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 Cornell University Library 
 F 44C7 W18 
 
 Chronicles of an old New Enaand fariti; t 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 028 813 058 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028813058 
 
Soac/j/^ /d. ^)a{/u>i , 
 
€brcinicle$ of an Oia new Gngland Tartu 
 
 THE 
 
 HOUSE AND FARM 
 
 OF THE FIRST MINISTERJ^n^ 
 
 ' i I' If /! ij y 
 
 OF . 
 
 CONCORD, N. H. 
 1726-1906 
 
 BY 
 
 Joseph B, Walker 
 
 ' Good husbandmen must moil and toil, 
 
 To lay to live, by laboured field; 
 Their wives, at home, must keep such coil, 
 As their like acts may profit yield." 
 
 Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of 
 Good Husbandry, Edition of 1 S80. 
 
 Concord, N. H. 
 1906 
 
A. z^t Ut<=\U 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The possibility that, a continuous record of An Old New 
 England Farm, from its clearing from the primeval forest on 
 through a period of one hundred and eighty years, might inter- 
 est some hard-fisted brother farmer, has suggested the collec- 
 tion into a volume of the three following papers, prepared for 
 three different occasions. 
 
 J. B. W. 
 
 Concord, N. H., May i, 1906. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 House. 
 
 House. Garrisons in 1746. Erection of House. Occupancy. 
 Interior Construction. Second Proprietor. Early Visitors. Third 
 Proprietor. Old Library, Pictures. Memorial Stones. Shade 
 Trees. 
 
 Farm. — Part I. 
 
 Farm of First Minister. Settlement of the Plantation of 
 Pennycook. Boundary Line between Massachusetts and New 
 Hampshire. Survey of Township in 1726. First Minister a 
 Proprietor. First Religious Service in Pennycook. First 
 Grass Cut. The Plantation. Passaconaway. Waternummons. 
 Wonolancet. Character of First Settlers"; The First Minister. 
 His Ordination. Organization of Church. First Ministers' 
 Farming. Plan of Farm. Visitors. Barn. Farm Stock. 
 Slavery. Eph. Colby. Crops. Cider Mill and Cider. Mast- 
 ing. Ministers' Garrison. His Gun. Massacre of 1746. Rev- 
 olutionary War. Death of First Minister. His Character. Old 
 Customs. 
 
 Farm. — Part IL 
 
 Colonization of Pennycook. Farm's Second and Third Pro- 
 prietors. Agricultural Improvements. Its Fourth Proprietor. 
 Condition in 1853. Plowing. The Cow Pasture. Destruc- 
 tion of Bushes. Oxen. Freshets. Farm Drainage. Rubbling 
 of River Bank. Hay. Forests. Undeveloped Resources. 
 Conclusions. 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 Obsequies of the First Minister. Horse Shoe Pond. Horse 
 Shoe Pond Bridge. Back Pond. Interval in 1726. Freshet 
 of 1895. 
 
l)OU$e of tbe first minister 
 
 of 
 eoncora, new Ratnpsbtre^ 
 
 IHeeting of Colonial Dames, 
 Coneopd, K- H-, Jaae 17, 1899. 
 
Concord, N. H., June 17, 1899. 
 
 To the Colonial Dames of America, \ 
 in the State of New Hampshire : ) 
 
 Ladies : 
 
 In compliance with a suggestion that a brief 
 account of the ancient house which you honor with 
 your presence to-day might be acceptable, the fol- 
 lowing summary of some of the more salient points 
 in its history is presented to such members of your 
 distinguished association as may be interested therein. 
 
 We have the honor to be. 
 
 Most sincerely and respectfully yours, 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Joseph B. Walker. 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE 
 FIRST MINISTER. 
 
 HIS house, mentioned by Mr. David Wat- 
 son, in his Concord Directory of 1844, as 
 "the oldest two story house between Haver- 
 hill, Mass., and Canada,"* was erected by the 
 
 Age. -' 
 
 Reverend Timothy Walker, the First Min- 
 ister of Concord, when New Hampshire was a Brit- 
 ish Province, and its people were subjects of King 
 George the Second. To aid in its erection, his fellow- 
 citizens, on the i6th of January, 1733/4, made him 
 a grant from their common treasury of fifty pounds, t 
 Its life spans the several periods of King George's 
 and the last French and Indian wars ; of the Revo- 
 lutionary War and the establishment of the govern- 
 ment of the United States ; of the War of 1812 and 
 of that with Mexico ; of our Civil War and of our 
 war with Spain. It has witnessed the relinquish- 
 ment, 
 
 * The correctness of this statement is neither affirmed nor denied 
 tAt a meeting of the Inhabitants and Freeholders of Penny Cook, holden on 
 the i6th day of January 1733/4 it was 
 
 " Voted that there should be Fifty Pounds given to Mr. Timothy Walker for 
 building of him a Dwelling House in Penny Cook provided that he gives the In- 
 habitants and Freeholders a Receipt that he has received in full for his Salary in 
 times past until this Day for the Decay of Money it not being equal to Silver at 
 Seventeen Shillings the Ounce." 
 
 Rumford Town Records, printed vol., p. 15. 
 
4 The House of the First Minister. 
 
 ment, by France and Spain, of substantially all of 
 their immense colonial areas on this hemisphere. 
 
 During the first of the wars above mentioned, the 
 people of Rumford lived more or less of the 
 Garrisons, time in garrisous. Within the one whose 
 walls inclosed this house dwelt eight fami- 
 lies, besides that of the First Minister. Watch and 
 ward was maintained day and night, and the dis- 
 charge of a musket from its sentry box indicated to 
 all who heard it the approach of the Indian enemy.* 
 
 From these garrisons, the men went out armed to 
 their work, on week days, and with their families to 
 their block house, to worship, on Sundays. The 
 First Minister prayed and preached with his gun 
 beside him.f Gospel and gun were near companions 
 
 in 
 
 *Garrisons in 1746. 
 
 .} 
 
 We, the subscribers, being appointed a Committee of Militia for 
 settling tlie Garrisons in the frontier Towns and Plantations in the Sixth Regi- 
 ment of Militia in this Province, by his Excellency, Benning Wentworth, Esq., 
 Governor, &c, having viewed the situation and enquired into the circumstances of 
 the District of Rumford, do hereby appoint and state the following Garrisons, 
 viz ; 
 
 The Garrison round the house of the Reverend Timothy Walker, to be one of 
 the Garrisons in sd Rumford, and that the following inhabitants, with their 
 family's, viz.: 
 
 Capt. John Chandler, Nathaniel Rolfe, 
 
 Abraham Bradley, Joseph Pudney, 
 
 Samuel Bradley, Isaac Walker, Jr., 
 
 John Webster, Obadiah Foster, 
 
 be and hereby are, ordered and stated at that Garrison.'' 
 
 Extract from Report of Committee^ May 15, 1746. 
 
 t" 1746, June 24, Wm. Stickney brought up my new gun, and my mare from 
 Andover." 
 
 Diaries of Rev. T. Walker, p. 13. 
 
 " Province of 
 New Hampe 
 
> 
 
 H 
 
 w 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 >n 
 
 fa 
 w 
 < 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 > 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
 
 
The House of the First Minister. 5 
 
 in those days. Indeed, even yet, the gunpowder age 
 has not fully passed. 
 
 The frame of this house is mainly of pitch pine and 
 white oak. Its boarding and inside wood- 
 Constrnction. work are of white pine. It originally con- 
 sisted of a two story front, forty feet long 
 and twenty feet wide ; and of a one story ell, about 
 twenty feet square. Each was covered with a gam- 
 brel roof, battered with birch bark, and shingled. It 
 had three chimneys, two of brick, and one of stone 
 laid in clay mortar and plastered within and without 
 with clay and chopped straw. In these were six fire- 
 places of ample dimensions ; that in the kitchen 
 having before it a hearth of granite ten feet long, still 
 in use, and polished by the feet of the family genera- 
 tions of the last one hundred and sixty-five years. 
 
 A quaint correspondence, in 1757, between the 
 First Minister and his son, then teaching school at 
 Bradford, Mass., relative to painting "ye 
 Interior, outsidc " of it has been preserved.* The con- 
 clusion then reached is not known. Seventy 
 years ago it wore a coat of light drab paint upon its 
 walls, and of white upon its cornices, corner-boards, 
 and casings. These remained unchanged until 
 1848. 
 
 The interior was not completely finished until 
 
 1764, 
 
 * " Am now to inform you yt we have hitherto got along with good success with 
 ye House & find we shall have a comfortable and handsome one, if we can get 
 thro with it, but finding several species of materials to fall short, have determined 
 upon a journey to Boston. » * * One article we have at present under 
 consideration is, whether or no to paint ye outside. Am advised to it by ye 
 best Judges & particularly Col. Rolfe." 
 
 Walker Papers, vol. ■i,f. 5. 
 
6 The House of the First Minister. 
 
 1764, when the title to the township had been con- 
 firmed to its occupants by a second decision of the 
 king in council, and a legal contest of forty years 
 was substantially ended. Then, tradition says. Dea- 
 con Webster, of Bradford, Mass., came to Rumford 
 and spent the summer in constructing the front stair- 
 way, with its ornamented rail and balusters, and the 
 paneled dadoes of the upper and lower halls. 
 
 The room partitions were largely of wainscoting, 
 the window sashes were heavy and glazed with 
 small panes of seven by nine glass, those of the first 
 story being protected by inside shutters of wood. 
 
 The legislature met in Concord for the first time 
 on the 13th day of March, 1782, at the old North 
 church. As there was no means of warming it, an 
 adjournment was immediately taken to a room pre- 
 pared for it, in a building still standing on the west 
 side of North Main street and numbered 225 and 227. 
 
 During its session, the First Minister placed at 
 the use of the state officials in attendance such por- 
 tions of his house, as they required. The president, 
 Meshech Weare, with the Honorable Council, oc- 
 cupied the north front chamber ; the secretary of 
 state, Ebenezer Thompson, the sitting-room ; and 
 the state treasurer, Nicholas Oilman, the south 
 front chamber. 
 
 The First Minister lived to occupy his house until 
 September i, 1782, when he died, 
 °FksrMinUte^' having completed a pastorate of nearly 
 fifty-two years. 
 
 Upon 
 
The House of the First Minister. 7 
 
 Upon his decease, its ownership passed to his son, 
 
 Judge Timothy Walker, wh*o, with his 
 
 Subsequent occu- ^ife, occupied it the remainder of their 
 
 pancy by Hon. , . mi i r 
 
 Timothy Walker, "ves. lo them were born fourteen 
 children. It can be no surprise, there- 
 fore, that its enlargement became imperative. This was 
 secured by doubling the length and height of its ell. 
 As first remembered by its present owner, it con- 
 tained seven rooms on the first floor and 
 House in eight on the second, with a liberal interposi- 
 1828. tion of closets, hall ways, and entries. One 
 portion of the attic was devoted to bins for 
 the storage of grain, and another to a small sleeping 
 room. In the lemainder was kept a miscellaneous 
 collection of farm and household utensils not in active 
 use — weaving machinery, spinning-wheels, swifts, 
 flax-combs, etc. It was the most attractive place in 
 all the house for the children, with the exception of 
 the pantry. 
 
 Beneath the first floor were two cellars, one for the 
 
 storage of meats, vegetables, etc. ; another, for uses 
 
 of which recollection speaks charily, mildly hinting 
 
 that, had the Maine liquor law then been in force, it 
 
 might have furnished a fit repository for its archives. 
 
 The wainscoting and other woodwork of the 
 
 several rooms bore diff'erent colors ; that of 
 
 Colors of the parlor and sitting-room chamber being 
 
 Rooms. green ; of the sitting-room, light blue ; 
 
 of the front hall, parlor chamber, and old 
 
 people's bedroom, white ; and of the kitchen, red. 
 
 Around 
 
8 The House of the First Minister. 
 
 Around this kitchen, as a centre, revolved the 
 geheral economy of the household. Its red 
 The color gave it a cheerful tone; its wooden 
 
 Kitchen. window shutters, a sense of security ; its am- 
 ple display on open shelves of crockery, 
 pewter and wooden ware, a comfortable intimation of 
 good cheer, while its huge fireplace, brick oven, and 
 swinging crane, loaded with a graded line of pots 
 and kettles, asserted the family's dependence upon its 
 cook. 
 
 The six doors of this room, like the gates of 
 ancient Rome, opened in all directions ; one to the 
 back room, a second to the deep closet, another to 
 the old people's bedroom, still another to the pantry, 
 another still to the vegetable and meat cellar, and a 
 sixth to a side entry and thence out doors ; while, 
 through the capacious flue of its chimney, the sailing 
 clouds might be observed in the daytime, and the 
 sparkling stars at night. 
 
 Here, in old colonial times, when a mild slavery 
 existed in New Hampshire, Luce and Violet domi- 
 neered over their gentle mistress within, just as 
 Prince lorded it over his master, the first minister, on 
 his farm without. Here Eph. Colby, the town bully, 
 rehearsed his exploits, boasting that he feared no 
 man on earth save Parson Walker. Occasionally, at 
 nightfall, a strolling Indian, melancholly representa- 
 tive of a vanishing race, found welcome in this plain 
 kitchen. Here he loosened his belt, fed to his fill, 
 rolled himself in his blanket, and upon its floor 
 
 slept 
 
The House of the First Minister. 9 
 
 slept soundly before the fire which never went fully 
 out. 
 
 At the decease of the second proprietor, Judge 
 Timothy Walker, the house descended to his young- 
 est son, Captain Joseph Walker, and still later, to the 
 present proprietor. With the exception of a slight 
 enlargement and modifications, easily recognized, it 
 remains as above described. It has sheltered six 
 generations of the First Minister's family, and, by 
 God's blessing, the oil in the cruse and the meal in 
 the barrel, has never failed. During the first forty 
 years of its existence, its occupants were loyal to the 
 cross of St. George. Since 1776, they have gloried 
 in the stars and stripes. 
 
 The first two owners of this house were much 
 engaged in public affairs. 
 
 The First Minister was not only the spiritual leader 
 of his people, but quite often a temporal 
 Visitors in advisor in their business matters as well, 
 former days. Many of the legal documents relating to 
 these, which have been preserved, are in 
 his handwriting. He was their agent in the cele- 
 brated Bow Controversy, before mentioned, which 
 involved the title to their entire township, and lasted 
 forty years. During its continuance, he made three 
 journeys to London in prosecution of their claims 
 before the king in council. 
 
 For more than sixty years, the judicial and multi- 
 farious other duties of Judge Walker kept him in 
 close touch with all the affairs of his town, and 
 
 with 
 
lo The House of the First Minister. 
 
 with many of the state, which he had aided in 
 creating. 
 
 These varied relations of its occupants brought to 
 this house, during the first one hundred years of its 
 existence, visitors almost numberless, many of whose 
 names receive frequent mention in their diaries. 
 Here, for half a century, the First Minister entertained 
 his clerical brethren. Here, as visitors, repeatedly 
 came General John Stark, sometimes accompanied 
 by his wife {nee Elizabeth Page), to whom the first 
 minister had united him in marriage. Here, also, 
 were welcomed Major Robert Rogers, the ranger, 
 Capt. Peter Powers of Coos, Col. Joseph Blanch- 
 ard. Col. John GofFe, Capt. Caleb Page, Capt. 
 Phineas Stevens, and many others, much of whose* 
 talk was of French and Indian wars in which they 
 had been or were then engaged. Under the same 
 roof, a little later, with his neighbors, Col. Thomas 
 Stickney, Col. Benjamin Rolfe, Capt. Joshua Abbott, 
 and Capt. Benjamin Emery, his only son, Timothy, 
 his sons-in-law, Capt. Abiel Chandler, and Dr. 
 Ebenezer Harnden Goss, all, subsequently, partici- 
 pants in the Revolutionary struggle, near at hand, 
 the First Minister discussed the varying prospects of 
 that inevitable contest. Here, too, the old patriot 
 strove, but in vain, to detach from his entanglement 
 with the royal cause the husband of his eldest daugh- 
 ter, Benjamin Thompson, now known to the world as 
 Count Rumford. 
 
 In later years, his son and successor, Judge 
 
 Walker 
 
The House of the First Minister. ii 
 
 Walker, welcomed to the hospitalities of his pater- 
 nal home, friends of his own generation. Among 
 these were President Meshech Weare, Secretary 
 Ebenezer Thompson, Treasurer Nicholas Gilman, 
 Governor John Langdon, Col. Ebenezer Webster, 
 the father of Daniel, while later still, its doors swung 
 open to Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse, of telegraphic 
 fame, and husband of his granddaughter, to Gov- 
 ernors William Plumer, Benjamin Pierce, and Isaac 
 Hill, besides numberless others, whose names it 
 would not be easy to number. 
 
 Its third proprietor, Capt. Joseph Walker, had 
 military tastes, and, in the early part of the century, 
 commanded a company of horse, composed of per- 
 sons living in Concord and several of the adjoining 
 towns. Tradition says, that meetings of the company 
 were warned by verbal notices given the Sunday 
 before, to such members as were present for worship 
 at the Old North meeting-house, which by them were 
 communicated to the others not there present. It also 
 says that more or less of the members who lived at a 
 distance came mounted to the residence of their cap- 
 tain the night beforehand, and that to such, the hos- 
 pitality of his house was freely extended, and to 
 their steeds, the horse^itality of his barns. It fur- 
 thermore asserts that, when the supply of beds proved 
 insufficient, as it sometimes did, the less fortunate, 
 unbuttoning their waistbands, laid down upon the 
 floors and " enduerd hardness as good soldiers." 
 
 At the death of its second mistress, in 1828, the 
 
 house 
 
12 The House of the First Minister. 
 
 house contained a respectable library, the 
 The old result of the gradual accretions of nearly a 
 Library, ceutury. The division of her estate among 
 
 her heirs-at-law caused a dispersion of its vol- 
 umes, as complete as did the deportation of the 
 members of the ten tribes of Israel by Shalmaneser. 
 
 Little knowledge of its contents has survived, other 
 than that of inference, from the character of a few 
 volumes which a long effort has reclaimed from their 
 exile. These indicate that it may have been largely 
 theological and miscellaneous. Among these may 
 be found the Westminster Catechism, An Examina- 
 tion of Edwards on the Will, four volumes of Caryl's 
 Job, Coleman's Sermons, Religio Medici, Baxter's 
 Saints' Rest, a first edition copy of Belknap's History 
 of New Hampshire, a volume of the Tattler, together 
 with enough others to bring the number to a score or 
 thereabouts. 
 
 As these stand together, in their dark, leather 
 covers, in a corner of the present library, their ex- 
 pression appears one of sadness. While glad, appar- 
 ently, to get back to their old home, they seem to 
 mourn more the absence of their former companions, 
 than to rejoice in the welcome accorded them by the 
 larger company now about them. 
 
 The few pictures, which formerly hung upon the 
 
 walls of the house, shared the fortune of the 
 Pictures, books just mentioned. Those now scattered 
 
 through its different rooms have been gradu- 
 ally gathered from different sources by its present 
 
 occupants 
 
The House of the First Minister. 13 
 
 occupants ; mostly from the collections of the Countess 
 of Rumford and of Judge Nathaniel G. Upham, the 
 father of its present mistress. The large one of the 
 woman and child, over the front hall stairway, was 
 painted in Paris, about twenty years ago, by Charles 
 Walker Lind, a grandson of Professor Samuel F. B. 
 Morse, and the little encaustic painting on copper, in 
 the poet's corner of the library, is a copy of Prof. 
 Morse's portrait of his wife ; painted when she was 
 about twenty years of age. Nearly all the portraits 
 and some of the other subjects in oil are the works of 
 German and English artists. The few water colors 
 and prints are of various ages and from different 
 sources. Of the former, the two Bavarian landscapes, 
 above the mantel of the sitting-room, were presented 
 to Count Rumford by the ladies of Munich, in recog- 
 nition of his services in causing the neutrality ot 
 Bavaria to be recognized by the contending armies 
 of the French and Austrians, in 1796. The three 
 early prints of Trumbull's paintings of the Death of 
 Gen. Montgomery, of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and 
 of the Declaration of Independence, were purchased 
 of the artist's executor, soon after his decease. They 
 are largely interesting as specimens of American art, 
 at the close of the last and the beginning of the 
 present century. 
 
 And the furniture which was jn the house in 1828, 
 encountered the same dispersion which came to the 
 books and pictures. 
 
 The small stone in front of the house records the 
 
 names 
 
14 The House of the First Minister. 
 
 names of the families assigned to the garri- 
 The stones, son built around it in 1746. The large, 
 
 round stone beside the driveway, is the 
 horse-block formerly attached to the Old North 
 meeting-house, in which the first minister preached 
 from 1751 to 1782. In that period, many of the good 
 wives of the parish rode to meeting on horseback, 
 seated upon pillions behind their husbands. Tradition 
 has it that its purchase was effected by their joint 
 contributions of a pound of butter apiece. 
 
 The elms in front of the house were planted by the 
 
 First Minister on the secondi day of May, 
 The Elms. 1764. On this Seventeenth day of June, 
 
 1899, they are in a fair state of health, 
 growing old, indeed, but gracefully and with a tena- 
 cious vigor which makes slow their decline. 
 

 
€l)e latm of tl)e Jfirst IttimBter. 
 
 An Address 
 
 Delivered before the New Hampshire Board of Agriculture, 
 At The Weirs, August 15, 1894. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH B. WALKER, 
 
 OF CONCORD, N. H. 
 
 JReprinted from the Report of the State Board of Agriculture^ 1894. 
 
 CONCORD, N. H. 
 THE REPUBLICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION. 
 1895. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 
 
 Our gallant leader, Captain Humphrey, and his associates 
 upon the board of agriculture, have this year transferred our 
 summer outing from Boar's Head and the ocean shore to ancient 
 Aquedoctan and the placid waters of Winnepesauke lake. 
 
 The fact that he has heretofore safely steered our craft along 
 a coast where the headlands are sharp and the east winds often 
 strong, gives confidence in his future pilotage over these placid 
 waters which, coquetting with the mountains, reflect the smile 
 of the Great Spirit by day and the stars which he has set in his 
 firmament by night. 
 
 We are here for a good time, but skilled as is our leader, we 
 must not depend upon him entirely for its attainment. Cooper-- 
 ation should be our watchword in the prosecution of our pleas- 
 ures and all our great interests as well. It was not General 
 Grant alone who forced the surrender of Richmond, in 1865, 
 but the pressure of the great armies whom he led to victory. 
 
 The announcement of my subject suggests three inquiries : 
 
 1 . Where was this farm ? 
 
 2. Who was the first minister.? 
 
 3. What of his farming? 
 
 To answer these will be my present endeavor. 
 
 I. 
 
 WAere was the first minister's farm ? 
 
 On the 17th day of January, 1726, the general court of Mas- 
 sachusetts Bay granted to one hundred prospective settlers a 
 plantation seven miles square, lying on its northern border and 
 on both sides of the Merrimack river, at a place called by the 
 Indians, Pennycook. 
 
 This was known at first as the Plantation of Pennycook. In 
 1733 it was incorporated by Massachusetts as the town of Rum- 
 ford, which name it bore until 1765, when it was again incor- 
 porated by New Han^shire as Concord, b)' which designation 
 it has ever since been known. To avoid confusion from these 
 
changes of name, I shall speak of it by its original Indian name 
 of Penny cook. 
 
 These settlers were to be subsequently selected for their 
 fitness, by a committee' appointed by the general court, and the 
 territory thus granted was to be divided between them, the 
 church, the school, and the first settled minister. 
 
 Pennycook, which had been long known to the early settlers 
 of Massachusetts as an extensive tract of rich alluvion, had been 
 previously granted to parties who, for failing to comply with 
 the conditions of their grant, had lost it.^ Up to this time it 
 had been considered a valuable and undisposed portion of Mas- 
 sachusetts Bay Territory. Its boundaries under this last grant 
 were substantially conterminous with those of the present city 
 of Concord. 
 
 At this time, the northern boundary line of Massachusetts 
 was undetermined. She claimed that it began at the sea, at a 
 point three miles north of the Black Rocks, at the mouth of 
 MeiTimack river and thence ran westerly, three miles north of 
 and parallel with this river to a white pine tree standing three 
 miles north of the junction of its two main branches at Frank- 
 lin ; and thence due west to the South sea.' 
 
 ' This committee consisted of Hon. William Tailer, Esq., Elisha Cooke, 
 Esq., Spencer Phipps, Esq., William Dudley, Esq., John Wainwright, Esq. 
 Capt. John Shipley, Mr. John Sanders, Eleazer Tyng, Esq., and Mr. Joseph 
 Wilder. — Mass. Court Records, Jan. ly, iy2^-6. 
 
 ^ The character of the lands at Pennycook was well known to the people of 
 the coast towns at an early day. A grant of a tract eight miles square was 
 made in 1659, to Richard Walderne and twenty-one others ; but it was subse- 
 quently forfeited by non-compliance of conditions. — Mass. Archives, Vol. 112, 
 p. iiy. 
 
 In 1662, Joseph Hills and others, of the town of Maiden, Mass., peti- 
 tioned the general court " That a Tract of Land About fowre Miles Square 
 at A place Called Pennycooke may be Granted As An Addition to us, for our 
 better Support And Incouragement." This petition was not granted. — Mass- 
 Archives, Vol. 113, p. I4J. 
 
 June 9, 1721. In pursuance of an order of the general court of Massa- 
 chusetts, a committee was appointed " To take an exact Survey of the Land 
 on each side of Merrimack, between the rivers of Suncook and Cuntacook." 
 This committee discharged the duty assigned them and made report June 1 5, 
 1722. It also appears that, as early as 1722, the Scotch-Irish had a knowl- 
 edge of these lands and contemplated a settlement^upon them. — Mass. House 
 Journal, June 1$, 1^22. 
 
 > Belknap's History of New Hampshire, Ed. 1741, Vol. 2, p. 138. 
 
New Hampshire claimed that her southern boundary line 
 began at the sea, at a point three miles north of the middle of 
 the channel of Merrimack river, and thence ran due west until 
 it met his majesty's other governments. 
 
 The territory between these two lines, and in dispute, 
 embraced a part, but in most cases the whole, of the present 
 towns and cities of Chesterfield, Westmoreland, Walpole, 
 Charlestown, Clai'emont, Cornish, Swanzey, Keene, Surry, 
 Alstead, Acworth, Unity, Newport, Croydon, Marlborough, 
 Roxbury, Sullivan, Gilsum, Marlow, Lempster, Goshen, Suna- 
 pee, Springfield, Dublin, Harrisville, Nelson, Stoddard, Wash- 
 ington, Newbury, New London, Peterborough, Hancock, 
 Antrim, Deering, Windsor, Hillsborough, Bradford, Sutton, 
 Wilmot, Greenfield, Francestown, Henniker, Hopkinton, 
 Warner, Salisbury, Andover, Lyndeborough, Mt. Vernon, New 
 Boston, Weare, Webster, Boscawen, Amherst, Merrimack, 
 Bedford, Manchester, Goffstown, Dunbarton, Bow, Concord, 
 Hooksett, and Pembroke. 
 
 A glance at the map of New Hampshire shows that, if the 
 northern line of Massachusetts was where she claimed it to be, 
 the plantation of Pennycook, although upon her extreme fron- 
 tier, was clearly within her limits and jurisdiction. And if, on 
 the other hand, the line claimed by New Hampshire was the 
 tiHie one, PennycGok was as clearly within the limits of this 
 province. 
 
 Inasmuch, therefore, as this uncertainty must in no long time 
 be removed by an authoritative determination of the truce line, 
 Massachusetts may have been willing to have established on the 
 debatable ground a reliable colony of her own people, care- 
 fully selected for their fitness and friendly to her interests. At 
 all events her extreme care in their examination and admission 
 of the colonists which she sent to this new plantation is con- 
 sistent with this supposition. They were a picked body of 
 one hundred men, mostly from the old Massachusetts towns of 
 Andover, Bradford, Newbury, Haverhill, and Woburn, who 
 stood ready to occupy their new homes as soon as they could 
 be surveyed and made ready for their use. 
 
