Wentworth had a post-oflB.ce, and our fathers went there for 
 their mail matter. But this was a great inconvenience, letters 
 frequently laj-ing in the Wentworth post-oflice a whole month at a 
 time before the owners got them. But now the stage ran so reg- 
 ularly there was no reason why the desire for a post-ofl5.ce should 
 not be gratified. So a petition numerously signed was forwarded 
 to the postmaster-general at Washington. The prayer of the citi- 
 zens was granted at once, and our little democracy became a post 
 town. 
 
 Amos Burton, who had a store near the southern termination 
 
, FIBST POSTMASTER. 403 
 
 of the turnpike, was the first post-master in "Warren. Anson Mer- 
 rill succeeded him, and then Dr. Jesse Little held the office of post- 
 master nine years. Dr. David C. French, Levi C. "Whitcher, Asa 
 Thurston, George W. Prescott, Charles C. Durant, and numerous 
 others have held the office. 
 
 "With the stage an easy means of travel, the mail with its let- 
 ters and newspapers coming and going every day, our little de- 
 mocracy among the hills felt as though it had got out among folks. 
 At any rate it grew rapidly and became a State of great import- 
 ance, particularly in its own estimation, — a condition especially to 
 be commended, for if a person don't think well of himself, he may 
 be pretty sure no one else will. 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 THE BLACK PLAGUE, OTHERWISE CALLED THE SPOTTED EEVEE OE 
 THE GREATEST HORROR WARREN PEOPLE EVER HAD, 
 
 It was a cold year, 1816. "Winter lingered in the lap of 
 spring. The summer was damp, cloudy, Knd cheerless, and the 
 sun's rays seemed 'sickly. For two years pestilence had been 
 abroad in the land, although not as yet had it come to AVarren. 
 
 But now old people said everything appeared to bode some- 
 thing wrong. Strange sounds hurtled in the air, the owl hooted 
 hoarse at midnight, a.portentous red meteor fell down with a long 
 trail of blood in the great gorge of Moosehillock, and the frogs 
 croaked ominously ; the whip-poor-will sang a mournful strain in 
 the dusk of evening, and comets flashed like troops of ghosts 
 through the sky. 
 
 Silently came the pestilence. "Whence, noone could tell. But 
 its first victim was found in the family of Mr. George Bixby, on 
 Beech hill.* A young son of Mr. B. was suddenly taken alarm- 
 ingly ill. A physician was sent for, he came, and not discovering 
 the nature of the disease, gave as he thought a simple remedy, and 
 took his departure. In a few hours the young man was dead. 
 The corpse was laid out and two sons of Amos Little came to 
 
 * FAMILY RECCED OF GEOEGE ASP SAEAH (Annis) BIXIiY. 
 
 George, .Tr. born Oct. li, 1788. Elizabeth, Tjorn Deo. 9, 1802. 
 
 Benjamin, born Apr. 6, 1790. Dudley, born Deo. 0, 1804. Died Aug. 
 
 Anna, born Feb. 8, 17!i2. 24, 1808. 
 
 .loseph, born Mar. 2, 1794. Asa, born Feb. 7, 1807. Died Nov, 13, 
 
 Samuel, born Mar. 13, 1798, 1808. 
 
 Sarah, born May 28, 1798, Hannah B. born Feb 7, 1809, 
 
THE SPOTTED PEVEK. 406 
 
 watch by it the succeeding night. The next day one of them, James 
 Little, was taken sick and five liours after was a corpse. Amos 
 Little, Jr., the other watcher, also died.* Then Dolly Little, a 
 sister of James and Amos, Jr., died. 
 
 The disease came down from Beech hill, spread rapidly and 
 soon all was consternation. There was no physician in town and 
 the inhabitants were obliged to send to Piermont and other places 
 for one. Dr. Wellman came, also Dr. "Whipple of Wentworth, 
 and Dr. David Gipson of Romney. They visited a patient and 
 while tliey were consulting, he died under their eyes. Cold, 
 feverish, spotted, they said it was the spotted fever. A few hours 
 after death the corpse turned black, hence in other countries the 
 disease was known as the black plague. It has been more dreaded 
 than the cholera or the yellow fever, because it comes without 
 warning, lighting down on noisome pestilential wings, like a foul 
 bird of prey for its victims. 
 
 That night the three physicians were discussing the disease in 
 a sort of undertone at Joseph Merrill's inn. Suddenly Dr. Well- 
 man felt cold, chilly. Dr. Whipplef and Dr. Gipson gave him 
 some stimulating medicine and went home down the valley. Jo- 
 seph French nursed Dr. Wellman, but at night, twenty-four hours 
 after, the doctor was dead. They buried him in the grave yard on 
 Pine hill road, and only cfl,rried his corpse to Piermont when the 
 frosts of winter came. Dr. Whipple had the plague, and Dr. Gip- 
 son would not -come to Wp.rren again. 
 
 Families soon got so reduced they could not get a physician. 
 Physicians in neighboring towns were so frightened that they 
 would not come. The selectmen, Jonathan Merrill, Abel Merrill, 
 and Moses U. Clement, came together and called an informal 
 meeting of the citizeAs. It was agreed that the town should pro- 
 cure physicians. Dr. Robert Burnsf had studied medicine with 
 Dr. Bartlett on Beech hill. He was attending the medical school 
 at Hanover, and the town in its distress sent for him. Daniel 
 Pillsbury went on horseback to Hanover for Dr. B. But he could 
 
 * Amos Little, .Tr., died in three hours alter he was taken sick. ■ 
 
 t Dr. Whipple when he lived in Warren, resided first opposite the Ahel Merrill 
 
 house on the west side of the Mikaseota, and allerwards In the house built by 
 
 Joshua Merrill, Jr., now occupied by Ezra W. Keyee. 
 t Dr. Bums lived in the Ezra W. Keyes house. 
 
406 HISTORY OP WARREN. 
 
 not attend to all the sick, and Jonathan Clough immediately went 
 to Hanover for Dr. Amasa Scott. Jonathan Merrill boarded Dr. 
 Scott, and the latter had excellent success treating cases of spotted 
 fever.* Some got well under his care, but the plague did not 
 abate. 
 
 At first they had funerals, then they hurried the corpse away 
 to the grave before it was hardly cold in the house. Many were 
 buried in the night, no moui-ners, and the village cemetery saw 
 in the darkness two or three men digging a grave, the sickly moon 
 looking down upon them, saw the coffin made of rough boards 
 hastily lowered, and heard the falling of the cold clods upon it as 
 the grave was hurriedly filled up. Then they would drive away 
 as though ghosts were screaming after-them, and the graves were 
 soon forgotten. Men found weeks afterwards that their nearest 
 friends were dead and buried, no one knew where, whom they 
 thought alive and well. The sexton often digs up those rough 
 coffins even at this late day.f 
 
 Some had great courage and lived even in spite of the plague. 
 Joseph Merrill the innkeeper, went wherever he was asked, to the 
 sick bed, to the coffining the black and loathsome corpse, to the 
 graveyard— and never got sick. His wife had the plague, but she 
 got well. On the contrary, Mr. Samuel Merrill who lived next house 
 to the burying ground would shut all his doors and windows when 
 they came to bury the dead. "When they brought Tristram Low 
 dead, from the East-parte, he was particularly careful ; but it was 
 no use. The grim spectre death was after him, and in two days 
 they carried him out upon the hill-side and buried him without 
 a psalm or a prayer. J 
 
 * PiUsbiuywas paid $1.34 for going to Hanover after Dr. Burns. 
 
 Clough received tl.SOfor going after Dr. Scott. ^ 
 
 Dr. Scott was paid for liis services $182.59. ^ 
 
 Jonatlian Merrill received for boarding Dr. S. and horse, $10.75. 
 
 Dr. Burns received $2.00 for carrying money to Dr. Scott. 
 
 Paid Col. Clement for his wagon to Hanover, $2.20, — probably the little Dutch 
 one.— Selectmen's Records, Vol. i. 
 
 t 'Squire George Libbey says he dug twenty-eight graves in one month during 
 the spotted fever time, and did not dig them all either. He also worked for a month 
 taking care of the sick. 
 
 t Samuel Merrill was taken sick in the morning, and at ten o'clock at night was 
 dead. 
 
 Lemuel Keezer, Jr., father of Ferdinand and Fayette, kept store in Wan-en in 
 1815. He was afraid of the spotted fever, very. One day the fire went out and he 
 went to Joseph Merrill's for live coals. Dr. W'ellman was sick there then, and Kee- 
 zer would not go in, but sent a man in after them. Four days alter, Keezer was 
 dead, died of spotted fever. 
 
THE PLAGUE ABATES. 407 
 
 The town suffered terribly from spotted fever. One third of 
 the inhabitants on Beech hill died. Some families in the valley, 
 like that of Mr. rrederick Brown, almost all died. Half a dozen 
 members of Mr. Jonathan Clement's family died of spotted fever, 
 and are lying in the almost forgotten grave-yard of Eunaway 
 pond. On the Height-o'-land, by the ponds near Piermont line, 
 on Pine hill, the Summit, in the East-parte district, and the Forks 
 district — all parts of the town suffered.* 
 
 When cold weather came on, the disease grew less malignant, 
 and gradually disappeared. Those who recovered were almost 
 invariably deaf, and there w£is a good deal of loud talk in town 
 for years after. 
 
 Since 1815 but very few cases of spotted fever have been 
 known in Warren. But the neighboring land of Piermont was 
 since sorely aflflicted with it — nearly half the inhabitants in East- 
 man pond district dying in a few months. 
 
 May the like never visit our hamlet among the hills again, for the 
 mind shudders at uncoflned burials, at funerals witliout a prayer, 
 at midnight gi-ave-digging, at persons buried in nameless gi'aves, 
 unbeknown to their friends. Let the memory of the woes of 1815 
 never be forgotten . They will serve to chasten us and teach us 
 that in life we are in the midst of death, and that time with Ms 
 scythe may cut us down when we least expect it. 
 
 * Abvam, Elsie, and Emily Bro^ra, Children of Frederick Brown, died; also 
 Ruth Knight, two children of Charles Bowles, two of Luke Libhey, and Mr. Thom- 
 as Patch, died. Three of Joseph French's children died. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOW ALMOST A FAMINE, THEN A HUREIOANE CAME, AND THEN A 
 HISTORY OF ONE OF THE MOST PLEASANT YEABS WAEEEN EVEE 
 EXPERIENCED. 
 
 The war came first, that of 1812, then the pestilence, the 
 black plague, then in 1816 famine almost looked into our valley 
 among the hills. A venerable writer of that time says that the 
 whole face of nature appeared shrouded in gloom. The lamps of 
 heaven kept their orbits, but their light was cheerless. The bosom 
 of the earth in a midsummer's day was covered with a wintiy 
 mantle, and man and beast and bird sickened at the prospect. For 
 several days in summer the people had good sleighing, and it 
 seemed as if the order of the seasons was being reversed. On the 
 sixth of J\ine, the day of the meeting of the Great and General 
 Court of New Hampshire, the snow fell several inches deep, fol- 
 lowed by a cold and frosty night, and on the two following days 
 snow fell and frost continued ; also July the 9th, there was a deep 
 and deadly frost that killed or palsied most vegetables.* 
 
 Then one August day in Wan-en, the sky was lurid in the west. 
 
 * DIARY OF WEATHER IN 1S16. 
 
 May 16, froze hard enough on ploughed land to bear aman. 
 
 June 6, snow squalls. 
 
 June 8, snow squalls. 
 
 June 10, frost last night. 
 
 June 11, ft'ost last night, heavy, killed corn and flve-slxths of the apples. 
 
 June 22, ice formed on water. 
 
 July 10, frost on low ground. 
 
 August 20, heavy snow on mountains. Hurricane. 
 
 August 22, heavy teoet. 
 
THE GREAT HUEBICANE. 409 
 
 The clouds thickened fast, hailstones rattled on the forest, and the 
 wind shook the tops of the trees. Suddenly it grew dark, then in 
 the twinkling of an eye the hurricane leaped like a maniac from 
 the skies, and howling, crashing, dizzying, it came. It lighted 
 down on Mt. Mist at first, and then with a breadth of twenty rods, 
 the whole forest seemed to give way ; to have been felled by the 
 stroke of some Demiurgic fury, or to have prostrated itself as the 
 Almighty passed by. 
 
 Eastward towards Mt. Kineo, it shot like a flash of lightning. 
 Across Pine hill it left the woods and entered the settlement. 
 Nothing could vFithstand its fury. Stephen Richardson's barn was 
 blown down, and the long shingles of its roof borne across Berry 
 brook valley, across the Asquamchumauke, three thousand feet 
 above it, to Amos Little's back pasture, two miles away on the 
 side of Mt. Eineo. Nathaniel Libbey's house was unroofed and 
 the furniture was scattered over the whole farm. A looking-glass 
 was blown tliirty rods and deposited by the wind on a stone, with- 
 out breaking it.* The tornado cut a swath through Nathaniel 
 Richardson's oats three rods wide, as smooth as if mown by a 
 scythe. Fences were prostrated, cows lifted from their feet and 
 sheep were killed. In bush and settlement, upland and interval, 
 was its havoc alike fearful. 
 
 Thus passed the season. Autumn returns, alas I not to fill the 
 arm with the generous sheaf, but the eye with the tear of dis- 
 appointment. "Winter came, and with it would have come starva- 
 tion had it not been for the tolerably good crop of rye, the only 
 crop that matured, which supplied the inhabitants with bread. So 
 terrible was the year 1816, that the people grew disheartened, and 
 many sold out and went south and west. 
 
 But in 1817 a change came. Everything was lovely, and when _ 
 the year closed people said it was the happiest one they had ever 
 known. Let us follow it through and see how the citizens spent 
 each season, — ^how they worked, played, and enjoyed themselves. 
 
 As the winter wore away, a warm wind blew from the south- 
 west, and the snow begun to melt early. What joy was there 
 when the spring breathed under sheltering rocks the sweet arbu- 
 
 * Nathaniel Eiohardson's statement. 
 
410 HISTORY OF WABEEN. 
 
 tus into bloom, and sky, born blue-birds came down on the air of 
 wondrous morning with throats full of fresh and fragrant melody. 
 
 As the days grew still and long in the yards of the quiet 
 dwellings, the sturdy chopper's axe was swung all day long above 
 the winter gathered piles. Dogs basked for hours on southern 
 door-steps, and cattle, turned out from dark stables, tried horns 
 and heads with each other. 
 
 In the maple groves of "Warren, and on all the hill-sides around 
 the quiet valley, sugar fires were smoking, for it was charming 
 sugar weather ; bland and sunny overhead, frosty under foot, the 
 sap racing up from the roots every morning and running back at 
 night for fear of a freeze. ' 
 
 There had been a scalding and soaking of sap-buckets, a 
 tramping through maple woods, augur in one hand and sap spouts 
 in the other, a repairing of arches or the hanging of great flve-paU 
 kettles ; sap pails and sap yokes to bring the sap, all in order ; a 
 crackling of dry beech Umbs, a roaring fire, then a simmering and 
 seething of the sweet maple sap in the kettles before it leaped up 
 in wliite dancing foam only to be kept froin overflowing by being 
 wallopped with a stick having a piece of pork on its end.* 
 
 Amos Little had a glorious sugar place on Beech hill, and his 
 boys and girls, — for he had a large family, — were determined to 
 have a sugar party. Young folks, Merrills, Clements, Bixbys, 
 Knights, and numerous others came to the bpautiful farm where 
 George E. Leonard lives now. They had fun and frolic; rosy 
 cheeked girls laughing as they stamp the mud from their thick 
 boots, charming forms carried in stout arms across the little rill 
 which now swollen leaps laughing down to the Mikaseota, some- 
 times called Black brook. 
 
 The great sugaring-ofif kettle is hung on a pole placed on two 
 forked stakes, by itself. The syrup, enough for all, is turned in, 
 the fire lighted, and then there is a rustic jubilee over the brown- 
 ing cauldron, as the fragrant steam grows richer and the color 
 deepens from hue to hue of russet, till the syrup clings in double 
 drops on the edge of the skimmer, and the hot fluid changes to 
 delicious gum when poured over the melting ice cake. There 
 
 * The farmers in WaiTen often nse the last nins of sap to make spruce "beer — 
 an excellent and very common drink in Warren. 
 
SUGAEENG OFF. 411 
 
 were pretty lips closing over beech paddle sticks, and young John 
 L. Merrill and Russell K. Clement blistered their tongues and got 
 laughed at for they, could not wait for tlie deUcious sweet to cool. 
 
 Their hearts were all happy, and what sweet songs were sung 
 in the dusk of nightfall, as the earliest frog peeped from the swamp 
 in the valley below. The sweet songs of that day, alas! what 
 were they? They are gone, they are forgotten, like the smiles and 
 the roses of those who sang them, like the hopes and the affections 
 of the youths who listened to them. The triumphs of the singers 
 of those days and the popularity of the songs, where are they? 
 It is a lesson for us ; but let us chase it out of mind. Be happy 
 while ye may. We love the month of March, for in Warren it is 
 the liveliest and most romantic month of the year. No tree does 
 so much for happiness as the sugar maple. It brings more good 
 cheer, more joy and frolic, more money into the pocket and more 
 ■ sweetness upon the table than all the rest of the forest trees put 
 together. 
 
 As the sun run higher and the air grew warmer, there was a 
 sound in the earth, as if myriads of fairies were at work preparing 
 juices for the grass and fruits and flowers, — a sound of tiny foot- 
 steps, multitudinous bells deep down in caverns and dingles, and 
 here and there a bank snailed back in downy green the sun's radiant 
 favors. And then the leaves come out, at first no larger than a 
 mouse's ear, and thousands of birds are singing in all the fields 
 and woods. Up narrow roads, the one to Eed-oak hill, and those 
 to Rocky falls, Beech hill. Pine hill, and the East-parte, between 
 high, mossy banks where the little- runnels come rushing and 
 chiming along, through the wild, still, shady woods of Warren, and 
 in fields deep with the greenest grass and bright with the sun- 
 shine and glory of spring ; all these birds are at work building 
 their nests, each in its own peculiar fashion ; the song' sparrow, the 
 vesper sparrow, the grass finch and Wilson's thrush, on the ground 
 and under warm hummocks ; the robin on nearly every tree, black 
 birds and cat-birds in the hedges ; bob-o'-links in the meadows of 
 Runaway pond and the swaley fields by Moosehillock road ; vireos 
 and orioles in the ever waving boughs of the elms in the valleys, 
 and the maples on all the hills ; warblers among the emerald green 
 leaves of the wild rose-brier, to say nothing of the blue-bird in an 
 
412 History of wakkest. 
 
 old knot hole of a fence post ; swallows in the bani, Jennie wren 
 iu a box in the apple tree, and martins in the house on the top of 
 a pole. 
 
 The men are out in the fields and gardens, the cottage dames 
 and the rosy daughters are engaged iu the renewal of flower 
 borders, in the sowing of seeds and the planting of shrubs ; old 
 men sit watching them on the steps or wooden benches, on the 
 warm side of the house, while groups of children ai'e scattered 
 here and there over the happy fields, tracing the fence sides or the 
 bright streams or running to secure the first dandelions, their clear 
 voices all the while ringing out from the distant steeps and hill-tops. 
 There they find the sugar plum, the wild-bird cheriy and the 
 moosemissa in bloom, their flowers hanging on the waving boiighs 
 or fluttering on the earth, a profusion of beauty in which the per- 
 ceptions are almost lost. 
 
 Men went to work with good courage in the spring of 1817. 
 They seemed to feel that good times were coming back. How did 
 they work? How did they live ? The farmer of that period was 
 up in the morning by half past four, stoutly dressed in his leather 
 pants and sheeps-gray frock. At five he gets up his help. His 
 wife hurries the girls out of bed, crying, " Up sleepyheads, the 
 sun will burn your eyes out if you lay there." The house is swept, 
 the cows are milked, the hogs are fed. Man and boys go to work, 
 fodder stock, clean out barn, prepare for the day's work. 
 
 Then comes breakfast. How some of the old settlers could 
 eat. In olden times huge basins of bean-porridge and loaves as 
 big as bee hives and pretty much of the same shape, and as brown 
 as the backs of their own hands, delighted and refreshed our 
 ancestors. To this fare they would betake themselves with a 
 capacity that only pure air and hard labor can give. A settler 
 would eat as much of these as would answer for a round family 
 now at breakfast, and then he would only be ready for his dish of 
 pork and beans ; pounds of pork six inches thick set on the top of 
 a peck of baked beans. What a pile he takes on his plate, how 
 sharp is the viuegar he pours on them, how keen the pepper, and 
 then they vanish as rapidly as if they did not follow that mess of 
 porridge and those huge hunches of bread. Christian William 
 Whiteman, who lived on the top of the Height-o'-laud, said he 
 
ENORMOUS EATERS. 413 
 
 " could eat three qiiarts of baked beans and also Indian pudding 
 and other ' fixings ' suitable to accompany them, at his morning 
 meal." Mr. Pixly, a tall gaunt man who once resided in Charles- 
 ton by Tarloton lake, said that " many a time he had eaten a six 
 quart pan full of pork and beans and vinegar, at a single sitting 
 and then could make a famine among the pies and cakes and cheese 
 on the table." Mr. Nathaniel Richardson, who has had his home 
 on the East-parte road for more than half a century, has been 
 known to eat two full grown chickens, seventeen large, mealy 
 potatoes, and plum-pudding in abundance along with them, and 
 he said he could always top out such a slender repast with twenty- 
 five cents worth of cracker toast, when he stopped at a hotel. Yet 
 Mr. Richardson never was sick in his life, only a little spleeny by 
 spells, and now at the age of nearly eighty years he is tough as 
 an ox.* 
 
 And then what mugs of cider those old settlers could drink. 
 A Mr. Lund could swallow a pint at a draught, without stopping 
 to breathe, and Dr. Ezra B. Libbey, in his day, could easily per- 
 form the same feat, while Mr. Obadiah Libbey, who lived in War- 
 Iren long ago, has often been known to proudly drink a quart and 
 a half of hard old cider without once taking his lips from the mug. 
 Mr. Samuel Jewel), who lived on Pine hill road, often said he 
 " wished his throat was as long as a pine mast, that he might more 
 fully enjoy the good taste of the fluid as it trickled down." These 
 are only a few notable cases where hundi-eds could be cited, and 
 we can but envy the keen appetites and great capacity of our early 
 settlers.. Breakfast eaten and at ten they would take a hearty 
 luncheon of bread, nut>cakes, and cheese, to set their appetites 
 right for dinner. f ' 
 
 There is plowing in the field, there is manure to be carted out, 
 there is harrowing, and sowing, and harrowing again, there is 
 furrowing and dropping potatoes and corn, and covering the hills; 
 
 * Josiah BTimham, surveyor, had an enviable capacity and appetite. He could 
 eat eight quarts of hasty pudding and milk, at a sitting.— Anson Merrill's state- 
 ment. 
 
 Rev. Charles Bowles conld frequently do something in the way of eating. He 
 once eat a wliole quarter of lamb and nearly everything else on the taljle, at 'Squire 
 Jonathan Merrill's, thereby depriving the 'Squire and his family of their morning 
 meal. Mrs. MeiTill had to do another cooking that morning.— Moses P. Kimball's 
 statement. 
 
 t Mr. James Clement's stories. 
 
414 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 there is picking stones, laying wall, and mending fences to keep 
 the cattle in the pastures. Then there is washing of sheep at the 
 pool in the river, and the shearing of sheep in all the barns." 
 
 At home the wife and girls boil potatoes for the hogs, take 
 turns at the churn, gown sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, kneel- 
 ing to press the sweet curd to the bottom of the " hoop," to salt 
 and turn cheese, and watch progress of diflferent stages from new- 
 ness and white softness, to their investment with the unctuous 
 coating of a goodlj^ age. They also see that the calves, geese, tur- 
 keys, and barn-yard fowls are properly fed, that the dooi'-yard is 
 nicely picked up and swept. Some had a taste for beauty and 
 were most zealous and successful florists. To select rich and suit- 
 able soils, to sow and plant, to nurse, and shade, and water, to 
 watch the growth and expansion of flowers of great promise was 
 an occupation afibrding much enjoyment to our grandmothers. 
 They had the polyanthus, auricular, hyacinth, carnation, tulip, and 
 ranunculus. Then there were pinks, and poppies, and sweet Wil- 
 liams, and peonies, and lilacs, and a host of others; but the splen- 
 did dahlias and pansies of to-day were unknown to them. Mrs. 
 Enoch Noyes and Mrs. G. W. Prescott, daughter of Mr. Isaac' 
 Merrill, could boast of having the nicest flower gardens. 
 
 At night the farmer sits down mth his men and boys by the 
 Are, and they talk^over the work of the morrow, how to plant, 
 hoe and sow, and where. His wife has a little work-table set near, 
 where she makes and mends ; the girls knit, darn stockings, and 
 fix caps for Sunday. 
 
 Now days there is a complaint that the farmer has been spoiled 
 by the growth of luxurious habits and effeminacy in the nation. 
 
 * Sheep Marks. — In those primitive times, when fences were rare, and sheep 
 were nimble, it was fonnd necessary to record the marks by which one's sheep 
 might be known or recognized. Accordingly we are certified th'at Obadiah Clement's 
 sheep are marked by one-half crop on the upper side of the right ear, and oue-half 
 crop on the under side of the left ear. Stevens Merrill's a fork like a swallow's 
 tail on the end of the left ear. Joseph Merrill's, a crop of the leit ear. Jonathan 
 MerrUl's, a crop of the left ear and a slit on the under side of the same. Caleb 
 Homau's, a fork like a swallow's tail on the end of the left ear, and a crop from off 
 the ri^ht ear. Amos Little's, a slit on the end of the right ear. Joshua Copp's, a 
 fork like a swallow's tail on the right ear, and a crop on the left. JoshuaMerrill's, 
 a crop Irom off each ear. This mark is now taken hy John Whitcher, May 27, 1814. 
 N. B. — Joshua Merrill has removed from this town. (1) 
 
 (1) Col. Moses H. Clement's ram once troubled Mr. Keezer and his sheep. 
 Keezer took the ram in the night, led him to Mr. Clement's house and tied him to 
 the door-latch. When Mr. C. opened the door next morning it yanked his ramship, 
 and, indignant, the brute with abound and a bunt knocked Col. C. "flatter than a 
 flounder." 
 
THE FAEMEE AT HOME. 415 
 
 Old furniture has been cast out of the houses, and carpets, sofas, 
 and pianos, are to be found where once were wooden benches and 
 the spinniiig-wheel ; that daughters are sent to boarding schools, 
 instead of to market, and the sons, instead of growing up sturdy- 
 husbandmen like their fathers, are made clerks, shop-tenders, or 
 spme such skimmy dish things. There is some truth in this. But 
 never mind ; the farmer shovild be a rural king, sowing his grain 
 and reaping his harvest with a glad heart, aaid he can do this by 
 being educated. 
 
 How much better the farmer enjoys himself than the merchant. 
 The latter coops himself up in a small shop, and there day after 
 day, month after month, year after year, he is to be fonnd like a 
 bat in a hole of the wall, or a toad in the heart of a stone or of an 
 oak tree. Spring, and summer, and autumn go round, sunsliine 
 and flowers sjjread over the world, the birds sing, the sweetest 
 flowers blow, the sweetest waters murmur along the vales, but 
 they are all lost upon him ; he is the doleful prisoner of Mammon, 
 aud so he lives and dies. The farmer would not take the wealth of 
 the world on snch terms. The bright sun, the pure air, the green 
 meadows, the clear streams, the growing crops, the flocks and 
 herds in the pastures, the keen appetite and good health are far 
 to be preferred. 
 
 There were no frosts, no snows, no cold and chillmg winds in 
 the summer of 1817. All over town there was bustling life and 
 even over to Charleston district, by Tarleton lake, where times 
 had been the hardest, the hearts of men took courage. Corn gi-ew 
 again, the potatoes were luxuriant, and deep grass overhung the 
 banks of all tbfe little streams, and many a flower nodded above 
 the clear water. Upon the fields was a rich mosaic of colors, and 
 on the edge by the wood were seen the wild sun-flower, ox-eye 
 daisies, tiger lilies, and the purple and gold of the hard-hack. 
 Among the crimson headed clover were honey suckles, butter- 
 cups, golden rod, and white top, scenting all the air. The oats 
 were so heavy the farmer was afraid they would lodge ; the rye 
 was as tall as a man's head, while shadows fly over the yellow 
 bai'ley, and tumbling waves chase each other on the acres of wheat. 
 Horses stand under the great maples by the road, brushing flies 
 with their tails, the sheep are grazing on the hill-sides, cows are 
 
416 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 feeding where the grass is shortest and sweetest, while Thomas 
 Pillsbiivy's spotted bull lows in Mt. Mist's echoing pastures. 
 
 They were a happy peopl? over at Charleston. Amos Tarleton, 
 Thomas Pillsbury, Ephraim Potter, Richard Pillsbury, Stephen 
 Lund,* Daniel Day, Hosea Lund, Benj. Bixby, and others, lived 
 there. David Smith was born there. He was a good school-master, 
 was selectman, tax collector, town treasurer, and county treasui'er ; 
 cool, shrewd, long-headed, he was one of Warren's smartest men. 
 They had a Methodist society, a class, Sabbath school and regular 
 preaching, a good school-house, which also answered for a churfch ; 
 many have taught school in it, and a grave yard was by it, where 
 the early settlers were sleeping. Their buildings were good, their 
 great barns were always well filled with hay, and their sugar 
 places were the best in town. 
 
 But alas ! all this is changed. The dwellers in the district by 
 the lake are all dead, the houses and the barns have mouldered 
 away, the spot where they stood can hardly be found, and the 
 fields and the pastures are grown with forest trees. Even the old 
 school-house, the church in Charleston, is gone. Nothing but the 
 foundation remains. The burying groiind by it is overgrown; 
 the thistle shakes its lonely head by the tombstone, the gray moss 
 whistles to the wind, the fox looks out of its hole by the sunken 
 graves, and the wood-brakes and the birches wave above them. 
 
 "Whence came this desolation? The great west takes away the 
 young men of Warren ; they are gone to cities, the gold mines of 
 California invited some of them ; some died on the battle-field. 
 A hundred years may go by before Charleston district shall have 
 such a thriving, happy population again. » 
 
 The sugar and the wool crop made, the hay crop was the next 
 to be harvested. The farmers of "Warren have always raised their 
 full supply of hay, never having been obliged to import any, and 
 grazing and stock-raising has been one of their most profitable 
 employments. Who does not love haying time. True, it may be 
 ". hot as blazes," but what a softness clothes those green mountains ; 
 what a depth of shadow fills the hollows ; how sweet the voice of 
 
 * Steptieu Lund lived to be over ninety years old. He was a cooper, and a red 
 headed man, bony and rawny. He shot a trout that weighed four pounds. He 
 used to catch large quantities of trout from Tarleton lake and carry them to Hav- 
 erhill and sell them, court time. 
 
OUT DOOK UPE IN THE COUNTRY. 417 
 
 the waters rises on the hushed landscape. Magnificent arcades of 
 trees stretch up the sides of tlie fair streams, their luxuriant masses 
 of foliage shading the limpid coolness below . 
 
 What a luxury to follow some rapid stream, or sitting down 
 on a green bank, deep in grass and flowers, to pull out the spotted 
 trout from the bubbling eddy below the boulders or from his lurk- 
 ing place beneath the broad stump and the spreading roots of the 
 alder. A summer day spent beside Patch brook as it runs through 
 the meadows, up Hurricane brooli to tlie cool cascades in the deep 
 woods of Mount Qarr, by the Mikaseota, or Black brook, by Ore 
 hill's foamy stream, by Berry brook, by the roistering Oliverian, by 
 Merrill brook," or East branch, or along tlie roaring, foaming 
 Asquamchumauke, with the glorious hills and the deep, rich 
 foliage clad mountains around you is most delightful — is grand. 
 The power and passion and deep fehcity that come breathing 
 from the mountains, forests, and waterfalls, from clouds that sail 
 above, and storms blustering and growling in the wind, from all 
 the mighty magnificeiice, solitude, and antiquity of nature, cannot 
 be unfolded. 
 
 Sit down by the pond where tiny Cold brook comes in. There 
 the wild rose is putting out and the elder is in flower. The lilies 
 are as lovely as ever, the butter-cups as yellow; harebells, violets, 
 and a thousand other kinds of flowers listen to the tinkling music 
 of the stream. 
 
 The May flies in thousands come fortli to their day-life, flying 
 up and down. There are horse flies and red flies pestering tlie 
 cattle on the hill-side opposite ; but the king-bird, laughing from 
 the breezy maple top, is after them. Over the water midges are 
 celebrating their airy labyrinthine dances with amazing adroitness 
 looking almost like columns of smoke as they shine in new life 
 and new beauty. Dragon flies of all sizes and colors, — boys call 
 them devil's darning needles, and say, " Look out or they will sew 
 your eyes up," — arc hovering and skimming, and settling among 
 the %vater plants or on some twig, evidently full of enjoyment. 
 The great azure bodied one with its fllmy wings darts past with 
 reckless speed, and slender ones, blue, and purple, and dun, and 
 
 * Joseph Patch used to kill moose near the head of Men'ill brook. 
 
418 HISTORY OF WAEREN. 
 
 black, and jointed bodies, made as of shining silk and animated 
 foi' a week or two of summer sunshine by some frolic spell, now 
 pursue each other and now rest in sleep. 
 
 The bob-o'-link in the meadow up the brook, flies up and down 
 on balancing wings uttering its many toned joyous songs, tittering 
 as if in high glee ; swallows are skimming along the fields and 
 over the waters catching flies ; the song sparrow sings so sweet in 
 the flowers and grasses, the white throated finch warbles tender 
 and plaintive in the fir copse up by Amos Little's field ; the 
 Maryland yellow throat in the alders over the water says " sit> 
 u-see, sit-u-see," in such a winsome way; water-wag-tail repeats 
 its " crake, crake," from the grass in the swamp ; the spotted sand- 
 piper says, "wect, weet," from the old log and muddy bank; 
 crows are cawing in the woods across the pond, and the water 
 itself ripples on, clear and musical, and checkered from many a 
 leaf and bent and moving bough. "Wc lift up our heads and in the 
 west above Stephen Lund's where farmer Joshua lived once, what 
 a ruby sun, what a gorgeous assemblage of sunset clouds. 
 
 The oats, rye, barley, and wheat, were good this year, 1817, 
 and when they were gathered, autumn with its rich corn harvest, 
 and all its happy human groups, and bright days of calm, 
 steady splendor came. After the first frosts, the Indian summer 
 began, and a soft haze pervaded the atmosphere and settled like a 
 thin gray cloud on the horizon, bringing a delicious, sweet, sleep- 
 like feeling, which seemed to fill the valley. On all sides the sky 
 appeared resting upon a wealth of colors, orange and yellow, pur- 
 ple and crimson, blue and greeu, and red, and every shade and 
 hue that mantled the forests of the mountains. In the woods on 
 the edge of the clearings, fields and pastures, red squirrels chased 
 one another over crisp leaves on the ground and along the limpid 
 .bi-anches of the trees, yelping and chattering like king-fishers. 
 Fox-colored sparrows, uut-hatches and great golden-winged wood- 
 peckers vied in their notes and seemed resolved on merriment 
 while the season lasted. The white-crowned sparrow came down 
 from Labrador where it had spent the summer rearing its young 
 and singing all the day long, and stopped a day or so by the banks 
 of the Asquamchumauke, before it hastened on iis journey to its 
 winter home in Florida and the "West Indies. Wild geese with 
 
THE FALL OF THE YEAR. 419 
 
 theiv weird hawnk-honk-e-honk, were seen tearing tlie yielding 
 air with wiugs fierce and strong, as in liarrow-like form tliey Imr- 
 ried down tlie valley, and now and then the farmer in his field 
 would hear a strange, wild cry, coming seemingly from mid 
 heaven, as a fiock of swans, flying more than one hundred and 
 twenty miles an hour, clove the air thousands of feet above^tlje 
 mountains. As the days went by, the leaves of the trees merging 
 from their bright dappled colors into a dull uniform brown, dropped 
 to the earth and were swept by the winds into dusty, crackling 
 torrents, and borne to unknown resting places on the bosom of 
 every tinkling rill. The turnips were dug, potatoes garnered in 
 the cellar, apples carried to the cider-mill and the corn was stacked 
 for husking. 
 
 The cider mill! Who does not have one in recollection. They 
 made cider at Mr. Nathaniel Clough's in those days. Mr. Samuel 
 Merrill built the first and only one in the East-parte ; then old Mr. 
 Batchelder and Mr. Foote each had one on Pine liill, and Capt. 
 Joseph Merrill one by the village burying ground. What pleasant 
 memories of bins of russet, red, and golden apples, of the great 
 cog-wheels, of the horse going round and round attached to the 
 creaking crane, the crushed apples in the great trough, the large 
 wooden screws that compressed the cheese that was put on so 
 neatly in fresh yellow straw, the gushing juice that fiowed so 
 freely at every turn of the levers, into the great holder beneath, 
 and us boys *with oaten straws sucking our fill from the little 
 brooklet running down, better pleased and happier than kings. 
 May the picture of the old cider-mill never fade away. 
 
 Husking bees were common then in our hamlet among the 
 hills, they are common in Warren now. Generally they were on 
 pleasant evenings in the early part of October. They had one at 
 Joseph Merrill's this season, tlie gi-andest one of the year. The 
 people collected from nearly eveiy district in town, my father and 
 his numerous brothers, the Clough boys, the Patches, the Clements, 
 consisting of several families, — old Obadiah would not go, — the 
 Merrill's, and they were numerous, the Batchelders, JBichardsons, 
 Lunds, Pillsburys, Dows, and many others, were there. The corn 
 was piled iu the centre of the capacious kitchen, and around the 
 heap squatted the buskers. The room was abundantly as well as 
 
420 HISTORY OF WABKEN. 
 
 spectrally lighted from the immense tire-place briskly glowing with 
 pitch knots and clumps of bark. Boys and girls, young men and 
 their wives, and some old people listened to songs and varied their 
 labors with such pleasantry as was natural to the occasion. Great 
 ardor was evinced in pursuit of the red ear, for which piece of for- 
 turtfe the discoverer had the privilege of a kiss from any lady he 
 should nominate. Stevens Knight was the lucky finder, and peo- 
 ple who remember him can well imagine how he stammered and 
 blushed, and refused to kiss any girl, and how one of 'Squire 
 Abel's daughters threw her arms around his neck and gave him a 
 good smack amidst the shouts and laughter of the whole party. 
 Nobody accused Stevens Knight of bringing the red ear in his 
 pocket. 
 
 The pile was finished and the hard glossy ears were stored 
 away under the eaves of the garret. Then new cider and old was 
 passed around, and some had something stronger. All now 
 repaired to the hall over the bar-room ; the violin sounded and 
 the young folks formed for a dance. Enoch R. Weeks danced with 
 Sally Little, Col. Benj. Clement with Miss Dolly Gove, Nathaniel 
 Copp with Miss Mary Pillsbury, and so on ; we have forgotten 
 the names of the others. Billy Brock the fiddler was a grand 
 musician and Ms very soul seemed breathing in his music* All 
 gloom disappeared and fun and frolic saw them into the small 
 hours. 
 
 For^^variety came the supper. There were great dishes of 
 beans and Indian pudding, pumpkin pies, pewter platters full of 
 dough-nuts, sweet cakes, fruit and cheese, cider, bottles of native 
 wine and spirits washing it down. And then they danced again. 
 We won't go home till morning, was the way they did at this happy 
 husking-. 
 
 Who can blame them ! Peace, plenty, and health had come, 
 
 * Billy Brock was of Ryegate, Tt., and was the best fiddler in all the connti;y 
 round. He would balance a tumbler of whisky on his head, dance with it, lie 
 doM'n on the floor witli it and all the time be playing the Tiolin for others to dance. 
 
 Nathaniel Copp tried to fiddle lor a party, could only play one tune, broke the 
 fiddle strings trying to play another, and the party broke up in a huff. They sent 
 over the Heiglit-o'-land to "get the fiddle for him. ■ 
 
 Mrs. Jonathan Clongh, then Miss Pillsbury, danced with Joseph Patch, Jr. 
 Mary Pillsbury witli Joshua Copp, Jr. Sally Little and Tamar Little danced. 
 The Patches were all dancers. .Josluia Copp, 3d, danced. Betsey, who married 
 Joseph Farnham, Sally, who married 'Squire Weeks, Mary, who mairied Mr. Clark 
 
A PEOSPEEOUS SEASON. 421 
 
 and -why should not the people of our great history be happy at 
 the close of so fruitful and prosperous a year as 1817. 
 
 of Landaif, 'Squire Abel's daughters, all danced. Dolly Gove aud Betsey Gove, 
 Sailr White and Ruth Whilu, Col. Cole, father of D. Quinoy Cole, all of Wentworth, 
 used to come to Warren to dance. Also Miss Dolly Page. Jonathan Clement's 
 girls,— one of them married uncle Tom PiUshnry, and the other Lt. Perkins Fel- 
 lows, — danced. Col. Ben. Clement is the sou of Jonathan Clement, innkeeper.— 
 Anson Merrill's statement. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHAT A WOMAN CAN DO AND HOW SHE DID IT; OR THE ACCOM- 
 PLISHMENT OF ONE OF THE GREATEST " REQUISITES " OF THE 
 LAST CENTURY, VIZ: THE BUILDINa OP A MEETING HOUSE. 
 
 Rev. peter powers preached the fli-st sevmon in 
 Warren, Rev. Elijah R. Sabin brouglit the doctrines of John 
 Wesley, Methodism, to our hamlet among the hills, and Rev. Jo- 
 seph Boody founded a society of Freewill Baptists in the valley. 
 These and their associates preached sometimes out in the open 
 air, sometimes in the houses or barns of the settlers, and some- 
 times in the school-houses ; for as yet there was no meeting-house 
 , in Warren. The first generation of Warren's settlers had tried 
 hard to build one during the last years of the eighteenth century, 
 but had failed in the attempt and then the enterprise slumbered.* 
 
 'Squire Jonathan Merrill's wife had died. He found another 
 lady-love, the widow Chellis, down country, and eventually mar- 
 ried and brought her to live in Warren. f She told the "Squire that 
 It was a shame for so smart a town as Warren to be without a 
 
 * 1808. — " Voted to choose a committee of six persons for the purpose of ap- 
 pointing another committee ot three indifferent persons living out of town, for the 
 purpose of establishing a suitable place in this town for erecting a house lor pub- 
 lic meetings. Chose Col. Obadiah Clement, William Butler, Mr. .Jonathan Fellows, 
 Capt. Joseph P.atch, Lieut. Stephen Flanders, and Mr. Aaron Welch, for the abore 
 mentioned committee." 
 
 Dec. 17, 1S03. — " Voted not to build a meeting-house in the town way, but that 
 we are willing it should be done by subscription." 
 
 Paid William Butler for money he paid the committee for appointing a place to 
 set a meeting-house, $15 00. For expenses at Clement's, 70c. — Selectmen's Records, 
 Vol. i. 
 
 t The widow Chellis was from Amesbury, Mass. 
 
THE MEETING HOUSE FRAMED. 423 
 
 meeting-house. She told it to Iiim twice, aud she gave him curtain 
 lectures on the subject; in short she gave him no peace till he 
 came to think as she did about it, and until he had stirred up the 
 whole town about the matter and made them all feel that it was 
 an " abominable shame " for the town to be without a meeting- 
 house. 
 
 So in the selectmenship of Joseph Patch, Jr., Moses H. Clem- 
 ent, and Stephen Flanders, 1818, the citizens of our little democ- 
 racy in General Assembly voted to build a meeting-house, the 
 size to be forty feet by fifty feet within joint. Chose Jonathan 
 Merrill , Nathaniel Clough, Abel Merrill, and James "Williams a 
 committee to superintend its building, and for that purpose was 
 appropriated all the money due the town on the leases, Including 
 the present year, and also the avails of the wild land belonging to 
 the town. "What can't a woman do ? 
 
 To the building of the house the committee proceeded in right 
 good earnest. The frame, that good old oaken one, which is yet as 
 good as new, was hauled from many a dark recess of the old woods, 
 the inhabitants ready to assist, giving many a long day's work. 
 In the neighborhood of "Wachipauka pond where the Indians used 
 to camp the oaks were cut, and the long timbers for the ceiling 
 over head ; and the masts in the steeple, nearly a hundred feet high, 
 came down from Pine hill, the first selectman, Joseph Patch, Jr., 
 having taken the job to put them upon the ground. Eenben Clif- 
 ford was the master workman; he could handle abroad axe better 
 than any man in town, and he could how almost as smooth as one 
 could plane. Amos Little aud James Dow helped hew. James 
 "Williams took a job of boring, and Samuel Knight made pins. 
 People loved to come and look on, and the master workman would 
 good naturedly say, " You must bring something to treat with if. 
 you want to stop about here." The people were so well pleased 
 with his work and the enterprise, that he got many bottles of old 
 rum to drink. 
 
 By the first of July the frame was ready for erection, and the 
 "Fourth" was decided to be the time when the raising should 
 take place. "What preparations were made for that day! They 
 must have a grand collation and so the building committee had a 
 table constructed, and rude benches on each side of it across the 
 
424 HISTOBY OF WAEBEN. 
 
 entire common . All day long the third of July the farmers' wives 
 and their daughters had done their very best cooking for the colla- 
 tion. How anxious they were when they vfent to bed the night 
 before the raising. , , 
 
 The morning of that expected day at last dawned ; but before 
 the sun had kindled a rosy light on the bald top of Moosehillock, 
 or on the green wooded summit of Mount Carr, the workmen were 
 on their way. Few indeed were the sleepy persons found that 
 morning, for a raising was a raising in those days, and every body 
 was delighted to attend ; but the raising of a meeting-house- was a 
 sight seldom witnessed but once in a life-time. 
 
 From every quarter they came ; the good man and his buxom 
 dame, and their rosy daughters who had spent a long hour more at 
 the toilet that morning than usual. All were there, and by the 
 presence of those fair faces many a young man wa§ stimulated to 
 perform herculean feats of lifting and mounting giddy heights, 
 every way worthy of his ancestors. All about the destined spot 
 lay strewn the heavy timbers. The old men with shining broad 
 axes were shaping pins, or smoothing the end 6f many a tenon, 
 while the master builder, Eeuben Clifford, with rule under his 
 arm, and feeling the great rasponsibility resting upon him, was 
 moving hither and thither, now giving directions to one party and 
 then to another, whom drolly enough he had designated his oxen, 
 his steers, and his bulls, in order that they might more readily come 
 at the word. These weve tugging, lifting, and straining themselves 
 into very red faces as they carried the heavj'^ timbers over the nu- 
 merous blocks and chips. The building committee were there also 
 giving instructions to each other, the master builder, and every 
 one else. 
 
 And now one huge broadside is ready. The rugged yeomanrj'^ 
 of Warren range themselves side by side ; the master builder gives 
 the word, "All ready, heave-er-up!" shouting in the most won- 
 derful manner; and creaking and groaning, that old oaken broad- 
 side slowly rises. A pause — the stout following poles hold; and 
 now long pike poles are applied, guided firmly by strong arms, and 
 again that broadside goes up, as a hush comes over the anxious 
 crowd, eagerly watching, but who soon breathe more freely as the 
 huge timbers erect settle firmly into their resting places. And 
 
THE MEETIKG HOUSE K/USED. 425 
 
 now with DO laggard hands the remaining broadside and the 
 cross-timbers are put in their places, and long ere the rays of the 
 setting snn had departed, the roof, with its crowning steeple tow- 
 ering above, was in its proper position. 
 
 Here succeeding generations must lament the loss of that 
 speech called naming the house, every way worthy of the occasion, 
 which Col. Benjamin Clement delivered from the ridge-pole, The 
 gentle breezes of that summer day wafted it far over the green 
 foliage of the wood to the distant hill-sides, where it was recorded 
 in their beautifully shaded dells; but no man can read their 
 phonography.* 
 
 Then True Stevens exhibited a mighty feat of jumping ten 
 feet at a leap on the plates and cross-tirabers, thirty feet above the 
 ground, the whole length of the frame, and Samuel Knight stood 
 on his head upon the ridge-pole and made flourishes with his feet 
 up into the clear sky, much to the delight of the assembled multi- 
 tude who held their breath at the sight. 
 
 The oration and the gymnastic feats were each greeted with a 
 great shout, and then all the cider possible was drank and they 
 hurried to partake of the grand collation so bountifully prepared 
 for the.m. Mrs. James Williams, from the East-parte, took charge 
 of setting |the tables, and'Aunt Ruth Homan and her beautiful 
 daughters, and Mrs. Daniel Ramsey acted on the committee with 
 her. Mr. James "Williams and Mr. Samuel Merrill bi-ought out 
 whole wagon loads of the very best eatables, and the Beech liill- 
 ites and the dwellers of Runaway pond and those from the Height- 
 o'-land. Pine hill, the Summit, and the Forks, also brought a great' 
 abundance. There was an immense crowd, many from the neigh- 
 boring towns ;t and how they ate, for it was a free collation ; and 
 
 * It was customary to name all buildings. Jack Tennant got off this, Jesse 
 Little having composed it for him, on a building Gov. Samuel Flanders framed for 
 Gov. Stevens Merrill : — 
 
 " Here is a frame deserves a name, 
 Here is a frame deserves a name. 
 Jt is made of spruce and sapling pine — 
 It was talsen down old and put up new, 
 And you all can see what two Governors can do." 
 They were called Governors because each had had a few votes for governor at 
 some town meeting. 
 
 Then there was a shout, and they had all the cider they could drink. 
 t nice Howard and Mr. Samuel Bennett, both of Haverhill, noted gamblers, 
 who attended all musters and public gatherings, were present. It was wonderful 
 what sums of money they would fleece out of the simple country people. The 
 mamerous anecdotes of their exploits would fill a volume. 
 
426 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 how happy they were when they went home that night, thinking 
 they would now have such a nice meeting-liouse. 
 
 Captain John Gove, the witch killer of "Wentworth, and his 
 two sons, Edward and Winthrop, all excellent carpenters, fin- 
 ished ofi" the house. Captain Gove hired a room at the store Capt. 
 Benjamin Merrill built, and his daughters^ Dolly and Betsey, 
 cooked for and boarded them during the time. Messrs. Tucker & 
 French, from Haverhill, painted the outside and inside of the meet- 
 ing-house, steeple and all, and boarded at Joseph Merrill's inn 
 while doing the work. Anson Merrill, a boy then, raised the 
 money by subscription to paint the inside: but it was not all 
 finished that year.* 
 
 George W. Copp, son of 'Squire Joshua Copp, went over the 
 Heighi>-o'-land and got the underpinning near Tarletou lake. He 
 hammered and set it very nicely. 
 
 The work progressed steadily, and early in the fall, though it 
 was not fully finished, the meeting-house was dedicated. The 
 widow Chellis, 'Squire Jonathan's second wife, was a Congrega- 
 tionalist, and of course no minister but a CongregationaUst was fit 
 to preach the dedicatory sermon. Rev. Edward Evens lived at 
 "Wentworth. He was a talented man, preached half the time in 
 that pious town, was a missionary the other half, and during week 
 days attended to the duties of Judge of Probate for Grafton 
 County, which oflice he held. He was the one 'Squire Jonathan's 
 wife selected to preach, and of course he did it. 
 
 But all the people must be pleased, so Rev. James Spencer, a 
 Freewill Baptist preacher, assisted, making the prayer and reading 
 the hymns. 
 
 The choir of Warren was anxious that day ; but its members 
 did their best. Joseph Boyntonf was leader, and an excellent 
 singer was he. Betsej^ Knight, daughter of Samuel, sung air, 
 Mrs. Joseph Boynton, — Sally Knight once, — sang counter or alto, 
 while Betsey Little, Jesse Little, Benj. Little and others assisted. 
 The critics of those daj's said the choir did exceedingly well. 
 
 * Nathaniel Eicharrtson shaved the sliingles put ou the old meeting-house. , 
 t Funeral.— Josejih and Orlando, sous of .Joseph Boynton, once had a ftineval 
 over a grasshopper. They dug a grave, preacheii and sang, and then prayed that 
 " the Lord might be nierciM to the leastest and lastest remains of .\e poor grass- 
 hopper." Orlando, it is said, shed tears, and a whole generation remembered that 
 prayer. lantha, a sister of .Toseph and Orlando, was chief mournov. 
 
%c^€.^^ yi^^^j 
 
 60. 
 
SALE OF PEWS. 427 
 
 Edward Evens was hired to preach in Warren half the time, 
 for several years, and the town voted in 1819 to appropriate the 
 interest of the minister lands towards paying him.* 
 
 After the dedication came the sale of the pews. They were 
 set up at auction as is usual in such cases ; the person bidding 
 the highest having the first choice and the next highest the next 
 choice, and so on till all were sold. Amos Little got the best pew, 
 the right hand front one, in the broad aisle. He said he was not 
 going to be second to anybody in relation to pews. 'Squire Jona- 
 than Merrill got the next, the left hand front one. He pretended 
 to be a little mortified because he did not get the first ; but shrewd 
 folks said he was sharp and had got the best pew after all — the 
 widow Chellis thought it was the best. 
 
 James Williams, Moses H. Clement, and Joseph Merrill, each 
 had pews back of Amos Little's on the right-hand side of the broad 
 aisle, in their order, and Abel Merrill, his son Daniel Merrill, and 
 William Kelley, had them in the same manner back of 'Squire 
 Jonathan's. 
 
 Sept. 21, 1819, at a town meeting held for the purpose, the 
 following report of the building committee was read and accepted, 
 viz:-^ 
 
 1st. The meeting-house finished except the painting. 
 
 2d. All the pews disposed of and are the property of the pur- 
 chasers when paid for, othei-wise the property of the committee. 
 The purchasers and owners of pews to have the liberty to pass and 
 repass the doors and aisles to and from said pews whenever the 
 doors are open for public worship or town meetings. 
 
 * Ministers.— F aid Edward Evens for preaching in 3820, $40.39. 
 
 1823.— P'd Newell Culver, $7.51). Mr. Mills, $7.60. Mi-. Washburn, $2.00, aU for 
 preaching that year. 
 
 Eev. Edward Evens was settled in Enfield, N. H., and was dismissed in 1805. 
 He was qnite popular, and collected a church of not far from a hundred members. 
 But Mr. Evens was not an orthodox congregationalist, noi- was his church an or- 
 thodox church of that order. Agedpeople who knew him well say that in senti- 
 ment he was always a Methodist. — Hist, of N. H. Churches, 531. 
 
 Eev. Jonathan Hovey, of Piermont, used to preach at Warren,' occasionally. 
 He was a congregationalist, and Col. Obadiah Clement and old Mrs. Ben. Brown 
 admired him very much. They used to say Ihey wished he would drive the Meth- 
 odists all out, and then they would have none but decent preaching.' 
 
 I'ay for Preaching. — Rev. Mr. Haynes occasionally preached in Warren, but 
 lived at Romney. Lemiiel Keezer, innkeeper, once told him that he would pay 
 him for preaching in grain. He took a two bushel bag, put in wheat, corn, rye, 
 oats, barley, buck-wheat, India wheat, and a few small potatoes, and carried it to 
 the parson. The latter looked at it and said he could not make anything out ofit. 
 Keezer flatteringly replied, " Well, parson, you can make just as much out of it as 
 I can out of your preaching." 
 
428 HISTORY OF WAEREN. 
 
 3d. The other parts of the house to be for the use of the town 
 upon the following conditions, viz: That the town pay over to the 
 committee all the money and land they agreed to give to encour- 
 age a committee to undertake to build said meeting-house, which 
 was three hundred dollars or thereabouts. 
 
 4ih. The committee respectfully request the town to unite 
 with them and adopt the best measures or means to finish paint- 
 ing the house and erect door-steps. 
 
 JONATHAN MERRILL, ^ 
 
 JAMES WILLIAM8,t J 
 
 N. B. — There are demands in the hands of the Committee 
 arising from the sale of two pews, viz: number forty-one and 
 forty-two, to the amount of fifty dollars or more, besides what we 
 have laid out painting said meeting-liouse.J 
 
 Reader, the first time I ever went to meeting it was in this 
 old meeting-house, and I sat in number forty-one. It was on the 
 right of the pulpit in the body of the house, and was, like all the 
 rest, a veiy large pew, twelve feet long and eight feet wide. There 
 were banisters in the pew walls, seats on two sides that turned up 
 during prayer and often fell down " slam." My mother used to 
 stand me on the seat when they sang, and I often amused myself 
 turning one of the loose banisters to make it squeak during ser- 
 mon. What an object of wonder was the sounding board over 
 the minister's head. Once I asked what it was for, and they told 
 me " that it was placed there so that if the minister told a lie it 
 would fall on his head and kill him." The pulpit was a little castle 
 lugh up. "With what veneration I first entered it. In it was a 
 
 * Nathaniel Clough came from Hampstead, N. H. 
 
 t-Janies Williams came from Haverhill, Mass., and was a descendant of Hau- 
 nah Dustin of Indian fame. He had one of hei' pewter plates which was marked 
 *' H. D." A Mrs. Crook has the plate now. 
 
 J Lock on Mccfing-ITouse Door. — Jacob Whitcher moved away iip country aboiit 
 this time. It was maliciously said of him that he, like some otlaer folks, would lie 
 when t lie truth would do a good deal better. He would tell his neighbors what a 
 powerful lock they put on the meeting-house door in Warren. He said it was one of 
 the most remarkable locks ever made in modern times ; tliat it was so large that it 
 required a "hand-speke" to turn tlie key; that when the bolt snapped back it 
 made so loud a noise that it could be heard a mile. 
 
 He would tell the story in such an honest manner tiiat his friends thought it 
 was true, and when they came down marketing in the winter they would call at 
 Joseph Merrill's inn near the meeting-house, arid ask to be shown the wonderful 
 lock. 
 
THE TTTHINGMAN ASTONISHED. 429 
 
 cricket for short ministers to stand upon, and tlie window behind 
 with its circular glass was a wonderful piece of architecture. In 
 the north porch was the black table and pall used in burying the 
 dead. How I dreaded, the north porch, how shunned it. 
 
 At first they had no tires in the meeting-house and in winter 
 the minister used to preach with woolen mittens on his hands and 
 our mothers would carry the old fashioned foot stoves, which they 
 would replenish noon times at Joseph Merrill's inn, to keep them- 
 selves warm during service. Stoves were put into the meeting- 
 house in 1880. 
 
 Mr. James Dow was the tythingman in the new church. He 
 sat to the left of the minister, under the edge of the long gallery 
 that extended on three sides of the house. One Sabbath, while 
 the minister was pveachiug, a large yellow dog started from the 
 right and traveled round the whole edge of the gallery till he came 
 to the point over Uncle Dow's head. Addison "W. Gerald from 
 the East-parte sat there, and the Devil whispered in Mr. Gerald's 
 ear, " Push the yellow cur off." No sooner said than it was done. 
 The poor beast falling fifteen feet, struck on Uncle Dow's bald 
 head; it hurt; and the " purp " he yelled and he yowled. Uncle 
 Dow, who was dozing, sprang to his feet, stamped furiously and 
 at the same instant sung out in a voice like thunder, " Ahem ! 
 Ahem ! I hope the owner will keep that dog to home and stay to 
 home himself." Of course the choir never smiled nor the audience 
 either. The minister also preserved his dignity ; but' one thing is 
 certain, he closed the services in very short metre.* 
 
 One Sabbath at meeting, I distinctly remember hearing my 
 father who always sat in the singing seats above, he was town clei'k 
 too, cry out, " Hear ye, hear ye ! notice is hereby given that Russell 
 K. Clement and Betsey Eames intend marriage." There Was a 
 grand sensation, for they all thought Russell was a confirmed old 
 bachelor; but perhaps no more sensation than was customary on 
 publishing the " bans." 
 
