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I
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SIXTY YEARS IN CONCORD
AND ELSEWHERE.
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
OF
HENRY McFARLAND.
1831-1891.
PRIVATELY PRINTED.
CONCORD, N. H.
1899.
Innsportation
Library
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THE BUMFOBD PRESS,
CONCORD, N. H.
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A
Copyright, 1899, by Henry McFarland.
V'
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TO MY WIFE,
MA.RY FRANCES CARTER,
THIS NARRATIVE IS AFFECTIONATELY
INSCRIBED.
!
y
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\
SIXTY YEARS IN CONCORD AND
ELSEWHERE.
I.
Concord, New Hampshire, is a town to
which almost everybody, sooner or later,
comes. Here have been the Marquis de
Lafayette, Count Rumford, Daniel Webster,
James Monroe, S. F. B. Morse, John Tyler,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emer-
son, Nathaniel Parker Willis, John Pierpont,
Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Winfield
Scott, Rufus Choate, Abraham Lincoln, Sal-
mon P. Chase, Henry Ward Beecher, John
G. Whittier, Sam Houston, Horace Greeley,
Adelina Patti, Anna Bishop, William War-
ren, Adelaide Phillips, Teresa Parodi, Edwin
Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Levi P. Morton,
Capt. James West, of the once famous Col-
lins steamship "Atlantic," Robert Bochsa,
first harp-player at private concerts of the
Emperor Napoleon, Ulysses S. Grant, Will-
iam T. Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan, Ed-
ward Everett, Jefferson Davis, Theodore L.
6 Sixty Years in Concord
Cuyler, Rutherford B. Hayes, Bayard Taylor,
Benjamin Harrison, Madame Salm-Salm, and
others famous in various ways, of whom
those above named are conspicuous examples.
I have thought that a man might take a
stand on Main street, and by patient waiting
be sure to see pass by any noted person whom
he sought.
Such a broad, hospitable town as this is a
good one in which to be born, — broad in ter-
ritory, broad enough in opportunities. I in-
tend to relate my experience and reminis-
cences of the place, and the narrative may in-
clude other topics not too remote from the
main purpose. There will be family and
personal biography, too much perhaps, and
any reader with a critical turn of mind may
as well pause here at the threshold and turn
his steps away.
My parents, Asa McFarland and Clarissa
Jane Chase, were married at Meredith Bridge,
now Laconia, by Rev. Daniel Lancaster, pas-
tor of the Congregational church in Gilman-
ton. After the wedding, they drove in a
chaise to their home in Concord, being es-
corted a part of the way by young friends
driving in similar carriages, — the chaise being
the fashionable vehicle of that day. I am
the eldest child of those parents, — born July
Personal Recollections, 7
10, 1831 ; and perhaps a less sturdj^ infant
nevei* surprised its nurses by living.
My father was the eldest son of Rev. Asa
McFarland, third pastor of the First Congre-
gational church in Concord, who served the
parish, or rather the town, that being the
day of the " established church," with ability
aixi irreproachable industry from 1798 to
1821. The text of my grandfather's first
sermon after his ordination was from Job
xxxiii : 6, and the sermon was preached on
March 11, 1798. In it is found the follow-
ing sentence: "I do not promise myself a
great share of repose in the business which
I have undertaken." The church records
bear the names of four hundred and twenty-
eight persons added during this ministry.
My mother was the youngest of five daugh-
ters of James Chase, of Gilford, the bounda-
ries of which town included a part of what
was the village of Meredith Bridge.
My father's mother, Elizabeth Kneeland, a
third wife, was born in Boston, March 19,
1780 ; she was the only daughter of Barthol-
omew and Susanna Sewall Kneeland. Her
mother was of the Sewalls of York, Maine,
a family which has a record in the annals of
jurisprudence. Her father was a merchant
of Boston, who resided at the time of her
8 Sixty Years in Concord,
birth at or near the northerly corner of
Washington and School streets. As the wife
of a country clergyman, her life abounded in
good works and alms-deeds, as her memoir
by Rev. Nathaniel Bouton (1839) relates,
and she died, as did her husband, at the age
of fifty-eight years, — he on Feb. 18, 1827, and
she on Nov. 9, 1838.
There is in existence an inventory of the
estate left by my reverend grandfather, which
fixes its valuation at $15,239.13. There was
considerable real estate, — town lands, and a
farm on the river road to Penacook. He was
the son of a farmer, and was always inter-
ested in agriculture. As mucli as the above
mentioned valuation may have come to him
as his wife's inheritance from her father's
estate. Their private income must have
been their chief pecuniary resource ; for his
annual salary was but $3o0, and to the pay-
ment of this, meagre as it now seems, there
were at the outset of his ministry twenty-two
dissenters, probably heads of families, who
were appalled by the munificence of the
"living." He had, however, the use of cer-
tain parsonage lands, and in 1820 his minis-
terial income was increased by an agreement
made by earnest parish friends to pay an-
nually the sum of $154.43 in addition to the
Pergonal Recollections. 9
regular salary. A copy of this agreement is
ill existence, and it is an interesting paper.
On it are one hundred and eighteen names.
The largest single subscription is that of
Thomas W. Thompson, ten dollars ; and the
smallest ones are fifty cents each. There
are pledges of curious amounts, such as $1.13
and $1.15, — a fact which might be taken to
indicate care and exactness, or the impor-
tance of small sums of money in those days ;
but the most probable explanation is, that
these subscriptions had some relation in the
giver's mind to the personal tax which he had
theretofore paid for the support of public
worship.
My grandfather found opportunity to
write, in 1806, one year after a Unitarian was
appointed professor of divinity in Harvard
college, a volume of two hundred and
seventy-four pages, entitled '' An Historical
View of Heresies and Vindication of the
Primitive Faith." This book was issued
" from the press of George Hough, sold at
his bookstore in Concord, and at the book-
store of Thomas & Whipple, Newburyport."
A few copies still exist. He served at times
as chaplain at the prison, and as a member of
the town school committee. He was a trus-
tee of Dartmouth college for a considerable
10 Sixty Years in Con'cord,
period, which included those critical years in
its history, 1816-'19, and became involved
in the great controversy of that time for its
control. All that I have seen of what he had
to say in the newspapers, on behalf of the
trustees, he said in a dignified way, and signed
his name thereto, like a man, while the writ-
ings of his opponents were put forth under
editorial impersonality, or in various anony-
mous forms. He must have enjoyed the cel-
ebrated success which the cause gained in
the United States court. He also performed
some missionary services as far away as the
Pequakeb country, around Conway and Frye-
burg, and was there during the sudden illness
and death of his second wife (Nancy D wight,
of Belchertown, Mass.). It appears that he
left her in health, and returned to learn that
she was in her grave, within three months
after marriage, her burial having been has-
tened b}^ dread of the malignant fever which
carried her off. He passed away himself at
an age below the average of his ancestors.
It is not inappropriate to apply to him these
lines from Goldsmith's "Deserted Village :"
But in his duty prompt at every call,
He watched and wept, lie prayed and felt, for all;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To temot its new-fledged offspring to tlie skies.
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.
Personal Recollections, 11
My mother's mother was Naucy Aveiy, a
native of Deerfield, of what Carlyle calls the
"fairest descent — that of the pious, the just,
and wise," — a Christian of the utmost gentle-
ness and grace, whom the little folks of our
cousinry loved the more because she shared
our delight when we came in shouting from
Gilford meadows, bringing pails of berries or
baskets of trout. She died in 1854, aged 81
years.
My father took no care about affairs of
ancestry. It appears that he was a descend-
ant in the fourth generation from Daniel
McFarland, who, with a son twenty-eight
years old, came to this country in 1718 from
the province of Ulster, Ireland, whither he
or his ancestors had gone from Argyleshire,
which lies opposite Ulster, across the chan-
nel in Scotland. Daniel settled in Worces-
ter, Mass., and his homestead (500 Pleasant
street) remains in possession of his descend-
ants. A considerable number of Scotch
Presbyterian colonists at that time took up
homes in Worcester, and were not received
kindly by their Congregational neighbors.
They attempted to build a church in 1740,
but it was pulled down in the night by mili-
tant adherents of the rival church. Not long
afterward the McFarlands became Congrega-
tionalists themselves.
12 Sixty Years in Concord,
In the mother country the Mcfarlanes
dwelt about Loch Sloy and Loch Lomond.
Arrochar was the home of the chief of the
clan, and the old site of his castle is now
occupied by a hotel. In the summer of 1889
my brother visited some of the Mcfarlanes
living in a humble way near Loch Lomond,
on the estate of the Duke of Montrose. Sir
Walter Scott mentions the clan, and says
the moon was called in their vicinity '^Mac-
farlane's lantern." Bailie Nicol Jarvie in
"Rob Roy" claims kinship with them, and
through them with the Macgregors. They
were predatory and warlike folk, whose battle
cry was "Loch Sloy," and their love of home
and mountain, lake, river, and woodland, is
deeply ingrained in their posterity. In
America they are widely scattered. There
is McFarland's mountain at Mount Desert,
McFarland's gap on the Chickamauga battle-
field, and McFarland's station on a railroad
in Kansas.
Our family homestead in Concord, built
in 1799, now numbered 196 North Main
street, was as comfortable as were the dwell-
ings of our neighbors, though the parental
resources were limited. There was in my
early youth a carpet for only the best room ;
but there was solid silverware, beautiful
Personal Recollections, 13
table-linen, and stately mahogany furniture
of the Chippendale period, brought from
Boston by my grandmother. The front hall
was plainly furnished, and its clear white-
pine finish had never been painted. There
were no draperies for the windows, but their
place was supplied by sliding solid wooden
shutters from places of concealment in the
casings, while candles or whale-oil lamps
shed dim light on the interior. The lamps
were of most primitive description, until
there came one called the " astral," which
caused as much contentment as did the
eventual introduction of coal gas. There
were a few pictures, among them one of Mar-
cus Curtius riding a white horse into the gulf
of the forum to save Rome ; but little people
got greater satisfaction from the winter frost-
work on the windows, where were etchings
of ferns, trees, and fairy castles. The porce-
lain tableware was decorated in blue, and
bore the imprint of Porter & Rolfe, local
dealei-s, who imported it from Staffordshire
potteries, — Burslem, the home of Josiah
Wedgwood, being the exact place of its
production.
In summer our Concord streets were hot
and dusty, but were never sprinkled arti-
ficially; — flies and mosquitoes were numer-
14 Sixty Years in Concord.
ous, but there were no window-screens.
There was neither ice nor abundant soft
water for domestic uses, and in winter no
home was warmed in all its needful apart-
ments. The young people of that time
could sleep in chambers of almost arctic tem-
perature, bathe in water where ice was form-
ing, and go down to breakfast with no doubt-
ful appetite, although in early March morn-
ings they might be required to swallow a
doleful mixture of sulphur and molasses,
which was deemed an excellent spring tonic
and in common use.
As to the matter of dress, boys were not
so very carefully clothed then, being pro-
vided with neither woolen underwear, over-
coats, nor overshoes ; for out-door use they
had long boots, mufflers, caps of hair seal-
skin, and mittens.
However cold it might be elsewhere, there
was gladness and cheer in the kitchen,
around the broad open fireplace. Care was
taken to keep live coals over night, and at
the home of one of the neighbors, Mr. John
Odlin's, fire did not expire on the hearth for
twenty-two years. The implements of cook-
ery were few and simple. On a stout iron
crane the Dutch oven hung, glowing embers
beneath it, and hot coals on its lid. For
Personal Recollections, 15
larger undertakings there was the tin-kitchen
on the hearth. This was for roasting by
exposure to the direct and reflected heat
from the open fire, while the oven did the
baking, and each produced results which
were eminently satisfactory to youthful
expectations. My own memory is partial to
the -fire-cake, which was cooked on a sheet of
flat tin turned up to confront the fire at an
angle of fifty degrees, and browned to a
tempting shade. It must have absorbed
some sweetness from the maple logs on the
fire.
When fuel became more costly, the cheery
fireplaces were closed with bricks, the rotary
cooking stove came into uses, and the most
picturesque features departed from the
kitchen. I once heard Henry L. Hallett,
of Boston, say that a fire on the hearth was
better than a grand painting on the wall.
Tiie rotary stove is mentioned because that
was the first cooking-stove I ever saw. It
was sold in Concord by William Gault, and
widely advertised. Its top was made to
revolve, like a turntable for locomotiv^es, by
the use of a short lever, and the cooking
dishes were thus brought one after another
over the hottest portion of the fire. Gradu-
ally other fireplaces in the house were closed,
16 Sixty Years in Concord.
and " air-tight " iron orsoapstone stoves came
to occupy grave places in the living-rooms.
Such have had their day, and open fires have
returned to my old home as well as to many
others. In an old house, long the dwelling
of a neighbor's family, once the residence of
Rev. Israel Evans, my grandfather's prede-
cessor in the North Church pulpit, it has
been found that the bricks in its chimneys
were so saturated with creosote from forty
years' use of air-tight wood-burning stoves,
that a disagreeable and ineradicable odor
pervaded all its interior.
There were three children beside myself,
all reared in the old-fashioned method, — by
good example and plenty of precept. Being
the eldest, I got, as is usual, rather more
than an average share. of the training and
up-bringing. My mother was a religious
woman, and drilled us with careful diligence
in the Westminster catechism and Sunday-
school lessons.
The children of that period were given
Bible reading as a stint. A chapter must be
read ever}'- morning before play began. In
at least one neighboring family, ex-Gover-
nor David L. Morril's, Fast and Thanksgiv-
ing days were observed as strictly as was the
Puritan Sabbath. There was generally less
/
Personal Recollections. 17
cheerfulness and good humor than now pre-
vails among elderly people. This may be
ascribed to the fact that life was a more
serious business then, the fruits of toil were
less, there were fewer amusements and fewer
books, political differences were more bitter,
and the tone of preaching was more severe,
less helpful and less hopeful.