SURVEY OF THE TOWNSHIP. 
 
 On Wednesday, the eleventh day of May, 1726, some four 
 months after the date of the grant before mentioned, a majority 
 of the committee appointed by the general court to take charge 
 of the survey and settlement of this plantation, accompanied 
 their chaplain, surveyors, chainmen, and some of the admitted 
 settlers, numbering in all thirty-two persons, started from Hav- 
 erhill, Mass., on their journey to Pennycook for the purpose of 
 locating and making a partial survey of it. 
 
 They arrived at their destination on the afternoon of the fol- 
 lowing Friday.' Their journal clearly defines their route and 
 says that they took their first noonday meal in Nutfield, " at 
 the house of John Barr, an Irish tavern keeper as we were 
 informed," of whom we " had nothing but small beer. Expen- 
 ses for our trouble at y" house, 5'-" The exact amount of 
 " trouble ' this sober company' of Massachusetts Puritans had 
 been able to ^extract from five shillings worth of small beer, I 
 leave for your computation. About five o'clock in the after- 
 noon they reached "Amoskeag Falls " and encamped for the 
 night'. Early the next morning they resumed their journey and 
 passed " Onnahookline (Hooksett) Falls " about eight o'clock. 
 
 About nine they forded Suncook river, and four hours later 
 the Soucook ; about five in the afternoon they reached their 
 destination and encamped on Sugar Ball Interval. 
 
 On the day after their jyrival they were called upon by a 
 committee of the New Hampshire government and warned to 
 desist from their work, for the alleged reason that the territory 
 upon which they had entered was within the limits and jurisdic- 
 tion of that province. To them they made a civil reply, refer- 
 ring them to the government of Massachusetts under whose 
 orders they were acting. Thereupon their visitors withdrew. ^ 
 
 The surveyors and chainmen were divided into three parties. 
 The first, starting from the mouth of Contoocook river, ran out 
 and marked the boundary lines of the township. The second 
 and third surveyed and put up the bounds of one hundred and 
 
 '■ Journal of Committee of General Court in Bouton's " History of Concord," 
 p. 66. 
 
 ^Journal of the Committee of General Court, Bouton's " History of Con- 
 cord," pp. 68 and 69. 
 
three houselots upon the first terrace west of the Merrimack, 
 and of the same number of homelots on the adjoining interval, 
 having an aggregate area of 154^^ acres, and whose united 
 area was 921 acres and 141 square rods. These were distrib- 
 uted by lot on the 7th and 8th days of February, 1 727, to the 
 several proposed settlers of the township, the church, the school, 
 and the first settled minister, one share to each.i 
 
 In the following May the remainder of the interval in the 
 central part of the plantation, amounting to 514^ acres, was 
 surveyed and assigned in 144 lots, varying in size from 2^ to 6 
 acres each to the 103 original proprietors. At this time, there- 
 fore, the division of the plantation territory stood as follows : 
 
 Whole area of the plantation, . . 31,360 acres, — sq. rds. 
 103 house lots, 154 acres, 40 sq. rds. 
 247 home lots, 1 ,436 " 61 " 
 
 1,590 " 141 " 
 
 Land undivided 29,769 " 19 " 
 
 Subsequent divisions and sales were made from time to time 
 until the entire area of the grant had passed from joint to indi- 
 vidual ownership. 
 
 Of the lands thus divided among the proprietors, the first 
 minister received his apportionate share, which, increased by 
 later divisions and purchases, made him a farm of some three 
 hundred acres. This gave him a pecuniary interest in the 
 plantation and kept him in close touch with his people. From 
 it, he ever after received a portion of his support, and was a 
 farmer as well as a preacher. 
 
 It is an interesting fact, in harmony with the devout spirit of 
 the time, that this little company of committee men represent- 
 ing the General Court of Massachusetts Bay, surveyors and 
 expectant settlers, should have brought with them their chap- 
 lain and that on the Sunday following their arrival, being the 
 fifteenth day of May, 1726, public worship was celebrated 
 for the first time in the wilderness Pennycook, which before 
 this had echoed only to the cries of wild beasts and birds and 
 the wilder cries of roaming Indians. 
 
 ' Records of proprietors of Pennicook. 
 
CONDITIONS OF PENNYCOOK IN 1726. 
 
 Upon their advent to Pennycook, the settlers found that some 
 portions of the interval had been partially cleared by the In- 
 dians and were bearing a coarse grass, a fact of great conse- 
 quence to them inasmuch as it allowed the immediate intro- 
 duction of horses and cattle to the settlement. The very year 
 the plantation was surveyed and before a furrow had been 
 turned, Capt. Ebenezer Eastman cut grass and stacked it in 
 Waternummons Field. The old Indian chieftain of that name, 
 who claimed ownership of that land, forbid his doing so at first, 
 but a few potations of the captain's fire-water removed his 
 objections and he was permitted to cut to his heart's content.^ 
 
 While the Indians had subsisted mainly by hunting and fish- 
 ing, their women had practiced a rude agriculture of limited 
 extent and raised small patches of corn, pumpkins, and possi- 
 bly of tobacco. Indeed, some of their corn hills overgrown 
 with grass remained undisturbed down to the memory of aged 
 men now living. 
 
 It is to be inferred from the description of some of the bounds 
 of the interval lots left on record by the surveyors, that the trees 
 then growing upon them were to a large degree similar to 
 those now found upon the adjoining uplands. Many of these 
 bounds are described as a white or red oak, a pitch pine, a 
 birch, a maple, an elm, a poplar, a bass, or an ash tree. Most 
 or all of these, with some others, may be found in small num- 
 bers growing there to-day. Indeed, the upland and the low- 
 land forests of the plantation were largely the same. 
 
 THE INDIANS. 
 
 Up to the death of Passaconaway, and for some years after,, 
 perhaps, Pennycook had been the headquarters of the Indians 
 of that name. The cunning and prowess of that great chieftain 
 have been preserved in history and song. He died at some 
 time between 1663 and 166^.' His successors were men of 
 
 iBouton's History of Concord, p. 41. 
 
 2 Judge Chandler E. Potter says, " Passaconnaway died prior to 1669, 
 . . The year o£ his death is not known. He was alive in 1663." — 
 The Farmer's Monthly Visitor, Vol. 12, p. 40. 
 
9 
 
 far less ability and unable to resist the pressure of the English 
 immigration. 
 
 The new comei's to Pennycook encountered no opposition 
 from the red men. Indeed, about all of these had retired 'in- 
 land before their advent. A few only maintained a straggling 
 life in and around this locality. Of these, Waternummons was 
 the most prosperous and important. 
 
 His wigwam stood on the south bank of the brook which 
 drains the waters of Horse Shoe pond into Merrimack river, 
 « and still bears his name ; midway between the two, at a point 
 where the Concord & Montreal railroad crosses it. Its site 
 was the highest in that vicinity and above the annual freshets. 
 From its entrance he could survey his little patches of corn and 
 pumpkins which his squaws were wont to plant and cultivate. 
 Descending therefrom a few steps he could give attention to his 
 pots of wicker work anchored in the stream to capture fish for 
 his larder, while on their passage between the pond and the 
 river. Here he smoked his pipe, nursed his scattered thoughts, 
 and responded by shrugs of his shoulders and by deep gutterals 
 to the remarks made to him by his unwelcome neighbors. He 
 considered the lands about him liis by occupancy.' They con- 
 sidered them theirs, by a title which traced back to its origin 
 was the same. Might was the tribunal which settled land 
 titles in those days. Waternummons was soon to lose his 
 cause in this despotic court. He was the last of the Penny- 
 cooks at the headquarters of his people. 
 
 From the spring of 1726, when the survey of the plantation 
 was made, on for four successive seasons, the proprietors were 
 
 1 The Indian title to the lands at Pennycook was extinguished near the 
 close of the seventeenth century, as appears by the following extract from the 
 Massachusetts records : 
 
 "Wanalanset made a demapd of the Lands at Penicook from Suncook to 
 Contocook as his Inheritance, saying (;hat they were never purchased of him 
 nor his Fathers ; and he likewise in behalf of the Indians resorting to Peni- 
 cook, prayed that a Trading house might be set up there. 
 
 " The Govr thereupon acquainted the Indians, that Wanalanset, Chief Sa- 
 chem on Merrimack River, had sold all those lands to the English almost 
 forty years agoe, and the Secretary shew' d the Indian the Record of his 
 Deeds, with which they express'd themselves fully satisfied and acknowledged 
 that the English had a good right to the said Lands by those Deeds." — 
 Mass. Council Records and Archives, Vol. 31, p. 183. 
 
10 
 
 active in making roads, fences, and bridges ; in clearing and 
 plowing fields, and in the erection of houses for their families 
 left behind them in Massachusetts, with whom they spent their 
 winters. Each spring when they returned they brought with 
 them a chaplain.' Rest and divine worship were maintained 
 on the Sabbath. 
 
 These settlers of Pennycook were a practical, serious, consci- 
 entious set ot farmers. They wrought diligently and patiently, 
 and in half a dozen years had built up a thriving town in the 
 deep wilderness, twenty-five miles beyond any other. They 
 did not know, as we do now, that they were laying the founda- 
 tions of the capital of a sovereign state. Their labors remind 
 us of those which met the gaze of tempest tossed Xerxes, as his 
 battered keels touched the Lybian shore, and he looked upon 
 the busy throng engaged in the building of old Carthage. 
 
 Pennycook did not grow to a thriving town by slow accre- 
 tions, but sprang into perfected municipality almost at once. 
 In the autumn of 1730,3 majority of the proprietors had become 
 settled residents in their new houses.'' The next thing in order 
 was the organization of a church of Christ, as contemplated in 
 their charter, and, in the phraseology of the times, the settle- 
 ment of " a learned, orthodox minister." To this duty they 
 next turned their attention, in compliance with an order of the 
 committee of the Massachusetts General Court.* 
 
 II. 
 
 Who was the first fnintsierP 
 
 The first minister was of old Massachusetts yeoman stock. 
 He was born in Woburn, on the 27th day of July, 1705. His 
 father was a founder and deacon of the church in that part of 
 
 : Rev. Bezaleel Toppan and Rev. Enoch Coffin had been employed to 
 preach to the settlers, before the settlement of Mr. Walker. — Bouton's History 
 of Concord, p. 93. 
 
 ! It appears from an official statement that on the 20th. of October, 1731, 
 about eleven months after Mr. Walker's settlement, seventy three houses had 
 been finished and eighteen more partially finished, — Bouton's History of 
 Concord, pp. 128-13:. > 
 
 ' " Ordered, That the proprietors or grantees of said town be, and Iiereby 
 are notified and warned to assemble at the meeting-house, (in Penny Cook) on 
 Wednesday, the fourteenth day of October next, at eleven of the clock in the 
 
11 
 
 the town now known as Burlington. His grandfather was a 
 deacon of the first Woburn church ; a man of some prominence 
 in the colony and a member of the convention of the people 
 called after the deposition of Sir Edmund Andross from the 
 high position which he had disgraced. His great grandfather 
 who had been born in England, emigrated to Reading, Mass., 
 and thence to Woburn about I'JS'J, where he was a maltster and 
 early tavern keeper, holding for twenty years responsible town 
 offices. His great great grandfather came to this country from 
 England and settled in Lynn, Mass.^ in 1630. He was made a 
 freeman in 1634, and was for more than fifty years quite active 
 in town and colony afiairs. He had a military turn of mind, 
 was an officer of the Lynn troops and one of the founders of the 
 Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. 
 Like some others, before coming to this country he had been a 
 member of the Honorable Artillery Company of England which 
 he had joined May 28, 162a. 
 
 Having graduated at Harvard College in 1725, to recruit his 
 slender finances, he had taught school for a time at Woburn, in 
 1726, and at Andover, in 1728.* At both places, he made ac- 
 quaintances with some of the Pennycook proprietors, a large 
 number of whom were from those towns. At some time pre- 
 vious to 173O1 he had studied theology and been licensed to 
 preach. During the summer of this year, he conducted relig- 
 ious worship at Pennycook as had Rev. Enoch Coffin and Rev. 
 Bezaleel Toppan, during those portions of the preceding years 
 in which the proprietors were erecting buildings and prepar- 
 ing fields preparatory to the advent of their families. 
 
 In the autumn of 1730, as before intimated, the Plantation 
 was ready -for the formation of a Church of Christ and the settle- 
 ment of a permanent minister. Accordingly, on the 14th day 
 of October, it was 
 
 '' Voted by the admitted settlers that, they will have a minis- 
 forenoon, then and there to choose a minister for, and setthng him in the said 
 town ; and upon his. acceptance of the choice to agree upon a time for his or- 
 dination." — Order of Massachusetts General Court Committee, 23d Septem- 
 ber, 1730. 
 
 1 Sewell's History of Woburn, pp. 236-239. Bailey's History of Andover, 
 p. 149. 
 
12 
 
 ter" and "that the Rev. Mr. Timothy Walker shall be the 
 minister of the town." 
 
 At the same meeting they also 
 
 " Voted, that Mr. Timothy Walker shall have one hundred 
 pounds for the year ensuing, and then rise forty shillings per 
 annum, till it comes to one hundred and twenty pounds and 
 that to be the stated sum annually for his salary," and 
 
 " That if Mr. Walker, by extreme old age, shall be disena- 
 bled from carrying on the whole work of the ministry, that he 
 shall abate so much of his salary as shall be rational." 
 
 In accordance with this action, preparations were at once 
 begun for the organization of a church, and the ordination and 
 settlement of the minister on the i8th day of November follow- 
 ing. 
 
 The officiating ministers present on that occasion were the 
 Rev. John Barnard and the Rev. Samuel Phillips, the respec- 
 tive pastors of the North and South churches in Andover, and 
 the Rev. John Brown, minister of the church in Haverhill. 
 These gentlemen had patiently threaded their way through 
 forty miles of wilderness to assist at this service. 
 
 The first preached the sermon usual on such occasions, 
 which was subsequently published, covering thirty closely 
 printed small octavo pages. The preacher evidently regarded 
 this as a church in tire wilderness, as in truth it was ; its near- 
 est neighbor being the Presbyterian church at Loi^donderry, 
 twenty-five miles away. He said to the little company as- 
 sembled in their log meeting-house, "There is this peculiar 
 circumstance in your settlement that it is in a place, where Satan- 
 some years ago had his Seat, and the Develvi^s, wont to be invo- 
 cated by forsaken salvages: A Place, which was the Rende- 
 vous and Head Quarters of our Indian Enemies." 
 
 Following the sermon came a solemn charge to the minister 
 by Mr. Phillips and a cordial right hand of fellowship by Mr. 
 Brown. 
 
 The church organized at this time consisted of nine mem- 
 bers, including the pastor, four of whom had been dismissed a 
 few days before from the First church in Andover ; one, elected 
 its first deacon, came from the church in Haverhill, and an- 
 other was from Bradford. In fact, many of the members of 
 
13 
 
 this little community had been heretofore under the pastoral 
 guidance of these three ministers. 
 
 Shortly after his ordination the new minister returned to his 
 former home, married a wife, and a few days afterward 
 returned with her on horseback to Pennycook. He was at this 
 time twenty-five years old. His earthly possessions were a 
 wife, a small tract of primeval forest, an uncertain future, and 
 a salary of £ioo a year, so long as he could earn it, equal, 
 according to Dr. John Farmer, to $130.67 of the present cur- 
 I'ency of the United States. This, doubtless, would have been 
 larger but for the fact that the income of his prospective farm, 
 given him as an encouragement to settlement, was expected to 
 so far complement his salary as to render it adequate to a frugal 
 support. 
 
 This early practice of giving to the first minister a farm may 
 not have been a>bad one. It brought him into closer touch 
 with his people than he would otherwise have been ; it gave 
 him a clear idea of their daily thoughts, of their characters and 
 aspirations; it made his and their worldly interests the same. 
 Whether some arrangement akin to this between pastor and 
 people would at this day prpduce like results is by no means 
 unworthy of a candid consideration. A clergyman must know 
 and sympathize with his people in all their varied interests if 
 he would most successfully offer to their acceptance the great 
 spiritual truths of which it is his high privilege to be the bearer. 
 
 Such was the condition of little Pennycook in 1730; such 
 were its people ; such was its first minister, a preacher of 
 righteousness and a tiller of the soil. The yellow pages of his 
 diaries contain vivid pictures of New Hampshire farming in 
 the middle half of the last century. To a few of these I desire 
 to call your attention. 
 
 III. 
 What of kts farming'? 
 
 The mowing fields of the first minister were kept productive 
 mostly by the rotation of crops and the occasional pulveriza- 
 tion of a virgin soil. Fertilization is not mentioned in any of 
 his diaries which have been preserved. Haying began in July 
 and continued on through August. In 1764 he housed his first 
 
15 
 
 load of hay on the 17th day of July, and the last on the first 
 day of September. The aftermath was cropped by his cows 
 and other stock. This great length of the hay season was due 
 to the interruptions of its operations by the harvesting of such 
 of his grain crops as matured during this period. 
 
 His grass lands were also partly kept in heart by annual 
 floodings from the Merrimack. These came every spring upon 
 the melting of the snows upon its head whters, and occasionally 
 in summer from heavy rains. Our records of the rain-fall 
 extend back only about thirty-eight years. Beyond that limit 
 they are very scanty and unreliable. There can be no doubt, 
 however, that the precipitation was greater one hundred and 
 fifty years ago than it is now. Then the primeval forests cov- 
 ered a much larger part of our area than do the secondary 
 woods of to-day. 
 
 Forty years ago the maximum rise of the Merrimack was 
 some twenty feet, and the Pennycook intervals were yearly 
 enriched by freshets. Since then the forests have been thinned 
 or removed altogether on large areas, and the lakes and many 
 of the large ponds have been converted into reservoirs for the 
 retention of the spring waters for summer use by the mills at 
 Manchester, Lowell, and Lawrence. Thereby the vernal inun- 
 dations have been largely diminished, to the serious detriment 
 of interval grass lands. Fields, therefore, upon which good 
 crops of grass were formerly made perennial by freshets, are 
 now kept in heart only by frequent pulverization of the soil, 
 fertilizations, and reseedings. 
 
 As a keeper of horses, cattle, and sheep, the first minister ot 
 necessity had pastures for their partial support. To keep these 
 in good condition he was accustomed to prevent, so far as he 
 could, all noxious vegetation thereon, and to cleanse their sur- 
 faces by burnings in the spring. In his time the ground was 
 more humid than now, less compacted by the feet of cattle, and 
 more productive. The contest was more with objectionable 
 vegetation than, as now, with a lack of moisture and a dearth 
 of feed. 
 
 When, a week or ten days after his ordination, the first min- 
 ister brought his bride from her father's home in the good old 
 
16 
 
 •■own of Woburn to the wilderness of Pennycook, he installed 
 ner as mistress of a log house then standing upon a low blufl 
 sloping to the shore of Horse Shoe pond. Thence he looked 
 northward across the interval to the wigwam of the wily old 
 Indian, Waternummons, before mentioned. 
 
 In this primitive abode the first minister lived until i734) 
 when, kindly aided by his people,* he had erected a more com- 
 modious one of timber and boards. This was more pretentious 
 than the first, being two stories high and covered with a gam- 
 brel roof. The cracks in the boarding of the latter were bat- 
 tened beneath the shingles with long strips of birch bark. The 
 timbers were of oak and hard pine. The boarding of the walls 
 was feather-edged, and nailed to the frame with wrought-iron 
 nails made by the village blacksmith. The kitchen hearth- 
 stone of granite is still in use, and is ten feet one and a half 
 inches long and thirty-one inches wide. It was but partially 
 finished inside, and went unpainted for more than twenty 
 years." It still stands in comfortable condition, and has shel- 
 tered six generations of the good man's family. 
 
 In this, for half a century, he dispensed a simple hospitality 
 to his numerous visitors. Here, John Stark rehearsed his cap- 
 tui-es by the Indians on Baker's river, in 1752, and his military 
 experiences in the battles of Bunker Hill and Bennington. 
 Here Robert Rogers, the Ranger, told of his bold exploits about 
 Lake George, in our last French and Indian war, of his destruc- 
 tion of the Indian village, at the confluence of the St. Francis 
 and St. Lawrence rivers, and of the annihilation of its male mis- 
 
 »At a town meeting held on the i6th day of January, i733-'4, it was 
 " Voted, That there should be Fifty Pounds given to Mr. Timothy Walker for 
 building of him a Dwelling House in Penny Cook provided that he gives the 
 Inhabitants and Freeholders a Receipt that he has received in full for his 
 Salary in times past until this Day for the Decay of Money it not being equal 
 to Silver at Seventeen Shillings the Ounce." — Concord Town Records, printed 
 copy, p. 15. 
 
 ' The houses in Pennycook were rarely, if ever, painted one hundred and 
 fifty years ago. The first minister seems to have nearly finished his house in 
 1757, and was in much doubt as to the wisdom of painting it. He says, in a 
 letter to his son dated September 9 of that year, '■ One article we have at 
 present under consideration is whether or no to paint ye outside. Am ad- 
 vised to it by ye best judges and particularly Col. Rolfe." 
 
17 
 
 creants, who had, time and again, brought terror and death to 
 the frontier settlements of New England. 
 
 Hither also came Benjamin Thompson, now known the 
 world over as Count Rumford, and sought successfully the hand 
 of the minister's eldest daughter. i Here he talked over with 
 his son and his three other sons-in-law the various events of the 
 Revolution in which all of them had actively and patriotically 
 participated. Here his brethren of the cloth always found 
 hearty welcome, as did also scores and hundreds of others who 
 sought, from time to time, his society and hospitality. 
 
 Successful farming in New Hampshire without a barn has 
 never been possible. In due time the first minister managed to 
 provide himself with one commensurate with his needs. It was 
 about one hundred feet long and forty feet wide. Its interior 
 consisted of two cross driveways, a granary, scaffolds and bays. 
 Adjoining it on its south side was a lean-to for his cattle and 
 horses. 
 
 Lumber was of good quality when this barn was built. Some 
 of its timbers are doing faithful service to-day. It was, in short, 
 one of those old New England barns which those who have 
 known them contemplate with affection. Such an one as our 
 own fathers and mothers played in when children ; one in which 
 a hen could hide her nest beyond all possibility of discovery and 
 hatch an unwelcome brood of fall chickens with highest success ; 
 a barn to delight the heart of childhood and add pleasure to the 
 reminiscences of old age. 
 
 In the early part of this century, a grandson of the first min- 
 ister, to whom this structure, which had become old and old fash- 
 
 ' The date of Count Rumford's ( Benjamin Thompson's ) marriage has not 
 been preserved. His marriage license," however, is in existence and reads as 
 follows : 
 
 "By His Excellency John Wentworth, Esq.; Captain-General, Governor, 
 and Commander in Chief in, and over His Majesty's Province of New Hamp- 
 shire, etc. To either of the ordained Ministers of the Gospel in said Prov- 
 ince, and them only. You are hereby Authorized and Impower'd to join to- 
 gether in holy Matrimony, Benjamin Thompson and Sarah Rolfe unless some 
 lawful Impediment appears to you to the contrary. 
 
 Given at Portsmouth, the fourteenth day of November, 1772. 
 
 No. 641333. J. Wentworth." 
 
18 
 
 ioned as well, had been given by his father, proposed its demo- 
 lition and the erection of a smarter one on the site of it. 
 
 But the father strenuously objected, saying, " Not in my day, 
 my son ; not in my day. That was the first minister's barn, and 
 never was it without hay and grain for the horse of the visitor 
 who came to see us. No, not in my day, my son, not in my 
 day." Has it ever occurred to you, ladies and gentlemen, that 
 in the old days before the stage coach and the rail car, there was 
 in our New England towns, not only hospitalit}', but " horse- 
 ■pitality" as well .'' It is a satisfaction to be able to state that a 
 new barn was erected upon another spot, and the old one pre- 
 served until the first two generations which had owned it, were 
 no longer living to witness its removal. 
 
 The farm implements used by the first minister were rude, 
 clumsy, and of local manufacture. His plows were mainly of 
 wood, the soles and coulters only being of iron, though their 
 mould boards were usually plated with sheets of that metal. 
 
 The village blacksmith made his nails, his axes, and his 
 chains, as also his clumsy pitchforks and flat tined manure 
 forks. His grain was thrashed by flails and winnowed by 
 exposure to the wind. His carts and sleds were generally con- 
 structed upon the farm and ironed by the blacksmith, the 
 wheels of the former having felloes three inches wide, tired 
 with short strips of flat iron. The wide rimmed wheel, shod 
 with a continuous tire of equal width, is of modern date. His 
 shovels were mainly of wood, having blades pointed with iron. 
 His harrows, made often of a forked tree, had teeth sometimes 
 of wood and sometimes of iron. 
 
 Rude as were those implements, they were as good as those 
 of his neighbors. Better ones might, possibly, have been 
 obtained from Massachusetts, or from England. But, had he 
 been asked in later years why he had not sent thither for such, 
 his reply must have been ver}' nearly in the words of the great 
 banker, George Peabody, to his friends, in allusion to his hav- 
 ing sawed wood at Stickney's Tavern, in Concord, one morn- 
 ing, to pay for his bed and board over night, " money was not 
 plenty with me then." Yet, then with these rude tools, the for- 
 est was successfully encountered and a comfortable living ex- 
 tracted from the soil. 
 
19 
 
 DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
 
 Successful agriculture in New Hampshire has always required 
 the presence and aid of domestic animals upon the farm. .The 
 first minister kept a variety and number of these adequate to 
 his wants. The unaided strength of man would have worked 
 slowly in wresting from the primeval woods a productive farm. 
 In all of our past agriculture the heavy work has been done by 
 the horse and the ox. As early as 1727, the ox team appeared 
 in Pennycook and has been common there ever since. ^ 
 
 Yes, the first minister had cattle and horses and sheep and 
 swine. It would be vain to ask of what particular race were 
 these, for the time of which we speak was before the time of 
 most of the great cattle and sheep breeders to whom we owe so 
 much. It will suffice to say that his cattle were all natives, 
 •descendents of earlier Puritan importations, some of them, pos- 
 sibly, of the coarse Danish cattle sent to his Piscataqua planta- 
 tions, about 1633, by Capt. John Mason — the first cattle ever 
 seen in New Hampshire. 
 
 His cattle and swine both were smaller than those among us 
 now. He tells us that in November and December, 1764, he 
 killed a cow whose weight was about ninety pounds per quar- 
 ter, and a heifer whose fore-quarters weighed two hundred and 
 thirty-four pounds. He also says that, he killed four hogS 
 whose aggregate weight was but about eight hundred and fifty 
 pounds. Some of you doubtless remember that the two Coop- 
 er hogs slaughtered in Croydon, some years ago, weighed re- 
 spectively, 1,250 and 1,370 pounds. 
 
 Lest you look with surprise upon these figures, I will venture 
 to remind you that when this board of agriculture was estab- 
 lished, in 1870, pure blooded stock was hardly known in New 
 Hampshire and that an ox measuring seven feet was, in most 
 localities, considered more fit for the sharnbles than for the 
 field-. 
 
 The first minister employed both white and black help upon 
 his farm. In 1730, when he was ordained, the population of 
 
 1 The first ox-team ever seen in Pennycook was that of Capt. Ebenezer 
 Eastman, which was driven inlo the plantation from Haverhill, Mass.,^y 
 Jacob Shute, in the fall of 1727. — Bouton's History of Concord, p. 565. 
 
20 
 
 New Hampshire consisted of about io,cx)0 white and 200 
 black people. Of the latter, more or less were slaves. Slav- 
 ery was recognized and regulated by the Provincial law. It 
 was never formally abolished in New Hampshire, but was 
 simply ignored in its state constitutions and laws. It was un- 
 profitable and its maintenance was undesirable. Had it been 
 otherwise, it might have continued as long in New Hampshire 
 as it did in Georgia ; for it is often a humiliating fact, that 
 while persons declaim loudly upon great moral and religious 
 duties and principles, they quietly regulate their private actions 
 by what they deem their private interests. 
 