 In the long row of meeting-hou^e sheds wer school boys used to 
 play " I spy," " hide and geek," " tag," and " goal," and sometimes 
 plagued the wrens that had their nests in the braces, or watched 
 the swallows which always built in the old belfry. 
 * Gen. Michael P. Merrill's statement. 
 
430 IIISTOKY OF WAKREN. 
 
 Our fathers' meeting-house was used for forty years, then it 
 became too unfashif)nable for a more fashionable generation. In 
 1859 it was moved back to the northeast corner of the common, 
 altered to a more modern style, and now within, the same walls 
 and under the same roof that Reuben Clifford, Amos Little, and 
 James Dow hewed and framed, the dwellers of Warren worship. 
 
 In 182B the town raiaed tifty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents in lieu of the 
 avails of the wild laud voted to the committee appointed to build the meeting- 
 house in 1818.— See Town Book. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A GAY LITTLE CHAPTER ABOUT WITCHES. 
 
 W^E should not perform our whole duty as a faithful histo- 
 rian unless we should depict the thoughts, beliefs, and opinions of 
 this second generation of Warren's citizens. We feel ourselves 
 more especially called upon to be faithful to this period, because a 
 few iuventions, of no great wonder now, were to make a radical 
 change in society. We refer to the steam-ship, rail-car, telegraph, 
 friction matches, and the like. 
 
 In those good old times when they had none of these, divers 
 superstitions were rife, and our ancestors, devoutly believed that if 
 a dog howled in the night some one in the neighborhood was 
 going to die sure ; that if the scissors, knife, or any sharp thing 
 fell to the floor and stood up straight, some visitor was coming ; 
 that if a looking-glass was broken, the person breaking it or some 
 relative would die before the year was out ; that if a knife or pair 
 of scissors was given to a friend without making hiin give a penny 
 or some amount of money for it, love between them would cer- 
 tainly be cut ; that if there were tea grounds or bubbles swim- 
 ming on the tea, as many strangers as grounds or bubbles were 
 coming ; that if one stubbed the left foot they were not wanted 
 where they were going, but if it was the right they would be 
 welcome ; that to spill the salt was a bad omen ; and the ticking of 
 a little bug in the wall was a sure sign of death, and also forty or 
 more other like superstitions. 
 
 But they also believed many other things much more serious, 
 
432 HISTORY OP WAKBEN. 
 
 and among them in witches and ghosts. Ever^ town has liad its 
 witch or wizard ; but if tradition is correct, Warren has had more 
 than its sliare. It is told that in oideii times, wlien there were hut 
 few clearings in tow]i, a young man, Jonathan Merrill, wont to 
 see his lady-love. AVhile there the happy moments flew swift and 
 time had crept far into the small hours before he thought of taking 
 his leave. On his way home he had to cross a stream on the trunk 
 of a fallen tree ; and when he arrived at this point, as he was step- 
 ping upon the log that was shaded by thick foliage, and through 
 which a few straggling rays of the moon struggled, he saw stand- 
 ingon the other end a white, airy flgure which looked to him auy- 
 tliing but earthly. He gazed upon it for a few moments and then 
 stepped from the log. As he did so the flgure followed his exam- 
 ple, and he saw it standing- on tlic water. He now thought he 
 would venture across, but the moment he was on the log again, 
 that light form was there also. Filled with terror, he gave one 
 more look, beheld as he thought, a ghastly visage, then turned 
 quick about and run with all. Ms might to the house where he had 
 so agreeably spent tlie evening. Plere he waited till day-light be- 
 fore returning home. Young Merrill always believed he saw a 
 witch that night. 
 
 Some folks have told the writer that they did not believe this 
 story at all, and one estimable lady, daughter of Caleb Homan, 
 said it happened down country when 'Squire Jonathan was court- 
 ing his wife. The same lady said witches* used to be plenty down 
 at old Plaistow ; and then she told how Nat Tucker, one of Uncle 
 Jim Dow's relatives, once sold some walnuts in old Haverhill, 
 much to the displeasure of a certain elderly lady. That night 
 Tucker and his wife could not sleep ; all night long there was a 
 rattling of walnuts on the kitchen hearth. Most wonderful to 
 narrate, the next morning when they arose there was every iden- 
 tical walnut piled up like cannon balls in the form of a pyramid 
 on the hearth-stone. The old woman, the witch, had brought 
 them all back. But stranger yet, the silk handkerchief that Mrs. 
 T. had used as a night-cap, when she went to take it from her 
 head, fell to the floor cut in a thousand pieces. 
 
 Foolish and superstitious folks scandalously said that the wife 
 
 * Old Mrs. Ely was one of the gi'oat witches of Plaistow. 
 
StIPEESTITION CONCEKNING WITCELES. 433 
 
 of Stephen Richardson was a witch. Her son Stephen was a lit- 
 tle out of his head, and he said she bewitched him. When his 
 friends tried to reason with him, he would say, " Good Lord, if 
 you had seen her coming over the ridgepole of the house in the 
 air as many times as I have, in the shape of a hog, yon would 
 believe she was a witch." Moses Ellsworth's wife, Susan, took her 
 mother's part, and Stephen Richardson, Jr., used to wish that he 
 had them both harnessed so Nathan "Willey could drive them with 
 a good stout stage whip hauling hay out of his swamp. 
 
 Stillnian Barker's wife, who was a sister of Lemuel Keezer, 
 was wrongfully and maliciously accused of being a witch and we 
 are very glad to here have an opportunity of vindicating her good 
 name. It is said, among other things, she bewitched a ca,lf and it 
 happened in this wise. Joseph Merrill, inn-keeper, was a super- 
 intendent of the turnpike, and one spring day when the bird 
 cherry-trees were in blossom, was cleaning out a ditch. "When 
 he came down from the Height-o'-land he found that old Mi'. Bar- 
 ker had altered the ditch so that the water overflowed and ran 
 across the road. Merrill called Barker out and reproved him 
 pretty fsharply. Mrs. Barker was mad about it.* 
 
 A day or two after Mr. M. turned his calves out to pasture 
 where the meeting-house stands now, and the next morning went 
 out to see how they were getting along. He found one of them 
 lying on the ground in a terrible tremor, with its eyes rolling and 
 flashing towards the sky as though it could see a hundred old 
 • witches there riding on a hundred broom-sticks. Merrill was con- 
 fident Mrs. B. had bewitched it, and with his knife he cut the calf's 
 ear off, carried it to the house and threw it on the fire. " I'll fix 
 her," said he. The calf from that moment began to mend ; but it 
 went on its knees for a while as if doing penance, and only got up 
 
 * A Scotcli teamster, long ago, stopped at the Moosilauke house one winter 
 night. Sitting around the lii-e with others, lie said he was never in Warren but 
 once before, and then it was when he was changed into a horse and ridden there 
 by a witch. He told how they hitched him with other horses at a post by the flrst 
 house on the right coming up from the Noyes Bridge. The whole party of witches 
 went into the house, and from where he stood he could see all they did there; that 
 they driuked up some wine, ate all the bread, butter, preserves, tarts, and pies, 
 and even devoured some sweet, good-tasting medicine that eat on the shelf. Be- 
 fore they left they cracked the sugar bowl. 
 
 These things down at Mr. Noyes' did actually happen^ and Mrs. Noyes, who was 
 away from home at the time, was very mad at ittiss Sallie Barker who worked for 
 her, for allowing such capers to be out up in her absence. Miss Sallie would always 
 have been presumed guilty had it not been for the confession of the Scotch team- 
 ster in after years. ' 
 
 B* 
 
434 HISTORY OF WAEKEN. 
 
 smart when haying was over and the witch on the Height-o'-land 
 had undergone a fit of sickness. Experienced witch killers say 
 that if he had scalded the calf it would have done just as well. 
 
 The wife of Mr. Zach.iriah Clifibrd, who was a sister of Sim- 
 eon Smith, was scandalized in a like manner as Mrs. Barker. She 
 lived on Red-oak hill, and it was perfectly wonderful what awful 
 things she could do. If you stuck a needle down in a witch's 
 track, it was said she would stop and look round ; if one was put 
 in her shoe she could not go at all. A shoemaker down at "Went- 
 worth made her a pair of shoes, carried them home to her and 
 when she tried them on she said one of them was good for nothing, 
 that she could not wear it and that he must make her another. He 
 had broke off his awl in the sole, but he did not tell her anything 
 about it. He carried the shoe home quietly, took out the piece of 
 the awl and when he returned it she said it was a grand fit and the 
 best shoe she ever had in her life. 
 
 John Clifford courted a sister of Mrs. Zack. Clifford, then 
 jilted her and went courting a Gove girl. Mrs. C. was awful mad 
 about it, said she would fix him, and when John Aveut courting 
 after that she would go too as a witch and sit in a spare rocking- 
 chair and rock all night. The young couple were terribly afflicted 
 but finally got married. Dr. Horatio Heath, who kept school 
 down on the " East side," said he knew all about Mrs. C.'s pranks 
 and that the stories about her were as true as the gospel, — a very 
 misguided and mistaken youth. 
 
 But gossiping slanderers of that day said that the wife of Mr. 
 Benjamin Weeks, Mrs. Sarah Weeks, had ten times the power that 
 the above mentioned ladies possessed. Invisible on her good steed, 
 a broom-stick, she rode all the country round and was a sort of 
 revenging angel for her husband. 
 
 One day, it is §aid, Joseph Merrill, son of 'Squire Abel, started 
 about the middle of the afternoon to come home from Haverhill. 
 Mr. Weeks was there and wanted to ride to Warren with him. 
 Merrill said there was another man to ride ; that he had as much 
 load as he could carry, and that he could not take him. Weeks 
 said if you don't take me you will be sorry for it, and you won't 
 get home to-night. Merrill harnessed up and drove out as far as 
 the toU-gate, when his horse, which hitherto had been perfectly 
 
CUEKENT WITCH STOBIES. 436 
 
 Mnd, kicked np and absolutely refused to go. Merrill coaxed, 
 whipped, aud then coaxed again ; the hoi'se laid down and would 
 not budge an inch. After an hour spent in vain effort and night 
 coming on, Merrill put his horse in a bai'u and walked back to the 
 Corner, where he spent the night. The next morning the horse 
 went home in splendid manner, and ever after was as kind as need 
 be. Mr. M. was perfectly certain that Mrs. W. had bewitched the 
 animal. 
 
 One day tliis lady of excellent reputation was sick and sent 
 her husband to Capt. Ben. Merrill's store for a pint of rum.* 
 
 Capt. Ben. and wife were away, Miriam Pillsbury, afterwards 
 Mrs. Aaron Goodwin, was keeping house, Levi B. Foot was 
 boarding there and studying, and Capt. Samuel L. Merrill " tended " 
 store. Weeks asked for his rum on trust. Captain Sam. said his 
 orders were not to let him have any on tick. Weeks was mad and 
 said " If you don't let me have it you will be sorry for it," and 
 then he went directly away to his Height-o'-land home. 
 
 The night was cloudy and dark, and when the twilight had all 
 gone they heard something going over the roof which sounded like 
 a team hitched to a load of slabs dragging along. 
 
 All three were terribly frightened although they afterwards 
 stoutly maintained that they were not. The noise continued, at 
 intervals for more than half an hour, then subsided. Captain Ben. 
 always kept a fine stallion and it was in the barn at that time. All 
 at once there was a tremendous noise at the stable. It was fearful! 
 Sam. L. Merrill, then quite young, belonged to the troop, and he 
 went and got his sword and buckled it on and loaded his great 
 horse pistols. Just then a cat jumped up on to the window stool, 
 and he cocked his pistol to fire but the cat jumped down too quick 
 for him. Who shall go to the barn to see the horse? No one dared 
 to go alone and no one dared to stay in the house alone, and so 
 they all went to the barn together. They found the horse all right, 
 not a particle of trouble, and they all returned together. Shortly 
 after the same terrible noise begaii again and along in the night 
 there was also screeching in the air, and two or three times sharp 
 flashes of light, like the flashing of a witch's eyes, gleamed through 
 
 * It is said Mrs. Weelss bewitched Mrs. Eunice Pillsbui-y, also Mrs. McCounell 
 of Piermont. Mrs. McConnell scalded Mrs. Weeks by scalding a call' that Mrs. 
 W. had bewitched. 
 
436 HISTOBY OF WABRBN. 
 
 the darkness. All this continued until the first cock crew and 
 then instantly there was silence. Elderly men and women telling 
 the story in an undertone, always believed that Mrs. "Weeks with 
 a crowd of old crones, her chums, were thumping and crashing 
 with their broom-sticks on the roofs that night. 
 
 Mrs. Weeks, with her husbaud, once went down to Mr. Na- 
 thaniel dough's after some flax, but was unable to procure it. 
 She was mad as usual, and went to the backside of the room, laid 
 her head upon the table and closed her eyes. Immediately there 
 was a terrible noise at the baru. The men folks rushed out and 
 found that a two years old colt had reached over into the sheep 
 pen and lifted two Jambs out with his teeth and killed them. He 
 was now working hard to catch a third sheep. Weeks went back 
 to the house on the run, shoved his wife on to the floor, then told 
 her to behave herself. To the credit of the colt it is told that he 
 quieted right down and never injured a sheep afterwards. All the 
 old ladies said that Mrs. Weeks was raising the d^l for revenge. 
 
 Uncle Tom. Pillsbury, as he was familliarly called, got Mrs. 
 Weeks to make three shirts for him. There was some trouble 
 about the pay. He went down conntrj' to work* and when the 
 first one was washed and hung out, it was mysteriously spirited 
 away. The same happened to the other two, not another thing 
 being lost from the line. Mr. Pillsbury said he knew Mrs. 
 Weeks had them all in Warren. 
 
 But Simeon Smith, as we have intimated in another book of 
 this history, was the great wizard of this mountain valley. His 
 fame preceded him, and it is said he acquired his powers down 
 countiy. When the revolutionary war was going on he was in 
 meeting one Sabbath, but all at once he left the house. Out of 
 doors he said he could not stop at meeting for a great battle was 
 
 * " Ride and Tie." — It was customary in old times for yoimg men in all this 
 iipper region to go down coiintry to work during the season. They nearly always 
 *' footed it," olten a dozen or tweutj^ in a party, away to Newbiiryport, Salem, and 
 Boston, and would come home agam late in the fall with money in their pockets. 
 Sometimes two young men would buy a borse and tliey would " ride and tie," as 
 it was called. One would ride ahead a few miles then tie the horse beside the 
 road and push on afoot, when the other coming up, would mount the horse, pass 
 his companion, get a mile or two ahead, then tie the horse again and walk on. 
 Thus they would walk and ride, accomplishing the journey in a 'very short time, 
 and when they had arrived at their destination would sell the horse for a good 
 price. 
 
DEAF CALEB'S PERFORMANCES. 437 
 
 being fought that day. This statement was afterwards found to be 
 true and Simeon Smith was looked upon as a wonderful man. 
 
 One day he mounted his horse to go up town, and before he 
 proceeded a rod got lost in one of his second sights. He seemed 
 to notice nothing around him but sat in the saddle in a strange 
 fit of abstraction as if gazing upon the revels of fiends incarnate 
 in some far off world. The horse seemed to behold the same 
 scene also ; and great drops of sweat trickled from every part of 
 its body. At last Mr. S. roused himself and strove by every means 
 in his power to make the horse proceed, but in vain ; and finally 
 weary in the attempt, he turned the animal into the pasture and 
 relinquished the journey, much to the surprise of several persons 
 who' witnessed the scene.* 
 
 Simeon Smith was a great rebel, ardently espousing the cause 
 of the colonists, and hated the British. Stevens Merrill was slightly 
 inclined to favor King George, and was strongly opposed to pay- 
 ing taxes to carry on the war for independence. Simeon Smith 
 was constable and tax collector, and compelled Mr. Merrill to pay 
 as we have before narrated. From that time there was a slight 
 enmity between the two families. 
 
 Mr. Merrill had a deaf boy Caleb, and one time after the war 
 was over he began to act strangely. He was hoeing in the meadow 
 one daj"-, over the river, when suddenly there was a tenible noise 
 as of the wings of a mighty bird, then an awful screeching. 
 Joseph Merrill, his brother, who was with him, although he looked 
 everywhere, could see nothing, and deaf Caleb of course could 
 hear nothing ; but he dropped his hoe and ran for home in a terri- 
 ble fright. "When interrogated, he replied by signs that Simeon 
 Smith was after him. The enmity, between the two families 
 slightly increased.! 
 
 A few days after deaf Caleb began to act in the strangest 
 
 * Simeon Smith once said he wished he possessed the power that his mother 
 and sister Nab had ; that he had seen them both on the lug pole in the fire-place 
 over the lire, spmning linen, many a time. 
 
 t 'Squire .Jonathan, .Joseph, and deaf Caleb, all sons of Stevens Men'ill, had 
 been over the river digging potatoes. There was no bridge then, and coming home 
 with a load they had to ford the I'iver, which was shoal. The three younemen and 
 two women were on the cart, and when they came to the water eas;e deaf Caleb 
 told them by signs that Simeon Smith woiild tip up the cart and dump them all 
 into the stream before they got across. To prevent this they sat on the front end so 
 that it could not tip up ; but, strange to relate, before they got half way across up 
 it went, and potatoes, men, and women all fell into the water. 
 
438 HISTOKY OF WARBEN. 
 
 inaunei\ He would run up the sides of the house or barn like a 
 squirrel, and would traverse the ridge-pole of the highest roofs 
 with the greatest ease, a thing he was never known to do before. 
 At times he would seem to experience the most excruciating tor- 
 ture, and would writhe for hours in agony. When asked who 
 tormented him, he would go with an individual and point out the 
 house in which he said his tormentor lived, but never in any 
 instance could he be persuaded to enter it. 
 
 Thus it continued until at last some of Mr. Merrill's neighbors 
 induced him — although he was incredulous as to believing in 
 witches — to try some experiments upon the boy thinking to make 
 his tormentor cease from troubling him. Accordingly some of the 
 boy's urine was procured, corked up iu a bottle and placed under 
 the hearth of the fire-place. Immediately after Simeon Smith 
 was taken suddenly with a violent bleeding at the nose, and for a 
 long time it could not be stopped. It finally was, and upon look- 
 ing at the bottle the cork was found to be out and the urine had 
 run therefrom. The boy began to cut the same antics as before 
 and his tortures were nearly doubled. Again some of his urine 
 was procured and carefully corked in the bottle. The wizard bled 
 at the nose again, the cork got out again and the bleeding stopped. 
 
 Then the boy behaved worse than ever and acted in a manner 
 truly terrible. This could not be borne long and they determined 
 to try a more serious remedy. They procured a quantity of deaf 
 Caleb's blood, placed it in the bottle, and as a precaution against 
 its becoming uncorked, a small, sharp sword was placed in the 
 cork. Samuel Merrill of the East-parte regions witnessed the 
 whole proceeding. 
 
 It was evening when this was done, and shortly after deaf 
 Caleb went to bed. In the morning when he awoke he seemed to 
 be in great glee, and immediately informed the family by signs 
 that Simeon Smith was dead. Wonderful that the boy should 
 know it; but it was true nevertheless. Upon examining the bot- 
 tle it was found that the sword had penetrated through the cork to 
 the blood. Tradition says deaf Caleb was no more troubled. 
 
 Simeon Smith had a great apple-tree that stood by Eed-oak 
 hill road. It bore excellent fruit and the boys robbed it every 
 year. He often said, " Bury me under that tree and I will take care 
 
A divine's opinion of the witches. 439 
 
 of the apples." His Meads did so, and the boys never stole fruit 
 there again. Henceforth, to. the present day, the apples are the 
 crabbedest, bitterest things that ever grevr.* 
 
 Samuel Knight had a pious belief in witches, but said he was 
 born uuder such a star that they had no power over him. Elder 
 Peck, a Methodist divine of good sense, once told him a story to 
 illustrate what he thought of such things; but it made Mr. K. 
 very mad. 
 
 Said the elder, " A man believed he was ridden by a witch, 
 and the belief affected him so much that he grew very poor. A 
 friend advised the witch ridden man when he was saddled and 
 bi'idled again, to gnaw the post to which he was tied and ease him- 
 self about the same, as a horse would when he had been hitched a 
 long time." The man did so, and when he waked in the morning 
 he fonnd that he had bit- the bed-post terribly, and that the bed 
 itself was in a most awful filthy condition. f 
 
 Of course the reader can judge, like Elder Peck, how much 
 of these stories of supernatural events is true, and make every 
 allowance for the prejudices of those times. For ages the belief in 
 ghostsj and goblins had prevailed; indeed the individuals who 
 did not believe in them were considered hej.'etics. Surely did not 
 the Bible teach that there were witches. For many hundred years 
 England had an established code of laws against witchci'aft, and it 
 was considered a capital offence. Thirty thousand persons were 
 put to death in Europe in the sixteenth century for being witches. 
 
 * Deaf Caleb leaned against the apple-tree while Simeon Smith's grave was 
 being filled up, and wh«jn the mound was rounded off, jumped upon it intimating 
 that he would keep him down forever. 
 
 t James Dow, lilje Mr. Knight and a good many others, believed in witches; 
 also that the world neither turned over nor went round the sun. Said he, '■ If the 
 world did turn over wouldnot my^ mill-pond spill out ?" He would get u]3 and tarn his 
 shoes the other side up in the night when he had the cramp. He said that was a 
 cure. 
 
 t Mr. John Whitalter once believed he saw a ghost on the east side of War- 
 ren common. He lived at the time in the East-parte regions four miles away, but 
 had a very bad habit of drinljing hard and stopping out late nights. Follss thought 
 it was a shame, and George Bixby and Mr. Gould determined they would scare 
 Whitalier and make him stav at home. So they got Lemuel Merrill, son of Joseph 
 Merrill, inn-keeper, to dress himself up as a ghost and stand behind a large pine 
 tree. When Whifcaker arrived at the spot, Lemuel, the ghost, stepped forth. Whit- 
 aker had heard that if one asked in the name of the Lord what the ghost wanted, the 
 apparition would immediately disappear. He put the question and his ghostship 
 vanished instantly. Whitaker was terribly frightened, ran back across the com- 
 mon shouting, " fiixby I Bixby 1 Gould I Gould !" so loud that he was heard a mile. 
 He trembled all over, paid Bixby nine shillings to carry him home and did not 
 show himself at the stores or taverns for months after. But he was awful mad 
 when he found out the trick. 
 
440 HISTORY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 The learned Baxter, who lived iu the seventeenth century, consid- 
 ered all persons as obdurate Sadducees who did not believe in it, 
 and Sir Matthew Hale, one of the brightest ornaments of the Eng- 
 lish bar, tried and convicted several persons for the crime of 
 witchcraft. Even Blackstone, the profound commentator of English 
 common law, swallowed and believed implicitly this great hum- 
 bug of the church. 
 
 But the hallucinations of other generations are passing away 
 and few are the persons at the present time who indulge in the 
 belief of goblins, ghosts, and witches. True it is that the me- 
 diums, claiiToyants, and cabinet gentlemen bring to mind the diab- 
 lerie of old Salem, when our fathers, the good puritans, made fools 
 of themselves and hung thirty old women as witches ; but such 
 things don't go for much except as a means of speculation in 
 money matters. They are first rate for that. 
 
 The dwellers in a new settlement, far away from the older 
 towns, were just the ones to indulge iu the belief of the supernat- 
 ural. Around them were thousands of old solitudes ; and as the 
 deepening shades of night cast her sombre mantle over the forest, 
 it required no active imagination to picture the forms of huge 
 giants stalking away among the trees ; to see numerous jack-o'- 
 lanterns gliding noislessly along to guide the lone traveler onward 
 until he was lost in the dark intricate windings of some dismal old 
 swamp ; to hear the infernal music of old crones as they charged 
 in huge battalions through the tops of the lofty trees mounted 
 upon their never tiring steeds, — broom-sticks. But they are all 
 gone. No more do we see the individuals who indulge in such 
 fancies, and although there were such, and they still live in history, 
 we have little right to laugh at,them. If our ancestoi-s did indulge 
 in them, still they had exalted notions of piety, and did thousands 
 of good deeds which latter it would be well if we would imitate. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THJ£ FIRST STORE IN WARREN AliTD ITS SUCCESSORS, AND OP A 
 ROARING, RAGING CANAL THAT NEVER WAS BUILT. 
 
 The first store in "Warren was built near Josliua Merrill's, 
 sometime in the last century. It was kept by Samuel Fellows,* 
 and after trading a short time in English and "West India goods he 
 was taken crazy. He would sometimes leave home and wander to 
 the neighboring towns; and when his friends went for him it 
 would be extremely difficult to influence him to return. At one 
 time he went to HaverhiU and a young man was sent after him. 
 He found him at the tavern, and to make good friends, asked him 
 if he would have flip or brandy before going home. Fellows 
 looked up sharply and said he guessed he would have brandy 
 while the flip was making. 
 
 To him succeeded first Charles Bowles, then George W. Copp, 
 who traded for several years just at the close of the eighteenth 
 century. Col. Obadiah Clement at this period, 1825, a very old 
 man, used to relate what he saw in this store. He said it was a 
 long building on the east side of the old Coos road, not- the turn- 
 pike, just at the foot of the Beech-hill aiid fifty rods south of the 
 summit of the Blue ridge. It had large windows with Shutters, 
 and door wide enough to roll a hogshead of molasses through ; 
 door and shutters always used as advertising boards for our mer- 
 chant himself and the public generally. Here, in winter, the peo- 
 ple would congregate, and with them he would sit by the old 
 fashioned fire and talk over the news and pass away the hours. 
 
 ' Samuel Fellows came to Warren in 1789. 
 
442 HISTORY OF WAKEEN. 
 
 He said he was there all one day when it suowed so hard that look- 
 ing out the hack window he could hardl)"^ see Mt. Helen, much 
 less the eastern mountains. First the flakes came down slowly 
 like feathers shading and mottling the sky. Then the storm in- 
 creased, the wind blazed and racketed through the narrow space 
 between the house and the hill and catching up the falling snow 
 sent it twirling and pitching skimble-skamble, and anon slowly 
 and more regularly as in a minuet, and as they came nearer the 
 earth they were borne by the current in a horizontal line like long 
 quick spun silver threads far adown the landscape. As he watched 
 he saw a flock of snow buntings, their white sides flashing before 
 the eyes, hurried on by the wind. They had come down to avoid 
 the dark night of the Arctic continent, the place where they were 
 hatched. Black brook, the Mikaseota, was ice-bound, covered 
 with snow, and scarce a murmur was heard from beneath its white 
 mantle. 
 
 The post-rider was snowed up that day; he had not got 
 through from Plymouth yet, and 'Squire Abel Merrill was without 
 the little seven-by-nine paper which he took, and the visitors at 
 the store lacked their customary news, which was always months 
 old before they got it. 
 
 But late in the afternoon it cleared ofi", the sun shone out, and 
 in the thick woods beyond the Mikaseota he saw a pair of nut- 
 hatches, several golden crested kinglets, a downy wood-pecker, 
 two or three brown creepers, and half a dozen chickadees, birds 
 that bide the New England winter. What pleasant music they 
 make 1 For a wonder, from the cluster of great hemlocks high up 
 on the side of Mt. Helen, came the cawing of crows as if they 
 were glad to see the sunshine, and that the winds had gone down. 
 
 While it snowed that day Col. Clement and his friends amused 
 themselves reading the notices posted on the doors and shutters ; 
 one was a sale on execution, another informed them that beeswax, 
 flax, skins, bristles, and old pewter, would be taken in exchange 
 for goods ; and another read as follows : — 
 
 " WATtREN, May 18th, 1799. 
 Sir; — 
 
 I send you the following description of a dark brown gelding 
 
 horse, taken up. by me, damage feasant, he appears to be about six 
 
THE OLD COUNTRY STORE. 443 
 
 years old, is a' natural pacer, mane hangs on the near side, well 
 shod, and is about fourteen hands high— the oner is desired to 
 prove property, pay charges and take him away. 
 
 AMOS LITTLE. 
 A true copy: Attest, 
 
 Jonathan Merrill, 
 
 Town Clerk." 
 
 Sitting by the Are, he saw a motley array of dry and .fancy 
 goods, crockery, hardware, and groceries. On the right were rolls 
 of kerseymeres, calimancoes, fustians, shalloons, antiloons, and 
 serges, of all colors, purple and blue calicoes, a few ribbons, tick- 
 lenburgs, and buckrams. On the left were cuttoes, Barlow knives, 
 iron candlesticks, jewsharps, black-ball, and bladders of snuflF. 
 On naked beams above were suspended weavers' skans, wheel 
 heads, an^ on a high shelf running quite around the walls was cot- 
 ton warp of all numbers. The back portion of the building showed 
 to him a traffic far more fashionable and universal in New England 
 than it is now; and the row of pipes, hogsheads and barrels indi- 
 cated its extent. Above these hung a tap-borer, faucets, and inter- 
 spersed on the widl were bunches of chalk scores in perpendicular 
 and transverse lines. Near by was a small counter covered with 
 tumblers, toddy sticks, and sugar bowl, and a few ragged will-gill 
 looking men, either from old Coventry, " Pearmount," or the land 
 of Wentwoi'th, (of course Warren men didn't drink, they never 
 have,) were standing there mixing and bolting down liquors. 
 
 The colonel said that a favorite and common drink at that 
 period was flip, which was made in this wise : a mug was nekrly 
 filled with malt beer, sweetened with sugar, then a heated iron 
 called a loggerhead was thrust into it, which produced a rapid 
 foam. Instantly a quantity of the " ardent," — a lialf pint of rum 
 was allowed for a quart mug, — was dashed in, a little nutmeg was 
 grated on the top, and the whole was quaffed off by two men or 
 more, as they could bear it, which had the effect often to set them 
 at loggerheads. Price, twenty-five cents a mug. 
 
 Another drink was toddy, which was made of rum and water 
 well sweetened. A stick six or eight inches long was used to stir 
 
444 HISTORY OF WAEKEN. 
 
 up the delightful beverage, called a toddy-stick. Price, six cents a. 
 glass. 
 
 Another favorite drink was egg-nog, which was composed of 
 an egg beaten and stirred together with sugar. The stick used for 
 this purpose was split at the end and a transverse piece of wood 
 inserted, which was rapidly whirled around backward and forward 
 between the palms of the hands. Skillful men made graceful 
 flourishes with toddy and egg-nog sticks, in those days. Price, 
 a sixpence a mug.* 
 
 In the farther end was the counting-room with another large 
 fire-place in one corner, a high desk, round backed arm chairs and 
 a little good wine in a keg. 
 
 But good-bye to Col. Obadiah and to the old first store, which is 
 a sample, contents, drinks and all, of all the others down to the 
 time of which we write, viz : the close of Warren's second generar 
 tion; for Geo. W. Copp sold out to Abel Merrill, who traded in 
 1804, and then the building was converted into a dwelling-house. 
 Trade in "Warren by no means stopped on account of this 
 sale. Benjamin Merrill, son of 'Squire Abel, built another store at 
 the forks of the road where one ran away north, to Coventry, and 
 the other over the Height-o'-land. Although many families have 
 lived in this second store, and under its roof your humble historian 
 drew his first breath, it is still occupied for trade, and stands nearly 
 in the same place. In it Benj. Merrill traded till about 1812, t 
 although it was much disturbed by witches as we have already 
 narrated, when he sold it out to Lemuel Keezer, Jr. Mr. Keezer, 
 father of Ferdinand and Fayette, died of the spotted fever, and 
 the property passed into the hands of Michael Preston, who traded 
 about three years. Preston having married Mary Merrill, was 
 
 * Sling was sugar, warm water, and whisky, mixed. Sometimes lialf a 
 craolier was toasted and put witli it. Tliis was called a toad. Price for the whole 
 6J cents. 
 
 t Captain Ben. Merrill started to go home one night, after closing up, with a 
 large 7»(im in his hand for family use. Before he left the yard he found he had for- 
 got something, laid down the ham in a feed-box for horses, and went back. He 
 was gone sometime, and when he returned the ham was missing. He never said a 
 word, was as silent as the grave, for he thought the thief would show himself in 
 time. One day, six months afterwards, aneiglibor said to him standing in the store 
 door, " Captain, did you ever find out who stole that ham from you ?" " Yes," said 
 Capt. Ben., " 1 know who it was, you are the very fellow ; walk m and pay for it, or 
 you'll catch it." It is needless to say that the money was forthcoming at once, and 
 the culprit acknowledged that he could not keep his mouth quite as close as the 
 captain. 
 
OLD TIME TRADERS. 446 
 
 anxious to move awaj^ to Canada, and sold out to Amos Burton. 
 The latter having high ideas of living, changed the Benj. Merrill 
 store into a dwelling house, and built another store directly oppo- 
 site where is now a peg-factory and wheelwright shop by the pond. 
 Others who traded in the latter place are, respectively, Samuel L. 
 Men-ill, William Merrill, Anson Merrill, and William "Wells, who 
 was famous for building up rousing fires, raising the windows and 
 playing lively airs on his fiddle for the amusement of Mr. Asa 
 Thurston and George W. Prescott, who were making music about 
 this time hammering away in the cooper's shop that stood where 
 the old first school-house was located on the river bank opposite. 
 "Wells was succeeded by John T. Sanborn, who traded at or about 
 the time of the chronological order of this chapter. Others who have 
 traded in town we will mention in the Appendix, a very necessary 
 thing for tins history, for what would it be good for without one? 
 
 Mercantile business was good about this time, for the town 
 was grow'ing, and it cost so much for freight that our traders, and 
 in fact all the others in the regions round about, began seriously to 
 consider how they could get their goods brought to their door at a 
 cheaper rate. Considering culminated in acting; a petition was 
 circulated and signed by our merchants and manj^ citizens and nu- 
 merous signatures were also obtained down the valley. It was 
 then presented to the legislature asking that a roaring and raging 
 canal might be incorporated. The General Court could not refuse 
 so respectable a request and two canals through the central portion 
 of New Hampshire were immediately chartered. One was to 
 commence at Dover, thence by way of Lake Winnepisseogee to the 
 Pemigewassett at Bridgewater ; the other followed up the Merri- 
 mack to Bridgewater, and uniting with the first, followed up the 
 Asquamchumauke to Warren Summit, and from there down the 
 OUverian to the Connecticut. It was fashionable to construct 
 canals in those days, and the great canals of New York, of the 
 West, and of southern New England, were then in the course of 
 being built. The United States government also assisted and sent 
 distinguished engineers to all parts of the country where they were 
 needed. 
 
 Gen. McDuflfee, who laid out the turnpike, now surveyed the 
 canal through our valley, and spent weeks in Warren trying to 
 
446 HISTORY or WAKEEN. 
 
 overcome the obstrnotions that the Summit presented. Capt. Gra- 
 ham of the United States army assisted him, and the general, the 
 captain and his lady, with their assistants, boarded a long time at 
 Joseph Merrill's inn. 
 
 The chief difficulty which they found in the building of the 
 canal was the inadequate supply of water upon the Summit. Two 
 routes were surveyed through Warren, one up Black brook, the 
 Mikaseota, and the otlier up Berry brook. K the Black brook 
 route was adopted, water was to be taken from Tarleton lake and 
 made to nin winding round the hills to the place required. This 
 would be a costly job. If the route up Berry brook was preferred, 
 the Asquamclmmauke river was to be tapped near the East-parte 
 school-house and canalled round Knight hill to the Summit, thus 
 affording an adequate supply of water for the numerous locks 
 needed. Gen. McDufTee reported that with suiflcient money all 
 the difficulties could be overcome, and that either route was feasi- 
 ble. "Which he preferred we never could learn. 
 
 And now the canal would surely be built, goods, wares, and 
 merchandise would come cheap, population would greatly increase, 
 and prosperity would bless the land. Alas ! the bright dream was 
 never realized. Money was hard to be got, a sufficient amount of 
 stock could not be disposed of, and we are sorry to tell what every- 
 body knows, the canals were never built and Warren's traders 
 were doomed to disappointment. 
 
 But before we close this entertaining book and say good-bye to 
 Warren's second generation, we must briefly mention one impor- 
 tant event which partly grew out of a desire to trade in Warren 
 and enjoy the benefits of the great canal. The people residing in 
 the south portion of old Coventry, now Benton, having said desire 
 and being very poorly accommodated in town affairs, were anxious 
 to be annexed to Warren and made application to our free and 
 independent democracy for that purpose. 
 
 This happened in the selectmenship of Enoch E. Weeks, Mo- 
 ses H. Clement, and Samuel L. Merrill. These rulers called an 
 assembly of the people, otherwise a town meeting, and the ques- 
 tion was discussed and voted upon. Maj. Daniel Patch modestly 
 presented the claims of the dwellers of the Summit, and of High 
 
ANNEXATION PKOPOSALS REJECTED. 447 
 
 street.* Moses H. Clement, one of that year's triumviri, was the 
 chief opposition speaker. He maintained that the legal voters of 
 Warren were now nearly strong enough to send a representative 
 themselves, (they had previously been joined to Piermont and 
 Coventry for that purpose,) that the land to be annexed was very 
 poor, that the people were poverty stricken and inclined to whisky 
 drinking, and that Warren would not be benefited. 
 
 His counsels prevailed, although we wish they had not, and 
 Warren lost, perhaps forever, the right of jurisdiction over the 
 fine and luscious blueberry fields of Owl's head, the millions 
 of feet of excellent timber growing upon Mt. Black, and the noble 
 and majestic summit of the lofty Moosehillock, to which so many 
 pilgrims annually journey. 
 
 * This section of Beaton should be joined to Wan-en, the Benton Flats should 
 partly go to Haverhill, while North Benton and East Landaff would make a beauti- 
 ful town of Bentou with its centre at "Uanville." 
 
 East Piermont should also be joined to Warren, where it would be so much 
 better accommodated. 
 
MAP OF MODERN "WAREEN. 
 
BOOK VII. 
 
 which book is but jl continttatlolsr op books v. and vi. and 
 contahsts the histouy of the third generation of war- 
 ren's WHITE inhabitants. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW gold, silver, and diamonds were discovered in warren, 
 
 AND OF several INDIVIDUALS WHO GOT IMMENSELY RICH MIN- 
 ING, ESPECIALLY IN THEIR IMAGINATIONS. 
 
 A.S the third generation of Warren's white citizens are step- 
 ping upon the stage, and at the commencement of the period when 
 this last book of our great history opens, a discovery of mighty 
 importance was made in our liamlet. Mr. True Merrill, who lived 
 upon the Height-o'-land, found upon the north bank of Ore-hill 
 brook, what was first known as the " Copper mine," then as the 
 " "Warren silver-lead mine," and latterly as the " Warren zinc 
 mine." 
 
 It was a rich deposit of minerals. Dr. Charles T. Jackson, a 
 great geologist from Boston, came on and examined it, made a 
 report such as all well paid geologists know how to make, namely 
 a favorable one, and a compan)' was formed, stock sold, and the 
 buyers of the stock it is said were sold too. 
 
 Ml". H. Bradford was the head and front of said company. 
 
 O* 
 
450 HISTOHT OF WAKREN. 
 
 They worked for a time, made a great hole in the side of the moun- 
 tain ; but not a cent to put in tlieir pockets, and eventually failed 
 up; the usual fate of most great mining companies. 
 
 Then as time rolled on for a decade of years several small but 
 terribly enterprising companies wrought the mine on Ore hill. At 
 intervals visions of riches, silvery and golden, would flash before 
 the eyes of individual speculators and operators, only to vanish 
 like a phantom, and as a result every one of the little companies 
 failed. 
 
 About 1840 this vein of ore fell into the hands of a certain 
 Mr. Brooks. We never had the pleasure of his acquaintance; but 
 "Warren miners say that they knew him, that he was like the dog 
 in the manger ; that he would neither work the mine nor let any 
 one else ; and that he believed that the property was richer than the 
 silver mines of Mexico or South America. 
 
 But after a great deal of diplomacy a heavy company, headed 
 by Mr. Baldwin of Boston, got possession of this wonderful deposit 
 of minerals and ores. They went to work and Ore hill glowed 
 and sweat. 
 
 They built half a dozen dwelling-houses — a little village — 
 a mill, put in stamps for crushing ore, set up a steam engine, pro- 
 cured a large number of separators, erected a whim house, sunk 
 the shaft in the copper mine a hundred feet deep, drifted north 
 from the foot of the shaft into the mountain a hundred and fifty 
 feet further in the black blende and galena, raised hundreds of 
 tons of ore, crushed, separated, and sent it to market, and then 
 failed. Too bad! Mr. H. H. Sheldon* was the superintendent, 
 and Captain Samuel Truscott, a Cornwall miner, was the overseer 
 in the shaft. They worked the mine for silver, copper, and lead, 
 but it paid not a cent. 
 
 Ore hill slumbered then for a time, and the well wishers of 
 the mine wei-c sad. 
 
 Captain Edgar came next. He drove an adit from the new 
 highway a hundred feet into the hill, then abandoned it and the 
 mine too, after sending a hundred tons or so of ore to England to 
 see whether or not it was good for anything. 
 
 * When H . H. tiheklon, Esq., had charge of the mine, the town hnilt the voad 
 from the old turnpike, at the fork6 of Ore hill stream up to the works. It made a 
 great saving in distance and tVeightage. 
 
MINING OPEEATIONS. 451 
 
 Then the mill and the engine were sold at auction, the shaft 
 and the drift filled up with water ; there was no more clicking of 
 hammers nor ringing of drills, and the fires of the forge went out. 
 
 About five years after, Captain Edgar came back and com- 
 menced work again, this time for zinc. He set up a small station- 
 ary engine to pump the mine and raise the ore, and put his men to 
 work in the large chamber at the end of the drift. The ore raised 
 was made into a kiln and set on fire by burning a large pile of 
 wood underneath to desulphurize it. This was done to save weight 
 in freight as from every thirty tons of ore about ten tons of sul- 
 phur was expelled. After cooling it was put up in bags and sent 
 to Pennsylvania to be worked into metallic zinc. Captain Edgar 
 suspended work, and the mine is now silent and deserted again.* 
 More than a hundred thousand dollars have been expended upon 
 it. We hope a hundred thousand more will be spent, and that 
 somebody will make an immense fortune there. 
 
 One good thing has happened by reason of milling on Ore 
 hill. A large and beautiful cavern has been formed, the most 
 extensive in the State, and hundreds of persons visit it when the 
 depth of water will permit. « 
 
 From Mr. True Merrill's wonderful discovery fiowed another 
 result; a mining and mineral fever immediately began to prevail 
 and difierent individuals discovered first a small vein of copper 
 pyrites, distant forty rods south west from the discovery of True 
 Merrill, then two and one-half miles north east, copper and pyrites 
 in small veins; and one hundred yards north Of the first mine an 
 extensive vein of black blende, zinc ore, mixed with copper 
 pyrites and galena. A few years after, copper, beryls, and epidote 
 in large masses, were found upon "Warren Summit. Subsequently 
 James Clement discovered copper, iron pyrites, nickel, antimony, 
 arsenic, and beautiful garnets by Martin brook on the south east 
 slope of Sentinel mountain, and Albert M. Barber found gold in 
 Hurricane brook that comes down from Mount Carr. Also James 
 Clement found gold in Martin brook near the spot where the gar- 
 nets are located. And afterwards the same gentleman found that 
 the Asquamchnmauke, the stream by which the Indian chief, 
 
 * Capt. James Edgar resumed work in the fall of 1869 and suspended business in 
 the winter of 18i0. Now at the end of 1870 he has commenced worl£ again. 
 
452 HISTOKT OF WAKKEN. 
 
 Wateruomee, and Captain Baker fought, and on which Stinson 
 died, was far richer than either in golden sands. 
 
 Besides these discoveries others have been made in a most 
 wonderful manner. It is told how a party of tourists from New 
 York, visited Moosehillock mountain. There they fell in with a 
 spiritualist who went into a fit, and looking with shut eyes towards 
 Sentinel mountain saw fourteen different mines upon that gi-een 
 wooded eminence, the best of which was located at a certain 
 clump of spruces. The oracle was believed, a company was organ- 
 ized, and they actually worked a year and a half at the spot indi- 
 cated.* They indeed found iron and some other minerals, but 
 nothing that would pay, and the undertaking was abandoned 
 after a'useless expenditure of fiom five to six thousand dollars. 
 Another individual, probably a cousin to the tourists, paid one 
 thousand dollars for a wortlilcss piece of land upon which some 
 " golden specimens " had been deposited. It was a regularly 
 " salted claim," and the buyer was out and swindled to the extent 
 of his investment. 
 
 So successful have been the gold prospectors and the men 
 with divining rods that a large number of other minerals and pre- 
 cious stones have been found in Warren ; the most interesting of 
 which are rutile, plumbago, molybdenum, cadmium, scapolite, 
 tremolite, talc, touiinaline, beryl, apatite, garnet, idocrase, epidote, 
 brown hematite, hyalite, cinnamon stone, quartz crystals in great 
 variety, besides others of less importance and all tlie rocks common 
 to New Hampshire. It is already known that forty-one different 
 kinds of specimens aie bedded iu the neighborhood of Sentinel 
 mountain ;t but not content with these, several enthusiastic min- 
 eralogists, with a wise look and a sly manner, aver that platinum, 
 mercury, tin, and rough diamonds likewise abound, although as 
 yet they fail to produce the samples. 
 
 Some also there are who in an undertone will tell you how 
 they know of a mine up in the muuutains where they can cut out 
 pure lead with a jackknif'e or axe just right to run into bullets — 
 Obadiah Clement and Joseph Patch got lead of that kind there 
 
 * They drove a shaft a hundred feet into the mountain. Capt. Trnscott had 
 charge ol this job. 
 
 t For a list of these see Appendix. 
 
WONDERFUL MINERAL DEPOSITS. 453 
 
 when they were hunting — how they can And mica in sheets a foot 
 square, worth its weight iu topazes, sapphires, and rubies, and 
 how they know the very mountain stream and the stone monument 
 beside it, where Roger's ranger picked up nuggets of pure gold as 
 large as robins' eggs. Yet they will not show the places for fear 
 they cannot buy the land, or that they will in some way be robbed 
 of all their hidden treasures. But we. will not vouch for their 
 statements, and it is only safe for this history to say that no other 
 spot on earth contains so great a variety of minerals, in so limited 
 an area, as our town of Warren. 
 
 But if all the mines in Warren have failed as yet, still it is 
 safe to say that one person has made a profit out of the minerals. 
 Mr. James Clement keeps an abundance of them to sell, and hun- 
 dreds of people have derived real pleasure in buying and examin- 
 ing them. " Jim " enjoys himself and improves his health, he 
 says, when with basket, cold chisel, and miner's hammer slung on 
 his shoulder, he takes a tramp through the valley and over the hills 
 seeking to find all the metals, minerals, and precious stones known 
 in the books, in this, as he alleges, " the most wonderful mineral 
 deposit on earth." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW THE BEERY BKOOK ROAD WAS BUILT AND A PATH ON TO 
 MOOSEHILLOOK WAS CUT, WITH A PLEASANT ACCOUNT OF SEV- 
 ERAL INDIVIDUAIS WHO NICKNAMED EACH OTHER IN THE 
 HAPPIEST MANNER. 
 
 The people in all this northern country were disappointed 
 in the failure to build the canal. They wanted an easy route to 
 the seaboard. The old Coos road " was a hard road to travel," 
 and the turnpike wliich superseded it, although nearly straight 
 and very well made, being over hills and lofty mountains, all 
 known as the Height-o'-land, was a very difl3.cult highway on 
 which to ti'ansport heavy freight. 
 
 Gen. McDuflfee's survey had one important result, it informed 
 the world that there Was an easier route than the turnpike and that 
 was the one through the Oliverian notch. Individuals from "Wells 
 River and northern Vermont, came down and examined this pass 
 through the hills and went back with a glowing report of the ease 
 with which a road could be built through it. They sent messen- 
 gers and letters to Warren urging the inhabitants to build it ; but 
 our little democracy was violently opposed to the enterprise for 
 the reason that it would subject them to much expense, and as it 
 passed through an uninhabited section it would cost a large sum 
 each year to keep it in repair. Besides, the landlords upon the 
 turnpike knew it would kill them, and they worked against it with 
 all their might. 
 
 But something must be done for the clamor came down even 
 
THE BERRY BROOK ROAD. 455 
 
 from the boundaries of Canada saying, " Build the Berry brook 
 road." So an assembly of the people was held in the selectmensliip 
 of Moses H. Clement, Samuel L. Merrill, and Samuel Memll, July 
 22d, 1834, and Nathaniel Clough, Solomon Cotton, and Samuel 
 Bixby were chosen a committee to examine and explore all routes 
 thought proper for a highway through the town. 
 
 The committee acted. They went up the banks of the Mikas- 
 eota or Black brook, and down Berry brook valley. "Whether or 
 not they went over the low pass between "Waternomee and Cush- 
 man mountains to "Woodstock, or climbed the old route surveyed 
 by Abel Merrill and Joseph Patch by Glen ponds to Trecothick, 
 we are unable to say, for the committee made no report and never 
 intended to ; the only object was delay. 
 
 The people of the upper country waited, then became impa- 
 tient, finally came to the conclusion that our little democracy did 
 not intend to do anything, and getting mad went before the grand 
 jury at Haverhill, and got "Warren's public highways indicted, as 
 Col. Obadiah Clement did once before, and the court ordered a 
 large fine to be imposed upon our modest town, to be paid in work 
 upon her bad roads. The citizens were disgusted and indignant, 
 but they worked out the fine. 
 
 The subject of a new road was also presented to the court. 
 After a patient hearing of the matter that august tribunal decided 
 that the road should be built through Berry brook valley, and 
 appointed a committee to lay it out. They immediately proceeded 
 with their work, bushing it through and setting the stakes upon 
 the west bank. Then the court ordered the town of "Warren to 
 build it. 
 
 "When it was evident that the work must be performed, and 
 that they could no longer avoid it, an assembly of the citizens was 
 held on the 8th of December, 1834, and it was voted that the road 
 should be built. They would not fight the court in the matter. So 
 they chose Solomon Cotton, Samuel L. Merrill, and Joseph Bixby 
 a committee to carry the work through, and authorized them to 
 raise five hundred dollars to commence with. But this sum hard- 
 ly made a commencement, only cutting the trees and digging 
 the stumps, nothing more. Then it was let out in difi'erent sec- 
 tions to several individuals, Maj. Daniel Patch and Ms son Joseph 
 
456 HISTORY OF ■WAEBEN. 
 
 building the one upon the Summit. Carlos D. Woodward, 
 Henry Noyes, Roper Noyes, John Buswell, Stevens Merrill, "Win- 
 throp and Roswell Elliott, and Ebenezer Calef, built the sections 
 south. Stephen Whiteman said he was a sub-contractor and cut 
 bushes, and that Rev. Horace "Webber did the same thing. 
 
 Before it was finished two years of time had passed, more 
 than three thousand dollars expended, and the town was heavily 
 in debt. December 22, 1836, the town voted that although the 
 Berry brook road was not completed, the selectmen should post up 
 notices at each end of said highway, that people might travel over 
 it at their own expense and their own risk. 
 
 The debt! It looked like a mountain. Warren Mtherto had 
 been an economical town. They were not used to paying big bills. 
 How could they now? The citizens were almost discouraged. 
 But kind Providence, as some of the more pious ones wiU have it, 
 came to their relief. It happened thus : — 
 
 For many years a large amount of money had been accruing 
 in the United States bank. When Gen. Jackson, who was very 
 hostile to the bank, was elected president, that institution was dis- 
 solved, and government after paying the debts of the nation passed 
 a resolve that the surplus should be divided among the different 
 States, and then distributed to the towns of which they were com- 
 posed. By a vote passed at the regular annual meeting, the select- 
 men were empowered to go to Concord and receive the " Sni-plus 
 Revenue." They brought home with them eighteen hundred dol- 
 lars. At first they hardly knew what to do with it ; but at a town 
 meeting held for the purpose, voted that the selectmen put the 
 money out at usury, not letting any one individual have more than 
 two hundred dollars. Then in 1838, the town voted that the select- 
 men call in enough of the surplus revenue to pay up for the build- 
 ing of the Berry brook road, — a very sensible vote — but they 
 coupled on the following rather ambiguous clause, " That Solomon 
 Cotton be an agent to take charge of the money, and that the 
 selectmen hire it of him, giving their notes for the same and pay 
 the town debt with it.'' What became of the notes we are wholly 
 unable to say. The town certainly never paid them. 
 
 With the new road thi-ough Berry brook valley buUt, a hotel 
 must be erected on the Summit. Moses Abbott, the fat man, kept 
 
A PATH CUT UP MOOSEHILLOCK. 4&7 
 
 it at first, and then it passed into the hands of Benjamin Little, 
 and he was mine host in that section for many years.* 
 
 Travelers who stopped at Mr. Little's inn, frequently sug- 
 gested that they would like to climb to the bald crest of Moosehil- 
 lock. To gratify the wish, one summer day he raised all High 
 street by giving them what grog they could drink and they bushed 
 out a path right up the side of the mountain to the topmost peak. 
 
 It was a beautiful day when the party of road makers came 
 out upon tfie bald crest. The wind was blowing strong from the 
 north west, and the little flowers growing upon Moosehillock's 
 bare peak shook their white heads in the breeze. 
 
 Our landlord is standing upon the north peak. His friends 
 and their dogs, wild dwellers of the Summit and of High street, 
 are in a group around him. Nathan Willey, playfully called " Mr. 
 Nutter;" Moses Ellsworth, who had the title of " Fortyfoot," on 
 account of the shortness of his stature; Isaac Fifleld, a tall man, 
 gifted in prayer in time of revivals, whom the Summit boys face- 
 tiously called " Aunt Isaac," — " Fortyfoot" had " Aunt Isaac's " 
 prayer learned by heart, and could repeat it with unction on occa- 
 sions when he had put himself outside of two or three beverages ;t 
 Sir Richard Whiteman ; Stephen "Whiteman, with the pious title of 
 " Elder Binx;" John French, the school-master, an early riser, who 
 had the economical habit of lying in bed with his wife till the 
 clock struck three in the afternoon, in winter, to save flre-wood ; 
 "Welches, father and two sons, Silas and Bartlett; Stephen Martin, 
 Calvin Bailey, Samuel Whitcher, James Harriman, husband of 
 Mrs. HaiTiman, and others, and Joseph Whitcher, the bear-catcher, 
 wolf-killer, and story-teller, were there — all good men, who thus 
 good naturedly nicknamed each other.t Their beards were un- 
 shaven, and their long hair streamed out in the pure air that was 
 blowing so steady over the mountain. 
 
 , The blue sky is above them ; no smoke, no haze, no clouds are 
 there. Silvei; lakes and flashing rivers lay beneath them. A thou- 
 
 * In early times Chase Whitcher kept entertainment for man and heast on the 
 Summit, Maj. Daniel Patch also, bat neither of them kept tavern. 
 
 t We once saw Jim Clement burst every button off his vest laughing at " Forty- 
 foot," when he was repeating " Aunt Isaac's " prayer to " Aunt I." himsell', and a 
 crowd of listeners. 
 
 1 Some well bred people have said that it was mean business for the above 
 gentlemen to call each other names. 
 
468 HISTOET OF WARKEN. 
 
 sand mountain peaks bathing their heads in the bright sunshine are 
 around them. There are peaks sharp and angular, wavy wooded 
 mountain crests, great cones standing alone, dome shaped moun- 
 tains dark and sombre. 
 
 Mr. Nathan "Willey wanted to know what that great sheet of 
 water in the south was, and John French, the school-master, said 
 it must be the Smile of the Great Spirit, the beautiful lake Winne- 
 pisseogee. Mr. Stephen "Whiteman asked what that ragged look- 
 ing mountain over there to the north-east was, and the school- 
 master told how he had heard Dick French, the hunter, tell about 
 the great Haystacks that had white furrows down their sides, and 
 that they were terrible hard m,ouu tains to climb. Capt. Benj. 
 Little pointed out the long river down in the west as the Connecti- 
 cut and Eichard Whiteman said he could see Black mountain, 
 Owl's-head, Webster slide, and Wachipauka pond, — he knew 
 them. Stephen Whiteman stuck to it that he could see Boston; 
 and said it was not a great distance either, only a hundred and 
 forty miles by the road; and that Maj. True Stevens had walked 
 it in less than two days when he came back from Brighton, 
 where he had been with a drove.* Capt. Ben. Little said he could 
 beat that, and then he told how Col. Moses H. Clement went 'down 
 to Brighton with a flock of sheep, and had a little brindle dog 
 Bose to help drive them, that just at dark in Brighton he lost the 
 dog, and that before night the next day, Bose whined and barked 
 at the door in Warren, and Mrs. Clement let him in, terribly tired 
 and footsore. The dog had run a hundred and forty miles in less 
 than twenty-four hours. Joseph Whitcher said he didn't care any- 
 thing about such stories, and then he went on to tell that he had 
 been all over the mountain a good many times before, hunting 
 wolves. Said he, " I caught one down there in the Tunnel where 
 you can hear Tunnel brook roaring. Once I followed one down 
 Moosehillock river that rises over there in that dark fir woods and 
 runs down into the Pemigewassett, but did not get him." 
 
 " Where does Tunnel brook go to?" said Stephen Whiteman. 
 Wliitcber said it ran down into the Swiftwater, and the latter 
 stream emptied into the Ammonoosuc. Then the bear catcher said 
 
 * John Libbey once did the same thing. He wallied from Boston to Wan-en in 
 two days. He got up to Concord the flrst day the sun an hour high.— Anson Mer- 
 rill's statement. 
 
THE SUMMIT OF moosehillook;. 469 
 
 he got two deer once in the meadow where was the little pond 
 which was the head of Baker river, and that once he fished clear 
 down to the East-parte and got more tront than he could lug, and 
 Mr. Fifield said he didn't believe a word of it. But Joseph 
 "Whitcher did not care a copper whether he believed it or not, and 
 went on to say that he had a sable line every year on the Oliverian, 
 and that every one of these streams, Tunnel brook, Swiftwafer, 
 Moosehillock river. Baker river, and the Oliverian, had its source 
 within a rod of the mountain summit where they stood. Moses 
 Ellsworth said he knew this was a lie for he hadn't had a drop of 
 anything for an hour to wet his whistle with, and he was most 
 choked to death and would like to see the springs from which the 
 streams started. 
 