My earliest church-going was to the Old
North, which stood where is now the Walker
school-house. The exterior and interior of
that edifice are imprinted on my memory, the
especial interior features being the sounding-
board of wonderful appearance, and the pew
of Dr. Peter Renton, upholstered and tas-
selled with red, in the east gallery. A winter
morning ride to that church in Mr. Samuel
Herbert's large sleigh, with my grandmother
and others, when a considerable number of
footstoves were taken along with live coals
therein, is fixed in my recollection. Mr.
Herbert lived in a house still standing at the
corner of Main and Ferry streets, built in
1765 by his father, who was a soldier at Ben-
nington. The horses which he turned out
seemed very fleet, the sleigh-bells rung clear
in the frosty air, and the driver vigorously
cracked his whip. No small boy. would ever
forget such a dash through the snow-drifts.
18 Sixty Tears in Concord.
The old North bell, which rung so invitingly
on Sunday mornings, had tlien three daily
week-day ringings, — at seven in the morning,
at noon, and at nine in the evening, the lat-
ter being a tradition of the English Curfew,
which dates back to William the Conqueror.
Just when those bells ceased to be rung I
cannot say, but probably about 1851.
In the Old North choir, with the viols, vio-
lins, and clarionet, Mr. George Wood was
the chief singer, his voice being a tenor of
sweetness and average strength. He enjoyed
singing a solo, and however delightful the
song might be, his facial expression was rather
alarming to youthful vision. There was a
great beam which ran across the ceiling at a
convenient distance from the gallery, and Mr.
Wood always fixed his eyes on that beam
when he lifted his voice to the higher notes.
This habit puzzled me, until I reached the
conclusion that the beam was in some myste-
rious way a necessary mental adjunct to the
singing — a sort of spiritual " lift," enabling
him to gain more easily the upper chambers
of song.
The hymns sung were from " Watts and
Select." At the evening service in the town
hall " Village Hymns " was used.
No more need be related here about the
Personal Recollections. 19
old church, because it has often been de-
scribed, — to some extent by ray father in his
"Outline of Biography and Recollection,"
printed in 1880, and again by Mr. Joseph B.
Walker in his " History of Our Four Meeting-
Houses," printed in 1881. There are remain-
ing in New Hampshire some better examples
of colonial architecture than the Old North
church, but it was more dignified and im-
pressive than many modern religious. edifices,
and would compare with the school-house
that stands in its place as does a rug of
Damascus with a crazy-quilt.
The Sunday outfit of an elderly gentleman
of that time was a rather wonderful sight.
A dress coat was a thing which lasted for
years, and through all stress and vicissitudes
was called the best coat. Made usually
rather narrow for the wearer, its skirts were
long, and the collar had aspirations toward
the top of the owner's head. In the course
of years this lofty collar became rather un-
sightly and unclean. A bell-topped beaver
hat, bought perhaps for his wedding, set off
his dome of thought. His stock was neither a
thing of beauty nor a joy forever: sometimes
made of leather, always stiff and wide, it
must have been a continual torment. It was
a serious affair to be arrayed like one of these ;
20 Sixty Year% in Concord.
but in partial offset, it should be stated that
it was not considered "bad form" to sit in
one's shirtsleeves at church if the weather
was oppressively warm.
The Old North pulpit seems not always
to have been devoted to doctrinal preaching.
The Concord Gazette of Aug. 2, 1806, con-
tained the following advertisement :
The Rev. Mr. McFarland's sermon,
preached the next Sabbath after the late
total eclipse of the sun, is just published,
and ready for subscribers, and for sale by
George Hough, at the Concord Bookstore.
The vestibule of the old church contained
an object of worldly interest, to wit, a bulle-
tin-board, on which, in fulfilment of law, the
town clerk posted notices like the following :
Concord, January 4, 1837.
Mr. Joseph Bagstock, of Concord, and
Miss Clementina Fletcher, of Hopkinton, in-
tend marriage.
Jacob C. Carter, Town Clerk.
There was sometimes a considerable list of
these fascinating announcements, to be read
by the most devout people before entering
church.
In February, 1837, my mother removed her
church relation to the South Congregational
Personal Recollections. 21
church, just then organized, and she is now
(1891) one of only two original remaining
members. My father joined the same church
in September, 1842.
About that time there were many isms in
the air. Anti-slavery societies were numer-
ous and aggressive, and the argumentative
leaders in that movement were denouncing
the churches for timidity and inaction in
respect to the liolding of slaves in our South-
ern states. Some of them renounced the
Bible as a Jewish impediment to progress ;
many withdrew from the churches, or were
driven out as disturbers. There were also
vegetarians, non-resistants, mesmerists, and
what were called transcendentalists. When
these notions took hold of people, the earlier
symptoms were with men long hair, and with
women short hair and a propensity to carry
knitting-work to church. Two of these local
doctrinaires, John B. Chandler and Maria
Church, contracted marriage, the ceremony
consisting merely of a mutual declaration,
made in the presence of witnesses, at the
breakfast-table. This was to cause notoriety,
and to escape obligation to priests, as they
styled the grave and reverend clergy. This
event caused considerable local stiu^ and
found mention in a book entitled " Items on
22 Sixty Years in Concord.
Travel, Anecdote and Popular Errors," which
was published in Quebec in 1855. These
folk, or some of the noisiest of them, became
known as " Come-Outers." Stephen S.
Foster, of the neighboring town of Canter-
bury, was one of the most radical shouters
against what he called a hireling priesthood,
and it became his custom to go about inter-
rupting church services. He visited the
South church, at that time (September, 1841)
on the southwest corner of Main and Pleas-
ant streets. He came to the morning service,
and took a seat near the pulpit, at the
preacher's right. After the preliminary ex-
ercises, the pastor. Rev. Daniel James Noyes,
arose to begin his sermon, but Mr. Foster
stood up and began an address in regard to
negro slavery. He was requested not to in-
terrupt the usual services, Jbut continued to
speak. The organist, Dr. William D. Buck,
overwhelmed his words with the notes of the
organ, and he seemed to be disconcerted, but
kept his feet with a half audible remark
about drowning his voice. He was conducted
to the door, in a rather dignified way, by two
persons, one of whom was Col. Josiah Stevens,
at that time secretary of state for New Hamp-
shire.^ In the afternoon Mr. Foster came
again, and began his address as soon as the
Personal Recollections, 23
congregation was seated, but was put out
with less dignity and more promptitude than
before. I was rather frightened, but remem-
ber the buz^ made b}'^ his feet as he held
them *' non-resistingly " together, and was
slid along the central aisle toward the door
in the grip of a stout teamster and the church
sexton. No unnecessary force was used and
no personal harm inflicted, that I could see,
but the next issue of the Herald of Freedom
made the most of the opportunity. There
was also a trial before a justice, and a fine
inflicted, which bystanders paid. At this
trial Mr. Foster, in some remarks, likened the
scene before him to that ancient court in
Jerusalem when Pontius Pilate sat on the
bench. The justice, Mr. Stephen C. Badger,
reminded him that there was a less worthy
respondent present on this occasion, whereat
Foster retorted that the judge of the tribunal
was very different too, — perhaps not so im-
perial, but surely a more kindly and consci-
entious personage than the Roman governor.
It would have been wiser, perhaps, if the
regular morning service at the church had
been suspended and Mr. Foster given a pa-
tient hearing ; but I suppose there was not
sufiicient willingness to listen to the author
of a work called " The Brotherhood of
24 Sixty Years in Concord,
Thieves, a True Picture of the American
Church and Clergy."
It is rather queer that wlien the question
of freeing slaves came in 1861 to be a strife
of arms, not one of these professional aboli-
tionists, old or young, put a gun on his
shoulder and went to the war. None of the
" Old Guard " of New Hampshire, as they
have since called themselves, put their lives
in peril by taking the field. They appear to
have been men of talk, but not of action.
The world is rather more fond of men, and
the memory of men, who do something beside
talk.
II.
If we were set back to about the year 1840
there would be found a state of industrial
and business affairs singularly unlike that
now prevailing. It would not be so easy for
any person to accumulate money. A Con-
cord citizen, of that class called "men of
property and standing," who has lived com-
fortably but without ostentation, has kept
for many yeans a careful account of his an-
nual income. Because it will give an idea
of local resources during the earlier period
of these recollections, he permits me to give
the following net results of his labor and
capital for ten yeara prior to 1849, when he
was in trade on Main street :
1839,
$203.11
1844,
i 427.24
1840,
584.50
18-15,
1,231.01
1841,
568.60
1846,
1,591.28
1842,
396.76
1847,
2,410.15
1843,
657.73
1848,
1,146.18
an average for the first five years of only
$482.14.
In 1840 there were few railroads, no elec-
tric telegraphs, and of course no telephones.
26 Sixty Years in Concord.
The fii-st free bridge across the Merrimack
had just been built here in 1839. It was a
rather hard day's journey from Concord to
the sea-coast. The national debt was no
more than ten million dollars. Indiana and
Illinois were frontier settlements. Postage
on a half ounce letter to those remote regions
was twenty-five cents ; for an ounce, one dol-
lar. Boston had less than three times the
present population of our city of Manches-
ter, and Manchester itself was about equal to
East Concord. There were but twenty-six
states in the Union, and there were two and
a half millions of slaves. The Duke de
Joinville, with the sailing frigate " Belle
Poule," was bearing the remains of Napoleon
Bonaparte from St. Helena to France. Wash-
ington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper
were living people. There were not more
than .two ocean steamships sailing regularly
out of the port of New York. There was
one stationary steam engine in Concord, and
that was regarded by strangers who ventured
near it as an awe-compelling sight. One of
our townsmen who boasted of smoking cigars
which cost thirty dollars a thousand was
deemed a great prodigal, like Lucullus. Not
more than twenty daily newspapei*s were
taken in the whole town. Paris fashions
Personal Recollections, 27
came but slowly, and there was as little public
attention to sanitary rules as to the laws of
the Medes and Persians.
The central precinct of the town was but
a picturesque village.* The air of colonial
days was still upon it. There were at least
three houses on Main street which had been
frontier garrisons. One colored woman was
living who had been a slave here in her youth,
and appears to have been recorded as such in
the census of 1840, — Nancy, born about 1766,
who died in the family of Mr. Samuel Her-
bert in 1845. If the town has since gained
much, as it assuredly has, in convenience,
resources, and stateliness, something rather
delightful of repose, simplicity, and tradition
has gone away.
In that day most of the dwellings were
scattered along Main, State,Green, and Spring
streets, then recently named (1834), and
thoroughfares connecting these four. The
region about South street was almost terra
incognita. Common talk was that Sampson
BuUard's residence on that avenue, now the
home of Mrs. Alonzo Downing, might as well
* In 1832 Lieut. E. T. Coke, of the Forty-fifth Regiment,
British army, traveled through the United States and Can-
ada, and wrote afterward "A Subaltern's Furlough." He
said, " Nowhere did I see such beautiful villages as in New
England, of which Concord in New Hampshire, Worcester,
and Northampton rank preeminent."
28 Sixty Years in Concord,
be in Bow. . There were no such streets as
Capitol, Court, Chapel, and Pitman.
The State-house park was flanked along its
southern border by primitive but populous
and very noisy stables, particularly on Inau-
guration Day. Among them was a black-
smith's shop, where Bradbuiy Gill struck
mighty blows on the anvil. The Merrimack
County Bank and the New Hampshire Sav-
ings Bank, as well as the law offices of
Franklin Pierce and Asa Fowler, were in the
building now occupied by the New Hamp-
shire Historical Society. Franklin Pierce
dwelt on Montgomery street. General Joseph
Low, whose gilt-headed cane and confident
manner caused the boys to regard him as the
Croesus of the town, had a pleasant house
with a deep front yard where Rumford block
now stands. At his death, in 1859, his estate
was valued at about $30,000 — a considerable
fortune when few persons had more. Nearly
opposite, on the corners of School street, in
a quiet atmosphere, were the homes of his
brother William and Deacon Benjamin
Damon. Mr. Peter Smith could be seen in
the streets in the capacity of town crier.
The residence of the governor of New Hamp-
shire had recently been where is now the
Governor Hill building. On Warren street.
Personal Recollections. 29
opposite the site of our Central Fire Station,
were an ironr foundry and a tanyard. Some
stores in good situations on Main street were
mere wooden shanties, one story high, gable
to the street, boarded up broadly in front as
high as the ridgepole to give them two-
story pretensions. Tliey were like the struc-
tures to be seen around railroad stations in
three-weeks-old Colorado and Nevada towns,
emblazoned " Palace Saloon," " El Dorado,"
"Delmonico House," etc. There were but
two brick buildings of any consequence on
Main street down town, — Stickney's and
Low's. There was nothing built on the low-
land east of Main street but a distillery and
two slaughter-houses. Political meetings
(many), secular lectures (occasional), and
social gatherings of the larger sort (few)
were in Grecian hall connected with the
Eagle hotel, Stickney's hall at Stickney's
tavern, or in Washington hall, an annex to
the Washington tavern at the North End.
The near coming of railroads was thought in
influential quarters to so threaten private
rights that committees of vigilance were pro-
posed to devise ways to curb their charters
and restrain their dreaded depredations for
right of way. Pecker & Lang's store at the
North End, corner of Main and Franklin
30 Sixty Years in Concord.
streets, was as prosperous as any other, and
anything could be found there from a paper
of pins to a hogshead of molasses. Luther
Roby was printing stacks of quarto Bibles in
the brick building still standing. No. 256-
262 North Main street, and meditating on
schemes like the sugar trust, copper syndi-
cate, and Standard Oil Company of to-day.