 In the first minister's day, slavery was well nigh universal 
 among the nations, and its injustice was little thought of. But, 
 from the traditions which have come down to us, it is a matter 
 of some doubt, whether here in New Hampshire, the master 
 ruled his slaves, or his slaves the master. It is quite certain 
 that their service was easy and their lives contented. 
 
 Tradition says that on one occasion, when his servant. Prince, 
 went with an ox team upon the farm, the first minister accom- 
 panied him. Coming to a slough in the road, the latter seated 
 himself upon the rear end of the cart and the darkey mounted 
 the tongue. In the deepest part of this slough the cart tipped 
 up and the minister found himself in the water, to the loud 
 regrets of his driver, who sorrowfully informed him that the 
 pin which held it down had jolted out. A few days later, the 
 order of riding was reversed, and at the same place, the cart 
 again tipped up and this time dumped Prince into the water. 
 Sitting quietly upon the cart tongue and holding up the pin, 
 the good-natured parson with a twinkling eye remarked, " The 
 pin, Prince, has jostled out again, just as it did before." 
 
 Against the date of, December 31, 1746, is this entry in the 
 first minister's diary : " Went to Canterbury. Bought a negro 
 wench of Capt. Glough for w"^ I am to give him £140." The 
 bill of sale of Prince together with those of several others of his 
 slaves have been preserved. That of Prince reads as follows: 
 
 Woburn, July 10, 1751. 
 For value rec* I have this day sold to Mr. Timothy 
 Walker a negro boy named Prince, which I have owned for 
 .some time past. Ruth Hayward. 
 
21 
 
 Another, dated April 3, I'J'jS, about three months after New 
 Hampshire had assumed civil government and adopted a tempo- 
 rary constitution ( Jan. 5, 1776), reads as follows : 
 
 Know all men by these Presents that I Aquis White, of 
 Pembroke, in y* colony of New Hampshire, Widow, for and 
 in consideration of ye sum of Thirty Five Dollars to me in 
 hand paid before signing this writing by Timothy Walker, of 
 Concord, in y' colony afores*. Clerk, have sold and hereby doe 
 sell to y' s* Timothy Walker, A Negro woman servant named 
 Violet, which said servant I engage and warrant to him, his 
 heirs or assigns, to be improved or disposed of according to y° 
 custom of servants in this country during her Natural Life, as 
 witness my Hand this third day of April One thousand seven 
 hundred and seventy six. 
 
 Testes 
 
 Her Her 
 
 Elizabeth X Moor Aquis X White. 
 
 Mark Mark 
 
 Martha Parker. 
 
 We infer from this that the assumption of independent gov- 
 ernment was not considered to have abolished slavery in the 
 colony of New Hampshire. 
 
 But most of the work upon the first minister's farm was that 
 of white men. One of these, Eph. Colby, was a great athlete, 
 renowned for his prowess at raisings and military musters. 
 Had he deferred his life to the present time, and entered one of 
 our colleges, he would have greatly increased its fame and 
 attracted students to its halls. 
 
 Tradition says that, one evening the bully of Chester came to 
 Pennycook " with a chip on his hat." Eph. was greatly excited 
 and anxious to meet him. But the mild persuasions of the first 
 minister, kept him at his hoeing. The next forenoon, however, 
 when, near midday, the Chester champion showed himself in a 
 boastful manner upon an eminence near by, Eph.'s valor became 
 irrepressible. He was missing after dinner. At nightfall tid- 
 ings came to the parsonage that a great contest had been fought 
 out. Soon after Eph. returned contused all over and minus his 
 front teeth. His opponent, a mass of purple jelly, with two 
 ribs broken, had been taken for repairs to the village tavern. 
 
22 
 
 CORN. 
 
 On the warm rich loam of his interval the first minister 
 raised corn as the Indians before him had done. The first day 
 of May, old style, corresponding to our eleventh of that month, 
 was then the day for planting it. But this rule was not strictly 
 observed. In 1746 he planted his corn on the 7th and 8th, and 
 in 1780 still later, on the 20th. 
 
 Soon after corn was up, it was " weeded," and some ten or 
 fifteen days later it was " moulded," or slightly embanked. 
 Later still it was " hilled," by a farther elevation of the embank- 
 ments. Thence onward to harvest time it required no farther 
 labor. By the middle of October it was carted to the barn and 
 husked. 
 
 Then huskings were social occasions as well as useful ; enjoyed 
 by the young and old of both sexes. To the more sedate they 
 commended themselves on account of the large amount of work 
 quickly and easily accomplished ; to the young men and maidens 
 on account of the opportunities which they afforded for merry 
 meetings together. The penalty or privilege, whichever in any 
 particular case it was, attached to the finding of a red ear, was 
 gallantly paid and blushingly accepted. 
 
 Against the date of Friday, October 12, in the minister's 
 diary for 1764, we find this brief entry, "At night had a husk- 
 ing." Some of the ladies here present, if any such there be, 
 who were young fifty years ago, can interpret that entry to 
 their more youthful sisters, far better than the dignity of this 
 staid occasion will allow me to do either verbally or otherwise. 
 
 RYE, WHEAT, BARLEY, AND OATS. 
 
 Rye, wheat, and barley, no longer very largely raised on our 
 New Hampshire farms, were annual crops on that of the first 
 minister. Winter rye, as he tells us, was sown in October and 
 reaped early in August. His winter wheat was ready for the 
 cycle at the same time. He also raised barley, sowing it in 
 1746, on the 14th day of April. In 1764 he sowed his oats on 
 the 19th of this same month. 
 
> 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 Z 
 
 -3 
 X 
 M 
 
 > 
 
 1^ 
 
 
23 
 
 TOBACCO. 
 
 Whether the good parson occasionally solaced his mind and 
 aided his reflections by a moderate use of that plant which was 
 for many years the staple crop and currency of old Virginia, I 
 have no present means of determining. That he raised more 
 or less of it he tells us in his diary in which we have it on 
 record that, on the 6th day of July, 1764, " he sat out the mis- 
 sing tobacco plants." If, two hundred years before this, the 
 great Sir Walter Raleigh could properly entertain prim Queen 
 Bess and her court, by smoking tobacco in their presence, and 
 force them to acknowledge themselves beaten, when asked the 
 weight of the smoke which he puffed in their faces, most 
 surely a quiet New Hampshire parson, back in the wilderness, 
 might be allowed to enliven his pious lucubrations by similar 
 fumings.i " 
 
 Another of the crops raised by the first minister was flax. 
 The seed was sown early in May, at the rate of from three to 
 four pecks per acre, if seed was sought, and from eight to 
 twelve, if the fibre was wanted. It was weeded if necessary, 
 and harvested in the early part of August, by pulling up the 
 plants by handfuls and .collecting them into small bundles. 
 Some weeks afterwards, these were spread upon the ground 
 "to rot," as the term then was, the object being" by exposure 
 
 1 Tobacco, though produced in a small way for home consumption, has 
 never been raised in New Hampshire as a commercial product. Her farmery 
 have never been attracted to it. Some years ago, the New Hampshire board 
 of agriculture held a meeting at Winchester, to which Deacon S. W. Buffum, 
 then the member from Cheshire county, had invited the brethren of a farmers' 
 club in a neighboring state, who were present and asked to address the meet- 
 ing. 
 
 Many of them were producers of tobacco, and their talk was mainly upon 
 its culture, a subject not upon the programmes of the meeting. When they 
 had consumed much of the forenoon session the deacon and his New Hamp- 
 shire friends grew tired of it. But how to courteously arrest its flow was not 
 apparent. At length, however, endurance became a doubtful virtue, and a 
 plain spoken New Hampshire farmer got the floor and expressed, as emphat- 
 ically as plainly, his opinion that tobacco and rum were twin products, and 
 that the culture of the former was of as little importance to the farmers of 
 New Hampshire as the manufacture of the latter. That opinion seemed to 
 prevail and the farther discussion of tobacco raising ceased. 
 
24 
 
 to sun and rain to loosen the flax fibre from the inner and outer 
 portions of the stalk. 
 
 It was next stacked or stored ready for " breaking." This 
 was done by a machine consisting of a series of fixed, horizon- 
 tal, hard wood slats, three fourths of an inch thick and an inch 
 apart, sustained, edges upward, upon a frame two feet and a 
 half high. To these, hinged at one end, was an upper corre- 
 sponding series. If brought together, the slats of the two inter- 
 mingled. When alternately raised and lowered, the flax stalks 
 placed between them were broken and loosened from the fibre. 
 
 The next process was that of " scutching." The broken 
 stalks were held by left handfuls over the upper edge of an 
 upright block or board, while by repeated blows of a broad, 
 wooden-bladed knife, held in the right hand, their loose bark 
 and wood were separated from the flax. 
 
 The last operation was that of "heckling," or combing. 
 This, like the weekly combing of her boy's head by an easy- 
 going mother, was not altogether a slight one. It consisted of 
 separating the flax from the tow by drawing the tangled mass 
 through the upright steel teeth of a stationary comb. 
 
 Flax was not only a home product, but was raised for home 
 manufacture and use. It was spun upon a foot-wheel and 
 woven upon a hand loom, by female members of the household, 
 for sheets, table cloths, and under garments. The factory was 
 yet unborn and a hundred years off" in the unknown future. 
 
 When bleached, this home-made linen rivalled the snow in 
 whiteness, was durable, and, to appreciative eyes, beautiful. 
 The tow was manufactured into coarser fabrics. The cloth 
 made from this, imperfectly cleansed from pointed fragments 
 of bark, was often converted into trousers for the boys and 
 men, and served the double office of a covering and an irritant 
 to the parts which these encased. Possibly some old boy may 
 be here present to-day who has unaffectionate remembrances of 
 such trousers. If so, in all probability he would hardly care to 
 have me repeat the emphatic expletives they may have caused 
 him to utter, and of which it is hoped that he has long ago 
 repented. 
 
 Peas seem to have been sown broadcast in considerable 
 
25 
 
 quantities as a field crop. On tbie iStii of April, 1764, the 
 good minister sowed them in no less than three different places, 
 in the latter, " i peck of large peas and three pecks of Hot- 
 spurs." On the 4th of August, these were " haik'd." Forty 
 days afterwards he cleared up fourteen bushels, having pre- 
 viously brought four and a half bushels from " Mr. Virgins." 
 
 It may seem to us a singular fact that, in none of the first 
 minister's diaries which have come down to us is there any 
 mention of the potato, and that we are left to infer that it was 
 not in very general use in Pennycook before the Revolution. 
 We are told that it was first brought into New Hampshire by 
 the Scotch Irish, who settled at Londonderry,^ in i7i9- While 
 it was well known in South America long ere this, it did not 
 become a common article of food in this country or in Europe, 
 Ireland excepted, before the middle or latter part of the eigh- 
 teenth century. 
 
 In the days of which we are speaking, a considerable variety 
 of beverages were in common use, some of them being intox- 
 icating, while others might be called exhilarating and even ine- 
 briating if taken in excess. Among the latter were beer and 
 cider. 
 
 The first minister, as did also his neighbors, furnished them 
 to his visitors and to his household. He made cider, and was 
 part owner of a mill for its manufacture. 
 
 In 1764, however, he seems to have decided that it became 
 the town minister to become sole proprietor of such an institu- 
 tion, and he proceeds accordingly. He first enlarged his 
 orbharding, as he tells us, by setting out, on the 21st of April, 
 "about 20 apple trees in y" Island orchard" and " y' Joel 
 orchard ;" that on the 23d he bought and set out 40 apple trees, 
 and that on the 24th he " sat out about 60 young apple trees 
 in y" house lot," thereby making to his former orcharding the 
 very respectable addition of 120 trees. 
 
 As showing fs^rther progress in the accomplishment of this 
 important purpose, he remarks, against the date of August 3d 
 of this same year, " Sold him [Mr. Farrington] my quarter of 
 cider mill for 7^ days work. . . . Mr. Aaron Stevens was 
 
 'Belknap's History of New Hampshire, ed. of 1791, vo). 2, p. 37. 
 
26 
 
 witness to y" bargain and the 6 days J work are chalked up 
 above his mantle piece." Down to times quite recent, the 
 mantel piece and the cellar door have been favorite tablets upon 
 which to inscribe in chalk important matters which an ordinary 
 memory might fail to retain. 
 
 Thus far his procedures in this direction were introductory. 
 To the attainment of his main objective point he soon after- 
 wards moved with much directness. He says, in his diary, — 
 
 Sept. 5. Mr. Blaisdell began to work on y' cider mill. 
 
 " 6. Brot mill sweep from Rattle Snake Hill. 
 
 " 7. Began to frame y" Cider mill. 
 
 " 13. Raised y' Cider mill. 
 Oct. 8. Mr. Hanniford worked on y° Cider mill. 
 
 Whether Mr. Hanniford finished " y' Cider mill" on this last 
 date does not appear. It is certain, however, that it was in 
 active service on the i6th. The record farther says : 
 
 Oct. 16. Made 7 barrels of cider. 
 Oct. 17. Made 2 barrels of water cider. 
 Oct. 18. Made 12 barrels of cider. 
 
 Oct. 20. Made 4 barrels of water cider. Gave Lieut. Web- 
 ster one of them. 
 
 The result of these four days' work was 19 bai'rels of cider 
 and 6 barrels of water cider, a grand total of 25. If the sev- 
 eral ministers of this new city of Laconia are to-day as well 
 supplied on this line as was our first minister in 1764, the hard 
 times will affect them but little, and they may look for more 
 frequent calls for spiritual refreshment than ministers usually 
 have. 
 
 It is a singular fact that, notwithstanding the evil results of 
 a free use of alcoholic stimulants, this remained so long 
 unchecked. Scant would have been deemed the hospitality at 
 ordinations, church councils, funerals, raisings, trainings, elec- 
 tions, and, in short, all social occasions, had not spirit of some 
 kind been present and free. It was not until about 1825 that 
 efforts in favor of temperance were first made in New Hamp- 
 shire. Total abstinence is of a date still later. 
 
 For many years after its settlement the principal exports of 
 
27 
 
 New Hampshire were fish and lumber. The latter commodity 
 embraced spars and masts for the royal navy and thb mercan- 
 tile marine of the old country. These were made from large^ 
 straight, and tall white pines, which were found scattered 
 throughout the woods, more particularly in the neighborhood 
 of the streams. 
 
 In the first minister's time, and even later, " masting," as it 
 was termed, was pursued to some extent by parties residing 
 within the limits of his parish. The business was laborious, 
 hazardous, and expensive. It required good judgment in the 
 selection of proper trees, and in the felling and moving of 
 them. As many as one hundred and four oxen were some- 
 times required for their transportation from the woods to the 
 river upon which they were floated to their destination, which 
 was usually Newburyport, Mass. This business therefore 
 required during the time of its prosecution the temporary aid 
 of the teams and of many of the men of a large surrounding 
 area, and awakened much interest in the community. In this 
 the first minister shared, manifesting it by sending his team to 
 help on the work.^ 
 
 This imperfect explanation of the business in his time and 
 locality will make plain to you the significance of the following 
 extracts from his diary for the year 15164. 
 
 1 The first mast-master of whom we have particular knowledge was Lieut. 
 John Webster. . . . Mr. Timothy Walker remembers that Lieut. Webster 
 cut a mast iti Northfield which measured thirty-eight inches in diameter at 
 sixty feet from the butt, and took one hundred and four oxen, or fifty-two 
 teams, to draw it. 
 
 The next famous master was Capt. Reuben Kimball. The manner in 
 which he carried on the business was as follows : Taking a strong team in 
 the winter, of twenty yoke of oxen or more, with sleds and an adequate niam- 
 ber of men, he went into the woods and camped. His men were divided into 
 sections for particular parts of the work, called swampers, teamsters, chop- 
 pers, peelers, and tailsmen. The swampers cleared the way; choppers cut 
 down the trees ; peelers peeled off the bark ; teamsters drove the oxen ; and 
 two tailsmen walked beside the hind team, and in case at any time the tongue 
 of the sled, in passing a hollow place, run so high as to lift the hind oxen up 
 by the neck, then the tailsmen seized the tails of the oxen and drew them out- 
 ward, so that in coming down the tongue of the sled would not strike them. 
 — Bouton's History of Concord, pp. 537, 538. 
 
28 
 
 Jan. 9. Y' mast team sat out. 
 " 17: Prince with the yoke of oxen went into y' mast camp. 
 " 18. Mr. Webster hauled his great mast at night. 
 " 20. At night Prince returned from masting. 
 
 Masting continued to be a business of considerable impor- 
 tance for many years. A locality where masts were collected 
 and rolled into the Contoocook river, in the north-westerly sec- 
 tion of Pennycook, is still designated "The Mast Yard," and 
 has given its name to the station of the Boston & Maine Rail- 
 road established there. 
 
 This paper embraces the period of our two last French and 
 Indian wars and of the Revolutionary War (i 726-1 782). 
 While New Hampshire was a province of England she was 
 called upon to participate in the hostilities between the mother 
 country and France. 
 
 The questions at issue in the first of these wars was that of 
 the Austrian succession, a question in which New Hampshire 
 had about as much real interest as in that on which side of the 
 undetermined line between her territory and Canada the wood- 
 chucks in that vicinity ought to burrow. 
 
 The long peace which followed the treaty of Utrecht (April, 
 1713) proved but little more than an armed truce, and in 1744 
 war again broke out between England and France. This pre- 
 cipitated upon the northern frontier of New Hampshire the 
 horrible succession of Indian barbarities which the Canadian 
 French were wont to instigate and reward. In anticipation of 
 their advent the people of Pennycook built garrisons for their 
 protection. 
 
 In the first minister's diary for 1746 may be found many 
 entries significant of the exposure of himself and people at this 
 time. 
 
 Jan. 28. Began to Jiaul fort timber. 
 
 This was for the grooved posts and tenoned timbers which 
 formed the garrison walls to be built about his house and three 
 or four others of a temporary character, in close proximity 
 thereto, erected for the accommodation of such families as, 
 assigned to his care, could not be sheltered within his own. 
 
29 
 
 Such hasty entries as these mark the progress of their con- 
 struction and occupancy. 
 
 May 23 & 24. Joseph Pudney and als. built their chimnies. 
 
 " 28. Joseph Pudney and Ob"" Foster moved into y' houses. 
 June 23. built y' Tailor's chimney " (Isaac Walker, the 
 tailor) 
 
 This garrison of the first minister was one of the twelve 
 erected in the township for the protection of its people.^ To 
 it a committee of the provincial government assigned eight 
 neighboring families besides his own. A portion of the men 
 maintained watch and ward upon the walls. A part went out 
 daily with implements of husbandry, and armed, to their work 
 in the fields. Three guns from this garrison was a signal for 
 all outside to repair at once within their respective strongholds 
 for safety.^ 
 
 As indicating the dangers to which the people of Pennycook 
 were daily exposed at this time, we quote further entries from 
 his diary of 1 746 : 
 
 April 22. Y' Indians took Woodwell's Garrison. 
 
 " 25. Went to Boston to carry news of y' Indian mischief. 
 
 May 24. In the night we had tidings of mischief being done 
 about sunset, at Contoocook, by y' Indians. Thomas Cook 
 and als. killed. 
 
 June II. Benj" Blanchard of Canterbury was scalped by y° 
 indians. 
 
 June 12. Our town was universally alarmed by hearing some 
 guns discharged in y" woods. 
 
 June 24. Mr. Stickney brought up my new gun. 
 
 iThe several locations of these garrisons are designated upon the accom- 
 panying map of Concord (formerly Pennycook) in 1746. 
 
 •The danger to which the inhabitants of Pennycook were at this time ex- 
 posed is farther indicated by a vote of the proprietors, passed March 19, 1746, 
 that a copy of their town records be made, and that the originals be sent to 
 Massachusetts for safe-keeping. — Proprietor's Records, vol. 3, p. 184. 
 
 Half a dozen years before this, notwithstanding it was a time of peace, the 
 general feeling of insecurity was such that the town " Voied, That there shall 
 be a good and Sufficient Garrison built around the Revd Mr Timothy Walk- 
 ers dwelling House as soon as may be Conveniently at the Town's Cost." 
 — Concord Town Records, printed copy, p. 46. 
 
30 
 
 This was afterwards a trusted companion to the first minis- 
 ter. Many a Sunday it stood beside him in his pulpit. While 
 he believed in the gospel of peace, he believed also in gun- 
 powder as, at that time, an active persuasive thereto. 
 
 June 25. Bishop was captivated by y' Indians. 
 
 June 30. An alarm over y' river on account of Indians being 
 seen. 
 
 July I. Dorcas Hall saw an indian at night. George Hall 
 lay abroad and saw six Indians. 
 
 Aug. II. Jonathan Bradley and als. were killed by y° Indians. 
 " 16. Andover men came up to guard us. 
 
 29. Went to Boston. 
 
 30. Put in a petition for help against y" Indians. 
 Sept. 3. Went to Boston to obtain a grant of 20 men. 
 
 If the question be asked why not to Portsmouth rather than 
 to Boston .'' The answer must be that the provincial assembly 
 of New Hampshire never manifested much friendship for 
 Pennycook, and strangely left to Massachusetts the manning of 
 some of the most important forts which the recent determina- 
 tion of her southern boundary line left within her limits. It 
 was not to her credit and it does not read well in history that 
 she left Fort Dummer and the fort at Number Four to be 
 manned by the soldiers of another province. 
 
 Turning again to the diary of 1746, we read : 
 
 A false alarm. 
 
 Went out into y'^ woods scouting. 
 
 Y° Indians killed Esterbrook. 
 
 Our soldiers were dismissed. 
 
 Capt. GofTe's men went away and carried 5 days 
 
 Went into y" woods. Lodged there. 
 
 On a fly leaf of his diary for 1746 he thus tersely summarizes 
 the barbarities of this year (1746). 
 
 WoodweWs Garrison was taken April 22. 
 Thomas Cook and als. May y' g. 
 Richard Blanchard scalped June 11. 
 
 Sept. 
 
 15- 
 
 (( 
 
 18. 
 
 Nov. 
 
 10. 
 
 (( 
 
 20. 
 
 (; 
 
 28. 
 
 provisions. 
 
 Dec. 
 
 9- 
 
31 
 
 Bishop -was captivated June 25. 
 
 yon'' Bradley and als. Killed Aug: 11. 
 
 Esterbrook killed Nov. 10. 
 
 Killed 8. Captivated 12. Died of his wounds i. 
 
 A most melancholy record of a melancholy year ! Under 
 such conditions nothing could flourish. Men, women, and 
 children simply strugglejd for existence. And yet, the worship 
 of God was regularly maintained. Partial crops were raised 
 and harvested and the frontier was defended. 
 
 The year before, generous in its poverty, this little township 
 had sent at least five, and doubtless more, of the effective men 
 ■she so sadly needed at home to aid in that strange capture of 
 LiOuisburg, the main credit of which belonged to William 
 Vaughn and was given to William Pepperell. The discom- 
 forts of garrison life told most severely upon the women and 
 children. Pi'otracted confinement in close quarters and a con- 
 stant sense of peril caused a physical and mental strain almost 
 intolerable.^ 
 
 The treaty of Aix La Chapelle brought indeed an uncertain 
 peace in 1748. But whatever had been gained by the war was 
 surrendered by the home authorities, and all parties dissatisfied 
 took breath for a final struggle in the near future. This war 
 had settled nothing and another was inevitable. 
 
 The Seven Years' war, which soon followed, was precipitated, 
 as will be remembered, by the seizure of some of the Ohio 
 company's men by the French in 1753. After a desultory con- 
 test of some two years, England formally declared war with 
 
 1 Beside the dangers and annoyances from the French and Indian enemy 
 and from the Bow proprietors, who claimed the homes which they had wrested 
 from the wilderness, the early settlers of Pennycook encountered others from 
 within, as appears from votes repeatedly passed at their annual town meetings, 
 of which the following are specimens : 
 
 i^th March, 1738. Voted That Ten Shillings be paid for each Wolf that 
 shall be killed within this Township (for the Year 1739) to the Killer of said 
 Wolf. 
 
 Voted That Twelve Pence be paid for each Rattlesnake that shall be 
 killed within this Township by the last of May next and brought to One or 
 More of the Select Men. 
 
 Voted That the Hogs may run at large within this Township for the Year 
 1739- 
 
32 
 
 France (May, 1756) and hostilities were waged with varying 
 results until the capitulation of Montreal in 1760. The early 
 campaigns showed decisively the incompetency of the English 
 generals sent over to command the English and colonial troops ; 
 making apparent the conceited wilfulness of Braddock, whose 
 name has become synonymous with defeat, the imbecility of 
 Loudoun, and the inability of Abercrombie. But the acces- 
 sion to power of William Pitt and the 'appointment to general 
 command of General Wolfe soon brought order out of chaos 
 and substituted victory for defeat. 
 
 In this war the American colonies had much at stake — more 
 far than they knew — and were intensely interested ; for the great 
 question at issue was, whether North America should be Eng- 
 lish and Protestant or French and Catholic. When, on the 
 i8th day of September, 1759, the lilies of France were 
 removed from the ramparts of Quebec, this momentous ques- 
 tion was settled. While her worthless king had been toying 
 with his trifles and his mistresses, France had lost a domain 
 compared with which her own was but a province. 
 
 From first to last the little community of Pennycook, coun- 
 selled and encouraged by her minister, had contributed liberally 
 from her scant supply of men and means to further the national 
 success. She was gallantly represented in the first expedition 
 to Crown Point in 1755, at the massacre at Fort William 
 Henry in i757' ^^^ ^^ Ticonderoga, Crown Point, the Indian 
 village of St. Francis, and at the capture of Qiiebec in 1759. 
 From the imperfect records which have escaped destruction 
 have been gleaned the names of no less than forty-three of her 
 stalwart men who in this war did honor to their country and 
 themselves as well. 
 
 From the treaty of Paris on for a dozen years, the American 
 colonies had peace and an opportunity for recuperation and 
 growth. But the selfish policy of the home government soon 
 created an unrest which broadened and deepened until it had 
 culminated in revolution. 
 
 The people of the American colonies, at the time of the 
 Revolution, were fortunate in three particulars : 
 
 I. The French and Indian Wars had taught them the use of 
 arms and their own power. 
 
33 
 
 2. When their great struggle with the mother country came 
 on, their leading men were neither rich nor corrupt. 
 
 3. Their clergy, a well educated class, largely graduates of 
 Harvard and Yale, were, with few exceptions, patriotic. " But' 
 for the clergy," said in my hearing some ^^ears ago, an old gen- 
 tleman of wide observation and reflection, " but for the clergy, 
 we could not have successfully fought through the Revolution." 
 
 Tradition says that intelligence of the Battle of Lexingtork 
 reached Pennycook in the evening and caused great excitement. 
 Early the next morning, a neighbor of the first minister looked 
 across the intervening fields and observing a light in his study, 
 went at once to discuss with him the tidings of the night before. 
 As he passed to the door, he saw, through' the curtainless win- 
 dows of his study, the good man alone, striding back and forth 
 evidently in painful thought. 
 
 He entered without knocking. The pastor recognized him 
 instantly, and as instantly remarked, " We must fight, John, we 
 must fight. There is no longer any alternative. Yes, John, we 
 must fight." He had been in England three times since i7S3> 
 and knew well the disposition of the king and of his advisors. 
 His was also the spontaneous opinion of all patriotic Ameri- 
 cans. 
 
 A very few days afterwards one of the First minister's sons-in- 
 law raised a company of thirty-six men and led them to Cam- 
 bridge, where he was soon transferred as adjutant to staff of 
 Col. John Stark.i A little later a second one entered the army 
 as second lieutenant of another company. Both fought under 
 Stark at the rail fence in the Battle of Bunker Hill. The first 
 died in the service at Crown Point in 1776. The second fought 
 persistently through the entire period of the Revolution and was 
 honorably discharged at its close with the rank of major.* To 
 the good man's great sorrow his remaining son-in-law, then Ben- 
 jamin Thompson, now known as Count Rumford, joined the 
 ranks of the Tories and retired within the British lines about 
 Boston, in October, 1775. 
 