 Just then three eagles rose out of the great Tunnel where the 
 brook was roaring, and came hovering over the grassy mountain 
 crest, hunting for small birds and mice. " See there ! " said Mr. 
 "Willey. The dogs snuflFed the air, erected the hair on their backs, 
 and their ears stood straight. One of them barked. The eagles, 
 one with white breast and tail, tlie others gray, caught sight and 
 sound. "Wheeling in the air, seemingly without moving feather or 
 wing, around and around in great circles, each time higher up, 
 they soared thousands of feet above the mountain peak, until they 
 were almost lost in the deep blue. Then, a speck in the sky, they 
 sailed slowly away eastward over the great Pemigewassett valley. 
 Stephen "Whiteman said he would like to know how those birds 
 could get up so high without " floppin " their wings once. 
 
 But it was getting cold, the men were dry, and away they went 
 through the matted hackmatacks down the mountain. "When they 
 were gone, as great novelists would tell it, the wind still sighed on 
 the rocks, the little birds sang their vesper hymns in the dark firs, 
 the eagles screamed again, and a wolf howled down in one of the 
 great gorges ; but no human ear was there to listen. The moun- 
 tain peak was left alone, a mighty solitude in the great waste of 
 mountains, jlist as it had been for ages. As the men went home 
 Isaac Fifield said that " the rain might descend, the winds blow, 
 the frosts come, and the snow fall and no human being for years 
 would again gaze upon this wild magnificence." But Mr. Fifield's 
 
460 HISTORY OF WAEKEN. 
 
 reflections did not prove true, and scattering visitors from that 
 day forth began to cliihb Moosehillock mountain.* 
 
 This last road cost "Warren notliing ; the burden of the first 
 the surplus revenue removed. Both brought prosperity and hap- 
 piness, one by attracting visitors with its mighty grandeur, the 
 other by turning a still larger tide of travel through our pleasant 
 hamlet valley. 
 
 * Dr. Ezra Bartlett, Samuel Enight and others went on to Moosehillock about 
 the year 180U. They did not succeed in lighting a Are, and it was so cold they liad 
 to leave the summit at night. They went down on the north east side over the great 
 ledges in tlie ravme where they had to let themselves down with a pole. There 
 was snow on the mountain at the time. — Miss Hannah B. Knigiit's statement. 
 
 Explanatory Jfote.— The substance of the story about cutting the Moosehillock 
 .path is true. But our authorities said they would not vouch for all the minute 
 particulars. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 OP A GEEAT LAWSUIT ABOUT MRS. SAEAH WEEKS, WHOM FOOLISH 
 PEOPLE CALLED A WITCH, CONCLUDING WITH .PLEASANT EEC- 
 OLLECTIONS OF A PAEING BEE AND A " SHIN-DIG," IF ANT- 
 BODY KNOWS WHAT THAT IS. 
 
 W^AEEEN ill olden times had waged fierce lawsuits. Col. 
 Obadiah Clement, fighting for victory, indignant teamsters and 
 stage diivers getting numerous indictments to cure bad roads, had 
 cost the town many a hard battle. But these old fights buried 
 under nearly half a century were almost forgotten, Uviug only in 
 the memory of the most aged inhabitants. Even the recollection 
 of the would be lawsuit Stevens Merrill might have had with 
 James Aiken, had he not taken the law into his own hands and a 
 house been burned up, had almost faded away forever. 
 
 But now when the third generation of Warren's white inhabi- 
 tants were on the stage the slumbering volcano of litigating wrath 
 once more burst forth and our peaceful hamlet among the hills was 
 tossed from centre to circumference.* It happened in this wise. 
 
 * Death ty Fright.— Vfavyea never has had many lawyers, but has been blessed 
 with plenty at law. Joseph Patch, Jr., for a while was deputy sheriff, and he once 
 went on to Pine-hill to arrest one Goodwin on a civil process. Goodwin stood 
 looking at him till the sherifl' got within a rod of him, and then fell dead in his 
 tracks. It was said by some that his imagination killed him. 
 
 Serious Law Case.— Copt. Samuel L. Merrill once kept store on the turnpike, 
 near the Blue ridge. Some one hitched hie horse and sleigh in the store shed one 
 day and went in to purchase goods. While there a person supposed to be tipsy, 
 went up behind the old fashioned, high-backed, blue-pa.inted sleigh, to answer to 
 one of the calls of nature. The sleigh back was five ieet high to keep (he wind off 
 the driver, and there was a crack near the top of it. The copious flood poured forth 
 by the tipsy man ran through the crack, down on the inside and wet the owner's 
 
462 HISTORY OP WARBEN. 
 
 Mrs. Sarah "Weeks, of whom we have spoken before, and who had 
 the very enviable reputation of being a witch, wife of Benjamin 
 Weeks, Jr., had become chargeable to the town of Wentworth for 
 support as a pauper. She had once lived iu "Warren on the Height- 
 o'-land, and Wentworth thought our good town should support 
 her. Wentworth requested Warren to do so. Warren refused. 
 Wentworth was indignant — mad — and said she should. Warren 
 was stubborn and a suit was brought. 
 
 Our neighbor across the southern border employed distin- 
 guished counsel, — Hon. John P. Hale, U. S. Senator, and after- 
 wards minister to Spain, and Hon. Josiah Quincy. Our beloved 
 hamlet engaged the services of Hon. Franklin Pierce, afterwards 
 President of tlie United Slates, and Thomas J. Whipple, Esq., io 
 assist him. The case was in the Eastern Judicial District of Graf- 
 ton county, and was tried at Plymouth. It turned upon this point: 
 Did Benjamin Weeks, Jr., have a residence in Warren? He had 
 never paid taxes there seveit-years in succession; but on the books 
 was this record: " 1817, Beuj. Weeks elected hogreeve." There 
 was no record of his taking the oath of office, and unless he had 
 done so, he would not have gained a residence. There was great 
 excitement about the case in both towns, and it greatly increased 
 when the witnesses were summoned. On the part of Wentworth, 
 the following were cited to appear: 
 
 Richard Whiteman and Stephen AVTiiteman, of Warren, Wil- 
 liam Whiteman, of Canada. Joshua Copp, Jr., of Northumberland, 
 N. H., William Kelley, and Anson Merrill.* 
 
 dinner, thereby spoiling it. It was a case of trespass; tlie owner was mad, and 
 swore he wonfd liave satisfaction. Moses Ellsworth, sometimes called Fortyfoot, 
 was present, tip^y, and he was at once suspected as the culprit, and talsen into 
 custody. There was no judge present, so a " reierence " was appointed and they 
 immediately proceeded with the invCbtigation. Fortyfoot plead "not guilty,' 
 whereupon a two foot rule was procured and the culprit's legs were measured. 
 They were lound to be only two feet four inches long, while the crack in the back 
 •of the sleigh was three feet six inches from the gi-ound, consequently the reference 
 after great deliberation, brought in that Fortyfoot could not have possibly done 
 the dirty deed, and he was acquitted. It is said that the accused wept tears of joy 
 over the result of tlie trial, and that the court, counsel, and spectators, all took a 
 smile at the bar of justice inside the store. 
 
 Moses Abbott and Joseph Whitcher once bet on an election. Each staked his 
 hog against the other. Abbott lost but would not give up his hog. Alter a good 
 deal of discussion they left it out to William Pomeroy, Enoch R. Weeks, and Ste- 
 vens M.Dow, who brought in that Whitcher should haveAbbott's hog; a very proper 
 decision according to the betting code, but decidedly illegal. This case created 
 immense e.vcitement on the Summit. 
 
 *AXSON AND MAHALA (^Bums) MERKILL'S TAMILT KECORD. 
 
 •Married Oct. 1831. He was born Dec. 4, 1804. She was born Aug. 15, 1815. 
 Their children are Elizabeth, Van, an infant, Ada A. and Elleu L. 
 

A GREAT LAWSUIT. 463 
 
 On the part of "Warren, Moses H. Clement, Jesse Little,* Page 
 Clement, son of old Jonathan Clement, innkeeper, David Fellows, 
 and Nathaniel Clough, were summoned. 
 
 "William D. McQuestion was agent for "Wentworth; Enoch E. 
 "Weeks was agent for "Warren. 
 
 And now the battle began. "Wentworth's witnesses testified 
 that Benjamin "Weeks, Jr., was chosen hogreeve; but they could not 
 swear that he was sworn in. "Warren's witnesses testified that he 
 was chosen, but that he was not sworn in. The lawyers on the trial 
 were very smart as might be expected, and fought tenaciously. 
 They wanted to show their present and future clients what great 
 ability they had. 
 
 The evidence was all in ; they were about to commence the 
 arguments ; silence reigned in the court room. There was a pause. 
 Then Eichard "Whiteman, sometimes called Sir Eichard of Tama- 
 rack swamp, again took the stand. His countenance shone, his 
 recollection was refreshed, and he testified as brave as a lion that 
 Benjamin "Weeks, Jr., was elected, that he was sworn in, and that 
 he, "Whiteman, had helped him on several occasions both yoke and 
 ring hogs. Most satisfactory evidence! 
 
 The arguments were made, the Judge delivered his charge, 
 the jury retired, and returning in a few minutes, gave a verdict for 
 "Wentworth. "Warren's agent and his witnesses went home feeUng 
 cheap enough. 
 
 That night "Wentworth had a jollification. Their old cannon 
 was brought put. It was double charged every time, and again 
 and again it sent the notes of victory up the Asquamchumauke 
 valley, over every hill of our hamlet, even to "Warren Summit. Of 
 
 t JESSE AND SUSAN COPP {Merrill) LITTLE'S FAMILY EECORD. 
 
 He was bom July 4, 1800. William, born Mar. 20, 1833. 
 
 She was bom July, 30, 1808. Thomas B. born Sept. 7, 1838. 
 
 Married Nov. 18, 1829. George A. bom May 23, 1847. 
 Joseph, bom Oct. 28, 1830. 
 
 GENEALOGY Or THE LITTLE FAMILY IN WAKEEN. 
 
 Geobge Little, a tailor by trade, came from Unicom street, London, Eng- 
 land, to Newbury. Mass., in 1040. He married Alice Poor. 
 
 Moses, 4th child of George, bora March 11, 1657, married Lydia Coffin. 
 Tristram, 2d child of Moses, born Dec. 9, 1681, married Sarah Dole. 
 Samuel, 3d child of Tristram, born Feb. 18, 1713, married Dorothy Noyes. 
 James, 1st child of Samuel, born Feb. 18, 1737, mamed Tamar Eoberts. 
 Amos, 3d child of James, bom Feb. 28, 1766, married Betsey Kimball. 
 Jesse, 5th child of Amos, bom July 4, 1800, married Susan 0. Merrill. 
 
464 HISTOBY OF WAKKEN. 
 
 course the citizens of Warren were perfectly delighted with the 
 gentle music. 
 
 "Wentworth's celebration had a wonderful effect. It waked up 
 the musty recollection of every old man in "Warren. They began 
 to remember how the case was. Old Mr. Nathaniel Clough was 
 the first man to recall it. The facts were something as follows : 
 There were in town two men, father and son, by the name of Ben- 
 jamin "Weeks, Benjamin, Sen., and Benjamin, Jr. The son was 
 chosen hogreeve, but as he was not in the meeting at the time, to 
 take the oath, his father, Benjamin "Weeks, stepped forward at 
 once and said, " Choose me and I will serve." He was immedi- 
 ately chosen, took the oath, and the record on the town book, 
 " 1817, Benj. "Weeks elected hogreeve," was correct; but it had no 
 relatioji to Benj. "Weeks, Jr. Many other men now remembered 
 the fact and the town could not give the case up so. 
 
 Accordingly at a meeting called and held Nov. 22, 1843, the 
 following vote was passed: " That the agent chosen to carry on 
 the case between "Warren and Wentw;orth, have it tried where they 
 think proper ; that the agent ascertain whether the review destroys 
 the decision of the former trial, if it does destroy it, then the 
 agents are to settle with "Wentworth, by that town paying- the legal 
 cost the town of "Warren would- recover by law, and they also 
 support Sarah Weeks; if they will not settle upon these conditions, 
 then the agent is to proceed with the case." 
 
 The facts and the action of the town came. to the ears of the 
 agent of "Wentworth. At first he was incredulous, then he made 
 inquiries, then went ttj the old men of "Warren and learned how 
 they would testify, and finally after the winter and spring passed, 
 and the summer was far along, he came to "Warren, backed down, 
 and paid up. Thus ended Warren's greatest lawsuit ; all the citi- 
 zens felt good and the victory must be celebrated. This was not 
 done by firing cannon after the manner of Wentworth ; but par- 
 ties, junketings, and apple bees were rife, and the people that 
 autumn had a most hilarious time of it. 
 
 The young friends of your humble historian, who was a boy 
 then, went with him to two paring bees that fall, according to his 
 recollection. Once we came down by the Forks school-house. 
 Where Hurricane brook, a silver stream, falls into Patch brook, 
 
CBLEBEATING- THE VICTOET. 466 
 
 after leaping and laughing its way from the summit of Mount 
 Carr, 3,000 feet above us, to Mr. ■William Clo'ugh's. What a pile 
 of apples was worked up that night. Four brave young men were 
 mounted on four old fashioned paring machines, all of different 
 patterns, and with what a buzz they took the skins off the beauti- 
 ful and'many hued apples. A lot of us small boys did nothing 
 but quarter the peeled fruit ; the beautiful young ladies and the 
 careful mothers cored them ever so nicely, and a bevy of girls and 
 old Mr. Clough strung hundreds of " strings " and hung them in 
 wreaths and wavy festoons, ornaments like, on pegs about the 
 room to dry. 
 
 Ten o'clock in the evening, and the work was done. What a 
 supper we had, fit for a king, and enough for a small regiment. 
 How good it tasted. And the games after supper was over! 
 " Blind man's buff" was glorious, " Button, button," was nice, and 
 " Turn the plate " was so fine. And then the pawns paid and the 
 kisses given. How rosy the lips that gave them. How I envied 
 the boys that got them. A little of superstition must come in; 
 apple peelings were thrown over fine heads to make initial letters 
 of their lovers' names, and several went down cellar backwards 
 holding a mirror in their hands to see their fixture husband's or 
 wife's face. Then we played " Chase the squirrel," and " Pass the 
 handkerchief," and " Simon says thumbs up," and sombody sang 
 songs ever so beautiful, and it was after midnight when we were 
 going home again by the "Forks school-house," in Patchbreuck- 
 land. 
 
 We had never been out so late before, and there was a grave- 
 yard with white tombstones by the " Forks school-house." But 
 we went bravely past it, and going up by the Patch place where 
 Jonathan Eaton lived, the stars shone above us, and the crescent 
 moon was hurrying down the western sky. Just then there was 
 a strange cry. We listened — heard it again. The older boys said 
 it was a wild hound dog on the eastern mountains. Some said he 
 belonged in Woodstock. How plain I heard him myself on that 
 moonlight night in antnmn. Baying at intervals, his three almost 
 unearthly yells would come ringing out through the darkness. 
 What was he pursuing? Was it the bounding deer, the black fox, 
 running straight away for mile's, or a shadowy ghost leading will- 
 
 D* 
 
466 inSTOKT OF WARKEN. 
 
 o'-tlie-wisp like through dark ravines and wild gorges. Others 
 said they had heard the old hound in the storm when his haying 
 mingled with the voice of the wind and the roar of the mountain 
 streams. 
 
 There were dozens of paring bees that fall, and the numerous 
 parties and festivities provoked by tlie great lawsuit victoiy only 
 ended, if we remember right, by a grand ball, where Jim Clement 
 danced his flat-footed double-shuffle so remarkably, and a turkey 
 supper, that came off about Christmas time, at the present Moosil- 
 auke house, one of the neat hotels of the hamlet. 
 
 May Warren never be perplexed by another lawsuit like the 
 one aboitt Mrs. Sarah "Weeks or any other kind; but if she should, 
 may it have a like successful and happy termination. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A CHAPTER ON FIRES. 
 
 \T E introdnee it here, because the greatest happened about 
 this time, and all the othci's seem to centre around it. It is worthy 
 of record that they had graud ones when the farms were cleared; 
 but the first dwelling- house burned in AYarren, as we all well 
 remember, was James Aiken's cabin that stood half a mile east of 
 the depot. Then Joseph Patch's buildings were fired by a brave 
 sojer boy journeying home from the wars, and for more^thau half 
 a century after not a honse was burned in Warren. 
 
 Then about the year 1830, Richard Whiteman's house on the 
 Summit went down, followed by the Pine hill school-house, which 
 burned up in the daytime, and shortly after that, the village school- 
 house flashed bright one night and was gone. Tliis was the 
 prelude. 
 
 One bright spring day in 18i5, the old homestead of Amos 
 Little, on Beech hill, accidentally took fire. All the male mem- 
 bers of the fanjjly had gone away, while Mrs. Kimball Little, who 
 was unwell, had retired to her chamber. There was a barrel 
 standing in the shed adjoining the house, in which some meat had 
 been placed to smoke, and as the family had smoked their meat 
 here the preceding spring, and no accident having occurred, it 
 was considered safe. 
 
 From this the fire took. It was a beautiful day, no wind. An 
 individual standing near the church on the common, happening to 
 look iu the'directiou of the house, saw curling slowly up a thin 
 
468 mSTOKT OP WAEKEN. 
 
 column of blue smoke. One moment more and the cry of fire 
 rung out rousing every neighbor. The inmates of the school- 
 house near by were dismissed, and the yonug urchins dispatched in 
 all directions to give the alai'm. 
 
 When the flrst individual, a peddler, arrived at the house, with 
 another person to assist him he could have stopped the fire ; but 
 in five minutes the roof of the shed was in flames. 
 
 Mrs. Little awakened, almost swooned in fright, then with the 
 rest commenced to carry the furniture from the house. In a very 
 short time nearly all the villagers arrived. Some tried to tear 
 down the shed connecting the house with the three large barns ; 
 but before it was half demolished the flames and blinding smoke 
 drove them from the undertaking. Every one now worked to 
 save \rhat they could from the burning buildings. But as is cus- 
 tomary at all fires, where they seldom occur, people generally lost 
 their wits, and haste, hurry, and excitement prevailed; windows 
 were thrown from the second story to the ground; looking-glasses 
 and other furniture easily demolished, shared the same fate, and 
 there was a delightful scene of confusion. 
 
 The fire advanced rapidly, and it was soon evident the build- 
 ing must be abandoned; but oue man, Mr. Miranda Whitcher, 
 wishing to save some article of furniture wliicli was in a room on 
 the east side of the house, went thither. He had scarcely entered 
 it before the flames sprung up behind, and firing an unplastcred 
 wall made a retreat almost impossible. A dense volume of smoke 
 now filled the room, choking and blinding him ; but Mr. "Whitcher 
 with a bound shot through the fire, trod quickly along the totter- 
 ing floor and made for a distant window. The people below saw 
 him and loudly shouted to him to jump out upon the ground; but 
 he seemed possessed of a strange fatality, and did «ot notice them. 
 The flames creeping rapidly along the floor behind, scorched the 
 poor man, when grasping the window sill he slowly let himself 
 down, but did not relinquish his hold. The fire at that instant 
 bursting from the window below circled up and around him. In- 
 dividuals entreated him to let go ; but he heeded tlicm not, until 
 at last exhausted, his hands slowly relaxed, and he fell. Two per- 
 sons enveloped in wet blankets succeeded in reaching him, and he 
 was removed to the little field on the west side of the road. 
 
BUKNED TO DEATH. ^ 469 
 
 The large buildings were now completely enveloped in fire 
 crowned by aii immense coliimu of black smoke. Nearly every 
 person had gathered about the dying man, whose groans mingling 
 with the crackling flames and the roar of the burning buildings, 
 made an impressive scene. In a few moments more, after one 
 convulsive quiver, the fine old house fell a mass of burning ruins. 
 Mr. Whitcher was then conveyed to his home, suffered for an hour 
 and died. 
 
 A whole generation had lived in "Warren without a fire of any 
 magnitude, and now such a conflagration, with Whitcher's death, 
 following so close upon the heels of " the terrible Parker murder," 
 which had filled the whole State' with horror, made a profound 
 impression upon the minds of the people and hardly anything else 
 was talked of for a whole month. The citizens of Warren did 
 what was customary in olden times in New Hampshire; they made 
 a " bee;" a hundred men or so went into the woods with broad 
 axes and narrow axes, and squares, and chalk-lines, and in a 
 week's time almost a frame was raised over the old ruins. Before 
 autumn Kimball Little, youngest son of Amos Little, had moved 
 into the new house and was upon the old farm again. 
 
 For the benefit of our readers who are interested in casualties 
 of this kind, we will state that the next fire occurred early in the 
 summer of 1849. Vowell Leathery' house was burned, and in it 
 burned his wife. It was a beautiful summer Sabbath. Mr. Leath- 
 ers was away at Romney,* attending meeting. His son John, — 
 many yet remember him, — was in the woods listening to the songs 
 of birds and gathering broom-stuff, while Mrs. Leathers, who was 
 old and blind, but an excellent woman for all that, could not help 
 herself in any manner. 
 
 About eleven o'clock in the forenoon, Isaac Sawtelle, who 
 lived by Sawtelle school-house, three miles away, saw the smoke 
 curling up from the dwelling, high up on the side of Sentinel 
 mountain. He came to the village on the run, rushed into the 
 meeting-house, and without ceremony gave the alarm, and with 
 the whole congregation hurried away up Beech hill. The house 
 was all in flames when Sawtelle arrived there, and a thin smoke 
 
 * It is said that the Hon. .Josiah Quincy knows how to spell Romney correctly; 
 that instead of R-u-m rum, otherwise "rot-gut," he spells the word, R-o-m-n-e-y 
 Bomuey, a noble name from a royal Kuglish house, that ol' the Earl ol' Bonmey. 
 
470 HISTOET OF WAKEEN. 
 
 was curling through the roof of the baiii. Hurrying in and on to 
 the hay-mow, he found it proceeded fi'om a slow match made with 
 great care, and that the hay was not jet burning. He removed 
 the match and the barn was saved. Hardly anything was taken 
 out of the house, and Mrs. Leathers was burned to death. 
 
 The next day Dr. Little climbed Beech hill, picked up the 
 charred remains of the poor woman, placed them in a rude box 
 and carrying them to the grave-yard, on Pine-hill road, they were 
 buried. 
 
 There was a terrible suspicion in the minds^of people. Who 
 set the flre? No one has ever told, and it will probably forever 
 remain a mystery. Still Uncle Leathers, as he is familiarly called, 
 never was considered a bad man, though he descended from the 
 Gipsy race and has many eccentricities, among which is the erect- 
 ing of tomb-stones witli names thereon, for himself and some of 
 his family before their death, and his fondness for perfumes ; he 
 being the man, as we have before stated, who persisted iu killing, 
 cooking, and eating such sweet smelling animals as skunks, at the 
 town farm, much to the delight of the lady paupers and other per- 
 sons living there. It is said that he once put a skunk, fresh smell- 
 ing from the dewy fields, under Mrs. Brown's bed, thereby filling 
 the soul of that chaste and pious lady with great happiness. 
 Uncle Leathers at the close of Warren's first century is still living, 
 a hale and hearty old man. 
 
 During the winter of 1864, the buildings of Mr. Amos Clement, 
 together with nearly all their contents, including thiity-three val- 
 uable sheep which they could not drive from the fire, a hog and a 
 yearling steer, were destroyed. 
 
 Since then a tavern stand built by Mr. Ephraim Clement near 
 the depot, together with Mr. Isaac Merrill's buildings near by, 
 have burned. Moses Ellsworth's little red house on Warren Sum- 
 mit burned up one night. Hazen Clement's house and barn on 
 the side of Mount Carr was consumed one day when all the family 
 were away. Ephraim Clement's house on Pine- hill, where Isaiah 
 Batchelder once lived, went down in a night. John Marston's 
 wheel- Wright shop blazed like a rocket and was gone ; and last, 
 Daniel Marston's house, at the foot of the Height-o'-laud, burned 
 up. We had almost fbrgot to state that George W. Jackson was 
 
FIRES UPON THE MOUNTAINS. 471 
 
 moving a house from the top of the Height-o'-land one summer. 
 It got stock in the road and stood tliere a fortnight. One night 
 some bad person touched a match to it, and the old house never 
 came down to Warren vilhige.* 
 
 But the grandest fires we have ever seen, were the fires upon 
 "Warren's mountains. Webster slide has blazed like a volcano. 
 Owl's head has burned for months, lighting up the licaveus at 
 night; Moosehillook has been wrapped in slicets of flame com- 
 pletely enveloping its twin peaks, and Mount Carr, twice within 
 the memory of the present generation, has flashed from base to 
 summit. It was in the summer of 1854 that the fire roared on 
 Mount Carr. Then a million trees burned to the wind. Then a 
 sound came like the rushing of a tempest; like the mighty 
 voice of the ocean. Its roaring was heard six miles away, and 
 one could see to read fine print at midnight. It was a sight never 
 to be forgotten. 
 
 * Friday, Sept. Hi, 1870, there was a great Are in Wan-en. Russell Men-ill's 
 hotel, the old Joseph Merrill inn, and Henry W. Week's house hurned. The Are 
 occurred about two o'clock in the morning. Loss $18,000, insured for $10,000. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 sow AND WHEN THE KAILEOAD WAS BUILT, WHICH WILL BE A 
 WONDER TO FDTUEE GENEEATIONS, BUT IS QUITE A COMMON 
 THING NOW. 
 
 The first railroad steam engine and railway, if we remem- 
 ber right, were built in England. The first railroad in this country 
 was the short line from the stone quarries in Quincy, Mass., to the 
 wharf" down by the sea," to transport stone. Then in New Eng- 
 land, the Boston and Providence, the Boston and Worcester, and 
 the Boston and Lowell railroads followed in quick succession, and 
 after these were built, railroads began to multiply wonderfully all 
 through the country. 
 
 From Lowell the iron horse crept up the Merrimack gradually 
 to Concord, N. H. Here it paused a short time, but not long. 
 The Northern railroad from Concord to Lebanon, was soon com- 
 menced, and then after the most fierce opposition from the North- 
 ern and Pasumpsic railroads at the June session of the Legislature 
 in 18i4, the Boston, Concord and Montreal was chartered. 
 
 The cqmpany immediately organized, Josiah Quincy,* of 
 
 * OFFICERS OF THE BOSTON, CONCORD AND MONTREAL KAILEOAD. 
 
 Presidents i — 
 
 .Josiah Quincy, elected April 8, 1845. 
 
 John E. Lyon, elected May 29, 1860, still in office. 
 Superintendents : — 
 
 Peter Clark, chosen May 15, 1846. 
 
 James N. Elkins, chosen Deo. 2, 1847. Died June 20, 1853. 
 
 James M. Whiton, chosen June 20, 1853. Died June 20, 1857. 
 
 JohnT. Coflin, chosen June, 1857, as agent of Trustees. 
 
A KAILKOAD OPENED IX) WAKEEN. 473 
 
 Bomney, being President, and the people along the route freely 
 paid their money for a survey, which was made this season by Mr. 
 Crocker, throughout the whole line. Stock books were also imme- 
 diately opened, a considerable amount was subscribed, the grading 
 of the road was commenced upon its lower sections, and in. about 
 one year was completed eighteen miles, from Concord to Tilton. 
 
 Then a year more and the cars ran to Laeonia, and another 
 year and they got up to Meredith village. Here they stopped 
 a while, for the route by the beautiful ponds of Centre Harbor 
 and over New Hampton summit was a hard one ; but late in the 
 autumn of 18i9 the cars ran into Plymouth. 
 
 But the road was not to stop here ; it had already been com- 
 menced above on the banks of the Asquamchumauke, and Thomas 
 Piersons was set stoutly to work to find a feasible route over 
 Warren Summit. The first line surveyed by Crocker, came up 
 the west bank of the Asquamchumauke, up Black brook, the 
 Mikaseota, the same side to the Blue ridge, thence crossing the 
 valley at the outlet of Runaway pond it passed up the east shore 
 of the latter basin, up Black brook, over the Summit and down the 
 Oliverian. Thos. Piersons took the east side of the valley through 
 "Warren, crossed the Asquamchumauke, with a "fill " for half a 
 mile seventy-flve feet deep, to the side of Knight hill, and thence 
 up Berry brook to the Summit. Then he tried up the road to 
 Noyes Bridge, kept under the bank on the east side of the lower 
 village, thence across the plain by the place where James Aiken 
 got burned out, and up his old route by Berry brook. He made 
 his report and " the directors considered." 
 
 Two years they considered ; and then another engineer was 
 procured, T. J. Carter, and he surveyed and located the present 
 railroad route through "Warren. He did his work best of all, for 
 
 Joseph A. Bodge, chosen Aug. 9, 1858, still in ofdce. 
 Cleric:— 
 
 Charles Lane, chosen April 8, 1845, still in office. 
 Station Agents at Warren .— 
 
 David Atwood and Mr . Chase. 
 
 Bioliard Wiggin. 
 
 Marcus M. Lawrence. 
 
 Edwin C Weiitworth. 
 
 Morrill .J. Sanbora. 
 
 J. M. l^arks, at Summit. 
 — Col. Charles Lane's statement. 
 
474 HI^TOEY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 no where else in town could the depot have been so satisfactorily 
 located. 
 
 Tlie road was already nearly graded to the sonth line of War- 
 ren, and a contract was made in the summer of 1850 with "Warren 
 H. Smith, an enterprising gentleman residing at Tilton, to com- 
 plete it to Warren village. Mr. Smith commenced work the ensu- 
 ing October, and then Warren glowed with life. 
 
 As many men as possible were put into the Clifford cut on 
 the southern bouudai-y, and there were a lot of shanties built at 
 the cast end of the bridge over the river near by, for the Irish 
 shovelers to live in. Well do we remember the pleasant little 
 anecdate told of these transient residents, here. One of the shanty 
 families sent to Ireland for a friend of theirs. He landed in Bos- 
 ton and then came immediately to Warren. The next Sabbath as 
 alone he was wallcing ont for his health and a little pious medita- 
 tion, he chanced to find as he thought a spotted cat by the wall. 
 Catching it up in his arms he began to stroke its back saying, " Poor 
 pussy," wlien suddenly dropping it he grasped his nose and ex- 
 claimed, " Howly Mither, what has the crathure been aiteu!" Not 
 being particularly fond of sweet perfumes, he quickly returned to 
 the shanty and with religious fervor related his adventures with 
 the cat, much to the delight of all his friends. 
 
 The Bedington boys, brotliers, finished the Clifford cut. Mr. 
 Gipson was " boss " in the '' side-hill cut," near the old Nathaniel 
 Clongh place. It took all winter to dig this out. William Clem- 
 ent, of Warren, son of Col. Ben., oversaw a gang of Irishmen near 
 the long covered railroad bridge, making the fill above the bridge 
 and tlie cut through the John Mills burying-ground, down by the 
 Patch place to Patch brook. Old " St. Bovven" graded up about 
 the depot, running his " dump carts " all winter down through 
 the village over the Noyes bridge to.the mound just below on the 
 east side of the road. Pity he hauled sand from there, for he left 
 an unsightly cut. All of Clement's*and Mr. Bowen's men lived in 
 shanties over by Patch brook where it leaps down Rocky falls. 
 Batchelder of Lake village made the rock cut just west of the 
 Moosilauke house, and the hutments, and the great bridge, were 
 built during the winter. 
 
 Before the first of April, 1851, the grading and bridges on the 
 
THE GREAT ETENT CELEBRATED. 475 
 
 whole line from Plymouth to Warren village were nearly com- 
 pleted. As soon as the ground was suffloieutly settled, Mr. Smith 
 commenced to lay the track, and on the 24th of May the first 
 steam engine ran into Warren, and on the 26th its bell was rung 
 at Warren depot. 
 
 May 25, 1861, was a great day for Warren. It should not be 
 forgotten. With that day came a new life. The great teams and 
 covered wagons, the pungs of winter, driven by the Vei-mont 
 farmers; the stages, the mighty droves of beef cattle tramping 
 along the road; the flocks of sheep, thousands together; herds of 
 swine more numerous than the one the devils of Mary Magdalene 
 drove into the sea, going to market, — all these shall now disappear 
 from the highways of Warren forever. In their place shall come 
 thundering cars, the iron horse with ribs of steel and heart of flre, 
 screaming with its steam whistle loud enough to be heard faraway 
 beyond Glen ponds and Woodstock, passenger trains and freight 
 trains, and telegraph. 
 
 The people of Warren did appreciate the day and celebrated it. 
 Mr. Smith gave a bountiful and" excellent supper at the Moosilauke 
 house, then kept by Levi C. Whitcher, and mirth, hilarity, music, 
 and dancing prevailed. 
 
 On the first Monday in June, 1851, the oars began to run regu- 
 larly from Warren, no longer a quiet, pleasant hamlet, but now a 
 smart, bustling little town among the mountains.* 
 
 At the railroad company's annual meeting, held at Went worth 
 on the last Tuesday of May, it was voted to prefer six hundred 
 thousand dollars of stock, with which to construct the road from 
 Warren to Woodsville ; and early in the fall the grading was con- 
 tracted for by Mr. Warren H. Smith, and rapidly commenced. 
 Owen McCarthy made the great fill across the plain from Mt. 
 Helen down to the common. Mr. Dolloflfcut the ledge near the 
 basin of Runaway pond, called the Dollofi" cut; " Pt. Bowen " 
 made great cuts and fills around Pine hill, and the Eedington boys 
 had the deep excavation near Kelly pond. But the cutting through 
 
 * When they were surveying the railroad, Mr. Nathaniel Cloiigh, 86 years old, 
 who was inureduliuis about the entei prise, said that he did not want to live any 
 longer than to see tlie cars run into Warren. He was sick at the time the first reg- 
 ular train passed his house dud they sat him up in had to look at it. Two weeks 
 after he was dead. 
 
476 HISTORY OP WARKEN. 
 
 the ledge on "Warren Summit was the great work, and it involved 
 an immense amount of labor. For a year and a half a hundred 
 and fifty men, superintended by two brothers by the name of 
 Keyes, fromEomney, seventeen horses, with a number of yokes 
 of cattle, were employed. Tons of powder were burned,*a man 
 was killed, and more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
 expended before a steam engine ran over the Summit.* 
 
 The cut at this, the highest point of our railroad, is nearly 
 three-fourths of a mile in length, and in some places sixty feet 
 deep. Near the north end a little rill of pure, clear water comes 
 dashing down over the huge rocks, and at the bottom, divides 
 itself into two streams ; the waters of the one running north emp- 
 tying themselves into the Connecticut eventually find their way 
 into the ocean, through Long Island Sound; while those running 
 south unite with the MeiTimack river which discharges itself into 
 the ocean nearly two hundred miles from the mouth of the Con- 
 necticut. 
 
 The cars commenced running over this last section in the fall 
 of 1852, as far as East Haverhill, and early the ensuing spring the 
 road was finished to "Woodsville, where it connects with the Pas- 
 sumpsic railroad and the White mountain railroad. 
 
 Green were the hills of "Warren. The mighty spruces and 
 hemlocks still stood untouched iipon the mountains, and amongst 
 them the wood-chopper's axe had not as yet been heard. The rea- 
 son of all this was the inconvenience of getting the timber to 
 market, and the consequent unprofitableness of the business. But 
 now, through the medium which the railroad afi'orded, a rapid and 
 convenient communication was opened with the large towns down 
 the Merrimack, and thereby the business of lumbering was much 
 more profitable. 
 
 Wood also became an object of importance, and the once 
 heavy forests fast began to disappear. Upon the side of Mount 
 Carr, high up in the valley of Patch brook, a large company of 
 French Canadians, honest men every one, made a rural settlement 
 and chopped wood, under the superintendence of Col. Charles 
 Lane. This individual, more easily to facihtate its transportation 
 
 * 0. H. Latham had chai-ge of the engineering. Jonathan Little kept the hotel 
 on the Summit, and made money-while the railroad was building; Ijuc the tavern 
 was good for nothing after the cars began to run. 
 
OTHER IMPORTANT ENTEKPEISES. 477 
 
 froin the mountain side, constructed a sluice nearly two and one- 
 fourth miles in length, extending to the valley near the railroad. 
 The sluice was twenty inches in width and sixteen inches' in 
 height. In it he turned the waters of Patch brook, the wild 
 mountain stream, and placing the wood inthis, it rapidly descended 
 in its serpentine course, now crossing some deep gully, then span- 
 ning the torrent, and then creeping rapidly along on the side of 
 some steep bank till at last it reached the valley, falling over a 
 thousand feet. 
 
 Mr. Lane also constructed a large canal, half a mile long, 
 through which he turned the water of Baker river into the lai'ge 
 mill-pond on Black brook. The cost of the work was about two 
 thousand dollars. It was flnislicd late in the fall, and the water 
 first let in on November 28, 186S. 
 
 This made an excellent mill-privilege and a great saw-mill 
 went up in Warren village. Millions of feet of lumber have been 
 manufactured here and sent to market. East-parte also waked up 
 and a mighty mill was erected there. Warren Summit also got 
 enterprising; numerous mills have been built, and the timber 
 comes down from Black mountain. Owl's head, Webster shde, 
 and Wyatt hill. 
 
 What was the consequence of all this enterpiise? Warren 
 village doubled in size, and the population and wealth of the town 
 much increased. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A BEIEP ACCOUNT OF TWO MUBDETtS. 
 
 This is a chapter we would gladly omit, but we should 
 not be doomed a faithful historian if we did not write it. Within 
 a 3-ear and a half of each other, it was alleged, two men were mur- 
 dered in Warren. Antony McCarter and Vanness Wyatt were 
 the alleged murdered men, — Patrick Sweeney and James M. Wil- 
 liams were the alleged murderers. 
 
 The first tragedy happened in 1859, and it was a snowy day in 
 March when Antony McCarter was last seen in Warren. He had 
 led a secluded life for years ; but that winter had taken up his resi- 
 dence with Sweeny, an Irishman, who had his shanty in the fir 
 woods by the brick-kiln, on the East-parte roall. He had quar- 
 relled with Sweeny's wife that morning, and she had inflicted a 
 deep gash in his face with an iron poker. No one saw him after 
 that day. 
 
 Sweeny sold McCarter's stove, his clothes, axe, and jack-knife. 
 He told many diflferent stories about where ho had gone, and when 
 hints of foul play were thrown out. Sweeny left town suddenly in 
 the night and went to Vermont. 
 
 Enquiries were made for the murdered man in all the neigh- 
 boring towns, and even letters were sent to the otiier side of the 
 Green mountains by the river Lamoile, where he used to live; but 
 nothing, could be heard from him. 
 
 The people grew anxious, excited; the summer wont by and 
 still nothing was discovered. Wild stories were told, how some 
 
KETUBN or THE MISSING MAN. 479 
 
 boys passed him in the woods where he was just covered in a shal- 
 low grave; how a fisherman hooked up one of his ribs^from the 
 great pot hole in the river ; and how will-o'the-wisps were seen 
 hovering at night over the old cellar of the shanty. 
 
 So intense was the excitement that in January people began 
 to search for McCarter. The cellar was dug deeper, the woods 
 were searched wliere the boys said they discovered him, and the 
 great basin in the rocks was dipped out by more than twentj' per- 
 sons; but no dead man could be found. "Where was he? All be- 
 lieved him murdered. "Where was Sweeny? 
 
 More than two years afterwards, an old man with a pack on 
 his back was seen traveling through the village towards tlie East- 
 parte. To the surprise of every one, it was McCarter. He went 
 back to tlie old shanty again, fitted it up, and to-day, with his hens, 
 his dog, and his cat, he lives alone in the fir woods.* 
 
 The second occurred in 1860, and it was fiir more serious than 
 the Sweeny-McCarter affair, and the dead man never came back to 
 life again. 
 
 James M. "Williams was a nervous, thin-haired man. "Vanness 
 "Wyatt was stout and strong; but was loose in his conversation, 
 and did not weigh well his words. Mr. AVilliams was a man of 
 considerable .property. Mr. "Wyatt was poor. Mr. Williams had 
 become very unpopular, owing to au alleged improper intimacy 
 between himself and Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain. Said intimacy 
 was stoutly denied by Mrs. Cliamberlain, Mr. Williams, and all 
 their friends, and the persons who circulated the stories were pros- 
 ecuted for slander. Mr. Wyatt was a good natured fellow, and 
 was generally liked; but persons who 'said they were disgusted 
 with the alleged conduct of Mr. Williams with Mrs. Cliamberliu 
 put Wyatt up to " haze " Williams. 
 
 But this was the I'cal cause of the quarrel between the two 
 men. Wyatt's father owed Williams a debt ; the latter sued the 
 father and attached and sold some peg wood and bark whicb the 
 son, Mr. Wyatt, claimed to own. Mr. Wyatt was mad, made an 
 
 * McCarter was liorn in Canada, of Irish parents. He served in the 1812 war, 
 was in several battles, and at Saoliett's harbor was severely wounded. He belonged 
 to the British army. 
 
 Patrick- Sweeny in 1864 lived in Manchester, N. H. He is a thick set, light 
 complexioued man, somewhat given to druukeuuess and telling loolislt lies. 
 
480 
 
 HISTORY OF •WAKREN. 
 
 assault upon Mr. Williams, although he did him no injury, and 
 used very threatening language towards him. He was somewhat 
 encouraged to do this by those persons who disliked Mr. Williams. 
 The friends of the latter advised him to arm himself. He did so 
 with a revolver. Should not the parties who encouraged tliis bad 
 blood ou both sides feel a little guilty? If any one should ask us 
 to express our opinion privately, we should say that the persons 
 who advised Mr. Williams were vastly more to blame than him- 
 self for what he did ; also, that if those who set ©n Mr. Wyatt had 
 minded their own business they would have done far better. 
 
 The killing took place on the morning of July 27, 1860. Wil- 
 liams had been to Samuel Bixb\"'s, who lived over the river from 
 the depot, to milk his cow. Wyatt was at work loading bark near 
 the railroad track. Coming home in company with William Clem- 
 ent, Mr. Williams saw Mr. Wyatt approaching liim with a small 
 stick in his hand. Wlien near the south-east corner of the house 
 Stevens Merrill built sixty odd years before, Williams spoke and 
 said, "Van. is after us." Clement said, "I guess not." They 
 passed along a few steps, when Williams turned again, drew up 
 his pistol and said to Wyatt, " Step another step and I will blow 
 you through," and fired at the same time. He then passed along 
 on the sidewalk about six feet, and by the corner of the fence 
 made a short halt, and as Wyatt came near where Clement stood , 
 Williams started across the street. 
 
 William Clement under oath says in continuation: — "He 
 (Wyatt) then said, ' I have not touched you Mr. Williams, and 
 wasn't a going to,' and Mr. Williams had got out a little ways in the 
 road and said ' I know you havn't, but you followed me with a 
 stick,' and then he passed along across the road. Wyatt then 
 looked up and said, ' Bill, he has killed me.' I saw he was pale, and 
 saw a red spot on his shirt, and lie was tottering; went towards 
 the feuce and I sat part down and caught him. After I got hold 
 of him I looked around for help, but could see no one ; but turned 
 and saw Williams across tlie street, and called to him to lielp carry 
 in that man or take care of him, don't remember which, and then 
 I looked back up street and saw Boynton coming out of his door, 
 and called to him and he came, and we carried Wyatt to Knapp's 
 hotel. Wvatt lived from five to ten minutes, and tlien died." 
 
AKREST AND TKIAL OP "WILLIAMS. 481 
 
 They had a post-mortem examination of the ihurdered man, 
 and the following doctors were present: David C. French, A. G. 
 French, Jesse Little, Peter L. Hoyt, and A. A. Whipple. Tliey 
 found that Vanness was shot in tlie left breast, the ball passing 
 through between the fourth and fifth ribs, above the centre of the 
 breast, through the covering over the heart, through the lieart— and 
 it lodged in the right lung. Dr. Alphonzo G. French took out the 
 ball. 
 
 There was a terrible excitement in WaiTeri that day; men 
 turned pale when they heard the news, and almost every person 
 in town came to the village. They wanted to see the murdered 
 man, and the}' wanted to see the murderer too, as they called him. 
 One political party was almost wholly against "Williams. The 
 other party with equal unanimity immediately began to stand up 
 for him. 
 
 HaZen Libbey, the constable, arrested Mr. "Williams. Chas. 
 H. Bartlett, Esq., an attorney at "Wentworth, came to advise with 
 him. Hon. Thomas J. Smith came to advise with the citizens. 
 He counselled moderation, and had a coroner's jury summoned. 
 It consisted of Samuel L. Merrill, George E. Leonard, and Samuel 
 Bixby ; and after hearing the evidence they brought in the follow- 
 ing verdict: " He came to his death by a bullet shot from a pistol 
 by the hand of tlames M. Williauis." Then Mr. "Williams was 
 brought before a Justice of the Peace, Col. Isaac Merrill, waived 
 an examination, and was committed to Haverhill jail. At the 
 August term of court he was admitted to bail, and at the January 
 term at Plymouth he had his trial. 
 
 Justices Bellows and Nesmith held the court; Hon. John Sul- 
 livan, the Attorney General, and Henry "W. Blair, county solicitor, 
 were counsel for the State. Hons. Josiah Quiucy and Harry Hib- 
 bard were assigned as counsel for the respondent, he representing 
 himself as poor. The jury consisted of nine of one political party 
 and three, of the other.* The respondent plead, " Not guilty," 
 and set up that the act was committed in self-defence. 
 
 Many witnesses were calledf and the case occupied several 
 
 * it was alleged, bnt perhaps wrongfully, tlmt Mr. WiHinms' Iriends. those who 
 advised hiin to get a pistol, were about the court working Ibr him, and that they 
 log-rolled the jury, &c. 
 
 t The State called the following persons as witnesses ; Williana Clement, Wil-- 
 
482 HISTORY OF WARKEK. 
 
 days ; the jury were out tlih-ty-six hours, could not agree and were 
 discharged. It was understood that the jury divided politically; 
 the three of one party being for the State, and the nine of the 
 other party for the respondent. The case was continued along for 
 a year or more, and then a nolle prosequi was entered. 
 
 It is but justice to Mr. Williams to add that no juryman found 
 him guilty of murder. The three who were for convicting him 
 only wished to bring in a verdict for " manslaughter in the second 
 degree." 
 
 Afterwards Mr. Williams hada short history of the trial pub- 
 lished in pamphlet form in vindication of himself. K any should 
 think our brief chapter does not do him justice, we would advise 
 them to procure the pamphlet and read and judge for themselves. 
 
 Vanuess Wyatt was buried in the village grave-yard, and on 
 his tombstone is the following inscription : — 
 
 "VANNESS WYATT, 
 
 DIED 
 
 July 27, 1860, 
 M. 28. 
 
 He came to his death fi-oni a pistol shot by the hand of Jaraes M. Williams, 
 in the street at Warren village, at live and one-half o'clock, A. M." 
 
 liam Caswell, Dan. Y. Boynton, Alphonzo G. French, Hazen Libbey, Henry A. 
 Colley, Isaac Morrill, .1. B. S. Otterson, Hobavt Wyatt, Veraniis P. Drew, George 
 H. Monlton, Ezra Libbey, George W. Merrill, Isaac banborn, Benjamin Clement, 
 Damon Y. Eastman, and several others who were not pnt upon the stand. The de- 
 fence called Arthur' Knapp, Darius Swain, Otis (Jhamberlin, .Joseph Bixby, Adoni- 
 ram Whitchei*, Caleb H. ^oyes, JMorrillJ. Sanborn, Georpre Libbey, Harvey Cham- 
 berlin, X. P. Folsom. Ezra 15. Katon, Addison Robinson, Ferdinand (J.Keezer, Jas. 
 P.Webster, ^Nathaniel Merrill, Salmon Gleason, .losepli Chamberlin, and put in 
 the aflldavits of George W. Prescott and Mary G. Noyes. 
 
 Warren has had two or three other very mean and as some say very dirty cases ; 
 but we can't stomach to put them in tliis our modest, pleasant, and urbane history. 
 The writing the above chaptei- was about the worst dose oJ literature we ever took. 
 For a history of said cases we would reler the historian of a hruidred years hence 
 to the N. H. Law Keports. — Author's KotG. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONCERNING A GKEAT KrVAlKY BETWEEN CHARITABLE RELIGIOUS 
 SOCIETIES, WHICH RESULTED IN MOVING AND REMODELLING THE 
 OLD MEETING-HODSE, IN A TOWN-HOUSE, A NEW SCHOOL- 
 HOUSE, A BEAUTIFUL COMMON, AND IN IMPROVING THE GRAVE- 
 YARD, ALL WHICH IS AN HONOR TO THE TOWN AND THE PRIDE 
 OF THE INHABITANTS. 
 
 A.BOUT the year 1830, and perhaps at an earher date, 
 difi'erent clergymen of the Universalist denomination preached 
 occasionally to the believers in a world's salvation from sin and 
 suffering; but the first society was organized in the year 1838, 
 under the ministry of Kev. John E. Palmer. 
 
 The Methodist at this time was the most prominent society in 
 town, in fact the Cougregationalists had nearly all disappeared,* 
 and the Freewill Baptists were but a weak handful of brethren. 
 Consequently it was natural that the followers of John Wesley, 
 
 * The Congregationalists often tried to make. inroads npon the Methodists, hut 
 without much success. P.riest Davis, (I. S. Davis,) of Wfiitworth,\vas instramen- 
 tal in getting a daughter of Capt. Daniei Merrill converted, and wanted her to join 
 his church. Capt. Daniel's folks were Methodists, hut they all went down to 
 the congregational church one Sunday. Davis was a cunning man and he preached ' 
 a good Methodist discourse to please them. Aunt Daniei heard him through, and 
 alter meeting she spoke. Said she, " Mr. D.'s preaching reminds nie of Farmer 
 Joshua Meri'ill up at Wan-en ; when he goes out to catch his old mare, he shakes a 
 nice pan full of oats and calls, ' ker-joh, ker-joh, ker-joh,' holding the bridle all the 
 time behind him out of sight. Just so with the priest; he halloos 'ker-joh,' and 
 shakes a nice pan-lull of Methodism; but when he gets 'em caught, he'll put on the 
 orthodox bridle with a vengeance." "The daughter didn't jine that society no 
 how." 
 
 Capt. Daniel Merrill once did something that pleased or displeased his wife 
 very much. To recompense him, she made up his new pants' wrong side out, seam 
 like a welt on the outside, and the Captain highly delighted wore them to meeting 
 several times, in that fashion.— B. K. Clement's story. 
 
48i HISTORY or WABKEN. 
 
 wishing to retain the supremacj', shonld regard this new sect with 
 suspicion and much jealousy, especially as its members, disciples 
 of John Murray, did not believe in an endless hell at all. 
 
 At first the Universalist societj^ had their meetings in the 
 school-house, the one with four roofs that stood in the fork of the 
 turnpike and Beech hill roads, and once in a while they would get 
 possession of the meeting-house on the common. Then the Meth- 
 odists would be filled with righteous indignation at the sacrilege, 
 as it seemed to them. 
 
 But the Methodist society still increased much the fastest, and 
 finally having been disconnected from the Wentworth and Orford 
 circuit, it obtained what it had not before had, preachiug every 
 Sabbath; yet as they had no right to occupy the old meefiug-house 
 all the time, althougli they wanted to, they were compelled to use 
 the school-house as often as one Sabbath a month, while the Uni- 
 versalist minister held forth in the pulpit under the great sounding 
 board. This seemed too bad, and tlie Methodist brethren would 
 steal the Bible away from the pulpit sometimes, and carry it to the 
 school-house with them. David Smith, Esq., a leader in the new 
 society, and withal a good disputationist, often remonstrated with 
 the Methodist brethren, but to no purpose, and much ill feeling 
 was engendered. 
 
 At last the feud culminated. The believers in eternal torment 
 came to the conclusion that they would not worship under the 
 same roof with that " damned society," that did not believe in 
 " damnation " at all; that thc)^ would give up the old meeting- 
 house entirely for a season, and under the ministry of Eev. Sulli- 
 van riolman a new and beautiful chapel was built. Much taste 
 and piety was evinced in selecting the locality for the new house. 
 It was located a short distance from the front door of the old 
 church. Then a school-house committee, from the same good 
 • society, with excellent taste, located a new school-house nearly in 
 front of the old meeting-house ; building a nice school-house privy 
 close up to the old sanctuary. And now the Universa'.ist society 
 could have as much preaching in the old house as they wished; 
 and some wicked outsider who sympathized with the Methodists 
 said, " They could bo damned into the bargain if they pleased." 
 
 The two societies being thus now in full blast, and the Free- 
 
RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM. 485 
 
 will Baptists wide awake, there was a great rivalry ainon;y tlicm, 
 and as a result the whole town went to meeting with all its might. 
 In winter they came in sleighs from Beech hill, Heiglit-o'-la^id, 
 Pine hill. Runaway -ponA, the Summit, East-parte and the Forks, 
 many of the women bringing their mother's old foot stoves to 
 keep their feet warm, and hitched their horses during the services 
 under the new cliapel sheds, a long row that the Methodists 
 had proudly stretched more than half way through the very centre 
 of the old common. In the summer time, no matter if it lightened, 
 thundered, rained, and hailed, or the sun poured down its rays 
 with torrid heat, they all turned out to meeting just the same. 
 The ladies on such occasions carried fans and parasols to keep cool, 
 and most every one brought bouquets or bunches of flowers, and 
 alecost, thyme, and southernwood, the pungent qualities of wliich 
 they found very useful stiraulents to keep them awake during 
 drowsy sermon time. The choirs also sang better than ever before, 
 and they had some glorious awakenings and revivals. Everything 
 was lovely and nobody seemed to care a copper how the village, 
 churches or common looked, provided only the societies flourished. 
 Opposition, excitement, and rivalry are grand things in church 
 affairs. For as many as ten years ecclesiastical matters thus went 
 on, and then the fever heat began to cool down a little. 
 
 The eyes of the citizens opened slightly, and they could see 
 that the old meeting-house of 1818 was out of repair and fast 
 going to decay; and that the paint was worn off the new Metho- 
 dist chape] ; also the once beautiful parade in front of Joseph Mer- 
 rill's inn was fondly in the recollection of some of the oldest in- 
 habitants, and the school-house and the new chapel-sheds seemed 
 out of place and unsightly. In short, the whole village looked bad 
 and was an object of remark in the neighboring towns. 
 
 Soon a general discontent arose against this order of things 
 on the common. Sundry individuals began to move in the matter. 
 Plan after plan was devised and abandoned ; but at last a town 
 meeting was held at which it was voted, the Universalists acqui- 
 escing, to sell the old meeting-house to the Methodist society and 
 that the town should buy the Methodist chapel at an expense of 
 five hundred dollars, for a town-house. The village school district 
 No. 2 had a meeting, or several (rf them, and voted that the dis- 
 
486 HISTOKY OF WABKEN. 
 
 trict would exchange its lot of land for one to the north, and then 
 it was generally agreed that all three of the buildings should be 
 moved and the common cleared. 
 
 There was much opposition and a great fight about the mov- 
 ing and where the houses should be placed; but they finally settled 
 down into their present locations and everybody was delighted. 
 
 Ira Merrill gave the lot of land for the town-house ; m9ney 
 was raised by subscription to buy of Albe C. Weeks the lots for 
 the meeting-house and school-house. Henry W. Weeks and Levi 
 C. Whitcher paid the most liberally, and Capt. Samuel L. Mer- 
 rill, more generous than any of the rest, gave most of the land 
 where the common is now. 
 
 Ephraim S. Colley moved the meeting-hpuse and town-house, 
 and Janes Glazier the school-house. Jolm M. Whiton managed 
 the remodeling of the old 1818 meeting-house. Columbus Clough, 
 George Clough, Amos F. Clough, and Ezra W. Keyes, did the 
 work. Considerable additions were made, but the body of the 
 old house remained the same, posts, timbers, walls, and roof, and 
 even the plastering overhead is the very same put on in 1818, bet- 
 ter than any that can be spread at the present day. 
 
 Thus the common was cleared and the looks of the village 
 improved. Our good Methodist society also, after twenty years of 
 efibrt, had now obtained what they had always longed for, the full 
 control of our fathers' old meetingrhouse ; and that they might 
 be a little more popular, under the pastorate of the Rev. L. L. 
 Eastman they had purchased the beautiful toned bell that has so 
 often enlivened our hills and valleys. At fii-st they had it rung 
 every day at noon, and several times each Sabbath; but the week- 
 day ringing shortly fell into disuse except on funeral occasions, and 
 when it tolls at the deaths of the inhabitants.* 
 
 Jared S. Blodgett has always had charge of the bell, and the 
 moment it is heard to toll all know that he is in the church tower 
 and every individual is all attention, hushed, standing in the atti- 
 tude of profound listeners. Thebellj by some signal which all 
 understand, proclaims the sex, the married or single state of the 
 
 * Tolling the Bell— A man dead and the bell sti'ikes one; a woman and it stiikes 
 two; a pause — then if thepei*son is single the hell strikes three times slowly; if 
 married, four times slowly, then the ag* is counted out. 
 
j,-«nyr~»^'JC-T^i— • , . 
 
 4^. V 
 
 
 :( "^ M.S. 
 
IMPBOVEMENT OF WAEREN COMMON. 487 
 
 deceased, and then counts out his or her age. Having ascertained 
 these particulars, the people begin to speculate, for they already 
 know every one that is ill in town, and thus generally discover 
 pretty certainly before any other intelligence reaches them, whose 
 bell it is. That bell is a suflBcient text for the discourses of the 
 day. They run all over the biography of the individual and bring 
 up many an anecdote of him and his contemporaries which had 
 long slept in their mjiids. 
 
 After the meeting houses, sheds, and school-house were moved , 
 what an amount of work was done on the common ! The stumps 
 of the dark old pines two hundred feet high, that once sighed in 
 the wind and shaded the Indian beneath, were dug out ; hundreds 
 of tons of stones were removed, and ploughs and harrows were 
 used day after day. One spriug. Henry W. Weeks, Oharles Leon- 
 ard, and others, planted elms and maples all around it, and the 
 good citizens have now in part the village green that Gov. "Went- 
 worth wished they should when he so kindly gave the town char- 
 ter in 1763. It is the pleasantest place in town. The wide spreading 
 trees cast a refreshing shade there. Caravans with elephants, lions, 
 and tigers, — and circuses — pitch their tents upon the greensward, 
 and the great mountains, bright and refreshing, look in upon the 
 gatherings of happy citizens. May the common be forever pre- 
 served. 
 
 With a new meeting-house and bell, town-house and common, 
 the village cemetery must be improved. Col. Isaac Merrill was 
 the leading spirit in this enterprise, and the wall was re-built, 
 good fences erected, and some trees set out, and to-day Warren 
 has as beautiful a burying ground as almost any country town.* 
 
 From our grave-yard a green vale extends far away to the 
 south. Great hills lift their heads around and stretch their old 
 trees to the wind. Warren's first settler, Joseph Patch, lies here 
 
 * The first grave-yard in Warren was located a short distance below the village 
 on land near the great railroad bridge. It was situated on the west side of the 
 road at the top of a little hill wliich was once the bank of the river. In this yard 
 abont twenty were buried, among the tirst of whom were John Mills ard his son, 
 earlv settlers. When excavations were made for the raikoad, the remains of sev- 
 eralbodies were ejchumed; iiut the overseer of the work dug the graves deeper, 
 aiid in them again deposited the remains. 
 