His monopolies were to be in wafer seals and
whale oil, if I remember aright. Knives and
locks w^ere then made at '' Millville," shoe
lasts at " Fush Market," pottery on the
Hopkinton road, hammers and shovels at the
state prison, silver spoons and friction
matches, as well as drums and churns, in
"smoky hollow."
Two clear, swift brooks crossed Main
street, carried below its surface in culverts,
one (called West's) at the foot of Chapel
street, and the other near the foot of Mont-
gomery street. One had its source west of
the old prison, and the other on the present
city hall grounds. Both met on the inter-
vale, and flowed to the Merrimack in a
stream copious enough to support numerous
frogs, schools of minnows large enough for
pickerel bait, and an occasional bigger fish.
Two of my comrades declared they saw a
trout further up West's brook than the pres-
Personal Recollections. 31
ent site of Mead, Mason & Co.'s steam mill.
From the east windows of our homestead
there might often be seen, in the springtime
evenings, the bright flames of torches flitting
about on the river, borne in the bows of
boats the occupants of which were engaged
in taking fish with spears of many prongs.
There were in this seven-mile-square town
less than five thousand inhabitants, and those
were not altogether prosperous. The times
had been out of joint. A speculation in
Maine lands, which culminated in 1837, had
brought trouble in its train. This specula-
tion was the '-Atchison," the "Delphos,"
or the " western mortgage " of that period.
No railroad had reached Concord, but the
highways were fretted by a large traffic in
teams and stage-coaches. It was an inspir-
ing sight to see the four- and six-horse
coaches depart in a long line for the north,
to Burlington (two days away), Hanover,
Haverhill, Bradford, Vt., Conway, Clare-
mont, and intermediate towns. The adver-
tisement of one of the Boston lines cautioned
its friends not to buy tickets of B. P. Cheney,
then of 11 Elm street in that city, since one
of Boston's wealthiest citizens. The stage-
coachmen were an important set of people,
whose favor was sought. Every winter they
32 Sixty Years in Concord.
gave a coachmen's ball, one of the society
events of the region, and it is said that peo-
ple sometimes attended to whom Macaulay's
characterization of Lucy Walters might ap-
ply. These dancing parties were usually at
Grecian hall, but jnay have once or twice
drifted away to Stickney's or the Washing-
ton tavern.
I can mention in this place as appropriately
as in any, the gentlemen of the North End,
for whom I had great respect, and who, being
of good birth, ability, considerable property,
and dignified bearing, were during many
years regarded as the conservative or aristo-
cratic force in public affairs. My father must
have got in his young days a similar impres-
sion of the predecessors of those men. He
said to me only a day or two before he died,
at a moment when his thoughts were wan-
dering, but in tlie careful phrase which he
always used, — "1 wish I could convey to
your mind an adequate conception of the
attempt made in my youth to found a feudal
aristocracy at the- North End." This very
high respect which I felt was shared by all
the boys of my age. It was a great privilege
for us to be permitted to look in at the Mer-
rimack County Bank, where no one beneath
the rank of judge, colonel, or at least select-
Personal Recollections. 33
man, was permitted to sit around tlie fire
with the elect when the Boston paper came
to be read.
All the churches of that date, except the
Baptist, were plain structures of wood; the
exception was of equal plaiimess, but its
walls were of brick. The pastors were, at
the North, Rev. Nathaniel Bouton ; at the
South, Rev. Daniel J. Noyes ; at the Baptist,
Rev. E. E. Cummings ; at the Unitarian,
Rev. Moses G. Thomas; at the Methodist,
Rev. Wm. H. Hatch ; and at the Episcopal,
Rev. Petrus Stuyvesant TenBroeck. Al-
though it is the custom to speak of the good
old times, I do not suppose the general aver-
age of morality was higher than now. Con-
cord has always had at least a respectable
reputation for thrift, intelligence, and well-
doing.
But, to go to the otlier extreme, there was
a noted public liquor-shop in the basement
of the Farley building, which stood where is
now Exchange block, and connected there-
with was a bowling alley, then considered a
very low-toned place of amusement. Another
rum-hole in a basement on Main street
opposite the capitol, came to be popularly
called the Chichester gin-shop. I have
looked with curiosity over the wine lists of
3
34 Sixty Years in Concord,
some famous hotels, but neither there, nor in
the lists of old liquors imported by ancient
houses and sold because of death in the
family or other misfortune, have 1 seen men-
tioned this old Chichester gin. It got its
name in this wise : Men from out-lying
towns, many of them from Loudon and Chi-
chester, who had wood to sell in the winter,
were constrained to remain in the streets
around the state-house park until they dis-
posed of their sled-loads. To such, the
cheer of a warm fire and a hot drink was
always a temptation. It became known one
winter that the proprietor of this basement
grogery kept two grades of gin, one for the
tipple of his most fastidious customers, and
the other for those who only wanted some-
thing hot and strong. One day he returned
to his place from a brief absence, and found
his assistant dealing out the best gin to a
group of sled-drivers. At this sight excite-
ment overpowered discretion, and he pub-
licly rebuked the erring bar-keeper, point-
ing out the gin to be served, which he said
was good enough for the Chichester people
with whom he was dealing. This declara-
tion made a flurry of exasperation, and the
qualities of Chichester gin were discussed
and commented upon, even in families where
Personal Recollections, 35
gin was not a favorite drink. A few morn-
ings after this ^occurrence an efiigy was dis-
covered hanging from the eaves of the build-
ing, with a black bottle marked "Chichester
gin " clasped to its ragged manly bosom.
As this eavesdropper hung in front of a win-
dow of my father's printing-office there were
objections to its remaining, and ''old vet-
eran " Hoit, the founder of the Patriot^ then
a compositor, leaned out of a window and
cut the suspending cord, when the offending
figure shot downward, and landed on the
stairs leading from the sidewalk to the grog-
gery to be seen no more.
Two local frequenters of the Chichester
gin-shop always sat around the fire until the
place was otherwise deserted, when they
went home at the owner's bidding, and the
door closed on their reluctant heels ; but one
night the bidding was omitted, and they
stayed on in undisturbed tranquility until
morning, when the bar-keeper found them
where he had left them, crooning away over '
the stove, taking no note of time.
The effigy above mentioned was probably
the work of a lot of young highbinders who
did about all the nocturnal mischief in town.
One of their common pranks was to trans-
pose .business signs, fastening "Fresh Fish
36 Sixty Years in Concord,
daily received from Boston " securely to a
well known lawyer's office, for church-going
people to see on Sunday. The night after
the Fourth of July was an occasion for great
bonfires in the street in front of the state-
house, when all the loose combustibles with-
in reach, — barrels of tar, dry goods boxes,
out-buildings, neglected wagons, etc., — were
piled on the flames. If the town constables
appeared, they were greeted with volleys of
rotten eggs; but at least once (1842) the
riot act was read, and several offenders
arrested for disturbing the peace and dignity
of the state, which so offended Dr. Peter
Renton (his son John being in limbo) that
he changed his residence to Boston, .where
he gained an extensive practice, and died in
February, 1865.
Many of these mischief-loving fellows were
journeymen printers, who had more than their
share of the spirit of misrule. Another of
their diversions was the occasional issue of a
ten-by-fifteen-inch paper called The Owl^ de-
voted to tattle and scandal, which had no
subscription list, but was distributed freely
at doorsteps in the early morning. This
paper had for a heading a picture of the
bird of wisdom perched on the side of the
globe with a quill pen over his ear, wearing
Personal Recollections. 37
eye-glasses and smoking a pipe. There were
many local printing-offices then, among them
those of the Statesman^ Patriot^ Herald of
Freedom^ Family Visitor^ Congregational Jour-
nal^ and Baptist Register^ — about a dozen
in all. It was supposed that The Owl itin-
erated in its roost or place of issue, and was
printed at night. Each journeyman of the
gang put in type, as opportunity offered, at
his place of employment, the copy assigned
to him, and carried the type on galleys to
the rendezvous for printing, all the materials
being taken from the employing printers.
When public wrath became excited, and
search was hot, the " forms " were buried in
the earth to await some midnight resurrec-
tion. I think the last number of The Owl
appeared in 1848.
The railroad, when it came, changed the
life and to some extent the appearance of the
town. When the surveys for the Concord
road were made, the engineers were in doubt
whether to bring it here by the route finally
selected, or bv one a little more to the west-
ward. If the latter way had been chosen,
the station would have been somewhere near
the corner of Pleasant and South streets,
and the building of the Northern railway
lines would have divided the town in twain :
38 Sixty Year 9 in Concord,
so the result which was reached seems to
have been a fortunate one. Those famous
civil engineei^s, George W. Whistler, after-
ward the great railroad builder in Russia,
William Gibbs McNeill, a West Pointer, who
commanded the Rhode Island militia in the
Dorr rebellion, and E. S. Chesbrough, chief
engineer of the Boston water-works and of
the water and sewage system of Cliicago,
each had a hand in surveying or building the
line from Boston to Concord. The Concord
company's rails were laid down in 1842 ; and
/ I went to the so-called Great Swamp, now
market-gardens, below the present gas-w6rks,
to see the process of track-laying, which was
different from current methods. A line of
chestnut planks, three inches by eight, was
laid below the ground, under the ends of the
sleepers and parallel with the rails ; to these
planks the sleepei-s were fastened with
wooden bolts. This use of planks for sub-
sills was soon determined by experience to
be unnecessaiy. The ends of the rails were
placed in iron chairs, which are now dis-
carded for the more satisfactory fish-plates.
All the territory, where are now the tracks,
station buildings, and Railroad square itself,
was raised several feet above its natural level,
and much of the gravel used for grading was
Personal Recollections. 39
carted across town from " sand hill," at the
west side of the existing central precinct.
I was among the multitude of townspeople
who gathered in the evening of September 6,
1842, to see the fii*st railway passenger train
come into Concord. This train of three pas-
senger cai-s was drawn by the " Amoskeag,"
a small locomotive built by Hinkley & Drury
of Boston, ten and a half tons in weight,
with one pair of driving-wheels five feet in
diameter. George Clough was the conduc-
tor, Leonard Grossman, engineer, and Seth
Hopkins, fireman. The engineer and fireman
were wholly exposed to the weather, as the
cab for locomotives was not devised until
years later. The station buildings to which
this train came were lowly, but suificient.
This important event was noticed in the Pat-
riot to the extent of a quarter of a column i- an
unusually sprightly local Democratic caucus
a few weeks before got a column and a half.
Fires have greatly changed the appearance
of our town. Except the sites of Rumford
and Woodward's blocks. Button's building.
Masonic Temple, old Goncord Bank and
Board of Trade buildings, I have seen all
the business territory on both sides of Main
street, between Bridge and Pleasant streets,
burned over once, some of it twice.
III.
During my boyhood Concord had few peo-
ple of foreign birth. Michael Spellman and
Peter Murphy were among the first Irishmen
whom I remember. There was a Patrick
Gunning, a tramp, who kept Concord in his
orbit, always begged a clean shirt but was
never known to wear one, and, in rich
brogue, announced himself to be on the way
to Montreal. His last appeamnce here, so
far as I know, was in 1863.
At West Concord was Patrick Tyning,
born at Kilkenny, a soldier in the British
army which burned the capitol and the presi-
dent's house at Washington in 1812, and got
routed at New Orleans.
Another one, back of my remembrance,
whom my father knew, was James Phelan.
He went hence to Boston, blew an organ in
the Catholic church of the Holy Cross, sold
tickets in the Federal Street theatre, and then
embarked in the hardware trade in New
York. In the latter city he became conspic-
uous in public undertakings, acquired a
great estate, and had a house at Newport,
Personal Recollections. 41
R. I. Still later he weut to Paris, became a
companion of the Count D'On^ay (who died
in 1852), and gave entertainments rivalling
those of the titled people in that great city.
He was one of the American friends who
welcomed Charles Sumner to Paris in 1872,
when the senator last visited Europe.
John Anderson, a Scotch shoemaker, had a
shop in " smoky hollow." He was a fervent
Democrat. When Gen. William Henry Har-
rison was elected president in 1840, Mr.
Andei'son was cast into the depths of woe,
and declared that Democracy had fallen never
to rise again.
Some of the youngsters of Concord were
taught by Miss Sally Parker. Her school,
which was for the youngest pupils, was in an
east room of her house, now No. 14 Centre
street. The apartment was unfinished, lathed
but not plastered, and the seats were long
wooden benches without backs. Prizes of
three butternuts were distributed every Sat-
urday to winners of class honors. Who were
the scholars, and what books were studied, I
cannot venture to say.
On the next lot south of my father's house
stood a yellow cottage, an appanage of the
Dr. Peter Green estate. Here came to dwell
Mrs. Ruby Bridges Preston, a widow, teacher
42 Sixty Years in Concord.
by the Lancastrian system of a school for
children. Her front room was the rendezvous
of little pupils, among whom my mother
enrolled me. Of the children who gathered
there I can call to mind with certainty only
three boys, namely, William Chadbourne,
Robert A. Hutchins, and Henry G. Burleigh.
William Chadbourne was a son of Dr.
Thomas Chadbourne, and years afterward
became a partner in the great dry-goods'
house of James M. Beebe & Co., of Bos-
ton, in whose behalf he crossed the At-
lantic forty times. He died in Brookline,
Mass., May 15, 1868, aged thirty-six years.
— Robert A. Hutchins (son of Ephraim
Hutchins) served on the staff of General
Wilcox in the war for the Union, with gal-
lantry like that of his great-grandfather Col.
Gordon Hutchins in the Revolutionary war.