 > Capt. Abiel Chandler. 
 Major Daniel Livermore, for many years a respected citizen of Concord who 
 died in 1798 at the age of 49 years. 
 
34 
 
 His only son, as loyal to the American cause as was his 
 father, was active as a military man until 1777, when his 
 removal to the bench restricted his efforts to more of a civil 
 nature. 
 
 Without detailing the movements of the First minister during 
 this crucial period of our history, it will suffice to say that his 
 record was that of an active Christian patriot. At the begin- 
 ning of hostilities he took a stand from which he never 
 swerved, — a stand which exposed his little estate to confiscation 
 and his neck to the halter. 
 
 He lived to hear of our triumph at Yorktown and to rejoice 
 in the cessation of hostilities which followed it. All through 
 life he had shared his people's fortunes and for fifty-two years, 
 except when temporarily absent in their behalf, had regularly 
 occupied the pulpit to which they had called him. But the end 
 of his farming and his preaching had come. 
 
 One Sunday morning, a little less than a year after the sur- 
 render of Lord Cornwallis, his people assembled at the meeting 
 house for their usual service and there many of them first 
 learned that their venerable pastor was dead. He had risen in 
 the expectation of meeting them as usual, but the great arbiter 
 of human actions had summoned him to a greater assembly, and 
 to a higher service. The Pennycook pulpit was for the first 
 time vacant. 
 
 In due time, the town placed at his grave a plain slab of slate 
 stone, which tells the reader that. 
 
 He died on the ist day of September 1782, 
 In the 78th year of his age 
 And the 52d of his ministry. 
 
 But it was mainly to the leadership and pastoral care of a 
 rural people that the first minister devoted his time and ener- 
 gies. 
 
 He identified himself with their temporal interests. Many of 
 their early legal documents are in his handwriting. He worked 
 with them for the establishment of American nationality. In 
 the defense of their homes against the Bow proprietors his aid 
 
35 
 
 •was invaluable. Three times he went to England with appeals 
 in their behalf from the judgments of the provincial courts. 
 
 He also identified himself with their spiritual interests. He 
 taught them weekly from his pulpit. He joined them in mar- 
 riage. He baptized their children. He buried their dead. 
 His life was in close touch with that of his people. 
 
 Such were some of the salient points which characterized 
 the agriculture of central New Hampshire from those which 
 distinguish it today. The soil was then new and productive. 
 The cattle and swine were smaller, coarser, and of no well 
 •defined races. 
 
 Barley, wheat, and peas were raised more extensively then 
 than now. 
 
 Flax was a common crop, and tobaccb was produced for 
 -domestic use. 
 
 Cider was made in large quantities, and was a common bev- 
 erage. 
 
 Slavery existed in a mild form, and more or less of the farm 
 work was accomplished by enforced labor. Agricultural imple- 
 ments were few and clumsy. 
 
 During the French and Indian wars farming operations were 
 greatly hindered and prosecuted with danger. 
 
 The style of living was simple but abundant. 
 
 Food and clothing were products of every farm. So, too, 
 "were children, bright, sturdy, numerous. 
 
 Little, remote, wilderness-begirt Pennycook was an ideal com- 
 munity. The poets sing of Arcadia, but Pennycook was more 
 than an Arcadia. Its people owned the farms which they cul- 
 tivated. They were honest, intelligent, self reliant. Until 1776 
 they were loyal British subjects. The Declaration of Independ- 
 ence made them American citizens. 
 
 But, ladies and gentlemen, my time is up, and I close here my 
 recital of the record of the First Minister's Farm, omitting the 
 last one hundred and twelve years of it. It is still in the occu- 
 pancy of his descendants. Should its later history be called for, 
 I may reply in the words of the tapster to the thirsty guest of 
 the old English inn, 
 
 "Anon — Anon, Sir." 
 
00 
 
 Eh 
 
 
 O 
 
 t3 
 
 O 
 
^\)t JFarm of tl)e JFitat JHimater. 
 
 A. Secokd Address 
 
 Delivered before the New Hampshire Board of Agriculture, 
 At The Weirs, August 15, 1895 
 
 JOSEPH B. WALKER, 
 
 OF CONCORD, N. H. 
 
 Beprinted from the Report of the State Board of Agriculture, 189S. 
 
 CONCORD, N. H. 
 
 THE REPUBLICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION. 
 
 1896. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 
 
 BY JOSEPH B. WALKER, CONCORD. 
 
 FAJIT II. 
 
 Afr. Chairman^ Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 I had the honor, a year ago, about this time and in this place, 
 to read to you, as those of a typical New Hampshire farm, the 
 annals of that of the First Minister of Pennycook, now Con- 
 cord, and the capital of this state, from the time it was wrested 
 from the wilderness, down to the death of its first proprietor in 
 1782, — a period of fifty-two years. I have since been invited 
 by this Board to continue the narrative to the present time. 
 For that purpose I am here to-day. 
 
 Concord was colonized, rather than settled in the usual way 
 by accretions from time to time of individual immigrants. The 
 proprietors were all admitted to plantation rights after careful 
 examinations by a committee of the General Court of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay as to their fitness. As a consequence, as early as 
 October, 173I) less than six years after the grant of its proprie- 
 tary charter, almost every one of its proprietors had a portion of 
 his land improved and a house built thereon.-' 
 
 In 1769, the First Minister transferred the ownership of one 
 half of his farm to his only son, Hon. Timothy Walker, and in 
 1782, devised to him the other half.^ He had been born upon 
 it and was familiar with its traditions. He had been educated 
 
 iSee Appendix A. 
 
 2 On the 25th of December, 1769, the Eev. Timothy Walker deeded to his only 
 son, Hon. Timothy Walker, " The one half of all the lands which I own in the 
 Parish aforesaid, as well such as are already divided into lots as those which I 
 own in Common with other Proprietors of said Parish." By his will, executed 
 August 10, 1782, he devised to him the remainder of his real estate. 
 
 Walker Papers, Vo}. 2. 
 
4 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 at Harvard, had studied theology, and was for several years a 
 minister of the standing order, but was never settled. The Revo- 
 lution, however, swept him from clerical, first into military, 
 and subsequently into civil life. In 1777, he was appointed a 
 justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Rockingham County, 
 an office which he held until he became disqualified by the 
 limitation of age, in 1807; having been presiding justice from 
 1789. He died May 5, 1822, at the mature age of eighty-five 
 years.-' 
 
 By his deeds bearing dates from June 20th, 1803, and June 
 23, 1807, the farm passed to its third owner, his youngest son. 
 Captain Joseph Walker.^ He held if until his death, March 3, 
 1833, when it descended by law to his only son, the present 
 owner (Joseph B. Walker) . 
 
 During the ownership of the second and third proprietors, a 
 period of about fifty years, the agriculture of New Hampshire 
 was more conservative than progressive, and made few 
 advances. A traditional system of mixed husbandry prevailed, 
 mingled with domestic manufactures. The farmer lived rrrore 
 entirely than now upon the products of his farm. He sold lit- 
 ■ tie and bought little, and that mostly by barter.* 
 
 The latter part of this period, however, marks the approach- 
 ing renaissance of New England agriculture. Improved breeds 
 of sheep and horses were introduced. The horse hay-rake and 
 iron plows came into use. The first New Hampshire Board 
 of Agriculture was established, as were our several county 
 agricultural societies. The depressing influences of the wars 
 of the Revolution and of 1812 had passed away, and the new 
 spirit of a new age was everywhere felt and manifest. 
 
 For nearly thirty years after the death of its third proprietor, 
 the farm of the First Minister was occupied by tenants. To 
 say that its condition improved during that period, would be to 
 say what is not true. To say that it was maltreated, would be 
 equally so. For the use of it, the fourth proprietor received a 
 fair annual rent and the tenants secured for themselves a fair 
 net profit. 
 
 1 See Biographical Slietoli, Appendix B. 
 
 = See biographical notice of Oapt. Joseph Walker, Appendix C. 
 
 s See Agricultural Advancements, 1782 to 1833. Appendix D. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 5 
 
 But our agriculture will be unlikely to improve under any 
 systenn of tenancy which has hitherto or may hereafter be 
 devised. The changes for the better in its condition, so 
 devoutly desired, can only be secured through the stimulus of 
 personal ownership and the adoption of better methods of farm- 
 ing. The old English system of landlord, tenant, and farm 
 laborer engenders jealousies, supports caste, and keeps all par- 
 ties concerned discontented and unsatisfied. 
 
 While it is to be deeply regretted that twenty-eight per cent, 
 of all the farms in the United States are leased to tenants, we 
 should rejoice that only seven per cent of those in New Hamp- 
 shire are rented. If there be upon this planet any substantial 
 foundation upon which national prosperity can securely rest, it 
 will be found in an intelligent. Christian yeomanry which owns 
 the land which it tills ; such as New England has heretofore 
 produced, and, it is to be hoped, will never cease to maintain. 
 
 THE FOURTH PROPRIETOR. 
 
 In 1853, after it had been leased to tenants for some twenty 
 years, the Fourth Proprietor assumed control of the Farm of 
 the First Minister. He knew no farming, but he had agricul- 
 tural blood in his veins, as a descendant of the seventh generation 
 in a direct line of farmers back to their first Anglo-American 
 ancestor, an English yeoman, who settled at Lynn, Mass., in 
 1630, and believing in gospel and gunpowder, became a mem- 
 ber of the Church of Christ in that town, and a founder of the 
 Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. 
 The farm then consisted of: 
 
 Tillage, 73 acres, 37 square rods. 
 
 Pasture, 68 acres, 12 square rods. 
 
 Low meadow, 47 acres, 69 square rods. 
 
 Forest, 215 acres. 
 
 Water, 20 acres, 70 square rods. 
 
 Amounting to 424 acres, 28 square rods. 
 
 TILLAGE. 
 
 Island 46 acres, 172 rods 
 
 SixAoreLot 6 " 000 " 
 
 Watemummons Field 16 " 105 " 
 
 HouseLot 3 " 80 " 
 
 T — 73 acres, 37 rods. 
 
NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 PASTDEES. 
 
 68 acres, 12 rods. 
 
 215 acres, 00 rods. 
 
 Island Pastures 32 acres, 12 rods 
 
 Little Pond Pasture 36 " 00 " 
 
 LOW MEADOWS. 
 
 Improred Meadow 7 acres, 28 rods 
 
 Unimproved Meadow 40 " 41 " 
 
 47 acres, 69 rods. 
 
 FORESTS. 
 
 Livermore Lot 15 acres, 00 rods 
 
 Parson Walker's Pasture Lot 30 " 00 " 
 
 Little Pond Lot , UO " 00 " 
 
 Dark Plain Lot 60 " DO 
 
 PONDS. 
 
 Horse Slioe Pond 16 acres, 60rods 
 
 Little Pond 4 " 10 " 
 
 . 20 acres, 70 rods. 
 
 Whole Area o( Farm 424 acres, 28 rods. 
 
 The tillage land was in low condition, the pastures had been 
 closely fed and, together with portions of the meadows, were 
 largely encroached upon by willow, alder, and other bushes. 
 
 The buildings consisted of a one-story cottage, two two-story 
 houses, two cattle sheds, a wood and carriage house, a hogpen, 
 a bacon house, and several other small structures. No one of 
 these was covered with a sound roof. Each, together with long 
 lines of farm fences, needed speedy repairs.^ 
 
 To the present proprietor, who then possessed very little 
 agricultural knowledge and no experience, these neglected 
 lands and dilapidated buildings afforded larger opportunities 
 for making improvements and sinking money than the first sur- 
 vey of them revealed. But a few months' association with farm 
 hands, stone layers, carpenters, and other mechanics, accom- 
 panied by a painful void in the abdomen of his pocket-bopk, 
 gave him unwelcome information which he could have obtained 
 so well from no other source. He learned for the first time 
 that the glory of being a land holder was an expensive one. 
 
 But, he had literally put his hand to the plow and he pushed 
 on into his unknown future, thinking that he " who looked 
 back " was not worthy of agricultural success. He observed 
 
 1 For condition of First Minister's Farm in 1853 see Appendix E. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 7 
 
 as he went, he thought, he recorded his experiences and studied 
 those of others ; sometimes cheered, sometimes depressed, but 
 determined to sooner or later Icnow his business. 
 
 On one occasion, however, he became discouraged. The 
 farm was not paying expenses, and he confided to a neighbor 
 of twice his years and far broader agricultural experience, his 
 purpose to sell it. " Pooh ! " replied his confidant, throwing 
 back his head, until his eagle beak of a nose hung down his 
 face like a bush scythe on a tree, " Pooh ! I don't think much 
 of a young man who is not smart enough to keep what was given 
 to him." 
 
 This remark stung the young proprietor's too thin skin, 
 which has grown thicker since. When, ere long, his temper 
 had become serene, and cool reflection had come to his aid, he 
 concluded that his sympathetic comforter held a justifiable 
 opinion. The old farm was not sold. Thus far, its present 
 owner has been " smart enough to keep it.'' 
 
 PLOWING. 
 
 The important fact was ere long made known to the present 
 owner, that his hired men worked for pay and not because they 
 loved him, and that if their pay was to come from the farm's 
 income, the farm's products must be largely increased. It was 
 being run upon the old rotations of an hundred years ago. 
 Exhausted sod ground was broken up in the fall, manured the 
 next spring, and planted to corn. The following year it was 
 sown with oats, to be cropped with grass the succeeding six. 
 
 Hay, the leading crop, was produced at the rate of some fifty 
 to sixty tons a year. A part of this was of good quality, but most 
 of it classed under the uncertain term of " stock hay," and 
 varied all the way from fair, fairish, and middling fair, down 
 to mean, meaner, and meanest. 
 
 A farm never stands still. It either improves or deteriorates. 
 Conscious that, for aught he knew, its three former owners, — 
 a minister of the Gospel, a judge of the Common Pleas court, 
 and a captain of Cavalry, might, from some locality beyond his 
 ken, be watching his movements, the present proprietor felt 
 that, if he neglected its improvement, there might be such a 
 
8 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 rattling at night of dry bones about the headboard of his bed as 
 would drive " sleep from his eyes and slumber from his eyelids." 
 He therefore determined to break up as fast as he could his 
 exhausted, turf-bound fields, and after thorough pulverization 
 and fertilization seed them anew. 
 
 This work was begun in 1853, by breaking up a section of 
 run-out grass land to the depth of eight and a half to nine 
 inches. The favorite breaking-up plow then in use in his 
 locality, was the old cast-iron " Lion plow." Its successful 
 operation on interval turf land required a plowman, two team- 
 sters, and eight oxen. It turned a fifteen-inch furrow slice 
 perfectly flat, shutting it in closely against its neighbor, and 
 leaving the ground as smooth and solid as before. 
 
 Upon the soil thus inverted, manure was spread at the rate 
 of ten cords per acre and buried with a seed plow, running 
 some four inches deep. Thus prepared, the eight years' rota- 
 tion above mentioned began. 
 
 The present proprietor will never forget his first attempt at 
 plowing. He took his initial lesson in an effort to plow 
 under manure upon an inverted sod. The plow seemed aware 
 that a green hand was between its stilts, and showed a per- 
 sistent determination to either dive under the furrow slices or 
 scoot from the ground. To keep it in place, he expended all 
 his strength, sometimes turning it one way and again the 
 other ; sometimes lifting it up, and at others bearing it down ; 
 all the while making very poor work and learning the impor- 
 tant fact, that a balk in one furrow secured the imperfection of 
 the next. At the end of two or three hours, he was the 
 "tiredest" man ever seen on the First Minister's Farm, and 
 he had reached the conclusion that plowing was very hard 
 work. But first conclusions are not always correct. 
 
 It at length occurred to him that if he would restrict his 
 efforts to the guidance only of the plow and leave its draft to 
 the team, he might save both muscle and perspiration. This 
 idea was an inspiration. From that time to this, he has al- 
 lowed his teams to do his plowing, contenting himself with the 
 simple direction of his implements. 
 
 Following a plow all da}' long in the constant endeavor to 
 make every furrow like every other perfect furrow, may seem 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 9 
 
 to some a monotonous business, but every good plowman will 
 tell you that it is not so. Each furrow makes a little history of 
 its own, of much interest to him who turns it. If his plow 
 shows a fixed disposition to run away, he notes the fact, and, 
 if it be a good one, at once changes its draft line. If a poor 
 one, embodying faulty lines of construction, he dismisses it 
 with his blessing, as Abraham did Hagar, and seeks a better 
 one. No farmer can afford to use a poor plow. 
 
 The practical plowman soon learns that the basal idea in 
 every plow is a combination of two wedges, one to move hor- 
 izontally, and the other perpendicularly ; the office of the first 
 being to sever the furrow slice from the subsoil ; while that of 
 the second is to raise and turn it downside up. He also sees 
 that if these wedges are too blunt, and their cutting edges are 
 kept dull, unnecessary resistance will be encountered and the 
 amount of power required to draw the plow through the soil 
 will be unduly increased. 
 
 A careful experiment made, some years since, with two pop- 
 ular plows in breaking up a piece of tough sod-land, revealed 
 the fact that the turning of a furrow eight and a half inches 
 deep and fourteen inches wide, by one of them, required an 
 expenditure of power amounting to eleven hundred and fifty 
 pounds ; while by the use of the other, the same work was 
 done at an expenditure of only eight hundred. As the cost of 
 plowing is largely in that of the power used, the comparative 
 merits of the two plows were very apparent. 
 
 When, in the course of time, experience had taught the 
 present proprietor many of the points in good plowing, the 
 question arose in his mind, why do you and your men and 
 teams walk hundreds of miles every year to plow.? Readily 
 came the answer, " to pulverize the soil." To the next ques- 
 tion, " Does the old ' Lion plow,' which simply lifts the furrow 
 from its bed, and after turning it lays it down again as solid as 
 before, do that?" To this inquiry the answer was simply 
 "No." 
 
 Thereupon the old " Lion " was left to "innocuous desue- 
 tude " and a successor was employed which turned every fur- 
 row slice with a twist, and rested, its off edge upon the near 
 edge of its neighbor. Thus turned, partial pulverization was 
 
lO NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 secured and an open space left at the bottom of each furrow, 
 from which the forces of nature might attack the inverted sod 
 and aid in its disintegration. 
 
 With the best hand plows which he could get, it cost the 
 present owner of the First Minister's Farm from ten to twelve 
 dollars to break up an acre of his interval sod land to the depth 
 of from eight and a half to nine inches. To do this, as before 
 remarked, required three men and eight oxen, or a team equiv- 
 alent thereto. In the course of time the Sulky plow came to 
 the farm and came to stay. No less than three have here done 
 service; first, a " Cassidy ; " later, a " Syracuse," and lastly a 
 Taylor & Belcher. Their distinctive points of excellence can- 
 not be here detailed. It must suffice to say that, with a slightly 
 diminished depth and width of furrow, the cost of sod-plowing 
 has been reduced to about one half of its former amount ; while 
 the privilege of riding has been accorded to the plowman in 
 exchange for that of going on foot. For similar reasons, 
 the old spike-tooth harrow has been remanded to the retired 
 list. 
 
 Next in importance to fertilization, in field culture, is soil 
 pulverization. There is no better place to study this essential 
 work than between the handles of a good plow swinging free in 
 the furrow, behind an even-, steady-moving team. The com- 
 minution of the furrow slice as it is detached from its bed and 
 rolled over, will suggest to an intelligent plowman that the 
 vast envelope with which Omnipotence has wrapped this 
 planet is all plant food ; stored for the farmer's use in a form 
 to insure its preservation, and that he has but to separate its 
 numberless particles and expose them to the action of heat and 
 air, water and frost, to secure from them assimilable sus- 
 tenance for the plants growing upon them. Furthermore, as 
 he thinks back into the agricultural past, it will occur to him 
 that old Jethro Tull, who, two hundred years ago, taught that 
 pulverization might be substituted for fertilization, was less of 
 a crank than his neighbors thought him to be. In time it 
 will dawn upon him that the former is cheaper than the latter 
 and that if he will, he may plow more and manure less to his 
 own pecuniary advantage. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. II 
 
 THE COW PASTURE. 
 
 An early subject to claim the attention of the present proprie- 
 tor was the condition of his cow pasture, about one third of 
 which had been usurped by a vigorous growth of hardback, 
 black alder, cold water, and willow bushes. The Bible tells us 
 that the advent of sin upon the earth was followed by " thorns 
 and thistles,"^ and that our first ancestor was commanded by 
 his Maker to " replenish and subdue it.'"* The alternative pre- 
 sented was the subjugation of these intruders or, in the near 
 future, no milk. 
 
 He accepted the former, but, it must be humbly confessed, 
 with little knowledge of the best means of its attainment. 
 Kindly disposed neighbors told him that if he would cut his 
 bushes on two certain days in August, " when the sign was in 
 the heart," he would surely kill them. As it was impossible 
 with his established farm force to cut ten acres of them, vary- 
 ing in height from one to twenty feet, sin two days, he was 
 constrained to disregard their disinterested advice. 
 
 But extermination must be accomplished somehow, and he 
 began it by mowing the hardbacks {Spirca satiscifolia). This 
 temporarily improved the appearance of the pasture, but the 
 following season brought them all back again in increased num- 
 bers. Ploughing was next tried. Their stalks were turned 
 downwards and their roots upwards. They were literally up- 
 rooted, but while most of them were thus killed, their roots lay 
 upon the ground's surface, black, tough, fibrous masses, each 
 one resembling a big darky's scalp, which neither plow, har- 
 row, or other implement, would reduce to pulverization. 
 
 But, inasmuch as fire will do what no other agent will, some 
 of these were gathered into masses and burned, and their ashes 
 paid in part the expense of their reduction. The remainder 
 were used as the substratum of a farm road then in process of 
 construction. Whether by this time, the forces of chemistry 
 have reduced these to their primal elements your speaker 
 knows not. He does know that that road has never settled, in 
 spite of time and frosts and floods. 
 
 lOenesls, 3:18. 
 2 Genesis, 1:28. 
 
12 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 This work of subjugation extended through parts of as many 
 years as it has taken minutes to narrate it. It taught the inex- 
 perienced farmer how to kill hardhacks, which should have 
 never been allowed to grow. 
 
 The plow sufficed for the uprooting of small willows. As 
 fast as a bout was plowed, the stalks and roots were pulled out 
 by hand, to be afterwards gathered into heaps for burning. 
 Any not loosed by the plow were dug out by the bog hoe. 
 This operation left the ground in fit condition for further 
 manipulations. 
 
 But willows five or six feet high, or higher, did not obliging- 
 ly yield to this treatment. Their roots were too large and 
 descended too deep. The axe was here found necessary. 
 Severing them at an inch or two below the ground's surface, 
 just where they changed to stalks ; in short at their necks, 
 where one cuts off" a mean dog's tail, they all died satisfactor- 
 ily. Whenever water bushes were encountered, extermination 
 was found only in substantial extraction. 
 
 The black alder generally grows in bunches of a dozen or 
 more stalks springing from one cluster of roots. Cutting each 
 stalk separately above ground proved a slow, laborious and 
 ineffectual work, even if done on the right day in the month of 
 August, when " the sign was in the heart." It was found that 
 each bunch must be severed from its roots below the ground's 
 surface, or it would sprout and grow again. Questions as to 
 why the Almighty allowed sin to enter the world, and why he 
 endowed weeds and bushes with high vitality have never been 
 satisfactorily answered. If, however, they have been intended 
 for human discipline, the present proprietor has great reason 
 for gratitude. 
 
 But experience, ere long, developed an effectual method of 
 subduing the largest alders. It consisted : 
 
 1. In making a circular incision with an axe, a few inches 
 deep, around the outer roots of a clump, similar to that for- 
 merly made by the old-fashioned doctor, with his dull lancet, 
 around the tooth he was about to extract with his accursed key, 
 of which some of you may have painful recollections. 
 
 2. By carefully introducing to the groove thus made, a small, 
 short linked, cable chain, and so hitching it to the neck of the 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 1 3 
 
 roots that, when drawn to its final grip, its pull was an upward 
 and onward twist. 
 
 After these preliminaries, the slow, steady pull of four good 
 seven and a half feet oxen, with heads slightly lowered, as they 
 straightened themselves horizontally under the guidance of a 
 skillful teamster, sufficed to extract and lay prone upon the 
 ground the most formidable clumps of these intruders. 
 
 You must pardon him, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentle- 
 men, if the present owner of the First Minister's Farm just here 
 and now, confesses to a love for a good yoke of oxen. There 
 are few finer types of animated substantiality than a mild-eyed, 
 clean-faced ox, possessed of a head surmounted with a comely 
 pair of horns, behind which a strong neck and shoulders develop 
 into a straight back and well-rounded body, terminating in deep 
 hind quarters, and a well-inserted tail ; the whole supported by 
 four muscular and well-formed legs. 
 
 Mrs. Austin, his daughter, tells us that that sharp-witted 
 English divine, the late Sidney Smith, kept a four-ox team, 
 and gave to the animals composing it appropriate names. ^ Of 
 the first yoke, he named one " Tug," and the other " Lug." 
 Of the second, he called one " Haul," and his mate " Crawl " ; 
 names quite as significant as are those of Bright, and Berry, and 
 Buck, and Broad, so common with us. 
 
 Daniel Webster also loved oxen.^ It has been said that one 
 of his latest earthly enjoyments, after he had gone, down to his 
 Marshfield farm to die, was to sit in his doorway and look ad- 
 miringly into the honest faces of his oxen, as they stood before 
 him, and to lavish upon them the noble affection, which, con- 
 tracted in youth upon his father's farm, twenty miles below us, 
 grew stronger with his years, and was as lasting as his life. 
 
 Remote be the day when cattle husbandry shall be banished 
 from the farms of our beloved state. " Let that day be dark- 
 ness ; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light 
 shine upon it."' 
 
 > Life ol Sidney Smith, Vol. 1, p. 145. 
 'Harvey's Eeminiacences of Daniel Webster, pp. 276-278. 
 s Job, 3:4. 
 
14 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 FRESHETS. 
 
 The tillage portion of the First Minister's Farm, as before re- 
 marked, is a section of Merrimack River interval.-' For one 
 hundred and twenty-two rods, the river forms a part of its 
 northern boundary. As one stands upon its bank, some fifteen 
 feet above its surface, when at its summer level, and looks up 
 and down its course, it seems a peaceful stream, and its quiet 
 flow suggests only the gentle lapse of the later years of a well- 
 spent life. Its channel has a width of some five hundred feet, 
 and its depth rarely exceeds fifteen. Unless ruffled by the wind, 
 its surface is as smooth as a mirror and reflects the trees and 
 shrubs and flowers which line its way. 
 
 But it is not always thus. At times, it rises in its might some 
 five, ten, fifteen and even twenty feet ; like a tawny giant from 
 his sleep, increasing its volume and accelerating its flow. So 
 long as it keeps within its banks, its current, though strong, is 
 comparatively harmless. 
 
 When, however, swollen by the waters of excessive rains, 
 particularly if these be combined with those of melting snows, 
 it overflows its channel, its course is capricious, impetuous and 
 
 1 The formation of the Oonoord interval is clearly revealed upon a careful ob- 
 servation of the adjacent territory. When, in a prehistoric age, the great ice 
 cap, which covered the northern part of this continent, receded from the Mer- 
 rimack valley, it left behind it a bed of glacial drift extending from one side 
 to the other of it. Upon the middle portion of this was subsequently laid an- 
 other of modified drift, through which ihe river has pursued its devious way, 
 cutting away its banks on alternate sides, all the while deepening its channel 
 and emptying its sand-laden waters into the ocean at Newburyport. This it 
 continued to do until the rocks of the underlying formation arrested its de- 
 scent. Since then, its depth has not been changed, but its channel has all the 
 while been moving laterally easterly and westerly, until it has passed over 
 the entire interval time and again. 
 