 There were also three other burying grounds which have become almost un- 
 known. One of these was located near the present site of the railroad depots. 
 Another is on Blue ridge, where .Toshua Copp was buried. It was the piece of 
 land which the town voted to accept of him for the purpose of erecting a meeting 
 
488 HISTOET OP WAKEEN. 
 
 ■without a tombstone. His grave is beside a rustling tree. The 
 breezes are sighing there. A little streamlet murmurs near and 
 sends its waters to the Asquamchumauke. A great mountain to 
 the northward, Moosilauke, looks in on the turfy mound. " O lay 
 me, ye that see the light, near some rock of my hills! Let the 
 thick hazels be around. Let the sound of the distant torrent be 
 heard." 
 
 Obadiah Clement also lies sleeping in an tinmarked grave, and 
 Stevens Merrill and Jonathan Merrill are resting near by. Joshua 
 Copp is buried on the Blue ridge by the banks of the Mikaseota. 
 Simeon Smith has his grave under the great apple tree by Eed-oak 
 hill road, and John Mills is sleeping on the river bank where the 
 " roaring rips are ever sounding." Who cjvn tell of the others? 
 
 "Warren's old settlers are all dead now. A life interspersed 
 with joys and sorrows was theirs. 
 
 " Oft did the harvest to their siclfle yield ; 
 
 Their liirrow olt the etnb'oorn glelSe has broke; 
 How jocund did they drive their team afield, 
 
 How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke. 
 
 But now — 
 
 Each in his narrow cell forever laid. 
 The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 
 
 The breezy call of incense breathing morn, 
 The swallow twittering from her straw built shed; 
 
 The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn, 
 No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 
 
 For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
 
 Or busy housewife ply her evening care; 
 No children run to lisp their sire's return, ' 
 
 Or climb'his knee the envied kiss to share." 
 
 How different in effect is the city from the country faneral. 
 In the city a strange corpse passes along amid thousands of stran- 
 gers, and human nature seems shorn of that interest which it ought, 
 
 house, and occupying as a burying-yard and training fleld. The third is in the 
 basin of Runaway pond. In this yard about thiWy were buried, the last being 
 children of Jonathan Clement, innkeeper, who died in 1815 of spotted fever. In 
 the pond basin was also the old Indian burying ground. 
 
 The old burying ground at Charleston should not be forgotten. 
 
 Besides the village cemetery on the Pine hill i-oad, there are used at the pres- 
 ent time, the Cloiigh grave-yarri, by the Forks school-house in Patchbreuckland ; 
 the East-parte grave-yard, as yoii turn up the Moosehillock road ; and the Siimmit 
 grave-yard, as you go up High street road. The Whitchers also had a grave-yard 
 of their own on Pine hill. 
 
tKESENT KEXIGIOUS STATUS. 489 
 
 especially in its last stage, to possess. In the country, every man, 
 woman, and child, goes down to the dnst amid those who have 
 l?nown them from their youth, and all miss them from their place. 
 Nature seems imits silence to sympathize with the mourners. The 
 green mound of the imral grave-yard opens to receive the slumberer 
 to a peaceful resting place and the maples and the elms which he 
 climbed when a boy in pursuit of bird's nests, moths or butterflies, 
 overshadow as it were with a kindred feeling his grave. 
 
 In concluding tliis chapter let us say that the Methodists and 
 Universalists have had no fights since ; the former having the whole 
 control of the old meeting-Iiouse, and the latter using the town- 
 house when they want preaching. The Freewill Baptists have 
 preaching at either place just as they can get accommodated. 
 Sometimes the Second Adventists, a new sect that has seen the 
 world destroyed a half dozen times or more, occupy the town-house 
 much to tlieir gi-eat delight. And now at the close of "Warren's 
 :ftrst century entire harmony among the different religious societies 
 prevails. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF A DELECTABLE VISIT TO MOOSEHILLOCK, AND WHAT CAN BE 
 SEEN THERE — THE WEATHER PEKMITTING. 
 
 Reader, let us go ou to Moosehillock. The Indians 
 called it Moosilauke from mosi, bald, and auke, a place, — " Bald- 
 place." There are three paths leading to the top of the mountain, 
 one from North Benton, one from "Warren Summit, and one from 
 the East-parte region. The last one will answer our purpose 
 best. 
 
 Let us start early ou the East-parte road. There has been a 
 great storm, but it has cleared off noT*-; the moon is on the full, 
 and the air is clear as a bell. "We cross Berry brook where Samuel 
 Knight had a fight with a bear, keep Silver rill upon our left, and 
 come to the Sawtelle school-house. Crossing the bridge over the 
 Asquamchumauke or Baker river, we iDass a remarkable flume in 
 the rocks which the waters for ages have been wearing out, leave 
 the " pot holes" where McCarter was said to be hid when he was 
 murdered, to our left, and listening to the white thoated finch, our 
 mountain whistler, as he sings the prelude to the " "Wrecker's 
 daughter," in the fir woods, we reach East-parte school-house by 
 Moosilauke falls on the Asquamchumauke. 
 
 It is a modest little school-house by the roadside, but it has a 
 history such as few others can boast. "Within thirty years, nearly 
 a score of boys have been to school there, who have made preach- 
 ers of the gospel. Heber C. Kimball, the celebrated Mormon, and 
 Moses H. Bixby, an eloquent divine, are the most noted. Four 
 
" MOOSILAUKE.'; 491 
 
 doctors and two lawyers also got their early education there. 
 Perhaps the great wooded mountains arouud, the mighty chasms 
 worn in the solid rocks, with pot holes, some of them forty feet 
 deep, and the music of falling waters, had something to do with 
 forming the character of the pupils who have attended school 
 there. 
 
 We go up through MooseMUock district, climbing the hill all 
 the time, past a swaley meadow-field on the right, where a hun- 
 dred bob-o'-links titter, and laugh, and sing all through the month 
 of June, past another school-house and over Merrill brook, and 
 we arrive at Nathaniel Merrill's, the last house high up on the 
 northern marche or boundary of "Warren. 
 
 "What a magnificent place is Mr. Merrill's ; green fields up to 
 his very door ; rustling maples, the hum of millions of bees, the 
 primitive cheese-press and an old loom in the shed, and pure water 
 to drink. Cattle and sheep are in the rich pastures, there are 
 waving fields of ripening grain, the orchard is filled with apples, 
 cherries, and Canada plums, and the murmuring of brooks and 
 the roar of the distant torrent is heard. Arouud are the lofty 
 wooded crests of the great mountains, "Waternomee, Cushman, 
 Kineo, and Mount Carr, sweeping away in a circle to the south- 
 west. 
 
 We will get saddle horses here and go up the mountain slowly 
 that we may enjoy the trip all the better. "We open the heavy gate, 
 cross the little rill that comes down from the great sugar orchard 
 where the song thrush is singing, and going up through the pas- 
 ture, startle si grass finch that skippering to the top of a low wav- 
 ing maple, warbles two soft half plaintive notes, followed by a 
 sweet silverj' giggle, as though the bird exceedingly pleased,~Was 
 laughing at its own rich melody. 
 
 As we enter the woods we see the mountain summit rising 
 4,000 feet above us ; the river is roaring in the ravine 500 feet deep, 
 on our right ; the red-eyed vireo and winter wren are perpetually 
 singing in the thick forest, and when we cross on rustic bridges 
 two mossy streams, where a pair of solitary sand pipers are feed- 
 ing, we begin the sharp ascent of the mountain. 
 
 The forest is deep and dark. Deer yard in these woods every 
 winter ; bears prowl in them all summer long, there are sable-traps 
 
492 HISTOKT OF WAKREN. 
 
 beside the path, tvaps in which wild cats are catight; and it was 
 near here that Joseph Patch, his son, and Captain Flanders killed 
 the last moose that were ever found in this region. Yet no one 
 was ever hurt by these " wild beastes/' so terrible, only Jared S. 
 Blodgett once was greatly frightened by a bear by the path, and 
 many a traveler has seen a hedgehog rapidly disappearing in the 
 thick bushes. Hear that great owl hooting away across the table 
 land by Gorge brook. What a dreadful voice he has ; but it never 
 injured one yet. There are red squirrels chattering by the road- 
 side, — a pleasant sound. 
 
 Climbing, zigzaging up the mountain, the forest changes, the 
 ash, beech, and maple disappear, and the spruce, fir, and silver 
 birch take their places. "We have reached a different zone, and the 
 birds change, — the soft, sweet lovc' note of the purple finch is 
 heard up among the conep, the ivory billed snow bird is startled 
 from its nest by the path, Canada jays scream out from the fir 
 shade, and sometimes cross-bills, yellow rumped warblers, pine 
 grosbeaks and lesser red polls, birds that breed Jn Labrador, are 
 found. The Canada grouse, with their brood of chicks, mn fl-om 
 the path. Then there are nut hatches, kinglets, raby crowned 
 wrens, oven birds and olive backed thrushes far in these woods. 
 
 The trees gi'ow smaller and smaller, so short and thick and 
 scraggy that one can almost walk on top of them. Blueberries 
 and raspberries, that are ripening in the valley below, are just 
 beginning to flower here ; the bunch plum is white by the path, 
 and a dozen kinds of flowers, new and strange, flora of Green- 
 land, appear. 
 
 We will stop at the cold spring just under the southern peak, 
 to drink. It is the coldest water we ever drank; our teeth ache 
 and chatter, and we say with all the rest that surely there is an 
 ice bank near by. 
 
 Soon we are out on the bald mountain ridge that connects the 
 two peaks; on either hand are wild and hideous goro^es three 
 thousand feet down into the depths below. Beyond to the west is 
 the bright valley of the Connecticut, garden land, with silver 
 river; to the east the dark ravine of the Asquamchumanke filled 
 with the old primitive woods, where the trees for thousands of 
 years, like the generations of men, have grown, ripened and died. 
 
»f 
 
 (•few"'*- ■ .I-,' ,'•' 
 
 ^^ "'^"^^n ■^v.^I^r -'"^^l" •* '""■■' 
 
THE PROSPECT HOUSE. 498 
 
 Half a mile further on and we are at the Prospect House on 
 the bald summit of the mountain. The most sensible thing- that 
 we can do is to hitch our horses under the ledge on the eastern 
 side, ovit of the way of the wind, and go in and get a good cup of 
 tea, or something of the sort. The house is a I'ude structure, built 
 of stone. Darius Swain and James Clement built it in I860.* 
 Samuel Hoit was master workman and John "Whitcher, Nathan 
 "Willey, and numerous others, worked there. They had two yoke 
 of oxen up on the mountain for a whole mouth, and the men 
 all camped over by the cold spring. f 
 
 We are out now on top of the mountain, well wrapped up in 
 shawls and quilts. It is a glorious day, but a little colder than 
 when the Indian chief, Waternomee, sat on this summit, yet not 
 so cold as when a century ago one of Eobert llogers' rangers died 
 here. Chase "Whitcher, the first white settler who came up here, 
 thought it a cold place. But Mrs. Daniel Patch, the first wliite 
 woman who ever stood upon this summit, thought it quite pleasant. 
 She brought her tea-pot with her, and made herself a good cup of 
 tea over a fire kindled from the hackmatacks, bleached white, so 
 many of which you see standing like skeletons down on the shoul- 
 ders of the mountain, just as though a great grave-yard had been 
 shaken open by an earthquake. Mrs. Susan C. Little, wife of Dr. 
 
 * The persons who worked on the moimtain: — James Clement, Darius Swain, 
 John Hoit, Samuel Hoit, John Whitcher, with yoke of cattle; Nathan Willey, di'ove 
 cattle; Vanness Wyatt, Burgess A. Clement, Jesse Eastman, James S. Merrill, J. 
 T. Merrill, Horatio Willouglil>y, with cattle ; Eben-Swain, Chas. Carpenter, Joseph 
 Whitcher, Ilazeu Libbey, benjamin Eastman, Daniel Willis. 
 
 The Prospect Holise was opened July 4, 18(jO, and the day was celebrated on 
 the mountain- Blore than a thousand people were present; the Kewbury brass 
 hand lurnished the music. Col. Stevens M. Dow marshaled the citizens, a whole 
 regiment of them, marching and counter-marching upon the mountain top, and 
 Hou. Thomas J. Smiih delivered an excellent and patriotic oiation. 
 
 On this occasion Daniel Q. Clement drove two horses attached to a large pleas- 
 ure wagon on 'to tlie mountain; and the celebration concluded with a sliow hy a 
 party of Indian performers, genuine Indians, who danced, sang, and sounded the 
 war-whoop. 
 
 t Nathaniel Bichardson and Nath. K. Eichardsou made the shingles high up on 
 the mountain side. 
 
 " I860, Aug. 29.— Philip Hadley, 80 years old, came up to the Prospect House. 
 He lives at Bradford, Vt. , and he walked all the way from that place to the top of 
 the mountain." — Register of Prospect House, latiO. 
 
 James Cutting, 85 years of age, rode horseback from his home in Haverhill, to 
 the top of Mooshillock, and back the same day, Aug. 24, 18fi9. 
 
 Immediately after opening the Prospect House, several citizens of Wan-en 
 commenced to keep summer boarders ; Rnssel Merrill was the first to open the 
 business; and after him, H.H.Sheldon; the Moosilauke House, now kept uyD.G. 
 Marsh, aiid Nathaniel MerriM, 2d, have followed the business. 
 
494 HISTORY OF WABKEN. 
 
 Jesse Little, was the first -wonian who rode a horse on to the moun- 
 tain, and that was in 1859. 
 
 William Little was the first landlord of the Prospect House, 
 then Ezekiel A. Clement kept it for one season, and afterwards 
 James Clement, for years and years, was mine host on Moosehil- 
 lock. He was really the old man of the mountain. Many a night 
 he has stopped alone up here among the clouds and the eagles. 
 The housewife rocking her cradle of a stormy night, below, would 
 mutter as a gust of storm thundered over the roof, " O then it is 
 poor Jim that has enough of fresh air about his head up there this 
 night, the creature !" 
 
 One summer they had, as visitors at the Prospect House, a 
 deer, thi'ee eagles, a bear, and a wild cat. Jim said he saw the 
 deer cropping the harebells on the mountain top ; that the boar lay 
 in the grass at the foot of the falls ; the wild-cat screamed from 
 the hackmatacks at the moon, and the eagles looked in at the win- 
 dow as he was building the moi-ning fire. Jim was a great hand 
 at telling stories of his adventures in the woods, and what he had 
 witnessed on the mountain. He said he had seen the fog so thick 
 that he could bag it up like corn ; that he had seen it so cold that 
 it turned into icicles and sailed round like birds ; that the wind 
 would blow one hundred and twenty miles an hour; that once a 
 wMrlwind lifted a pair of cart-wheels fifty feet into the air, spun 
 them round for a minute and then let them down again uninjured ; 
 that he had heard a bear in the night, hallooing over on the south 
 peak so loud that it waked the whole family up ; that there was an 
 earihquakc that shook the crockery on the shelves; that once a 
 column of smoke and flrS issued from the easterly ridge, belching 
 up like a volcano ; that the aurora borealis came down on the 
 mountain so thick and so splendid that it seemed like a shower of 
 silver and gold ; and that every year, there was one night, about 
 the full of the moon in August, when witches, and ghosts, and 
 spirits, and fairies danced, and yelled, and sang over the mountain 
 peaks by the million. When remonstrated with for telling large 
 stories, he would reply, " What is the use of telling a story at all 
 unless you can tell one that will call the mind into activity." 
 
 Let us get up on the deck of the roof. It is the best view of 
 all from here ; tlie grandest and most sublime, far surpassing that 
 
A PANORAMA OF MOUNTAINS. 495 
 
 from any other peak in New England, because of its isolated posi- 
 tion, and of its great height, and no other mountains near to hide 
 the prospect, as is the case at the "White mountains. Then stand- 
 ing alone it does not attract the clouds as the White mountains do, 
 and for a whole month in the season it shoots up into the clear 
 heaven when all the eastern peaks are cloud capped. 
 
 Just around us, the mountain is green with mosses and lichens, 
 thirty kinds of mosses ; and harebells and mountain cranberries, 
 with their millions of flowers, make it seem like a garden, with a 
 green border of flrs and spruces and birches below. Purple 
 finches, snow birds, and the mountain whistler are singing in this 
 garden. 
 
 The sun is going down and it is cold you say. Let us travel 
 with our eyes round the whole horizon. 
 
 Look away to the south first. How the ruby light is gleaming 
 on Lake Winnepisseogee, " The Smile of the Great Spirit ;" see that 
 tall shaft just on the horizon beyond. It is Bunker hill monument 
 standing " down by the sea." Carry your eye round to the west; 
 Mt. Belknap is first, then "Wachusett in Massachusetts, the Unca- 
 noonucks, and to the right of them, Jo English, Kearsarge, Mt. 
 Cardigan, Monadnock, and Croydon mountains. Close by is Wa- 
 ternomee, Cushman,Kineo, Mount Carr, Stinson mountain in Kom- 
 ney. Smart's mountain in Dorchester, Mt." Cube in Orford, Senti- 
 nel mountain in Warren, and Piermont mountain. 
 
 Across the Connecticut river to the southwest is Ascutney, and 
 beyond it, fai-ther down, is Saddle mountain, Graylock, and Berk- 
 shire hills, in Massachusetts. Then wheeling round towards the 
 north are Killington peaks, sharp and needle like, shooting up 
 above the neighboring hills ; farther north and directly west, is 
 Camel's Hump, unmistakable in its appearance ; then Mt. Mans- 
 field, towering above the thousand other summits of the Green 
 mountains.' 
 
 Above and beyond them, in the farthest distance, are counted 
 nine sharp peaks of the Adirondacks in New York, Mt. Marcy 
 higher than all the rest. To-morrow morning at sunrise you will 
 see the fog floating up from Lake Champlaiu this side of them. 
 
 Li the northwest is Jay peak on Canada line, and to the right 
 of it you see a hundred summits rising from the table lands of 
 
496 HISTORY OP WAKBEN. 
 
 Oftnada. Then there is the notch at Memphremagog lake, Owl's 
 head by Willoughby lake, and Monadnock iu northern Vermont. 
 
 Close down is Black mountain; Owl's head of New Hamp- 
 shire, and Blncberry, Hogback and Sugarloaf mountains. Then 
 north is Cobble hill in Landaff ; Gardner mountain in Lyman, and 
 Stark peaks away up in northern Coos. 
 
 To the right, and stretching away to the northeast in Maine, 
 you see a long rolling range of hills, the water-shed between the 
 Atlantic ocean and the St. Lawrence river, said by Agassiz to be 
 the oldest land in the world. East of these is the white summit of 
 the Aziscoos, by Umbagog lake. 
 
 Nearest and to the north-east is Mt. Kinsman, the Profile 
 mountain; and above and over them Mt. Lafayette, its sides 
 scarred and jagged where a hundred torrents pour down in spring, 
 its peaks splintered by lightning. South of this, and near by, are 
 the Haystacks. Over and beyond the latter are the Twins, more 
 than Ave thousand feet high; and just to the right of them Mt. 
 "Washington, dome shaped and higher than all the rest. Around 
 this monarch of mountains, as if attendant upon him, are Mts. 
 Adams and Jefferson, sharp peaks on the left, and Mt. Moriah, the 
 Imp, Mts. Madison and Monroe, Mt. Webster, the Willey notch 
 precipice. Double head, and a hundred other great mountains 
 standing to the right and front. 
 
 A little to the south is Carrigan, 4,800 feet high, black and 
 sombre, most attractive and most dreaded, not a white spot nor a 
 scar upon it ; covered with dark woods like a black pall, symmetrical 
 and beautiful, the eye turns away to return to it again and again. 
 Mt. Pigwacket in Conway, its neighbor, always seems gray in the 
 hazy distance, Chocorua rises farther south, and Welch mountain, 
 Osceola, Whitcface, Ossipee, Agamenticus, on the sea coast; Mt. 
 Prospect and Red hill fill up the circle. 
 
 This view to the north and cast is the most magnificent moun- 
 tain view to be had on this side of the continent. The most indif- 
 ferent observer cannot look upon it without feeling its grandeur 
 and sublimity. 
 
 Forty ponds and lakes are sparkling under the setting sun. 
 Two iu Woodstock, the little tarn iu the meadow where the As- 
 quamohumauke rises ; Stinson pond in Romney, Lake Wiiinepis- 
 
MAGNIFICENT PKOSPECT. 497 
 
 seogee, Winnesquam, Long bay, Smith's pond, Squam lake, Mas- 
 coma lake, two ponds in Dorchester, Baker ponds in Orford, 
 Indian pond, Fairlee pond, and numerous others in Vermont ; 
 Tavleton lakes, Wachipauka pond, by which Rogers and his ran- 
 gers camped, Kelley, and Horse-shoe ponds ; t"wo others in Hav- 
 erhill, Beaver meadow ponds in Benton, and many more with 
 names unknown ; how they aU gleam and glisten, and look like 
 silver sheens. 
 
 The Pemigewassett, the Asquamchumauke, tlie Ammonoosuc, 
 and the Connecticut, from their wooded valleys are flashing in ihe 
 setting sun. 
 
 The villages with their churcli spires are gleaming. See Brad- 
 ford, Haverhill Corner, East and Xorth Haverhill, Newbury, Woods- 
 ville and Wells River, down there in the Connecticut valley. A 
 hundred spires are shining on the hills of Vermont. Landaflf and 
 Bath are lighted up, and Warren, Wentworth, Campton, Fraiico- 
 nia, Lake Village, and Laconia all come distinctly out as the sun 
 goes down. 
 
 Now see the sun just touching the Adiroudacks beyoud Lake 
 •iChamplain in the west. There is a rosy blush on the White moun- 
 .tains, the Green mountains are golden, while all the peaks behind 
 which the sun is going down are bathed in a sea of glorious light. 
 How it changes I Darkness creeps over the eastern peaks, the 
 Green mountains are going into shadows, the vermillion, pink, 
 ruby, and gold of the Adirondacks, is fading away, and the stars 
 are coming out. 
 
 But look! there is a silver line on the eastern horizon. 'Tis 
 the moon rising. But Luna don't come from behind the hills. 
 Her upper limb as she creeps up is distant twice her diameter 
 from the land horizon. That bright band twixtmoon and earth is 
 
 The view is- ihe grancl thing ol' Moosehillock. But if it should happen to be 
 cloudy, as is frequently the case, there is much of interest about the top of the 
 mountain. Garnets an inch in diameter, with perfect faces, are found by the car^ 
 riage road, forty rods from the house. Tlie best tourmalines in New Hampshire 
 are also obtained in the same locality. Down iii the Tunnel are magnificent quartz 
 crystals. On the south peak is a most curious lurrow. Mr. James Clement says 
 it was undoubtedly plowed by an iceberg drifting from the north-east to the south- 
 west, when New Hampshire mountains wiere under the ocean. No person can fail 
 to notice it. *'Jobildunc" ravine where the Asquamchumauke leap's down a 
 thousand' feet at an angle of 80 degi'ees, is much visited. The Seven Cascades 
 between the two peaks of the mountain on Gorge brook, are also, well worth avisit. 
 The stream descends at a sharp angle eight hundred -feet over a series of steps, 
 and after a great rain i^ a most maguificeut sight. 
 
 F* 
 
4:yo HISTOKY OF WAKBEN. 
 
 the ocean. It is a sight seldom seen from New Hampshire's moun- 
 tains. 
 
 As we come down from the roof, the m.onntain whistler, well 
 called the northern nightingale, chants its sweet notes in the hack- 
 matacks, an owl hoots over by the old camp at the Cold spring, 
 the wind is songhiiig mournfully on the mosses of the rocks, and 
 the deep voice of the torrents comes up from the dark ravines 
 below. Lot us go in, get supper, listen to Uncle Jim's yarns lor a 
 while, go to bed and sleep till the sunrise, which is scarcely less 
 glorious than the sunset. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOW SEVERAL IN^DIVIDUALS GOT RICH MANUFACTURIXIi, OR OtTGHT 
 TO, 'WITH THE GLORIOUS RESl'LTS OF IT. 
 
 YT ARREN has always been esteemed an agricultnral town. 
 Some milling has also been carried on, but wo do not now propose 
 to consider cither of said branches of industry ; but to give a brief 
 liistory of manufacturing in our little democracy. 
 
 Saw Mills. — In the earliest da3's of our hamlet the manufacture 
 of lumber was the most important of this branch of industry. 
 Stevens Meriill, as wo have said before, built the first saw-mill at 
 the "white little falls" on the Mikaseota, Black brook, where 
 once Jolin Page shot a deer. 
 
 Joshua Copp built the next saw-mill near the outlet of Runa- 
 way pond. "What an excellent mill privilege might be made there 
 now by constructing a short dam fifty feet long and forty-feet high 
 and flowing all Runaway pond basin again. The pond would be 
 a mile wide, two miles long and thirty feet deep. What a grand 
 reservoir! Then Kellcy pond could be flowed so as to make a 
 reservoir of eighty acres, twelve feet deep, and V\^aohipiuika could 
 be raised some eight feet by a short dam. If it was raised higher 
 than that its water would flow down the Oliverian to the Con- 
 necticut. 
 
 After Mr. Copp, Nathaniel Clough built two saw mills, the 
 first on the Asquamchumauke near the southern boundary, and the 
 second on that musical stream, Hurricane brook. Joseph Clement 
 
600 HISTOEY or WAEREN. 
 
 repaired the latter aud then sold It to John L. Stevens, who 
 moved it away to High street. 
 
 My grandfather Joseph Merrill, Jonathan Men-ill, and Benja- 
 min Merrill, then built the great saw-mill jusr at the depot cross- 
 ing. 
 
 Kuel Bela Clifford built on Moosehillock falls the mill stand- 
 ing near the East-parte school-house, and later, Adoniram Whitcher 
 built the old mill now gone to decay, on Berry brook, far up the 
 "New Road." 
 
 William Kelley built the saw-mill at Kelley pond. 
 Joseph H. Stevensjthe mill on Oak falls;* hardly a vestige of 
 it now remains. 
 
 Mrs. James Harriman, first a mill up High street on the Oli- 
 verian, and second another mill lower down on Warren Summit. 
 Sylvester Merrill and Capt. Daniel Merrill, a flourishing mill 
 high up in the East-parte regions. 
 
 Levi F. Jewell, two mills on Berry brook, and Isaac Sawtolle, 
 a mill in Streamy valley district, near the mouth of Batchelder 
 brook. t 
 
 What a host of different persons have owned some of these 
 mills. Stevens Merrill sold his to Moses H. Clement, and the 
 subsequent owners are Ebenezer Cushman, P. A. & M. E. Cush- 
 man, Philo Baldwin, Hazelton & Eaton, aud Whitcher, Merrill & 
 Clark. 
 
 Joseph Merrill bought out Jonathan and Benjamin Merrill, and 
 then sold to Anson Merrill. He sold to James Dow; and subse- 
 quent owners are Col. Charles Lane, Albe C. Weeks, Whitcher & 
 Weeks, L. C. Whitcher, J. M.Whiton, and last, H. W. Weeks. 
 
 At first all the lumber was manufactured for liome consump- 
 tion; but since the railroad was built millions of feet are annually 
 sent to market, bringing thousands of dollars back to the lumber- 
 men aud farmers of Warren. 
 
 Orist Mills. — The manufacture of all kinds of grain into meal 
 and flour is one of great importance, yet but two grist mills of 
 
 * Mr. Paxil Mealier was killed "here, Nov. 8, 1833. A log rolled oyer liim cnish- 
 ing his head to a jelly. He was 77 years old. 
 
 t Since the advent of the 2d century Col John S. Bryant built another mill on 
 the Oliverian, at the Summit, and Charles Thompson, a large steam mill by the 
 depot on the Summit. 
 
MILLS AND MILLERS. 501 
 
 any consequence have ever been established in "Warren ; Butler's 
 mill at the old deep hole, and Clement's mill at the mouth of Black 
 brook. For nearly twenty-flve years the Butler mill stood on the 
 Asquamchumauke, and sons of Joshua Copp "tended it." Then 
 it went to decay. The Clement mill has since done nearly all the 
 " grinding." Col. Obadiah Clement was the first miller* at the 
 white little falls on Black brook, and old men and women tell how 
 when they were boys and girls they went there "to mill" and 
 waiting for their " grist " whiled away the time listening to the 
 buzz of the old Col.'s rude mill stones, the splash of the water- 
 wheel and the rattling music of the kingfisher, equally familiar, 
 that every year had its nest down the stream in the river bank.f 
 
 Carding Mill, &o. — Col. Moses H. Clement established a card- 
 ing mill for the manufacture of rolls, which the farmers' wives and 
 their daughters spun into yarn, and wove into cloth. It was built 
 beside his grist mill, and he had in connection with it a falling 
 mill and dye house. Ebenezer Cushmau continued the business 
 and employed Moses W. Pillsbury for many years to work for him. 
 Philo Baldwin followed Mr. Cushmau, and after him Haselton & 
 Eaton. Hobart Wyatt used to do the dyeing for them. 
 
 Clapboard and Shingle Mills. — Moses H. Clement also had a 
 shingle mill. Ebenezer Cushman in Mr. Clement's mill, and Sal- 
 mon Gleason at the East-parte, have sawed an immense quantity of 
 shingles. Shingles have also' been made at the Sawtelle mill, the 
 Joseph Merrill mill, Keiley mill, and at Warren Summit. But 
 very few are now made in town. 
 
 Col. Isaac Merrill had the first clapboard mill in Warren.. It 
 was located on Patch brook, just below Rocky falls. Then Hasel- 
 ton & Eaton had one at the Stevens Merrill mill, and both together 
 they cut out and sent to market millions of clapboards. Not a 
 clapboard is made in "Warren now. 
 
 * others who have tended mill theve are Moses H. Clement, .Joshua Coipp, Jr., 
 James Mills, (1) the perpetual motion maker, Ebenezer Cushman, Page Kimball, 
 Robert B. Stevens, John Haselton, B. B. Eaton, Ira Merrill, and George Prescott, 
 miller. 
 
 (1) Mills ivorked on " pei-petual motion " all his life, hut did not make it go. 
 
 t Some grinding hap been done where the peg mill is now. Salmon Gleasoii 
 once had a cirn mill iit the East-parte. Levi F. Jewell now grinds corn, and long 
 ago the Curriers had a grist mill in the ed^e of Benton on Warren Summit. 
 . True Stevens " named" Moses H. Clement's grist m'll. He said, " What came by 
 Hazen's industry was Tamar's delight," and many other things of the same sort. 
 
602 HISXOKY OF WAKKEN. 
 
 Pepr^.-^Baj-ker & French commenced the maniifactiii-e of sioe 
 pegs, near the close. of. Warren's thii'd generation. Tliey made 
 thousands of barrels of them, the very best sent to' market, and 
 Employed many boys and girl^ in the manufacture. They carried 
 oil basiuess just at the end of the old Ooos Turnpike near the 
 Joseph lilerrill mill, and had Jboth steam and water power. John 
 M. Whiton succeeded them arid had a staall pond oa Cold brook 
 north cast of the railroad, in which to keep his peg timber soaked. 
 
 Tanning. — "Walter Whipple, brother, to Dr. Thomas Whipple, 
 who went to congress so many years, built a tannery on the Mi- 
 kaseota, just below'tho Blue ridge, and a dwelling-house near by. 
 The house was for many years the old parsonage, and Anson Pills- 
 bury lives in it now. Joseph Boynton, the great Methodist class 
 leader, succeeded Whipple in the business, and Joshua Merrill fol- 
 lowed him. Col. Isaac Merrill had a tannery on Ore-hill brook, 
 and William Pomeroy bought him out and carried on the business , 
 for many years. 
 
 Window Shades. — Haselton & Eaton commenced the manu- 
 facture of Window shades, and carried it on. extensively at the old 
 Stevens Merrill -mill. The material is got out here, but almost 
 every woman in town has a loom and weaves window shades. 
 Merrill Sp Clark still boatinae the business. 
 
 Starch. — F. A. & M. E. Cushman built a starch factory at the 
 Stevens Merrill mill. They made the starch from potatoes. 
 Shortly atteri i^assellK. Clement built, another starch factory by 
 Rocky falls on Patch brook, where he mauufactured potato starch 
 for a few years. He then moved his mill to the mouth of the Mi- 
 kaseota, where in company with Daniel Q. Clement he has con- 
 tinued the trade, and they have both acquired considerable 
 property. 
 
 Bobbins. — ^Levi F. Jewell built a bobbin mill at the mouth of 
 Berry brook and has made money making bobbins. He uses more 
 than a hundred thousand feet of hard- wood lumber .annually," and 
 has usually sold in Nashua. Mr. Jewell made wash-boards for a 
 few years. Nathaniel K. Richardson made bobbins a short time at 
 tlie Sawtellc mill. :> , , 
 
 , Coopers. — A cooper came to towir longt years ago, Mr,. Asa 
 Thurston. His shop stood exactly on the spot where the fix'st 
 
^cJeiu ham uouu^ 
 
 ' t -• * * 
 
 £711^71 
 
OTHER OCCUPATIONS. ,503 
 
 ssliool-house in Warren was built. Mr. Thurston employed George 
 W. Presoott, trader, and John Lord, to work for him. Afterwards 
 ■ Georg-e Bixby-, Son., and Samuel Bixby and Samnel Goodwin made 
 bue!ci'i>-, kits, and burrcils, utidLeaVii! . on Hn'TIing-lir-o' lai)d, made 
 ■' l.-arh-t,ilj- ■" toi' Ajisuii M<-|-i-ill. 
 
 SuKc'imI I'^/uinj.'et:. — ObJ Aiitoa\ Mo<;uiic;)'. rln; lun-iait., luadb 
 shingles by hand, and Samuel Osborn, iStephon Richardson, Isaac 
 CliflFord, .on Eed-oak hill, William Stoarus,* by Kelloy pond, Na- 
 thaniel Richardson, Daniel Bailey, James Dow, and Stevens Mor- 
 rill, son of 'Squire Jonathan Merrill, Tappan Craige, Stephen 
 Craige, and numerous others in town, have followed the same 
 business. Nathaniel Richardson and his son Nathaniel, high up 
 on the side of Mooseliillock mountain, made the long shingle for 
 the Prospect House. They camped out in the woods while thus 
 engaged. Persons who shaved shingles were called "shingle 
 weavers." 
 
 Pearlash. — -Capt. Benjamin Merrill, son of 'Squire Abel, made 
 salts and pearlash. His potash stood down the bank from the old 
 first school-house and Thurston's cooper shop. Ashes were plenty 
 then and Thomas Pillsbury and Col. Ben. Clement worked night 
 and day for liini, leaching, boiling, and pearling. What hot fires 
 they kept! Preston & Keezer bought out Col. Ben. Merrill and 
 continued the business. 
 
 Anson Merrill built a potash just west of the depot " crossing" 
 :ir'id did a lar^e ba^iini--.-. lie iiiwa^ s uiMde A N'. 1 pearlash. and 
 j;\ii the lua'l'ie.-! yru-i- \\>y i(. Willitirn Wpilf worki-'l Ji>r him awhile 
 aijJ Dhen he emiil<jM::d Huban VV'v.am. I.i.nue! Day. C':'). Lien. Cleni- 
 ent, " Biger " Wriglit, Nathan Willey, Thomas Pillsbury, Stephen 
 Whiteman and others in the business. Old settlers say " lots of 
 rum used to be drank in the potash premises;" but this must be a 
 mistake, for although all the ministers in those tiipes invariably 
 drank what liquor they could get, yet it is well known that all or 
 nearly all the above worthies were, or ought to have been, good 
 temperance men. 
 
 * Steai-ns once stopped at Uliiies' hotel at Eiist Haverhill. He had in a few- 
 glasses and Celt good. He called lor siippei-; Gliaes a/sked if he had any money. 
 Stearns said "yes." Glinesmiile him sliow it, then had a good snpper prepared. 
 When it wa.s ready he wanted Stearns to walk in. The latter did so, went twice 
 around the table, waike.l out into the bar-room and told (ilines that he had seen 
 the money, and the supper hafl been seen, and now he guessed they were even. 
 iStearns then walked oil', leaving Glines in a very pleasant mood. 
 
504 HISTORY OF WAERBN. 
 
 Uncle Eben Cushmau built a potash at the lower village and 
 worked it a long time. Then Hobart Wyatt* got exclusive control 
 of these important manufactories, and with his- son Vanness,t 
 was the last who ever carried on thcpearlash business in Warren. 
 
 Brick. — Brick making has never been very extensive in our 
 town. Long ago clay was dug in the bottom of Runaway pond, 
 and brick made from it just below Beech hill bridge on the south 
 bank of the Mikaseota ; but who did it the oldest inhabitants of 
 the present day have forgotten. Three-fourths of a century ago a 
 kiln was burned at the forks of Ore-hill stream where the road 
 turns off to the mine, from the turnpike, and Dr. French burned 
 several kilns in the East-parte region. J 
 
 Oils and Essences. — Every one has heard of Stephen White- 
 man's large essence manufactory, by Berry brook on the Summit. 
 He made peppermint essence, checkerberry essence, hemlock 
 oil, fir oil, spruce oil, pipsissiwa, and others, at' his l-enowned 
 distillery. Mr. Whiteman says Ellsworth and Woodstock will 
 soon be grand places to make spruce oil, for the lazy farmers of 
 those towns are letting their farms all grow up to spmce bushes. 
 Once Dr. David C. French had a large fir oil manufactory on the 
 East-parte road near where old McCarter was not murdered. 
 
 Blaohsmithing . — The following persons: Joseph Kimball, 
 Samuel Knight, Samuel Gilman, Joseph Rollins, Stephen White- 
 man, (he sei-ved seven years to learn the trade,) Deacon Peter 
 Stevens, on Red-oak hill, David Colby, Enoch R. Weeks, Moses 
 H. Clement,** James Clement, Joseph Clement, George Libbey, at 
 
 * Hotoart Wyatt once got mad at Moses Ellsworth and chased him all round 
 Joseph Merrill's bar-room trying to kick him; but Moses was too spry for him and 
 kept ont of the way. Both were " balmy." The next day EUs^worth was " tight " 
 and went into thepotash to whip Wyatt. He -" liit him once," when Wyatt, who 
 was a very strong man, seized "Fortyfoot" by the nape of the neck and the 
 ' seat of tile breeches and ducked him in a lye tub, " You are wetting me,'? sung out 
 Ell-*worth. " Then I'll dry ye," said'W'yatt; and he held him at arms length be- 
 fore t'te tire. " You are burning me," screamed " Fortyfoot." " Then I'll cool ye^" 
 said Wyatt, and he soused him in the lye tub again. Just then somebody came m 
 and stopped the pleasant fun, much to the disgust of botli parties. 
 
 t Van Wyatt went to a revival one evening after having collected ashes all day. 
 He was sleepy. Oneof the mi-nistere approached and asked him if he was looking 
 for religion. Vanness raised his eyes meekly and replied in the most honest man- 
 ner imaginable, "No sir, I am looking for ashes ." The minister laughed in spite of 
 himself, and passed along. 
 
 X They made a kiln of brick in 1801, near Aaron Welch's on Pine hill road. 
 
 ** JLemuel Keezer once agreed to pay Col. Moses H. Clement in mutton for 
 blacksmithing. One morning the colonel found two sheep tied in the shop, one 
 very fat and the other awftil poor. Col. Clement, the next time he saw Keener, 
 asked him what he meant by such work. IveezA* said that some of tlie blacksmith- 
 ing was good, but some mighty poor, and the bad mutton was for that. 
 
MTNOK MANUFACTUBBS. 506 
 
 the East-parte, Hazen Libbey, Walter Libbey, Moses Abbott, Ha- 
 zen Abbott, Paul White, George W. Jackson, Moses W. Pillsbuiy, 
 Emerson Pillsbmy, Anson Pillsbury, James Harriman, and others 
 have made horse shoes, axes, hoes, and nails, and shod oxen and 
 horses, and ironed wagons, sleighs and sleds. 
 
 Shoemakers.— In later times George "W. Jackson, Jared S. 
 Blodgett, John Merrill, son of Capt. Daniel, Ezra B. Libbey, Wil- 
 liam Weeks, Enos Hnckius, Nathaniel Libbey, Coleridge Marston, 
 have worked at making shoes and boots. Long ago Caleb Noyes, 
 (Noyes bridge was so called for him) Joseph Patch, Benjamin 
 Brown, Frederick Brown, Tristram Brown, John Abbott, Chase 
 Whitcher, and Luther Gove, made boots and shoes and mended 
 the same for our ancestors. These good men, knights of St. Cris- 
 pin, often went about the town " whipping the cat," as it was 
 called. The farmer with his ox cart would go for the shoemaker, 
 load in his bench, lasts, leather, and all the rest of his " kit, " and 
 drive him jolting home. A gallon of rum generally went with 
 him. Old men tell us how in one corner of the room the shoe- 
 maker sat, in a red flannel shirt and a leather apron, at work on 
 the kit mending and making shoes. With what long and patient 
 vibration and equipoise he draws the thi'eads and interludes his 
 hammer strokes upon leather and lap-stone and pegs, with snatches 
 of songs, banter, and laughter. The next farmer who wanted his 
 services came and earned him away, when his job was done, and 
 thus he " whipped the cat" all over town. 
 
 Tailoresses. — Warren has had many of them. They used to 
 go all about, just like the shoemakers, making clothes' for the 
 farmers and their families. Hitty Smith, daughter of Simeon 
 Smith, was the first one. She was an excellent workwoman, and 
 after long years of service, married a Mr. Clark, of Dorchester. 
 After her, in order, came Jane Parkinson, who married Adams 
 Preston, of Bradford; -Nancy Marsh, Sally Barker, who married 
 Jesse Eastman ; Nancy Barker, who married Col. Isaac Merrill, and 
 Sarah Clement, who married George Noyes. There were numer- 
 ous others, but these are best remembered. 
 
 Among the minor manufactures we should npt omit to men- 
 tion that Richard Whiteman, sometimes called " Sir Richard," 
 made kitchen chairs; that Jacob Whitcher and George Libbey 
 
606 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 made baskets; that Frank Oiisliman made whetstones' and '' scythe 
 rifles;'^ that A. L. Noyes mads jewelry: that J. M. Spaulding and 
 John C. Sinclair mad« harnesses: that Amos Clement, J. M. Wil- 
 liam«. Mordll J. SniibovD. and numerous others made -loft coal: 
 r.liJii; K.ael 8i-la Oli*l''jid made •/■«/':,•,■.• that Hazeii Kimball, Charles 
 (?hanill<-i\ .l:uiaes X. Hartwell, DamOu Y. Eastman, Addison W 
 Eastman, Joseph il. Little, and Hlmu-v N. Merrill made carriages 
 and sleighs; that Amos F. Clough was a photographer * and Chas. 
 A. Fiske, a painter; and both made beautiful picture*. Mr. Fiske 
 came to Warren about 1863, and afterwards built '' Green Lane 
 Studio," with a trout pond by it, the pleasant pine woods near, 
 where the Asqnarachumauke bends away to the East-parte. 
 
 If the making of maple sugar is a manufacture, then certainly 
 it is the sweetest and largest, and more jprofitable than all the rest, 
 and every farmer in town is or ought to be engaged in it as we 
 have before mentioned. Don't! don't cut down the sugar places. 
 
 Warren has done a great deal more than the average of country 
 towns in manufacturing, and could the reservoirs we have men- 
 tioned be bnilt, and the surplus water of Berry brook and the 
 Oliverian be carried down into them, as could easily be done by a 
 skillfnl engineer, a large manufacturing village could be built up. 
 Two good mill privileges on the Bine ridge, the Joseph Merrill 
 pond, the fall at the depot, the Stevens Merrill pond, the fall at 
 the mouth nf the Mikaseota. and the old deep-hole fall would fur- 
 iii-lr II ='.'i'tf^ 1(1 mill >iit->. >iii-li M,- i\'\\ rt'Wii-- |.i»>i(>v^. ;mmI \\"!:iri;'r 
 
 I'lv igrt^s;- in mauufai-tariuy lia- made mighr.y chaage* in War- 
 ren during its first century, as well as everywhere else. No more 
 do we have the rude camp and log cabin, except in the French 
 settlements, stone chimney and Dutch oven outside, and ill fitting 
 windows through which the wintry winds come whistling ; but 
 our modern house is a snug and silken nest of delight, rising in 
 some lovely spot light and airy, with heavy carpets, rich curtains, 
 and elegant beds. The rude fiishion of furniture and vessels for 
 the table, pewter ware, wooden knives, forks, and spoons, and 
 noggins, and the rude stylo of cooking, bean porridge hot and 
 
 * Charles F. Bracey was also a photographer in Warreu . 
 
CONTEAST — THEN AND HOW. 507 
 
 cold, has departed. Now we have a superior grace in fashion of 
 furniture and all household utensils, — silver and gold, brass and 
 steel, porcelain and glass, wrought into beautiful shapes, and for 
 the liioi'ning meai Cliiua a/id the Indies send their coffee, tea, suga)-,. 
 chooolHte. and preserved ti ails : lAn: Wc-ii ir- fl'iur, imd i^in L^^^■n 
 fai-iub an iibundrtui;e of rural daimieK. 
 
 No longer do we have a dearth of books and pictures, with a 
 life of story telling around the hearth, little intercourse with the 
 outer world, roads almost impassable, and hunting and carousing 
 for the chief pleasures and amusements; but to-day on our tables 
 are daily papers from Boston and New York, bringing news from 
 the whole world. There is notliing going on in the Legislature, 
 iu Congress, in the courts of law, in public meetings, religious, 
 political, or musical, iu any town in the country; no birth, mar- 
 riage, death, or any occurrence of importance ; nothing in the mer- 
 cantile, the literary, or the scientific world, but they are all laid 
 before us. We sit in the midst of our woods and groves in the 
 quietness of the country, a hundred miles from the capital, and are 
 as well acquainted with the movements and incidents of society 
 as though we were almost omnipresent. 
 
 So much for the advancement of one century. Will the next 
 show as much ? 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF SEVEBAL THINGS THAT HAPPENED ; CONCLUDING THIS HISTOKT 
 WITH SINCERE THANKS AND MANY KIND WISHES. 
 
 W^ARREN'S wars have seemed to repeat themselves once 
 in a hundred years. 
 
 King Philip's war in whicli our Indian cliief Watei'nomee, 
 sometimes called Wattanummon, took his first lesson, occurred in 
 1675, and a hundred years after came the revolution, in which the 
 first settlers of onr hamlet distinguished themselves. 
 
 Then came Queen Ann's war of 1712, and Capt. Baker's fight, 
 one of its battles, in which Waternomee was slain, and a hundred 
 years after was the war of 1812, with the British,, during which in 
 our hamlet there was such lively volunteering. 
 
 King George's war came in 1743, with its memorable expedi- 
 tions through and about our mountain valley, with the capture of 
 Louisburg, and a hundred years after came the Mexican war, when 
 Henry Albert went in Captain Daniel Batchelder's company to 
 Mexico. 
 
 The next great conflict was the old French'and Indian war, the 
 result of which, with Robert Rogers' great fight, — his rangers 
 against the St. Francis Indians, — made Wapeu a safe place for 
 white men to live in. This struggle ended in 1760, and a hundred 
 years later happened the war of the great rebellion, just at the 
 close of Warren's first century, and of this great history. 
 
 Our citizens took a lively interest in this last conflict. A ma- 
 jority of them said it was all about the negro, as some of the win- 
 
THE " GREAT REBELLION." • 609 
 
 ning party now boast, got up to free their man and brother from 
 slavery, and that it was fought under cover of a lie ; the aboli- 
 tionists loudly proclaiming that it was to preserve the Union and 
 the Constitution, and to maintain the flag, when in fact it was 
 nothing more nor less than a negro crusade. Now it is over they 
 good natu redly suppose it is all right, although some of them think 
 that the result will be very fatal to the " poor daiky." 
 
 The citizens of "Warren, many of them, did not believe in the 
 war, thought there was no need of it; but they had to sustain it as 
 some said " at the point of the bayonet." 
 
 At first quite a number of Warren's solis volunteered, some of 
 them from patriotic motives, and some thinking the war would 
 not last long, and they would have sort of a holiday excursion ; 
 but the lattei' soou got disabused of that idea, and when a new 
 quota was called for the town was compelled to oflFer bounties. 
 One hundred dollars to a man was first oflfered, the State and the 
 United States each also paying the same men one hundred dollars, 
 and a few young men inspired by patriotism, took the bounty and 
 went. Then when another call for troops was made, the town voted 
 to pay a bounty of one thousand dollars in addition to the State 
 and United States bounty, to each man, and a few more got exceed- 
 ingly patriotic and went away to the war. 
 
 Afterwards when a quota was demanded from Warren, like 
 every other town in the State, her selectmen paid three hundred 
 dollars for her part, filled it up with Canuck substitutes and other 
 foreigners, and these bounty jumpers "skedaddled" or deserted 
 the very first opportunity, as can be seen by any one who will 
 take the pains to look at the Adjutant General's Reports for New 
 Hampshire. Nearly all the persons from Warren in the 4th, 5th, 
 6th, 7th, and part of the 8tli regiments were bounty jumpers and 
 desertei-s. 
 
 The following list of solHiers from Warren, was kinrlly furnished by George 
 Bai-tlelt Noyes. It was taken from the reports of Adjutant General Natt Head :— 
 First Reqiment .— Eighth Regiment .— 
 
 Ward C. Batchelder. John S. Hennessy. 
 
 John Ryan, captured at Sabine Cross 
 Second Regiment .— Enads, La. , April 8, 1864. 
 
 Lieut. Andrew G.Braoey. James Ragaii. 
 
 WilHarn Clifford. John Sullivan. 
 
 Osco H. French. John O. Sullivan,— deserted. 
 
 Aaron Goodvvin. WStltei-Veaeey. 
 
 Lieut. Thomas B. Little. 
 
510 
 
 HISTORY OP WABEEN. 
 
 Thus the war went on past 1863, the year "Warren was cue 
 hundred years old, and ended in April, 1865; a little more than 
 four years from its commBucemcnt. Every body rejoiced when 
 the war was over, and every bell in the whole North rang a jubi- 
 lee when peace came. 
 
 Some of Warren's sons behaved with much gallantry and 
 gained credit on the battleiield. Others did not do so well. Their 
 names and their records are .all truthfully preserved iu the Adju- 
 tant General's Report. Gen. Natt Head* did his work well, " and 
 
 Fourth Regiment ■. — v 
 
 Oliver R. Counter. 
 .James Dougherty. 
 Joseph Hartman. 
 John Kehoe,— deserted. 
 Michael King,— deserted- 
 Daniel Sayers. 
 Henry G. Scott. 
 ,Jas. Welch,— wounded Aug. 16, 1864. 
 
 Fifth Uegiment ; — 
 
 Alphonzo Brochat,— wounded Apr. ~, 
 
 1835. 
 ■John Cochran. 
 Chas. W. Oowen, — promoted to sergt. 
 
 April 1, 18 J5. 
 Edward Jones,— deserted. 
 Perliins H. Hlott, — promoted to corp. 
 
 then deserted. 
 Joliu McCarter. 
 Antoui Hobba,— deserted. 
 Benjamin Varnev, — wounded April 
 
 7, 18i)5. ' * 
 
 Sixth Regiment:— 
 
 Twelfth Regiment .- — 
 
 Josepli M. Bixby . 
 
 Charles H . Caswell. 
 
 Tiutus L. Colby,— died at Falmouth, 
 Va., Feb. 7, 1883. 
 
 Reuben Gale,— killed at the battle of 
 Chancellorsville, Va., May 3, 1883. 
 
 Horace W. Gleason. 
 
 Charles H. Hmman, corporal. 
 
 .Jonathan Iv. lielsea,— died at Wash- 
 ington, D. C, Jan. 24, ISO-t. 
 
 Ezra Walton Libbey, musician. 
 
 Geoi-ge W. Merrill, musician. 
 
 .James M. Xoyes,— wounded May 3, 
 18GJ; promoted sergt.; wounded 
 severely May 14, 1834. 
 
 Lieut. Charles' H Sheldon,— wound- 
 ed .June 3. 18 J4; died of wounds, 
 June 27, 18.U. 
 
 Fourteenth Regi-ment; — 
 
 Fernando Hobbs,— died May 17, 1863. 
 Jolin S. Varney,— wounded Sept. 19, 
 
 18i4, 
 Richard Varney, — died in 1834 of 
 
 wounds received at Winchester, Va. 
 
 Killed there. 
 
 Andrew Ballman,- 
 
 1834. 
 Charles M. Hosmer,— deserted. 
 Thomas .Jones,- deserted. 
 Bdw. Nero,— wounded June 22, 1864. 
 Edward Saliske,— deserted. 
 John Saunders, — deserted. 
 John Smith. 
 Joseph Tarbelli.— wounded June 28, 
 
 1834. 
 Samuel Wilson,— wounded May 12, 
 
 1834, died of wounds June 21, 18(i4. 
 
 Seventh Regiment: — 
 
 Samuel Allen,— deserted. 
 
 wounded May 12, Fifteenth Regiment:— 
 
 John Kimball,— died May 28, 1833. 
 John A\^iggin. 
 
 First Regiment iV. H. Cavalry: — 
 Edward I. Robie. 
 
 First Regiment Hi'arij ArtiUenj :— 
 Leonard Colburn. 
 Edwin Fifield. 
 Osco H. Frenchj corporal. 
 I'roctorE Harris. 
 Henry T. Latham, coi'poral. 
 George M. Little. 
 Henry D. Noyes. 
 Darius O. Swain, wounded. 
 Dr. John F. ^Villey. 
 
 * Gen. Natt Head is the gi-andson of Nathaniel Head, of Hoolcsett, who was a 
 captain in theRevolutitin. He was Adjutant General during the whole war, and 
 had great pride in New Hampshire soldiers, and did more than any other man to 
 preserve their record. Through his efforts we are able to give so complete a list of 
 the soldiers from Warren. 
 
RESULTS OF THE WAE. 511 
 
 pity 'tis " that our aucestors, soldiers of the revolution, could not 
 have had the memory of their deeds as well preserved. Warren 
 can be proud of her sons. 
 
 As one of tlie results of the war our town is staggering under 
 the burden of an enormous debt; and the millions owed by the 
 State and the nation malce taxes high, and tlie poor to be 
 oppressed. The bondholders are now in the hey-day of their 
 glory. 
 
 One of the grand things that happened while the war was 
 going on was the telegraph put up in Warren in 1862. Arthur 
 Kuapp erected the poles from Plymouth to Littleton. The opera- 
 tor first had his office in W. S. Doggett's store, and then in Jewett 
 & Eaton's, at the railroad crossing. 
 
 About tills time, although not exactly in chronological order, 
 happened a great boundary feud, like those of ancient time, be- 
 tween our flourishing democracy and old Peeling, now called 
 Woodstock. It occurred in the selectmcnship of Jesse Little, Ira 
 M. Weeks, and David Smith. The preceding year, and in fact for 
 several successive years before, the dwellers in the East-parte 
 regions would -see the smoke of strange fires curling out of the 
 woods on Mts. Kineo, Cushman, and Waternomce ; but no one 
 could tell what they were. Some said they were fishermen, some 
 that they were deer stalkers; and others that they were diamond 
 hunters camping there ; but this year it came out that they were 
 parties of land surveyors from Woodstock. 
 
 Soon the selectmen got a notice that a hearing would be had 
 at the Moosilauke House. It came ofi'iu the summer, and the citi- 
 zens of WaiTen then learned what Woodstock claimed. By its 
 charter, Woodstock was granted as nearly a square townsliip, cut- 
 
 The following persons from Warren served In regiments out of this State, in 
 some capacity ; — 
 
 Capt. Dudley C. IJixby. Andrew Jackson. 
 
 Anson Chandler. Merrill S. Lund,— died in the ai-my. 
 
 Commodore Clifford. Harvey Eames,— died inthe army,— 
 
 Eev. Addison W. Kastman. brought to Warrenfor burial. 
 
 Martm V.Libbey. Thomas Miles. 
 
 Joseph Noyes. Chailes iV. Harris. 
 
 Delano Prescott. George E. Swain. 
 
 Charles MeiTill. . Daniel French,— died in the army,— 
 
 Albe W. Merrill. brought to Wanen for burial. 
 
 GeorgeMlller. Charles F. Braoey. 
 
 Hazen Libbey. John T. Bailey. 
 
 Kewell S. Martin. Thomas J. Clifford. 
 
612 HISTORY OF WAREEN. 
 
 ting a square of about six hundred acres out of the north east 
 corner of Warren. Our democracy was chartered in the same 
 manner, nearly square, and cutting about tlie same amount of 
 land out of the south west corner of Woodstock. Warren was 
 chartered first, but Woodstock had her charter on record first, and 
 hence the controversy — which town should own that six hundred 
 acres of land. 
 
 Woodstock's selectmen, agents, and surveyors who had built 
 the strange camp-fires in the woods, and intei'ested citizens, came 
 over the low pass between Wateruomee and Mt. Cushman, to that 
 meeting; and our selectmen. Col. Isaac Merrill, Dr. David C. 
 French, and other citizeuSj met them at the village hotel. They 
 had a long good uatured talk which amotmted to nothing only that 
 each party got considerably enlightened about the history of town 
 charters, and all were firmly convinced that they had got to go to 
 court to settle the matter. Then Woodstock's offlcers, sui"veyors, 
 and citizens went home by the route they came. 
 
 At a town meeting held November 7, the repi'esentative of 
 Warren to the Legislature was instructed to procure a 'copy of 
 the charter of Peeling, now Woodstflck, and at the fall term of 
 court at Plymouth, after an extended hearing, a commission con- 
 sisting of David C. Churchill, of Lyme, and Nathaniels. Berry, of 
 Hebron, the side judges, was appointed to investigate the whole 
 m.atter.* 
 
 The committee came to Warren and looked at the line, exam- 
 ined the charters, looked over the " doings " of the old court's 
 committee, and finally came to the conclusion that as the Legisla- 
 ture in 1784 had established by an act for that purpose the boun- 
 dary lines of Warren and the towns around it, those boundary 
 lines must stand ; and the case was decided in favor of Warren. 
 The court afl5.rmed the report of the commissioners, and Isaac 
 Sawtelle was ordered to re-mark the old line between our two 
 towns, putting on every blazed spot of the trees the cross mark 
 of the court's committee, that the boundary might never more 
 be forgotten. Thus Warren's last boundary question was settled. 
 
 Had Woodstock prevailed, all that section of the East-parte 
 regions known as the reservation, together with a part of the last 
 * Col. Isaac Men'ill's statement. 
 
A TEMPEBANCE MEETING. 613 
 
 farm up the mountain road to Moosehillock, on the west side of 
 the Asquamchumauke, now owned by Nathaniel Merrill, 2d, would 
 have been lost to Warren, and many of the inhabitants compelled 
 to go over the mountain on the surveyors' path to Woodstock to do 
 town business. 
 
 "When the temperance reform sprang up in the country, of 
 course it came to Warren. It was conducive of great good, and 
 appealed to the understanding and moral nature. They had a 
 great many temperance meetings in town ; but the one best remem- 
 bered was held about the close of Warren's first century, by Al- 
 fred Dustin, painter. William Weeks, shoemaker, presided, and 
 he had a great bulls-eye watch and copper chain attached to time 
 the speaker. James Clement and Francis A. Cushman were dea- 
 cons, and sat by the speaker's stand. Uncle Ebenezer Cushman 
 and Auni Eben, his wife, were present. Cotton Foot was there 
 also, and he furnished applause with his droll and magical laugh. 
 