Robert was the handsomest boy of his time
in the town, and when a man, would have
made as dramatic a figure as did the Revolu-
tionary colonel who walked up the aisle of
the Old North clmrch on an August Sunday
in 1777, with the dust of his gallop from
Exeter still on his shoulders, to tell the
startled congregation that a British army
under General Burgoyne was marching from
Canada toward New York, and that General
Pergonal Recollections. 43
Stark would leave next morning with the
New Hampshire volunteers to strike the hos-
tile expedition. Robert died at Los Angeles,
CaL, Oct. 15, 1883, aged fifty years. — Henry
G. Burleigh's father, a manufacturer of shov-
els, contractor for labor at the state prison,
lived where now stands the city hall, almost
directly opposite the site of Mrs. Preston's
yellow cottage. Henry has spent most of
his prosperous life at Ticonderoga and White-
hall, N. Y., and has had the honor to repre-
sent the Eighteenth New York district in
the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth congresses,
receiving at his last election 20,732 votes
against 2,817 for all others.
Mrs. Preston died in Concord, Aug. 15,
1881, aged eighty-two years. She had a son,
James, a sailor, whose loose blue flannel suit,
with wide-bottomed trousers and tarpaulin
hat, with a fathom of ribbon flowing behind,
caused our eyes to open very wide when he
came home in full sea rig. He died of fever
off the coast of Africa in 1848.
Getting away from Mrs. Preston's, I sat
under the instruction of Miss Mary Ann
Allison, in a house which stood where is now
the North church. This house was built for
Capt. Joshua Abbott, who fought at Bunker
Hill, and was said to be in 1855 one of the
44 Sixty Years in Concord,
oldest sixteen in Concord main village. It
is still in existence, being now No. 12 Wash-
ington street. Shadrach Seavey had altera-
tions made in it daring his ownership thereof,
and found a brick in the chimney bearing the
date "1765" marked in its soft clay before
burning.
There was a little more discipline at Miss
Allison's school than I had experienced
before, and when the class in Malte-Brun's
Geography was on the floor, and some luck-
less wight ventured to shout "Mild and sa-
lubrious !" in reply to a question about the
climate of Patagonia, he was liable to suffer
some penalty for his words without knowl-
edge ; — but most of, the climatic descriptions
in that geography were "cold and inhospi-
table," "mild and salubrious," or "hot and
unhealthy," and we rarely got far out of our
latitude in guessing at suitable answers to
interrogatories on that theme.
My playmates and schoolmates of this and
a little later period were, beside those before
mentioned, Edward P. Carter, Robert Sher-
burne, Samuel and William H. Morril,
George W. Gault, Edward Whipple, George
H. Sanborn, Charles H. West, William L.
Gage, and Nathaniel E. Gage. Of all I have
named, only four are living. Edward Carter
Personal Recollections, 45
died in Central City, Colorado, April 9, 1868,
aged thirty-four years. Robert Sherburne
is a farmer in Illinois. Samuel Morril is a
physician at Marlboro, Pitt county. North
Carolina. His brother William resided there
until his death, which occurred about six
years ago. During- the War of the Rebel-
lion, William was a staff officer in Mahone's
Division of the Southern army. George
Sanborn became an inventor of printers' and
bookbinders' machinery, prospered, and died
in or near New York city. Charles West
was a paymaster in the navy during the War
of the Rebellion, and died in Winchester,
Mass. Nathaniel Gage was a physician, and
perished from cold on a Western prairie;
while his brother William was a distin-
guished writer and preacher of the Congre-
gational church, settled for many years at
Hartford, Conn., and died in 1889. He once
received a call to the Richmond Street
church, in Edinburgh, Scotland. George
Gault, after going to sea before the mast in
a ship commanded by my uncle, William
McFarland, settled down to country life in
Gilmanton, and became a deacon de facto^
as he had been by courtesy in his youth.
George was long my most intimate friend.
He lived with his uncle, John Stickney, on
46 Sixty Years in Concord.
the old Stickney Tavern estate, wliicli dated
back to 1794, now changed utterly, but the
site opposite my old home has since been
owned in part by Mr. John H. Pearson. The
axe was laid to the root of the old tavern sign-
post probably about 1838-'40. The swinging
sign-board which it long supported had on
either face, in good strong colors, the figure
of an Indian with bow and tomahawk, and
the legend "J. Stickney, 1794."
The old tavern hall was a favorite place
with us. There in the early part of the cen-
tury had been famous dancing parties, and in
1818 a great dinner to General Ripley, of
Maine, a soldier in the War of 1812, when
the principal decoration was the national flag
displayed on a fishpole. There, on March 4,
1825, was a dinner in honor of the inaugu-
ration of President John Quincy Adams.
This old hall abundantly lighted, and the
great sheds and barns opening to the south,
with horses and cattle and plenty of room,
made the Stickney estate a grand place for
boys in any kind of weather. In the stable
was one of our particular friends, " Old
Judge," the horse, and in the yard another,
*' Old White," the dog.
My father drew the following picture of
the Stickney tavern, as it was about 1825:
Personal Recollections, 47
Stickney's was the stage tavern of the
town. The celebrated reinsmen of the
period were to be found there, in all their
pride of place, — Parsons, Bly, Walker, and
others ; we can see them as clearly as if yes-
terday, standing near the front door. And
not the drivers only, but their horses and
coaches, and the long tin horns which they
blew on Jipproaching the town. Parsons had
at one time four white horses for the team
driven into Concord. They were lost at the
burning of the Anderson tavern, about 1822,
on the turnpike between Hooksett and Ches-
ter, when Tom shed bitter tears that he
could fondle and drive them no more.
A Vermont traveller once said they could
at Stickney's make better beefsteak of red
oak chips than he obtained in some taverns
where they served what purported to be beef.
Stickney's tavern was a resort of rep-
utable ti-avellei*s, — stage passengers, people
going about in their own vehicles, Vermont-
ers going to Boston, Salem, and Newbury-
port with country produce, and footsore and
dusty pedestrians, cane in hand. Undesir-
able people, if they went to the house, were
not apt to like the "lay of the land," and
did not remain long within its portals. All
well disposed people reaching this house felt
they had gained an excellent harbor.
A favorite winter drink of the days when
this tavern was in its prime was " flip."
One of the most common banters of the
olden time was, "I'll bet a mug of flip."
48 Sixty Years m Concord,
This drink consisted of beer and rum, with
sugar and grated nutmeg. When mixed, the
poker, always during winter kept in the fire,
was thrust red hot into the mug, and then
the foaming liquid was " flip."
The arrival of coaches at Stickney's de-
pended upon the state of the weather and
the roads. Those from Boston, in favor-
able seasons, reached here before 6 p. m. ;
those going north or south left at 4 a. m.
A long tin horn was blown at departure, and
also on arrival, — indeed, on going into any
village, to notify postmaster, taverner, and
all concerned to be ready for the exercise of
their duties. Many people can testify to the
comfort they took in this wayside inn.
Dancing parties at Stickney's assembled at
an early hour. I have seen an invitation to
one such printed on a playing-card, the five
of diamonds (perhaps a hint that card-play-
ing would be allowed), which read as fol-
lows :
SOCIAL BALL.
The company of Mr. and Mrs. Chandler is
requested at Stickney*s hall, on Thursday even-
ing next, at 5 o'clock.
W. A. Kent, )
R. H. Ayer, >• Managers.
C. Emery, )
Concord, Nov. 29, 1806.
In the great woodshed of the Stickney
tavern, George Peabody, afterward the emi-
r
Personal Recollections. 49
nent London banker and philanthropist, once
cut firewood to pay for a night's lodging, when
in 1810, as a boy of fifteen, without surplus
money, he was on his way from Danvera to
live a year with his grandfather in Thetford,
Vt. When he visited Concord in 1858, as
the guest of Hon. N. G. Upham, he related
this fact to Hon. Ira Perley. George Gault
and I were occasionally called upon to cut
wood in this shed, but in no other way have
our fortunes resembled those of Mr. Pea-
body.
In the Stickney kitchen was a colonial
fireplace, wide enough for sticks of wood
four feet long, and Miss Susan Stickney did
not object to our wliittling in a part of that
room, so a large share of our winter carpen-
try was carried on there. Capt. Nathan
Stickney, who owned the next estate, we
were rather shy of, for a boy discovers read-
ily who of the grown people have no longing
for his society. Mrs. Ezra Carter (mother
of Edward) and Mrs. Thomas Chadbourne
(mother of William) were always indulgent
to boys, and we favored them with much of
our company. Our calls were not of a very
ceremonious character, being often made
without preliminary rap at the door, or
waiting for an usher to escort us in : such
4
50 Sixty Years in Concord,
formalities were not considered then as of
the utmost importance. Mrs. Chadbourne
was before marriage Clarissa D wight Green,
a daughter of Dr. Peter Green, named for
my grandfather's first wife, Clarissa Dwight,
of Belchertown, Mass., who died a few days
before her namesake was born.
There were summer visitora to Concord
then, the like of whom are not seen here now
— girls from Switzerland, wlio sang street
songs to the accompaniment of a tambour-
ine. .They had indifferent, overtasked voices,
but my father listened with apparent pleas-
ure to their whole repertoire, Tliere may
not have been much delight in the music, <
but the costumes and songs of tiie Swiss can-
tons probably carried his imagination away to
Alpine valleys, which he had a longing to see.
Miss Allison, our teacher, transferred her
school, first, to a room over a drug store and
tract depository in a structure standing the
second south of^ the Historical Society's
building, and thence to one of the jury-
rooms in the old town- and court-house,
which stood near the present junction of
Main and Court streets. At the last place I
got a hard fall on the long stall's, and was
taken home wounded and frightened. On
the lower floor of this plain colonial building
I
i
, Personal Recollections. 51
was the town hall, and in its vestibule, or in
the town hall itself, were stored on cross-
beams some most astonishing implements
called fire-hooks, designed for pulling down
burning buildings. They, were very un-
wieldy and rarely put to use, but made an
excellent roosting-place for expert climbers
on town-meeting day ; and it was from that
height of vantage that Deacon Caleb Parker,
in 1838, charged Cyrus Barton with voting
double. This was a subject for talk and
newspaper paragraphs for years afterward,
Colonel Barton being then the editor of the
Patriot.
Our school holidays of that time were not
always spent exactly to our liking. There
was a considerable period when such of us as
worshipped at the South church were sent
thither on Saturday afternoons to recite the
Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism
to the pastor. That work was all in my
memory, both questions and answers, and
will never be wholly forgotten ; nor shall I
ever forget the look of astonishment which
came to the face of the pastor when on one
occasion he surprised us all playing "tag," or
" follow my leader," among the seats of the
chapel, and gave us a considerate rebuke for
lack of respect to the temple.
52 Sixty Years in Concord,
Fourth of July, too, was wont to be given
to cold-water-army marching and Sunday-
school celebrations ; — so when that ever-glo-
rious day came, most of the town children
were paraded under various banners, each
denominational band of Sunday-school pupils
by itself, and marched to the Old North
to hear addresses on temperance; thence to
the state-house yard, tired, hot, dusty, and
hungry, to be refreshed with cake and cold
water or lemonade so long as the cake lasted,
afterward with barrels of dry crackers brought
from the bakery of Capt. Ebenezer Symmes.
A little pamphlet relating to the celebration
of 1841 was published. It gives the names
of the teachers and scholars then present from
each Sunday-school, and shows the following
totals, — North church, 220 ; Methodist, 80 ;
Episcopal, 71; South church, 230; Baptist,
108; Unitarian, 107. Total, 816. On that
occasion the tables were spread in a field
near Richard Bradley's home, and a thunder
shower disturbed affairs. After my last ap-
pearance at one of those festivities, I went
home, and, within hearing of my father, made
a little declaration of independence, to the
effect that I would never go to another such
celebration, and, much to my joy, this resolu-
tion was approved by the home government.
JPersonal Recollections. 53
The schools oiF that period were not
graded, so we had pupils of various ages and
different attainments in the same apartment.
There were first, second, and third classes in
reading, arithmetic, and other branches of
study. One advantage this old way certainly
had : young people could listen to the recita-
tions of those more advanced than them-
selves, and learn something by hearsay. It
would be interesting to see the school-books
of that time, — the New Hampshire Book, the
American First Class Book, Porter's Rhetor-
ical Reader, Olney's Geography (beside
Malte-Brun's, already mentioned), Com-^
stock's Philosophy, Cutter's Physiology,
Webster's Spelling Book, Adams' Arithme-
tic (published at Keene, N. H.), Colburn's
Arithmetic, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and
Smith's Grammar.
Penmanship was taught with more care
and lather more success than now, but ours
is not a nation of penmen ; the English and
Germans excel in this respect.
It seems to me that I went from school to
school in a rather desultory way, but it was
merely change of place and teacher ; books
and methods were generally the same. There
were in our main village three public school
buildings, for districts numbered 9, 10, and
54 Sixty Years in Concord.
11 ; that for District 10 was the Bell school-
house, situated where is now the high school
building, and that for District 11 was a rather
dignified two-story brick building at the
corner of State and Church streets, on what
was formerly called Parsonage lands.
Some of our Concord old-time pedagogues
afterward attained eminence, — for instance,
Hon. Levi Woodbury, Benjamin Thompson
or Count Rumford, Prof. Edwin D. Sanborn,
Hon. George . W. Nesmith, Nathaniel H.
Carter, and Rev. Abraham Burnham.
I was at the Bell school a long while, the
same that my father and uncles had attended.
How thickly and deeply the old desks and
seats were scarred by generations of destruc-
tive jack-knives ! The existing building for
the high school is the fourth which I have
seen on that site, each a great improvement
on its predecessor. Mastei-s Moses H.
Clough and James Moulton at different
times swayed the ferule there during my
early pupilage. John Towne was also a
dominie in this school for a considerable
period, and was at the same time deputy sec-
retary of state, — a fact which suggests that
the occupation of teaching was not deemed
so exhaustive of vital forces as it is now said
to be. There was considerable punishment
Personal Recollections. 55
in this school, and the ferule and rattan were
never far away. They were kept in hand as
necessary badges of authority in all the
schools for larger pupils of that time.