 Most of these lateral movements have been gradual. Some of them, however, 
 have been violent and extensive. The September freshet of 1828 severed a long 
 tongue of land of some thirty acres, from the east side of the river and trans- 
 ferred it to the west side and by a new channel then made converted it into an 
 island, since known as Bradley's Island. Again, in January, 1831, the river out 
 off Hale's Point, near by, and transferred it from its west to its east side. 
 
 These changes have generally resulted from natural causes. But several have 
 been made by other agencies. In 1846, or thereabouts, the Northern Railroad 
 turned all the water of the river at Sewall's Island into its eastern channel, 
 which it has since broadened at the expense of much valuable land. At about 
 the same time, this railroad cut a new channel across the base of Goodwin's 
 Point, thereby transferring a large tract of land to its west side and making it 
 an island. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 15 
 
 irresistible. If, as is sometimes the case, its waters are freighted 
 by ice or logs, the injury to lands, bridges, and buildings near 
 its banks is liable to be serious. Turbid as the yellow Tiber of 
 old Rome, it buries its intervals from sight and strews them 
 with sand, logs, and miscellaneous debris. 
 
 The Merrimack freshets, like those of other rivers, vary 
 much in magnitude and results. The river usually rises from 
 its previous level for some twenty-four to, thirty-six hours after 
 a flood-producing rain. When its waters begin to fall, a north- 
 west wind arises and accompanies their subsidence. This 
 pushes the current, accelerated to a speed of some four miles an 
 hour or more, against the leeward bank and so undermines it 
 that strips of land, varying in width from one to thirty feet, 
 fall into the stream and are lost. The southerly course of both 
 river and winds cause its erosions to be generally made upon 
 the southerly bank. 
 
 The thread of the stream almost always hugs the abraded 
 shore, and the line of its withdrawal on one side indicates to 
 some degree the width of its encroachment on the other. In 
 other words, the loss of land by a proprietor on one shore indi- 
 cates the gain of his neighbor on the opposite one. This 
 transfer is without consideration, but so long as it is gradual the 
 law does not interfere. 
 
 Almost every year until 1870, the successive proprietors of 
 the First Minister's Farm had more or less land thus taken from 
 them and transferred to their neighbors on the opposite bank 
 of the river. One of these used to show his unclean teeth and 
 note with a covetous eye the yearly increment to his farm. 
 
 The freshets of the Merrimack vary greatly in height from 
 one year to another. A tradition somewhat vague speaks of a 
 very high one in 1784. Authentic records exist of many of the 
 abnormal ones occurring since 1818, a period of seventy-seven 
 years. ^ 
 
 East Concord bridge was carried off on the 5th "day of April, 
 1819; again on the I3th of February, 1824, and still again, to- 
 gether with the Free bridge, on the 8th of January, 1841, 
 when at one time the river rose four feet in thirty minutes at 
 
 > See Benjamin Kimball's Journal, Appendix P. 
 
1 6 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 Sugar Ball ferry. Two years before this, on the 26th day of 
 January, 1839, ^'- '"°®^ fifteen feet in as many hours, and swept 
 away all the Concord bridges with the single exception of Federal 
 bridge. This stood until April nth, 1872, when it was again 
 carried away and the one near the south end of Main street was 
 so damaged as to require a partial rebuilding. 
 
 But the highest freshet on the Merrimack, of which any au- 
 thentic record has beetj preserved, was that of April 13th, 1895. 
 There had been a moderate rise of the river early in this month 
 which had partially subsided by Friday, the twelfth, when, 
 about its head waters, a rain commenced and continued 
 through that day, Saturday, and until the evening of Sunday. 
 This caused a second rise which, augmented somewhat by the 
 waters of dissolving snows, proved unprecedented. 
 
 With the exception of a few square rods on Waternummon's 
 hill, adjacent to the track of the Concord & Montreal Rail- 
 road, the entire Concord interval was covered. At its highest 
 stage, the water was twelve feet deep on the top of Sewall's 
 Falls dam. South of West street, the tracks of the railroad just 
 mentioned were submerged for the distance of one or two miles, 
 as were those of the Northern Railroad for some three miles 
 north of Bridge street. On the floor of one of the barns on the 
 Farm of the First Minister, the water stood two feet deep and 
 its proprietor then learned by a new experience that the immer- 
 sion of hay in cold water for twenty-four hours does not improve 
 its quality, for ordinary purposes. He accordingly sold the 
 most he had which had been so treated to milk men, as soon as 
 he could and for what he could get. 
 
 By this freshet, many of the houses upon the interval below 
 the gas works, in Concord, were for a time surrounded by 
 water, and some of them were temporarily vacated by their in- 
 habitants. Four were undermined, two of which were moved 
 from their foundations. The logs, timber, cord wood, old 
 fences, discarded railroad ties, and other multifarious debris 
 brought disgust to the owners of land upon which they finally 
 rested. And the flood came freighted with sand also, which it 
 deposited at its own sweet caprice, sometimes where it would 
 do good and sometimes where its presence was as unwelcome as 
 it was annoying. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. I7 
 
 It is, however, " an ill wind that blows nobody any good." 
 The Farm of the First Minister shared the fortunes of its neigh- 
 bors. On some portions of it the water stood, at its highest, 
 a dozen feet deep. Here and there, undesired coatings of sand 
 were left, together with worthless deposits of brush and wood. 
 But, thanks to its rubbled banks, it lost no land and its low 
 meadows were elevated in places, to their improvement, some 
 four or five inches, by the sand left upon them. 
 
 Those sections of the farm's grass lands which were in best 
 condition were most benefited by this inundation. The pro- 
 portion of Timothy to the other grasses was greatly increased. 
 More or less of it grew to the unusual height of four feet and 
 occasional stalks were found which measured four feet and a 
 half, and some even more.^ 
 
 DRAINAGE. 
 
 An examination of the meadow land of the First Minister's 
 Farm revealed the fact that some fifty acres (47 acres 59 rds.) 
 were either submerged or too wet to produce anything of much 
 value. ^ It also showed that the water table beneath it corres- 
 ponded with the surface of Horse Shoe pond, by which it was 
 partially surrounded, and whose summer level was several feet 
 higher than the river into which its overflow was discharged, 
 at a point two thirds of a mile distant. It was apparent, there- 
 fore, that the sinking of this water-table would drain the lands 
 above it to a corresponding depth, and increase considerably 
 the farm's arable area. 
 
 That this depression of the water-table was practicable was 
 clear.' Whether the cost of draining it would outweigh the 
 benefits resulting therefrom was not altogether certain, but as 
 Pope says, " hope springs eternal in the human breast," and in- 
 experienced youth is often bold. It was decided to incur the 
 expense and take the financial chances of the operation. 
 
 'It was generally felt that suoli a freshet would not be likely to occur again 
 for a century, but In this very Maroli, 1896, on the 1st, 2d, and 3d days there was an 
 ice freshet of nearly equal height. 
 
 2Tlils was a low section of land occupying an abandoned channel of Merri- 
 mack river, which had been formed by successive deposits of aquatic vegeta- 
 tion and silt. 
 
 3 When a level was run the surface of the river was found to be six feet lower 
 than that of the pond. 
 2 
 
l8 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 The plan adopted was to lay a drain from the river inland 
 for one hundred rods. This was to be constructed of green, 
 white pine, two-inch planks, free of sapwood. It was to be 
 twelve inches wide and eight inches high on the inside, afford- 
 ing an interior section of ninety-six square inches.-^ Beyond this 
 an existing open drain was to be followed onwards to the 
 pond.^ 
 
 An excavation, fourteen and a half feet deep, five feet wide 
 at the top, and three at the bottom, was commenced at the river 
 bank in September, 1853, when the river was at its lowest 
 stage. 
 
 The plank conduit, made in sections of eight feet each, was 
 placed in position as the excavation progressed. These inter- 
 locked at the ends, and were substantially water tight when 
 covered. 
 
 It was found upon trial that an ordinary shoveller could throw 
 dirt upon the bank to a height of about six feet, and the work 
 was commenced with an initial opening of that depth. Deeper 
 excavations were next sunk in short cuts about ten feet long, 
 and much of the dirt removed therefrom was thrown back- 
 wards upon the successive conduit sections as they were put in 
 place, so that only a portion of the earth moved was thrown 
 outside the ditch. The ground gradually fell off as the excava- 
 tion was carried inland, and at the end of the first fifty rods its 
 original depth of fourteen feet and a half was reduced to ten. At 
 this point the work was suspended for a time. Subsequently 
 resumed, another fifty rods of similar construction was laid, in 
 excavations varying in depth from two feet to ten. Hence, on- 
 ward to the pond, the old open ditch was deepened as found 
 necessary, and for about eighty rods its bottom was 
 floored with boards. These, constantly covered with water, 
 
 iQlazed Akron pipes were not then in use, and it was assumed that heart 
 white pine, kept at a temperature nearly uniform and always wet, would not 
 decay. Experience has thus far sustained this assumption and this drain, 
 worn somewhat by the friction of the water passing through it, seems as sound 
 as when first laid, forty-two years ago. 
 
 2The experiment may have been a rash one, as underdraining was then very 
 imperfectly understood and but little practised in New Hampshire. Mr. Will- 
 lam Connor and Judge Henry F. French, of Exeter, were the only persons 
 within the writer's knowledge who had then done any systematic drainage in 
 this state. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. I9 
 
 have never decayed. They define the bottom of the channel 
 and afford firm footing to a workman when engaged in clearing 
 it of aquatic plants and the precipitated silt of freshets.^ 
 
 This drainage channel of covered conduit and open canal has 
 a total length of about two thirds of a mile (222 rods). It has 
 lowered the water-table, under and around nearly fifty acres of 
 land, about thirty inches. Since its completion laterals of 
 stone, brick, plank, and tiles, have been laid, as experience has 
 suggested their utility. 
 
 While the cost of this enterprise has been considerable it has 
 not equalled the increased value of the land which it has im- 
 proved. Some sections of this, which had ever before been too 
 soft to allow the passage over it of cattle and horses, can now 
 be plowed and harrowed. On others, where formerly only 
 sedges grew, tame grasses flourish. The mowing-machine, 
 horse-rake, and hay-cart are no longer strangers to them. 
 Others, I regret to say, are still too wet for arable crops, and 
 for the want of an out-flow sufficiently low, must ever remain 
 so, unless raised above their subjacent water-table by costly sur- 
 face fillings. 
 
 The experience gained during the last forty-two years has 
 pretty firmly established''' some conclusions in regard to farm 
 drainage, among which are the following : 
 
 1. Inasmuch as drainage is a costly operation, the expense 
 and effects of which can generally be forecast with much accu- 
 racy, it should not be extensively undertaken until these have 
 been ascertained, otherwise expensive disappointments may be 
 encountered. 
 
 2. That no drainage operation should be commenced until a 
 satisfactory outflow has been found and a definite plan of the 
 main, sub-main, and lateral drainage lines has been intelli- 
 gently settled. Loss of money and uncertain results are likely 
 to attend a disregard of this suggestion. 
 
 >Opeii ditohes, althougli boarded at the bottom, are liable to be clogged Ijy 
 abrasions of their sides, particularly when subject to inundations from the 
 larger streams into which they discharge their water. 
 
 ^Experience on the Farm of the First Minister is demonstrating the fact that 
 a lining of their banks with stone or plank will facilitate their flow and prevent 
 obstructions from this cause. Its considerable cost is the only objection to its 
 use. 
 
20 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 3. No underdrains should be laid at a less depth than three 
 feet, and four is a better one than three. The deeper a drain, 
 the greater will be the area which it will dry. 
 
 4. The principles of land drainage may be acquired from the 
 books, but the practical application of these can be learned 
 only in the ditch. Any person afraid of soiling his hands or 
 his clothes had best keep out of it. It is a wet and dirty busi- 
 ness, but it unfolds to the agricultural student some of the mys- 
 teries of aqueous circulation and changes worthless bogs to fer- 
 tile fields. The cutting of his main ditch through the mud, 
 against the protestations of the frogs, turtles, water snakes, and 
 muskrats, to the open waters of Horse Shoe pond, afforded the 
 present proprietor a gratification, less indeed, but akin to that 
 experienced about the same time by the brave Arctic explorer, 
 William Morton, while forcing his way through the ice floes and 
 snow of Smith's strait, to the northern polar sea. 
 
 5. Drainage does not change the natural characteristics of a 
 soil. Silicious, peaty, or clayey soils before drainage, remain 
 such after their surplus water has been removed. Therefore, 
 from an agricultural standpoint it is generally bad farming to 
 drain poor land. Its real value is as little enhanced thereby as 
 the true character of a mean man is elevated by his election to 
 an office which he is unworthy to hold. 
 
 6. Open ditches should be avoided so far as possible. They 
 embarrass cultivation, are liable to obstruction, and occupy 
 much valuable land. In the long run they are the least effec- 
 tive and most troublesome. 
 
 7. Thorough drainage to be most effective must, as its 
 name implies, be thorough. 
 
 RUBBLING. 
 
 Up to 1850, as before remarked, the Farm of the First Minis- 
 ter had been losing narrow strips of shore land on its northern 
 border every year by encroachments of the river. These also 
 threatened, by cutting a new channel, to transfer to dry ground 
 both the East Concord bridge and that of the Boston, Concord 
 & Montreal Railroad. 
 
 It occurred to the parties in interest that the time had fully 
 come to arrest this destructive wandering of the stream. For 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 21 
 
 centuries, how many we know not, it had staggered wantonly 
 over its interval, reminding one of jolly old Silenus on a spree, 
 drunken, reeling, and reckless. 
 
 Could this be done? It was decided by the officials having 
 in charge the aforesaid bridges, the present proprietor of the 
 First Minister's Farm, and his adjoining neighbors to cooperate 
 in an attempt. It had been learned by inquiries that similar 
 encroachments by the Eiver St. John, in New Brunswick, had 
 been stopped by lining its banks with trees and brush, pinned 
 down by stakes ; and that, elsewhere, a like result had been 
 reached by coatings of stones, of sufficient weight and thickness 
 to withstand the force of moving ice and water. 
 
 It was finally concluded to coat the bank with rocks, and 
 work was begun and prosecuted by hauling to the verge of the 
 bank hundreds of loads and afterwards placing them upon the 
 slope. The largest were placed first and formed a footing 
 beneath the surface of the water to sustain the smaller ones sub- 
 sequently laid above them. 
 
 Some forty-four years have since elapsed and the river has 
 made no impression upon the bank thus protected. Trees 
 have sprung up from between the rocks — maples, willows, 
 alders, poplars, and some others, whose roots hold in place 
 the stones which, in turn, prevent the washing away of the soil 
 upon which they grow : — an instance of reciprocal aid which 
 suggests that our success as farmers will be greatly promoted 
 by good fellowship and mutual dependence. 
 
 The late Col. David M. Clough used to say that it was the 
 opinion of some men that a hole would wear longer than a patch, 
 and they therefore went with their coat sleeves open at the 
 elbows. For this or some other reason, satisfactory to himself, 
 the owner of the upper section of this bank has allowed the 
 river to attack it in flank and undermine it. From this neglect, 
 he has lost most of his rubbled line, which a little labor and 
 watchfulness would have saved. 
 
 Regarding this kind of work, a few suggestions just here and 
 now, may not be out of place : 
 
 I . It should be done when the water is at its lowest stage ; 
 as that is the time most favorable for sloping a bank and 
 placing the stones which are to cover it. 
 
22 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 2. The stones should be of sufficient weight to prevent their 
 removal by ice or water. 
 
 3. Round stones had best be employed to make a footing 
 and to cover submerged portions of the bank. Such are easiest 
 got into position. Quarry grout and other angular stones, cut 
 into slabs eight or ten inches thick, lie firmest above the water 
 line and are to be preferred. 
 
 4. If the bank be a high one, the rubble need not be carried 
 to the top of it, nor cover all the surface it occupies. If three 
 quarters of it is covered, erosion will be prevented. 
 
 5. The requisite amount of stone may be often lessened by 
 constructing the submerged footing of trees, laid parallel with 
 the bank with their tops up stream. These may be kept in 
 place by rocks laid upon them, and, arresting moving sand, 
 will be soon buried beneath it. Kept perpetually wet, they 
 will never decay. 
 
 6. It is well to encourage a speedy growth of bushes and 
 trees along a rubbled bank. They will be sure to spring up 
 sooner or later of their own accord, but their advent and growth 
 may be hastened by plantings. Whenever the river overflows 
 its bank, these will arrest floating debris and cause a precipita- 
 tion of suspended sand near the channel. 
 
 7. I give no estimates of the expense of this kind of work. 
 It will depend largely upon the height of the bank to be pro- 
 tected, the depth of the water and the cost of labor and 
 materials. Hundreds of loads of the stones used upon the bank 
 described weie taken from useless stone walls on neighboring 
 upland farms. The cost was one dollar and twenty-seven cents 
 per linear foot. It might now, doubtless, be done for a good 
 deal less. 
 
 PRODUCTION OF HAY. 
 
 A novice in farming is quite sure to make mistakes, more or 
 less costly in proportion to the magnitude of his business. The 
 present proprietor expected no exemption from the action of 
 this rule, and determined at the outset to watch carefully the 
 results of his operations and record them in a cash book. This 
 is to the farmer what his log book is to the seaman. It gives 
 him his financial latitude and longitude and oftentimes saves 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 23 
 
 him from the perils of an agricultural lee shore. He runs at 
 random without it. 
 
 The present proprietor followed at first the agricultural rou- 
 tine of his neighbors. He had a fondness for cattle and raised 
 beef and milk for the Concord market ; but, inasmuch as his 
 best hay bore an average price of seventeen dollars a ton, his 
 cash book indicated that the production of beef and milk was 
 unprofitable. He raised a few crops of wheat, but so fully 
 charged with gluten was it found to be that a slice of bread 
 made from it might be thrown over the house and be sure to 
 fall unbroken on the other side. His barley headed imper- 
 fectly, and his rye crops were diminished by the uninvited 
 presence of witch grass. Hay, however, and oats and corn 
 and potatoes paid fairly well. 
 
 It by and by occurred to him that, instead of raising a little 
 of many things and some of them at a loss, he had better raise 
 a considerable of a few things and, if possible, at a profit. He 
 accordingly took a new departure, with hay production as his 
 main objective point, accompanied by such acreages of corn, 
 oats, and potatoes as his personal needs might require. The 
 farm stock was reduced to three good horses, two good straight- 
 backed oxen, one cow, and two hogs. 
 
 But, some of you may ask, how sell hay and keep no stock 
 to maintain the fertility of the fields producing it.? In answer 
 it may be said that the situation of this farm Is exceptional. It 
 lies within a mile of the New Hampshire state house, around 
 which are located the stables which consume its hay and have 
 manure to sell at five dollars a cord. Of this, one ton of hay 
 will ordinarily buy three times as much as it would make, if 
 fed upon the farm. 
 
 It was soon found that the old rotation before mentioned 
 would not secure success in hay production. Its maintenance 
 required too great an acreage of other crops. The surface of the 
 ground, lying undisturbed through eight year periods, became 
 compacted by freshets and grass roots and too greatly reduced 
 in fertility to yield satisfactory returns. As you all know, when 
 the product of a hay field falls below one ton per acre, the hay 
 declines in quality as well as quantity, and there is a double 
 
24 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 loss. Weeds come in to prod the farmer to his duty. He is 
 burning his candle at both ends. 
 
 The length of the old rotation was accordingly reduced from 
 eight to five years, the first being devoted to corn or oats, and 
 the remaining four to grass; any part of the land not wanted 
 for the first mentioned crops being sown at once to the latter. 
 By this change, the hay raised has been inci-eased in quantity 
 and improved in quality. 
 
 Stable-keepers do not want fine hay, grown at the rate of a 
 ton or three quarters of a ton per acre. They desire that of a 
 coarser quality, which grew at the rate of from a ton and a half 
 to two and a half tons per acre. And if he would have them 
 buy it, the farmer must furnish the kind which they desire. As 
 the late Capt. John H. Moore of Massachusetts once put it, 
 when asked the variety of strawberries which he raised, " I 
 
 raise the variety, the meanest variety, the variety the 
 
 Boston people want." 
 
 The objective point proposed at this departure from the 
 old course of cropping, was the production of hay at an 
 average rate of two tons per acre per annum. Its attainment 
 has been found dependent upon certain inexorable conditions : 
 
 1. A thorough pulverization of the soil every five years. 
 
 2. An uninterrupted maintenance of adequate assimilable 
 plant food in the soil. 
 
 3. Reseeding with sufficient frequency to insure a good stand 
 of grass plants at all times. 
 
 These conditions have been pretty satisfactorily met by sod 
 breakings seven or eight inches deep every five years, followed 
 by thorough pulverizations by the harrow ; by a careful mix- 
 ture with the soil of six cords per acre of good stable manure, 
 and an even application of seed subsequently rolled in. It is 
 at once apparent that under this rule five acres of a twenty-five 
 acre grass field will require plowing, manuring, and seeding 
 each year. 
 
 Sod ground may be broken up in spring, summer, or autumn, 
 as may be found most convenient. On the First Minister's Farm 
 this is done in August or the first half of September, if the 
 ground is to be sown to grass, and immediately afterwards 
 manured, harrowed, and seeded. Ordinarily the plants get 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 25 
 
 well Started before the season closes, and all annual weeds, which 
 chance to spring up, are killed by the frost. The next season, 
 from three quarters to a full crop of hay may be expected. 
 
 If land is to be devoted to oats or corn, it is usually broken 
 up in October or November. Grass seed is sown with an oat 
 crop the next spring, and land in corn, as soon as the crop 
 has been removed in the fall. In the latter case, the grass gen- 
 erally reaches the height of an inch or two before the ground 
 freezes. The next year it gives one half or two thirds of a 
 crop not always free from weeds. 
 
 I need not remind so intelligent an audience as this that the 
 best implements attainable should be employed in harvesting a 
 hay crop. Labor is always dear in haying time and the best 
 are the most profitable. 
 
 The first mowing machine introduced to permanent residence 
 in Concord was used by Richard Bradley in 1866 or 1867.. It 
 was an early " Ketchum," and was provided with but a single 
 driving wheel. Two years later the present owner put upon 
 the First Minister's Farm a one-horse " Wood " machine, which 
 cut a swath three feet wide and worked well on perfectly level 
 ground. He remembers distinctly the contemptuous remark of 
 his oldest hired man, as he looked at it. Stretching out his 
 muscular arms, he said, " I guess the old-fashioned machine is 
 as good as those of the new sort." It became evident, how- 
 ever, in a few days that he and his associates had pocketed 
 their pride and were willing to allow the " new sort" to do all 
 the mowing it would. 
 
 The next season a two-horse "Wood" mower, much im- 
 proved and having a four-foot cutter bar, was substituted for 
 the one just mentioned. None but "Wood" machines were used 
 for many years and until an " Eastern Star " was purchased and, 
 with one or two successors, did fair work. These, however, 
 gave way in turn to the four and a half cut "Wood," one of 
 which is still in use. 
 
 Inasmuch, however, as the improved "Buckeye," whose 
 knives driven by an endless chain cut a swath of six feet, has 
 been found to require little more power than the four and a 
 half cut " Wood," it has been welcomed to the farm and 
 allowed to do the largest part of its mowing. 
 
l6 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 The first horse rake ever used upon the First Minister's Farm 
 consisted of a horizontal head of wood, some eight feet long, 
 carrying a single row of teeth. Upon this stood two perpen- 
 dicular handles and a few standards to prevent the gathered ha)' 
 from slipping over the teeth when in motion. It was drawn by 
 long tugs attached to the ends of this head and its operation 
 required the services of a man, a boy, and a horse. When 
 filled, the boy backed the horse, and the man, after drawing 
 the rake from underneath the windrow, lifted it over and started 
 it for the next one. 
 
 This rake was in time superseded by the wooden revolving 
 rake. With this the present proprietor began his haying 
 experiences, and it was in general use in the Merrimack valley 
 for many years. But this, in turn, had to give way to the 
 spring-toothed rake. When it had been mounted on wheels, 
 so that the lame and the lazy could ride, it was adopted as the 
 rake of the farm. For some years past, a couple of " Tigers " 
 have done its raking. To these has been added the present 
 season a " Worcester." 
 
 Pitching has almost always been done by hand. A horse- 
 fork was introduced and used somewhat by the third proprie- 
 tor, sixty or seventy years ago, but since then hand pitching 
 only has been practised. This horse-fork has been preserved 
 and weighs some twenty to twenty-five pounds. 
 
 At the present time, the larger part of the seeding to grass is 
 done as follows : The land is usually broken up during August 
 or the first half of September and partially harrowed. There 
 is then spread upon it six cords of good stable manure, which 
 is immediately incorporated with the soil by " Cutaway " and 
 Acme harrows. The seed is then sown by a seed sower at- 
 tached to a " Tiger" horse rake, and the ground is made smooth 
 by an iron roller, which compacts the soil about the grass 
 seeds. 
 
 Thus far, stalsle manure has been generally used as a fertil- 
 izer in the production of grass. According to the present pro- 
 prietor's best knowledge and belief, it is, all things considered, 
 the cheapest and the best. Whether hay can be profitably 
 raised by commercial fertilizers alone, is a question which he 
 has repeatedly asked, and to which he has as yet received no 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 27 
 
 satisfactory answer. His own experience has been adverse to 
 its use as a seeding down enrichment of ground. 
 
 As at present advised, he would expect best results from its 
 use in connection with barn manure. If, for instance, upon 
 seeding it to grass, the land was dressed with half the usual 
 quantity of the latter, and after two cuttings of grass was an- 
 nually top dressed for the next two or three years, with five 
 hundred pounds of fertilizer, profitable results might follow. 
 Experimentation might also demonstrate that, on a particular 
 soil, only a part of the several ingredients of the fertilizer were 
 needed. On this line, we farmers must all turn chemists ; 
 making laboratories of our fields and, from repeated trials of 
 our own, learn what application is best for each and every one 
 of them. 
 
 Long experience has shown that, on an acre of the best grass 
 land of the First Minister's Farm, such a five years' course will 
 afford an average of two tons a year, or ten tons in five years, 
 worth in the Concord market an average price of seventeen 
 dollars a ton, and amounting to $170.00 
 
 The average cost of these ten tons will be about 
 as follows : 
 
 Sod breaking, 
 
 
 $4.50 
 
 
 Six cords of stable manure spread on 
 
 the 
 
 
 
 ground at $6.50, 
 
 
 39.00 
 
 
 Working in the same. 
 
 
 3-50 
 
 
 Seed and sowing. 
 
 
 2.50 
 
 
 Harvesting 10 tons at $3 per ton, 
 
 
 30.00 
 
 
 Marketing 10 tons at $1.25 per ton. 
 
 
 12.50 
 
 
 Use of implements. 
 
 
 2.50 
 
 94.50 
 
 Profit in five years, $75-5° 
 
 While this system may not suit the majority of New Hamp- 
 shire farmers, it may, pei'haps, be suggestive of some other 
 which will. Two or three points may be noted as of universal 
 application. 
 
 I. The species of grasses cultivated should be such as one's 
 market calls for. Their number is not great. Of the two hun- 
 
28 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 dred and twenty-five varieties mentioned by the late Secretary 
 Flint, a dozen or so comprise all which need concern us. 
 
 2. The varieties should be suited to the soil upon which they 
 are expected to grow. While witch grass grows almost any- 
 where, it avoids the rich, wet soils in which foul meadow de- 
 lights. Herds grass prefers a moist, fertile loam. Red top 
 grasses do not flourish on dry soils. Each variety has its pref- 
 erence which, as far as possible, should be met. 
 
 3. Our grass lands should be manured and reseeded as often 
 as need be, if we seek maximum crops at minimum cost. 
 
 The present haying equipment on the First Minister's Farm 
 consists of four horses, one yoke of oxen, two mowing ma- 
 chines, one cutting a swath of four feet and a half and the other 
 of six, three horse rakes, one tedder, four carts and men sufficient 
 in number for the employment of these, each furnished with a 
 scythe and a pitchfork. 
 