 Mr. Dustin made a good speech, full of fun, pathos, and elo- 
 quence ; but as there was no short baud reporter present little of it 
 is remembered. He commenced by saying that the terrible effect 
 of drinking intoxicating liquOrs could be seen in his own case. 
 That he was a living example of the ruip rum could make. Then 
 he showed that in rum-drinking nearly all the vices and crimes of 
 society originated ; that it filled the poor-houses, work-houses, jails, 
 prisons, and furnished victims for the gallows. Dispense with rum- 
 drinking and crime would be banished. Rum-drinking, said Mr. 
 Dustin, is the meanest business on earth; and the man or woman, 
 the boy or girl, who engages in it, might as well be damned, — is 
 damned now and eternally. 
 
 Rum-selling, said he, is a hellish, damnable trafllc. Law don't 
 stop it. It is a traffic that gets the orphans' and widows' curse, 
 and the deepest execi-ations of the wife and mother. Devils laUgh 
 and gloat over it, and hell yawns for the men who engage in it. 
 
 At the conclusion of Mr. Dustin's address, Mr. Weeks, the 
 chairman, said he was fully convinced, and that he should not 
 make a swill-tub of his bowels any longer. Said Mr. Weeks, 
 " God help the poor rum-drinker ! The Devil will get the rum- 
 seller, for he commits a dastardly crime with his eyes wide open." 
 
614 HISTORY OF WAEREN. 
 
 Poor men ! They talked well ; but like a great many other 
 people they could not practice what they preached. 
 
 We remember well how about this time four young men, 
 Benj. K. Little, Amos F. Clough, Joseph Noyes, and another, 
 went over Mount Carr to Glen ponds fishing. On their way they 
 passed through Fox-glove meadow and came to the most northern 
 pond first. Standing on the 'western shore, it appears almost in 
 the form of the letter Q, very deep in the middle, and grassy on the 
 beaches, with some large stones rising out of the water by the out- 
 let. South, one-fourth of a mile, is pond number two, three times 
 as long as wide, very shoal, and containing about ten acres ; and east 
 of this half a mile is the third pond, almost circular, very deep, 
 and about half as large as the second. 
 
 The little party built their camp on the north shore of the 
 middle water where the forest was dark and sombre, standing just 
 as it has stood for centuries. The valley of the ponds is like a great 
 horse-shoe basin; three lofty mountains on the east, north, and 
 west, while to the south an extended vista over the woods is ter- 
 minated by Mt. Stinson. It is four miles from the pond through 
 the woods over the mountain to Warren, and farther than that to 
 a farmer's house in the ancient land of Trecothick. From their 
 camp our party saw no clearing, no lumberman's habitation, no 
 sign of civilization, no more than when hundreds of years ago a 
 party of Indians camped on the shore, (Indian arrow heads have 
 been found among the pebbles of the beach) ; or when in the last 
 century John Page and S.urveyor Leavitt ran the first lines about 
 the township ; or Mr. Carr stood listening to the rain pattering on 
 the water and like a Frenchman dined on frogs ; or the party of 
 hunters from Warren crossed the ice and then went after moose in 
 the great yard over and around Black hill. The same great inter- 
 minable wood was seen, and the same sounds were heard that 
 Moses Abbott the fat man and Capt. Marston saw and heard when 
 they -stopped here weeks at a time, and lived on the trout they 
 caught from these ponds. 
 
 A bright fire was built, then two of the party went on a raft 
 fishing. The other two sat on a log and watched and listened. As 
 the sun went down an osprey was seen Ajdng over the water, and 
 a great hen-hawk sat on a stub by the shore. Then the laughter 
 
EXCUBSIOK TO GLEN POKDS. 515 
 
 of kingfishers aud red squirrels was heard, and white throated 
 finches, ruby-crowned wrens, golden-crested kinglets and snow 
 bu-ds, sang as the mellow twilight faded away. Suddenly a flock 
 of black ducks whistled through the tree-tops and lighted down in 
 the shoal water where the reeds and lilies were growing. They 
 had come from the little meadows at the head of Monlton brook, 
 where they were hatched, to stop on the pond all night. 
 
 The fishermen came back on their raft at dark ; more wood 
 was cut, the fibre was replenished, and the flames crackled aud 
 flashed, and shone through the trees. One of the party went to 
 the grassy shore for a drink of water. He saw something across 
 the pond, and he never forgot the sight — three wild deer were 
 standing on the rocky beach. They had come down to the pond 
 to feed. How still they are — not a motion ; aud their eyes, how 
 they glisten as they stand there almost spell-bound, gazing through 
 the darkness at the camp-flre of the fishermen. 
 
 Another individual used to tell what a grand hand Amos 
 F. Clough was to keep the fire burning all night long, and how B. 
 K. Little nudged somebody and whispered, "Hear them! hear 
 them ! " Half a dozen great owls attracted by the blaze had gath- 
 ered in the hemlocks, aud were giving the grandest concert ever 
 listened to. "Hark! hear that!" he whispered aga-in. It was 
 the long drawn halloo of an old bear far up the side of Mount 
 Can-. Hear it again and again. It was enough to make one's hair 
 stand on end. But it is soon over and the party go to sleep 
 once more, listening to the frogs singing in the pond, and the 
 splash of the muskrats among the reeds. 
 
 Hundreds of men have seen and heard these same sights 
 and sounds ; but never as yet has a white woman stood on the 
 shores of Glen ponds. 
 
 The fish bite well in the morning and when the sun goes 
 down. "What beautie's they are! Some of them will weigh a 
 pound. One of those fat fellows with a piece of pork inside 
 cooked on a forked stick held over the fire, is the daintiest morsel 
 in the world. As the sun gets high, the fish cease to bite, the 
 " traps " are packed up and the party is ofl" over the mountain 
 home, having had a pleasant experience, never to be forgotten. 
 
 Thousands of pounds of trout are caught out of these three 
 
516 HISTOKY 6V WAKBEN. 
 
 dark little tarns every year. It is said that pot fishers sometimes 
 go there and catch bushels of trout with a net; that they snare 
 large but poor fish on the spawning beds, and lime the waters. 
 We hope that all such persons may get choked to death with fish 
 bones. 
 
 Glen ponds, it is alleged, are filling up, and that the next cen- 
 tury wilf see them in the same condition as Foxglove meadow a 
 mile to the north of them. It would be a shame for such a thing to 
 happen. There is no spot on earth where trout grow faster or better. 
 If the fishermen of "Warren, Wentworth, Eomney, and old Tre- 
 oothick would but club together and build short earth dams at the 
 outlets of each, they could be made six feet deeper, many acres 
 more of now useless land would be flowed, and Glen ponds with 
 all their wildness, solittide, and piscatorial beauties, would last 
 forever. 
 
 Warren people, like other highly civilized commimities, have 
 always been fond of amusements, more especially of the higher, 
 order of the drama. Many of her sons have cultivated the histri- 
 onic art, and arrived at a good degree of perfection. The first 
 exhibition we ever attended was in the old school house at the 
 forks of the turnpike and Beech-hill road. This was followed by 
 a theatrical entertainment at the old meeting house. A stage was 
 erected about the pulpit, without scenei-y and without cmtains. 
 Mr. James Clement was one of the principal actors, and we recol- 
 lect him in a single act piece, entitled " I think I have been eating 
 sunthin." Jim had padded himself out with pillows till he had a 
 belly larger than Jack Falstaff's and looked comical enough. Col. 
 Thos. J. Whipple had been assigned the post of honor, namely: 
 a seat in the pulpit. As Jim proceeded to tell what he had eat the 
 colonel was convulsed with laughter, and Jim's story and funny 
 look, together with Col. W. behind him stretching his mouth from 
 ear to ear, with his loud haw-haw, msHe a broad farce, and the 
 whole meeting-house roared. The scene produced made such a 
 strong impression upon the writer's mind, that although very 
 young he never forgot it. 
 
 The next exhibition was managed by Col. Isaac Merrill, and 
 Addison W. Eastman was one of the star actors. Miss Tamar 
 J. Clement also took a prominent part. We remember very little 
 
EXHIBITIONS — SPELLING SCHOOLS. 517 
 
 about it, only it was considered a decided success, and was the 
 principal subject of conversation in towu for weeks after. 
 
 Then there was a grand combination of performers in "Warren 
 one winter ; A. W. Eastman being the leading star. Forest was 
 outroared and outdone, and 'WaiTeh shone with brilliancy. All 
 the surrounding regions came to see the plays that season. 
 
 Since, there have been school exhibitions, religious exhibitions, 
 and various other kinds, all successful, and more recently a sort of 
 stock company that gave entertainments for a pecuniary consider- 
 ation, in addition to the glory they might achieve ; and this collec- 
 tion of stars was perhaps the most successful of all. 
 
 In addition to these exhibitions by our home talent, traveling 
 performers have sometimes entertained our citizens. What a 
 wonder was Potter, the juggler and ventriloquist. How he made 
 the eyes of the "Warren youth stick out when he fried ,eggs in a 
 gentleman's hat, and returned the hat uninjured ; when he smashed 
 a beautiful gold watch " all to flinders," and burned a lady's hand- 
 kerchief to ashes, and then restored the same whole and entire; 
 also when he suffered himself to be shot at, aud cut a man's head 
 off without hurting him. Old Glynn was nearly as wonderful as 
 Potter; and the above named A. "W. Eastman was one of his 
 grandest performers. A people's civilization can be judged by the 
 character of theiT amusements. 
 
 In addition to having good schools, "Warren has been cele- 
 brated for her spelling schools. Thfey were held in winter time in 
 all the districts, and there was a great rivalry to see who could 
 spell down the whole town. One in Runaway pond or "Weeks dis- 
 trict, that came off about this time, is well remembered. John 
 French was keeping the school, and the little red school-house was 
 packed with youths and maidens. Young Joseph Bixby, a 
 naughty youth, was present, and some wicked person pushed him 
 over the roaring, red hot stove, knocking it down. The school- 
 master, Mr. John French, rushed forward, feehng that his dignity 
 was injured, stamped his foot, and with stentorian lungs shouted, 
 "Cassius! May Bnitus and all the other heathen gods preserve 
 and defend us." And then there was a roar of laughter, much to 
 the school-master's delight, the flames belching out and the smoke 
 rolling up. But some resolute boys at once procured two stout 
 
518 HISTOKT OF WARREN. 
 
 levers, carried the stove out iuto the snow, cooled it, set it up 
 again, aired the house, and then the spelling-school went on. 
 
 Two of the best scholars chose sides, taking care to seat the 
 boys and girls who were fond of each other together, and choos- 
 ing the poorest spellers last, each chooser trying to get the best, 
 that his or her side might miss the least words and thereby win. 
 Then after spelling a while the tally keepers announced the result 
 and they had a recess ; such a grand time. When it was over they 
 " chose " again, spelt round a few times and then spelt down. Misses 
 Elsie Ann Bixby and Caroline French could beat the whole 
 town in their day. After the spelling exercises they propounded 
 conundrums, put out hard words, and spoke funny pieces. 
 
 Then the school-master made a speech. How well it is re- 
 membered. Some believed it. He began by telling the advanta- 
 ges of the common schools, how they had made New England 
 what she is ; how, educated in them, the sons of New Hampshire 
 were the representatives and senators in congress, the judges in 
 the courts, and one of them an honored President. That where 
 the common school system did not exist, there ignorance, supersti- 
 tion and priest-craft prevailed, and the people were the slaves of 
 despots. That there was a class springing up in the country that 
 was opposed to our system ; would have none of it ; would break; it 
 up. This should not be allowed. The school system should be pre- 
 served. "We should stick to it, cling to it. We might as well let 
 our fields and pastures grow up to bushes, burn up our houses and 
 factories, let our ships rot at the wharves, and destroy our railroads, 
 as to give up our school system, and the liberty and the' glory it 
 brings with it. 
 
 Then some of the citizens in a few words agreed with the 
 speaker, made complimentary remarks, and the exercises closed. 
 
 When dismissed, the boys waited upon the girls home, which 
 was the grandest part of the whole performance. No wonder, 
 when the families were large, (what a shame they are not so 
 now,) and district schools were crowded, spelling schools were in 
 high esteem. 
 
 The last great occurrence at the close of Warren's first century 
 
 A-bout these days the citizens larocured a hearse, and the town voted to build 
 a hearse-houSe near the grave-yard. Mrs. Mercy J. Knapp, wile of Artluir 
 Knapp, headed the subscription list, raised the money ana bought the hearse. Can- 
 not some lady do ae much towards building a receiving tomb ? 
 
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 619 
 
 of white settlers, and with its iiaiTation we shall end our enter- 
 taining history, was "Warren's Centennial Celebration. At the 
 annual town meeting it was voted to have a celebration on the 
 14th day of July, 1863, just a hundred years after the day the town 
 was chartered. ' 
 
 ENOCH- R. WEEKS 
 was chosen President. 
 The following men over seventy years of age, were chosen 
 Vice Presidents, viz. : — 
 
 BENJAMIN BIXBY. 
 JOHN CLARK. 
 WILLIAM CLEASBY. 
 JONATHAN CLOU6H. 
 JONATHAN EATON. 
 DR. DAVID C. FRENCH. 
 ASA HEATH. 
 VOWELL LEATHERS. 
 GEORGE LIBBEY. 
 SAMUEL MERRILL. 
 NATHANIEL RICHARDSON. 
 JOSIAH SWAIN. 
 STEPHEN WHITEMAN. 
 All men over sixty years old were chosen as a committee of 
 arrangements.. They were as follows: — 
 
 Joseph Bixby. 
 
 Samuel Bixby. 
 
 Benjamin Clement. 
 
 Jesse Eastman- 
 Joseph B. Eaknham. 
 
 Samuel Goodvitn. 
 
 James Habriman, 
 
 Ezra B. Libbet. 
 
 John Libbet. 
 
 Nathaniel Libbey. 
 
 Benjamin Little. 
 
 Dr. Jesse Litjle. 
 
 Calvin Mat; 
 
 Samuel L. Merrill. 
 
 Antont McCarter. 
 
 Nathan Willet. 
 
620 HISTOET OF WABEEN. 
 
 The 14th day of July, 1863, was rainy; but the people in 
 goodly numbers assembled in the town house on "Warren Common. 
 Charles Leonard, when the hour arrived, rang the bell, and his 
 father, George E. Leonard, acted for the committee of arrange- 
 ments. Enoch E. Weeks, faithful to his duties, presided, and the 
 following was the order of exercises :—' 
 
 I. Reading the Scriptures, — Isaiah xxxv. 
 
 II. Music, — America, by the choir. 
 
 III. Prayer, — Eev. Josiah Hooper. 
 
 rV. Music, — Auld Lang Syne. 
 
 "V. Address, — by William Little. 
 
 VI. Music, — Old Hundred. 
 
 VII. Benediction. 
 
 Rev. Josiah Hooper made an excellent prayer. The choir, 
 consisting of Messrs. Amos Clement and Wesley C. Batcheldev, 
 Mrs. George E. Leonard, Mrs. Russel MerriU, Mrs. Susan C. Lit- 
 tle, and Misses Sarah J. Leonard, EUen J. Bixby, Sarah J. Merrill 
 and Ameha S. CliflTord, sang in their best style, and the address 
 was afterwards published. Any one can express his opinion of 
 that after he has read it. Capt. Daniel Batchelder and others, of 
 Haverhill, were present, and many came from Wentworth and 
 Romney. In the evening they had a ball at the Moosilauke House 
 and the young folks enjoyed themselves. Thus ended Warren's 
 first century. May the next be as prosperous, and have a like 
 happy end. 
 
 Eighteen hundred and sixty-three 1 A hundred years have 
 passed since Warren became a town, and we close our history 
 here. We are happy we have written it, and happy should be the 
 great historian of Warren of the next hundred years, for we 
 believe we have made a good beginning for him. Thrice happy 
 should' be our citizens that they have this good history. 
 
 We trust all vsrill be pleased, for we have set down naught in 
 malice. Everything has been written in the most perfect good 
 nature, and with the best intentions. We have even taken pains 
 to-make some of oui- friends show off" in good style. We have 
 also given every citizen a chance to appear in our book, to immortal- 
 ize himself by enrolling his name in our subscription list. Many 
 
CONCLUSION. 521 
 
 have a-yiailed ttieroselves of the opportunity, aadi to sachi ■Njre return 
 our heairtiest amd most sincere thanks. 
 
 K by our efforts we shall cause any of our friends to feel a tithe 
 of thci pleasure in reading the preceding pages that we have in 
 writing them, they will be very happy indeed and we shall be- 
 • amply compensated. 
 
 In closing, we sincerely wish that as long as any trout shall 
 swim in the River Baker, otherwise the Asquamchnmauke, and all 
 its silvery, musical tributaries, as long as partridges shaU drum in 
 the forests on the mountains, as long as any blueberries shall ripen 
 on the crests of Webster slide and Owl's head , as long as the Mi- 
 kaseota shall come down from "Wachipauka pond, as long as silver 
 and gold shall be found on Sentinel mountain, as long as the 
 sparkling waterfalls shall gleam on Mount Carr, and as long as 
 the bald head of MoosehiUock shall whiten with winter snows, so 
 long may our friends and thdr children live and enjoy themselves 
 in our town of Warken. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPEN^DIX. 
 
 EXPLANATOEY NOTES. 
 
 PAGE 57.— WETAMOO. 
 
 The bride of " Montowampate." Her real name was " Wenuchiis."— Hist, of 
 icord, p. 32. 
 
 PAGE 134.— Captuee op the Johnson Family. 
 
 The Indians did furnish a horse for Mrs. Johnson to ride. The horse was 
 jrwards killed and eaten to prevent the party from starving. The oldest daugh- 
 
 who was educated by the French, concluded to return home. KosweU H. 
 ssam, of Manchester, furnished us an interesting account of the capture of the 
 inson family, which we would be glad to see pul^lished. 
 
 PAGE 152.— EOBEET POKEKOY. 
 
 There is a tradition that Chase Whitoher and Joseph Patch both told of flnd- 
 a human skeleton on Moosilauke, and without doubt it was Pomeroy, one of 
 gers' rangers. 
 
 PAGE 208.— James Dow. 
 
 James Dow, tythingman, contributed most of the descriptions of dress and 
 pearance of the early settlers. 
 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 AXIMALS WHICH NOW, OR FOKMERLY, LIVED IN WAEEEN. 
 
 Bat. 
 
 Shrew Mole. 
 Star Nose Mole. 
 Say's Least Shrew Mole. 
 Brewer's Shrew Mole. 
 
 White Weasel, or Stoat, or Ermine. 
 Little Nimble Weasel. 
 Tawny Weasel. 
 Small Weasel. 
 
 Sable, or Pine Marten. 
 Pennant's Marten or Fisher Cat. 
 
 Otter. 
 
 Mink. 
 
 Mountain Brools Mink. 
 
 MAMMALIA. 
 Okdeb I.— Caknivoka. 
 Skunk. 
 Wolverine. 
 
 Cougar, or Panther, or Painter, or 
 
 Catamount. 
 Canada Lynx, or Loupceryier. 
 Bay Lynx, or Wild Cat. 
 
 Wolf. 
 
 Red Fox. 
 
 Black or Silver Gray Fox. 
 
 Black Bear. 
 
 Raccoon. 
 
 Oebek II.— Rodentia. 
 
 Gray Squirrel. 
 Black Squin-el. 
 Chickaree, or Red Squirrel. 
 Chip, or Chipmonk, or Striped Squir- 
 rel. 
 Flying Squirrel. 
 
 Wilson's Meadow Mouse. 
 American W,hite Footed Mouse. 
 House Mouse. 
 
 Leconte's Pine or Field Mouse. 
 Jumping ^ouae. 
 
 Okdee III. 
 
 Moose. 
 
 Caribou, or American Reindeer. 
 
 Black Rat. 
 Norway Rat. 
 
 Beaver. 
 
 Musquash. 
 
 Porcupine or Hedgehog. 
 
 Woodohuck. 
 
 Rabbit, or Northern Hare. 
 
 -RUMINANTIA. 
 
 Common or Fallow Deer. 
 
 BIRDS. 
 
 [e means common; r, rare; m, spring and fall migrants.] 
 
 Okder I.— Raptokes— Robbers. 
 
 Bald Eagle, r. 
 Golden Eagle, r. 
 
 Broad winged Hawk, c . 
 Marsh Hawk, o. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 527 
 
 Black Hawk, r. 
 
 Fish (or Osprcy) Hawk, c. 
 
 Goshawk, r. 
 
 Pigeon Hawk, c. 
 
 Bed tailed, or Hen Hawk, c. 
 
 Sharp shinned Hawk. o. 
 
 Sparrow Hawk, o. 
 
 Cooper's Hai^k, c. 
 
 Great horned Owl, c 
 Long eared Owl, r. 
 Short eared Owl, r. 
 Screech Owl, c. 
 Snowy Owl, ni. 
 Acadian Owl, m. 
 Barred Owl, m. 
 Hawk Owl, m. ■ 
 
 Ordek II.— Scansokes— Climbehs. 
 
 Black billed Cuckoo, o. 
 Yellow Ijilled Cuckoo, c. 
 
 Downy Woodpecker, c. 
 
 Three toed Banded Woodpecker, i 
 
 Golden winged Woodpecker, c. 
 
 Black backed 3 toed Woodpecker, r. 
 Hairy Woodpecker, c. 
 Pileated Woodpecker, r. 
 Red headed Woodpecker, r. 
 Yellow bellied Woodpecker, r. 
 
 < Okdek III.— Insessobes— Pbkcheks. 
 
 Euby throated Humming Bird, c. 
 
 Chimney Swallow, u. 
 
 Whip-poor-wiU, i. 
 Night-Hawk, o. 
 
 Belted Kingfisher, c. 
 
 Kingbird, c. 
 
 Pewee.'or Phebe Bird, c. 
 Olive-sided Fly-catcher, c. 
 Wood Pewee, c. 
 Chebec, c. 
 
 Wood Thrush, o. 
 Olive backed Thrush, c. 
 Hermit Thrush, c. 
 Wilson's Thrxish, c. 
 Eobin, c. 
 
 Brown Thrasher, r. 
 Cat-bird,, c. 
 
 Bluebird, c. 
 
 Ruby crowned Wren, c. 
 Golden crested Wren, c. 
 Chickadee or Black cap Tit- 
 mouse, c. 
 White bellied Nuthatch, c. 
 Red bellied Nuthatch, o. 
 American Creeper, c. 
 House Wren, c. 
 Winter Wren, o. 
 
 Black and White Creeper, c. 
 Blue, Yellow backed warbler, r. 
 Maryland Yellow throat warbler, c. 
 Golden winged warbler, c. 
 Nashville warbler, r. 
 Oven-bird warbler, o. 
 Water Thrush warbler, c. 
 Black throated Green warbler, c. 
 Black tlu-oated Blue warbler, m. 
 Yellow rumped warbler, c. 
 Blackburnian warbler, m. 
 Pine-creeping warbler, c. 
 Chestnut-sided warbler, c. 
 Black Poll warbler, r. 
 Yellow warbler, c. 
 Black and Yellow warbler, c. 
 YeUow Red-poll warbler, c. 
 
 Canada Flycatcher warbler, m. 
 Red Start, c. 
 Scarlet Tanager, o. 
 
 Barn Swallow, c. 
 Eave Swallow, c. 
 White bellied Swallow, c. 
 Bank Swallow, c. 
 Purple Martin, c. 
 
 Cedar, or Cherry Bird, c. 
 Bohemian Chatterer, m. 
 Shrike, or Butfeher Bird, m. 
 YeUow throated Vireo, r. 
 Solitary Vireo, r. 
 Bed-eyed Vireo, c. 
 
 Pine Grosbeak, m. 
 
 Purple Finch, c. 
 
 Goldfinch or Yellow Bird, c. 
 
 Pineflnch, m. 
 
 Red CrossbiU.m. 
 
 White winged Crossbill, m. 
 
 Mealy Red poll, m. 
 
 Lesser Red poll, m. 
 
 Snow Bunting, ra. 
 
 Lapland Longspur, r and m. 
 
 Savannah Sparrow^ r. 
 
 Grassfinch or Bay winged Bunting, c. 
 
 White crowned Sparrow, m. 
 
 White throated Sparrow, c. 
 
 Snowbu'd, c. 
 
 Tree Sparrow, m. 
 
 Field Sparrow, c. 
 
 Chipping Sparrow, c. 
 
 Song Sparrow, or Ground Bird, c. 
 
 Swamp Sparrow, r. 
 
 Fox colored Sparrow, m. 
 
 Rose breasted Grosbeak, r. 
 
 Indigo Bird, c. 
 
 Ground Robin,— Chewink, r. 
 
 Bobolink, c. 
 
 Cow Blackbird, c. 
 
 Red winged Blackbird, u. 
 
 Meadow Lark, r. 
 
 Baltimore Oriole, c. 
 
 Busty Blackbird, r. 
 
 Crow Blackbird, or Purple Grakle, r. 
 
 Crow, c. 
 Blue Jay, c. 
 Canada Jay, c. 
 
528 
 
 HISTOKT OF WAEKEN. 
 
 Obdbr IV.— Rasokeb— Scratchees, 
 
 Wild Pigeon, c. 
 Carolina Dove, t. 
 
 Canada Grouse, o . 
 Euffed Grouse, c. 
 
 Order v.— Geallatores— Waders. 
 
 Great Blue Heron, or Crane, c. 
 Bittern, or Stake Driver, o. 
 Green Hei'on, r. 
 Night Heron, r. 
 
 Woodcock, c. 
 
 Snipe, m. 
 
 Solitary Sandpiper, c. 
 Spotted Sandpiper, c. 
 
 Upland Plover, r. 
 
 Order VI.— Natatokes— Swimmers. 
 
 Canada Goose, m. 
 Brant Goose, ra. 
 
 Blact Duck, c. 
 Blue winged Teal, r. 
 Green winged Teal, r. 
 
 Wood Duck, li. 
 Sheldrake, c. 
 
 GuU, r. 
 
 Great Norther Diver, or Loon, o. 
 
 EBPTILIA, OR REPTILES. 
 
 Snapping Turtle, or Tortoise. 
 
 Painted Tortoise. 
 
 Spotted Tortoise. 
 
 Wood Terrapin, or Tortoise. 
 
 Mud Turtle or Musk Tortoise. 
 
 Box Tortoise. 
 
 Blanding's Box Tortoise. 
 
 Striped Snake. 
 
 Ribbon Snake. 
 
 Water Snake. 
 
 House Adder. 
 
 Red Snake. 
 
 Green, or Grass Snake. 
 
 Ring- necked Snake. 
 
 Blue tailed Skink or Lizard. 
 
 YeUow bellied Salamander. 
 Violet colored Salamander. 
 Bed Backed Salamander. 
 Painted Salamander. 
 Salmon colored Salamander. 
 
 Blotched Salamander. 
 
 Red Salamander. 
 
 Blue spotted Salamander. 
 
 Granulated Salamander. 
 
 Tiger Triton Salamander. 
 
 Crimson spotted Triton Salamander, 
 
 or Evet. 
 Dusky Triton Salamander. 
 
 Toad. 
 
 Bull-frog. 
 
 Large Northern Bull-frog. 
 
 Spring Prog. 
 
 Marsh or Tiger Frog. 
 
 Shad Frog. 
 
 Wood Frog. 
 
 Tree Toad. 
 
 Pickering's Hylodes. 
 Cricket Hylodes. 
 
 FISHES. 
 
 Trout. 
 
 Troutlet. 
 
 Pickerel. 
 
 Pout. 
 
 Roach. 
 
 Dace. 
 
 Shiner. 
 Sucker. 
 Bel. 
 
 SPIDERS. 
 
 eyes. 
 
 One hundred and twenty-six kinds, some with six eyes and some with eight 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 529 
 
 ESTSECTS. 
 
 Beetles : 
 Tiger. > 
 
 Long-horned Water. 
 Koyer. 
 Flat Boring. 
 Death-watch or ticking. 
 Bone. 
 Carrion. 
 
 Short horned Water. 
 Weevils. , 
 
 Capricorn. 
 
 Cockroaches. 
 
 Crickets. 
 
 Nocturnal Grrasshoppers. 
 
 Diurnal Grasshoppers. 
 
 Squash Bug. 
 Bedbug. 
 
 Common Harvest Fly or Locust. 
 Bark Louse. 
 
 Oyster-shaped Bark Louse. 
 Dragon Flies, or Devil's Needles. 
 White Ants, or Wood Lice. 
 
 Saw Flies. 
 
 Ants. 
 Stinging Ants. 
 
 Wasps. 
 Hornets. 
 Wood-c>itter Bee. 
 Lealcutter Bee. 
 Humblebee. 
 Honey Bee. 
 Butterfly. 
 Skipper Butterfly. 
 Humming Bird, or Hawk Moth. 
 Locust-tree Cossus. 
 Caterpiller. 
 
 Autumnal Web Caterpillar. 
 Cut Worm. 
 Apple Worm. 
 Bee Moth. 
 Clothes Moth. 
 Mosquito. 
 Gnat. 
 Horsefly. 
 Flesh Fly. 
 Bot Fly. 
 Common Flea. 
 
 Louse and many other kinds, together 
 with several species of worms. 
 
 White Pine. 
 Hard Pine. 
 Norway Pine. 
 Black Spmce. 
 Spruce. 
 Red Hemlock. 
 White Hemlock. 
 Fir. 
 
 Tamarack. 
 Cedar. 
 Bed Oak. 
 White Oak. 
 White Maple. 
 Birds-eye Maple. 
 Bock Maple. 
 Bed Maple. 
 Swamp Maple. 
 Elm. 
 
 Slippery Ehn. 
 White Birch. 
 Yellow Birch. 
 Black Birch. 
 Red Birch. 
 Silver-gray Birch. 
 
 TREES. 
 
 Bed Beech. 
 White Beech. 
 White Ash. 
 Swamp Ash. 
 Black Ash. 
 Mountain Ash. 
 Prickly Ash. 
 Bed Ash. 
 Butternut. 
 Poplar. 
 
 Lombardy Poplar. 
 Horn Beam. 
 Leverwood. 
 Balm Gilead. 
 Choke Cherry. 
 Black Cherry. 
 Bird Cherry. 
 Tame Cherry. 
 Canada Plum. 
 Witch Hazel. 
 Hazel. 
 Red Alder. 
 Black Alder. 
 Thorn. 
 Willow. 
 
 Bog WUlow. 
 
 Weeping Willow. 
 
 Elder. 
 
 Ground Hemlock. 
 
 Moosewood. 
 
 Moosemissa. 
 
 Wild Gooseberry. 
 
 Currant. 
 
 Skunk Currant. 
 
 Rose-Bush. 
 
 Lilac. 
 
 Sumach. 
 
 High Blueberry. 
 
 Blueberry. 
 
 Whortleberry. 
 
 Dogwood. 
 
 Sweet Fern. 
 
 Apple. 
 
 Wheat Plum. 
 Damson. 
 Sugar Plum. 
 Withe-wood. 
 
 Wild Sarsaparilla. 
 
 Parsnip. 
 
 Lovage. 
 
 Sweet Sicily. 
 
 Bane Berry. 
 
 Columbine. 
 
 Cowslip. 
 
 Gold Thread. 
 
 Liverwort. 
 
 PLANTS. 
 
 Yellow Wood Sorrel. 
 Violet. 
 Chick-weed. 
 Pig-weed. 
 Poke-weed. 
 Joint-weed. 
 Bind Knot-weed. 
 Knot Grass. 
 Field Sorrel. 
 
 Mullen. 
 
 Vervein. 
 
 Pennyroyal. 
 
 Hoarhound. 
 
 Horsemint. 
 
 Peppermint. 
 
 Spearmint. 
 
 Catmint. 
 
 Scullcap. 
 
 H* 
 
630 
 
 HISTORY OF "WARREN. 
 
 Buttercup. 
 CroTpfoot. 
 "White Pond Lily. 
 Yellow Water Lily. 
 Horse Radish. 
 Mustard. 
 Strawberry. 
 Sweet-brier. 
 Black RaspbeiTy. 
 Red Raspbeiiy. 
 Blackberry. 
 Hard Hack. 
 Thorn Bush. 
 Field Clover. 
 Red Clover. 
 White Clover. 
 Nettles. 
 
 White Mulberry. 
 Red Mulberry. 
 Grape. 
 Poison Ivy. 
 Wood Sorrel. 
 
 Dock. 
 
 Hon^- suckle. 
 
 Trailing Arbutus, 
 
 Partridge Berry. 
 
 Cranbeny. 
 
 Wintergreen. 
 
 Harebell. 
 
 Wormwood. 
 
 Burdock. 
 
 Marygold. 
 
 Canada Thistle. 
 
 Common Thistle. 
 
 Artichoke. 
 
 Dandelion. 
 
 Fire-weed. 
 
 Golden Rod. 
 
 Colts Foot. 
 
 Tansy- 
 
 Checkerberry. 
 
 Twin-flower. 
 
 Milk-weed. 
 
 Fox-glove. 
 
 Forget-me-not. 
 Mouse-ear. 
 Plantain. 
 
 Yellow-eyed Grass. 
 Star Grass. 
 Blue Flag. 
 Blue-eyed Grass. 
 Ladies' Slipper. 
 Indian Poke. 
 Solomon's Seal. 
 Bell-wort. 
 Cat-tail. 
 S^eet-flag. 
 Skunk Cabbage. 
 Hair Grass. 
 Meadow Grass. 
 Beard Grass. 
 Timothy Grass. 
 Sedge Grass. 
 Bay Rush. 
 
 FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 
 
 Horse-tail. 
 Maiden Hair. 
 Brake Fern. 
 Adder Tongue Fern. 
 Common Brake. 
 
 Rock Brake. 
 Ground Pine. 
 Liverwort. 
 Shield Lichen. 
 Lichen. 
 
 Pufi'-ball. 
 Smelt. 
 Frog Spittle. 
 
 ROCKS AND MINERALS. 
 
 Gold. 
 
 Silver. 
 
 Iron. 
 
 Zinc. 
 
 Lead. 
 
 Copper. 
 
 Nickel. 
 
 Cadmium. 
 
 Antimony. 
 
 Plumbago. 
 
 Iron Pyrites. 
 
 Iron Pyrites Black. 
 
 Molybdenum. 
 
 Arsenic. 
 
 Brown Hematite. 
 
 Garnets. 
 
 Epidote. 
 
 Idocrase. 
 
 Tremolite. 
 
 Tourmaline. 
 
 Beryl. 
 
 Apatite. 
 
 Cinnamon Stone. 
 
 Massive Garnet. 
 
 Rose Quartz. 
 
 Smoky Quartz. 
 
 Hyalite. 
 
 Quartz. 
 
 C ale spar. 
 
 Porphyritic Trap. 
 
 Trap. 
 
 Granitic Gneiss. 
 Feldspar. 
 Granite. 
 Mica Slate. 
 Talcose. 
 Hornblende. 
 Scapolite (with the Apa- 
 tite) Ci-ystals. 
 Limestone. 
 ArgiUapeous Slate. 
 Clay. 
 
 Feruginous Sand. 
 Alluvial Sand. 
 
 TOWN OFFICERS. 
 
 1779. 
 Obadiah Clement. 
 Joshua Copp. 
 Israel Stevens. 
 
 1780. 
 Joshua Copp. 
 Thomas Clark. 
 John Whitcher. 
 
 1781- 
 Obadiah Clement. 
 WiUiam Butler. 
 Isaiah Batchelder. 
 
 SELECTMEN. 
 1782. 
 
 Joshua Copp. 
 Ephraim True. 
 Simeon Smith. 
 Joshua Merrill. 
 
 1783. 
 Obadiah Clement. 
 Joshua Merrill. 
 William Butler. 
 
 1784. 
 Obadiah Clement. 
 Stevens MerriU. 
 Samuel Knight. 
 
 1785. 
 Obadiah Clement. 
 Stevens Merrill. 
 Joseph Patch. 
 
 1786. 
 Joshua Copp. 
 Stephen Richardson, 
 William Butler. 
 
 1787. 
 WiUiam Butler. 
 Joshua Copp. 
 Stephen Richardaon. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 531 
 
 1788. 
 Joshua Copp. 
 Ephraixa True. 
 Nathamel Knight. 
 
 1789. 
 Nathaniel Knight. 
 Samuel Knight. 
 Moses Copp. 
 
 1790. 
 Nathaniel Kniglit. 
 Jonathan Merrill. 
 Stephen Eichardson. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 
 1804. 
 Ezra Bartlett. 
 Abel MerriU. 
 Elisha Swett. 
 
 1805. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 WUliam Butler. 
 Daniel Patch. 
 
 1806. 
 Jonathan Merrill. 
 Daniel Patch. 
 Jonathan Fellows. 
 
 1820. 
 .Toseph Patch, Jr. 
 Nathaniel Clough. 
 Jacob Patch. 
 
 Nathaniel Clough. 
 Jacob Patch. 
 Amoe Tarleton. 
 
 1822. 
 -Jacob Patch. 
 Amos Tarleton. 
 George Libbey. 
 
 1791. 
 Joshiia Copp. 
 William Butler. 
 Stephen Eichardson. 
 
 1792. 
 Ephraim True. 
 Joseph French. 
 Samuel Knight. 
 
 1793. 
 Jonathan Merrill. 
 Joseph French. 
 Jonathan Clement. 
 
 1794. 
 .Jonathan Merrill. 
 Thomas Boynton. 
 Aaron Welch. 
 
 1795. 
 Jonathan MeiTill. 
 Thomas Boynton. 
 Joseph French. 
 
 1796. 
 .Jonathan Merrill. 
 Abel Menill. 
 Elisha Swett. 
 
 1797. 
 William Butler. 
 Jonathan Merrill. 
 Joseph French. 
 
 1807. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 .Joseph Patch. 
 Elisha Swett. 
 
 1808. 
 Joseph Patch, .Jr., 
 Aaron Welch. 
 Ebenezer Barker. 
 
 1809. 
 Jonathan Merrill. 
 .Joseph Patch, Jr. 
 .Jonathan Fellows. 
 
 1810. 
 •Jonathan MerriU. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 Amos Tarleton. 
 
 1811. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 Joseph Patch, Jr. 
 .Vmos Tarleton. 
 
 1812. 
 -Jonathan Merrill. 
 Benjamin Men*ill. 
 -Joseph Merrill. 
 
 1813. 
 -Joseph Patch. 
 Thomas Whipple. 
 Stephen Flanders. 
 
 1823. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 Joseph Patch, Jr. 
 -Joseph Bixby . 
 
 1824. 
 Jacob Patch. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 WiUiam Clough. 
 
 1825. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 Jacob Patch. 
 William Clough. 
 
 1826. 
 Jacob Patch. 
 WiUiam Clough. . 
 Enoch K. Weeks. 
 
 1827. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 Enoch E. Weeks. 
 Stevens Merrill. 
 
 1828. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 Enoch E. Weeks. 
 Samuel Men-ill. 
 
 1829. 
 WiUiam Clough. 
 Samuel MerriU. 
 George Libbey. 
 
 1798-'99. 
 Jonathan MerriU. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 Elisha Swett. 
 
 1814. 
 Jonathan Merrill. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 -Joseph Patch, -Jr. 
 
 1830. 
 -Jacob Patch. 
 Benjamin Little. 
 Samuel Merrill. 
 
 1800 
 .Jonathan MerrUl. 
 Ezra Bartlett, 
 WiUiam Butler. 
 
 1815-'16. 
 -Jonathan MerriU. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 
 183]-'32. 
 -Jacob Patch. 
 Benj^-min Little. 
 Anson Merrill. 
 
 1801. 
 -Jonathan MerriU. 
 Ezra Bartlett. 
 Abel Merrill. 
 
 1817. 
 Jionathan MerrUl. 
 Abel MerriU- 
 James WilUams. 
 
 1833. 
 Enoch E. Weeks. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 Samuel L. MerriU. 
 
 1802-'3. 
 Jonathan MerriU. 
 Abel MerriU. 
 Elisha Swett. 
 
 1818-'19. 
 Joseph Patch, Jr. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 Stephen Flanders. 
 
 ia34. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 Samuel L. MerriU. 
 Samuel MerriU. 
 
-532 
 
 HISTORY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 1835. 
 Jacob Patch. 
 Isaac Merrill, 2d. 
 Solomon Cotton. 
 
 Samuel L. Merrill. 
 Solomon Cotton. 
 George Libbey. 
 
 1837. 
 Samuel L. Men-ill. 
 George Libbey. 
 Enoch K. Weelis. 
 
 1838. 
 William Clough. 
 "William Pomeroy. 
 Jonathan Little. 
 
 1839. 
 William Pomeroy. 
 .Tonathan Little. 
 Josepli Bixby. 
 
 1840. 
 Jonathan Little. 
 Joseph Bixby. 
 Stevens M. Dow. 
 
 1841-'42. 
 Enoch K. Weelcs. 
 Solomon Cotton. 
 Nathaniel Merrill, 2cl. 
 
 1843. 
 Enoch B. WeelfS. 
 William Pomeroy. 
 Eussell F. Clifford. 
 
 1844. 
 •Isaac Merrill. 
 BusseU F. Clifford. 
 Stevens M. Dow. 
 
 1845. 
 Isaac Merrill. 
 BusseU F. Clifford. 
 James S. Men-ill. 
 
 1846. 
 Samuel L. Merrill. 
 James S. Men-ill. 
 James Clement. 
 
 1847. 
 Jesse Little. 
 Solomon Cotton. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 
 1848. 
 Jesse Little. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 David Smith, 
 
 1849. 
 Samuel L. Merrill. 
 David Smith, 
 Thomas P. Huokins. 
 
 1850. 
 Samuel L. Merrill. 
 Thomas P. Huckins. 
 Albe C. Weeks. 
 
 1851. 
 Samuel L. Merrill. 
 Albe C. Weeks. 
 Michael P. Merrill. 
 
 1852. 
 Samuel L. MerrUl. 
 Michael P. Merrill. 
 •Joseph Clement. 
 
 1853. 
 David Smith. 
 Joseph Clement. 
 Jonathan Little, 
 
 1854. 
 William Pomeroy, 
 Ezra W, Cleasby, 
 .James Clement. 
 
 185.1, 
 William Pomeroy, 
 Ira Merrill, 
 Enoch B. Weeks, Jr. 
 
 1866. 
 Ira Merrill. 
 Enoch E, Weeks, Jr, 
 Darius Swain. 
 
 1857. 
 Samuel L. Merrill. 
 Darius Swain. 
 Stephen M. Boynton. 
 
 1858. 
 Isaac Merrill. 
 Stephen M. Boynton. 
 Nathaniel Mei-rill, 2d. 
 
 1859. 
 RusseU F. Clifford. 
 Nathaniel Men-Ul, 2d. 
 Ezra Libbey. 
 
 1860. 
 Eussell F. Clifford. 
 Ezra Libbey. 
 Nathaniel Menill, 2d. 
 
 1861. 
 Ira Merrill. 
 Nathaniel Merrill, 2d. 
 Caleb I. Heath. 
 
 1862. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 Caleb I. Heath. 
 George E. Leonard. 
 
 Stevens M. Dow. 
 George E. Leonard. 
 James S. Merrill. 
 
 1864-'65. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 Levi C. Whitcher, 
 Adoniram Whitcher, 
 
 1866-'67, 
 Enoch E, Weeks, Jr. 
 George E. Leonard. 
 Calvin W, Cummings. 
 
 1868. 
 Stevens M. Dow. 
 Walter Libbey. 
 Amos Clement. 
 
 1869. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 Walter Libbey. 
 Amos Clement. 
 
 1870. 
 IraM. Weeks. 
 Arthur Knapp. 
 James M. Bixby. 
 
 TOWN CLERKS. 
 
 1779— Obadiah Clement, 6 
 1786— Joshua Copp, 1 
 
 1787— Joshua Merrill, 1 
 1788— Nathauiel Knight, 2 
 1790— Joshua Copp, 2 
 
 1798— Jonathan Merrill, 10 
 1803— Ezra Bartlett, 2 
 
 1805— Abel Men-ill, 1 
 
 1806— Jonathan Merrill, 1 
 
 yrs. 1818 — Joseph Patch, Jr., 2 yr 
 
 " 1820— Moses H. Clement, 7 
 
 " 1827— Enoch U. Weeks, 1 
 
 " 1828— Anson Merrill, 4 
 
 " 1881— Jesse Little, 7 
 
 " 1888— R. K. Clement, 6 
 
 " 1844— Isaac Merrill, 2 
 
 " 1846— R. K. Clement, 13 
 
 " 1869— Albe C. Weeks, 2 
 
1807— Abel Mei-nll, 2 
 
 1809— Jonathaa Merrill, 2 
 1811^-Benjamin Merrill, 2 
 1813— Thomas Whipple, 2 
 1815 — Jonathan Merpill, 1 
 1816 — Joseph Patch, Jr., 1 
 1817— Robert Barns, 1 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 yrs. 
 
 1861- 
 
 a 
 
 1864- 
 
 a 
 
 1865- 
 
 a 
 
 1867- 
 
 a 
 
 1868- 
 
 iC 
 
 1870- 
 
 -Daniel Q.Clement, 3 yrs. 
 -R. K. Cleineut, 1 " 
 -William Pomeroy, 2 " 
 -Samuel B. Page,, 1 " 
 -James B. Eastman, 2 " 
 -Nathan Harris, 1 " 
 
 REPRES:^NTATIVES . 
 
 1784— Obadiah Clement, 2 
 1789— William Tarleton, 1 
 1793— Jonathan Merrill, 3 
 1797— William Butler, 2 
 1800— William Tarleton, 1 
 1801— Abel MerrUl, 1 
 
 1806— Ezra Bartlett, 2 
 
 1808— Abel Merrill, 2 
 
 1811- " " 2 
 
 1814^Joseph Patch, Jr., 2 
 1817— " ■" 4 
 
 1822— Amos Tarleton, 2 
 1825— Abel Merrill, 2 
 
 1828— Jacob Patch, 1 
 
 1830— Moses H. Clement, 1 
 1831— Enoch R, Weeks, 2 
 1833— Jacob Patch, 1 
 
 1834^Moses H. Clement, 1 
 1835— Jacob Patch, 1 
 
 yrs. 1836 — Moses H. Clement, 1 yrs. 
 
 " 1838— " "■ 1 " 
 
 " 1839— Enoch R. Weeks, 1 " 
 
 " 1340— Jesse Little, 2 " 
 
 1842— William Clough, 2 " 
 
 1844— RussellK. Clement 2 " 
 
 1846— Jonathan Little, 2 " 
 
 1848— R. K. Clement, 1 " 
 
 1849— Levi C. Whitcher, 2 " 
 
 1851— William Pomeroy, 2 " 
 
 1853— Isaac Merrill, 1 " 
 
 1854— R. K. Clement, 1 " 
 
 1855— Isaac Merrill, 3 " 
 
 1858— James Clement, 2 " 
 
 I860— Ira M. Weeks, 2 " 
 
 1862— James M. Bixby 2 " 
 
 1864— Samuel B. Page, 6 " 
 
 1870— George F. Putnam-, 1 ' ' 
 
 MODERATORS. 
 
 Joshua Copp, 1779, '82, '98, '99. 
 
 Thomas Ulark, 1780, '81. 
 
 WilUam Butler, 1783, '84, '87, '88, '91, 94, 1801. 
 
 Stevens Merrill, 1785, '89, '90. 
 
 Absalom Peters, 1786. 
 
 Ephraim True, 1792. 
 
 Thomas Boynton, 1793, '96. 
 
 Abel Merrill, 1776, 1802, '3, '5, '7, '10, '12, '13 '14, '16, '17, '18, 
 
 '19, '20, '25. 
 Anson Welch, 1797. 
 Ezra Bartlett, 1800, '8, '11. 
 Obadiah Clement, 1804. 
 Jonathan Merrill, 1806, '9. 
 Daniel Patch, 1816, '21, '22, '23, '24. 
 George Libbey, 1826, '36, '37, '38, '39, '40, '42. 
 Jacob Patch, 1827, '28, '29, '30, '31, '32, '33, '34. 
 Anson Merrill, 1836. 
 Isaac Merrill, 1841, '43, '48, '62, '63. 
 
534 
 
 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 William Pomeroy, 1844, '45, '47. 
 
 Francis A. Cushman, 1846. 
 
 Michael P. Merrill, 1849, '50, '51, '54, '55, 56, '57. 
 
 William Little, 1858, '59, '60. 
 
 Enoch R. Weeks, Jr., 1861, '62, '64, '65, '67. 
 
 Samuel B. Page, 1863, '66, '68, '69. 
 
 George F. Putnam, 1870. 
 
 SCHOOL COMMITTEE. 
 
 1829. 
 David C. French. 
 Horatio W. Heath. 
 Robert E Merrill. 
 
 1844. 
 Michael P. Merrill. 
 David Smith. 
 James M. Williams. 
 
 1852. 
 Michael P. Merrill. 
 
 1830. 
 Jacob Patch. 
 Anson Merrill. 
 Jonathan Little. 
 
 1845. 
 David Smith. 
 Michael P. Merrill. 
 James M. Williams. 
 
 1853. 
 James M. Williams . 
 Ira Merrill. 
 
 1831. 
 Isaac Men-ill, 2d. 
 Job E. Merrill. 
 Russell F. Clifford. 
 
 1832. 
 Jonathan Little. 
 John L. Merrill. 
 Nath'l Merrill, 2d. 
 
 1833* 
 Job E. Merrill. 
 Stevens M. Dow. 
 Russell K. Clement. 
 
 1835. 
 Job E. Merrill. 
 Stevens M. Dow. 
 Anson Merrill. 
 
 1837. 
 Jesse Little. 
 Moses Men-ill. 
 Russell K. Clement. 
 
 1846. 
 Michael P. Merrill. 
 Dudley B. Cotton. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 
 1847. 
 David Smith. 
 Dudley B. Cotton. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 
 1848-'49. 
 Dudley B. Cotton. 
 Ira Merrill. 
 James M. Williams. 
 
 1850. 
 William MerriU. 
 Albe C. Weeks. 
 Joseph B. Cotton. 
 
 1851. 
 Wilham Merrill. 
 Joseph B. Cotton. 
 James M. Williams. 
 
 1854, '55, '56, "69, '70. 
 Ira Men-ill. 
 
 1857. 
 Dudley B. Cotton. 
 
 1858, '59. 
 Russell F. Clifford. 
 
 1860. 
 William Little. 
 
 1861. 
 Alphonzo G. French 
 
 1862, '65, 'C6, '67, '68. 
 Samuel B. Page. 
 
 1863. 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 
 1864. 
 Josiah Hooper. 
 
 POPULATION AT DIFFERENT PERIODS 
 
 1780— (about) 125 1820— 544 1860— 1,152 
 
 1790— 206 1830— 702 1870— 960 
 
 1800—. 336 1840— 938 
 
 1810— 606 1850— 872 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 535 
 
 MONEY TAX. 
 
 1779— 
 
 £100 
 
 1810— 
 
 $0.00 
 
 1841— 
 
 1780— 
 
 150 
 
 1811— 
 
 0.00 
 
 1842— 
 
 1781— 
 
 500 
 
 1812— 
 
 300.00 
 
 1843— 
 
 1782— 
 
 *4 1-2 
 
 1813— 
 
 100.00 
 
 1844— 
 
 1783— 
 
 6 
 
 1814— 
 
 245.00 
 
 1846— 
 
 1784— 
 
 5 
 
 1815— 
 
 0.00 
 
 1846— 
 
 1785— 
 
 
 
 1816— 
 
 30.00 
 
 1847— 
 
 1786— 
 
 5 
 
 1817— 
 
 60.00 
 
 1848— 
 
 1787— 
 
 
 
 1818— 
 
 30.00 
 
 1849— 
 
 1788— 
 
 3 
 
 1819— 
 
 75.00 
 
 1860— 
 
 1789— 
 
 6 
 
 1820— 
 
 50.00 
 
 1861— 
 
 1790— 
 
 9 
 
 1821— 
 
 30.00 
 
 1852— 
 
 1791— 
 
 6 
 
 1822— 
 
 40.00 
 
 18'53— 
 
 1792— 
 
 
 
 1823— 
 
 50.00 
 
 1854— 
 
 1793— 
 
 4 1-2 
 
 1824^ 
 
 75.00 
 
 1865— 
 
 1794— 
 
 6 
 
 1826— 
 
 60.00 
 
 1856— 
 
 1795— 
 
 3 
 
 1826— 
 
 75.00 
 
 1857— 
 
 1796— 
 
 
 
 1827— 
 
 150.00 
 
 1868— 
 
 1797— 
 
 $13.33 
 
 1828— 
 
 200.00 
 
 1859— 
 
 1798— 
 
 10.00 
 
 1829— 
 
 300.00 
 
 1860— 
 
 1799— 
 
 0.00 
 
 1830— 
 
 200.00 
 
 1861— 
 
 1800— 
 
 13.00 
 
 1831— 
 
 200.00 
 
 1862— 
 
 1801— 
 
 0.00 
 
 1832— 
 
 200.00 
 
 1863— 
 
 1802— 
 
 16.00 
 
 1833— 
 
 150.00 
 
 1864^ 
 
 1803— 
 
 30.00 
 
 1834— 
 
 160.00 
 
 1865— 
 
 1804U- 
 
 70.00 
 
 1835— 
 
 400.00 
 
 1866— 
 
 1805— 
 
 160.00 
 
 1836— 
 
 250.00 
 
 1867— 
 
 1806— 
 
 40.00 
 
 1837— 
 
 250.00 
 
 1868— 
 
 1807— 
 
 40.00 
 
 1838— 
 
 300.00 
 
 1869— 
 
 1808— 
 
 75.00 
 
 1839— 
 
 400.00 
 
 1870— 
 
 1809— 
 
 80.00 
 
 1840— 
 
 600.00 
 
 
 * Silver money. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LAWYERS. 
 
 
 $400.00 
 
 800.00 
 
 1,000.00 
 
 1,200.00 
 
 660.00 
 
 526.00 
 
 426.00 
 
 1,000.00 
 
 900.00 
 
 700.00 
 
 800.00 
 
 600.00 
 
 600.00 
 
 650.00 
 
 800.00 
 
 1,200.00 
 
 1.200.00 
 
 1,200.00 
 
 1,600.00 
 
 1,600.00 
 
 1,600.00 
 
 1,600.00 
 
 1,600.00 
 
 4,000.00 
 
 4,000.00 
 
 4,000.00 
 
 4,000.00 
 
 4,000.00 
 
 4,000.00 
 
 4,000.00 
 
 The following persons have practiced law in Warren : — 
 
 Joseph B. Hill — 1865 to 1867. 
 
 Joseph W. AKMtNGTON — 1861, a short time. 
 
 Samuel B. Page — from 1861 to 1869. Mr. Page was born 
 at Littleton, N. H., June 23, 1838. He was educated at Phillips, 
 Kingston, and Lyndon academies ; studied law with Hon. Harry 
 Bingham, of Littleton, and graduated at the Albany Law School 
 in 1861. In 1861 he commenced the practice of law at Warren. 
 
 In the course of the next six years he held the oflces of mod- 
 
536 mSTORT OF WAEREN. 
 
 erator, town clerk, and school committee, and also represented the 
 town for seven consecutiye sessions in the Legislature. 
 
 As a representative he was diligent, worked hard, and was 
 always in his place. During the last two years he was the leader 
 of the House, and as a debater and tactician had no equals. 
 
 Mr. Page received the degree of A. M. from Dartmouth Col- 
 lege in 1868. 
 
 He married Miss Martha C. Laug in 1860. They have had 
 three children, Child L., William H., and Elizabeth Berkley Page. 
 
 In 1869 he removed to Concord, N. H., where he had already 
 formed a law partnership with Hon. Ira A. Eastman and John H. 
 Albin, with the firm name of Eastman, Page & Albin, which 
 stiU continues. 
 
 George F. Potnaji — 1869 to — . Mr. Putnam, the son of John 
 and Almira {French) Putnam, was born at Croydon, N. H., Nov. 
 6, 1841, and is the youngest of a family of eight children. He 
 fitted for college at Thetford Academy, Thetford, Vt., and gradua- 
 ted at Noi-wich University in 1863. In the fall of that year he 
 commenced the study of law with N. B. Felton, Esq., at Haverhill, 
 N..H., where he remained till the summer of 1866, when he went 
 into the of5.ce of Judge C. R. Morrison, and was admitted to the 
 bar at Manchester, Jan. 1, 1867. Mr. P. commenced the practice 
 of law at HaverhiU, in the summer of 1867, and remained there 
 until the summer of 1869, when he removed to "Warren. 
 
 In 1866 and '67 he was superintendent of schools in Haverhill, 
 and in 1868 and 1869 represented that town in the New Hamp- 
 shire Legislature. In 1870 he represented the town of "Warren in 
 the Legislature. 
 
 Mr. Putnam married Mary R. Reding, daughter of Sylvester 
 and Ellen D. Reding, Deo. 22, 1868, at Haverhill. 
 
 Mr. P. is a young man of flue ability, of genial and courteous 
 manners, and without doubt wiU make his mark as a good lawyer. 
 
 PHYSICIANS. 
 
 The following persons have practiced medicine in "Warren : — 
 
 Dr. Joseph Peters was the first. He came in 1791, and 
 lived in town about two years. 
 
APPENDIX. 537 
 
 Dk. Levi Root — from 1796, three years. 
 
 Dr. Ezra. B.iRTLETT — from 1798 to 1812. Dr. Bartlett was 
 the son of Dr. Josiah Bartlett, one of the governors of New 
 Hampshire, aud came to Warren in 1798. For a short sketch of 
 him see page 354. 
 
 Db. Thomas "Whu-ple practiced in town from 1811 to 1814 . 
 Dr. "Whipple was born at Lebanon, N. H., in 1787. He attended 
 the common school of his district, and went to an academy for a 
 few weeks only. In Warren, on Beech hill, he studied Latin by 
 the light of Dr. Bartlett's great flre-place, and also medicine with 
 Dr. B. for about two years. He completed his medical studies 
 with Dr. Nathan Smith, at Hanover, N. H. Attended lectures at 
 the Dartmouth Medical College, and received his diploma Aug. 4, 
 1810. 
 
 Dr. Whipple practiced medicine a short time at Bradford, Vt., 
 and moved to WaiTeu in 1811. Wiiile at Warren he held the office 
 of town clerk and selectman. In 1814 he removed to Wentworth, 
 where he lived till his death. 
 
 Dr. Whipple possessed great ability, had excellent success in 
 his practice, and living but a short distance from Warren practiced 
 in our town all his life. His face was just as familliar to our citi- 
 zens as though he was one of their own townsmen. He was free 
 and easy in his manners, and the people were always pleased to 
 see him. Has argumentative powers were good, and he was very 
 keen at a joke. Only one man in Warren dared meet him in argu- 
 ment or wit, aud that was Stevens Merrill, son of 'Squire Jona- 
 than Merrill. Stevens Merrill was "enough for the doctor," and 
 the latter was often glad to shun our keen, witty farmer. The 
 doctor had a, powerful memory and could recite nearly the whole 
 of Virgil and Milton, and much of Shakspeare. Besides his prac- 
 tice in Warren and Wentworth he visited patients in all parts of 
 the county of Grafton and in neighboring towns in Vermont. 
 