At this school I came first and last, within
the circuit' of some new companions, — Abel
and George H. Hutchins, John and Charles
Kent, Charles P. Sanborn, afterward speaker
of the house of representatives, Benjamin E.
Badger, Gustavus Walker, Henry H. Gil-
more, lately mayor of Cambridge, Mass.,
Thomas J. Treadwell, who graduated at
West Point, and served in the Ordnance
Corps of the army, J. Hamilton Low, Edson
C. Eastman, Charles H. Foster, recently a
sugar importer in Boston, John Chandler,
who lived sometime at Manila as agent for
William F. Weld & Qo., the largest ship
owners of Boston, Henry W. Fuller, George
Henry Chandler, major of the Ninth New
Hampshire Regiment, William E. Chandler,
now a United States senator, James E. Ran-
kin, since a Congregational clergyman, now
president of Howard University, and J. Henry
Gilmore, now a professor in Rochester Uni-
versity. The last two are known as authors
of famous hymns.
There came home from West Point in my
school days a young man in the uniform of
66 Sixty Years in Cmicord,
the military academy, who was regarded with
much curiosity. This was Napoleon Jerome
Tecumseh Dana, whose mother and sister
then lived in the house next north of the
residence of the late Gov. Onslow Stearns.
He was heard of afterward when he marched
with the renowned First Regiment of Min-
nesota to join the Army of the Potomac. In
February, 1862, he was a brigadier-general,
commanding the Third Brigade of Sedgwick's
Division in the Second Army Corps. He
was severely wounded in the impetuous at-
tack of this corps, under General Sumner, on
the enemy's left wing, at Antietam. I met
him again in 1886, when he was president
and I was secretary and treasurer of the Mon-
tana Union Railway, an offshoot of the Union
Pacific Company.
Walter Brown, or Darkey Brown as we
called him because of his swarthy complexion,
indulged in a rather amusing escapade at the
Bell school. One morning he brought a red
squirrel in his pocket, and when the exercises
of the forenoon were well advanced, the
little creature left its place of concealment
and ran out-of-doors with Walter in full cry
in pursuit, starting from his seat near the
middle of the large room. Neither the cap-
tive nor the captor returned that day.
Personal Recollections. 57
Walter was, like all the rest of us, fond of
the woods,- and it was said that lie could
crack a chestnut-burr with his bare heel.
The last I heard of him he was in Iowa about
1860, advertising for a wife.
My ambition at this time was to become a
carpenter, like one whom I heard could earn
$1.25 a day ; or a miller, the latter fancy hav-
ing taken hold of me during a visit to a tidy
gristmill in a picturesque nook on the Win-
nipiseogee river at Meredith Bridge. All
the boys had spells of wanting to go to sea :
mine were cared by the advice of my uncle
William, a ship-master who was a sailor from
boyhood.
I was away from the Bell school at inter-
vals, during one of which I trod the paths to
Academy hill, where in a lonesome building
was what was left of the Concord Literary
Institution. In 1835 moved by Mr. T. D.
P. Stone, a young gentleman from Andover,
Mass., an associated effort had been made to
establish an academy on the hill, with normal,
academical, high, and preparatory depart-
ments. The first intent was to build of
granite, but that purpose failed. The wooden
building, fifty-four by fifty-eight feet, had
boys' and girls' study-rooms, recitation-rooms,
a laboratory, and a spacious hall for rhetori-
58 Sixty Years in Concord.
cal and public exercises. About one hundi-ed
shareholders were in the undertaking, and
the roll of pupils contained, first and last,
nearly two thousand names, from all New Eng-
land, Ohio, and Alabama, and from Greece
and Spain one each. In 1835 there were
eleven teachera and more than two hundred
and fifty students. The ambitious undertak-
ing was not rewarded with prosperity, and
after a time the property was leased for the
uses of a private school. Mr. Aaron Day,
just out of Dartmouth college, and Miss
Emily Pillsbury wei-e the instructors during
my pupilage, and the hall, being airy and
well lighted, was the school-room. I fix the
year of my attendance as 18-43 by circum-
stantial evidence onlv. Most of the scholars
were attacked briefly by a prevalent influenza
called the " Tyler Grip," because it appeared
contemporaneously with President Tyler's
visit to New England, which occurred that
year. Then, too, we had a season of great
interest in a popular excitement which
sprung out of the hanging at sea of three
chief mutineers on the brig " Somers," of the
United States Navy, the culprits being
Spencer, Cromwell, and Small. Spencer was
a son of Hon. John C. Spencer, secretary of
war. Alexander Slidell- Mackenzie, sailor
Pergonal Recollections, 59
and author, was the commander of the ves-
sel, and, being accused of harshness and
imprudence, was court-martialed on arrival
at New York, but fully exonerated. This
hanging was in December, 1842, and as the
consequent excitement ran along into the fol-
lowing year, this seems to confirm the other
date. We went so far as to suspend some
paper effigies of the mutineers to the ceiling
of our scliool-room.
Among the effects left over from the
wreck of the academy were some philosophi-
cal apparatus, among which was an orrery,
to teach us the movements of the planets,
an air-pump and receiver, by which we
learned that a mouse could not live happily
in a vacuum, and a primitive dynamo, from
which we got some idea of the power of elec-
tricity. (This apparatus is now in the posses-
sion of Benj. E. Badger, Esq.) This was the
same year that congress appropriated $30,000
to enable Prof. S. F. B. Morse — the former
portrait painter in Concord — to build the
first electric telegraph, from Washington to
Baltimore.
One may not be so free to deal with the
names of school-girls, but I suppose Miss
Clara Lancaster was regarded generally as
the local beauty of the period. She mar-
60 Sixty Years in Concord,
ried a swarthy Cuban of at least middle age,
and it is doubtful whether any one in Con-
cord knows what became of her.
Concord was so sparsely settled that I went
usually across lots from my home on Main
street to the academy, where Academy street
now is, without causing inconvenience to
anybody.
A little battle of the Tom-Brown-at-Rugby
description, between two of the older boys,
was fought one evening, and divided us for
a few days into rival clansmen. One of the
belligerents, George Renton, died in Boston
a few years ago ; the other lives in St. Louis.
Oratory and the drama were not utterly
neglected at the academy. Our great
speaker, so I thought, was Samuel Morril,
son of ex-Governor David L. Morril. Car-
dinal Wolsey charged Cromwell to fling away
ambition ; but our school had never heard of
this priestly advice, and we essayed a public
dramatic exhibition. Some scenes from the
tragedy of Pizarro, by Kotzebue, were given
to a crowded house. This is one of the
passages :
Gomez, — On yonder hill, among the palm-
trees, we have surprised an old Peruvian.
Escape by flight he could not, and we seized
him unresisting.
Pizarro, — Drag him before us.
Personal Recollections. 61
I have never seen these lines since they were
delivered in the old academy, and they may
not be correctly given.
This play was followed by a farce, of
which it is enough to say that it was the
production of a school-boy, William Chad-
bourne. The text and the acting were what
they were. The members of the six Shake-
speare clubs now in Concord might have
smiled behind their fans had they been pres-
ent on that elevating occasion. This was
perhaps the last flicker of the candle on that
hill of science. The doors of the academy
did not reopen to pupils. The building was
taken down, and wrought into some houses
now standing near Main street, south of the
last residence of Governor Hill.
IV.
I was at Pembroke Acaderay for the sum-
mer and autumn sessions of 1844, 1845, and
1846. The town of Pembroke, like Gold-
smith's Auburn a viUage of the plain, was
at that time rent by factions, one being par-
tisans of tlie Academy, and the other champ-
ions of the G3'mnasium, a younger and rival
school, alleged to be less orthodox in its
teaching. Church and state were divided on
this school question. On the way to the
Academy I was often the target for the gibes,
and sometimes tlie missiles, of students or
enterprising friends of the younger seminary.
I could throw a stone with some force and
accuracy on suitable occasions, and those of
us who lived north of the Academv, and had
to pass the Gymnasium four times a day,
finally obtained peace by being always ready
to fight for it.
The principals of the Academy during the
above-named years were, successively, Charles
G. Burnham and Jonathan Tenney; assist-
ants, or preceptresses as they were called.
Miss Elizabeth Fuller, Miss Emily Pillsbury,
and Miss Clara A. Brown. Before this I
Personal Recollections, 63
had seen a Latin dictionary, and Andrews
and Stoddard's Latin Reader and Grammar.
At Pembroke Virgil was read, and also Sal-
lust. Arithmetic was not very difficult, and
I could solve the usual examples. Mr. Ten-
ney sometimes sent me to the blackboard to
show some older boy the way out of trouble ;
but in declamation and original composition
I had not good standing. None of the pupils
of that period has attained a very eminent
station in life, so far as I know. Albert
Palmer obtained the mayoralty of Boston ;
John Thornton Wood, who wrote ''''faciam
viam^^ under his name on the fly-leaf of
school-books, became a writer on the Phila-
delphia North American^ and is now a resi-
dent of Washington ; and Natt Head blew a
bugle in the Hooksett band and reached tlie
governor's chair in New Hampshire.
My room-mate at Pembroke was Nathaniel
L. Upham, now a Congregational clerg3^man
residing in Philadelphia. Rev. Abraham
Burnham, Nathaniel's grandfather, took us
into his family, and was as kind to us as if
we had been his sons. My grandfather had
a part at his ordination in 1808, when the
Concord paper said, — *' To the credit of the
people who attended, during a long exercise
the greatest degree of order and decorum
64 Sixty Years in Concord,
prevailed." Mr. Burnham had a serious face,
thoughtful expression, and was rather abrupt
in manner, so his real character did not man-
ifest itself to everybody. He kept a good
horse, and was fond of having us drive with
him to " Buck street," or North Pembroke.
There was an abundance of wholesome food
on his table, at which we were never seated
until, all assembled and standing, the divine
blessing had been solicited. He liked cheer-
ful conversation and a lively joke. I remem-
ber an occasion at family prayers when he
read a chapter of the Old Testament, in
which mention is made of the Hebronites.
Closing the Bible with a smart bang, he re-
marked, — " We have some Hebronites in New
Hampshire." " Why, where ? " said Mrs.
Burnham, with manifest surprise. " Up in
Hebron," replied he gaily, then arose and
began a fervent prayer. .To those who
deemed him a severe man this would have
seemed a queer thing to do, but the truth is
he was not a s'evere man. He was a brisk,
hearty New England clergyman, sound and
mellow, not too theological to be human.
My father was not subjected to great ex-
pense for my living in Rev. Mr. Burnham's
family. The stipulated price was $1.50 a
week, but in consideration of my driving the
Personal Recollections. 66
cow to and from pasture one week, and carry-
ing wood from shed to kitchen and watering
the horse the alternate week, the price was
reduced to efl.25. My room-mate performed
like service on alternate weeks. What
would a lively Harvard student, maintaining
a suite of rooms, a piano,' and bouquet for his
centre table, with annual college and per-
sonal expenses of from 12,000 to #5,000,
think of so small an outlay ?
My journeyings to and fro with tliat cow
were satisfactory opportunities for reflection
and observation. The sleek creature had the
right of way, for it had been settled in the
clash of battle, with much pawing of dust,
and bellowing, and onset of horns, that she
could defend her privilege against all milch
kine along the road. There were berries to
gather, squirrels to chase, and skunks to
hurl stones after; also shy upland plovers,
fluttering and limping away from pasture
nooks, enticing one away from their homes
where beautiful eggs were hid in soft herb-
age under overhanging berry-bushes. Trout
would come up for a grasshopper to the sur-
face of every pool in a brook from which they
have now been gone these forty years; and
there was that wonderful Fife house, under
the builder's hand then, not completed yet.
66 Sixty Years in Concord.
I was permitted to come home to Concord
on alternate Saturdays to remain over Sun-
day, the homeward journey being made on
foot, and the return usually by railway as far
as Robinson's Ferry. The first time I went
toward Pembroke Academy by rail, Hon.
N. G. Upham (my room-mate's father),
superintendent of the Concord railroad, told
Mr. George Clough, the conductor, to pass
me free for that one time, the first occasion
on which I travelled as a " dead-head " — a de-
lightful experience. Gail Hamilton says it
seems to be a hardship for anybody to pay
car fare, because one wants all his money to
spend at the journey's end ; and to the truth
of that statement abundant testimony might
be found.
Being able during school hours to prepare
myself sufficiently to pass the recitations,
there was time for woods and fields, and I
knew every eddy in the river, all the good
fishing-places, the best forests for chestnuts,
and did such shooting as could be done with
a long bow, a gun being prohibited. Knox's
woods were abundant in nuts, but an edict
of the proprietor, enforced by his big dog,
barred us out; still we foraged around the
edges under far-reaching trees.
Our regular bathing-place was a pool in
Personal Recollections, 67
the Merrimack, and here one afternoon was
dragged out a boy named McQuesten, who
had ventured beyond his depth, and was
splashing and struggling in distress. Near
by this favorite spot was the eccentric Daniel
Flagg's shower-bath. Here was a hogshead
held aloft on poles, and piped so that it would
drop an avalanche of cold spring water from
a height of twenty feet on the stark and
cranky individual willing to defy mosquitoes
and the e3'^es of the forest. I never saw this
invigorating apparatus put to use, and sus-
pect it did not give its owner the satisfaction
which he had hoped to derive from it. Daniel
was a queer character, not over fond of work.
Barefooted in summer, thinly clad all the
year, gaunt and pinched, he claimed to use
for food or raiment no article to obtain which
had cost some animal its life. He fellow-
shipped to some extent with the people
known as " Come-outers."
Many of my schoolmates at Pembroke
were in training for college, to which I had
no inclination, but a new Bell school-house
having been built, I was there for a while,
with Mr. Hall Roberts as instructor.
V.