 In haying, work begins in the morning, at six o'clock, sharp, 
 and ends at the same hour in the evening. A light luncheon 
 is served in the field at nine, and coffee as wanted in the after- 
 noon. The grass is cut in the forenoon, mostly by a machine, 
 the men using their scythes only when out of other work. It is 
 raked in the afternoon when warm and put into cocks. None is 
 allowed to lay over night in windrows. The heaps are opened 
 the next morning and after an hour's exposure to sun and air, 
 are tedded, if requiring it. When particularly heavy, fresh 
 mown grass is also tedded or turned over by forks. 
 
 Carting begins immediately after dinner by two teams and is 
 continued until all hay fit for the barn has been drawn in. In 
 particularly favorable weather, a load or two may be housed 
 before dinner. All the loads are pitched off immediately after 
 being drawn in, except the last four, which are usually left on 
 the carts over night, to be unloaded in the cool of the next 
 morning. This arrangement gives a little time to determine as to 
 the weather which is often very uncertain at so early an hour. 
 With this force of men, teams, and implements, and continued 
 good weather, an average of ten or twelve tons of hay may be 
 daily cut, made, and stored. 
 
 The average cost, one year with another, of cutting, curing, 
 and storing hay on the Farm of the First Minister, is about 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 29 
 
 three dollars per ton. As a general thing, the heavier the grass, 
 the less the cost of its conversion to hay. Hay caps have been 
 tried and discarded as unnecessary. In uncertain weather, the 
 hay cocks are sometimes doubled up. No spirit is allowed in 
 the fields and no haying is done on Sunday. The extra mow- 
 ing machine and horse rake are kept to avoid delays by repairs 
 in case of accidents. 
 
 FORESTS. 
 
 As befoi'e stated, when the present proprietor assumed con- 
 trol of the Farm of the First Minister, two hundred and fifty 
 acres of it were in forest. 
 
 About sixty of these were upon the sandy plain east of the 
 Merrimack and were covered with pitch pines {Pinus rigida), 
 some of which were of primeval growth. The remainder of 
 the farm's forest was upon the high ground rising up from the 
 interval to the westward. This consisted of deciduous trees 
 with which were mingled, moi'e or less, pines and hemlocks, 
 with now and then a spruce. They were of all ages. Many 
 of them, however, having attained maturity were declining in 
 vigor and value. ^ 
 
 • The following is a list of tlie principal trees and shrubs growing upon the 
 First Minister's Farm in November, 1895: 
 
 American Linden, Tilia Americana; Bock Maple, Acer saccharinum; Eed 
 Maple, Acer rubrum; White Maple, Acer daaycarpum; Striped Maple, Acer 
 PennaylvannieuTn; Hornbeam, Nyasa silvaiica; White A&h, Fraxinus Ameri- 
 carta; Brown Ash, i'VaajinttS sam6wci/oiia; American Elm, Vlmus Americana; 
 Slippery Elm, Ulmus fulva; Butternut, Juglans cinnerea; Hickory, Carya 
 alba; White Oak, Quercus alba; Black Oak, Quercus tinctorea; Bed Oak, 
 Quercus rubra; Beech, Fagus ferruginea; Chestnut, Caatanea vulgaris; Lever 
 Wood, Ostrya Virginnica; Black Birch, Betula lenta; Yellow Birch, Betula 
 luiea; White Birch, Betula papyrifera; Grey Birch, Betula alba; White Wil- 
 low, Salix alba, and several other species; American Aspen, Populus tremu- 
 loides; White Pine, Pinua Strobus; Pitch Pine, Pinua rigida; Norway Pine, 
 Pinuaresinoaa; Black Spruce, Picea mgfra; Balsam Fir, A&ies balsamea; Hem- 
 lock, Tsuga Canadensis; American Larch, Larix Americana. 
 
 There were also scattered among these trees a few very old white pines 
 (Pumpkin Pines), four feet, and often more, in diameter at the butt. Such 
 pines were not uncommon In Concord fifty years ago, but very few, if any such, 
 now remain. 
 
 Woodbine, Ampelopsis quinquefolia; Buckthorn, Bhamnus catharticus; 
 Climbing Bittersweet, Celastrus scandens; Poison Ivy, Bhua toxicodendron: 
 Choke Cherry, Prunus Virginiana; Red Hardback, Spirea tomentoaa; Wild 
 Bed Baspberry, Bubus strygosus; High Blackberry, JRubus villosus; Sweet 
 Briar, Bosa rubiginosa; Witch Hazel, Bamam,elis Virginica; Common Elder, 
 Sambueua Canadensis; Button Bush, Cephalanthus occidentalis; High Blue, 
 
30 NKW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 While the present proprietor does not boast of his treatment 
 of these forest lands, he is unprepared to criticise it with very 
 great severity. He started w^ith a belief entertained by older, 
 and, as he thought, wiser men than himself, that a forest of 
 miscellaneous trees of all sizes, ages, and conditions, had best 
 be swept off clean, when visited by the ox team and the axe, 
 and the land left bare for the production of a new one. 
 
 In accordance with this belief, he sold for wood and timber 
 the entire growth of his pine lot. He also sold the land. In 
 this transaction he made two mistakes. The first was in selling 
 the land which he could have retained at a small discount from 
 the whole price, not then realizing that it costs little to keep 
 that which is of little value. The second was in not restricting 
 his sale to the mature growth, inasmuch as the remaining trees 
 would, in a generation or less, afford a second cutting, being 
 then for the qiost part of sizes sufficient to bear with little 
 harm the fires which swept over more or less of that plain 
 almost every year.' 
 
 Much of his upland forest was at first treated in the same 
 way, with the single variation that the ground upon which it 
 stood was not sold. Consequently his woods are now for the 
 most part of recent growths of from twenty to fortj' years. He 
 sincerely hopes that his successors, whomsoever they may be, 
 may prove wiser than has he, and adopt a more rational sys- 
 tem of forestry. To one who has failed to do as well as he 
 might, there is little consolation that his neighbors have done 
 no better, or perchance not quite so well. He is, however, 
 somewhat comforted by the thought that from a portion of the 
 old farm's forest mature trees only have been removed, and that 
 on this a second cutting may be made whenever his pocket- 
 book shall have a severe attack of that empty belly ache of 
 
 berry, Vaccinium corymbosum; Winter Bush, Ilex verticellata; Sweet Pern, 
 Comptonia asplenifolia; Pussy Willow, Salia: discolor; Common Alder, Alnus 
 serrulata. 
 
 'Denuded land on the Dark Plain, in Concord, was valued at only one or two 
 dollars an acre. If small trees are cut they afford only immature wood, meas- 
 ure but Httle and bring very little money in the market; but it may have taken 
 half a generation to produce them and a like time to raise others of equal size. 
 With a little care many such trees may be saved in lumbering and afford a 
 good start for a new growth. In short, they are worth more to stand than to 
 cut. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 3 1 
 
 which the late Colonel Clough of Canterbury used to speak in 
 early meetings of this honorable Board. Until then they will 
 be likely to stand. 
 
 To every New Hampshire farm should belong such an area 
 of forest as will afford to its owner as much winter occupation 
 as his individual circumstances may suggest. Besides getting 
 therefrom his household fuel, he can spend time profitably in 
 thinning and pruning his trees, thereby converting much of his 
 growing wood to timber. From a thrifty lot well cared for, the 
 owner, sooner or later, may annually sell more or less mature 
 trees and receive therefrom an income quite as reliable as that 
 afforded by any other crop produced upon his farm. 
 
 It is a lamentable fact that all the older nations of Europe 
 gave no care to their forests until they lost them. Not until a 
 wood and timber famine had come upon them with all the dis- 
 astrous accompaniments of denudation did they plant new 
 ones. It is a more lamentable fact that the people of the 
 United States with all their experiences to warn them should 
 persist in following their example. For we are not only reck- 
 lessly wasting our forest covering, but, with a madness almost 
 incredible, are allowing fire to follow the axe and destroy the 
 scant remnant which this insatiable implement may have 
 chanced to spare. Conflagrations have been allowed to sweep 
 over entire townships and obliterate in their progress entire vil- 
 lages with more or less of their inhabitants. 
 
 Mr. Bela Hubbards says in an able article in the March, 
 1895, number of the Popular Science Monthly: — "Voyagers 
 upon the upper lakes in August last, [1894] were involved in 
 clouds of smoke which settled over the waters. These were 
 often so dense as to render navigation dangerous and to occa- 
 sion frequent collisions. They obscured the sun, which ap- 
 peared a dull, red ball in the sky. This smoke extended as far 
 east as the Atlantic and south to Georgia. The cause was soon 
 apparent ; forest fires were raging in the lands about the lakes. 
 
 "By these fires in-XrOwer Michigan property to the extent of 
 thousands of dollars was destroyed ; in the Upper Peninsula 
 the burned area is reported at over one thousand square miles. 
 
 " But these devastations were insignificant compared with 
 those in Wisconsin and Minnesota, in each of which states the 
 
32 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 losses amount to many millions of dollars. In Wisconsin the 
 areas burned over ranged from fifty to one hundred and forty 
 miles in extent. Individual lumbermen lost in standing pine 
 from ten thousand to five hundred thousand dollars. All this was 
 accompanied with the destruction of entire villages and crops as 
 well as great loss of human life. A witness reports, ' the bodies 
 whicli dot the heated and black expanse give the scene the ap- 
 pearance of a battlefield.' 
 
 "From Minnesota the news is even more appalling. Be- 
 tween Pine City and Carlton, a distance of one hundred and 
 thirty miles, whole towns were swept out of existence. In one 
 alone, Hinckley, at least two hundred people perished. Nine- 
 teen villages are wholly or partially destroyed, and many 
 million feet of lumber. It is fairly computed that in this state 
 alone five thousand square miles in area have been thus devas- 
 tated. Minnesota contains about seventy thousand square miles ; 
 supposing two thirds of this area to be timbered land, one may 
 count on the fingers of his two hands how many years of such 
 devastation will deprive this state of every vestige of its timber. 
 
 "Terrible as has been the destruction froni forest fires 
 in 1894, the phenomena to which it has borne witness have 
 been by no means unprecedented in our history during the last 
 half century. I will recall those of a single year only. 
 
 "The present generation cannot have forgotten the year 
 1871, made memorable by the great fire in Chicago, preceded 
 by forest fires in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and followed by 
 similiar fires in Michigan. From July to November, a period 
 of five months, the rainfall in the latter state did not exceed six 
 inches, and the entire precipitation of the year was only two 
 thirds of the normal amount. Early in October disastrous 
 fires overspread portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota, burning 
 over three thousand miles of territory. On the 8th of October 
 occurred the great fire which consumed a large part of Chi- 
 cago. On the same night the cities of Holland and Manistee 
 were laid in ashes, and during the weeks succeeding came 
 news of devastating fires in other parts of the state. The new 
 county of Huron was almost entirely swept over, and a large 
 part of Sanilac county. Nearly all the villages on the Lake 
 Huron coast were destroyed and at least five thousand inhabi- 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 33 
 
 tants left houseless. Houses, fences, crops, timber, all were 
 burned ; and many people perished, being unable to escape the 
 rapid "march of the flames and smoke. Not less than two thous- 
 and square miles of country, wholly or partially timbered, were 
 completely burned over in Michigan during this disastrous year. 
 The Lower Peninsula contains forty-four thousand square miles. 
 If we estimate about one half, or twenty thousand square miles 
 as timbered, it would require but ten such fires as that of 1871 to 
 sweep the state clean. 
 
 "The extent and magnificence of the forest growth of the 
 United States at the beginning of our existence as a nation 
 surpassed that of any land of equal extent on the globe. In 
 the number of species and the size of its trees, both deciduous 
 and evergreen, it exceeded by five times that of Europe. Such 
 a forest spread almost unbroken from the Atlantic to the Mis- 
 sissippi. An equally dense forest, mostly conifers, and many 
 of a size before unknown, occupied the Pacific slope ; while 
 between stretched an almost treeless region comprising nearly 
 half the territory of the United States. What a treasury of 
 wealth belonged to the new nation in its woodlands if properly 
 husbanded ! But to its first possessors these were an incum- 
 brance, to be got rid of as speedily as possible, in order that 
 place might be made for another source of national wealth — 
 agriculture. 
 
 "Since that early period how great has been the change! 
 The forest area, which seemed to its first possessors so vast, 
 and such an obstacle to civilized progress, has in a single century 
 almost disappeared. 
 
 " Computations have been made, from time to time, by com- 
 petent persons, including our efficient forestry chief. Prof. Fer- 
 now, of the number of cubic feet of wood of all kinds annually 
 used by our people for all purposes. Into these I do not pro- 
 pose to enter. It must suffice to say that the total annual con- 
 sumption has been variously estimated at from four to eight 
 million acres of woodland. Forest fires are responsible for 
 ten million acres more, or nearly do.uble all other causes 
 combined. 
 3 
 
34 
 
 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 " The United States east of the Mississippi contains about 
 five hundred million acres. Assuming one half to be timbered 
 land, and that ten million acres cover the actual annual con- 
 sumption and destruction, our woodlands will practically last 
 only another quarter of a century. 
 
 "The following propositions seem to be well established. 
 
 1. That the temperature is hotter in summer and colder in 
 winter than when the country was covered with forests. This 
 is a natural result of exposure of the soil to more active radia- 
 tion and consequent frost. 
 
 2. The winds have a more uninterrupted sweep, and so the 
 country is both dried up and refrigerated. 
 
 3. The rainfall is less in amount or its advantages are to a 
 great degree lost. Forests retain the moisture that falls and do 
 not allow it to go to waste. 
 
 4. The humus in the soil, and the soil itself on the hills and 
 slopes, are washed away by the, rains, and carried to the lower 
 lands, and to the rivers, a large part being lost altogether." 
 
 Fortunately, in our own state we have awakened to the folly 
 of forest destruction, and are trying to avoid its consequences. 
 But as yet, our eyes are but half opened, and we are still pur- 
 suing it, to the injury of our climate, the diminution of our 
 water power, the waste of our soil, and the impairment of our 
 scenery. 
 
 One becomes attached to the woods which he often visits and 
 cares for. There is companionship in trees, when he gets to 
 know them. They have interesting individualities and varying 
 characteristics. . The stately pine, lifting himself above his fel- 
 lows, seems to assert supremacy over all about him ; the oak 
 stands ready for struggle and brave endurance ; the scraggy 
 hemlock boasts of no beauty and is of coarser fibre. Were we 
 to join these to companions of more delicate traits, as man is 
 joined in holy wedlock to woman, we might mate the pine 
 with the clean-leaved maple ; the oak with the wide spreading 
 beech ; the hemlock with the prim and delicate larch. 
 
 If one seeks his best. thoughts, he will be surest to find them 
 in his woods. A subtle spirit of good, as from on high, settles 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 35 
 
 into his heart of hearts, as he sits in silence and listens to the 
 gentle breathing of the winds through their lofty arches. A 
 still, small voice, inaudible in the noisy rush of business, is 
 heard with distinctness there. As said Mr. Bryant more than 
 fifty years ago : — 
 
 " The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
 To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, 
 And spread the roof above them, — ere he framed 
 The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
 The sound of anthems ; in the darkling wood. 
 Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down 
 And offered to the Mightiest, solemn thanks 
 And supplication.'' 
 
 UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES. 
 
 Such are among the ordinary resources of the First Minister's 
 Farm. It contains, however, certain others of a more specula- 
 tive character, and undeveloped as yet, of which no mention 
 has hitherto been made. 
 
 1. It has within its bounds the whole or parts of three fish 
 ponds of an aggregate area of some twenty acres, upon which 
 important fisheries might be established by men of enterprise, 
 as they were two centuries and a half ago at Strawberry Bank, 
 by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason. 
 
 Under the friendly encouragement of our fish commissioners, 
 choicest varieties of aquatic food might be successfully raised 
 for the ubiquitous small boy and the confident sportsman, fresh 
 from the city on his summer vacation, whose large outlay for 
 tackle is generally out of all proportion to the value of his 
 catches. 
 
 2. It is also possible that the fur trade might be revived 
 within its bounds, and flourish at the capital city of New Hamp- 
 shire, as it formerly did when Concord was the headquarters of 
 the ancient Fenacooks. It is true that the fox and the bear, the 
 beaver and the mink, have departed long ago, but their old 
 companions, the wood-chucks and the skunks and the muskrats 
 still remain, to burrow in the fields and ditches of the present 
 proprietor and sorely tempt him at times to use stronger lan- 
 guage than is decorous or pious. 
 
36 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 The latter particularly abound, and build their houses on 
 the edge of Horse Shoe pond, where the land and water meet.^ 
 These are of graceful outlines and modelled after the dwellings 
 of their unctuous cousins, the Esquimaux, who live to the north 
 of us and owe allegiance to Queen Victoria. I must modestly 
 leave to your better judgment than mine, the value of this 
 great peltry interest, if fully developed. 
 
 3. But still another resource, rare and as yet undeveloped, 
 is the farm's important pearl fishery. From Cleopatra's time 
 and long before, the pearl has been esteemed one of the fairest 
 adornments of our fairest sex. While oftenest brought by 
 breathless divers from the black depths of oriental seas, it is 
 sometimes found in shallow. New England brooks ; concealed 
 within the shells of the dark bivalves, known to science as the 
 " Unioidas," but to an ordinary farmer, like your speaker, as 
 the common, black, fresh water clams. 
 
 While it was known to the present proprietor that pearls of 
 considerable value had been found in New Hampshire 
 streams, the fact had awakened but slight interest in his plod- 
 ding mind, until he was aroused from his indifference by the 
 captivating suggestion that a proper development of this neg- 
 lected bonanza, through the aid of enterprising " promoters " 
 and the facilities of modern financiering, might exalt his farm 
 to fame and its owner to fortune. 
 
 For reasons which your own good sense will supply, these 
 three important resources are little likely to find development 
 under the farm's present ownership. 
 
 The small boy must not be deprived of the privilege of 
 catching, now and then, his string of pouts and perch, which he 
 has asserted and constantly maintained for more than one hun- 
 dred and fifty years. 
 
 Neither can the mighty hunter, descendant of Nimrod, booted 
 and armed, be kept from striding along the margin of the mead- 
 ow, in search of snipes and ducks ; while his empty game bag 
 affords disagreeable evidence that his realizations have not 
 equalled his expectations. 
 
 And, too, international courtesy requires that the Italian gen- 
 
 1 Nine such bouses may now (November, 1895) be counted on tlie north shore 
 of this pond, either finished or partly so. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 21 
 
 tlemen, who have nobly expatriated themselves for the sake of 
 digging our sewer ditches, should be allowed to add a few 
 black bivalves to the luxuries of their native cuisine. The pres- 
 ent proprietor prefers rather to adopt the legend once displayed 
 over the open door-way of the late Mr. Hart's inviting saloon, 
 " Live and let live !" 
 
 CONCLUSIONS FROM AN EXPERIENCE OF FORTY YEARS. 
 
 An experience of forty years and more has convinced the 
 present owner of the First Minister's Farm that success in 
 farming is attainable only on certain conditions, among which 
 are these : 
 
 1. The farmer's heart must be in his business. He will fail 
 to do his best if it is not. 
 
 2. He must possess a fair amount of broad common sense. 
 This comes not from the schools, but is the gift of God. 
 
 3. He must get the most he can from every resource of his 
 farm : from his stock, from his fields and low meadows ; from 
 his pastures and his woods. 
 
 4. He must make free use of courage, enterprise, energy and 
 industry. Without these he cannot successfully meet the sharp 
 competition he will encounter on every hand. 
 
 5. He must remember that brute power is cheaper than 
 human power, and overcome the high price of labor by the use 
 of animals and machinery, whenever and wherever he profita- 
 bly can. The time may not be far away when steam and elec- 
 tricity will come to his aid. The ensilage used at the N. H. 
 Asylum for the Insane was all cut by electric power the 
 present (1895) season. 
 
 6. He must so manage as to have appropriate employment 
 twelve months in each year. If he does little or nothing in 
 winter, when everyone engaged in other occupations is at 
 work, he will not get rich by farming. 
 
 7. He must possess a fair knowledge of the principles of ag- 
 ricultural science. Without this he will make costly mistakes. 
 
 8. He must understand the practical application of these 
 principles in all their details. If he does not, it will be as vain 
 for him to anticipate success as to expect good digestion and 
 peace of mind when his wife does n't know how to cook. 
 
38 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 While your speaker yields to no one in high appreciation of 
 the value of agricultural science, he has been led by personal 
 experience and observation to emphasize the innportance of 
 knowing hovv^ to use it. Theory and practice must go hand in 
 hand. Why, my dear brother farmers, we need art as well as 
 science in our business. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that our agricultural institutions 
 gave too much attention to the science and too little to the prac- 
 tice of farming. Particularly has this idea been impressed 
 upon my mind when I have seen a great farm, which some- 
 times sold hay, obliged to buy it, on account of the lack of a 
 practical remembrance of the productive capacities of its soils, 
 on the part of its scientific manager. And still deeper has 
 sunk the impress, when I have learned that the ensilage on an 
 important farm had been partially spoiled because its scientific 
 overseer had refused to have it cut before a magical 25th day 
 of September, notwithstanding it was, long before that day, 
 drying up to its injury. 
 
 Our chairman, Mr. Humphrey, is preeminently a practical 
 man, and I have imagined that if some confident, young 
 graduate, fresh from a great agricultui-al college outside of 
 New Hampshire, with his head crammed with ill-digested, 
 rural science, but empty of all skill in the practical use of it, 
 were to apply to him for the position of manager of his farm, 
 the interview might be, possibly, something like this : 
 
 Graduate. — " Mr. Humphrey, inasmuch as you have be- 
 come too old to work, it has occurred to me that you needed a 
 foreman on your farm, and that I am the man you need." (He 
 has rubbed our chairman's fur the wrong way.) 
 
 Mr. H. — " It has occurred to you .'' A most wonderful oc- 
 currence ! It is true that I no longer boast of extreme youth ; 
 for I am fifty years old and a trifle over ; as is also Mr. Glad- 
 stone, and Prince Bismarck, and Senator Morrill of Vermont, 
 but none of us think that we are past doing something. 
 However, I do want a foreman, and I'll hire you if there is a 
 fair probability that )'Our ' occurrence ' will materialize to my 
 advantage. What are your qualifications.'" 
 
 Graduate. — " There is my diploma, read it for yourself! 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 39 
 
 You will see that I am a Bachelor of Science." (Thereupon 
 he hands him a sheet of parchment, half as large as a bed blan- 
 ket, adorned with a great seal, a broad, blue ribbon and official 
 signatures.) 
 
 Mr. H. — "A Bachelor of Science ! What is that .'' Science 
 is a large word. ' Bachelor of Science !' Does it mean that 
 you are an unmarried man, and know everything.'' Do you 
 know how how to drive a four ox-team }" 
 
 Graduate. — "You would hardly expect, Mr. Humphrey, a 
 learned college professor to teach the driving of oxen, would 
 you.?" 
 
 Mr. fl. — " I would if his students were not good teamsters ; 
 and also how to hitch to a plow, or a log, or a stone, or any- 
 thing else, so as to accomplish a given amount of work with 
 the least expenditure of power. Power on a farm is expensive. 
 But, if you know no teaming, you, doubtless, know all about 
 botany for that is a science. Can you tell me whether a hog- 
 weed is an annual or a perennial plant.?" 
 
 Graduate. — "We studied botany at our college in the win- 
 ter, and I do n't quite remember. My recollection is, that it is 
 a perennial plant." 
 
 Mr. H. — " Then this weed must have changed its nature. I 
 have known it and fought it in my garden and iields for half a 
 century and it has always heretofore been an annual one. 
 Science is progressing, however, and I have doubtless got be- 
 hindhand. But never mind the hog weed ! I want to drain 
 that narrow belt of ground, which you see sloping to the pond 
 on one side, and kept wet on the other by springs discharging 
 upon it, at the base of the hill which rises above it. Can you 
 tell me how to do it V 
 
 Graduate. — "Oh, yes, Mr. Humphrey, just have an hydraulic 
 engineer make you a drainage plan, and put in your drains as 
 he directs." 
 
 Mr. H. — " Can you make me such a plan?" 
 
 Graduate. — " Well, I have never done such work. A for- 
 mer president of your New Hampshire College of Agriculture 
 said, some years ago, at a meeting of farmers, that drainage 
 could be learned in five minutes, and for that reason I did not 
 study drainage." 
 
40 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 Mr. H. — " If the president was right, you can easily post 
 yourself on that branch of farming. If you will pardon my 
 curiosity, I will ask what did your great diploma cost you .''" 
 
 Graduate. — "I do n't quite like to say. I fear from your 
 questions that you think it covers only about half of what it 
 ought to, and that, like a fifty cent silver dollar, it is worth but 
 half of what it claims to be. However, I will answer your 
 question, and say that my degree of Bachelor of Science cost me 
 three years' study and about one thousand dollars." 
 
 Mr. H. — " Go and study two or three years more with some 
 intelligent, practical farmer who understands his business. If, 
 at the end of that time, you see fit to return to me, with a cer- 
 tificate from him, in two lines, that you have come to know less 
 than you thought you did, and have become a middling good 
 farmer, I '11 hire you." 
 
 If the wings of the young " diplomatist" were plucked a lit- 
 tle by this interview, it was far less his fault than that of his 
 teachers. Our chairman doubtless recognized this fact, and 
 would have pardoned him had he ventured to say of them, what 
 the great German statesman has recently said of the landless 
 rulers of his country, " Each minister [professor] ought to be put 
 on a farm and forced to subsist on the products thereof. Then 
 would farming be better cared for."^ 
 
 In the general study of the great laws which govern indus- 
 trial processes, the present trend of thought is toward practi- 
 cality. Many of the principles of electricity were well known 
 an hundred years ago, but that knowledge benefited mankind 
 but little. Now that this most subtle and powerful of all known 
 agencies has been tamed and harnessed to the rail car and the 
 mill wheel, its value has become incalculable. And, when all 
 the hidden forces of nature applicable to agriculture shall have 
 been made available, the results of our labors will have been 
 enlarged and our welfare correspondingly advanced. 
 
 John Lord has somewhere said that, during the reign of the 
 Cffisars and their successors, great elevating and depressing 
 forces were constantly active, the latter of which eventually 
 prevailed and rendered the ruin of the empire as complete as it 
 
 I Boston Dally Advertiser, June 10, 1895, p. 1. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 4I 
 
 was inglorious. It is equally true, that strong uplifting and 
 depressing influences are now operating upon the welfare of 
 our agriculture. 
 
 Among the latter, may be enumerated a distaste for farm life, 
 due largely to bad farming ; the farmer's imperfect apprecia- 
 tion of the importance of his calling and of his position as an 
 owner of land ; as well as an exaggerated idea of the desirable- 
 ness of large wealth and the superior advantages of city life. 
 
 Among the former, we may recognize as uplifting influences, 
 our agricultural journals and schools, our agricultural boards, 
 and the great organization of the Patrons of Husbandry ; all 
 accompanied by the activity of men of mechanical talent, by 
 whose inventions the results of labor are enhanced and its cost 
 diminished. 
 
 The contest between these two forces is everywhere active, 
 and bids fair to continue to be. Malthus and Buckle may 
 tell us that states, like men, are born and grow to maturity, 
 only to decline to decrepitude and death ; arid, in proof of this, 
 point to Babylon and Assyria, to Egypt, Persia, Greece, and 
 Rome. And in harmony with them Lord Byron may have 
 
 said, 
 
 " When falls the Colosseum, Rome falls, 
 And when falls Rome, the world." 
 
 The Colosseum is now a ruin, and the empire perished fif- 
 teen centuries ago ; but the world still endures. So does Agri- 
 culture, man's primal calling and our own chosen pursuit. 
 This great industrial interest, which underlies and supports all 
 others, will last as long as God's great experiment of human 
 regeneration continues. For while " man cannot live by bread 
 alone," he cannot live without it. When that fails, man fails 
 and the world will be divested of human occupancy. Such 
 is the character, and importance of the calling to which our 
 energies have been consecrated. 
 