 At Wentworth Dr. Whipple held nearly every town office in 
 the gift of the people, and for many years represented that town 
 in the Legislature. His greatest triumph was the passage of the 
 " Toleration Act," in 1819. By it all denominations in New 
 Hampshire were placed upon an equality, and every man could 
 
538 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 support preaching or not, as he felt disposed. In the discussion of 
 the act iu the House of Representatives, Dr. Whipple exhibited 
 talents as a debater, equal if not superior to any man in the State. 
 
 In 1821, he was elected Representative to Congress, and was 
 re-elected in 1823, 1825, and 1827. He was a prominent, hard- 
 working member, and as a debater on the floor of tlte' House had 
 few equals. He married Phebe Tabor of Bradford, Vt. 
 
 Secondly, he married Pricilla Pierce of Royalton, Vt., and 
 their children were Pricilla P., who married Dr. Boney; Phebe 
 T., who married Ben Ayer, of Manchester, now of Chicago, 111. ; 
 and Celia, who married Mr. Wallace, of Chicago. The latter is a 
 talented lady and a writer of considerable ability. 
 
 • Dr. Whipple died Jan. 23, 1835, aged forty-eight years, and 
 was buried at Wentworth. 
 
 His son, Dr. A. A. Whipple, born in Warren, is now practic- 
 ing medicine at Wentworth. He is a man of fine ability. Col. 
 Thonias J. Whipple, his second son, is a lawyer of extensive prac- 
 tice, and resides at Laconia. 
 
 DR. THOMAS AND PHEBE ( Tabor) WHIPPLE'S FAMILY KECOED. 
 
 Alonzo A., bom Feb. 27. 1811. Walter G., born Nov. — , 1818. 
 
 Thomas J ., born Jan. 30, 1816. Caroline B., born Apr. 1, 1820. 
 
 Dr. Robert Burns practiced from 1816 to 1818, when he 
 moved to Hebron, and from thence to Plymouth. He was a Rep- 
 resentative iu Congress four years. 
 
 Dr. John Bkoadhead — from 1818, one year. He was the 
 son of Rev. John Broadhead, Methodist minister. 
 
 Dr. Laban Ladd— from 1820, two years. He was a native 
 of Haverhill, and died there shortly after he left Warren. 
 
 Dr. David C. French — from 1821 to 1870. He Avas a sou 
 of Joseph French, one of the early settlers of Warren, was born 
 in town, and now at the age of eighty years is still in actiVe prac- 
 tice. 
 
 Dr. Jesse Little — from 1830 to 1865. He was the son of 
 Amos Little, who came to Warren in 1789. Dr. Little studied 
 medicine with Dr. Thomas Whipple, and graduated at the Dart- 
 mouth Medical College, Hanover, N. H., in 1828. He practiced 
 
APPENDIX. 539 
 
 first at Landaff, and moved to "Warren in 1830. He held every 
 office in the gift of his tovrnsmen, and represented the town in the 
 Legislature in 1840 and 1841. He died at "Warren, July 29, 1865. 
 
 Dr. James Emery — from 1845, one year. 
 
 Dr. Mctodt D. Page — in 1849. He lived at the oldHomans 
 place, East-parte. 
 
 Dr. a. Busvtell — from 1852 to 1854. 
 
 Dr. Axphonzo G. French — from 1853 to 1862. He was a 
 son of Dr. David C. French, graduated at the Medical School at 
 Hanover, in 1858, and died in California, in 1865. 
 
 Dr. Moses C. Eaton — from 1864 to 1869. 
 
 Dr. John F. "Willey, (eclectic)- from 1860 to 1865. He is 
 a son of Nathan "Willey, and a nephew of Dr. D. C. French. Dr. 
 Willey returned to Warren in 1870. 
 
 Dr. Charles A. Manning, (eclectic) — from 1868. 
 
 Dr. Robert E. Merrill — from 1869. He was the son of 
 Samuel Merrill, and was born in the East-parte district ; graduated 
 at the Medical School at Hanover, and after practicing many years 
 at Meredith, Pembroke, and Laconia, moved to "Warren. 
 
 COLLEGE GRADUATES. 
 
 Joseph Merrill, eldest son of Joseph and Sarah {Copp) 
 Merrill, was born Oct. 19, 1788. He in a great measure fitted 
 himself for college, and gi-aduated at Dartmouth in 1814; being 
 the first person born in Warren who received college honors. He 
 then engaged a year and a half in teaching in Haverhill, at the 
 same time diligently pursuing the study of law. Thence he re- 
 moved to Marblehead, Mass., still successfully occupying himself 
 in teaching. Here his theological views and religious character 
 took definite shape, and having made a public profession in 1818, 
 he entered upon the study of theology, under Rev. Samuel Dana. 
 In June, 1820, he was licensed to preach, and was ordained Nov. 
 15, of the same year, pastor of the Evangelical Congregational 
 Church in the East Parish of Dracut. There he remained thirteen 
 
540 HISTOET OF WAREEN. 
 
 years. He took great interest in the public schools, anfl special 
 mention is also made of his services to the people of Lowell, in the 
 infancy of that city. As the nearest Congregational pastor he was 
 in constant request for pastoral duties before any minister was 
 settled there. His church in Dracut was blessed during his min- 
 istry with three distinct periods of special revival. 
 
 Oct. 16, 1833, he removed to Acworth, N. H., where he was 
 settled about five years. "While here it is said that " he was fa- 
 vored with the confidence and affection of Ms people ; that he was 
 erect and dignified in person, genial and affable in his manners, 
 and sound and interesting as a preacher." With the assistance of 
 the great revivalist, Burchard, ninety-five persons were converted 
 and added to Ms church in 1835. 
 
 In 1838 he removed to Wellfleet, Mass., and for a considerable 
 time was engaged as a revivalist in different places, with great 
 success. In 1840 he returned to Dracut and was pastor of the 
 church in the West Parish for eight years. He was then elected 
 for two years a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, and 
 afteiTvards resided in Lowell. 
 
 Mr. Merrill married Eleanor Haynes, of Romney, in 1812. 
 Their children were : — 
 
 George Anson, born April 14, 1813. Sarah H., born Feb. 23, 1822., 
 
 Died May 3, 1835. Mary, born Jan. 22, 1824. 
 
 Harriet W., bom April 15, 1815. Elizabeth, born March 7, 1826. 
 
 Eleanor H., born Jan. 7, 1818. Martha, born Deo. 7, 1830. 
 Joseph A., born Sept. 13, 1819. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Merrill died at Lowell, Nov. 21, 1856, aged 68 years. 
 In theology Mr. M. was a decided though not an ultra Calvinist. 
 He left behind him nearly fourteen hundred written sermons, a 
 part only of those which he prepared and jjreached, and a memo- 
 randum in Ms hand writing records that he preached 3,077 times 
 during thirty years of his ministry, from manuscript, besides all 
 his unwritten sermons, lectures, and addresses. 
 
 William Little, son of Jesse and Susan Copp {Merrill) 
 Little, born March 20, 1833; graduated at Dartmouth, 1869; 
 studied law and practiced at Manchester, N. H. 
 
 George Leroy Gleason, son of Rev. Salmon and Jerusha 
 {Willard) Gleason, was born Feb. 26, 1885; graduated at Dart- 
 mouth, 1861 ; studied at the Andover, Mass., Theological School, 
 
APPENDIX. 541 
 
 and preached at Kutland, Vt., and at Manchester, Mass. He was 
 ordained pastor of the Congregational Church at Bristol, Vt., Feb. 
 1, 1866. 
 
 John Merrill, son of Abel and Tamar {Kimball) Merrill ; 
 born March 4, 1786 ; entered Dai-tmouth 1806. He died while a 
 member of the sophomore class. The following lines are to be 
 found on his tombstone : — 
 
 Behold the blooming youth is gone ; 
 
 The much loved object's fled: 
 Entered his long eternal home, 
 
 And numbered with the dead. 
 
 But he shall live and rise again 
 
 Enrobed in bright array ; 
 Shall take his part in heavenly strains, 
 
 In Everlasting day. 
 
 Lemuel Merrill, son of Joseph and Sarah {Copp) Merrill; 
 born Nov. 8, 1793; entered Dartmouth College in 1814, but did 
 not graduate. He studied law and practiced with good success, 
 acquiring a large property, at Tuskega, Ala. He died about 1862. 
 
 George Alfred Little, son of Jesse and Susan Copp 
 {Merrill) Little, born May 23, 1847, and entered Dartmouth in 
 1867. 
 
 The following have received college honors : — 
 
 Moses H. Bixby — the degree of A. M., in 1868, at Dartmouth. 
 
 Samuel B. Page — the degree of A. M., in 1868, at Dartmouth. 
 
 George F. Putnam — the degree of A. M., in 1870, at Dart- 
 mouth. 
 
 The following Methodist ministers have preached in town : — 
 
 Kev. Elijah E. Sabin. Rev. N.W.Aspinwall. Rev. James Martin. 
 
 Thomas Skeel. C. R. Harding. J. A. Sweatland. 
 
 Joel Winch. J. W. Morey. Silas G. Kellogg. 
 
 Jacob Sanborn. Phineas Peck. S.Holman. 
 
 • John Lord. S. A. Gushing. J. A. Scarritt. 
 
 Wm. Plumbly. Enos Wells. L. L. Eastman. 
 
 John Davis. R. Dearborn. Rufus Tilton. 
 
 Walter Sleeper. Moses Merrill. O. H. Call. 
 
 Newell Culver; J. W. Sanborn. James Adams. 
 
 Charles Baker. Salmon Gleason. Charles Smith. 
 
 Nathan Howe. B. R. Hoyt. Josiah Hooper. 
 
 Damon Young. Kimball Hadley. W. H. Jones. 
 
 Caleb Dustin. L. D. Blodgett. 
 
 J. H. Hardy. Samuel Baker. 
 
542 HISTORY OP WAEBEN. 
 
 The following Free-will Baptist ministers have preached in 
 town : — 
 
 Rev. Joseph Boody. Rev. James Spencer. Rev. G. W. Cogswell. 
 Jos. Boody, Jr. Joseph Quimby. J. Moulton. 
 
 Lewis Harriman. Amasa Messer. Sargeant. 
 
 Thomas Perkins. Aaron Buzwell. Horace "Webber. 
 
 J. Marks. S. Doane. J. D. Cross. 
 
 John Wallace. Leavitt. 
 
 The following UniversaUst ministers have preached in town : — 
 
 Rev. JohnE. Palmer, 1S38 to ]841 Rev. Chas. C. Clark,1852 to 1853 
 S. A. Johnson, 1841 " 1845" 8. W. Squire, 1853 " 1859 
 
 Alson Scott, 1845 " 1849 T. Barron, 1858 " 1861 
 
 MaceyB.Newell,1849 " 1851 
 
 CHORISTERS. 
 
 Samuel Knight. Capt. Benj. Little. Gen. M. P. Merrill. 
 
 Samuel Merrill. Joseph Boynton. Capt. Ira M. Weeks. 
 
 James Dow. Dr. Jesse Little. William Merrill. 
 
 Paul Taber.* Col. S. M. Dow. Albert Bixby. 
 
 * Taber was a brother-in-law of Dr. Thomas Wliipple. 
 POSTMASTERS. 
 
 Amos Burton. Asa Thurston. 
 
 Anson Merrill. George W. Prescott. 
 
 Dr. Jesse Little. Charles C. Durant. 
 
 Dr. David C. French. Russell K. Clement. 
 
 Levi C. Whitcher. Ezra Bartlett Eaton. 
 
 The following are persons born in Warren who afterwards 
 became, lawyers : — 
 
 Lemuel Merrill, practiced at Tuskega, Alabama. 
 Joseph F. Merrill, practiced in Port Huron, Michigan. 
 Benjamin Bixby, practiced in Ohio. 
 William Little, practiced in Manchester, N. H. 
 
 The following are persons once liraig in Warren, who after- 
 wards became ministers of the gospel : — 
 
 Rev. Joseph Meekill, CongregationaKst. (See biography, 
 page 539.) 
 
 Rev. Frederick Clark, ordained iu Warren in 1817, in the 
 barn at the forks of the turnpike and Coventry road. 
 
APPENDIX. 643 
 
 Rev. Hobace Webbek, Free-will Baptist, ordained in "War- 
 ren in 1836. Col. Moses H. Clement objected to his being ordained 
 . in "Warren, unless he would sign acquittance to the minister lands, 
 which Mr. "Webber did. 
 
 Rev. Chakles Bowles, Free-will Bnptist. (See sketch on 
 page 286.) 
 
 Ret. Moses Meerill, Methodist. He was born on Beech 
 hill, in "Warren, June 26, 1802. and is the son of Nathaniel Merrill, 
 and grandson of Rev. Nathaniel Merrill, of Boscawen, who was 
 the brother of Stevens and Joshua Merrill, early settlers of "War- 
 ren. Mr. Merrill was an excellent school teacher as well as minis- 
 ter, and the writer of this owes much to his teaching and encour- 
 agement. 
 
 Rev. Ezekiel Dow, Congregationalist. He is the son of 
 James Dow, and was born on Pine hill in Warren, April 9^ 1807. 
 
 Rev. Chakles Bowles, Jr., Congi-egationaUst. He was or- 
 dained as minister at Bridgewater, N. H., in 1825, and preached 
 there three and one-half years. — Hist, of N. H. Chiu'ches, 515. 
 
 Rev. Hebee Kimball, Mormon. He was a great high priest 
 in his church, and next to Brigham "Young in authority. At his 
 death he left an estate valued at $80,000, and forty-one children, 
 thirty sons and eleven daughters, to share it. "When in "Warren he 
 used to tend bar for Mr. Anson Merrill, and sell rum to the cus- 
 tomers. 
 
 Rev. Addison Patch, Methodist. He was the son of Joseph 
 Patch, Jr. 
 
 Rev. William Bixby, Methodist. 
 
 Benjamin Bixby, Methodist. 
 
 George W. Bixbt, Calvin Baptist. 
 
 Rev. Moses H. Bixbt, Calvin Baptist. Rev. Mr. Bixby, 
 
 the son of Benjamin and (Cleasby) Bixby, was born in 
 
 "Warren, August 21, 1827. At the age of twelve years he expe- 
 rienced religion, and having a strong conviction that he would at 
 
544 HISTORY OF -WABBEN. 
 
 sometime preach the gospel, he entered at once on a course of 
 preparation. 
 
 He began his studies at the Literary and Theological Seminary 
 at Newbury, Vt., then attended the seminary at Derby, Vt., two 
 years, and finished his course at the Baptist College, in the city of 
 Mouti-eal, where he enjoyed decided advantages, being instructed 
 by Rev. J. M. Cramp, D. D., and Rev. Dr. Davis, of London. 
 
 Mr. Bixby was ordained to the gospel ministry in 1849, at the 
 age of twenty-two years, at Williston, Vt., and was married that 
 year to Miss Susan C. Dow, daughter of Deacon Grilman Dow, of 
 Hardwick, Vt. 
 
 After four years of pastoral work in this country he received 
 an appointment of the American Baptist Missionary Union, as a 
 .missionary to Bui'mah. 
 
 For four years he labored ardently and successfully in that, 
 country, when Mrs. Bixby's health failed, and he was obliged to 
 return home. His wife shortly after died at Burlington, Vt. 
 
 He soon after settled in Providence, R. I., as pastor of the 
 Friendship Street Church, and afterwards married Miss Laura A. 
 Gage, who was then and had been for several years principal of 
 the New Hampton Female Seminary. 
 
 In 1860 the Missionary Union gave him an appointment as 
 missionary to open a new mission in Burmah, for the Shaus. 
 
 With his family he spent eight years at that station, and 
 labored with signal success, when failing health compelled him to 
 return to America. 
 
 Mr. Bixby is now settled as the pastor of the Cranston Street 
 Baptist Church, Providence, R. I. He has been a missionary in 
 Eastern Asia twelve years, and a pastor in this country eight 
 years. He has preached the gospel in Europe, Asia, Africa, and 
 America, with a good degree of success ; and the denomination to 
 which he belongs holds him in high esteem. The degree of 
 Master of Arts was conferred upon him by Dartmouth College, 
 while he was absent from the country. 
 
 Mr. B. has eight brothers, five of whom have been ministers 
 of the gospel. Their names are found in the accompanying list of 
 ministers. His father and mother are still living at "Warren, aged 
 respectively eighty and seventy-five years. His grandfather, "Wm. 
 
APPENDIX. 545 
 
 Cleasby, died in Wavren, at the age of ninety-five years. "We give 
 this extended account of Mr. B. for we regard him as one of the 
 most able and eloquent of Warren's sons. 
 
 Rev. Dudley C. Bixbt, Calvin Baptist. 
 
 "William Meueill, Methodist. 
 
 Addison "W. Eastman, Methodist. 
 
 George Leeot Gleason, Congregationalist. 
 
 Charles W. Cushman, Methodist. 
 
 George C. No yes, Methodist. 
 
 Jajies M. Copp, Methodist. 
 
 Lafayette "W. Parker, Methodist. 
 
 Timothy Clifford, Methodist. 
 
 John French, Spiritualist. 
 
 The following are persons once living in "Warren who after- 
 wards became doctors : — 
 
 Dr. Eliphalet Copp. He was the son of Joshua Copp, and 
 practiced in New Jersey. 
 
 Dr. David C. French. 
 
 Jesse Little. 
 
 Alonzo a. Whipple. 
 
 Levi B. Foot. 
 
 Dr. Willi A3I Merrill. He was the son of Abel Merrill, 
 graduated at the Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, and after 
 practicing a short time at Lisbon, died. 
 
 Dr. Levi Bartlett, son of Dr. Ezra Bartlett. 
 Josiah Bartlett, son of Dr. Ezra Bartlett. 
 RfeBERT E. Merrill. 
 Horatio Heath. 
 
546 HISTORY OF WAKKEN. 
 
 Dr. Tristram Haynes. He removed to Vermont, opened a 
 great water-cure establishment and home for invalids ; amassed a 
 large fortune, and died leaving an estate of over fifty thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 Dr. Worcester Eaton Botnton. Dr. Boynton, the son of 
 Samuel H. and Mehitable {Clark) Boynton, was born on Beech 
 hill, Warren, March 26, 1824. His early education was acquired 
 at the common schools, and at Newbury, Vt., Seminary. He re- 
 ceived a diploma from the Medical University of New York, and 
 also another diploma from the Mass. Medical College, and com- 
 menced the practice of medicine at East Hopkinton, N. H., in 
 1851. He has since practiced in Concord, Nashua, Dover, and 
 Lawrence, Mass., at which latter place he is now located. He is 
 the inventor of the " Electric Med. Lung Flannels, " for which he 
 was awarded a diploma ; and of a " Lung Barometer " of acknowl- 
 edged merit. He is also the author of several medical works, of 
 which his treatise on the "Human Eye," the "Medical Instructor," 
 and the " Private Medical Lectures," are the most important. 
 These works were all well received by the public. Dr. Boynton 
 has had excellent success in his practice. He is the proprietor of. 
 several kinds of medicine which find a ready sale in different parts 
 of the world. One brother, David M. Boynton, and his only sis- 
 ter, Mrs . Bixby, also reside in Lawrence. Dr. B. married Miss 
 Ada A. Lane, of Nashua, N, H., in 1867. 
 
 Dr. Alphonzo G. Frekch. 
 
 Dr. John F. Willey. 
 
 Dr. Francis L. Gekai.d. He graduated at the Medical School 
 in Philadelphia, and is a young physician of much promise. He 
 is now located at Nashua, N. H. 
 
 MHilTARY OFFICERS. 
 
 The following persons who have lived in Warren have held 
 military positions. 
 
 Gen. Michael P. Merrill. 
 
 Gen. Absalom Peters. He was a Captain in the Revolu- 
 tion. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 547 
 
 Col. Obadiah Clemeut. 
 
 William Tarleton. He was a Captain in the Kevoliition. 
 Benjamin Stone. He was a Captain in the Eevolutiou 
 
 and drew a pension of $216 a year.) 
 David Patch. He commanded as Captain in the 1812 war. 
 Moses H. Clement. 
 Benjamin Clement. 
 • Isaac MeiTill. 
 Stevens M. Dow. 
 
 Maj. Daniel Patch. He was also a Quartermaster in the 1812 
 war. 
 True Stevens. 
 Simeon S. Clifford. 
 Ira Libbey. 
 
 Capt. WUliam Butler. 
 
 Stephen Flanders. 
 
 James Aiken. He was a 
 
 Capt. in the Revolution. 
 John Mills. He was a ' Cap- 
 . tain in the Revolution. 
 David S. Craige. 
 Joseph Patch, Jr. 
 Jonathan Ramsey. 
 Daniel Merrill. 
 Benjamin Merrill- 
 Samuel L,- Merrill. 
 Perldns Fellows. He was 
 
 a Lieut, in 1812 war. 
 Stephen Richardson. 
 Joseph Rollins. 
 "William Clough. 
 Enoch R. Weeks. 
 
 Capt. Jonathan Clough. 
 George Libbey. 
 Benjamin Little. 
 John Low. 
 Hosea Lund. 
 Russell K. Clement. 
 Moses H. Clement, Jr. 
 John L. Merrill. 
 Joseph Merrill. 
 Ira Merrill. 
 Stephen Marstoii . 
 Ira M. Weeks. 
 Isaac Sawtelle. 
 Dudley B. Cotton. 
 David Harris. 
 Nathan Harris. 
 Nathaniel Merrill. 
 
548 
 
 HISTORY OF WAEREN. 
 
 The following is the record of the Divisions of Lots in the town- 
 ship of Warren, as they were drawn to their several original 
 rights, and entered on the original plan, viz: — 
 
 FIEST DIYISION OF LOTS. 
 
 
 81 
 
 No. 
 
 
 Si 
 
 No. 
 
 NAMES OP PROPRIETORS. 
 
 1 
 
 of 
 ot. 
 
 Names of Proprietors. 
 
 M 
 
 of 
 lot. 
 
 Thomas True .... 
 
 
 1 
 
 Capt. Henry Pierce . 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 Ebenezer Stevens, Esq. . 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Moses Greeley . . . • 
 
 5 
 
 11 
 
 John Batchelder . 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Josiah Bartlett . . . . 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 Nathaniel Barrell, Esq. 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 Ebenezer Morrill 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 licmuel Stevens . 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 Phillip Tilton . 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 John Page, Esq. . 
 Samuel Osgooa 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 Ebenezer Collins 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 Aaron Clough .... 
 Capt. John Hazen 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 Belcher Dole 
 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 e 
 
 Peter Coffin . 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 Eeuben True .... 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 Daniel Page . 
 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 Jacob Currier . 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 Capt. Ephraim Brown 
 Joseph w hitcher . 
 
 • 2 
 
 5 
 
 Henry Morrill . 
 
 7 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 James Graves . 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 Joseph Blanchard, Esq. . 
 
 .3 
 
 1 
 
 Jacob Hook, Esq. 
 
 7 
 
 3 
 
 Enoch Page . 
 Stephen Webster 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 John Marsh .... 
 
 7 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 Andrew Wiggin, Esq. 
 
 7 
 
 5 
 
 Ebenezer Page .... 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 Jonathan Greeley, Esq. . 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 Silas Nowell . 
 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 Trueworthy Ladd 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 Joseph Greeley . 
 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 Capt. John Parker . 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 Minister. 
 
 
 i 
 
 2 
 
 Benj. French, Jr. . . . 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 Jeremy Webster, Esq. 
 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 The Society for Propagating 
 
 
 
 James Nevin, Esq. 
 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 the Gospel .... 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 Andrew Greeley . 
 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 Nathaniel CuiTier 
 
 8 
 
 3 
 
 Nathaniel Fifleld . 
 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 Jonathan Greeley . ■ . 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 Capt. George March . 
 Ephraim Page . 
 Abel Davis . 
 
 
 4 
 
 7 
 
 Benjamin Clough. 
 
 8 
 
 5 
 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 Francis Batchelder . 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 Enoch Chase .... 
 
 8 
 
 7 
 
 Theodore Atkinson, Jr. 
 
 
 4 
 
 10 
 
 Samuel Graves . 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 Moses Page . 
 
 
 f, 
 
 3 
 
 Dyer Hook 
 
 8 
 
 fl 
 
 Wm. Whitoher . 
 
 
 n 
 
 4 
 
 Jacob Gale 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 Abraham Morrill . 
 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 Glebe for the Church 
 
 9 
 
 1 
 
 David Cloiigh 
 
 
 a 
 
 6 
 
 David Morrill . 
 
 9 
 
 2 
 
 Joseph Page 
 
 
 5 
 
 7 
 
 School lot 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 Samuel Dudley . 
 
 
 5 
 
 8 
 
 John Darling . . . . 
 
 9 
 
 4 
 
 Joseph Tilton . . . . 
 
 6 
 
 9 
 
 Eeuben True . . . . 
 
 9 
 
 5 
 
 Samuel Page, John Page, Jr., and Wm. Parker, Jr., their lots being taken into 
 Wentworth, have each two lots in the second division. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 549 
 
 THE SECOND DIVISION OF HUNDRED ACRE LOTS. 
 [Drawn March 25, 1771.] 
 
 Names of Propkietoks. 
 
 David Morrill 
 
 Josiah Bartlett, Esq. 
 
 Capt. John Hazen 
 
 Aaron Cloiigh, Jr. 
 
 Enoch Chase 
 
 Ephraim Page 
 
 William Pavlter, Jr. 
 
 Nathaniel Eifleld . 
 
 Joseph Tilton 
 
 Capt. John Parker 
 
 Phillips Tilton . 
 
 David Clough 
 
 Stephen Webster 
 
 Hon. Nathaniel Barrell 
 
 Lemuel Stevens . 
 
 Minister lot . 
 
 John Marsh . 
 
 Trueworthy Ladd 
 
 Moses Page . 
 
 Ebenezer Page 
 
 Jacob Gale . 
 
 Ebenezer Morrill . 
 
 Samuel Page . 
 
 Samuel Osgood . 
 
 Capt. Thos. Pierce 
 
 Benjamin French 
 
 Jacob Carrier 
 
 Jonathan Greeley 
 
 Jacob Hook . 
 
 Joseph Page . 
 
 Francis Batchelder 
 
 John Darling 
 
 Samuel Graves . 
 
 Benj. Clough. 
 
 Capt. George March 
 
 Soc. for Propagating the Gospel 
 
 Wm. Parker, Jr. . 
 
 0) 
 
 No 
 
 
 n 
 
 of 
 
 
 K 
 
 lot. 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 .5 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 •11 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 
 a 
 
 1 
 
 
 'i 
 
 2 
 
 
 a 
 
 3 
 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 
 a 
 
 S 
 
 
 % 
 
 fi 
 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 
 3 
 
 ,H 
 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 
 3 
 
 fi 
 
 
 3 
 
 fi 
 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 
 4 
 
 .1 
 
 
 4 
 
 fi 
 
 
 4 
 
 7 
 
 
 4 
 
 R 
 
 
 4 
 
 i) 
 
 
 4 
 
 10 
 
 
 4 
 
 11 
 
 
 4 
 
 12 
 
 
 !) 
 
 1 
 
 
 b 
 
 2 
 
 
 NAMES OF PROPEIBIORS. 
 
 Ebenezer Collins 
 John Page, . 
 Joseph Blanchard 
 Moses Greeley, . 
 Ephraim Brown . 
 P. White, for two settlers 
 Enoch Page 
 Dyer Hook . 
 Samnel Dudley . 
 Silas Newell 
 Theo. Atkinson, Jr. 
 Nathaniel Currier 
 Henry Morrill . 
 Jonathan Greeley 
 Joseph Whitcher 
 Daniel Page 
 Hon. James Nevins 
 Belcher Dole 
 William Whittier 
 Eeuben French . 
 Jeremy Webster 
 Church of England 
 John Batchelder 
 John Page, Jr. . 
 Samuel Page 
 School lot . 
 John Page, Jr. . 
 Peter Coffin 
 Abraham Morrill 
 Andrew Greeley 
 James Graves . 
 Reuben True' 
 Andrew Wiggin . 
 Abel Davis . 
 .Joseph Greeley, . 
 Thomas True 
 
 No. 
 of 
 lot. 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 5 
 8 
 7 
 8 
 9 
 10 
 11 
 12 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 9 
 10 
 11 
 12 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 16 
 17 
 18 
 19 
 14 
 15 
 16 
 17 
 18 
 19 
 14 
 15 
 16 
 17 
 18 
 19 
 
 Those that have two lots drawn in this division is to make up for their first 
 division lots that were taken into Wentworth. 
 
 July 7th, 1789, Joseph Page reported that they had laid out the Governor's 500 
 acre lot, and also 27 lots on the line of Piermont. 
 
 Voted to draw said lots, and they were drawn as follows :— 
 
 
 S^n 
 
 No. 
 
 
 4 
 
 No. 
 
 Names of Prophietors. 
 
 
 of 
 lot. 
 
 NAMES OF PROPRIETORS. 
 
 i 
 
 of 
 lot. 
 
 Thomas True .... 
 
 
 12 
 
 Moses Page 
 
 3 
 
 12 
 
 David Morrill 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 John Marsh 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 13 
 
 Stevens Webster . 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 Joseph Greeley . 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 14 
 
 Samuel Osgood . 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 Minister lot 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 ■15 
 
 Aaron Clough 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 Andrew Gi-eeley 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 William Parker . 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 Trueworthy Ladd 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 .Col. Stevens . 
 
 
 
 IS 
 
 Samuel Osgood . 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 Lemuel Stevens . 
 
 
 2 
 
 12 
 
 School lot .. 
 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 Jacob Gale . 
 
 
 2 
 
 13 
 
 'Tohn Hazen 
 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 Gospel lot . 
 
 
 2 
 
 14 
 
 John Page, Jr., . 
 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 Samuel Page 
 
 
 2 
 
 15 
 
 Belcher Dole 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 16 
 
 Ebenezer Morrill 
 
 
 2 
 
 16 
 
 Josiah Bartlett . 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 17 
 
 Thomas True 
 
 
 2 
 
 17 
 
 Ebenezer Page . 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 18 
 
 David Clough .... 
 
 2 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 
550 
 
 HISTOKY or WAREEN. 
 
 At a meeting held Oct. 20, 1796, at Lemuel Keezer's Inn In Wentworth, (formerly 
 in Warren) the following lots were pitched in the 
 
 THIRD DIVISION. 
 
 Names of Propkietoes. 
 
 Names of Peopeietoks. 
 
 No. 
 of 
 lot. 
 
 William Parker, Jr. 
 
 John Darling 
 
 Jacob Currier 
 
 Benjamin Clough 
 
 Thomas True 
 
 Jonathan Greeley 
 
 Daniel Page . 
 
 John March . 
 
 Joseph Whitcher 
 
 Francis Batchelder 
 
 School .... 
 
 Jacob Hook . 
 
 Joseph Tilton 
 
 Kbenezer Morrill 
 
 Reuben True 
 
 Minister 
 
 Aaron Clough, Jr. 
 
 Peter Coffin, Jr. . 
 
 Moses Greeley, of Salisbury 
 
 Silas Nowell, marked 69 on trees 
 
 John Page . 
 
 Samuel Page 
 
 Abraham Morrill 
 
 Josiah Bartlett . 
 
 Reuben French . 
 
 Nathaniel Barrell 
 
 Ebenezer CoUms . 
 
 Henry Morrill 
 
 John Batchelder 
 
 Dyer Hook . 
 
 Jonathan Greeley 
 
 Capt. George March . 
 
 Stephen Webster, (pitch $40) 
 
 Ebenezer Page, (pitch $42) 
 
 Nathaniel Currier 
 Andrew Greeley 
 Samuel Graves . 
 Trueworthy Ladd 
 Jeremy Webster 
 Ephraim Page . 
 Capt. Thomas Pierce 
 Andrew Wiggin 
 David Clough . 
 James Nevins, (pitch $40) 
 Joseph Greeley . 
 John Page, Jr. . 
 Nathaniel Fifleld 
 Jacob Gale . . . . 
 William Whitcher . 
 Samuel Osgood . 
 James Graves . 
 Ephraim Brown 
 Enoch Chase 
 Capt. John Hazen . 
 Phillips Tilton . , 
 
 Moses Page 
 Lemuel Stevens . 
 Samuel Dudley . 
 Joseph Page . . . 
 Enoch Page . . ' 
 Ebenezer Stevens 
 Joseph Blanchard . 
 Abel Davis 
 
 Theodore Atkinson, Jr. . 
 Belcher Dole 
 Benjamin French, Jr. 
 David Morrill . 
 Capt. John Parker . 
 
 39 
 
 40 
 41 
 43 
 4S 
 44 
 4.T 
 46 
 47 
 48 
 4(1 
 50 
 31 
 52 
 53 
 54 
 85 
 56 
 67 
 58 
 59 
 60 
 61 
 62 
 63 
 64 
 65 
 66 
 67 
 
TAXES OF THE CITIZENS OF WAEREN FOE 1780. 
 
 [STATE AND CONTINENTAL TAXES.] 
 
 Names. 
 
 Thomas Clark 
 Isaiah Batehelder 
 Eeuben Whitcher 
 Ephraim True 
 William Butler . 
 Simeon Smith 
 •John Mori-ill . 
 Stevens Merrill . 
 Jonathan Merrill 
 Joshua Merrill 
 Joshua Copp 
 Jonathan Clement 
 Obadiah Clement 
 Eeuben Clement . 
 John Whitcher . 
 Joseph Patch 
 Daniel Clark . 
 Chase Whitcher . 
 Joseph Kimball . 
 Nathaniel Niles . 
 Ephraim Lund . 
 ■loseph Lund 
 Moses True . 
 John Marston 
 Gardner Dustin . 
 
 First. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 2 13 
 
 (5 18 4 
 
 4 14 
 
 11 2 8 
 
 U 1 
 
 8 7 7 
 
 2 6 5 
 
 21 15 9 
 
 12 8 
 
 i 3 7 
 
 8 U 11 
 
 4 17 1 
 
 7 17 7 
 
 6 3 7 
 
 6 2 11 
 
 4 S 3 
 
 4 16 
 
 7 11 8 
 
 4 4 8 
 
 13 4 
 
 16 
 
 16 
 
 4 6 
 
 13 4 
 
 10 
 
 Second. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 10 6 
 
 2 19 2 
 
 2 7 
 
 5 11 4 
 
 7 6 
 
 13 3 
 
 10 17 9 
 11 4 
 2 4 9 
 4 7 5 
 
 2 8 7 
 
 3 13 10 
 3 1 10 
 3 16 
 2 4 1 
 
 2 8 
 
 3 15 10 
 2 2 4 
 6 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 10 
 
 Third. 
 
 £ s. 
 2 13 
 
 .5 18 
 4 14 
 
 11 2 
 
 14 1 
 8 7 
 2 6 
 
 21 15 
 12 8 
 4 3 7 
 8 14 11 
 4 17 1 
 7 17 7 
 6 3 7 
 
 6 2 11 
 4 8 3 
 4 16 
 
 7 11 8 
 4 4 8 
 13 4 
 16 
 16 
 4 6 
 13 4 
 10 
 
 Fourth. 
 
 £ s. 
 
 1 6 
 
 2 19 
 2 7 
 
 9 
 4 
 9 
 '6 
 7 
 
 18 10 
 1 10 
 
 1 6 
 4 1 
 8 
 
 15 10 
 
 2 4 
 6 8 
 8 
 8 
 2 
 6 8 
 
 10 
 
 Town 
 Tax.- 
 
 13 1 
 1 14 
 
 12 14 
 
 6 16 
 
 8 n 
 
 15 13 
 11 10 
 
 13 17 
 
 7 17 
 7 16 
 
 10 13 
 10 16 
 16 
 
 4 
 4 
 
 6 
 6 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Beef 
 Tax. 
 
 s. rf. 
 6 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 18 15 2 
 4 12 10 
 43 10 6 
 2 5 4 
 
 8 19 2 
 17 9 10 
 
 9 14 2 
 15 15 
 12 7 
 12 5 
 
 16 
 12 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 11 
 
 9 : 
 15 3 
 
 1 6 
 1 12 
 1 12 
 
 8 
 
 1 6 
 
 INVENTORY OF WAEEEN FOE 1781. 
 
 Names. 
 
 00 
 
 =1 
 
 O 
 
 "S 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 o 
 
 ti) 
 
 f 
 
 s 
 
 O 
 
 a 
 
 X 
 
 O 
 
 8 
 
 ra 
 
 
 u 
 s. ■ 
 
 g 
 
 
 Peter Stevens 
 Simeon Sftiith 
 John Morrill . 
 Joseph Pato^.- . 
 William Butllf . 
 Jonathan Merrill 
 Stevens Merrill 
 Joshua Merrill 
 Joshua Copp 
 Jonathan Clement 
 Obadiah Clement . 
 Eeuben Clement , 
 Thomas Clark 
 Isaiah Batehelder 
 Jonathan Foster . 
 Daniel Clark . 
 Eeuben Whitcher . 
 John Whitcher 
 Amos Heath 
 Chase Whitcher . 
 Ephraim True 
 John Marston 
 John True 
 Aaron True . 
 Henrv Sunbury 
 William Wliiteman 
 Joseph French 
 Charles Bowles . 
 William Tarleton . 
 John Hiukson 
 
 
 2 
 1 
 2 
 
 4' 
 2 
 3 
 3 
 3 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 2 
 1 
 3 
 
 2 
 3 
 
 8 
 2 
 5 
 2 
 
 10 
 8 
 
 12 
 8 
 
 12 
 3 
 5 
 
 8 
 6 
 4 
 
 2 
 4 
 
 8 
 12 
 
 4 
 4 
 2 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 2 
 
 2 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 2 
 3 
 
 3 
 1 
 2 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 4 
 
 2 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 171 
 47 
 77 
 
 616 
 
 386 
 86 
 
 3.33 
 87 
 
 300 
 
 150 
 45 
 95 
 50 
 90 
 93 
 
 141 
 
 196 
 240 
 
 100 
 100 
 100 
 100 
 
 50 
 
 £ s. d. 
 1 10 
 5 3J 
 1 11 
 3 Bh 
 10 95 
 1 6S 
 7 93 
 3 11 
 8 3^ 
 2 9J 
 6 9} 
 2 10 
 2 7J 
 17 
 3 11 
 Q* 3 1 
 3 1 
 3 10 
 1 1 
 3 10 
 5 6 
 11 
 1 114 
 
 1 lu 
 1 IH 
 1 lU 
 IH 
 
 llj 
 llj 
 1 75 
 
552 
 
 HISTORY OF "WAREEN. 
 
 LONGEVITY. 
 
 The two following tables were most of them taken from a 
 record by Mrs. Levi C. "Whitcher : — 
 
 1808— Anna Bixby died aged 84 
 
 1810— Mrs. Eebecca Clough, 82 
 
 1811— Thomas Richardson, 92 
 
 1811— Phebe Richardson, 92 
 
 1826— Jesse Brown, 102 
 
 1826— Reuben Batchelder, 85 
 
 1829— Obadiah Clement, 87 
 
 1840— Joshua Merrill, 100 
 1842 — Mrs. Jonathan Clement, 80 
 
 1843— Phebe Abbott, 87 
 
 1843— Joseph Lund, 92 
 
 1843— Joseph French. 84 
 
 1844— Mrs. George Bixby, 80 
 
 1846— Samuel Knight, * 86 
 
 1846— Mrs. John Whitcher, 80 
 
 1847— Elizabeth Merrill, 80 
 
 1849— Mrs. Abbott, 81 
 
 1851— Mrs. Polly Knowlton, 82 
 
 1851— Nathaniel Clough, 86 
 
 1852— Mrs. Joseph French, 83 
 
 1852— Joseph Lund, 85. 
 
 1853— Mrs. John Famham, 85 
 1854 — ^Mrs. Ligraham, 85 
 
 1856 — James Dow, 81 
 
 1856— John Farnham, 90 
 
 1856— Mrs. Samuel Merrill, 81 
 1856— Mrs. Hovt, 84 
 
 1859— Moses Kimball, 80 
 
 1859— Mrs. Cross, 82 
 
 1860— Nathan Willey, 83 
 
 1862— Mrs. Clark, 83 
 
 1863— Samuel Merrill, 84 
 
 1863— Mrs. Nathan Willey, 87 
 1864— Mrs.StephenBoynton, 84 
 1865— William Cleasby, 
 1865— Chase Marstou, 
 1865— Mrs. R. Whiteman, 
 1866— Mrs. Stevens Merrill, 
 1867— Enoch R. Weeks, 
 1868— Mrs. Moses Kimball, 
 1869— Bijah Wright, 
 
 80 
 81 
 86 
 80 
 82 
 95 
 
 DEATHS IN WARREN. 
 
 1841— 8 died. 
 
 1842—18. 
 
 1843—29. 
 
 1844^ 9. 
 
 1845— 4. 
 
 1846—15. 
 
 1847—10. 
 
 1848— 3. 
 
 1849—18. 
 
 1860—14. 
 
 1851—13 died. 
 
 1852—20. 
 
 1853—14. 
 
 1854^15. 
 
 1855—16. 
 
 1856—23. 
 
 1857— 6. 
 
 1858—18. 
 
 1859—15. 
 
 1860—14. 
 
 1861—15 died. 
 
 1862—19. 
 
 1863—40. 
 
 1864^16. 
 
 1865—27. . 
 
 1866—10. 
 
 1867—12. 
 
 1868—16. 
 
 1869— 9. 
 
 1870—12. 
 
 The following persons were living in Warren, A. D. 1870, 
 over seventy years of age : — 
 
 Abbott, Anna. 
 
 Barker, Charles 
 Barker, Mary, 
 Batchelder, Abigai 
 Bixby, Benjamin, 
 Bixby, Betsey 
 Bixby, Joseph 
 Bixby, Mary, 
 Bixby, Samuel B. 
 
 82 
 
 82 
 79 
 81 
 80 
 76' 
 76 
 76 
 74 
 
 Carleton, Rodney 
 Clement, Benjamin 
 Clement, Tamar 
 Clough, L. Mercv 
 Clough, Sally . 
 Colby, David . 
 Cotton, Eliza . 
 
 Davis, Ruth . 
 
 71 
 71 
 81 
 76 
 75 
 74 
 76 
 
 85 
 

 APPENDIX. 
 
 558 
 
 Eaton, Betsey . 
 
 80 
 
 Martin, Stephen 
 
 70 
 
 Eaton, Jonathan . 
 
 76 
 
 Marsh, Mary, . 
 
 73 
 
 
 
 McCarter, Antony . 
 
 77 
 
 Farnham, Betsey . 
 
 76 
 
 Merrill, Sally . 
 
 70 
 
 Farnham, Joseph B. 
 
 73 
 
 
 
 French, David C. . 
 
 80 
 
 Noyes, Orra . 
 
 71 
 
 Gale, Lydia . 
 
 80 
 
 Osborn, Samuel 
 
 70 
 
 Glover, Benjamin . 
 
 83 
 
 
 
 Goodwin, Samuel . 
 
 70 
 
 Patch, Betsey . 
 
 86 
 
 
 
 Perry, Percy . 
 
 80 
 
 Haines, Susan 
 
 70 
 
 Pomeroy, Durocsy . 
 
 71 
 
 Heath, Asa . 
 
 80 
 
 Pope, Naomi . 
 
 87 
 
 Kenney, Elizabeth 
 
 74 
 
 Richardson, Nathaniel . 
 
 77 
 
 Kemiey, Hugh 
 
 76 
 
 Richardson, Sarah . 
 
 70 
 
 Leathers, Vowell . 
 
 87 
 
 Swain, Josiah 
 
 80 
 
 Libbey, George 
 
 77 
 
 
 
 Libbey, John . 
 
 73 
 
 "Warren, Lucy B. . 
 
 76 
 
 Libbey, Nancy 
 
 75 
 
 "Weeks, Sally . 
 
 80 
 
 Libbey, Nathaniel . 
 
 75 
 
 "Whitcher, Ruth 
 
 88 
 
 Libbev, Sally 
 
 76 
 
 "Whiteman, Stephen 
 
 87 
 
 Littlej Sally 
 
 73 
 
 "Willey Nathan 
 
 7-1 
 
 GENEALOGIES. 
 
 We insert the following, being nearly all we could find in 
 the town books. Pity 'tis that families do not have their family 
 records recorded on the town books, the same as they did in old 
 times ; and a thousand times more pity 'tis that families have no 
 children of any consequence to record. Oh ! it is the meanest of all 
 mean things to let our race "play out "by being too mean, too 
 stingy, too lazy to have children. 
 
 Abbott, John. Ch., Sally, b. Oct. 1, 1798 ; Nancy, Jan. 81, 1795 ; 
 Polly, June 80, 1796 ; Betsey, Oct. 15, 1797 ; Susanna, Feb. 
 7, 1799; Ruth, Oct. 6, 1800; Hannah, Jan. 18, 1802; Ruth, 
 Aug. 21, 1803; Cotton, Aug. 12, 1805; Enoch M., Aug. 18, 
 1807. 
 
 Baekee, Ebenezee, m. Ajina Clement, Julv 28, 1800. Ch., Sally, 
 b. Dec. 30, 1801; Abigail, Feb. 1, 1804;" Nancy, Dec. 9, 1808. 
 
 Batcheldee, Reuben, m. Hannah Merrill, June 22, 1794. Ch., 
 "Ward Cotton, b. March 25, 1796 ; Reuben, Dec. 6, 1796, died 
 Nov. 17, 1797; Reuben, July 14, 1798; Nathaniel, Aug. 25, 
 1800; Betsev, Oct. 17, 1802. 
 
554 HISTOKY OP WARREN. 
 
 BoYNTON, Samuel H., m. Mehitable Clark. Ch. Louisa, b. Jan. 
 14, 1818; David, Nov. 2, 1819; Maria, May 29, 1821; Worces- 
 ter E., Mar. 26, 1824. 
 
 BoYNTON, Nathaniel, son of Sir Matthew Boynton, of Salem, 
 Mass. Ch., Nathaniel, lost at sea; David, Richard, Asa, kept 
 hotel at Haverhill Corner ; Thomas, he was grandfather of Dr. 
 ^Y. E. Boynton; Eunice, Polly, Louis. Sir Matthew Boynton, 
 of Old Salem, was a man of estate ; owned much land, horses, 
 cows, sheep, goats, swine, &c. He held important offices of 
 trust, and discharged his duties with fidelity. 
 
 Boynton, Thomas, son of Nathaniel, and grandson of Sir Matthew 
 Boynton, m. Elizabeth Keezer, 1775. Ch., Betsev, b. Sept. 2, 
 1777; Elizabeth, Oct. 8, 1778; Stephen, Dee. 21, 1780; Thom- 
 as, Jan. 18, 1783; Sally, Dec. 29, 1784; Abigail, Dec. 30, 1787; 
 Samuel H., father of Dr. Worcester Eaton Bovnton, Nov. 25, 
 1790; Mary, Dec. 21, 1792; Joseph, June 10, 1795; Timothy, 
 Aiig. — , 1797 ; Nathaniel, May — , 1800. 
 
 Clakk, Thomas, b. at Hampstead, N. H., m. Hannah Foster, of 
 Hopkinton, N. H., granddaughter of Hannah Eastman, who 
 was captured by the Indians at Haverhill, and carried by them 
 to upper Coo's. Ch., Amos, Hezekiah, Joseph, Betsey, Han- 
 nah, Sarah, and Mehitable, who was^tlie mother of Dr. W. E. 
 Boynton. 
 
 Clifford, Timothy. Ch., Dolly, b. May 9, 1799 ; Kussell Freeman, 
 Feb. 9, 1802; Polly, Sept. 21, 1803; Rutli, Oct. 24, 1805; Tim- 
 otliy, Jr., Sept. 24, 1807; Mehitable, July 30, 1810; Absalom, 
 May 15, 1812; Simeon Smith, Sept. 9, 1814; John C, Nov. 9, 
 1817. 
 
 Clough, Amos, son of Nathaniel, b. May 12, 1797; m. Orra Jew- 
 ett. She was b. Jan. 5, 1799, at Rowley, Mass. Ch., Aaron 
 J., b. March 31, 1821; Columbus, May 19, 1825; George M., 
 Jan. 13, 1827 ; Orra A., July 17, 1830 ; Amos P., Feb. 24, 1833. 
 Amos Clough died Jan. 7, 1833. 
 
 Dow, James, m. Euth Williams. Ch., Susanna, b. June 21, 1796 ; 
 Sally, Dec. 24, 1798 ; Ruth, Aug. 24, 1800. Euth Williams Dow 
 died Aug. 28, 1800. James Dow m. Hannah Merrill. Ch., 
 Betsey, b. Deo. 5, 1801; Stevens M., Nov. 29, 1804; Ezekiel, 
 Apr. 9, 1807 ; Jonathan Merrill, Feb. 2, 1809-; Lorenzo, Sept. 
 12, 1811. 
 
 French, Joseph, m. Polly or Molly Batchelder. Ch., David C, 
 b. April 21, 1791; Hannah, Mar. 1, 1793; Joseph, Nov. 16, 
 1794; Polly, Apr. 9, 1797; Mehitable, June 30, 1799; Daniel, 
 Nov. 7, 1801; Eeuben B., Mav 12, 1804; John, Nov. 24. 1806; 
 Benj. M., July 6, 1809; Sally A., Aug. 6, 1811. 
 
APPENDIX. 565 
 
 Jewell, Samuel, m. Sally Foot, Nov. 26, 1802. Ch., Betsey F., 
 Nov. 7, 1802; David, Dec. 13, 1804; Lovina, July 30, 1807; 
 Fauny D., Mar. 15, 1809; David M., June 4, 1811; Dolly F., 
 Apr. 27, 1814; Samuel, Mar. 16, 1816; Levi F., July 4, 1818; 
 Jacob, ; Alonzo, . 
 
 LiBBEY, Geokge, m. Sally Abbott. Ch., Hazen, b. June 10, 1815 ; 
 Anna, Nov. 3, 1816; John, Feb. 9, 1819; Mary H., June 21, 
 1821; John, Nov. 12, 1828; Walter, July 29, 1826; Mary, Oct. 
 
 26, 1881. 
 
 Libbey, Luke, m. Anna . Ch., George, b. Aug. 22, 1792; 
 
 Nathaniel P., Mar. 2, 1795 ; John ^Y., June 19, 1797 ; Stephen 
 W., Oct. 20, 1799; Ezra Bartlett, Aug. 24, 1801; Anna Patch, . 
 Feb. 26, 1804; Jonathan M., Mar. 8, 1806; Obadiah Clement, 
 Dec. 15, 1807. 
 
 Little, Geokge, came from Unicorn St., London, Eng., to New- 
 bury, Mass., in 1640, m. Alice Poor. Ch., Sarah, b. May 8, 
 1652, d. Nov. 19, 1652; Joseph, Sept. 22, 1653; John, July 28, 
 1655, d. July 20, 1672 ; Moses, Mar. 11, 1657 ; Sarah,- Nov. 24, 
 1661. His wife, Alice, d. Dec. 1, ;680. Married Eleanor Bar- 
 nard, of Amesbury, July 19, 1681. He d. about Nov. 27, 1694, 
 as the Amesbury records say: " Widow Eleanor Little d.Nov. 
 
 27, 1694." He Uved a few rods from the house now occupied 
 by Silas Little. He was remarkable for strength of mind as 
 well as strength of body, but was not an educated man. The 
 farms which he selected in Newbury contain some of the best 
 land in that town, and are still owned and occupied bj"^ his de- 
 scendants, at Oldtown and Turkey hill, where the houses 
 which he built are in part standing. The farms have been 
 owned and occupied by the Little family for 230 years. 
 
 Meeeill, Isaac, was b. Aug. 4, 1778, m. Anna Blodgett, Feb. 13, 
 1806. Ch., Benjamin Franklin, b. Dec. 13, 1806; Job Eaton, 
 Nov. 12, 1808; Arvin, Dec. 13, 1810; Mahala, Jan. 25, 1813, 
 d. Nov. 12, 1815, of spotted fever; Esther, Apr. 4, 1817. 
 
 Meeeill, Joseph, son of Stevens, m. Sarah, daughter of Joshua 
 Copp. Ch., Jonathan, b. Nov. 24, 1786 ; Joseph, Oct. 29, 1788 ; 
 Stevens, Apr. 24, 1790; Joshua, Jan. 25, 1792; Lemuel, Nov. 
 8, 1793; Caleb, June 7, 1795; WilKam, Feb. 28, 1797; Mary, 
 Dec. 4, 1798; Ezra, Sept. 6, 1800; Sally, Dec. 9, 1802 ; Anson, 
 Dec. 4, 1804; Hannah, July 25, 1806; Susanna, July 30, 1808. 
 
 Meeeill, Nathaniel, m. Betsey Favour. Hewasb.inBoscawen, 
 Apr. 10, 1769 ; she in New Chester, Feb. 10, 1773. Ch., Da- 
 vid B., b.Dec. 11, 1791; Nathaniel, Jr., Nov. 6, 1793; Sabina, 
 Mav 27, 1796; Polly, Aug. 7, 1798; Judith, May 18, 1800; 
 Moses, June 26, 1802. 
 
656 HISTORY OP WARREN. 
 
 Merrill, Stevens, in. Hannah Clifford, Dec. 31, 1802. Ch., Isaac 
 Merrill, b. Nov. 17, 1803 ; Stevens, Jr., Mar. 4, 1806 ; Nathaniel, 
 Apr. 28, 1808; Enth, Mar. 4, 1811; Susannah, Mar. 28, 1813; 
 Mary, Oct. 26, 1815 ; 2d, m. widow Colby. Ch., Michael P., b. 
 Dec. 26, 1818. 
 
 PiLLSBUKY, Richard, m. Miriam . He was b. Feb. 5, 1763; 
 
 she Feb. 25, 1768. Ch., Tristram, b. Mar. 19, 1787; John, 
 Nov. 11, 1788; Thomas, Mar. 23, 1791; Daniel, Feb. 28, 1793; 
 Polly, Mar. 5, 1795; Miriam, May 7, 1797; Pollv, May 12, 
 1799. 
 
 Richardson, Stephen, m. Susanna . Ch., Stephen, b. Nov. 
 
 29, 1779; Anna, Nov. 21, 1784; Phebe, Apr. 24, 1787; Sarah, 
 Apr. 7, 1789; Dorcas, Feb. 25, 1791; Nathaniel, May 30, 1793; 
 Susanna, May 17, 1797; Joanna, Feb. 3, 1705. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 Joseph Patch. 
 
 Walden, Vt., Dec. 25, 1869. 
 Mr Dear Sister Hannah: — 
 
 You ask for information about father and mother Patch. 
 About that I am not so clear. Father Patch died in 1822, I think 
 inAugnst; any way it was in the time of making hay. It was 
 before I united with the family. I have never been able to ascertain 
 his age. However, I think he must have been as old as seventy- 
 four or five. He came to his death passing from the once Meader 
 farm to where he then resided, with his son Daniel, in the neigh- 
 borhood of Meader pond. All who remember the circumstances 
 know how he was overtaken and carried home dead. Mother 
 Patch was born Dec. 28, 1756. She died March 4, 1835, in her 
 79th year, on the Summit, where Chase Whitcher, Jr., once kept a 
 house of entertainment. They were both buried in the village 
 graveyard on Pine hill road, near the height of the ground. David, 
 their son, died first, in August, and was buried at the left hand as 
 you stand at the head of the graves looking towards the road ; 
 then Thomas at the right of him ; his grave was marked with the 
 common stones for the times ; then Anna, then Wilham, then 
 mother Patch and father Patch on the right of all. If I were there 
 I think I should not be puzzled to go right to the spot ; but it is 
 not at all probable I shall ever stand on "Warren soil anymore. 
 
APPENDIX. 567 
 
 Since the death of my son my health has been very poor. I hope 
 you are now better. You asked whether Mr. Hunt's family had 
 moved away ; they have moved to his father's. ' 
 
 Now fare you well, my sister adieu ; 
 If I no more your face can view, 
 O may we hasten to the shore, 
 Where we shall meet to part no more. 
 
 Yours affectionately, 
 
 MKS. BETSEY PATCH. 
 To Miss Hannah B. Knight. 
 
 PAGE 302.— "Weestlers. 
 
 Warren has always been celebrated for her smart wrestlers. 
 They would practice the art at trainings, musters, town meetings, 
 raisings, huskings, piling bees, at all public gatherings, and with 
 the Vermont teamsters that for fifty and more years passed down 
 through Warren to the seaboard. Among those best remembered 
 after Joseph Patch, are Samuel Knight, True Stevens, Ezra B. 
 Libbey, Joseph Merrill, and Samuel L. Merrill, (one of the best,) 
 sons of 'Squire Abel, Joshua Merrill and Anson Merrill, sons of 
 Joseph Merrill, inn keeper ; Joseph Pillsbury, Joseph Patch, Jr., 
 Reuben B. French, Beniah Wyatt, Hobart Wyatt, Walter Wyatt, 
 Col. Benj. Clement, Alonzo Gale, Hazen Libbey, Ezra Libbey, 
 Robert E. Merrill, (now in California.) Moses Page, Darius Swain, 
 Reuben Gale, Freeman Gale, Hiram Gale, and E. Walton Libbey. 
 The latter was a member of the 12th N. H. Regt., in the war of 
 1861, and was the champion wrestler of the whole brigade to 
 which his regiment belonged. He often won as much as $25 
 " wrestling iu the rin^." 
 
 TOWN MEETINQS. 
 
 From 1779 to 1799, the annual tovm meetings were held on 
 the first Wednesday of March, each year. Then by act of the 
 Legislature, passed Dec. 20, 1799, the annual meeting was held on 
 the third Thursday of March. In 1804 the annual meeting was 
 held on the second Tuesday of March, which custom still continues. 
 
 HEALTH. 
 
 No person born and living in Warren, has died of consump- 
 tion for the last twenty-five years. The children are free from it. 
 
558 HISTORY OF WAHREN. 
 
 But few cases were ever known in town, and those were persons 
 who inherited it and then came to Warren and died, or the chil- 
 dren of such persons. The elevation of the land and the purity of 
 the air exempts our citizens from this dread disease. 
 
 SUICIDE. 
 
 No one has ever yet committed suicide iu Warren. "The 
 people are not such fools." Pure air, pure water, and lofty moun- 
 tainous scenery keep them from having. the blues. Dwellers in 
 the region of Wentworth and the land of " Peawnouut," some- 
 times do the foolish thing. 
 
 LOST. 
 
 Maey Anx Gerald, daughter of Addison W. and Mary 
 {Merrill) Gerald, was lost in 1852. They lived in the East-parte. 
 The little girl was gone for two days. It rained pouring one night. 
 The whole town hunted for her, and theyfound her drenching wet 
 iu the woods near where Seth Jewett Brown once resided. 
 
 Daniel Welch, who was crazy by spells, started about 1825 
 to go from Mr. Daniel Ramsey's by Silver rill, to Joseph French's 
 east of Knight hill, where Stephen Noyes once lived, He never 
 reached the place and was never seen again. The old story runs 
 that straying away through the woods far up the side of Moosehil- 
 lock, he perished in the great gorge, south of the lower mountain 
 peak, and that his spirit still crazed wanders there yet. Old hun- 
 ters who took their last journeys in the forest about this time used 
 to tell how no one ever stopped in that gorge at night without 
 experiencing a haunted and weird like feeling, and some said they 
 had heard the lost man just at nightfall calling for help from the 
 shadowy gorge, and had seen his white ghost gliding noiselessly 
 through the stunted spruces and dark firs.* 
 
 * Welch gave tlie town much trouble as will be seen by the following from the 
 town records : — 
 
 1821.— Due Nathaniel Clough $3.94 for advertising Daniel Welch. 
 " Paid Joseph Kimball lor going after him $7.32. 
 