Although the boys of 18-40-' 45 were with-
out tennis, croquet, and cigarettes, tliere was
sufficient amusement. Marbles and ball were
taken up as soon, as the snow was gone, base-
ball being a favorite game, altliough it had
not the modern rules and strange devices.
We walked on high stilts, flew kites away up
in the blue ether, and built miniature saw-
mills on West's brook. With the aid of a
pliant stick and a short knotted string, we
shot darts out of sight skyward. The most
conspicuous ball-ground was the state-house
park, and a game could usually be found
there any week day in April or May; on Fast
Day, three or four games at the same time.
On the stone wall, then the north boundary
of the park, was perched a row of spectators,
like swallows on a telephone wire. There
was no restraining reverence for the capitol.
Boys with lofty aspirations climbed by the
lightning-rod from the ground, and crossed
the dome of the edifice as it then was, to
seat themselves astride the eagle's neck.
This was a favorite pastime for Abiel Carter,
Personal Recollections, 69
and his brother, John W. D., since citizens of
Portland, Maine. Abiel went up one night
before a Fourth of July, and. hung the
national flag on the eagle ; at daylight he
discovered it was " Union down," and climbed
up again to right it. A boy who thought
tliat much of the old flag could not be driven
into the rebel army, if he did have life and
property at stake in Texas when the storm of
war burst over the South in 1861. Doric
hall, as it is now called, then known merely
as the " Area," was used occasionally as a
public assembly-room. There Daniel Web-
ster once received a popular greeting, and so,
I think, did Gen. Sam Houston, of Texas.
The Seamen's Friend Society of ladies held
sometimes a June fair there, in the hope of
capturing many half dollars for their cause
from rural legislators, — a hope which never
had full fruition.
The river and intervale were places of
frequent resort, for we took delight in the
stream, and in its green banks and sandy
edges. In the summer vacation-days a whole
afternoon was frequently given to the water,
reserving only time enough to get our heads
well dried before the anxious maternal inspec-
tion at supper-time. The west bank of the
river for an eighth of a mile above the " Free
70 Sixty Years in Concord,
Bridge" was the popular evening bathing-
place for apprentices and mechanics, and a
long line of young A polios could be found
there from late afternoon until dark. The
water was deep then, with no shoals or sand-
bars, and there was good diving. Edward E.
Sturtevant, then a printer in Concord, after-
ward a major of the Fifth New Hampshire,
" New Hampshire's first volunteer," killed
in the assault of the Army of the Potomac on
the heights of Fredericksburg in December,
1862, was accustomed to go under with a
cigar, lighted end inside his mouth, come up
a long way off, and puff the smoke in a
leisurely swim to the further shore. My
comrade, George Gault, could go off a spring
board with the grace of a professional ath-
lete, turn a beautiful curve, and plunge into
the water straight as a pickerel, leaving
hardly a ripple behind.
The Merrimack to our boyish eyes looked
broader and grander than it is : to me it has
always been the most delightful of rivers.
David A. Wasson, a native of Maine, where
rivers abound, says in one of his essa3^s,^ —
'* Sweet old Merrimack stream, the river that
we would not wish to forget, even by the
waters of the river of life ! " It was our
common fishing-water, too, and seldom it was
Personal Recollections, 71
that we came home empty-handed. We
caught perch, chub, roach, horn-pout, and
pickerel. Although the small streams in our
countj', all tributary to the Merrimack, are
among the best natural trout waters, I never
saw but one trout caught in the river itself ;
that one was taken between the mouth of
Turkey river and Garvin's falls. I have
heard of an occasional one in Turkey pond.
I took a pickerel which weighed over three
pounds at the outlet of Fort Eddy, when I
was but just strong enough to land him, and
one of the South End boys, Theodore French,
caught one twice as large not far above the
lower bridge. Salmon were then taken at
Garvin's falls, before the great dam was built
at Lawrence in 1848. The last of those
lordly fish I heard of in the river, before that
high dam was completed, were taken at Gar-
vin's, and sold in Concord to Joseph A.
Gilmore, who shared them with his friends.
Between those two, and the fish now occa-
sionally seen in the attempted restocking of
the stream, was a long interregnum.
Just below the Lawrence dam, in 1851-54,
I had opportunity to see many shad taken in
a seine, and once was looking on when a
great sturgeon escaped by leaping over the
edge of the net as it was drawn to shore.
72 Sixty Years in Concord.
There was some navigation on the river.
Canal-boats came up from Boston (by use of
the Middlesex canal as far as Lowell) from
1816 to 1843, having one landing just below
the Pembroke bridge, and another near the
Federal bridge. One of the means to enter-
tain a president in Concord in 1817 was to
give him a boat excursion down the river to
Garvin's falls. There was an odor like that
of city wharves about the boating company's
landings ; — bales and boxes of goods, bundles
of iron, and hogslieads of molasses were vis-
ible. One navy-yard where canal-boats were
constructed was on the north side of Centre,
between Main and State streets ; another was
on Hall street. When ready for the water
the boats were hauled away and launched,
with some frolic and possibly some tippling.
The granite for Quincy nuarket in Boston was
boated down the river. A small steamboat
had come up from the "Hub" as long ago as
1819. On at least one occasion of high ,
water, boats landed hogsheads of molasses at
the distillery, which stood where Stratton &
Co. now dispense "Alpine Daisy " flour.
Rafts of timber from forests north of Con-
cord were taken down the river, some of
them with rustic huts thereon, whence came
the glow of firelight, and glimpses of a cook
Personal HecoUeetions. 73
preparing the raftsmen's supper. Some of
this timber was wrought on the lower Merri-
mack into the staunch frames of ships known
all around the world. It seemed to us, as we
sat in the clover and buttercups by the river,
where the bdb-o-links sung and the bees gath-
ered honey, as if the adjacent nortli region
whence the water came, with now and then
a boat or a raft on its bosom, was a vast mys-
terious country, indefinite and unknown.
An English artist named Harvey, an asso-
ciate of the National Academy, once made a
picture of Concord from the east bank of the
river above the Pembroke or lower bridge, in
the foreground of which was almost exactly
what 1 have attempted to describe. Litho-
graphic copies of this picture were printed in
London. I know of but three in existence
now ; — one is the property of Mr. John M.
Hill, another is owned by a bookseller in
Bristol, England, and the third is in a Con-
cord barber shop.
Along the river bank were groups of maple
trees, from which we drew sap in sunny spring
days for boiling down to sugar in the even-
ing. On one of these sap-gathering play-
days, at high spring tide, we lost an axe
belonging to Mr. John Stickney, and it lay
quietly at the bottom of the stream until
74 Sixty Years in Concord,
summer drought enabled us to recover it, to
our great satisfaction, before its loss had
been discovered, and not much the worse for
its watery burial.
The " Paradise woods," a forest of grand
old pines, which stood opposite the site of
the present Blossom Hill Cemetery, was in
the spring a place abounding with Mayflow-
ers and evergreen. The ground in. these
woods became dry as soon as the snow was
gone, and there was a solemn, attractive
grandeur in the stately pines. When those
trees were swept away by the axe, desolation
reigned in their stead. There was also a
beautiful grove of large trees, mainly elms,
on the "fan" north of Fort Eddy, to which
we went on hot summer afternoons to. enjoy
the cool breeze, the waving grass,, and the
songs of birds which nested there in great
numbers. Their nests were never molested
by us. Toward autumn we roasted corn and
potatoes, and sat down to pastoral feasts,
where good digestion waited on appetite, and
health on both. There were also on the
meadows many staunch old hickory trees, at
which we kept busy in autumn holidays lay-
ing by a store of nuts for winter, there being
considerable rivalry to determine who could
gather most.
Personal Recollections. 75
The annual militia trainings in May and
the autumnal regimental musterings were
interesting and picturesque events, which
assembled the Concord Light Infantry (dat-
ing back to at least 1797), Capt. David
Neal, with blue coats, white trousers, and
waving plumes of red and white ; the
Columbian Artillery, Capt. Thomas P. Hill,
clad in patriotic blue ; the Troop, with red
coats and horses of every color, led by the
redoubtable Cotton K. Simpson ; and the
Borough Riflemen, Capt. Timothy Dow,
with a front rank of pioneers dressed like
Indians and bearing big tomahawks. Noth-
ing precisely like these is likely ever to go
through our streets again. The more
numerous train-bands without uniforms,
but provided with muskets, cartridge boxes,
knapsacks, and of course canteens, obtained
in some way the rather queer name of
" string-beans."
These militiamen, such as were left of
them, made their last collective appearance
in 1861, as Home Guards, "not to leave town
except in case of an invasion," with Josiah
Stevens, captain, Asa McFarland, first lieu-
tenant, and Hamilton E. Perkins, first
sergeant.
Coasting could be done, in its season, on
76 Sixty Years in Concord
any street in town which had sufficient slope :
no policeman would gather us in. I have
slid from a point on Main street near Bridge
street, northward as far as Montgomery
street, where there is very little declivity
now ; and Bridge street (before the building
of the railroad bridge) and Ferry- street were
very lively coasting-places, railroad trains
passing so infrequently that they did not
interrupt the sport to a serious or very dan-
gerous degree* I once saw a big sleigh-
bottom, with a dozen boys thereon, come
flying down Montgomery street, and at the
junction with Main take a countryman's
horse out of a passing sleigh and land the
animal clear over on the east sidewalk, the
boys rolling off barely in season to escape
harm. This affair was treated as a merely
funny adventure, — no fuss, no writs, no law-
yers, and no half column in a daily news-
paper. There may have been some anxious
hearts for a few hours. I know I saw Andrew
Chadbourne roll off the flying sled as he saw
what must occur, run into his father's house,
and come out after a while to ask the artless
victim of the mischance how it all happened.
Some of us were coasting on Ferry street
on an afternoon holiday, probably in 1843,
when looking toward the sun we espied the
Personal Recollections, 77
comet of that year. This was before the
strange visitor had begun to be talked about
or discussed in such newspapers as came to
our notice.
A gun is usually a coveted possession, and
there was in our house a weapon which my
father called a fowling-piece, bought when
he was an apprentice in Boston, in 1822,
from a store in Dock square, at a cost of ten
dollars. It was obtained for use in militia
trainbands, but he did some shooting with it
on Boston common. When it reached my
hands it was very long, although some inches
of its original proportions had been shorn off
at the muzzle end. The calibre, too, was
large ; so it took a sight of ammunition to
load it, and when discharged, it scattered-
shot widely and none too effectively. There
was a small flaw in the barrel, a few inches
from the lock, which was the cause of some
solicitude, but the arm proved to be safe for
the gunner, and not very dangerous to any-
thing else.
George Gault had the use of a similar gun
from his uncle, John Stickney. It was at
least as old as mine, much homelier, with a
curious bend in its barrel, a depression be-
tween lock and muzzle very evident to the
eye when the piece was sighted, probably a
78 Sixty Years in Concord.
caprice of the gun-maker with an intent to
give it long range. Its shooting qualities
were neither better nor worse than those of
my weapon.
Much time was spent by us in the forests
and fields. The pursuit of fish and game im-
parted habits of ol>servation which were
useful in after life. In the right season there
was almost always some reward for our hunt
to be found within easy distance. About the
year 1850 I saw a sportsman come out of a
cornfield which bordered on Ferry street,
half way from Main street to Fort Eddy,
carrying twenty or thirty snipe and wood-
cock. He was shooting in a way which I
had never seen before, with a handsome
double gun and a fine setter dog. We got
ruffed grouse within a mile" of the state-house ;
one I discovered in my father's garden.
Many a woodcock have I seen flying across
Main street in the early evening, and wild
pigeons were sometimes numerous in the
vicinity. The last mentioned birds I occa-
sionally shot from trees on Main street, also
in my father's garden, but oftener on the
meadows and Pine plain. Once I secured a
dozen pigeons, only one at a shot, about a
mile from the city hall; but this was not
done with the old fowling-piece before men-
Personal Recollections, 79
tioned. It was not" so far as that from the
city hall that I came near getting a wild
goose. The great bird was hit, and a little
more discretion on my part would have
secured it, but I lost my head with excite-
ment, and it escaped into the pine woods on
the plain. We were often as short of ammu-
nition as was the Continental army, and such
old iron and lead as could be found were bar-
tered for powder and shot. As our shooting
was not altogether approved in certain mater-
nal quarters, it was hard to obtain money
from the home government.
There were in winter some excellent skat-
ing-places on the intervale. The meadows
not being then well drained, we could often
skate from where are now the sheds of the
New England Granite Company southward
to the frog-pond below the Concord & Mon-
treal engine-house. During winter freshets
water sometimes covered the intervale, ice
formed, and a grand skating park resulted.
Occasionally we found smooth ice on the
river, and went flying as far up as Sewall's
Falls. My first skates were fished out of
a box of half-forgotten rubbish, and rigged
with leather thongs. When discovered,
brown rust lay thickly on the blades, but
hard work with brick dust and an old file
80 Sixty Years in Concord.
took that off. The skate of that day had a
longitudinal groove iu the edge which came
in contact with the ice, and a good pair, with
curves in front ending in a brass acorn over
the toe, cost a dollar and a quarter. George
Gault's brother William sent him a pair
from New York which had some elegant
double curves at the toe, two grooves in the
cutting edge of the blades, and other devices
which stirred our souls, and caused us to
regard him as a most fortunate being. We
called those " real Holland skates."
Christie Renton, daughter of Dr. Peter
Renton, was, I think, the first girl who did
any skating in Concord. She learned on
Horseshoe pond, with the assistance of her
brother John, wlio was a powerful skater.
There was a story current among us that
John once started at the upper end of the
Horseshoe, and came down to the bridge with
so much headway tliat he jumped clear over
it, that structure being then nearer the water
level than it is now. Tliis was as famous a
story among us as is that of "Alvarado's
leap'' in Mexican history. The Northern
Railroad embankment was not constructed
then, and there was a clear run from the head
of the pond.