 Let us therefore appreciate the importance of our calling and 
 love our acres, never forgetting the remark to her son by that 
 shrewd, old Virginia matron, the mother of John Randolph of 
 Roanoke : 
 
 " Never part with your land. Keep j'our land and your land 
 will keep you." 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE STATE AND CONDITION OF THE SETTLEMENT OF 
 PENNYCOOK IN OCTOBER, 1731. 
 
 Nathaniel Abbott. He had a liolise built and his family 
 there. 
 
 Jacob Abbott. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 John Austin. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Samuel Ayer. He had a house framed, and twelve acres 
 of land fenced, mowed, and ploughed. 
 
 Obadiah Ayer. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 John Ayer. He had a house inhabited. 
 
 John Bayley. He had a house erected but not finished. 
 
 Nathaniel Barker. He had a house built, and the lot 
 improved by James Varnum, an inhabitant. 
 
 Zebediah Barker. He had a house and barn well fin- 
 ished and inhabited. 
 
 William Barker. He had a house well finished and in- 
 habited, and a good barn. 
 
 Joshua Bayley. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Thomas Blanchard. He had a house built and inhab- 
 ited. 
 
 Moses Boardman. He had a house built, but not quite 
 finished, but tenantable — six-acre lot fenced in and under im- 
 provement. 
 
 Nathan Blodgett. He had a house inhabited. 
 
 Christopher Carlton. He had a house built and inhab- 
 ited. 
 
 Benjamin Carlton. He had a house built, and the orders 
 of the Court complied with by Jeremiah Stickney, an inhab- 
 itant. 
 
 Nehemiah Carlton. He had a house erected, and the 
 order complied with, by Abner Hoit, an inhabitant. 
 
 John Chandler. A house built and inhabited — the order 
 fully complied with. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 43 
 
 Nathaniel Clement. He had no house and no inhab- 
 itant — three acres ploughed. 
 
 John Coggin. He had a house erected, but not finished — 
 twelve acres of land fenced and improved. 
 
 Edward Clark. He had a house built, not finished, a 
 man inhabiting there — twelve acres within fence, nnowed and 
 ploughed. 
 
 Enoch Coffin. He had a house built, and the order com- 
 plied with by Jonathan Danforth. 
 
 Thomas Colman. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Richard Coolidge. He had no house, but land improved 
 and order otherwise complied with by Ens. John Chandler. 
 
 Joseph Davis. He had a house built and well finished. 
 
 Ephraim Davis. He had a house built, and the order was 
 complied with by his own son. 
 
 Samuel Davis. [Blank.] 
 
 Moses Day. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 David Dodge. He had a house built — not finished. 
 
 Jacob Eames. He had a good dwelling-house — six acre 
 lot, fenced in and broke up. 
 
 Ebenezer Eastman. He had six sons on the spot — six 
 men in his family. He paid the charge of building a corn- 
 mill ; and he has broke up, cleared and mowed upward of eighty 
 acres of land, and had very considerable buildings, out houses, 
 barns, etc., there. 
 
 Stephen Emerson. He had a house built, and the order 
 complied with — no inhabitant. 
 
 Ephraim Farnum. He was an inhabitant and had a house 
 built. 
 
 Nathan Fisk. He had a house built and inhabited, and 
 the order complied with by Z. Chandler. 
 
 Abraham Foster. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 John Foster. He had a house built, and the order com- 
 plied with by his son. 
 
 Benjamin Gage. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 John Granger. He had a house built and finished — order 
 complied with by John Russ, inhabitant. 
 
 Samuel Grainger. He had a house built — order com- 
 plied with by George Abbott. 
 
44 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 William Gutterson. He had a house built, and the 
 order complied with by John Merrill. 
 
 Joseph Hale. He had a frame standing on the house lot. 
 
 John Hall. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Moses Hazzen. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Richard Hazzen, Jun. He had a house built and the 
 order complied with by Deacon Osgood. 
 
 Nehemiah Heath. [Blank.] 
 
 Ephraim Hildreth. He had a frame, not raised, but 
 ready, and land ploughed. 
 
 Jonathan Hubbard for Daniel Davis. He had a house 
 built and inhabited. 
 
 John Jaques. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Timothy Johnson. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Nathaniel Jones. He had a house built, and order com- 
 plied with by his son. 
 
 David Kimball. He had a house built — an inhabitant. 
 
 Robert Kimball. He had a house — the order complied 
 with — his son an inhabitant. 
 
 Samuel Kimball. He had a house built — not finished — 
 the order complied with by his son. 
 
 Isaac Learned. He had a house — man dead. 
 
 Ebenezer Lovejoy. He had a house, but uninhabited. 
 
 Nathaniel Lovejoy. He had a house erected — not fin- 
 ished. 
 
 John Mattis. He had a house and barn, and inhabited. 
 
 John Merrill. He had a house built — an inhabitant. 
 
 Andrew Mitchell. He had a house erected — not finished 
 — twelve acres fenced and ploughed. 
 
 Benjamin Nichols. He had a house and inhabited. 
 
 John Osgood. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Stephen Osgood. He had a house — ten acres fenced and 
 mowed — cleared — nothing ploughed. 
 
 Thomas Page. [Blank.] 
 
 Joseph Page. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Nathaniel Page. He had a house built, finished and 
 inhabited. 
 
 Joseph Parker. He had a house but not finished — orders 
 otherwise complied with by Ezekiel Walker, an inhabitant. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 45 
 
 « 
 
 Nathan Parker. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Benjamin Parker. He had a house partly covered^^ten 
 acres fenced and improved by ploughing and mowing. 
 
 James Parker. He had no house — the land ploughed, 
 mowed and fenced by Lt. Farrington, an inhabitant. 
 
 John Peabody. He had a house up — negro man, inhabi- 
 tant — orders otherwise complied with. 
 
 Nathaniel Peaslee. He had a house — order complied 
 with by John Merrill. 
 
 Robert Peaslee. , He had a house and inhabited. 
 
 John Pecker. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Rev. Samuel Phillips. He had a house up — not finished, 
 order for improvement complied with by William Peters. 
 
 Jonathan Pulsipher. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Thomas Perley for Nathaniel Cogswell. He had a house 
 built and was an inhabitant. 
 
 Samuel Reynolds. He had a house erected, but not 
 finished, and land fenced and improved — no inhabitant. 
 
 Henry Rolfe. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 John Sanders. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Nathaniel Sanders. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 John Sanders, Jr. He had a house built — land ploughed, 
 mowed and fenced. 
 
 Jonathan Shipley. [Blank.] 
 
 James Simonds. He had a house built and inhabited. , 
 
 Nathan Simonds. [Blank.] 
 
 Ebenezer Stevens. He had a house and barn built, fin- 
 ished and inhabited. 
 
 Zerubbabel Snow. He had a house up, inhabited by 
 Isaac Walker. 
 
 Benjamin Stevens, Esq.. He had a house and barn — 
 improved by Ebenezer Stevens. 
 
 Bezaleel Toppan. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 Samuel Toppan. He had a house inhabited — order com- 
 plied with by Danforth. 
 
 Richard Uran. He was an inhabitant, and had land 
 mowed, ploughed and fenced. 
 
 Ebenezer Virgin. He had a house and inhabited it. 
 
 Isaac Walker. He had a house up — not finished — was an 
 
46 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 s 
 
 inhabitant, with his family — twelve acres fenced, mowed and 
 ploughed. 
 
 William White. No house frame ready — three acres 
 ploughed — that's all. 
 
 Nicholas White. Frame raised — possessed by Call, an 
 inhabitant there. 
 
 Thomas Wilcomb. He had a house built, and had a man 
 there. 
 
 William Whittier. No house nor inhabitant. 
 
 Edward Winn. He had a house up not finished. 
 
 John Wright. He had a house almost finished — an inhab- 
 itant. 
 
 Ammi Ruhamah Wise. He had a house built and inhabited. 
 
 David Wood. He had a house and a man on the spot — 
 ten acres fenced, mowed and ploughed. 
 
 Total 100. 
 
 The above is the account of the present state and circum- 
 stances of the Plantation of Penny Cook, taken there by as 
 careful a view as we could, and the best information of the 
 principal settlers and inhabitants. 
 
 October 20, 1731. 
 
 John Wainwright. 
 Jno. Sanders. 
 
 APPEN^DIX B. 
 
 HON. TIMOTHY WALKER. 
 
 Hon. Timothy Walker was the only son of Rev. Timothy 
 Walker, the first minister of Concord, N. H., where he was 
 born June 26, 1727, and died May 5th, 1822. He bore in suc- 
 cession the titles of Reverend, Colonel, and Judge Timothy 
 Walker, but longest the latter; by which he was designated 
 for some forty-five years. He was graduated at Harvard Col- 
 lege in 1756,^ studied theology and preached, more or less, for 
 
 ' Up to the Revolution, or thereabouts, the names of the students of Harvard 
 College were entered upon its catalogues according to the presumed social 
 positions of the families to which they severally belonged and not alphabeti- 
 cally or according to scholarship. Judge Walker's name stands as the eighth 
 on the roll of his class of twenty-flve ; while that of his father was the twenty- 
 eighth In a class of forty -five. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 47 
 
 ten years, but was never settled. A little before the commence- 
 ment of the Revolutionary War, he relinquished the sacred 
 duties of the pulpit for those of civil life. 
 
 On the fifth day of September, 1775, he was commissioned 
 by the Congress of the Colony of New Hampshire, Colonel of 
 the Third Regiment of Minute men of this Colony.^ He was 
 a Paymaster of the New Hampshire forces, stationed at Winter 
 Hill in the early part of the Revolutionary War, and served a 
 campaign under General Sullivan. Later, he was a member of 
 the Committee of Safety. He was also a member of the Fourth 
 and Fifth Provincial Congresses, the latter of which assumed 
 civil government by the adoption of a State Constitution, Janu- 
 ary 5th, 1776. He was also a member of the committee which 
 drafled and reported to the -House of Representatives the mem- 
 orable Declaration of Independence which was passed by this 
 resolute body on the fifteenth day of June, 1776.^ 
 
 I His commission, which has been preserved, has upon it the old Colonial 
 seal, bearing upon its face the deyice of a bundle of arrows, flanked on the 
 left by a flsh and on the right by a pine tree; together with the legend, ''Vis 
 Unita Fortior." It is signed by Matthew Thornton, President, and counter- 
 signed by E. Thompson, Secretary. 
 
 2 This Declaration was as follows: 
 
 " Whereas it now appears an undoubted Faci:, That Notwithstanding all the 
 dutiful Peticions and Decent Remonstrances from the American Colonies, and 
 the utmost Exertions of their best Friends in England on their Behalf, the 
 British Ministry, arbitrary and vindictive are yet Determined to Beduce by 
 Fire and Sword our Bleeding Country, to their absolute obedience; and tor 
 this Purpose in addition to their own forces, have Engaged great numbers of 
 Foreign Mercenaries, who may now be on their passage here, accompanied 
 by a Formidable Fleet to Ravage and Plunder the Sea Coast; From all which 
 we may reasonably Expect the most Dismal Scenes of Distress the ensuing 
 year, unless we Exert ourselves by every means and Precaution possible; And 
 Whereas as We of this Colony of New Hampshire have the Example of several 
 of the most Respectable of our Sister Colonies before us tor Entering upon 
 that most Important Step of a Disttniox from Great Britain, and Declaring 
 ourselves Fkee and Independent of the Crown thereof, — being propelled 
 thereto by the most violent and injurious Treatment; and it appearing abso- 
 lutely Necessary in this most Critical Juncture of our Public Affairs, that the 
 Honble the Continental Congress, who have this Important object under 
 Immediate Consideration, should be also Informed of our Resolutions thereon 
 without loss of time: We Do, therefore Declare that it is the opinion of this 
 Assembly that our Delegates at the Continental Congress should be Instructed, 
 and they are hereby Instructed to join with the other Colonies in Declaring 
 The Thirteen United Colonies, A Fbee and Independent State: Solemnly 
 Pledging our Faith and Honour, That we will on our parts Support the measure 
 with our lives and Fortunes;— and that in consequence thereof. They, the 
 Continental Congress, on whose Wisdom, Fidelity & Integrity we rely, may 
 enter into and form such Alliances as they may judge most conducive to the 
 
48 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 The adoption of the State Constitution involved the estab- 
 lishment of a State government with its legislative, executive, 
 and judicial departments. To the latter he was c&Ued, as a 
 Justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Rockingham County. 
 This position he held for more than twenty years. 
 
 He lived nearly all his life upon the Farm of the First Minis- 
 ter and for many years superintended its operations. But so 
 absorbed by other duties were his time and thoughts that he 
 attempted but little in the line of husbandry beyond the ordi- 
 nary routine of the farm work of his period. In fact, the time 
 for important improvements in agriculture has not yet come. 
 
 Early in the present century, feeling somewhat the weight of 
 years and desirous of establishing him in a settled business, he 
 transferred to his youngest son, Capt. Joseph Walker, the farm 
 which he had occupied for a generation. 
 
 He died at his paternal homestead on the fifth day of May, 
 1822, at the age of eighty- five years. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 CAPTAIN JOSEPH WALKER. 
 
 Captain Joseph Walker, its third proprietor, was born on 
 the Farm of the First Minister on the 12th day of January, 1782, 
 and reared under the traditions and usages of the period follow- 
 ing the American Revolution. He received a fair English 
 education in the common school of his native town and at the 
 academy in Fryeburg, Maine, in anticipation of an agricultural 
 career. 
 
 A few years after the attainment of his majority, his father 
 transferred to him the ownership of the farm and he thereupon 
 assumed its management. He repaired its buildings and in- 
 creased their number. He added to its acreage and, about 1820, 
 lessened greatly the distance to its fields by the construction of 
 
 Present Safety and Future advantage of These American Colonies: Pro- 
 vided, the Regulation of our Internal Police be under the direction of our own 
 Assembly. 
 
 Entered according to the Original, 
 
 Att; Noah Emery, Clk. D. Beps. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 49 
 
 a bridge across Horse Shoe pond. He also improved its sheep 
 husbandry by the infusion of foreign blood into his flock, 1 and 
 facilitated some of the farm labors by the introduction of the corn 
 sheller, the horse rake, and the horse pitch fork. The latter, 
 consisting of two very heavy iron tines held in place by a wood- 
 en cross bar, is still preserved. 
 
 Captain Walker held various town offices from time to time 
 and shared with his neighbors the official honors which his 
 town had at its disposal. But he had no desire for political pre- 
 ferment. He was a clear sighted, level headed man who pos- 
 sessed the courage of his convictions and acted in accordance 
 therewith. 
 
 He was engaged more or less, at times, in business other than 
 that of his farm, being a member of several financial cor- 
 porations and manager of an extensive land holding on the 
 Androscoggin river, at Rumford, Maine, a township which had 
 been granted by the state of Massachusetts to the proprietors 
 of Concord, in consideration of expenses incurred by them in 
 quieting the title to their township, against the claims of the so- 
 called proprietors of Bow, after the determination of the bound- 
 ary line between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. 
 
 He possessed a military taste and was for many years an 
 officer of a company of cavalry attached to the Eleventh Regi- 
 ment of the New Hampshire militia ; having been appointed 
 its second lieutenant December S, 1804, its first lieutenant 
 September 23, 1808, and its captain, September 22, 1809. His 
 successive commissions are signed, the first by Gov. John Tay- 
 lor Gilman, the second by Gov. John Langdon, and the third by 
 Gov. Jeremiah Smith. 
 
 Endowed with bonhomie in large measure, he was ever in close 
 touch with the members of his company. These lived in dif- 
 ferent sections of Concord and several of the neighboring 
 
 iMr. Bowland B. Robinson says In his history of Vermont that, " Early In the 
 century, Vermont flocks were greatly Improved by the Introduction of the 
 Spanish merinos. During 1809 and 1810 William Jarvis, our consul at Lisbon, 
 obtained about 4,000 merinos from the confiscated flocks of the Spanish nobles, 
 and imported them to this country. . . . From the Jarvis importation, and 
 from a small flock of the Infantado family imported about the same time by 
 Colonel Humphreys, our minister to Spain, the most valued merinos are de- 
 scended." More or less of our New Hampshire flocks were greatly Improved 
 by these importations. 
 4 
 
50 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 towns. Company meetings were warned by verbal notices 
 given to members present at the Concord meeting-house on 
 some Sunday previous to the day appointed therefor, and by 
 them forwarded to those absent. 
 
 Some of these, living at long distances from the place of pa- 
 rade, which was generally Concord, made their appearance the 
 evening before the day of training, and found at the home of their 
 captain a soldier's welcome to themselves and horses. For the 
 latter sleeping accommodations were always abundant. For 
 their riders, these did not always suffice. But if the number of 
 beds in the house fell short, the late comers took to the floors 
 and, wrapped in their blankets, " endured hardness as good 
 soldiers." 
 
 Before their marriage, the Captain's wife had been a school 
 teacher and may have increased his interest in the welfare of 
 the rising generation. However that may be, soon after he had 
 relinquished the celibacy which had too long enthralled him, 
 he was directed by his district to procure the erection of a new 
 school house, to supersede the low, wooden structure in which 
 his wife had painfully labored to enlighten the children com- 
 mitted to her tutelage. 
 
 In due time, a two-story, brick building,- surmounted by a 
 tin-covered belfry of graceful outlines and fully supplied with 
 the best furniture then in use, challenged the admiration of all 
 lovers of good schools and school-houses. It was by far the 
 best building of its kind in the county and few, if any, sur- 
 passed elsewhere in the state. 
 
 Some members of the district, who thought more of their 
 taxes than of their children's welfare, complained of its costli- 
 ness and objected to the payment of the outstanding bills in- 
 curred in its construction. During this ferment, the house was 
 opened for use and the late Judge George W. Nesmith, then a 
 student of Dartmouth college, was employed to teach the win- 
 ter school. 
 
 One day, as he has said, he was met upon the street by Cap- 
 tain Walker who asked him for the loan of the school-house 
 key. He at once handed it to him, supposing that entrance 
 was wanted for the completion of something which had been 
 left unfinished and that it would be seasonably returned to him. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 5 1 
 
 But, when the succeeding evening had passed and much of the 
 following morning with no tidings of the key, he sought the 
 Captain, whom he readily found, and asked for it. He was 
 suavely told, in reply, that a short vacation would harm neither 
 him nor his scholars, and that its length would be governed by 
 the obstinacy of the parties who withheld the money raised for 
 the payment of the few outstanding bills incurred in the con- 
 struction of the school-house. The money was soon advanced 
 and the interruption of the school exercises was but a brief 
 one. 
 
 Tradition has preserved various anecdotes relating to Captain 
 Walker which attest the kindly humor which he often dis- 
 played. One of them was to this effect : 
 
 At a parade in Loudon, his company of cavalry had been drawn 
 up to receive the hospitality of its commanding officer. The 
 bottle was started at one end of the line and each man helped 
 himself to its contents as it passed along. In due time it 
 reached the other end where the chaplain was stationed. He 
 manfully followed the example of his predecessors, and was 
 about to start the beverage on its return course when the quick 
 eye of the captain detected his intent, and a peremptory order, 
 prompt and clear, was issued, that his reverence must turn a 
 double corner and take a second drink before sending the bot- 
 tle back, as his comrades were about to do. The chaplain was 
 a strict disciplinarian and obeyed promptly. Total abstinence 
 was not then a martial virtue. 
 
 Captain Walker was the only one of the farm's four proprie- 
 tors who has devoted to it the main energies of his life. He 
 loved his paternal acres. He loved his flock and his herd. 
 He was fond of a good yoke of oxen and delighted in a good 
 horse. He also rejoiced in a straight, even, and well-turned 
 furrow. He raised good crops of hay and oats, of corn, rye, 
 and potatoes. 
 
 But the early loss of his wife cast a shadow over his last 
 years from which he never fully emerged. He died March 3, 
 1833, at the age of fifty-one years. 
 
52 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 APPEI^^DIX D. 
 
 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS FROM 1782 TO 1833. 
 
 During the long period extending from the death of the first, 
 in 1782, to that of the third proprietor of the First Minister's 
 Farm, in 1833, New Hampshire farming made few marked ad- 
 vances. The time was largely one of recovery from the ex- 
 haustion of war and financial embarrassments. The farmers 
 lived isolated on their individual holdings. They rarely left 
 their homes except as they went occasionally to market or to 
 mill and on Sundays to meeting. 
 
 But while this period of about fifty years was not fruitful in 
 very obvious advances in the state's farming, it was, neverthe- 
 less, important as the forerunner of a succeeding one of won- 
 drous progress ; just as the ministry of John the Baptist was of 
 the grander one of the Messiah. In other words, it was the ag- 
 ricultural daybreak of the full-orbed agricultural day. 
 
 On the i6th of December, 1812, the governor of the state of 
 New Hampshire approved an act of the Legislature making 
 Jedediah K. Smith of Amherst, Nathaniel Upham of Roches- 
 ter, Samuel Sparhawk of Concord, Ithamar Chase of Cornish, 
 Thomas D. Merrill of Epsom, Timothy Walker of Concord, 
 Joshua Darling of Henniker, Samuel Quarles of Ossipee, John 
 F. Parrot of Portsmouth, Edward Cutts of Portsmouth, John 
 Bradley of Concord, Joseph Sawyer of Piermont, William 
 Badger of Gilmanton, John Hodgdon, Levi Hutchins of Cm- 
 cord, Nathaniel Gilman of Exeter, Richard Odell of Conway, 
 John Dame of Portsmouth, and Peter Stow, their associates 
 and successors a body politic and corporate, " To promote and 
 encourage agriculture, economy and husbandry and useful 
 domestic manufactures the objects of their association [and] and 
 shall have right and power to ordain and grant premiums and 
 medals or other gratuities as rewards of merit, exertion, dis- 
 covery or improvement on the several objects aforesaid." ' 
 
 How far this society was active in promoting the objects for 
 which it was instituted I am unable to say. It was soon fol- 
 
 iPam. Laws, 1812, p. 27. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 53 
 
 lowed by the establishment of kindred organizations in several 
 counties: In Rockingham in 1814, in Cheshire in 1816, in 
 Strafford and Grafton in 1818, in Coos in 1819, and in Merri- 
 mack in 1824. All of these were instrumental for many years 
 in stimulating agricultural improvement in their several locali- 
 ties by exhibitions of choice farm products and domestic manu- 
 factures and by the payment of premiums therefor. 
 
 In 1820 the way seemed open to a further advance, and the 
 Legislature created a State Board of Agriculture, to consist of 
 the presidents of the several county societies and of one dele- 
 gate from each who " Shall receive and examine all such re- 
 ports and returns as have been or shall be made by the county 
 societies within the state ; and select for publication such of 
 them and such other essays relative to improvements in agri- 
 culture as they may think will conduce to the advancement of 
 agriculture. 
 
 "And shall annually publish a pamphlet at the expense of the 
 state, to be distributed by means of said agricultural societies to 
 the people of this state." 
 
 At a meeting of the Board, holden oh the nineteenth day of 
 June, 1821, Hon. William Badger of Gilmanton was chosen 
 President ; Hon. Matthew Harvey of Hopkinton, Secretary ; 
 Hon. Samuel Grant of Walpole, Treasurer; and Hon. Amos 
 Kent of Chester, Rev. Humphrey Moore of Milford, and Hon. 
 Samuel Grant, a Committee of Publication. 
 
 This Board had but a short career. In 1822 it issued a very- 
 creditable report of one hundred and thirty-five octavo pages, des- 
 ignated "The New Hampshire Agricultural Repository, No. i ." 
 It contains eight well-written papers, all from the pens of two 
 members of the Board. This first Report was its last and the 
 Board ceased to exist a year or two after its issue. It was, 
 however, the precursor by half a century of the Board, which, 
 instituted at a more auspicious time, has achieved a high and 
 lasting success. 
 
54 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 APPBI^DIX E. 
 
 THE CONDITION OF THE FIRST MINISTER'S FARM AND 
 BUILDINGS IN 1853. 
 
 When the fourth proprietor of the First Minister's Farm as- 
 sumed its management its condition was not one to be proud 
 of. For about twenty years it had been occupied by tenants. 
 The arable section had yielded successive croppings for one 
 hundred and twenty years. It was annually producing some 
 fifty to sixty tons of English grass. This varied in quality, all 
 the way from the best to the poorest, which could be made to 
 pass under that designation. It also gave medium crops of 
 grain and vegetables on a yearly area of seven or eight acres. 
 In short, for that of a rented farm, the tillage portion was in 
 fair condition, the leases having provided for the return to the 
 farm of a specified amount of manure for eacli ton of hay sold 
 therefrom, as well as the expenditure upon it of all produced 
 thereon. The tenants had always been honorable men and had 
 fulfilled the stipulations of their covenants. 
 
 There were three pastures upon the farm. The first was a 
 small one, of seven or eight acres, for the occasional use of 
 oxen. The second was a cow pasture of some twenty-five 
 acres. The third was upon the upland, two miles distant from 
 the buildings of the farm. 
 
 The first of these had been cultivated at some previous time 
 and was in fair condition. Much of the second had never felt 
 the pressure of the plow. It consisted of semi-circular ridges 
 and intervening hollows. The former were dry and bore more 
 hardback bushes than grass. The latter were moist, and their 
 herbage was largely mixed with brakes and polypod. The 
 third was an upland pasture of about thirty-six acres, which 
 had been cleared many years before and was somewhat stony 
 but of good soil. It had never been ploughed but produced a 
 fair amount of good feed. It was almost entirely inclosed by 
 a good stone wall, and had been used at one period as a sheep 
 pasture.^ 
 
 • When sheep husbandry was common In Concord, the owners of flocks had 
 their individual marks for the recognition of their sheep, which were recorded 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 55 
 
 The nearly fifty acres of bog land was a part of an abandoned 
 channel of Merrimack river, whose surface bad been raised by 
 successive deposits of aquatic vegetation and freshet silt some 
 six feet above the average height of the river. For the want of 
 proper drainage it was impassable by teams, and produced only 
 bushes, sedges, and the poorest kind of meadow grass. It sur- 
 rounded the main body of the tillage land by a belt, varying in 
 width all the way from two to twenty rods, parallel with which 
 extended much of the way an outer belt of water of varying 
 width. 
 
 At some remote period a ditch had been cut through a sec- 
 tion of this bog in the direction of Horse Shoe pond, but its 
 channel had been so obstructed by freshets, aquatic plants, and 
 bushes as to greatly imf)air its efficiency for drainage. 
 
 Some seven or eight acres of this bog had been mowed from 
 time to time, but the crops had hardly paid the cost of their 
 removal. The whole tract was underlaid by a water table, 
 whose surface rose and fell with that of the adjacent pond. At 
 the same time, it was the most conspicuous part of the farm and 
 was partially occupied by a belt of bushes, which previous 
 neglect had allowed to grow thereon ; but while this sodden 
 section had few attractions for the farmer, sportsmen and their 
 dogs were drawn to it and knew far better all the mazes of its 
 thickets than did its owner. 
 
 Sixty acres of the farm's wood and timber land was covered 
 with a sparse growth of pitch pine (Pinus rigida)^ and formed 
 a part of the sandy plain on the east side of the Merrimack 
 river. Some of the trees were of primeval growth. So free of 
 underbrush was it that a carriage might pass through it in all 
 directions. Fires had swept over it repeatedly, but its trees 
 had been large enough to successfully withstand their ravages. 
 It is greatly to be regretted that this valuable inhabitant of our 
 forests seems destined to become virtually extinct in New 
 Hampshire, and at a day not far distant. 
 
 The remainder of the farm's forest land was covered with the 
 common deciduous trees found in our upland woods, mixed 
 
 by the town clerk. That designating those kept upon the First Minister's Farm 
 
 was "A Swallow's Tail in the off Ear and a half Penny the under side of the 
 
 near Ear, entered June 9th 1770." 
 
 Concord Town Records, printed Vol., p. 630. 
 