 PAGE 425.— Stint. 
 
 Gov. Samuel Flanders once took his stint of Capt. David S. 
 Craige, who lived by Blue Ridge. It was to dig so many potatoes, 
 
APPENDIX. 569 
 
 and he had three days to do it iu. The first day he looked at it, 
 said he knew he could do it in two days, and so he put on his 
 boots with red morocco tops and silk tassels and went a visiting. 
 The next morning he looked at the stint again, said he had no 
 doubt but that he could do it in one day, and so went visiting once 
 more. The third morning he looked at it, said he couldn't do it 
 without killing himself; that he wouldn't try ; that he might as 
 well die for an old sheep as a lamb, and he went visiting again. 
 That night he set his boots on a red silk handkerchief so they 
 wouldn't get soiled. Such was the Governor's style through life, 
 and he was always poorer than Job's turkey. 
 
 LIBRARY. 
 
 A Circulating Library incbrporated by the Legislature was 
 established in Warren about 1808. The books were kept at the 
 house of Mr. Nathaniel Clougii. By vote they were distributed 
 among the library members a few years ago. 
 
 The ladies of Warren established another library in 1861. It 
 contains 240 volumes of an interesting and useful character, which 
 are much read. 
 
 SALMON. 
 
 This fish ceased to come to Warren after the dam at Went- 
 worth was built. In 1866, Joseph Clement hatched a large quan- 
 tity of salmon eggs, brought from Miramachi river, in New Bruns- 
 wick, in Patch brook. The young fish did well and went away 
 to the ocean. But as the fish-way was " constructed with a great 
 deal of pig-headedness " over the Lawrence dam, the fish never 
 came back to Warren again. 
 
 DEATHS BY CASUALTY. 
 
 John Mills killed by a falling tree, 1779. 
 
 Amos Eaton, killed " " 1780. 
 
 Capt. John Mills, Jr., " " 1784. 
 
 Richard Pillsbury, killed at a raising, 1800. 
 
 Reuben Batchelder, " " " 1802. 
 
 Joshua Copp, Jr.'s child drowned in a wash-tub, 1808. 
 
560 HISTOKr OF WABREN. 
 
 Caleb Merrill, deaf and dumb, killed by a falling tree, June 8, 
 1800. 
 
 Joseph Patch, first settler, killed bj^ a fall, 1822. 
 
 William Kellej-, Jr.'s child drowned iu Kelley pond, ISS.^J. 
 
 Paul Meader, killed by a log rolling over Mm, 1835. 
 
 Ward C. Batchelder, killed by a falling tree, 1836. 
 
 Mr. Merrill, killed by a pitchfork falling on him, 1840. 
 
 Miranda Whitcher, burned to death, 1845. 
 
 Abigail Weed, killed by falling on pitchfork, 1846. 
 
 Calvin Cummings, killed at a raising, 1848. 
 
 Mrs. Vowell Leathers, burned to death, 1849. 
 
 David Antrine, drowned in Meader pond, 1849. 
 
 Calvin May's adopted son, accidentally killed by manure-fork, 
 1850. 
 
 An Irishman killed at work on railroad, by falling tree, 1852. 
 
 Mr. Anderson burned to death at a coal pit over to Charles- 
 ton, 1852. 
 
 Bartholemew Welton's child drowned in Lower Village pond 
 in 1860. 
 
 Vanness Wyatt, shot by J. M. Williams, 1860. 
 
 Cornelius Flynn's child drowned in canal east of common 
 in 1861. 
 
 Daniel S. Hoit, killed by the cars in 1862. 
 
 No person was ever yet killed in Warren by Ughtning. 
 
 UNITED STATES, STATE, AND COUNTY OFP'ICERS WHO 
 HAVE LIVED IN WAREEN. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Whipple, Representative to Congress. 
 
 Robert Burns, " " 
 
 William Tarleton, Councillor. 
 Dr. Ezra Bartlett, " 
 Abel Merrill, State Senator. 
 Dr. Ezra Bartlett, State Senator. 
 Benjamin Merrill, County Treasurer. 
 David Smith, " " 
 
 Samuel L. Merrill, " " 
 
 E. R. Weeks, Jr., " 
 Abel Merrill, County Judge. 
 
APPENDIX. 561' 
 
 Dr. Ezra Bartlett, County Judge. 
 
 Isaac Merrill, County Commissioner. 
 
 William Tarleton, High Sheriff. 
 
 Joseph Patch, Jr., Deputy Sheriff. 
 
 Stevens Merrill,* " " 
 
 Benjamin Merrill, " " 
 
 * Stevens Merrill was the son of Joseph Merrill, innkeeper, of Warren. His 
 son, Hon. George A. Merrill, of Rutland, Vt., was for many years Siipt. of the Pas- 
 sumpsio KaQroad, is at present Supt. of the Vermont Valley Railroad, and has 
 been a member of the Vermont State Senate. 
 
 PAGE 441. — Traders in Warren. 
 
 Samuel Fellows, store on old Coos road in 1789. 
 Charles Bowles, " " " 1795. 
 
 George W. Copp, " " " 1800. 
 
 Abel Merrill, " " " 1804. 
 
 Capt. Benjamin Merrill, store at fork of Coventry road and turnpike in 1805. 
 Lemuel Keezer, " " " " " 1814. 
 
 Michael Preston, " " " " " 1816. 
 
 Amos Burton, store at end of turnpike. 
 ' Samuel L. MerrUl, store at end of turnpike and on Blue ridge. 
 WUliam Merrill, " " ' " 
 
 Anson Merrill, " " " 
 
 William WeUs. " " " 
 
 John T. Sanborn, " " " 
 
 Asa Thurston, store at end of turnpike, and on road to grist mill. 
 
 D. Quiucy Cole, " " " " " " 
 Francis A. Cushman, store at end of turnpike, and by Noyes bridge. 
 George W. Presoott, store at end of turnpike, and near depot. 
 William A . Merrill, " " " 
 
 Stevens MerrUl & Tristram Cross, store in valley of Runaway pond. 
 F. A. & M. E. Cushman, store by Noyes bridge, 1846. 
 James & Joseph Clement, store on road to grist mill, 1848. 
 
 E. C. Durant, " " " 
 C. C. & H. H. Durant, " " " 
 J. & C. C. Durant, " " " 
 Walter Pike & WiUiam Swain, " " " in 1855. 
 Daniel Q. Clement & Omar Little, " " 185B. 
 Russell K. Clement, store on " " 1857. 
 .Tames M. Williams, store near depot in 1847. 
 
 E. F. & C. F. Withington, " '' 1882. 
 
 William C. Webster, " " 1863. 
 
 Charles Thurston, " " 1864. 
 
 WiUiam S. Doggett, " " 1869. 
 
 Moses W. Pillsbury, store opposite Moosilauke House in 1865. 
 George W. Jackson, " " " 1854. 
 
 • Calvin Getchel, store opposite depot, in 1860. 
 
 M. P. Merrill & Levi C. Whitcher, store near railroad crossing in 1853. 
 
 Henry W. Weeks, " " " 
 
 J. M. Twombly, " " " 
 
 H. H. Sheldon; " " " 
 
 Ira Merrill, " " " 
 
 J. S. Jewett, " " " inl868. 
 
 E. B. Eaton, " " " 1868. 
 
 John M. Whiton & H. W. Weeks, store of Capt. Ben. Merall in 1868. 
 
 Enoch B. Weeks & L. C. Whitcher, " " " 1869. 
 
 Ezra Libbey, store on Summit in 1853. 
 
 Jonathan Stickney, " " 1853. 
 
 Warren H. Smith, " " 
 
 W R. Parks, store on Summit in depot m 1870. 
 
 Joslph H. Noyes, store by East-parte road in 1870. 
 
 A. L. Noyes, store, jewelry. 
 
 Joseph Chamberlain, store at East-parte m 1860. 
 
 Russel MerrUl, store near Town House in 1847. 
 
 True M. Stevens, store by Moosilauke House. 
 
 J* 
 
562 HISTOET OF WARREN. 
 
 WATEENOMEE FALLS 
 
 On Hurricane brook are so called from the Indian chief, "Wa- 
 ternomee. Chase Whitcher shot a caribou here, sometime in the 
 last centmy. Chas. A. Fiske, i3ainter, from New York city, has 
 spent whole summers by these " falling waters." The hottest 
 days are cool and comfortable here. 
 
 HDEEICANE FALLS 
 
 Are on Hurricane brook, above "Waternomee falls. Mr. Wil- 
 lard Hamilton, of Worcester, Mass., in 1870, fell down this fall, a 
 distance of a hundred feet, where he caught upon a tree that had 
 blown down and was saved from instant, death ; as it was, he was 
 very severely bruised and injured. The water jumps down a 
 ■series of steps more than two hundred perpendicular feet, at this 
 • falls. 
 
 WOLF'S-HEAD FALLS. 
 
 They are just above Hurricane falls. Amos F. Clough once 
 made one of the most beautiful stereoscopic views of these falls 
 that we ever saw. 
 
 DIANA'S BOWL 
 
 Is a beautiful basin worn in the rocks at the top of Wolfs-head 
 falls. It is situated some 2,600 feet up the side of Mount Carr. 
 The first mention we have of this spot is by Surveyor Leavitt. 
 He ate his dinner there one day more than a hundred years ago. 
 
 MIDDLE CASCADES 
 
 Are between Waternomee falls and Hurricane faUs. The water 
 jumps down sixty feet in the distance of a few rods. 
 
 INDIAN EOCK. 
 
 The marks on the rock are undoubtedly of Indian 'origin. 
 They are the most remarkable monument of the Indians now 
 existing in Asquamchumauke valley. 
 
APPENDIX. 563 
 
 HEIGHTS OF MOUNTAmS ABOUT WARREN. 
 
 The result of calculations by 
 
 Profs. Hitchcock and Huntington, State Geologists. 
 
 Mooeehillook,— feet above the sea, 4,941 Owl's Head,— feet above the sea, 3,357 
 
 Mt. Black, " " 3,701 Mt. Waternomee, " " 3,152 
 
 Mount CaiT, " " 3,652 Mt. Mist, " " 2,373 
 
 Mt. Kineo, " ' " 3,557 Webster Slide, " " 2,320 
 
 Mt. Cushman, " " 3,458 Mt. Sentinel, '■ " 2,209 
 
 THE MOOSHLiAUKE MOUNTAIN ROAD COMPAJfY. 
 
 This road company was incorporated at the June session of 
 the Legislature, 1870. John E. Lyon, Joseph A. Dodge, Daniel 
 Q. Clement, Samuel B. Page, David G. Marsh, G. F. Putnam, and 
 James Clement were made the "body politic." The corporation 
 immediately proceeded to build the road, and the work thus far 
 has been under the superintendence of D. Q. and James Clement. 
 They have pushed the enterprise with a great deal of energy and 
 the road is nearly completed. — (For charter in full see Pamphlet 
 Laws 1870, page 452.; 
 
 DISTANCES ON THE M008ILAUKE ROAD, 
 
 Measured by 
 
 Nathaniel Merrill, 2d, and Amos L. Merrill. 
 
 From N. Merrill, 2d's to Benton line on west bank of Big brook, 1 mile 25 rods. 
 
 " Half-way Spring.* . . . . 2 " 13 " 
 
 " Half-way Monument . . . 2 " 624 " 
 
 " Cold Spring .... . . 3 " 121 " 
 
 " Prospect House ... . . 4 " 125 " 
 
 * It is said by thirsty people that Half-way Spring dries np in summer time 
 when it rains. 
 
564 
 
 HISTOET OF WARREN. 
 
 THE POETS OF WARREN. 
 
 The first great poet of our town lived on Pine hill. Only one 
 of his productions has come down to us. It is entitled — 
 
 MOTHER CLUCK— A SCAKCASTIC POEM. 
 UT JOHN ABBOTT, EIFEE. 
 
 The poet was a fifer in two wars, and a schoolmaster in time 
 of peace. He blew a fife through the whole Revolution. Two 
 families on Pine hill ha^ a hot feud about a stolen drag. Abbott 
 immortalized the great family fight by writing the following beau- 
 tiful stanzas : — 
 
 Come all ye false prol'essors, 
 Who say you love the Lord, 
 
 You always have a hell at home 
 And strive lor one abroad. 
 
 But when the d — 1 comes for them. 
 
 They will no longer brag. 
 For he will tote them all away 
 
 Upon the stolen drag. 
 
 Come listen to my ditty. 
 
 The truth I will reveal ; 
 Toil tattle, lie, get drunk, 
 
 And from your neighbors steal. 
 
 K you want to know the names 
 Of those who stole the drag. 
 
 They are Scotch bastard, burnt 
 
 And Captain Rennett hag. 
 
 When the drag l)egins to move. 
 They will all begin to teeter, 
 
 Like mother Cluck with her budget 
 Of lies astride of Hipen Peter. 
 
 When she had stole the buckle 
 And the knife which she surely took. 
 
 She said that she had found them 
 Down by the alder brook. 
 
 You make a noise about a squirrel. 
 
 Your neighbors to abuse. 
 And then you go to meeting 
 
 With your blackened Sunday shoes. 
 
 You kill your neighbors' ganders. 
 About the chickens you make a touse, 
 
 And then you crop the pigs' ears. 
 And lay them up for souse. 
 
 You thought your store was rather small. 
 
 That it might quickly fail — 
 You turned your knife' the other way 
 
 And out off a pig's tail. 
 
 When these folks go to meeting. 
 They are for singing, red hot; 
 
 And if they can't get singing 
 They will rattle the pot. 
 
 Now I will conclude my ditty — 
 
 No longer will I sing, 
 Though they accuse innocent boys 
 
 Of in the spring. 
 
 They said they were good Judges of , 
 
 And that you can't deny. 
 For one would a kernel of wheat 
 
 And another a kernel of rye. 
 
 THE MOOGENS. 
 
 AN ELEGY . 
 
 The Moogens were a strange, nondescript race that lived on the 
 Summit sixty or seventy years ago. They then mysteriously disap- 
 peared and none live at the Summit now. A wild sort of tradi- 
 tion alleges that they were last seen going through the notch 
 between Black mountain and Moosehillock, down by Beaver 
 
APPENDIX. 666 
 
 meadow ponds, and that they were all lost in the dark gorge 
 known as the tunnel of the mountain. It is told that, like Hen- 
 drick Hudson and his men in the Catsldll mountains, their ghosts 
 hold high carnival there every ten years ; and the writer of this 
 can solemnly afiBlrm that in 1860, at the time when he spent two 
 months on the mountain top he once heard terrible and awful 
 sounds coming up from far down in the dark depths of the tunnel 
 as though all the lost Moogens were having a grand carousal, or in 
 other words were raising h — 1 and turning up jack. 
 
 Reuben B. French, of the East-parte, wrote a mournful elegy 
 on this lost race. Only one stanza, the following, has come down 
 tons: — > 
 
 When God made man they paid the coat — 
 The remnants he considered dross ; 
 He threw this out among the dung, 
 And ftom it the Moogens sprung. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that all the other stanzas are lost. 
 
 SENTIMENTAL ACROSTIC. 
 
 BY OBADIAH CLEMENT. 
 
 The following verses were i^jritten by Col. C. on the death of 
 
 his first wife, Sarah Batchelder : — 
 
 Oh me I unhappiest of all creatures, 
 Unto you I will relate, 
 . I am unhappy in evei-y feature, 
 
 I've parted with my loving mate. 
 
 But since to God I must submit. 
 
 And fall upon my bending knees, 
 * For to his creatures he has a right, 
 
 To call them home when e're he please. 
 
 A thousand thoughts run through my head, 
 WhUe I do ponder all alone. 
 To think, asas, my wife is dead. 
 And gone into the silent tomb. 
 
 Dreadful hard it is to part, 
 
 With one that has been always kind, 
 Sometimes I think t'will break my heart. 
 Or at least will wreck my mind. 
 
 I hope that I shall learn submission, 
 
 And let my thoughts be cool and calm. 
 And never run into distraction, 
 Although my heart seems overwhelmed. 
 
 Alas the pains that pierce my heart. 
 It seems as thovtgh it will me kill, 
 Bufrl must learn with Mends to part. 
 And Jp obey God's holy wUl. 
 
566 HISTORY OF "WARREN, 
 
 How desolate I now must be, 
 
 While I am here upon the stage, 
 And from my troubles never free. 
 While I am in my pilgrimage. 
 
 Come people all, both great and small, 
 Why are you hardened in your sins ? 
 Come, and obey God's precious call, 
 And be attentive unto him. 
 
 Look back into that Holy Book, 
 
 And there you'll see that all have died, 
 But only two, and God them took, 
 We never read death on them tried. 
 
 Elijah he was carried up 
 
 Into the air upon the wind, 
 Elisha he looked after him, 
 'Till he dropped his mantle down behind. 
 
 Many sepulchres we read were used, 
 Our Saviour he was laid in one, 
 By ancient people of the Jews, 
 Ajad at the door they rolled a stone. 
 
 Eqiial with God, he then arose, 
 
 And took his seat at his right hand, 
 Ten thousand angels, as we suppose, 
 Ready to obey the Lord's command. 
 
 Now let our love to God abound, 
 For at the best we are but clay, 
 Soon as the dying trumpets sound, 
 Oh, then we can no longer stay. 
 
 Then under gi-ound we all must rot. 
 Beneath the cold and frozen sod, 
 Our names and memory soon forgot. 
 All to fulfil the will of God. 
 
 And now my name can here be read, 
 I think I've spelled it very plain. 
 And if you read it when I'm dead, 
 Pray do not read it with disdain. 
 
 THESBIAN LYRIC. 
 
 BY ** SCHUTE.'' 
 
 *' Schute '' and a party of Mends p^repared to visit the summit 
 of the lofty Moosilauke, He invited Eva to accompany him. Her 
 mother objected — ^would not let her go^-on the ground that it 
 would be too much of a task. "Schute" sorrowfully wrote the 
 following lines : — 
 
 TO EVA. 
 
 Believe it or believe it not,— 
 Dear Eva, on the mountain-top 
 
 I found a little toad; 
 And it may puzzle you and I 
 To know how he could climb so high_ 
 
 And o'er so rough a road. 
 
APPENDIX. 667 
 
 His little lege you know are short. 
 And consequently he is thought 
 
 To be a clumsy climber. 
 But he has beaten longer legs, 
 And stronger i'ramee and wiser heads. 
 
 And some who are diviner. 
 
 I will not say he's beaten you, 
 Dear Eva,— that may not be true, 
 
 But he has beaten others, 
 The fault may not be theirs, I know; 
 Like you, dear Eva, they may owe 
 
 Obedience to their mothers. 
 
 To mothers, too, who may have seen 
 Some of the evil ways of men, 
 
 And hence gave timely warning. 
 They know too well a tarnished fame 
 Must end in grief and pain, 
 And that a pure, uusullied name 
 
 Is woman's best adorning. 
 
 And your fond mother, knowing this. 
 Dear Eva, thought it not amiss 
 
 To keep you nearer home. 
 Nor trust her darling out of eight 
 Upon Moosilauke's towering height 
 With men whose motives might be right. 
 
 Yet still to her unknown. 
 
 But Eva, may I dare to hope 
 The happy day is not remote 
 When you will venture up the slope 
 
 With some one whom you'll know ; 
 And may the one who shares with you 
 The toilsome jaunt, the glorious view, 
 Not only be a friend to you. 
 
 But may he be your heau. 
 
 And Eva, whether high or low. 
 Or up or down life's path you go. 
 With husband, friend, or lover : 
 
 Whatever be your lot below, — 
 Remember you will ever owe 
 
 Allegiance to your mother. 
 
 THE SERPENT. 
 
 A SLEIGHING SONG, BY MEBBILL BIXBY. 
 
 The village school once got up an immense onmibus and made 
 a visit to the East-parte school by Moosehillock falls. The East- 
 parte boys painted up a great four horse sleigh in the most fantas- 
 tic manner, and labelled it the " Serpent." In this sleigh all the 
 Easf^parte scholars visited the village school and sang this song 
 both on their arrival and departure, greatly delighting themselves 
 and everybody else : — 
 
 Did you ever see a serpent crawling on the snow ? 
 Did you ever see the folks laugh to see the serpent go ? 
 Why 'tis nothing but a carryall to carry us along— 
 And now if you are jvilling we'll eing you a song. 
 
568 HISTOBY OF TTABREN. 
 
 We are a little company of jolly girls and boys, 
 We've just begun to read and spell and make a little noise. 
 The times are hard, our parents poor, our chance is very small; 
 But for our own exertions we could not read at all. 
 
 We'll continue our exertions, the hill of science climb — 
 We'll improve upon our talents and not mis-spend our time. 
 When we have gained the eminence and buffeted the storm. 
 We'll double our exertions for a common school reform. 
 
 Now don't mistake our motive in giving you this call, , 
 
 Our feelings are quite generous, although our talent's small; 
 We will tender you our thanks, and will show to you our love. 
 Though we are not as wise as serpents we'U be harmless as the dove. 
 
 We respect and love our teacher, for he is very kind 
 To impart to us instruction to cultivate the mind. 
 His task is very hard, his time is very brief. 
 But the motto of the serpent shall be to him relief. 
 
 'Tis " labor viuoit omnia," 
 
 The motto of our crew. 
 By this we can accomplish much, 
 
 Although our number's few, 
 
 'Tis now we bid adieu to you, 
 And hope again to meet. 
 That the Warren Centre omnibus 
 May the infant Serpent greet. 
 
 To return we are now ready 
 
 To our homes in the east. 
 For the child is not a man. 
 
 And the serpent not a beast ; 
 For the children they may cry, 
 
 And the serpent he may hiss, 
 But of all the childish concerts 
 
 There is none can equal this. 
 
 EAST-PAETE SONG. 
 
 A BALLARD BY MEEELLL BIXBY. 
 
 It is said, though some doubt the truth of it, that the poet sang 
 this song, accompanying himself on a harp. We give only two 
 stanzas, the others are all supposed to be lost: — 
 
 Te Warrcnites that live in town, 
 Think this not done to gain renown, 
 'Tis but a glance that you may see. 
 What simple fools some folks can be . 
 
 Think not I censure every one. 
 But those who mischief much have done, 
 I mean those rakes out in the east, 
 Who out of slander make a feast. 
 
APPENDIX. 569 
 
 AMOS F. CLOUGH'S DIAEY. 
 
 KEPT ON MOOSEHILLOCK IN WINTER OP 
 
 1870. 
 
 1869, Dec. 31.— To-day I got my "traps" to make stereo- 
 graphs in order and started for the mountain. D. G. Marsh 
 brought me out to Merrill's, where Prof. J. H. Huntington, of the 
 Geological Survey, was waiting for me. We started at 11 a. m., 
 " traps" on a handsled, rope to draw by; a string team, Hunting- 
 torron the lead. We made good progress to where he left his sled ; 
 snow was hard and the walking good. Here we divided up, took 
 on some luggage, and then began the ascent in earnest. It was 
 warm and we had to resfquite often. My load became heavy and 
 at the steep part I left off the valise, which had nothing to freeze 
 in it. 
 
 When we came on to the ridge the scene was the grandest I 
 ever saw. Large^ maSsive clouds were floating along the base of the 
 highest mountains, and sweeping across the tops of the lesser ones. 
 The White mountains, snow white, were all above the clouds, 
 piercing the blue sky. The Green mountains were dark and 
 frowning. Lake Winnepisseogee was a field of glaring ice. The 
 mountains of Maine, of Canada, and the Adirondacks flashed daz- 
 zling in the setting sun. 
 
 The wind blew strong as we neared the Prospect House, and 
 we were glad to go in and get some "grub," and prepare for the 
 night. We have made a good flre, and fixed up our room. A 
 cloud has settled down upon the mountain top, it is as dark as 
 Egypt without, and here alone, away from friends and social life, 
 we feel as isolated as though we were in Greenland. 
 
 1870, Jan. 1. — Happy new year "to people down on earth." 
 It is a glorious morning up here. The scene is one of wild mag- 
 nificence. Avast ocean of clouds is below us. Rolling masses, 
 white crested, stretch to the south and east as far as the eye can 
 see ; high mountains pierce through them like islands. The White 
 mountains resemble huge icebergs in mid ocean, so white and daz- 
 zling is their lustre. As the sun rose higher, breaks began to 
 occur in the cloudy mass, revealing the world below, which seemed 
 a dark yawning abyss. 
 
 Went down after my luggage and brought it up. A fox had 
 
670 HISTORY OF WAEBEN. 
 
 the curiosity to follow us up the mountain yesterday. He came to 
 the Prospect House, but never asked to come in. He probably 
 thought it was an erratic notion of ours to come up on this bleak 
 peak at this season of the year. I found rabbit tracks plenty 
 among the firs. A Canada grouse had crossed and re-crossed my 
 path before I returned. "White winged cross-bills were at work 
 among the cones. Black capped titmice were as merrj' as crickets, 
 singing all the time and rattling off loose pieces of bark in search 
 of insects, while Canada jays fluttered before me, now cackling like 
 wild geese, then whistling like a hawk, then barking like a small 
 dog,* often uttering a weird and querulous note, and finally drop- 
 ping with motionless wings soft and silent as a falling snow-flake, 
 out of sight in the dark firs. These are all hardy birds and endure 
 the rigors of our coldest winters. 
 
 Fixed up bed-room at end of dining hall, as it presents more 
 chances for comfort than any other room. Shall paper it through- 
 out, top and bottom. The wind is blowing strong from the south- 
 east. " A storm may now be expected," as the almanac makers 
 say. Well, T can't help it, so " let-er-rip." Huntington is going 
 to make meteorological observations. I am going to make pictures. 
 Jan. 2. — I was awake nearly all night. Wind blew hard and 
 it began to snow. It makes the old stone house shake. It blows 
 a perfect gale, not in gusts, but a steady pull and a pull altogether. 
 At 9 o'clock A. M. I took the anemometer, stood out and held it 
 five minutes. It i-egistered 75 miles an hour. It was all I could 
 do to stand up against the tempest. The wind increased, and at 
 noon I went out again. The wind caught me and swept me sev- 
 eral yards before I could make a stand, and then only by bracing 
 against a rock. I could not hear Mr. Huntington, so had to watch 
 to see when the five minutes was up. He gave the signal and I 
 started to come in. The wind threw me down five times be- 
 fore I reached the door. I clung to the rocks, then crept on my 
 hands and knees, and when I entered the house, my clothing, 
 though of the heaviest kind, was saturated with the rain. I was 
 completely out of breath, and trembled all over Avith the exertion. 
 We found that the wind was blowing at the rate of 97 1-2 miles 
 per hour — a hurricane — the strongest, fiercest wind ever recorded 
 in the United States. 
 
APPENDIX. 571 
 
 "Well, if it blows much harder, there is a chance that they will 
 have a first class hotel over at North Bentou. If we go it will be 
 by wind, house and all. "We can go well enough, but how the 
 devil shall we light. Blow and be hanged. I have my boots, 
 coat and hat on, ready for a start. Huntington looks as if he was 
 ready. How it blows! The wind moans, whines, shrieks, and 
 yells,|like a thousand ghosts, the house trembles and rocks though 
 the walls are of stone three feet thick, and the roar is deafening. 
 The rain comes in through every crack and crevice. So fierce is 
 the draft of the stove that the wind has literally sucked the fire 
 out and we have had the greatest difliculty in re-kindling it. 
 Crash ! every glass in our window is broken, the fire is sucked out 
 of the stove again, the light in our hurricane lantern is extin- 
 guished. I speak, but no one answers ; I call louder, but there is 
 no response; I shout, but no answer comes; I shiver with cold, 
 and wet, and tempest. Darkness, if not terror, reigns. 
 
 Well, we have got the window fastened up. I held the boards 
 ■and Huntington nailed them. Then we nailed blankets over the 
 crevices to keep the wind out. After 9 p. m. the wind lulled ; at 
 midnight it was over and we went to sleep. 
 
 Jan. 3. — The storm has passed by. The wind has changed, 
 but the clouds still wrap the mountain top. H. went down to 
 Nathaniel Merrill's, and I have been busy fixing up our domicil. 
 Snow has nearly all gone from the top ; icy and slippery. Heard 
 a flock of cross-bills near the house. 
 
 4. — The clouds rise up occasionally, giving us a glimpse of the 
 lower world. "We hung out a red light to-night. 
 
 5. — Some snow has fallen. Wind strong. Our life is very 
 quiet — hermit like ! 
 
 6.— Snowed all this day. Wind S. W. Am reading geology. 
 
 7. Cold. Thermometer 3 degrees below. Wind N. W. 
 
 8. — Weather milder. Clouds have blown away. Snowdrift 
 as high as the house, and over our window. We had to shovel a 
 hole through it before we got any daylight. 
 
 9, Cold. Wind N. W. Heavy clouds driving across the 
 
 mountain. Came down after a barometer. Had tough time get- 
 ting over the ridge where it was drifted. Snow a foot deep in 
 woods— five inches at Mr. Merrill's. 
 
 10.— At Mr. Merrill's. 
 
672 
 
 HISTORY OF -WAEEBN. 
 
 11.— Left Mr. M.'s at 10:20 a. m. with a haversack well 
 filled — barometer, gun, and snow-shoes — a heavy load, for the 
 Prospect House. Snow grew deeper as I went up the mountain. 
 Could not use the snow-shoes they " loaded" up so. Had to take 
 them off and wallow up to my knees. Shot at two birds ; did not 
 get either of them. At last I gained the ridge where the snow 
 was blown off; it was like taking the fetters from one's feet to be 
 able to walk without wallowing. Never was a breeze more reviv- 
 ing in a hot sultry day in midsummer, than the one on the ridge, 
 though it was far below the freezing point. It infused new vigor 
 into my weary limbs, and I pushed rapidly forward to the Pros- 
 pect House; arrived at 2:30 p. m. having been a little over four 
 hours from Mr. Merrill's. As I came along the ridge, saw rabbit 
 tracks where it had leaped along the path. There were also the 
 tracts of a stoat or ermine, evidently in pursuit ; but I lost sight 
 of them where the snow was blown away. 
 
 12. — Eains. Wind S. W. No fair weather since Jan. 1. 
 
 13. — Snowed nearly all day. Shoveled out our window. H. 
 went down and got the snow-shoes I left. The stotm has broken 
 up this p. M., and massive clouds roll along the base of the moun- 
 tain. Snow squalls are to be seen here and there over the country. 
 Still and calm, more so than usual up here. House is well chinked 
 and daubed with frost. 
 
 14. — A remarkably fine day.' We are up in a clear, beauti- 
 fully transparent atmosphere. All below is covered with clouds ; 
 a vast ocean of clouds dotted with islands to the east and north- 
 east, the mountains rising through the dense vapor. 
 
 I have made some glorious stereoscopic views; frost views 
 and cloud views, and mountains in the distance. How I have 
 enjoyed this day ! 
 
 15. — A hard storm, snow and rain. Terrible long days and 
 nights up here ! 
 
 16. — H. went down to-day. Got back at 4.30 p. m. — brought 
 lots of letters. Played boy to-night and went sliding down the 
 side of the mountain on a sled. 
 
 17. — Hard storm. Rain and snow. Wind S. E. 
 
 18.— Wind shifted to N. W., and blowed hard enough to knock 
 the storm all to shreds. Clear as a bell this a. m. The mountains 
 
APPENDIX. 573 
 
 are gray, snow mostly gone, only large drifts > left in the ravines 
 and gorges. Dug out the spring to-day — don't fancy snow water 
 much. 
 
 19. — Pleasant. Went over to " Jobildunk" ravine. The falls 
 are ice crags, — splendid! Shall make some views there. Cross- 
 bills and chickadees were plenty in the hackmatacks. As we came 
 up over the brow of the mountain, saw what I took to be a smoke 
 and thought the house had burned. I went a few rods pretty 
 quick; it proved to be a thin cloud, so I was sold cheap. 
 
 20. — ^Pleasant. Got breakfast, took my gun and started down 
 the mountain . Shot some cross-bills ; heard a bird whisthng away ; 
 mocked him, he lighted on a stump to investigate ; I fired and he 
 flew " like thunder." Lucky fellow! he was about two thirds as 
 large as a robin. Shot at a large pileated wood-pecker, but did 
 not hit him. Saw an abundance of chickadees. Got to Mr. Mer- 
 rill's at noon. No letters, no papers, " no nothin," — a big joke! 
 Sent the birds to a taxidermist. Got dinner, talked with a minis- 
 ter of much religion and but little sense ; started, struck a two- 
 forty gait, and came up to the Prospect House on time. 
 
 21. — Cold. Five men and a " spotted dorg " came up to see us 
 from North Benton. 
 
 22. — Made some pictures — ^good ones. Cross-bills were plenty 
 about the house to-day. An ermine crossed the mountain last 
 night, about half-way between the house and the spring. They 
 are hardy fellows and pursue their game with a great deal of 
 tenacity. H. is getting lonesome. 
 
 23. — Rained. H. went down — brought up two letters. Shov- 
 eled snow to keep out the vrind. 
 
 24. — ^Made picture of frost feathers to-day. Glorious ! Also 
 cloud view over Lake "Winnepisseogee, — grand and sublime ! The 
 Adii-ondacks were lighted up to-day, their sharp peaks gleaming 
 in snow with dark clouds for a back-ground— never saw them so 
 magnificent before. 
 26. — Stormy. 
 
 26. — Storm has abated, but dark heavy clouds drive across the 
 mountain, making it almost as black as night. The bushes in the 
 sheltered spots are covered with great balls of ice of a tea green 
 color. On these form the "frost feathers." What is very pecu- 
 
674 HISTORT or WABBBN. 
 
 liar, these feathers form or build up against the wind, while the 
 side opposite is left bare. The same effect is produced on the 
 rocks, presenting a complete covering of pure white snow feath- 
 ers. Went down towards the ravine. 
 
 27. — Mounted my snow shoes, took an axe and an old iron tea- 
 kettle, and started for Jobildunk ravine. Splendid view there; 
 ice columns a hundred feet high. What a time I had getting down 
 to the foot ! First, I sent the axe down on a voyage of discovery 
 and to bush out a path. How it leaped and slid and plunged as it 
 went down to the woods a thousand feet below ! Next went the 
 snow-shoes ; but the kettle would be smashed and I kept it along 
 with me. Then I slid a little way clinging by the bushes, and 
 holding to a birch got down a perpendicular descent some ten feet. 
 From this I could not get back at all nor down except by jumping. 
 Then I sent the tea-kettle ahead — it went leaping and whirling 
 twenty feet at a bound, smashed in pieces and was lost in the firs. 
 I never saw it again. I looked over the precipice. There was a 
 shelf of the rock twenty feet below and a snow bank on it. It 
 was the only way. I jumped and settled to my knees in it. The 
 rest of the way was easier, and sliding and jumping, I was at the 
 foot in almost no time, It was a wild, grand scene, ice precipices 
 rising one above the other a thousand feet, till the tops are lost in 
 the clouds. Spotted my views, and was two hours climbing home 
 through the woods. The ravine is one of the wildest places in 
 New Hampshire, especially in winter. The Asquamchumauke 
 comes down through it. 
 
 28. — Cold. Made some pictures of frost work, and one mag- 
 nificent cloud view. H. went down to Mr. Merrill's and brought 
 up letters and papers. I am pleased. Two white-winged cross- 
 bills came into the house to-day as I left the door open. They 
 were lively and arc the only living things that visit us except a 
 few mice who have taken lodgings on the outside of our room, 
 where they can get some heat from the stove. A man by the 
 name of Adams started to come to the house, got lost and stopped 
 out on the mountain all night. He got back, having only frozen 
 his feet. Wonderful that he did not perish. 
 
 29. — Storms. Terrible lonesome here to-day. 
 
 30. — Wind fifty miles per hour. Snow flies. Dug out the 
 
APPENDIX. 575 
 
 window three times to let in daylight. The house is snowed up 
 very tight — ^very monotonous. Clouds and storm, storm and 
 clpuds. Not so cold here as I thought it would be. 
 
 31. — Cool but pleasant. Ther. stands at 0. Made the best 
 pictures of the "White mountains that I have ever got. The moun- 
 tains are clear and white, and seem brought forward. 
 
 Heavy banks of clouds have been hanging on the horizon, 
 south and east, all day. About 3 p. m. they began to come inland 
 like a huge sea, enveloping the hills and valleys. Then the vapor 
 rose up over the high mountains forming dark domes in the sun- 
 light, and at 5 p. m. we were enveloped with so thick and black a 
 cloud that we could scarce see three rods. Such is life on a moun- 
 tain. 
 
 One month has gone since we came up here. It has slipped 
 quickly and quietly away, and I have had about all of this that I 
 want, but shall stay a while longer if nothing happens. 
 
 Feb. 1. — Went down on earth. Huntington stops at Merrill's, 
 and is to walk up and down the mountain to get the record of the 
 thermometer and barometer. 
 
 16. — Well, after two weeks of sojourn below, I am here in the 
 region of bleakness ai^ storms once more. A dense fog envelops 
 the mountain, shutting out all distance. 
 
 16. — Cold; wind N. W. Clouds drove over our mountain 
 peak till about noon, then cleared off clear as crystal, — clearer 
 than I ever saw it before. We can see the ocean plain as the nose 
 on a man's face. It is through the notches of the hills beyond 
 Lake Winnepisseogee, a long bright line of blue. 
 
 It is growing cold, thermometer 16 degrees below. Hope it 
 will be cold as Dante's hell, for it gives us a glorious view. 
 
 17. — Cold. Made a few pictures, then started for Mr. Merrill's. 
 Slid on sled half a mile down to the ridge. Was one and a half 
 hours getting to Mr. M.'s. Got letters, papers, pail of sugar, and 
 gun, and am now on the road back, snow-shoeing it up the bridle 
 path — am stopping on the ridge now. Can see the ocean distinctly. 
 Heavy .clouds are coming from it. 6 p. m. — Am at the Prospect 
 House, and the clouds are here too. They were just one hour com- 
 ing from the ocean to Moosehillock. My boots froze stiff coming 
 up. Storms to night. 
 
676 HISTORT OF WABBEN. 
 
 18.— Storms. Well, I like a storm ; it rouses peculiar feelings ; 
 excitement, when it goes in strong, and it does that to-day, sure. 
 One incessant roar all day; driving sleet and rain. The houge 
 shakes and trembles, though one side is buried in a snow diift to 
 the top of the I'oof, nearly, with five inches of snow and ice on the 
 roof and walls. 
 
 10 A. M. — Went out with the anemometer. We had a barrel 
 set for the purpose, but the snow and ice had filled it up. So I 
 held the machine for ten minutes. Sat down back to the wind as- 
 tride of the barrel. It was no boy's play. Machine won't weigh 
 five pounds, but it tired me terribly. The wind would ease a tri- 
 fle, then come with a rush and a roar louder than thunder, that 
 made me cliug legs and arms to the barrel. The roar was deafen- 
 ing — I could not hear. Huntington gave signal with his hand and 
 I made for the house. "Was thrown flat down by the wind, then 
 crept in. How queer I felt. I reeled and staggered like a drunk- 
 en man. My head was gidd}', my eyes on fire, a thrill like elec- 
 tricity shot through my whole body, making me wild and reckless. 
 How it would have operated had I stopped longer, I cannot say. 
 I should be careless of my life to try it again. The wind is blow- 
 ing a hundred miles an hour — the sleet cuts like a knife — and my 
 skin smarts wherever it was struck. 
 
 Blows like great guns this p. 3i. Rain comes down a perfect 
 shower. Runs in streams about our window. We have got pails, 
 buckets, kettles, &c., to catch it and keep from being drowned 
 out. Tliis is worse than the storm of Jan. 2 ; but we are better 
 prepared to meet it. 
 
 8 p.m. — No abatement in the storm yet. Blow! blow! I like 
 it. It is like a roar of thunder all the time. 
 
 10:30 I'. M.— Still continues. Wind howls now like ten thou- 
 sand fiends let loose from the infernal regions. 
 
 19.— Well, the storm has spent its fury at last. The wild deaf- 
 ning roar has died away, but occasional gusts sweep along, sigh- 
 ing with a low moan, the last dying throes of the wild, terrifying 
 hurricane. It began to abate last midnight. Would like to have 
 the clouds lift a few minutes to see how it served people down on 
 earth. H. has gone down and when he comes back he will report. 
 
 It takes a blow from 8. E. to get up a storm and keep it agoing. 
 
APPENDIX. 577 
 
 It also takes a blow from the N. W., up in this altitude, a mile 
 above the ocean, to clear it off. It is cold to-day. 
 
 This p. M. we got frost clouds, " clouds made up of minute 
 particles of ice, said to bring death to auy one caught in them." 
 That story is a myth. We found them as harmless as a summer 
 vapor. 
 
 20. — Ther. 14 degrees below. Clear and pleasant. Looked 
 away to the south-east and saw the ocean. "Walked down to the 
 ravine. Got a fall and slid down a hundred feet — brought up in a 
 snow bank ; was frightened, but not hurt a bit. Hackmatacks are 
 buried in snow. Wind has changed to south-east again. Another 
 storm is on the stocks. 
 
 2 p. M. — It is blowing again. It roars again — it howls again. 
 I thought the wind had blown as hard as it could, but it is now 
 worse than ever before. I shall riot wet myself to the skin again 
 to hold up that anemometer. I know it blows at the rate of more 
 than a hundred, miles an hour. How it roars. But " roar " don't 
 express the noise. Bellow is too tame by half. In a thunder 
 storm the lightning ilashes, blinding the sight. Then comes a 
 sharp report which immediately gives way to deep, reverberatory 
 rumbling that shakes and makes everything vibrate with its power, 
 then rolls away and is lost. Now just imagine, if you can, a con- 
 tinual roll of the first reverberations, after the sharp report is over, 
 and you will have some faint idea of what we have this day, — a 
 continual thunder, making everything shake, for hours together. 
 
 Have storms like this swept over these mountains for thou- 
 sands of years, perhaps millions of years, or is this a special storm 
 for the benefit of us two poor mortals who have invaded this bleak 
 and lofty region ? Can't tell ! 
 
 21. — Snows, and there is a drift fifteen feet high on the south 
 side of our house. Had to shovel out our window to let in day- 
 light. 1 p. M. — I am writing by lamplight ; the house is completely 
 snowed up. 
 
 22. — Ther. 17 degrees below. House still snowed up — ^time 
 drags! 
 
 K* 
 
578 
 
 HISTOET OF WABKEN. 
 
 23.— Have worked with the Theodolite this day. The follow- 
 ing are some of the principal points which we have sighted: — 
 
 North 70 degrees 
 
 East 
 
 " 88 " 
 
 " 
 
 South 86 ■" 
 
 " 
 
 " 28 
 
 '* 
 
 " 26 
 
 '* 
 
 U " 
 
 " 
 
 i. 4 " 
 
 " 
 
 " U " 
 
 West 
 
 " 16 
 
 *' 
 
 " 19 " 
 
 " 
 
 " 51 
 
 
 " 64 " 
 
 
 " 69 
 
 
 " 61 " 
 
 *' 
 
 North 71 
 
 " 
 
 60 " 
 
 " 
 
 " 62 " 
 
 " 
 
 " 42 
 
 '* 
 
 11 
 
 *' 
 
 " 17 " 
 
 East 
 
 " 68 " 
 
 " 
 
 POINTS FROM MOOSEHILLOCK MOUNTAIN. 
 
 Mt. Washington 
 Mt. Cavrigau 
 Mt. Pigwaoket . 
 The Ocean seen 
 Lake Winnepisaeogee 
 Mt. Belknap 
 Manchester, N. H. 
 Mt. Kearsarge . 
 Mount Cavr 
 Mt. Monadnock 
 Mt. Ascutney . 
 Mt. Cube . 
 Mt. Graylock . 
 Killingtou Peaks 
 Mt. Marcy, N. Y. 
 Camels Hump . 
 Lake Champlain 
 Mt. Mansfield . 
 Jay Peak 
 
 Vevcj ov Stark Peaks 
 Mt. Lafayette . 
 
 24. — Cold. Packed np and have taken part of our things 
 down below the Cold spring. The snow is very deep there, yet 
 the spring runs musical, the same as ever. Cross-bills and other 
 winter birds are very plenty. Coming back, saw where a wolf 
 had crossed the mountain last night. He made a track as large as 
 a dog. Prof. H. froze his feet getting up to the Prospect House 
 yesterday, and thawed them out in snow. 
 
 25. — Here it is noon, and I am writing by lamplight, for we 
 have not courage enough to go out and shovel the snow away from 
 our window. Ther. 15 degrees below. Wind blows hard and we 
 cannot get off this mountain to-day. Just went out in the other 
 room and saw a stoat, or ermine, or weasel. He is about eight 
 inches long, small head, full eyes, body pure white, tail five inches 
 long tipped with black. He jumped out of the window where 
 there is a broken light of glass, then turned round and looked 
 back. I made a noise like a mouse, and he went to looking for 
 that animal. They are courageous, very spry and active, and will 
 kill rabbits and hens ten times their weight. No hens up here ! 
 
 26. — It is stormful, and clouds rush wildly along over the 
 mountain. We have packed up. Our sleds are loaded. We 
 are going to leave the Prospect House,— leave Moosehillock — 
 are going down on earth. What an experience for nearly two 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 679 
 
 months we have had up here. Storms, hail, rain, sleet, snow; 
 house rocking, dizzying ; wind roaring, yelling, howling, screech- 
 ing, screaming, moaning, whining, crying ; then thundering, one 
 continuous roll so loud that the most powerful voice could not he 
 heard three feet away. And then what sunshine ! How grand 
 the thousand snowy mountain peaks around us ! The rivers and 
 the lakes, glaring ice, flashing in a flood of glorious sunlight! The 
 ocean ! how suhlime and how distinctly seen, ninety miles away ! 
 ^tTo mortals since the world began ever had such an experience on 
 North American mountain top as we have had. 
 
 Boundary lines settled 
 
 The Era of Requisifes, about 
 
 Methodism first in Warren 
 
 Turnpike built . 
 
 Second war with England 
 
 First Permanent Stage 
 
 Spotted Fever 
 
 First Meeting-house built . 
 
 Daniel Welch perislied on Moosehillooli 
 
 Mine discovered ... . . 
 
 BeiTy brool£ road opened 
 
 Great lawsuit . .... 
 
 Railroad built .... 
 
 Warren Common cleared .... 
 
 Prospect House built and road cut on to Moosehillook 
 
 Centennial Celebration, July 14 . . ■ . 
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 Indians in Warren from tima immemorial — year 
 
 Wonalancet in Wan'en 
 
 Waternomee ascends Moosilauke— Acteon's statement — about 
 
 Kancamagus in Warren . 
 
 Captives carried through Warren . 
 
 Expeditions up towards Warren alter Indians 
 
 Caleb Lymaii kills Pemigewassetts 
 
 Lieut. Thos. Baker marches through Warren 
 
 Waternomee killed 
 
 Capt. John Lovewell kills Indians near Warren 
 
 Capt. Sam'l Willard, Jabez Fairbanks, and Col. Tyng, m'ch toward Warren 
 
 Capt. John Goffe marches toward Warren . 
 
 Court's Committee pass through Warren 
 
 Acteon Captures John Stark 
 
 Jotin Tolford comes to Warren 
 
 Capt. Peter Powei'S marches through Warren . 
 
 Indians with ttieir captives camp by Wachipauka pond 
 
 Cai)t. .John Goffe boating on the Asquamchumauke . 
 
 Maj. Robert Rogers and his rangers camp by Wacliipauka pond 
 
 Rogers' Bangers, some of ttiem, pass tlirough Warren 
 
 Hunters in Warren . . ... 
 
 Warren mapped and named 
 
 Warren granted to Jolm Page and others, July 14 
 Warren surveyed . ... 
 
 Warren settled 
 
 Road cleared • . 
 
 First religious meeting — Congregational — about . 
 
 Revolution . 
 
 First mill 
 
 Warren incorporated 
 
 First town meeting 
 
 First training 
 
 First public school 
 
 1 
 
 1676 
 1685 
 1690 
 1695 
 1703 
 1704 
 1712 
 1712 
 1724 
 1724 
 1746 
 1762 
 1762 
 1763 
 1754 
 1756 
 1756 
 1766 
 1759 
 1760 
 1761 
 1763 
 1765 
 1767 
 1767 
 1776 
 1775 
 1776 
 1779 
 1779 
 1780 
 1783 
 1784 
 1795 
 1799 
 1808 
 1812 
 1814 
 1815 
 1818 
 1825 
 1830 
 1836 
 1843 
 1861 
 1859 
 1860 
 1863 
 
SUBSCRIBERS 
 
 FOB THE 
 HISTORY OF WAKEEijr. 
 
 ALBANY, N. Y. 
 
 J. Munsell 
 
 ANDOVER. 
 
 John M. Shirley 
 
 ANTRI3I. 
 
 W. R- Cochrane 
 
 AUBURN. 
 
 Benj. Chase . 
 
 BENTON. 
 
 Chase Whitoher . 1 
 Ira "VVhitcher . . 1 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 Guy A. Clifford . J 
 
 John F. Colby . 1 
 
 Mrs. H. E. Bryer . 1 
 
 Samuel G. Drake . 1 
 
 Mrs. Susan Frost . 1 
 
 Benj. K. Little . 1 
 
 Omar Little . . 1 
 
 "William Little . 1 
 
 Public Library . 1 
 
 John E. Lyon . 1 
 
 "Wm. Parsons Lunt 5 
 
 G. H. Tucker . 1 
 
 BRIDGEPORT, CT. 
 
 W. C. Batchelder . 1 
 
 BROOKLYNN, N. Y. 
 
 Mrs. Kate Lee . 1 
 
 CANAAN. 
 
 Caleb N. Homan . 1 
 
 CLAREMONT. 
 
 H. W, Parker . 1 
 
 CONCORD. 
 
 Nathaniel Bouton . 1 
 Sam'lC. Eastman . 1 
 Asa Fowler . . 1 
 
 JohnH. George . 
 
 3 H. H. Kimball . 
 Thos. B. Little 
 A, S. Marshall 
 
 1 S. B. Page . 
 
 DOVER. 
 
 1 S. M. Wheeler 
 
 EXETER. 
 
 1 Chas. H. Bell 
 John J. Bell 
 
 1 John Poor 
 
 Daniel Whitcher 
 
 LAWRENCE, MASS. 
 
 D. M. Boynton . 
 W. E. Boynton . 
 Alonzo Jewell . 
 
 FRANKLIN. 
 
 Daniel Barnard , 
 Austin F. Pike 
 
 GREENLAND. 
 
 C. W. Pickering 1 
 
 HANOVER. 
 
 E. D. Sanborn . 1 
 
 HARTFORD, CT. 
 
 Geo. E. Merrill . 2 
 
 HAVERHILL, MASS. 
 
 J. H. Patch . 1 
 William Patch . 1 
 
 HILLSBOROUGH. 
 
 J. F. Briggs . 1 
 
 HUNTINGTON, MASS. 
 
 Ezekiel Dow .1 
 
 LACONIA. 
 
 E. A. Hibbard . 1 
 Mrs.E.M.Jewett 1 
 T. J. Whipple . 1 
 
 LANCASTER. 
 
 H. O. Kent . 1 
 
 LANDAFF. 
 
 Mrs. Mary Clark 1 
 
 1 M.P.Merrill . 1 
 
 LEBANON. 
 
 2 S. N. Homan . 1 
 
 LISBON. 
 
 Mrs. S. Kimball 1 
 
 1 Kimball Little . 1 
 
 1 A. B. Woodworth 1 
 
 LITTLETON. 
 
 J. G. Sinchdr . 1 
 
 LONDONDERRY. 
 
 R. C. Mack . 1 
 
 LOWELL, MASS. 
 
 Mrs. L. Carleton 1 
 
 E. A. Clement . 1 
 
 R. T. Clifford . 1 
 
 MANCHESTER. 
 
 A. W. Bartlett . 1 
 C. H. Bartlett . 1 
 Sam'l N. Bell . 2 
 H. E. Bnrnham . 1 
 Andrew Bunton 1 
 G. B. Chandler . 1 
 J. S. Cheney . 1 
 
 B. P. Cilley . 1 
 Jos. B. Clark . 1 
 L. W. Clark . 1 
 
 C. W.Clough . 1 
 L. B. Clough . 1 
 W. AV. Colburn . 1 
 Geo. W. Colby . 1 
 Thos. Corcoran . 1 
 David Cross . 1 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 681 
 
 Moody Currier . 1 
 
 Jesse "Eastman . 1 
 
 Jos. G. Edgeriv ,. 1 
 
 M. V. B. Edgei-ly . 1 
 
 J. E Eyerett . 1 
 
 A. G. Fairbanks . 1 
 
 Jos. W. Fellows . 1 
 
 John Ferguson . 1 
 
 J. C. French . . 1 
 
 Sacalexis Glossian 1 
 
 Charles Goold . 1 
 
 E. W. Harrington 1 
 
 John Harrington . 1 
 
 E. D. Hadley . 1 
 
 Stephen Homan . 1 
 
 Jacob F. Jewell . 1 
 
 Abbie A. Johnson 1 
 
 J. B. Jones . . 1 
 
 Joseph Kidder . 1 
 
 E. W. Libbey . 1 
 
 NancT J. Libbey 1 
 
 H.D". Lord . . 1 
 
 Mary M. Melendy 1 
 
 AnsonMerrill . 1 
 
 John T. Moore . 1 
 
 Chas. R. Morrison 1 
 
 Geo. W. Morrison 1 
 
 Rodnia Nutt . . 1 
 
 A. C. Osgood . 1 
 
 Wm. R. Patten . 1 
 
 David L. Perkins . 1 
 
 H. A. Prescott . 1 
 
 D. W. Reynolds . 1 
 Isaac W. Smith . 1 
 Mos3s E. Smith . 1. 
 Frederick Smyth . 1 
 Justin Spear - . 1 
 C. W. Stanley . 1 
 Horace Stetson . 1 
 Dan'l L. Stevens . 1 
 
 E. H. Stowe . . 1 
 E. A. Straw . . 1 
 Cyrus A. Sulloway 1 
 William J. Tucker 1 
 Samuel Upton . 1 
 James A. Weston 1 
 Darius Wilson . 1 
 Prank L.' Wilson . 1 
 
 MAELBOBOUGH, MASS. 
 
 Albe C. Weeks . 1 
 
 MEKKIIIACK. 
 
 L. W. Parker 
 
 PROVIDENCE, K. I. 
 
 1 M. H. Bixbv . 6 
 
 JULFORD. 
 
 B. Wadleigh, one for 
 self aud one for 
 R. B. Hatch, per 
 order clerk of the 
 court . . 2 
 
 NASHUA. 
 
 H. B. Atherton . 1 
 
 William Barrett 1 
 
 W. W. Bailev . 1 
 
 H. C. Batchelder 1 
 
 Joseph M. Copp 1 
 
 Dr. P. L. Gerald 1 
 
 G. A. Ramsdell 1 
 
 Sawyer Junior . 1 
 
 Gilmau Scripture 1 
 
 NEW BOSTON. 
 
 C. B. Cochrane . 1 
 
 NEW DUKHAM. 
 
 C. H. Boody . 1 
 
 NEWTON, MASS. 
 
 I. H. Silsby . 1 
 
 NEW YORK CITY. 
 
 C. A. Fiske . 1 
 
 Mercantile Lib'rv 1 
 
 N. Y. Hist. Soc." 1 
 
 Geo. H. Moore . 1 
 
 ONEIDA, ILL. 
 
 E. D. Aiken . 1 
 
 C. E. Clement . 1 
 
 PETERBOROUGH. 
 
 Charles Scott . 1 
 
 PLYMOUTH. 
 
 H. W. Blair . 1 
 
 J. A. Dodge . 1 
 
 J. W. Whiteman 1 
 
 POET HURON, MICH. 
 
 J. F. Merrill . 1 
 
 POETLAND, ME. 
 
 H. C. Peabody . 1 
 
 EINDGB. 
 
 E, S. Stearns . ,1 
 
 EUTLAND, VT. 
 
 G. A. Merrill . 1 
 
 C.K.Williams . 1 
 
 SALEM, MASS. 
 
 Henry Bixby . 1 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 
 
 W. Clogston . 1 
 
 Columbus Clough 1 
 
 M. H. G. Gilmore 1 
 
 Curtis B. Newell 1 
 
 James Parker . 1 
 
 TILTON. 
 
 J. H. Goodale . 1 
 
 VEESHIEE, VT. 
 
 A. J. Clough . 1 
 
 "WILTON. 
 
 C. H. Burns . 1 
 
 "WOBUEN, MASS. 
 
 A. A. Clement . 1 
 
 A. E. Clement . 1 
 
 Mrs. J. B. Flagg 1 
 
 Mrs. J. Wendell 1 
 
 WORCESTER, MASS. 
 
 C. W.Hamilton 1 
 W. Hamilton . 1 
 A. E.Noyes . 1 
 R. Woodward . 1 
 
 WARREN. 
 
 A. M. Barber . 1 
 
 J. W. Batchelder 1 
 
 R. Batchelder . 1 
 
 D. E. Bixby . 1 
 Rev. D.C. Bixby 1 
 James M. Bixby 1 
 Sam'l B. Bixby . 1 
 Luther Blake . 1 
 J. S. Blodgett . 1 
 C. F. Bracey . 1 
 John L. Clark . 1 
 S. K. Clark . 1 
 
682 
 
 HISTORY OF WARKEN. 
 
 Amos Clement 
 Benjamin Clement 
 Benj. Clement, Jr. 
 D. Q. Clement 
 Geo. B. Clement . 
 James Clement 
 Jas. A. Clement . 
 John Clement 
 Joseph Clement . 
 R. K. Clement 
 "W. Clement . 
 Geo.C.Cliflford . 
 Z. L. Clifford 
 A. F. Cloug-h 
 C. W. Clough 
 Olcott Colby . 
 D.B.Cotton. 
 
 C. W. Cummings . 
 F. C. Cummings . 
 J. T. Cummings . 
 Oilman C. Davis . 
 John E. Davis 
 
 W. S. Doggett 
 Jonathan Dow 
 Stevens M. Dow . 
 Benj. F. Eastman . 
 
 D. Y. Eastman 
 J. B. Eastman 
 Jesse Eastman 
 Ezra B.Eaton 
 H. A. Eaton . 
 James Edgar 
 CO. French 
 D. A. French 
 Osco H. French . 
 A. J. Foote . 
 