VI.
Not very many books were accessible in '
the earlier part of the period which I have
tried to describe. My list included some
volumes of the Penny Magazine and Merry* %
Museum^ Banyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
Harper's Family Library, Goldsmith's "Ani-
mated Nature," "The Scottish Chiefs,"
" Thaddeus of Warsaw," the RoUo Books, a
few other of Jacob Abbot's stories, and a
little later a real treasure-house, — Chambers'
Miscellany. " Robinson Crusoe " was read
and re-read. Josephus's History was among
the possessions of the Stickney tavern.
Some boy friend had the "Swiss Family Rob-
inson " and the " Arabian Nights." If there
had been a place like the Concord City
Library, it would have been a great satisfac-
tion. Maria Edgeworth's novels were in our
house, but not much read. Dickens's novels
were the first I went through with real satis-
faction. The "Pickwick Papers" I tried to
read, but could not get interested in them, —
a confession I never dared make, until I heard
Hon. Asa Fowler, whose love for books no
one would question, say the same for himself.
6
82 Sixty Years in Concord.
Three weekly newspapers came to our home,
the Congregational Journal The New Hamp-
shire Statesman^ and the Boston Journal.
After my fatlier became the publisher of the
Statesman the second time, in 1851, news-
paper reading became too abundant.
Mention has been made of a few of many
taverns on Main street: The Washington
House, Merrimack House, Stickney tavern,
American House (not the existing one of
that name), Eagle Coffee House, Columbian
hotel, Phoenix hotel. Elm House, and Carter's
tavern. Although strong liquors had ceased
to be considered good drinks, bar-rooms were
not banished from sight, nor driven to by-
places and holes in the ground. I was not
allowed to visit taverns or drinking-places,
but was induced once to go to " Sam Clark's,"
a semi-respectable retreat within a house then
standing where is now the Phoenix block, to
get a first acquaintance with oysters. Will-
iam Chadbourne and myself invested all our
money in a savory stew, and divided the pro-
ceeds of the investment. Its cost was nine-
pence in Spanish coins, equivalent to twelve
and a h*alf cents. Most of the silver coins in
circulation were Spanish or Mexican,* many
*In 1801 Thomas Jefferson and John Randolph attempted
to abolish the national mint and do away with the United
States coins, which they styled an '* insignia of sovereignty,"
or an assertion that the Nation is superior to the State.
Personal Recollections, 83
of them so worn that the mint stamp was
indistinct. Shop and store prices were not
stated in our national money, but were " four-
pence ha'penny " (six and a quarter cents),
" two and thre'pence" (thirty-seven and a half
cents), and so forth. Bank notes issued
in one state might not be current in
another. Counterfeits were so common that
every merchant kept a "detector" near his
elbow, and paper currency was never satisfac-
torj' until the establishment of the national
banking system in 1863-'64.
There being then no local daily newspaper,
the taverns were places of common resort to
tell and hear town news. The old Phoenix,
opened in January, 1819, was a rendezvous
of my father's, and a most respectable cir-
cle of Whig gentlemen could be found there
any cool evening, gathered around the cheer-
ful fire in the bar-room, an apartment about
twenty by thirty feet in area. The adorn-
ments of the room were long rows of sus-
pended crook-necked squashes, which dis-
appeared gradually before the approach of
spring, and a few pictures, " Susannah and
the Elders" being as conspicuous as any of
the collection. Major Ephraim Hutchins
was the landlord, and Mr. Solon Stanley
officiated behind the counter. After the brief
84 Sixty Years in Concord.
reign of William Dole, one was succeeded
by Mr. A. C. Pierce, and the other by Mr.
S. H. Dumas, who has been for many years
landlord of the Boar's Head at Hampton.
The Plioenix was Daniel Webster's abiding-
place when he came to Concord, and Gen.
W infield Scott was th^re when on his way to
Maine at the period of the northeastern
boundary dispute, in 1841-42, with England.
When I had attained wisdom enough to be
permitted to go occasionally to the Plioenix,
Hamilton Hutchins, Lewis Downing, Sam-
uel Coffin, J. Stephens Abbot, Ira Perley,
Woodbridge Odlin, Charles Smart, Joseph
G. Wyatt, Joseph A. Gilniore, Abel B. Holt,
and others, were in more or less regular
attendance. There was no drinking ; it was
mere sociability and friendliness. Democrats
holding similar rank in town resorted to the
American House, corner of Main and Park
streets.
Midway between these two hostelries was
the Eagle Coffee House, a most comfortable
tavern, built in 1827 by Mr. William Rich-
ardson, who came from Methuen, Mass.
Until then its site had been an apple orchard.
Here was a large tavern hall called the
Grecian, where on the wall back of the ros-
trum was what purported to be a picture of
Personal Recollerctions, 85
the Battle of New Orleans. Here Daniel
Webster once received his friends, but the
floor weakened under the weight of a numer-
ous assembly, and there was a sudden
adjournment to the state-house.
At the gatherings whicli I have mentioned
at the Phoenix, Mr. Odlin had always a fund
of wit to distribute. Ira Perley, a lawyer of
excellent attainments, highly respected by
his fellow-citizens, an oracle in the Whig
circle, was considered a possible governor or
member of congress. Although afterward
chief-justice of New Hampshire, he never
had the nicest judicial temper, — was fitful,
moody, and, in conversation at least, occa-
sionally unjust.
Mr. Wyatt, being a daily messenger of the
express to Boston, was an important acquisi-
tion to the circle. He could often tell of
occurrences in that city before they were set
forth in the newspapers. The murder of Dr.
George Parkman in Boston, in November,
1849, made a great impression on the public
mind ; and happening to hear from Major
Wyatt that the murderer had been discovered
and was a professor in Harvard Medical Col-
lege, I went home with the intelligence, to
be told by my father that it was preposterous
nonsense : still it turned out to be truth, and
86 Sixty Years in Concord,
my father read, in the Vale of Chamouni, in
September, 1850, an account of Dr. John W.
Webster's execution on the gallows in pen-
alty for the crime. The interior of Mr.
Wyatt's home was enlivened with portraits
of American statesmen. If the men them-
selves lost Mr. Wyatt's esteem, it was his
custom to turn the portraits head downward
on the walls, permanently or temporarily as
they might deserve. During periods of more
than usual political interest, the Phoenix
loungers overflowed into the south parlor, on
the same floor as the bar-room, and filled the
broad front piazza. These people at the
Phoenix were great admirers of Henry Clay,
and took that statesman's failure in the presi-
dential election of 1844 very much to heart,
as they would surely have done the defeat
of Webster if the latter had been the can-
didate.
The first time my eyes beheld Daniel Web-
ster I was a school-boy in the street, ignorant
that he was in town, but it needed no herald
to tell me who he was ; no other man could
have that imperial presence. My awe was
equal to that of the navvy, who pointed at
him in a Liverpool street, in 1839, and ex-
claimed, " There goes a king."
Nearly half a century ago I was told that
Personal Recollections. 87
my grandfather was the officiating clergyman
at the marriage of Daniel Webster and Gmce
Fletcher. Lately I have been looking about
to see if any corroborative evidence is on
record.
Miss Grace Fletcher was the daughter of a
Congregational clergyman of Hopkinton, but
at the date of her marriage her father was
dead, her mother probably re-married, and she
herself living with a married sister in Salis-
bury.
My grandfather was a tutor in Dartmouth
college when Mr. Webster was the foremost
student there, and they were probably known
then to one another. He was also, as I have
before stated, a trustee of the college during
the controversy which resulted in the famous
Dartmouth College case in the United States
supreme court, where Mr. Webster made the
argument, which brought tears to the eyes of
the great Virginian, Chief Justice John Mar-
shall, and wrung a favorable decison from a
reluctant court.
There was a color of probability to what
I was told, and a search for the truth has
amused me, but at the church in Salisbury
this marriage is recorded under the head of
" Marriages by Mr. Worcester," a long record
running from Nov. 12, 1791, to Nov. 28, 1830,
i
88 Sixty Years in Concord.
when Rev. Thomas Worcester was pastor of
the Salisbury church, and I suppose it may
have become the habit to write down any
marriage which occurred, without careful
regard to the heading. Mr. Webster himself
seems to have made an error as to the date of
his marriage. In his brief autobiography,
written in 1829, he says, " June 24, 1808, I
was married." To be sure this does not say
exactly that such was the date of his wed-
ding, but, standing as it does in a sentence by
itself, that is what it has been taken to mean.
If that is what it means, it was clearly a slip
of memory.
On the records of the town of Salisbury is
the following: "Daniel Webster, Esq., of
Portsmouth, and Miss Grace Fletcher, of
Hopkinton, N. H., were married May 29,
1808." This does not give the name of the
clergyman.
At the date of his marriage, Mr. Webster
lived in Portsmouth. In the Portsmouth
Oracle of June 11, 1808, is this: "Married
in Salisbury, Daniel Webster, Esq., of this
town, to Miss Grace Fletcher." This gives
neither date nor clergyman.
The Concord Gazette of Tuesday, May 31,
1808, does a little better. It says, — " Mar-
ried in Salisbury, on Sunday evening last.
Personal Recollections. 89
Daniel Webster, Esq., of Portsmouth, to Miss
Grace Fletcher."
This Concord Gazette of Tuesday probably
went to press Monday evening, as was the cus-
tom of that day, and I have wondered if my
grandfather preached in Salisbury Sunday,
May 29, 1808, married the young people, who
were probably both known to him, drove home
to Concord Monday morning, and attended
to the publication of that notice promptly in
the Gazette^ which was then printed by his
friend J. C. Tuttle. To add to the possi-
bility of my grandfather's having been in the
pulpit at Salisbury on the above named Sun-
day is the fact that he was to preach the
election sermon in Concord on the follow-
ing Thursday. Bouton's History of Concord
has a partial list of the preachers of election
sermons, in which another name than my
grandfather's appears for 1808, but this is
assuredly an error. The same Gazette which
printed the notice of marriage says, — " The
Rev. Mr. McFarland, of this town, is ap-
pointed to deliver the Election sermon on
Thursday." I have been inclined to think
that the preparation of that sermon (copies
of which are in existence) for the opening of
the legislature so far occupied his time the
week before the marriage that it might have
90 Sixty Years in Concord,
been very convenient for him to exchange
with Parson Worcester of Salisbury on the
Sunday of the wedding. But after all, I
have found no proof that Dr. McFarland
officiated at the espousals.
The annual town elections were opened on
the morning of the second Tuesday of March,
and continued down to Friday or Saturday ;
at least once the meeting held into a second
week. As the elections were at the town
hall nearly opposite my home, and as our
friends were active Whigs, and often beaten,
those great assemblies were interesting,
although mostly unsatisfactory. Sometimes
there were discussions on town affairs be-
tween men like Richard Bradley, Joseph Low,
Samuel Coffin, and James Peverly, on one
side, and Isaac Hill, Franklin Pierce, Robert
Davis, and Joseph Robinson, on the opposite
side. There were violent personal hatreds
between Whigs and Democrats. Ex-Gov.
Hill of the Patriot^ a red-hot Jackson man,
and in fact one of what is called in history
"Jackson's Kitchen Cabinet," used a good
many lively nouns and adjectives in political
newspaper attacks. These ways became the
ways of partisans, and there was sometimes
hot and fretful talk on the town-hall floor.
General Pierce was too ambitious to brook
Personal Recollections, 91
control, so he rebelled a little against the
authority of the political leader, but kept
inside the party lines. Within those lines
there was an exhilarating scrimmage on Sat-
urday, Feb. 18, 1842. Two factions of the
Democracy, " radicals " and " conservatives,"
striving for control of a caucus in the town
hall, came in collision, seats and desks were
smashed, wigs flew in the dusty air, and
bloody noses were seen on most respectable
faces. There was a great uproar and a clat-
ter of flying feet, combatants chasing their
foes as far down as Centre street. Two
Patriot newspapeiTS were then seeking party
favor, the Nexv HampsJdre Patriot and HilVs
New Harnpsiiire Patriot,
The old town hall was provided with a
speakers' platform at the west end, opposite
the entrance, and a broad open floor led from
entrance to platform. Rows of benches were
on either side, facing not toward the plat-
form, but at right angles to it, as in the
British house of commons. On the south
wall hung a large clock-case with a dial, but
it was a hollow sham, into which a boy could
climb. For a considerable period the even-
ing meetings of the First church were held
in the old hall, and so afterward were the
services of the early St. Paul's Episcopal
church.
92 Sixty Years in Concord,
Town-meeting week was in some sense a
town holiday, — a time for cakes and ale, gin-
gerbread and molasses candy. Peddlers of
various notions, and hucksters' booths, were
numerous in the trampled snow of the town-
house hill. People from outlying districts,
on the borders of Boscawen, Bow, Canter-
bury, Chichester, Dunbarton, Loudon, and
Pembroke (a cluster of dignified English
names), came in the morning, some of them
to stay all day and go home in the evening
with the smell of rum in their garments.
In the choice of moderator no check-list
was, used. The chairman of the selectmen,
standing at the handle of the big front door,
received the ballots of the voters, who, to
prevent double voting, entered and remained
within the hall perhaps a weary half day, un-
til the polls were closed, although there was
an occasional escape through some neglected
window. In 1843 Joseph Low, a Whig, was
elected moderator in opposition to Franklin
Pierce, Democrat.
There were usually ballots of three parties,
— Free Soil, Whig, and Democratic, — and
sometimes those of bolters or factions got
into the field. George Gault and I once
carved in pine wood two droll devices for
headings, and printed tickets at my father's
Personal Recollections, 93
press, designed to ridicule certain local poli-
ticians, a South End gentleman being the
especial object of our displeasure. Taking
exceptional care in the printing, we carried
our productions to the town hall, but were
afraid to distribute them. Concealing the
packages imperfectly in the crevices of a
woodpile on iMr. John Stickney's estate, we
went away for delibemtion, and on our return
were astonished to find a big, sober-faced man
selling our tickets for ten cents each, in a
very active market. Then we realized that
*'*' There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,"
for we had no more than ten cents each to
spend in all town-meeting week.