56 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 with pines and hemlocks. Here and there could be found old 
 growth white pines (Pinus strobus) four or five feet in diameter 
 at the ground, whose ages reached back to the Indian occupa- 
 tion of the country ; the last survivors of a noble company from 
 which the second and third Georges had selected masts for the 
 English navy. It is doubtless true that not one such is now 
 standing within the limits of ancient Penny Cook, and very 
 few, indeed, in this state. 
 
 Through the largest tract of the farm's forest the great cyclone 
 of 1816 had cut its way, prostrating everything before it. Its 
 course could be plainly traced by the decaying trunks, which 
 have ever since lain undisturbed where they had fallen, — pines, 
 oaks, chestnuts, maples, hemlocks, etc., gradually returning 
 to the soil the elements which they ha!ti formerly withdrawn 
 from it. 
 
 The farm's water surface, of some twenty acres, constituted 
 the whole or parts of three ponds, severally known as Horse- 
 shoe, Back, and Little ponds. While this territory belonged 
 legally to the owner of the farm, its occupancy had always been 
 maintained by a class of men and boys, who delight in the cap- 
 ture of shiners, flatsides, perch, pouts, with now and then a 
 pickerel and a slippery eel. They were mostly persons of 
 leisure, whose time was not considered very precious either by 
 themselves or by anyone else. 
 
 The buildings on the Farm of the First Minister have always 
 been siinple and unpretentious. 
 
 The house occupied by the several proprietors is a plain, 
 gambrel-roof structure of wood. It has been changed but little 
 since its erection in 1734, and has sheltered six generations of 
 the family. 
 
 In his history of the town of Concord, pp. 556-558, Dr. 
 Bouton gives the following historical sketch of it : 
 
 "the walker house. 
 
 " This house is [said to be] the oldest two-story dwelling house 
 between Haverhill, Mass., and Canada.-' It was erected by the 
 Rev. Mr. Walker on [or near] the house lot drawn to the first 
 
 ' Watson's Concord Directory, 1850, p. 6. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 57 
 
 minister in the year 1733-34, the town having generously voted 
 him ' fifty pounds for building a dwelling house in Pennycook.' 
 Its dimensions were forty by twenty feet, two stories in height, 
 with an ell adjoining on the east, of one story, both parts being 
 covered with a gambrel roof. The chimneys were very large 
 and of stone. One of them, which remained as originally built 
 until 1847, was found upon its removal to be about five feet 
 square, and constructed of flat, ledge stones, laid in clay mortar 
 and plastered on the inside with a composition of clay and 
 chopped straw. Only the ell part was entirely finished at first 
 and contained but three rooms on the first floor. The front 
 part remained in an unfinished state until 1757, when, with the 
 assistance of Lieutenant Webster of Bradford, a joiner of high 
 repute in those days, it was also completed. The wood-work 
 being near to completion, it appears from a letter dated the 9th 
 of September, 1759, addressed by Rev. Mr. Walker to his son, 
 Timothy, then teaching school at Bradford, Mass., that a grave 
 question arose as to the propriety ' of painting ye outside.' 
 The decision arrived at is not now known, but, either at that 
 time or a few years subsequent, it was painted a light yellow, 
 which continued to be its uniform color for at least seventy 
 years. The interior was finished in a style similar to that 
 found in the better class of houses of that period. Most of the 
 partitions were of wooden panel work ; the front hall was 
 dadoed with panelling, and the front stairs were in three short 
 flights, conducting to broad landings and guarded by a moulded 
 rail, supported upon curiously-wrought balusters. The rooms 
 were painted various colors, the north parlor and south parlor 
 chamber being green, the south parlor blue, the north parlor 
 chamber and the old people's bed-room white, and the kitchen 
 red. Thus constructed and finished it remained without alter- 
 ation, with the exception of an enlargement of the ell, until 
 1848, when it was modified in some particulars and thoroughly 
 repaired by the present proprietor. In 1739,^ it was appointed 
 
 > Should be 1746. 
 
 The precise year when the garrison around the house of the Bev. Mr Walker 
 was built is uncertain. On the 7th of November, 1739, the town " voted that 
 there shall be a good and sufficient garrison built around the Bev. Mr. Timothy 
 Walker's dwelling-house, as soon as may be conveniently, at the town's cost." 
 It must have been sometime between 1739 and 1746. 
 
^8 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 a garrison-house, and fortified 'at the town's cost' by the 
 erection about it of a wall of timbers lying in contact, one upon 
 another, and held in position by tenon-ends let into grooved 
 posts set in the ground. Eight families besides Mr. Walker's 
 were assigned to it and occupied it more or less of the time 
 until the close of the second French war. When, in 1782, the 
 legislature met in Concord for the first time and held its ses- 
 sions in the hall over Judge Walker's store, which was near by, 
 the president of the state with his council occupied the north 
 parlor of this house, while the south parlor served as a general 
 committee room, and the room above it as the office of the treas- 
 urer of state. It was the residence of Rev. Mr. Walker until 
 his death; and his son, the late Judge Walker, lived in it 
 during almost the entire period of his life. It is now owned 
 and occupied by Joseph B. Walker, Esq., a great-grandson of 
 Rev. Mr. Walker." 
 
 The barn erected by the First Minister was a fair type of the 
 larger New Hampshire barns of the middle of the last century. 
 It was some eighty or ninety feet long and forty feet wide, 
 boarded up and down with unplaned pine boards. The cart 
 entrances were upon the north side and its driveways were 
 across its longitudinal axis, flanked by bays for hay- In its west 
 end was a granary, slatted on the outside wall. It was en- 
 larged on the south side by the addition of a lean-to for cattle. 
 
 This barn stood at the corner of Main and Fenacook streets 
 until 1830, when it gave place to the more modern structure 
 still in use. This, which is eighty feet long by forty feet wide, 
 is entered at the ends and has a driveway twelve feet wide 
 extending through its entire length, on each side of which are 
 bays for the storage of hay. As originally constructed, it had 
 a stable for cattle on the east side of the driveway, and a small 
 stable for horses in the south-west section. Its main timbers 
 are of sawed hard pine, and its roof boards, which extend 
 without piecing from the ridge to the eaves, are of the same 
 material. The other timbers, plank, and boards are of white 
 pine. These, delivered upon the site and ready for use, cost in 
 1830, seven dollars per thousand. 
 
 The erection of this barn was preceded by that of two others, 
 one of them smaller but similar in construction, and the other. 
 
THE FARM OF THB FIRST MINISTER. 59 
 
 some forty feet long and thirty feet wide, designed and used for 
 a sheep barn, which was divided into two stories, the upper 
 being used for the storage of hay, and the lower one for the 
 sheltering of sheep and for a cider mill. When sheep hus- 
 bandry and cider making were abandoned, this barn was 
 removed and when, ere long, an increase of crops required 
 more storage room, another structure of better design and 
 larger proportions was erected. 
 
 These, together with two houses not mentioned, a horse 
 stable, corn barn, wood shed, and other small structures, con- 
 stitute the present buildings upon the First Minister's Fiarm. If 
 none of them are very fine, they are as good as the farm profits 
 will support, and are adequate to all the demands made upon 
 them. When, some years ago, the president of the old Perth 
 Amboy railroad in New Jersey, was asked why he did not 
 build a better station at Trenton, the capital of the state, he 
 quietly replied that " hemlock boards yielded very good divi- 
 dends to the stockholders." 
 
 APPENDIX F. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY KEPT BY BENJAMIN KIMBALL 
 AT KIMBALL'S FERRY, SO CALLED, CONCORD, N. H. 
 
 1815. March 25. Last passing the river on the ice. 
 May 18. First planting. 
 
 May 30. Apple Trees in full blossom. 
 
 Sept. 23. A high gale of wind, (September gales,) 
 which destroyed buildings, fences and trees to an im- 
 mense amount. 
 
 1816. June 6-ri2. Six days very cold weather; snow fell, 
 
 ground froze, and corn killed. 
 Sept. 23. A hard freeze, ears of corn froze through. 
 July 7. A hard frost ; cold for six days. 
 
 181 7. April I. Good passing on the ice with horses. 
 Sept. 30. The first frost. 
 
 Dec. 23. First passing the river on the ice. 
 
60 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 i8iS. February. A very cold month. 
 
 March i. A heavy rain, and on the third, river over- 
 flowed. 
 March 22. Good boating. 
 
 181 8. December. Very cold. 
 
 1819. January and February. Very warm, with very little 
 
 snow, the ground being bare the whole time, and no 
 
 sledding but all business and journeys performed with 
 
 wagons. 
 April 5. A great freshet, which carried off Federal 
 
 bridge. 
 May 19. High water over all the interval. 
 August 12. The warmest day for twenty years. 
 
 1820. March 30. First boating. 
 
 May 26. Apple trees in blossom ; also a storm of rain, 
 hail and snow, the snow lying two inches deep after 
 the storm. 
 
 Oct. 17. The highest freshet for thirty-six years. 
 
 Nov. 12. A severe snowstorm; snow fell six inches 
 deep, and good sledding for several days. 
 
 1821. Dec. 14. Last boating for the season. 
 
 Dec. 17. Ice on the river ; passed with teams. 
 
 1822. March 6. Ice out of the river, boating commenced. 
 Dec. 16. River frozen over and boating ceased. 
 
 1823. April 2. Could pass the river on the ice. 
 April 3. Commenced boating. 
 
 Nov. 18. Passing on the ice ; very cold fall. 
 Nov. 29. Teams passed the river on the ice. 
 
 1824. Feb. 4. Coldest day for the winter. 
 
 Feb. lo-ii. A great thaw, and on the 12th the ice left 
 the river and carried off Federal bridge. 
 
 March 10. First boating with the small boat. 
 
 Sept. 25. The first frost. 
 
 Nov. 3. Considered the coldest day ever known for the 
 season, or time of the year. 
 
 Dec. 6. Last boating. 
 1S25. March 7. Horses passing the river on the ice fell in. 
 
 March 18. Commenced boating. 
 
THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 6 1 
 
 June 22. The great day of Lafayette in Concord. The 
 warmest and dryest summer for many years until the 
 1 2th of August, when commenced a great rain. 
 
 Nov. 23. People on foot passed the river on the ice. 
 
 Dec. 13. The coldest day ever known for the season. 
 
 Dec. 19. The ground all bare. 
 1826. Feb. 2. The first snow to make sledding. 
 
 Jan. 31. The coldest day for many years. 
 
 March 14. First boating. 
 
 April II. The coldest day ever known at this season. 
 
 June. The season very warm and dry until the 24th of 
 June, when a great rain commenced, and there fell 
 four or five inches of water, followed by frequent and 
 heavy showers, until the 30th of August, when the 
 river rose twenty feet above low water mark, cover- 
 ing nearly all the interval, and on the 31st of August 
 the bank went off", and the house in danger. 
 
 1826. Sept. 2. Potatoes rotting in the ground and forty seven 
 
 men digging potatoes this day at Sugar-Ball. 
 Sept. 8. There has not been a good hay day for four 
 
 weeks. On the 15th of September the first North-west 
 
 wind for five weeks. 
 Nov. 21. First snow, when there fell six inches. 
 Dec. 7- River frozen over and boating ceased. 
 
 1827. Jan. I, 2, 3. Snowed for three days; there fell sixteen 
 
 inches from the ist. of January to the 20th of February : 
 
 very cold, with numerous severe snow-storms, and the 
 
 snow three to four feet deep. 
 March 23. Commenced boating, great rains, high winds 
 
 and very backward spring ; first sowing. May roth ; 
 
 planted corn, 19th. 
 July 26. Great rain; six inches of water fell, but did 
 
 not produce a great freshet. 
 Sept. 30. First frost. 
 Nov. 9, 10, II. Three coldest days ever known at this 
 
 time of the year ; the river froze over ; extremely cold 
 
 month ; not a pleasant day from the 13th to the 28th 
 
 day ; uninterrupted succession of cold N. W. wind for 
 
 fifteen days. 
 
62 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
 
 Nov. 24, 30. Rainy. 
 
 Nov. 28. Passed the river on the ice with horses. 
 
 Dec. I. Ice went out of the river. 
 
 Dec. 2. Boating, and continued until the i6th. 
 
 Dec. 18. First snow to make sleighing — six inches. 
 
 1828. Moderate winter, with but little snow, but there were 
 
 frequent thaws. 
 Feb. 19. A large rain — carried off all the snow ; the 
 
 ice went out of the river. 
 Sept. 6. Great freshet, the water covering the whole 
 
 interval. 
 
 1829. Extremely cold for seven weeks — from January i to 
 
 February 21, and but little snow ; then there was a 
 
 cold and severe storm, and sixteen inches of snow fell. 
 1831. Jan. I. River fell to the top of the banks. 
 
 Dec. 2. Water covered the whole interval, and came 
 
 within ten feet of the house. 
 June 5. More rain ; cannot pass to the house without a 
 
 boat. 
 June 6. A raft went down river, straight over the gulf. 
 
 1835. Nov. 20. First snow for the season, 
 
 1836. A cold winter ; the snow four feet deep on a level, and 
 
 no bare ground to be seen until the 15th of April. 
 March 31. The ice sufficient!}' strong to bear a horse 
 team and two ton's load. Passing on the ice on foot 
 as late as April 7. 
 
 1839. Jan. 26. Rained for twenty four hours; the river rose 
 fifteen feet in fifteen hours ; and came within three feet 
 of the door-steps of the house, and to the top of the 
 sills of the barn, which was occasioned by the river 
 being dammed up by the ice. It carried off all the 
 bridges on the river except Federal bridge, and that 
 so damaged as to be impassable. 
 
 1841. Jan. 8. A great freshet; the water in the river rose 
 fifteen feet, broke up the ice and carried off Federal 
 bridge and Free bridge within about half an hour of 
 each other ; the river rose four feet in thirty minutes, 
 and kept up so that we could not pass to the other 
 house for four days. 
 
63 
 
 Obsequies of the First Minister. 
 
 The First Minister died unexpectedly on the morning of 
 Sunday, September i, 1782. He expected to preach that day 
 and many of his people first heard of his decease upon their 
 arrival at the meeting-house to attend the forenoon service. 
 His pastorate was nearing the completion of fifty-two consecu- 
 tive years. Partly because he had been a town official, and 
 partly for the reason that he was held in high esteem by all his 
 people, they saw fit to assume the expenses of his funeral. The 
 report of the committee in charge of this is historically inter- 
 esting as showing some of the usages of such an occasion at 
 that time : 
 
 £. s. d. 
 
 " To eight rings, 4 16 o 
 
 " two gallons wine, i 40 
 
 " a coffin, 090 
 
 " beers, 016 
 
 " a horse to Sanbornton, 030 
 
 " do. to Gilmanton, 030 
 
 " do. to Warner, 023 
 
 " digging the grave, 020 
 
 " provisions, i 23 
 
 " grave stones, 440 
 
 12 7 o"^ 
 
 In those days rings were frequently furnished to pall-bearers. 
 In this instance the expense of these exceeded that of the 
 grave stones and was more than one third the whole outlay. 
 One of the rings presented on this occasion, preserved by des- 
 cendants of the Rev. William Kelley, of Warner, is still in 
 existence. 
 
 The pall bearers on this occasion, ministerial brethren of the 
 deceased and pastors of neighboring churches, were the Rev. 
 Joseph Woodman of Sanbornton, Rev. Abiel Foster of Canter- 
 bury, Rev. Samuel Wood of Boscawen, Rev. Elijah Fletcher of 
 
 ' Bouton's History of Concord, p. 285. 
 
Hopkinton, Rev. Jacob Rice of Henniker, Rev. Zacchery Colby 
 of Pembroke, and the Rev. William Kelley of Warner. 
 
 The First Minister's grave stone, of blue slate, is still in a 
 state of perfect preservation, and bears the following inscrip- 
 tion : 
 
 "This Stone 
 
 Erected by the Town of Concord 
 
 in Memory of 
 
 The Rev* Timothy- Walker 
 
 Late Pastor of the Church in s'^ Town 
 
 Who departed this Life 
 
 Sep''' ist A. D. 1782 
 
 In the 78 Year of his Age 
 
 And 52 of his Ministry." 
 
 Horse Shoe Pond. 
 
 Horse Shoe Pond is an abandoned section of a former chan- 
 nel of Merrimack River. It doubtless received its name from 
 its resemblance in shape to that of a horseshoe. Successive 
 crops, through a long period, of semi-aquatic and aquatic vege- 
 tation upon its borders and beneath its waters, have reduced 
 its original size and left it with a present area of about fourteen 
 acres. Its depth varies from a few feet, along its margin, to 
 about twenty in its deepest parts, which are filled with a min- 
 gled mass of water, pond lilly roots, eel grass and other sub- 
 aquatic plants. It receives its water in part from Wood's 
 Brook, which drains a limited water shed lying to the westward 
 of Blossom Hill Cemetery, and in part from numerous springs 
 along its southern shore. 
 
 Its waters have ever held a fair supply of the fishes com- 
 monly found in small New Hampshire ponds, supplemented 
 with an accompanying contingent of mud turtles, bullpaddocks 
 and frogs. In early times both great and small fishermen vis- 
 ited it in large numbers, some to angle for pickerel with poles 
 twenty feet long, and others for smaller fish, with rods propor- 
 tionately shorter. S6me came at night to " bob for eels " with 
 strings of angle worms attached to lines, while others came 
 
65 
 
 with spears expecting to stab their unsuspecting victims, re- 
 vealed to them by the light of flaming pitch wood, thrown into 
 the water as they passed slowly over its surface in canoes ; 
 while the small boy, choosing the daylight, was omnipresent 
 with slender gear, fishing from the bridge and the shore for 
 shiners, flatsides, perch and horn-pouts. 
 
 In early times wild geese were wont to stop here to rest, 
 spring and fall, on their coming and returning migrations. 
 Hawks, snipes and other birds in large numbers frequented 
 the thickets along the shores and attracted valorous hunters, 
 strenuous and of local renown, who went home weighted with 
 spoils and exulting in success. But the game has gone else- 
 where. A few muskrats only remain and build each fall some 
 half a dozen houses, too few to attract the trapper who formerly 
 sought them for their furs. 
 
 To the small North End boy, however, of all generations, 
 back for nearly two hundred years this modest, crescent shaped 
 pond has ever afforded irresistible attractions. From the 
 bridge which spans it, many a one has caught his first shiner, 
 and thereby created an epoch in his life ; upon its placid sur- 
 face has learned to paddle a canoe, and in the shallow water 
 along its shores has learned to swim. Later in the year, when 
 Thanksgiving and winter drew near, he has learned upon its 
 ice to skate; the lessons being occasionally impressed upon his 
 memory by an unwelcome bath, or from a horizontal position, 
 a sight of the stars in the daytime. Now and then, sad to say, 
 some poor lad, at the cost of his life, has taught his fellows 
 the truth that, even in sport, prudence should be a constant 
 companion. 
 
 The little pond has rendered valuable service, not only as a 
 source of boyish pleasure, but as a peacemaker as well. Seventy- 
 five years ago the village inhabitants of Concord lived for the 
 most part on Main Street. To such an extent was this true, 
 that this section of the town was generally designated as " The 
 Street." In other words. Concord had a North End and 
 South End, accompanied by some of the rivalries which usually 
 arise in such cases. 
 
 This fact was clearly manifested by the boys of the two sec- 
 
66 
 
 tions. For a time, the possession of an old iron cannon, of 
 uncertain ownership, was a cause of active strife, both claiming 
 it. At length the South Enders secured it and chained it to a 
 beam in the old Phoenix Hotel stable, where it remained in 
 silence until captured by Asa McFarland and Hazen K. West, 
 who took it to Horse Shoe Pond and sunk it to the compan- 
 ionship of the fishes. Since then, the pond has kept the can- 
 non and the boys have kept the peace. 
 
 The North End boy never forgets this little sheet of water. 
 Wherever he goes in after life, be it to the frigid North or to 
 the wide West, or even beyond the equator, to lands beneath 
 the Southern cross, he returns to it again and again in fond 
 remembrance and realizes that, while learning there to propel 
 and steer a canoe, he was also acquiring a habit of courage, 
 personal effort and definiteness of purpose, without which much 
 success is unattainable. It would be unkind therefore to deny 
 him the fond illusiori that the ice of Horse Shoe Pond was 
 smoother than all other ice of like quality, and that the shiners 
 which he there caught were larger than any of equal size grown 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Horse Shoe Pond Bridge. 
 
 The original access to Horse Shoe Island, which constituted 
 the main portion of the First Minister's tillage land, was over 
 the brook which drained the pond which nearly encompassed 
 it. This was at a point a few rods above Waternummons 
 bridge and about three quarters of a mile from his homestead ; 
 making the distance thereby to the centre of the Island, nearly 
 or quite a mile, while across the pond to its southern border, it 
 was less than fifty rods and to the middle of it, only about one 
 hundred. 
 
 To lessen the long travel, thus occasioned, he first used a 
 canoe and afterwards built causeways of logs and earth across 
 the bogs adjoining the pond to its deep water, and connected 
 their termini by a line of floating timbers fastened to each other 
 at the ends, called " string pieces." 
 
 While this arrangement furnished a fair passageway for. his 
 men it was unsuitable for his teams. These pursued the origi- 
 
67 
 
 nal route to their work, going at times two or three hundred 
 rods to reach it and then finding themselves but fifty from the 
 house, down to 1820, when Capt. Joseph Walker, the farm's 
 third proprietor, substituted for the ticklish " string pieces " a 
 substantial cart bridge of stone, timber and plank. 
 
 This bridge consisted of two spans, supported by the two 
 causeways and a mid way pier. Upon the latter was placed a 
 picket gate, hung between posts some twelve feet high and 
 connected with each other at the top by a crossbeam ; while 
 each post was flanked by a fence extending therefrom to the 
 pier's east and west sides. This imposing barrier to all stray 
 cattle was painted red, and like an Indian in his war paint, had 
 an appearance both formidable and ornamental. 
 
 The plan of the bridge, seems to have been devised with 
 much care and a contract for its construction was made with 
 Aaron Langley and Levi Lock, for the sum of four hundred 
 dollars. The work, was to be done to the satisfaction of 
 Caleb Parsons and Jeremiah Pecker, who, upon its completion, 
 examined it and made the following report : 
 
 "Concord, March 21, 1821. 
 " We, Caleb Parsons & Jeremiah Pecker, being chosen a 
 Committee to apprise the cost of building a Bridge over Horse 
 Shoe Pond last fall, agreeably to conversation between Joseph 
 Walker, on the one part, and Aaron Langley & Levi Lock on the 
 other part, being again called upon by the aforesaid parties to 
 state whether said Bridge is built according to the conversa- 
 tion then had, it is our opinion that said Lock & Langley 
 shall draw or cause) to be drawn twenty dollars worth of 
 stones and place them on said Bridge to make said Bridge 
 as good as was contemplated, and said Lock and Langley 
 allow said Walker for stones and timber which said Walker 
 had in preparation when said contract was entered into, to be 
 
 ber and for timber. ) 12 
 
 allowed for by said Lock & Langley, to wit, for stones | ^ 
 
 and for timber, j 12 
 
 JER. PECKER, 1 CommMee.'- 
 Caleb Pearson, J 
 
 Caleb Pearson, 
 
 'Walker Papers, Vol. 2, p. iii. 
 
68 
 
 This bridge did good service for nearly or quite forty years, 
 meeting the requirements of the farm and accommodating 
 numerous foot passengers between "Over the jRiver" (East 
 Concord) and the " Street " (the central settlement of Con- 
 cord), who desired a shorter route than that by the public high- 
 way. At the end of this period, it needed extensive repairs 
 and the fourth proprietor of the first Minister's farm rebuilt it, 
 reducing the waterway beneath it to fourteen feet, and elevat- 
 ing its surface and that of the causeways abutting thereon 
 some three to four. The trees, which line the sides of the 
 latter, planted at different times, have since grown to sizes 
 sufificient to overarch the roadway which has a length of about 
 three hundred feet. 
 
 Back Pond. 
 
 At some prehistoric time, Horse Shoe Island was a penin- 
 sula, around which the Merrimack made a bend resembling 
 a horseshoe in form. Later, it cut for itself a new channel 
 across the isthmus which attached it to the main body of the 
 interval, and thereby converted it to an island. Since then 
 the north part of the river's old channel has been mostly filled 
 up by freshet silt and successive crops of aquatic and semi- 
 aquatic vegetation, with the exception of a small area of water, 
 an acre more or less, which is now known as Back Pond, des- 
 tined to extinction by like agencies. 
 
 A similar cut off was made by the river, in 1828, of a tongue 
 of land belonging to Sugar Ball interval, whereby some thirty 
 acres was transferred from its east to its west side, and has 
 since been known as Bradley's Island. Three years later still, 
 in 1831, a freshet made a like transfer of Hale's Point from 
 its west to its east side. 
 
 While from a distance the surface of Horse Shoe Island 
 appears to be an even plain, it is found upon a nearer view to 
 consist of alternate semicircular ridges and hollows. These 
 mark some of the later changes of the river's channels. It will 
 also be seen that the northerly sides of these ridges are the 
 highest ; a fact due to the southern course of the river's cur- 
 rent and to the northwest wind which accompanies the sub- 
 
69 
 
 sidence of the freshets which abrade its southern bank and pre- 
 cipitate their deepest deposits of suspended silt on the surfaces 
 nearest thereto 
 
 The Interval in 1726. 
 
 The interval was largely covered with trees when it came 
 into the possession of the white man. The Indian did very 
 little farming. His crops consisted mainly of a small amount 
 of corn, a few pumpkins and a little tobacco. For the produc- 
 tion of these small clearings only were requisite. 
 
 We learn from the proprietary records that trees were not 
 unfrequently used as bounds by the surveyors who laid out the 
 Great Plain, Waternummons Field and -Horse Shoe Island into 
 six-acre lots. These consisted of white and red oaks, white 
 maples, ashes, pitch pines, elms, bass and poplars. There may 
 also have been other species which the record had no occasion 
 to mention. Five of the lots on Horse Shoe Island had forest 
 trees for one or more of their bounds,^ — one red oak, two pitch 
 pines and four birches. 
 
 There are growing today on this part of the farm, mainly 
 upon its borders, 13 species of forest trees, — the red oak, elm, 
 white maple, white ash, brown ash, black alder, gray birch, 
 white birch, willow, cherry, poplar, bass and walnut. Of the last 
 mentioned, there are 32 trees, many of which annually produce 
 good crops of nuts. Some years ago the gathering of these 
 was let out at the halves, and the parties to this contract each 
 received 7 J bushels. Since then the North End children have 
 harvested them, and there has been no occasion for any divi- 
 sion of the crop with the proprietor. 
 
 Farm Implements and Machinery. 
 
 Important additions have been made to the machinery on 
 the First Minister's Farm since its fourth proprietor took charge 
 of it in 1853. The only farm implements then in use upon it, 
 besides those operated by hand power, were the plow, the 
 spike-tooth harrow, a coarsely constructed cultivator and a 
 rudely devised horse rake. Some half a dozen years later the 
 
70 
 
 scythe was superseded by the mowing machine, which was 
 soon followed by the spring-tooth horse rake and the tedder. 
 Not long afterwards came the manure spreader, the iron roller, 
 the seed sower, the cut-away harrow, the combined hay rake 
 and tedder and the hay loader, Indeed, it is a plausible con- 
 jecture that the time is not far distant when, on our large and 
 smooth farms, the horse will largely give way to the automobile 
 as a motive power. 
 
 Freshet of 1895. 
 
 The highest freshet within the memory of persons now liv- 
 ing (1906) occurred in 1895. The water in Horse Shoe Pond 
 rose three inches over the iron of the Northern Railroad at its 
 crossing of Penacook Street. People went in boats from near 
 this point to the buildings of the Page Belting Company, the 
 water in the road being, in places, three feet deep. This 
 freshet resulted from the rapid melting of large accumulations 
 of snow, accompanied by heavy rains. At its height the water 
 rose to 12 feet above the crest of the dam at Sewall's Falls.