 A. F. Gale . 
 O.S. Gleason 
 
 1 T. Haines . . 1 
 
 1 Mrs. J. Harriman 1 
 
 1 N. Harris . . 1 
 
 1 Mrs. S.M. Heath 1 
 
 1 John Holt . . 1 
 
 1 H. C. Rowland . 1 
 
 1 A. M. Jackson . 1 
 
 1 G. W. Jackson . 1 
 
 1 Levi F. Jewell . 1 
 
 2 J. 8. Jewett . 1 
 1 Ezra W. Keyes . 1 
 1 M. P. Kimball . 1 
 1 Mercy J. Knapp 1 
 1 C. K. Leonard . 1 
 1 G. E. Leonard . 1 
 1 E. B.Libbey . 1 
 1 Geo. Libbey . 1 
 1 Hazen Libbey . 1 
 1 Ira Libbey . 1 
 1 John Libbey . 1 
 1 Nancy J. Libbey 1 
 1 Nath. Libbev . 1 
 1 Walter Libbey . 1 
 1 G. A. Little . 1 
 1 Jonathan Little . 1 
 1 J. M. Little . 1 
 1 Susan C. Little . 1 
 1 H. B. Low . 1 
 1 G.W.Lund . 1 
 1 James P. Lund . 1 
 1 J. D. Marstou . 1 
 1 D. G. Marsh . 1 
 1 Asa Merrill . 1 
 1 G.W. Merrill . 1 
 1 Enoch Merrill . I 
 1 H. N. Merrill . 1 
 1 Ira Merrill. . 1 
 1 
 
 James F. Men-ill 1 
 
 James S. Merrill 1 
 
 Jesse Merrill . 1 
 
 N. Merrill 2d. . 1 
 
 Russell Merrill . 1 
 
 Sarah C. Merrill 1 
 
 George B. Noyes 1 
 
 J. H. Noves . 1 
 
 S. M. Noyes . 1 
 
 Amos T. Page . 1 
 
 Reuben Page . 1 
 
 A. M. Pillsbury 1 
 
 E. Pillsbnry . 1 
 M. ^Y. Pillsbury 1 
 Geo. F. Putnam 1 
 Nath. Richardson 1 
 M. J. Sanborn . 1 
 Jos. Sherburne . 1 
 Darius O. Swain 1 
 
 F. J. Swain . 1 
 Geo. E. Swain . 1 
 S. E. Swain . 1 
 Franklin Towle 1 
 S. Truscott . 1 
 Jas. O. Tuttle . 1 
 Enssell LTpton . 1 
 E. R. Weeks . 1 
 H. W. Weeks . 3 
 Ira M. Weeks . 1 
 Wm.H. Weeks. 1 
 James Weltou . 1 
 H. A. Whiteman 1 
 J. M. Whiteman 1 
 N. Whiteman . 1 
 Levi C. Whitcher 1 
 Sam. Whitcher . 1 
 J. M. WMton . 1 
 
INDEX 
 
 The table of proprietors, page 170, is not indexed, neither are the lists Of 
 voters, town officers, subscribers, or tables of names in the Appendix. Indian 
 names are in small capitals. 
 
 A. 
 
 Abbott, ,Tohn 259, 288, 321 n, 393 n, 584 
 
 Moses 456 
 
 ACTEON, 33 n, 35, 43, 51. 61, 69, 71, 103, 142 
 Adiroudacks . . . .253 
 
 Allien brooli 246 
 
 James . 216-218,232,243-246 
 
 Albert, Henry 508 
 
 Algonquin Indians .... 23 
 Amakiscoggin Indians 25 n, 64, 68, 74 
 
 Ambuscade 96, 127 
 
 Amoskeag Indians . . . 24 7j, 60 
 
 Animals 158, 219, 229, 237, 248, 251, 318 
 
 370-377, .126 
 
 Annexation 447 
 
 Apple trees 210 
 
 Arling, Abigail .... 314-316 
 AeoSAGUNTICOOKS . 93-99, 111-113, 132 
 
 Arrows n. 35 
 
 Asqdamchumauke river . 18-20, 33 
 
 85, 101, 105, 122 K, 190, 345 
 
 Atkinson, Theodore, Jr. 163-164, 167, 168 
 
 173, 176, 178, 199 
 
 Auctions 283 
 
 Autumn . . 151,250,251,418-430 
 
 JS, 
 
 Badger, David 321 
 
 John . . . . 341 
 
 Baker, Capt. Thomas . 81-86, 190 
 
 Ponds .... 109, 122 
 
 Eiver. (See Asquamchnmauke.) 
 
 Balch, John . 265-287, 343, 398 
 
 Bald hill 19 
 
 Balls 309-312 
 
 Barber, Albert M 451 
 
 Barker, John .... 128, 129 
 Sarah .... 362,433 
 Stillman . . .433 
 
 Barn, the first one .... 240 
 Barr, Capt. Samuel ... 95 
 
 Barter .... .386 
 
 Bayley Fry 189 
 
 Bean pon-idge 218 
 
 Bears 228,232, 237, 238, 251 «,325, 371, 372 
 
 Beavers 210, 251 
 
 meadow pond . . 229 
 
 meadows . . 186, 210, 219 
 
 Bedell, Capt. Timothy . 270, 27 i 
 
 Bedsteads 215 
 
 Beech hill 20, 325 
 
 District . . . 320 
 
 Beef cattle sold to British . . 269, 270 
 
 Bell .486 
 
 Berry brook ... . 19, 20 
 
 brook road . . . 454.460 
 
 Bills paid in produce . . . 356 
 
 Birds 377,627 
 
 Bishop, Enos . . . 127-129 
 
 Bixby, Benj 404, 416 
 
 Dudley C. . . . 511,545 
 George . . 372, 404, n. 439, 503 
 
 James M 532 
 
 Joseph . ... 465 
 
 Moses H. . . 490, 541 , 543 
 • Samuel B. . 456,480-482,603 
 Black brook, (seeMikaseota.) 
 
 hill .... .254 
 
 mt 18,19,563 
 
 Blacksmiths 504 
 
 Blanchard, Col. Joseph 93, 130, 137, 138 
 Blazed paths ... . Ill 
 
 Blind man's buff .... 301, 309 
 Blodgett, Jared S. . . . 486,492 
 
 BlueKirtge 239,385 
 
 Block Houses 100 
 
 Blowing a horu 368 
 
 Boating on the Asquamchumauke . 101 
 
 Bobbins 502 
 
 Boody, Eev. Joseph . . 364,365,422 
 
 Books 400 
 
 Law . ■ . . 350, 352 
 
 Town . . ... 369 
 
 Boundary lines . . • . tc. 337 
 
 fends . ». 222, 335, 339, S11-51S 
 
684 
 
 HISTORY OF WAEEEN. 
 
 Bartlett, Cbas. H 481 
 
 Dr. Ezra 354 n, 355-3B8, 389 
 
 405, 460, 537 
 
 Dr. Josiah 167 n, 171 
 
 Bashaea 
 
 Baskets . 
 
 Batchelder brook 
 Cotton 
 Ca]Dt. Daniel 
 Isaiah 
 
 Battles 
 
 John S. 
 Reuben 
 Stepiien 
 Ward 0. 
 
 178, 196 
 
 277, 354 
 
 43, 46 n, 51 
 
 . 506 
 
 . 19 
 
 , 394 
 
 . 608 
 
 229, 260, 277, 292, 337 
 
 338, 419 
 
 Bennington 
 Bunlter hill 
 for oiEce . 
 Indian 
 
 288, 320, 342, 358 
 . 321 
 . 609 
 230, 231, 332 
 269 
 . 263 
 . 329, 334 
 44, 62, 66, 67, iS, 91 
 
 Knight with a bear . 344 
 
 by Rogers' rangers 139 
 
 of St. Francis , 145 
 
 Bounties for falling trees . . . 222 
 
 for grist-mill . . . 241 
 
 for killing Indians . 75 
 
 for killing wild animals . 371 
 
 for saw-mill . . 237, 240 
 
 for settlers . 196, 197, '^25 
 
 for soldiers . 2'69, 285, 287 
 
 Bowen, Peter 115, 117 
 
 Bowles, Charles . 285, 286, 307, 413, 441 
 Lot. . . 288 
 
 Bows, Indian .... n. '65 
 Boynton, Joseph . 367, 426 
 
 Thomas . . . .358 
 Dr. Worcester E. 546, 554 
 
 Bradstreet, Col. Dudley . . 70 
 
 Bracey, Chas. F. 506, 511 
 
 Brainard, Daniel n. 211 
 
 Brick . . . .604 
 
 Bridges .... 345-348 
 
 Bridle paths . . . 189, 245 
 
 Broad arrow mark . . . 184,2.38 
 Broadhead, Rev. John . 363, 368 
 
 Brock, Billy ... . . 420 
 
 Brooks .... 250, 381, 417 
 
 Brown, Frederick . . 407 
 
 Jesse 552 
 
 Burnham, Josiah . 321,339,413 
 
 Burning a piece • .... 218 
 Burning of James Aiken's house . 245 
 Burns, Dr. Robert 321, 355, n. 405, 538 
 Bnrnside, Thomas . . 190 
 
 Burials .... . is. 40 
 
 Burying cloth 353 
 
 ground . . 27, 296, 359, 487 
 
 Burton, Amos .... 402, 445 
 
 Butler, Capt. \Vm. 234, 240, 241, 277, 279 
 
 295, 302, 331, 338, n. 341, 352, 363, 3S5, 387 
 
 Button or play . . . . 309 
 
 c. 
 
 127 
 
 Call, PhiUip ... 
 Camp-meeting . . . 366- 
 
 Canal 349, 445-447 
 
 Canoes . . . . . «. 38 
 
 Captains .... 297, 391, 547 
 
 Captives 67, 88-98, 106, 108, 118, 127, 133 
 
 treatment of by Indians . 45 
 
 Cardigan Mountain . . . 318 
 
 Carding mill .... 349, 601 
 
 wool . n. 233, 360 
 
 Caribou 375-376 
 
 Can- Mt. 18-20, 182, 247-251, 254r-266, 376, 563 
 
 Cascades on Berry bi-o 
 
 ok. 
 
 
 . 324 
 
 on Ore hill brook 
 
 
 . 388 
 
 Casualties . 
 
 
 
 . 659 
 
 Catamoimt 
 
 
 
 208, 370 
 
 Cemeteries . 
 
 
 29f) 
 
 .359, 487 
 
 Census . 
 
 
 n 
 
 265, 534 
 
 Centennial . 
 
 
 
 167, 619 
 
 Centre district . 
 
 
 
 . 320 
 
 Certificate money 
 
 
 n. 
 
 333, 356 
 
 Chairs .... 
 
 
 
 215, 505 
 
 Charter .... 
 
 168 
 
 19R 
 
 199, 200 
 
 Charleston Convention 
 
 
 
 292-293 
 
 district 
 
 
 
 . 320 
 
 Choristers, 
 
 
 , 
 
 260,542 
 
 Christo 
 
 
 
 107 
 
 Chronology . 
 
 
 
 . 579 
 
 Churches 
 
 362-365 
 
 481-489 
 
 Cider mill . 
 
 
 
 419 
 
 Clapboard and shingle mill . . 501 
 
 Clark Amos .... .348 
 
 Daniel . . n. 277 
 
 Stephen K 500-602 
 
 Thomas 228, 277, 279, 285, 292, 337 
 
 n. 338 
 
 Clearing, flr.st one . 210 
 
 first road 188, 220 
 
 Clement Amos . . . . 506 
 
 Col. Benjamin 420, 425, 603 
 
 Daniel Q. . . a. 493, 502, 563 
 
 Bphraim . .470 
 
 Hill .... 19 
 
 James . 33, 451-453, 493-498, 516 
 
 Dea. Jona. . 245, 261, 365, 366 
 
 Jonathan 225, 269, 284, 349, 387 
 
 Joseph . . 33, 499, 504, 559 
 
 Moses H. 237, 341, n. 349, 396 
 
 -397, 406, 11. 427, 446, 466-458, 501 
 
 Obadiah 33, 222, 2:38, 267, 279 
 
 n. 284, 293, 297-303, 329, 334, 345 
 
 348,398,441^46, 565 
 
 . 278, .334, 349 
 
 . 225, 264, 27U, 293 
 
 321, n. 380,429,483 
 
 . 480-482 
 
 party 
 Reuben . 
 Russell K. 
 William . 
 Clerk, proprietors * 
 
 Town 
 Clifford, Absalom 
 Dorathy 
 Isaac 
 
 Hon. Nathan 
 Reuben . 
 Ruel Bela 
 Russell F. 
 Tmiothy 
 William 
 Mrs. Zachariah 
 Climate . 
 Clouglf, Amos . . 
 
 Amos F. 210, 486, 606, 5 14, 662, 569 
 Columbus, . . . 486 
 Capt. Jeremiah . 92 
 
 District . . . . 320 
 Jonathan . . . 210, 406 
 Nathaniel 365, ». 387, 419, )^; 428 
 436, 464, 476, n. 499 
 School-house. . .210 
 William 486 
 
 178 
 
 . 278, 632 
 
 . 382 
 
 . 351-.353 
 
 . 279, 280 
 
 )!. 280 
 
 . 423, 424 
 
 500 
 
 321 
 
 n. 320, 564 
 
 . 509 
 
 . 434 
 
 20 
 
 654 
 
INDEX. 
 
 685 
 
 Coal 
 Coasting 
 Cold brook . 
 
 Spring 
 
 Winter 
 Collectors of taxes 
 College graduates 
 
 . S06 
 
 316, 317 
 
 317, 417 
 492, 683 
 
 . 284, 442 
 170, 281, 282-284 
 539 
 
 Colonels ... 395 547 
 
 Committee of Safety 266-269, 275, 284-287 
 to explore Coos . . 109 
 to run lines . . 179, 337 
 to build bridges . 346-348 
 to build a meeting honse 358 
 359, 423-428 
 to clear roads I88, 196 
 
 to lay out lots . 189, 220 
 
 to take care of pauper . 352 
 to agree with setflers 196,220 
 n. 222 
 
 Common 
 
 485, 487 
 
 Conditions of Charter 169, 174, 187, 200 
 Constables . . 279 281 
 
 Constitution ... . ' 358 
 
 Continental Money . . 282 
 
 Converts . . . 368 
 
 Convention .... 292 
 
 Cook, Timothy '. . . 127 
 
 Cooking . . 306, 307, 399 
 
 Coopers 5ri2 
 
 CoosCfOK Indians . «. 24. 25,'99 
 
 Coos Turnpike .... 384-389 
 Copp, George W. n . 321 , 426, 441 
 
 •John .394 
 
 Joshua 218, k.265, 267,283, 292, 331 
 
 352, 358, 499 
 
 Joshiia, Jr. . . . 218, 294 
 
 Moses 218, 241, 287, 293, 352, 363 
 
 Sarah . . 310-312 
 
 Copper mine . 449 
 
 Corporation dinner . 177, 178 
 
 Cotton, Dudley B. ... 634 
 
 Solomon . . 453-457 
 
 Courts . . . .279 
 
 Coventry . . . .212 
 
 Craige, Alexander . . «. 211 
 
 David S. . 386 
 
 " Cross, Daniel 212 
 
 Iron mine . ... 389 
 
 Uriah . ... 343 
 
 CULHEAG TRAP ... 37, 208, 376 
 
 Cummings survey . . .339 
 
 Currency ... . . 356 
 
 Cushman, Ebenezer . . 600-504, 513 
 
 Francis A. 300-506, 513 
 
 Mt. . . . 18,371,563 
 
 D. 
 
 ty 
 
 Dances . 
 
 Dark day 
 
 Davis brook . 
 Enoch 
 
 Day, Daniel 
 
 Death by casual 
 by fright 
 in Warren 
 
 Dedication . 
 
 Deer 
 
 Deer Keepers 
 
 Devil's Doings 
 
 Diana's bowl 
 
 44, 309-312, 420 
 . 284 
 . 353 
 . 353 
 416 
 . 559 
 . 461 
 552 
 . 426 
 183,229,230,237,376 
 281, n. 351 
 . 363 
 . 192, 562 
 
 Diaiy, Amos If. Clough's . . . 669 
 of weather . . . n. 408 
 
 Dishes 218 
 
 'Distances on Moosilauke road 563 
 
 Dodge, .Joseph A. ... 473 
 
 Dogs . . . . . u. 374 
 
 Doggett, W. S. . .611 
 
 Dow, Ezekiel .... 3ai, rM 
 
 James 317, 320, 365, 366, 429,439, 623 
 
 .Tonathan . ... 582 
 
 Col. Stevens M. 261, 321, n. 493, 647 
 
 Drafts . 285, 391-393 
 
 Drawing of lots . . 192,548 
 
 Dreams 327 
 
 Dresses of olden times 208, 231, 233, 260 
 
 310, 311 
 
 Drinks . 261,278,302,311,413,443 
 
 Drills . . ... 361 
 
 Drovers . . .269 
 
 Ducked ... . ji. 504 
 
 Dudley, Gov. J. . . 73-75, 86 
 
 Dustin, Gardner . . 277, '282 
 
 Mrs. Hannah 67, 68, n. 428 
 
 Dutch wagon . . . 361, 398 
 
 oven . . . 210 
 
 Dying ... . . 234, 601 
 
 E. 
 
 Eagles 253, 469, 494 
 
 Eames, Capt. Jeremiah 267, 270 
 
 Early settlers . . . 207-235 
 
 East Branch . . . 19 
 
 Eastman, Addison W. 382, 516, 545 
 
 Damon Y 506 
 
 Jesse . . 362 
 
 Jesse . ... 394 
 
 East-parte district . 320, 342, 667 
 
 regions . . . 326 
 
 song . . .668 
 
 Eating ... . . 307,412 
 
 Iiuman flesh . . 148, 131 
 
 Eaton, Ezra B 600,511 
 
 Ecclesiastical 257-262, 361-369, 422-430 
 541-644 
 
 Edgar, James 
 Education . 
 Egg-nogg 
 Elliott the apostle 
 Elections 
 Eleven mile tree 
 Ellsworth 
 
 Moses . 
 Emerson, Samuel 
 Equinoctial storm 
 Eva 
 
 Evens, Eev. Edward 
 
 Sergt. David 
 
 Exhibitions . 
 
 Expeditions against Indians 75-79,80-86 
 
 88-91, 93, 96, 118 
 
 to Warren 101, 110, 121-126 
 
 138, 182-186 
 
 Express business . . . 398 
 
 Fairbanks, Capt. Jabez : . 89 
 
 Fairs 173 
 
 Fairiea- 152,260 
 
 Falling trees .... 222, 294 
 Family Beoord, (aeB Genealogy.) 
 
 . 460, 451 
 
 . 313-321 
 
 . 444 
 
 . 66 
 
 178, 278, 329-334 
 
 192, 339 
 
 . 247 
 
 394, 433, 462, «. 470 
 
 277 
 
 . 184 
 
 . 566 
 
 426-428 
 
 149-151 
 
 516 
 
686 
 
 HISTORY OF WAEBElSr. 
 
 Famine .... 408 
 
 among Indians n. 49 
 
 among Rangers • 147-156 
 
 Farm worli 412, 420 
 
 Fashions in olden times 233, 260,310 
 
 Federal Constitution . . 3.58 
 
 Currency . . . 356 
 
 Feasts ... 38, 177, 256, 307 
 
 Fellows, Jonathan . 269, 293, 341, n. 422 
 
 Joseph . . . . ' . 321 
 
 Perkins . n. 392, 394 
 
 Samuel . n. 341, 441 
 
 Fifleld, Isaac 372 
 
 Fire-place . ... 309 
 
 Fires 1 245, 467-471 
 
 First land in the world . . 31 
 
 Fishes . 528 
 
 Fishing. . .36,235,379-383,417 
 
 Fiske, Chas. A. . . 506, 562 
 
 Fisk.Wm. H. . ... 381 
 
 Flanders, Samuel . . 343,425,558 
 Capt. Stephen 342, 373-376, 422 
 
 Flax 234 
 
 Flip ... .443 
 
 Floats 373 
 
 Floodwood company . . 299, 393 
 
 Flowers .... 242, 318-324 
 
 Foote, Cotton 513 
 
 Foote, Ellas . . 370 
 
 Levi B. . 321, 435 
 
 Forks district . . . .210,320 
 
 Forts at Coos . . . 100, 113, 118 
 
 Wentworth . .138 
 
 Foster, Jona. . . . n. 285 
 
 Fowling . . .36, 378, n. 379 
 
 Foxglove meadow . . 235, 516 
 
 Foxes .... 251, .370, 376 
 
 Freewill Baptists . . 364, 483-489 
 
 French, Dr. Alphonzo G. . 382, 481, 539 
 
 David A. . . . 638, 581 
 
 Dr.DavidC. 321,403,481,504,512 
 
 638, 545 
 
 John . . 321, 545 
 
 Joseph . 288, 405, 407 
 
 Mrs. Dick . . . .324 
 
 OscoH. ... .609 
 
 Beuben B. . 321,665 
 
 War . . 126-166 
 
 Freshets . 347, ?j. 391 
 
 Frogs . . .249,74.307,319,528 
 
 Frost . 408 
 
 Clouds . 677 
 
 Feathers . . .673 
 
 Funeral . . n. 426 
 
 first one . . . . 294 
 
 Sermon . . 365 
 
 Furniture . . 215 
 
 6?. 
 
 Game . 
 
 36, 209, 251, 370 
 
 Games . 
 
 . 301 , 309 
 
 Gardening . 
 
 . 414 
 
 Gardner, John 
 
 . 342 
 
 Geese . 
 
 . 378 
 
 Genealogies :— 
 
 
 Abbott 
 
 563 
 
 Barker 
 
 . 663 
 
 Bartlett 
 
 . 354 
 
 Batchelder . ■ 
 
 . 653 
 
 Bixby . 
 
 , 404 
 
 Soynton 
 
 . 654 
 
 Genealogies ;— 
 
 
 Bowles 
 
 286 
 
 Butler . 
 
 . 234 
 
 Clark . . 
 
 . 554 
 
 Clement 
 
 . 222, 224, 344 
 
 Clifford 
 
 . 654 
 
 Clough 
 
 . 387, 654 
 
 Copp 
 
 . 218 
 
 Dow 
 
 . 554 
 
 French 
 
 . 554 
 
 Roman 
 
 . 3t2 
 
 Jewell 
 
 556 
 
 Knight . 
 
 342 
 
 Libbey 
 
 . 655 
 
 Little . 
 
 . 341, 463, 556 
 
 Merrill . 231 
 
 , 233, 341, 555, 556 
 
 Patch . 
 
 211, 357 
 
 Pillsbnry . 
 
 . 566 
 
 Richardson 
 
 666 
 
 Welch . 
 
 . 341 
 
 Whitcher . 
 
 221, 230 
 
 Whiteman 
 
 . 394 
 
 Ghosts . 
 
 388, n. 439 
 
 Gilman, Daniel . 
 
 . 265 
 
 GIXCHE Manito 
 
 .39,71,171,185 
 
 Glen ponds 19, 182,235, 
 
 248, 254, 455, 514 
 
 Gods, Heathen . 
 
 . 186, 366 
 
 Goffe, Capt. John 
 
 92, 94, 130, 136 
 
 Golden tradition 
 
 . 153 
 
 Gookin, Maj. 
 
 . 61 
 
 Gospel . 
 
 174 
 
 Gould, John . 
 
 . 372 
 
 Gove, Capt. John 
 
 . 426 
 
 Graduates . 
 
 . 539-541 
 
 Grantees of AVarren . 
 
 . 170 
 
 Grave-yards 
 
 . 487-489 
 
 Greeley, Col. Jona. 166-200, 2S0, 223, 291 
 
 his Inn 
 
 11. 168,176,291 
 
 Grist-mill 
 
 240-242, 349, 500 
 
 Guns 
 
 265, 267 
 
 s. 
 
 
 Hackett, Capt. Wm. . 
 
 n. 225, 71. 339 
 
 Handsleds . 
 
 238, 241, 265 
 
 Harboard, Jona. 
 
 . 311 
 
 Harnesses . 
 
 . 506 
 
 Harriman, Mrs. James 
 
 . 500 
 
 Harty, Capt. John D.. 
 
 . 394 
 
 Haying . 
 
 219, 258, 416 
 
 Hawkins, Onley . 
 
 . 354 
 
 Hazen, Capt. John 
 
 . 167, 179 
 
 Head, Gen. Natt. 
 
 . 610 
 
 Hearse .... 
 
 71.518 
 
 Heath, Dr. Horatio . 
 
 . 321,434 
 
 William . 
 
 230, 264, 287, 293 
 
 Heights of mountains 
 
 . .563 
 
 Hermits 
 
 . 235, 478 
 
 Hidden, Ebenezer 
 
 341 
 
 John 
 
 . 341 
 
 High Street . 
 
 . 362 
 
 Height-o'-land, . 
 
 20,325,386 
 
 Height-c'-Ianders 
 
 . 388 
 
 Heiglit-o'laud district 
 Highways, (see Roads.) 
 
 . 320 
 
 
 Highway surveyors . 
 
 . 279, 281 
 
 Hilton, Col. Winthrop 
 
 76, 80 
 
 Hinohson, John 236, 262-266, 259, «. 264 
 
 
 293 
 
 Hobart, Col. David . 
 
 . 280, 286 
 
 Hogreeves, or Hog constables ' 281 
 
INBEX. 
 
 587 
 
 Holman, Eev. Sullivan . . .484 
 H .mes, Barnabas .... 287 
 Homan, Caleb . . 342, 365, n. 414 
 
 Mrs. Caleb . . 314, 425 
 
 Horses . 357 
 
 Hotels . . . 204, •,.. 206, 348, 387 
 
 House burnt by rebel . 271 
 
 Houses ... . . 240 
 
 Howard. Col. Joshua . . 1911 
 
 Kice 425 
 
 Hunters . . 163, 158, 235, 250-266 
 Hunters' camp . . . 159, 236 
 
 on Moosehlllock . 229, 263 
 Hunting by Indians . . . ;?,, 37 
 
 party . . 103,203,255 
 
 Hunting 
 
 . 260-266 
 
 Hurricane . 
 
 . 409, 671, 676 
 
 i brook 
 
 . 260, 562 
 
 falls . 
 
 662 
 
 Husking bees 
 
 . 419 
 
 Hutchins, Gordon 
 
 287 
 
 T. 
 
 
 Indians 
 
 24 
 
 Burials 
 
 . n. 40 
 
 Camp . 
 
 . 128 
 
 Captives 
 
 . 133 
 
 Captured . 
 
 . 62 
 
 Fights 92, 95-98, IIB, 127-128, 145-148 
 
 Friendly . 
 
 81-84 
 
 Gods . 
 
 39 
 
 miled . 
 
 116 
 
 Laws . 
 
 .71.52 
 
 Leagne 
 
 42, 51 
 
 Legends 
 
 . 29 
 
 Marriages 
 
 40 
 
 Massacres 
 
 92 
 
 Names 
 
 . 26 
 
 Oratory 
 
 64-56, 74, 112 
 
 Keligion 
 
 . 39 
 
 Bevels 
 
 . 44 
 
 Rock . 
 
 26,71,242,294,562 
 
 Trail . 20, 149, 183, 189-19]; 340 
 
 Tribes . 
 
 . 42 
 
 War . 
 
 . 46, 69, 75 
 
 in Warren . 
 
 26,27,33,224,562 
 
 Indictments . 
 
 . 333, 343 
 
 Infantry 
 
 297-303, 390-397 
 
 Inns, (see Taverns.) 
 
 
 Insects . 
 
 . 417, 629 
 
 Interregnum 
 
 . 331 
 
 Introductory 
 
 . 17 
 
 Inventories . 
 
 282, 551 
 
 Iron mine . 
 
 389 
 
 J. 
 
 
 Jackson, Dr. Chas. T. 
 
 . 349 
 
 Geo. W. 
 
 470, 505 
 
 Jail broken . 
 
 . 117 
 
 JeweU, Samuel 
 
 . 413, 555 
 
 Levi F. . 
 
 . 372, 500, 502 
 
 Jewelry 
 
 .506 
 
 Jewett, J. S. 
 
 . 511 
 
 Jobildunc ravine 
 
 . 497 
 
 Johnson, James . 
 
 . 133, 526 
 
 Jones, Joseph . 
 
 . . . 364 
 
 Joseelyn, John, Gent. 
 
 . 36, 158 
 
 Judges . ... 
 
 . 279-281, 660 
 
 Jugglery 
 
 53,51,517 
 
 Jumper 
 
 . 226 
 
 Jurors, Grand . 
 
 . 329 
 
 K. 
 
 Kancamagus ... 64, no 
 
 Kelley pond . . 19, 326, 499 
 
 William . . . 427, '500 
 
 Keyes, Ezra W. . . . n. 405, 486 
 
 Keyes Ledge, or Mt.Helen, 20,27, 317-320 
 
 Keezer, Lemuel 337, 348, «. 368, n. 387 
 
 n. 400, n. 414, n. 427, n. 433, n. 504 
 
 Lemuel, Jr. . . 406, 444 
 
 Kimball, Cyrus C. ... 381 
 
 Heber . . . 490, 643 
 
 Joseph .... 277, 337 
 
 KINEO, Mt. . . . 18, 264, 663 
 
 King George's war . . 91-98 
 
 Phillip's war . . 60-62 
 
 William's war . . 88 
 
 King's Woods 171, 183 
 
 Knapp, Arthur . . .611 
 
 Knight, Betsey . ... 426 
 
 Hannah B. . 259, 363, n. 656 
 
 Hill. . . 19 
 
 Nathaniel . . . 316, 362 
 
 Samuel . .249, 288, n. 312, 43!) 
 
 Mrs. Samuel . . 344, n. 363 
 
 Stevens ... , 420 
 
 L. 
 
 Ladd, Capt. Daniel . . .96 
 
 Trueworthy . . . .166 
 Land given to settlers 211, 220, 222, 226 
 
 199 
 
 313 
 
 473, 600 
 
 360, 362 
 
 given to Col. Greeley 
 
 given to Phillips White 
 
 given to Schools 
 Lane, Col. Chas. . 
 Lawbook 
 
 Lawsuits 243, 279, 33S , 461-464, 482 
 
 Lawyers . . 462, 481, .535, 642 
 
 Lead mine . • . . . 44f>, 462 
 
 Leathers, Vowell 
 Leavitt, Benj. 
 Leonai'd, Charles 
 
 George E. 
 Libbey, Ezra Walton 
 Dr. Ezra B. 
 
 George 313, 373, 392, 406, 606, 555 
 
 Hazeii 
 
 John 
 
 Luke 
 
 Nathaniel 
 
 Obadiah 
 
 Walter 
 
 Library . 
 
 Lilting at stiff heels 
 
 Linen wheel 
 
 Lines settled 
 
 . 376, 469 
 182, 189, 192 
 
 . 487, 520 
 410, 481, 620 
 
 . 610,667 
 413, 606 
 
 481, 490 
 
 . 343, 4.58, 655 
 
 . 288, 407, 555 
 
 307, 310, 392, 409 
 
 . 413 
 
 . 505 
 
 . 569 
 
 . 302 
 
 . 234, 245 
 
 337, 511 
 
 Little, Amos 341, 385, 404, 410, 423, 427, 443 
 Benj. . . . 214,217,457 
 
 Benj. K. . . . 379,514 
 
 George . . . n. 463, 555 
 George A. . . . 463, n. 541 
 Dr. Jesse ?<.. 231, 3B1, 403, ». 463 
 611, 538, 545 
 Jonathan . . . 321, n. 476 
 
 Joseph M 606 
 
 Thos. B. . . . n. 463, 6()9 
 
 Lock .428 
 
 Log forts 138 
 
 Log houses . . . 210,216-224,236 
 Loggerhead . . ... 278 
 Longevity 652 
 
688 
 
 HISTORY OP WARREN. 
 
 . 227 
 
 . 558 
 
 102, 222, 648, 550 
 
 337 
 
 . 257 
 
 192 
 
 . 196 
 
 n. 170, 313 
 
 88-91, 98 
 
 288, 
 
 .211, 
 
 u. 396 
 
 11.396 
 
 . 313 
 
 u. 320 
 
 . 359 
 
 n. 245 
 
 . 476-477 
 
 227, 264, 288, 293 
 
 277, 392 
 
 . 416, 505 
 
 227,260,277,2113 
 
 . 416 
 
 418 
 
 . 511 
 
 76, 79 
 
 u. 472, 563 
 
 Loons 
 Lost 
 
 Lots drawn 
 lost 
 
 for ministers 
 run 
 
 I'or settlers 
 for schools . 
 Lovewell, Capt. John 
 
 flght ■ 
 Low, Asa 
 
 Jacol) . 
 John . 
 Lower school-house 
 Lufkin, Levi 
 Lug-pole 
 Lumber trade 
 Lnud, Ephraim 
 Ephraim 
 Hosea 
 Joseph 
 Stephen . 
 Stephen . 
 Stevens Merrill 
 Lyuian Caleb 
 Lyon, John E. 
 
 M. 
 
 Maluirin, Capt.' Ephraim H. . . 392 
 
 Mail 265, 398-403 
 
 Mann, John . .... 212 
 
 Manulactures . . . 499-507 
 
 Manitou, (see Gitche Manito.) 
 
 Map ol Warren . 16, 171, 336, 355, 448 
 
 Maple sugar . . 186, 410 
 
 JIarkets .... .173 
 
 March of Rogers' Rangers . 142-156 
 
 Marriage, the first . . . 279 
 
 Marsh, David G. . . . n. 493, 669 
 
 MarstoD Hill . . . 20-28 
 
 John . 255, 279, 293 
 
 John D. . . 470 
 
 Joseph B . ' 3."i0 
 
 Sarah . 221 
 
 Martin brook . . 183, 451 
 
 May, Col. Silas 398-401 
 
 May trainings . . . . 297 
 
 McCarter, Antony . 478-479, 503 
 
 McDeuffe, Gen. John 384, 445-447, 454 
 
 Meader, Paul . . 342, n. 500, 660 
 
 Meader Pond, (see Wachipauka pond.) 
 
 Meeting-house 260, 358, 422-430, 484-4S9 
 
 Meeting at Plymouth . . .336 
 
 of I'roprietors 176, 335 
 
 reliffious . 2,5i^ 
 
 town . . 277-279, 351 
 
 MerrUl, Abel ii. 341, 374, 423, 442 
 
 Amos L. . . . 372, 379 
 
 Anson 321, 366, 386, 426, 445, n. 462 
 
 603 
 
 Benjamin [390, 
 
 426, 
 
 435, 444, n 
 
 .445 
 .500 
 
 brookj . 
 
 
 . 19, n 
 
 417 
 
 Deaf Caleb . 
 
 
 
 437 
 
 Capt. Daniel . 
 
 368 
 
 , n. 387, n 
 
 400 
 
 
 
 427, 483 
 
 51)1) 
 
 David . 
 
 
 . 287 
 
 293 
 
 Ira . 
 
 
 321, 486 
 
 500 
 
 Col. Isaac 321 
 
 470, 
 
 481, 487, 
 
 502, 
 
 
 
 612 
 
 516 
 
 Isaac 
 
 . 
 
 363, n 
 
 414 
 
 Men-ill, Jonathan 232, 238, 569, 279, 284 
 
 329-334, 390, 393, 405, 422-428, 60O 
 
 Joseph 231, 344, 348, 386-390, 400 
 
 406, 436, 437, 500, 665 
 
 Capt. Joseph .- . 363, 419 
 
 Rev. .Joseph . . , 321, 639 
 
 Joshua n. 233, 252-256, 284, n. 386 
 
 Lemuel. . . 321, n. 439, 541 
 
 Gen. Michael P. 321, n. 385, n. 429 
 
 646 
 
 Rev. Xathaniel n. 321, 364, 386 
 
 Kathaniel, 2d 28', 321.491, n. 493 
 
 party . . 278, 334, 349 
 
 Robert E. . n. 363 
 
 Russel . . n.471, n. 493 
 
 Samuel . 213, 327, 342, 379, 386 
 
 Samuel . . . . n. 363, 406 
 
 Samuel L. 435, 445, n. 461,481,486 
 
 Stevens 231, 233, 237, 240-246, 252 
 
 -264, 267, 269, 283, 2!:6, 315, 346 
 
 364, 437^39 
 
 Stevens, 2d 
 
 True 
 
 William . 
 Meteors 
 Jletliodists 
 Mica 
 
 Middle cascades 
 MiKASEOTA brook 
 Military company 
 
 officers . 
 Mills . 193, 220-222, 
 
 Hills, Anna . 
 James . 
 
 232, 456, 637 
 
 . 449-453 
 
 . 394, 445 
 
 . 404 
 
 68, 483-489, 541 
 
 n. 316, 453 
 
 . 562 
 
 19,20,239,258 
 
 297-303 
 
 . 546-547 
 
 37-240, 349, 506 
 
 . 310-312 
 
 n. 501 
 
 John 215, 245, 252-256, 259, 263, 287 
 
 294-296 
 
 John, Jr. 215, 241, 259, 269, 293, 294 
 
 -296 
 
 Widow" . . 353 
 
 Millers . .... 601 
 
 Minerals . 20, 241, 249,449-463, 530 
 
 Mines 449-453 
 
 Ministers, Free-will Baptist 286, 364, 365 
 
 642 
 
 Methodist 362, 363, 367, 368, 408 
 
 489, 541 
 
 Universalist 
 
 Miracles 
 
 Mist Mt. 
 
 Jloat 
 
 Moderators . 
 Mohawk Indians 
 Money .... 
 
 MONTAWAMPATEE 
 
 Montgomery, Gen. John 
 Morey, Col.'israel 
 Morse, Robert . 
 Moose 111, 122, 212, 224, 2 
 
 Moose yard . 
 Moosehide breeches . 
 Moosehillock district . 
 
 falls 
 
 Mt. 18, 71, 151, 229, 253, 467 
 -460,490-498,663,669 
 
 Mt. road . . 663 
 
 483, 542 
 
 . 78, n. 363 
 
 18,663 
 
 n.317 
 
 278, 282, 633 
 
 42, 65, 76-79 
 
 . 356 
 
 . 67, 526 
 
 . 390, 392 
 
 . 297 
 
 . 400, 401 
 
 253-256, 372 
 
 -376, n. 417 
 
 . 253-255 
 
 221, n. 266 
 
 320, 342 
 
 ".44 
 
 Moosemeat 
 Moosilauke house 
 Morrill, Abraham 
 
 John 
 Mosely, Capt. 
 Mother Cluck 
 
 272 
 
 56,'47o, n. 493 
 
 . 189 
 
 221,231,279 
 
 . 61 
 
 . 564 
 
589 
 
 Moulton "brook .... 235, 515 
 Mount Oarr, (see Can- mountain.) 
 Mountains .... 495-498, 563 
 Mt. Helen, (see Keyes Ledge.) 
 
 Mnsic 
 Muster day 
 Mythology 
 
 300, 395, 401 
 395-397 
 366, 367 
 
 iV. 
 
 Name of War-ren . . 171 
 
 Naming buildings n. 425 
 
 Nashua Indians, . . . n. 24. 23 
 
 Necessaries brought from Plymouth 224 
 
 Negroes, stealing . . los 
 
 . New emission of money . . .356 
 
 New Hampshire Grants 159-161, 164, 289 
 
 Newichannook Indians . . n. 24 
 
 Night ... . 312 
 
 Niles, .lesse ... 354 
 
 Nathaniel ... .277 
 
 NIPMUCK Indians 24, 26. 28, 42, n. 70, 87 
 
 -92, 99, 113 
 
 Northern Indians . 61 
 
 Parker, Rev. L. W. 
 Piirties . 
 Partridges . 
 Pascataquaukes 
 Passaoonawav 
 Patch brook 
 
 bridge 
 Patclibreuckland 
 Patch, Daniel 
 
 David 
 
 hill 
 
 220 
 
 Lights 
 Noyes' Bridge 
 Enoch 
 rToseph 
 Number Four 
 
 o. 
 
 
 
 202, 374 
 
 n. 433 
 
 414 
 
 . 614 
 
 112, 155 
 
 Oak falls 
 Ocean . 
 Officers B. C. & i 
 
 I.B.I 
 
 82 
 I. 
 
 191 
 
 326, 500 
 
 498, 575 
 
 n.472 
 
 military . . 296 
 
 Proprietors . 177 
 
 Town .... 278, 530 
 
 U. S., State and County . 560 
 
 Oils and essences . . . .504 
 
 Oldfashioned flre-place 309 
 
 Old well . . 296 
 
 Old White Face . . . 371,372 
 
 Oliverian brook 18, 20, 82, 129, 149, n. 190 
 
 n. 229 
 Notch . . 20,124 
 
 Omens . , . 431 
 
 Oratoiy. . . . 54,112 
 
 Ore hill ... . 449, 453 
 
 Ore hill brook 
 
 Origin of the Pemigewassetts 
 Orn, -loseph .... 
 Osgood, Capt. James 
 OssiPEE Indians 
 
 Owl's Head Mt. 
 Ox Teams 
 
 29 
 
 . 354 
 
 n. 267 
 
 n. 25 
 
 18. 563 
 
 305, 308 
 
 .546 
 
 278, 329^334 
 
 251, 378, 379 
 
 u. 24, 42 
 
 . 51-57,110 
 
 19,477 
 
 . 347, 348 
 
 . 320, 325, 465 
 
 356, 392, 446, 456 
 
 n. 393 
 
 19, 342 
 
 Jaoob207, 209, 210, 245,253,321,372 
 
 -375 
 
 .loseph 207-213, 225, 2,31,240, 260-256 
 
 263, 271, 284, 351, 372, n. 376, 566 
 
 Joseph, Jr. 213, n 385, 393, 423 
 
 n. 461 
 
 Paddles . • n. 35 
 
 Page, Enoch 196, 220, 225, 338 
 
 Gov. John . . .392 
 
 John . 166-185, 203, 237 
 
 .Tohn, .Ir. . .• . 166-171,188 
 Joseph . 178,196,220,233,338 
 Samuel B. 462, 533, 534, 535, 541, 663 
 Pall ... . 353 
 
 Palmer, Kev. John E. . . 483 
 
 ■ Panics . . .... 289 
 
 Panthers . . . 208,370,529 
 
 Parade . . . . 360 
 
 Paring bees 464-466 
 
 Mrs. Joseph 
 
 . 272, 288 
 
 party 
 
 278, 334, 349 
 
 Pau<ius .... 
 
 89-91 
 
 Pauijers 
 
 . 351-363 
 
 Pawtucicet Indians 
 
 . 25 
 
 Pearlash 
 
 . 503 
 
 Peddlers 
 
 . 395-397 
 
 Peg factory . 
 
 . 502 
 
 Peeling .... 
 
 212, 337, 339 
 
 Peer . ... 
 
 . 103 
 
 Pehaungxjn 
 
 n. 70 
 
 PEMIGKWAS8ETT Indians 23-29,49, 68, 99 
 
 land 
 
 28, 61 
 
 Penliallow's Indian Wars 
 
 80,89 
 
 Pexnacook Indians . 
 
 24, 60 
 
 Pensions 
 
 . 287 
 
 People bewitched 
 
 435 
 
 Pequawkee Indians 
 
 n. 25, 89-91 
 
 Perusing the law 
 
 . 352 
 
 Pestilence . 
 
 . 49 
 
 Peters, Absalom . 289, 331 
 
 , 364, n. 384 
 
 Peters, Dr. Joseph 
 
 . 354,536 
 
 Philip, King 
 
 . 60 
 
 Phillips, Lt. William . 
 
 n. 149 
 
 Photographers . 
 
 . 606 
 
 Physicians . 
 
 354, 636-539 
 
 Picked hill , 
 
 . 19 
 
 Picnics ... 
 
 319 
 
 Pierce, Franklin . 
 
 . 462 
 
 Pine hill 
 
 . 20 
 
 District . 
 
 . 320 
 
 Pillsbury, Moses W. . 
 
 501,605,561 
 
 Kichard 
 
 . 416 
 
 Richard 
 
 346, 416, 656 
 
 Thomas 
 
 385, 416, 436 
 
 Pitching quoits . 
 
 302 
 
 Pitch-pipe 
 
 367 
 
 Pizen .... 
 
 . 301 
 
 Plague ... 
 
 47-60, 404 
 
 Plan of the town 
 
 339, 355 
 
 of Forts at Coos 
 
 . 100 
 
 Plantation .... 
 
 . 173 
 
 Plants . 
 
 . 318, 529 
 
 PLAUSAWA 
 
 . 114-116 
 
 Plays . 
 Pod teams . 
 
 301, 309, 465 
 
 . 386 
 
 Poets of Warren 
 
 . 564 
 
 Politics 
 
 . 357 
 
 Pomeroy, Robert 
 
 . 151, 526 
 
 William . 
 
 . 602 
 
 Ponds 
 
 . 19, 499 
 
 Population . 
 
 . 635 
 
 Postmasters 
 
 403, 642 
 
 Post-office 
 
 . 402, 403 
 
 Potash 
 
 . SOS 
 
590 
 
 HISTOET OF ■VTABKBN. 
 
 Potter, Bphraim . 
 
 
 366, 416 
 
 Hon. 0. B. . 
 
 
 n.'55 
 
 Pound 
 
 
 . 350 
 
 Poultry . 
 
 
 . 306 
 
 Powder aud ball 
 
 265, n. 290 
 
 Powers, Rer. Grant 
 
 . 120 
 
 190, 340 
 
 Capt. Peter . 
 
 120-125 
 
 190, 401 
 
 Rev. Peter 258 
 
 260-262 
 
 328, 422 
 
 Pow-wow 
 
 
 . 90 
 
 Preachers . 
 
 n 
 
 427, 541 
 
 Preaching . 
 
 
 258, 363 
 
 pay for 
 
 
 n. 427 
 
 Prescott, George W. 
 
 '. 403 
 
 414, 445 
 
 Presented . 
 
 
 . 333 
 
 Prime . 
 
 
 . 289 
 
 Proclamations . 
 
 
 160 
 
 money 
 
 
 . 174 
 
 Produce 
 
 
 308, 386 
 
 Proprietors . 
 
 21 
 
 170, 338 
 
 Camp 
 
 
 183, 189 
 
 Meetings 168, 
 
 178, 180 
 
 185, 188 
 192 
 
 Records 
 
 
 177, 194 
 
 Taxes 
 
 179 
 
 188, 193 
 
 Prospect House . 
 
 
 493-498 
 
 Pulling teeth 
 
 
 n. 400 
 
 Punch 
 
 
 167, 443 
 
 Pungs . 
 
 
 386 
 
 Putor platters 
 
 
 . 284 
 
 Putnam, Geo. P. 
 
 
 536, 541 
 
 Queen Anne's War . r3-79 
 
 Quilting bees . . . 462 
 
 Qnincy, lion. .Tosiah 469, n. 481 
 
 Quit rents . . .166 
 
 QUOCHECO . . . 66-68 
 
 Jl. 
 
 Rabbits . 171 
 
 Races .... 343 
 
 Rait on the Connecticut . 154 
 
 Railroad . . 472-477 
 
 Raising bees 424 
 
 Kamsey, Mrs. Betsey 365, 425 
 
 Daniel . 320, 372 
 
 Ransom money . . . 106 
 
 Rattlesnake Mt. . . . 122, 401 
 
 Rebels . . .... 264 
 
 Red-oak hill . . 18, 436.438 
 
 Regiments, old 13th . . 392, 395 
 
 12th . . 297 
 
 Religion ... . 174 
 
 of the Indiatis ... 39 
 Religious meetings . . 257-263 
 
 Report of Surveyor Leavitt . . 185 
 Representatives . . . 280, 293, 633 
 Reptiles ... .528 
 
 Requisites 340-359 
 
 Reservation . . . 165, 174, 197, 512 
 Retreat of Rogers' rangers . 147-156 
 Revolution .... 200, 263-293 
 Richardson, Nathaniel . . 392, 413 
 Capt. Stephen 260, 409, 433 
 
 Ride and tie 436 
 
 Riding post 265 
 
 Rindge, Isaac 200 
 
 Roads . 20,109,188,191,222,333,340 
 
 345 
 Rocks . .... 530 
 
 Rocky falls ... .252 
 
 Rogers' Rangers . . . 137-156 
 
 MaJ. Robert . 110, 136-156, ISO 
 Romney .... 211, n. 469 
 Roots, Crooks, and Daleys . . 212 
 Root Dr. Levi .... 354, 537 
 Rum .... 265, 346, 388 
 
 Runaway pond . 186,219 
 
 Running the gauntlet . . . 105 
 Running town lines . . 182, 220 
 
 s. 
 
 Sabbatis 
 
 
 107, 114^116 
 
 Sabin, Rev. Elijah R. 
 
 
 362, 422 
 
 Sable . 
 
 
 209,.370 
 
 Salamanders 
 
 
 298, 528 
 
 Sale of property to pay taxes . . 283 
 
 Salmon .... 
 
 
 209,241,659 
 
 Sanborn. MorriUJ. , 
 
 
 473, n. 506 
 
 Sawheganet falls . 
 
 
 . 122 
 
 Sawtelle district . 
 
 
 . 320 
 
 Saw-miUs 
 
 193 
 
 220, 237, 499 
 
 Scalping David Stinson 
 
 
 . 105 
 
 Scalps . 
 
 
 . 95, 105 
 
 Schools 
 
 175 
 
 313-321, 517 
 
 books 
 
 
 . 316 
 
 committee 
 
 
 534 
 
 districts . 
 
 
 . 320 
 
 honses 
 
 
 . 316-321 
 
 teachers . 
 
 
 . 314. 321 
 
 Scouts .... 
 
 
 77 
 
 Seal of ^Yarren 
 
 
 . 351 
 
 Selectmen . . 279, 
 
 281, 
 
 330 390,530 
 
 Sentimental Acrostic 
 
 
 . 565 
 
 Sentinel Mt. 
 
 
 18, 338, 563 
 
 Settlements 
 
 
 . 207 
 
 Settlers .... 
 
 . 
 
 . 212 
 
 Set of drills . 
 
 
 . 351 
 
 Set of raeasui-es 
 
 
 . 350 
 
 Seven Cascades . 
 
 
 152, 202, 497 
 
 Seven years war . 
 
 
 . 126-156 
 
 Sham-flght . 
 
 
 76, 396 
 
 Shaw, Henry 
 
 
 . 293 
 
 Sheep marks 
 
 Sheldon, Lieut. Charles 
 
 
 414 
 
 
 . 510 
 
 Henry H. . 
 
 
 . 661 
 
 Shingle-miil . 
 
 
 . 501,603 
 
 Shoemakers . 
 
 
 505 
 
 Shooting match 
 
 
 . 306 
 
 Silver mine . 
 
 
 . 449 
 
 rill . . . 
 
 
 . 344 
 
 Singing . 
 
 
 260, n. 362 
 
 Signs .... 
 
 
 348, n. 389 
 
 Smith, David . 251 
 
 321 
 
 416.511,534 
 
 Capt. John 
 
 
 41. 47 
 
 Simeon 
 
 226, 
 
 267, 282, 337 
 
 Snakes .... 
 
 
 . 628 
 
 Society, School-house 
 
 
 n. 341 
 
 Soldiers from Warren 
 
 264, 
 
 285, 293, 390 
 509 
 
 Solitude 
 
 
 99, 145, 203 
 
 Sorcery . 
 
 
 .53 
 
 SOUHEGAN IncHans . 
 
 
 n. 24 
 
 Spaulding. Daniel 
 
 
 190 
 
 Spelling schools . 
 
 
 . 617 
 
 Spiders .... 
 
 
 . 628 
 
 Spinning flax and wool 
 
 
 . 360 
 
 Spotted fever 
 
 
 . 404-407 
 
 Spring . 
 
 101 
 
 298, 409, 410 
 
 Squamscott Indians 
 
 n. 24 
 
INDEX. 
 
 591 
 
 Stage . 
 
 398-400, n. 401 
 
 drivers 
 
 . 400, 402 
 
 horses 
 
 400 
 
 Starch factories . 
 
 . B02 
 
 Stark, Geu. John . 103, 109, 139, 264 
 
 Stars 
 
 . 312. .374 
 
 Stevens Capt. . 76,112,130,142 
 
 Maj. True . 365, 
 
 423,458, n. 501 
 
 St.Fraucis ludians.see A.rosaKUQticooks. 
 
 Stinson, David . 
 
 . 103-105 
 
 Stint 
 
 . 658 
 
 Stock of provision 
 
 . 290 
 
 Stocks . 
 
 280 
 
 Stone, Col. . 
 
 . 396 
 
 Stores 
 
 441-448, 561 
 
 Storm .... 
 
 185.391,570 
 
 Straggler 
 
 . 288 
 
 Strangers, well dressed 
 
 268 
 
 Streamy Valley district 
 
 . 320 
 
 String bean company 
 
 299, 393 
 
 Sugaring 
 
 . 410 
 . . B58 
 
 Suicide . 
 
 Summer 
 
 . 258, 322 
 
 Summit 
 
 323, 476 
 
 District . 
 
 . 320 
 
 Superintending School Committee . 634 
 
 Surplus Eevenne , . .466 
 
 Surveyors . . . 179,189,339,384 
 
 of highways 279 
 
 Swain, Darius . . 493 
 
 Darius O. . . . 510 
 
 Swallows . ; ... 343 
 
 Swingling flax . 274, 315 
 
 Table . 
 
 215, 218 
 
 Tailors 
 
 . 233, 605 
 
 Tanning 
 
 . 602 
 
 Tarleton Lake 
 
 18, 262. 389 
 
 Taurentine Indians 
 
 42-52 
 
 Taverns 
 
 168, 223, 348, 387 
 
 keepers 
 
 . 223, 348 
 
 Tax collectors 
 
 . 281-284 
 
 Taxes . 
 
 . 356, 661 
 
 of proprietors . 
 
 . 179. 188 
 
 paid in produce 
 Teams to market 
 
 . 356 
 
 . 343, 386 
 
 Teamsters . 
 
 . 343, 349, 386 
 
 Telegraph 
 
 ijll 
 
 Temperance 
 
 . 513 
 
 Tempest 
 
 184,391,571, 676 
 
 The serpent . 
 
 . 567 
 
 Thesbian Lyric . 
 
 . 666 
 
 Thurston, Asa . 
 
 . 403, 445, 502 
 
 TiTAGAW, Francis 
 
 .103 
 
 Todd, Capt. Andrew 
 
 . 96 
 
 Toddy .... 
 
 . 443 
 
 ToU'ord, Capt. John 
 
 . 109 
 
 Toll-gate 
 
 . 386 
 
 Tolling the bell . 
 
 486 
 
 Tomahawks . 
 
 . 34 
 
 Tories . 
 
 . 264, 268 
 
 Tornado 
 
 . 409 
 
 Torture . 
 
 44, 45 
 
 Town books . 
 
 330, 350 
 
 Clerks 
 
 . 278, 532 
 
 Honse 
 
 . 486 
 
 lines . 
 
 . 168, 337 
 
 lots . 
 
 . 192, 548 
 
 map . 
 
 16, 171,336,448 
 
 meetings ' 
 
 . 277, 282, 657 
 
 officers 
 
 278,281,530-634 
 
 Uniforms 
 'Universalists 
 Utensils of Indians 
 Upper school-house 
 
 Townships laid out 
 
 Tradeers 
 
 Training day, first one 
 
 field 
 Trapping 
 Treasurer, county 
 
 proprietors 
 town 
 Trccothick . 
 Trees .... 
 Trout 
 
 True, Eph. . 
 Truscott, Samuel 
 Tunnel brook 
 Turkey shoot 
 Turnpike, Coos . 
 
 Coventry 
 Turtles . 
 Two Brothers monument 
 Tythingman 281 
 
 Tyng, Capt. . 
 
 . 164 
 
 441-448, 661 
 
 297-303 
 
 . 359 
 
 159, 508 
 
 560 
 
 . 179 
 
 281 
 
 212 
 
 . 1^29 
 
 . 317, 381 
 
 . 219, 297 
 
 460 
 
 . 263 
 
 . 306 
 
 384 
 
 528 
 
 . 74 
 
 n. 365, 366, 429 
 
 80, 89 
 
 299 
 
 483-489, 542 
 
 . 34 
 
 n. 320 
 
 366 
 
 Varnum, John 
 
 Vendue Wi 
 
 Village school . . . . .320 
 
 Volunteers for the army . 264, 392, 394 
 Voters . . . 277, 285, 333, 341, 354 
 
 w. 
 
 WACHIPAUKA pond 18, 128, 138, 239, 382 
 Wagon, first in town . . . 361,398 
 Waldron, Eiohai-d . . .62, 64-68 
 
 Wars 201, 508, 611 
 
 Mexican . . .608 
 
 of 1S12 . . . 391-394 
 
 of Revolution . . 263-293 
 
 Warning out of toAvn . . .353 
 Warren Admiral ... 17, 172 
 Warren . . . 102, 158, 168, 171, k76 
 WatEENOMEE 69-72, 75, 83, llO, 190, 493 
 
 608 
 
 falls . . .202, 375, 562 
 
 Mt. 18, 197, 512, 563 
 
 Water shed ... . 386, 476 
 
 Weare, Meshech . . 277 
 
 Wearing a hat . . .310 
 
 Weaving 346 
 
 Webster, Jeremy . . . 177, 185 
 
 Slide Mt. . . 18, 372, 663 
 
 Weeks district . . .320 
 
 Enoch K. 420, 446, 463 
 
 . Enoch fl.,,Tr 560 
 
 Henry W. . 471, n. 486,600,661 
 
 IraM. . . . .321, 511 
 
 Mrs. Sarah . . . 434, 462 
 
 Weights and measures . . 350 
 
 Welch, Aaron 341 
 
 - Daniel 558 
 
 Wentworth, Gov. B. 91, 129, 162, 167, 194 
 
 Gov. John 194,197,200 
 
 Wetamoo . . . . 57, 525 
 
 Wheelwrights 606 
 
592 
 
 HISTORY OF WARREN. 
 
 Whipping tile cat . . 505 
 
 Whippingpost and etocltfi . . 28fl 
 
 Whipple, JJr. A. A. . 481, 538, 545 
 
 Dr. Thos. . 400, 405, 637 
 
 Col. Thos. J. 462, 616, 538 
 
 Walter . . .502 
 
 Whitcher, Chase 229, 266, 362 
 
 .Jolin . 221, 285 
 
 .Joseph . 264, 293 
 
 Levi C. . 486, 500 
 
 Keuben 260,277,284 
 
 Sarah . . 322-328 
 
 White, Phillips . . .196-200,265 
 
 Whitemau, C. WiUiam . 342, 412 
 
 Stephen . n. 394, 456, 604 
 
 William . . . n. 394 
 
 Whiton, John M. . 486,500,502 
 
 Wigwams . . .34, n. 35 
 
 Wild-cat . . 343, 626 
 
 Wild hound .... 465 
 
 Willey Nathan . . .433 
 
 Window shades . ... 502 
 
 Winter .... 202; 305, 442 
 
 Witches . . . 225,431-440 
 
 Wi.VNECOWETT Indians . n. 25 
 
 WiN.NEPisSAUKEE Indians n. 24 
 
 Wolf's headfaUs . . . 192, 562 
 
 Wolves, 
 
 WONALANCET 
 
 Wrestling . 
 
 Wyatt hill . 
 Hoi) art 
 Vanness 
 
 Yards . 
 Young Calel) 
 
 Zinc mine 
 
 212,216,237,370,458 
 
 56, n. 60-63, 65 
 
 . 302, 557 
 
 . 20 
 
 . 479-482, 501, n. 504 
 
 478-482, n. 504 
 
 264-256 
 285, 293 
 
 z. 
 
 THE EXB. 
 

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