This great annual meeting brought all the
queer local characters to the front — among
others, Benjamin Green, a half-crazy English-
man, with perhaps a broadside of original
doggerel verses ; John Virgin, a cranky pen-
sioner of the War of 1812, who served under
General Harrison at Tippecanoe, vehement
and sometimes eloquent in praise of his old
commander and Henry Clay; and a man
from "The Borough," who went striding
about, with a pole held at his shoulder as if
it were a gun, shouting " Guards to the right !
Dragoons to the left! Advance the centre !"
94 Sixty Years in Concord,
Such queer people seem to be extinct.
"Our Decided Characters," who were por-
trayed by Mr. Charles L. Wheeler in a Con-
cord Directory published by him in 1853,
have apparently left no successors.
As long as annual sessions of the state
legislature began in June, so long was Inaug-
uration or Election day the best holiday of
the year. It came in the most delightful of
all the months, and the wliole town was made
ready for it. Contracts for house building
and painting were timed to be completed
before that day, and lawns were raked of
their last dead leaf. New clothes were
brought home from the tailors, and new bon-
nets had their first outing. Out-of-town visi-
tors swarmed in, arrayed in their best. The
military turned out, — infantry, artillery, and
(in 1860-'65) the Governor's Horse Guards.
This was a brave show. To be sure the
Horse Guards had their difficulties ; what
military company does not? Their untrained
horses could never quite comprehend why
sabres should be drawn, and the flash of steel
about their heads scattered the whole caval-
cade into separate units. Then there was
one occasion when " bold John Barleycorn "
got in his work. A bustling officer of the
guards mounted his horse at the Phoenix,-
Personal Recollections, 95
before the hour for parade, and made a head-
long dash down Main street, slashing with
his sabre right and left at imaginary foes,
and putting to desperate flight a demure cow
at the South End. This achievement being
satisfactorily accomplished, he came back up
the street at like pace, and landed prone in
the dust in front of Phoenix block, exclaim-
ing, " The horse was not to blame !" Thence
he was borne off to bed, and the horse, which
had stood quietly by the fallen rider, was led
away to the stable. Such scenes did not
occur on Main street every day, or every
Election dav either. The career of that
Horse Guard was over.
*' His banner led the spears no more amidst the hiUs
of Spain."
If any person of the olden time had fore-
told the present biennial winter sessions,
without music and banners, fakirs and magi-
cians, lemonade and 'lection cake, he would
have been regarded as a hopeless lunatic.
There was work as well as play for the
boys of 1845, — work in the garden, hoeing
and digging, fruit-gathering, wood to saw,
split, and pile, and paths to shovel in winter.
No grocer of that day delivered by wagon
the goods sold to his customers. He surren-
96 Sixty Years in Concord,
dered commodities at his store, and the pur-
chaser got them home as he best could. In
such service my wheelbarrow was useful,
and my father would dispatch me to the
grocery, usually that of Deacon Nathaniel
Evans, which stood where is now the Chase
building, with a written order for whatever
was wanted^ drawn in his strong, character-
istic hand, which ran usually in this way :
Mr. Evans: Please deliver to this lad the
following [here was a list of articles], and
charge the same to the account of
Your obt. servant,
Asa McFakland.
all as carefully capitalized and punctuated
as if it had been a paper of the State De-
partment. This was rather serious business
when the supph^ of wheat flour and sugar
and molasses needed replenishing, but there
were neither delays nor accidents on the line.
The streets and walks were not crowded with
traffic.
I was often at the printing-office, then in
the third story of Stickney's building, which
faced the state-house park, to render such
service as was witliin my strength and ca-
pacity. First-class printers made constant
use of the dry-press for restoring finish to
paper which had been wet before printing.
Personal Recollections, 97
and indented by the impression of type. The
practice of wetting paper was then universal.
To restore the printed sheets to their original
finish, they were placed between hard,
smoothly finished pasteboards, and subjected
to great pressure in powerful screw presses.
It seems as if I must have " put in " and
" taken out " in those years enough sheets of
paper to cover the whole territory of Concord
with literature. It was monotonous toil, be-
gun when I was too small to stand in one
place and reach to the right or left for sheets,
so it was necessary to walk to and fro in front
of the bench, like the swing of a pendulum.
There was a story current among the boys
that Dr. Timothy Haynes had a dissecting-
room in the attic at the south end of the
Stickney building. Two or three of us went
to the roof above the printing-office, ran
along the ridge, ventured down a convenient
scuttle, and found there a human body on a
table covered with canvas. It was a grue-
some sight, and we stood not long upon the
order of our going.
Among my father's customei"s were the
Canterbury Society of Shakers, and David
Parker, chief of that society, persuaded him
to have a dry-press of a new pattern built by
them at Canterbury. It was not scientif-
98 Sixty Years in Concord.
ically designed in some of its proportions,
and proved to be too weak to resist its own
power.
The Shakers essayed to do some of their
own printing, and I heard my father and
David Parker, or Thomas Corbett, discuss-
ing the workmanship of a doctrinal book
which they had issued. My father had
observed errors in it, although the Shakers
claimed that the printing had been done
under inspiration from Heaven, and that
after first proofs had been corrected by
human hands, revised proofs had been taken,
left in a convenient place, and the angel
Gabriel summoned by trumpet to come down
and give the pages a final critical reading.
Among printing-house workmen and
apprentices, I remember well the " old vet-
eran" William Hoit; "Capt. Sam" A. Mor-
rison, who not infrequently took a drop too
much, and went about town brandishing a
cane at invisible tormentors, or in the office
might fling missiles at an imaginary imp
lurking in some dim corner; Edmund S.
Chadwick, Ervin B. Tripp, Frank Barr,
George O. Odlin, Rufus Lane, Edward E.
Sturtevant, George E. Jenks, Elijah Clough,
Edward A. Jenks, Andrew J. Gilmore, who
served in the navy during the Civil War,
Personal Recollections. 99
Edward O. Withington, and Heniy W.
Phelps, who became interested in a news-
paper at St. Paul, Minn., but came home to
Hopkinton to die in October, 1857. Then
there was "Archibald," a guzzling Scotch
compositor, who tramped around a long cir-
cuit of towns, making his appearance here
irregularly, and remaining so long as he did
not get intolerably drunk.
Among persons of an earlier day, all now
dead, who became conspicuous in newspaper
undertakings and otherwise, whom local
associations would indicate for mention here,
are Nathaniel H. Carter, editor of the Neiv
York Statesman^ born near the banks of Tur-
key river, which he celebrated in the poem
" To my Native Stream ; " George Kent, for
five years prior to 1831 editor of our States-
man^ afterward consul of the United States at
Valencia, Spain; George J. L. Colby, in 1844
editor of the People^ s Advocate in Concord,
many years editor of the Newhiiryport Her-
ald \ Paul Morrill, once a citizen here, one
of the founders of the Alta California^ San
Francisco ;• and Jacob H. Ela, an all around
man on several papers, afterward member of
congress from the First New Hampshire
District. William T. Porter and George Wil-
kins Kendall were employees of the States-
100 Sixty Years in Concord.
man and the Patriot ; — the former, known as
" York's tall son," six feet four inches high,
founded in 1831 the New York Spirit of the
Times \ and the other, in 1837, established
the New Orleans Picayune^ a great paper
during the Mexican war, and since that
event.
My father printed the New Hampshire
court reports under some arrangement with
Hon. Joel Parker, the chief-justice. Printed
but unbound sheets of such reports were
kept for safe storage at a room on the sec-
ond floor of the New Hampshire Historical
Society's building ; and many a trip to and
from that place did I make with the wheel-
barrow before mentioned, tugging up and
down those stairs loads of good law, now
quoted in many courts where English is
spoken.
Great care was exercised in the printing of
those reports, and as specimens of law print-
ing, which has a style of its own, they will
compare favorably with the reports of any
state in the Union. Asa McFarland had an
honest man's pride in his business, which he
loved as a worthy art ; and writing this re-
minds me how troubled I was at being told
by the Morril boys that their father, David
L. Morril (who had been governor, and
Personal Reeolleetions. 101
wrote occasional prosy articles for the States-
man over the signature of ''Senex"),
declared printing to be only a trade, and that
my father ought not to mention it as an art.
It seemed preposterous to me that any one
could suppose my father to be mistaken
about his own business : hence my chagrin.
I should have been gratified could I have
quoted the inscription from the facade of
Lawrens Coster's house at Haarlem, placed
there before 1628, or even shown them, in
Worcester's Dictionary, the word printing
defined as "the act, the art^ or the practice
of imprinting words on paper."
There was nothing relating to the art of
printing as practised in his day which my
father did not understand, and in which he
did not at times take part. He wrote readily,
and could have produced a book, except
binding, doing all the work with his own
hands. After he assumed, in 1851, the pub-
lication and editorial care of the Statesman^
he did not oversee every detail of the estab-
lishment, but the impress of liis care was on
all the considerable productions of his press.
The printers' work most distasteful to me
was the boiling of glue and molasses together
for the composition of ink-rollers, and this
performance seemed, singularly enough, to
102 Sixty Years in Concord.
come very often on Saturday afternoons
when there were school half-holidays. The
boiling being done, the rollers were cast late
in the day, and allowed to remain in the iron
moulds until Monday morning, when they
were taken out, and examined as carefully
as is the cylinder of a steam engine in a
great foundry. Every printing-office then
made its own rollers.
But the youthful toil which caused me
real distress was blowing the organ at the
South church. The daughter of one of our
neighbors, being a pianist, was ambitious to
play the organ, and wanted manj'- horn's of
pracitice. Stimulated by promise of suitable
compensation, all of my Saturday afternoons
for a whole summer were spent in the work
of J^]olus at that organ ; and beside losing
legitimate playtime, I was paid in nothing
but charming smiles from the fair organist, —
a coinage which I have since learned goes at
its face value all around the world.
VII.
Charles Kingsley says, — '' There is no
pleasure that I have ever experienced like a
child's midsummer holiday. The time, I
mean, when two or three of us used to go
away up the brook, and take our dinners with
us, and come home at night, tired, dirty,
happ3% scratched beyond recognition, with a
great nosegay, three little trout, and one
shoe, the other having been used as a boat
till it had gone down with all hands, out
of sounding." I have enjoyed that kind of
pleasure — at least the fishing and out-door
dinner — not only in childhood, but ever
since.
There were visits to Meredith Bridge and
North Conway, where every stream had wary
trout in it, which gave great satisfaction.
Jacob Libby was a favorite stage-driver as
far as Meredith Bridge, and Peter Hines
thence to Conway. After the Concord Rail-
road was opened, the start from Concord was
so late that the latter portion of the drive
was pushed far into the night ; and being
once the only passenger beyond Ossipee, I
104 Sixty Years in Concord.
was thumped about heavily; — half asleep
and half awake, I was continually lying
down on the seat, tumbling off into the straw
at the bottom of the coach, and hunting for
my cap, which was forever getting lost in the
blackness of space.
Among the most delightful vacations which
a boy could have were those at North Con-
way, then a charming village in the moun-
tains, without cai's or caravansaries, or tourists
with alpenstocks and plaid trousers. There
was a daily mail stage thence to Concord,
and one quiet country inn. My father's
eldest sister, Susan, became in 1838 the wife
of Gilbert McMillan, who owned and dwelt
upon the best and most picturesque farm in
the whole valley of the Saco. My uncle
McMillan was a descendant of Andrew
McMillan, who came to this country from
Londonderry, Ireland, about 1754, served in
the rangera with Capt. Jonathan Burbank
and Major Robert Rogers, purchased two
slaves, Caesar and Dinah, in 1767-'68, and as
early as 1775 was a prominent man in Con-
cord, having a store on the northwest corner
of Main and Pleasant streets. The wide and
beautiful farm at Conway was a provincial
grant to Andrew for military services in the
French-Canadian war. The mansion was
Pergonal Mecollections. 105
spacious, a good example of the • New Eng-
land farm-house, some rooms containing
deep-backed settles fronting broad, generous
fireplaces. The morning after the midnight
arrival on my first visit, as I came down to
breakfast, the household dog Rover came
tearing up to greet me at the half-way Land-
ing on the stairs, and we formed a friendW
alliance which lasted until his death, and was
renewed with various successors that bore
his name.
Not far from the house, large barns shel-
tered the necessary horses and a goodly herd
of cattle. Behind the mansion were the
Saco meadows, in front was Sunset hill.
Away to the north, at the end of the Saco
valley, was the sublime mountain range, of
which m)^ uncle said, in reply to my inquiry
as I saw him lean daily on his cane and gaze
northward longingly and earnestly, that it
was as grand and beautiful to his vision as
when his eyes first saw it. He was a Chris-
tian gentleman, quiet, patient, appreciative,
fond of wit, going about his estate to super-
intend its cultivation like an English country
gentleman out of " Bracebridge Hall," and
his wife was his perfect counterpart. Would
that every New Hampshire farm were to-day
in as honorable and delightful ownership.
106 Sixty Years in Concord.
Landscape painters visited Conway fre-
quently, some of them not widely known,
but Kensett and the Harts (James and Will-
iam) were distinguished. I found one of
the latter at work one morning near a turn
in Artist's brook, on mv uncle's meadow,
painting a glorious picture of Pequaket
mountain, with the brook, meadow, and an
old scarred white birch in the foreground.
There was an angry swarm of mosquitoes
buzzing about liis ears, and he might have
resented my intrusion ; but he did not, and
was so kind as to invite me to see his collec-
tion, and equally kind when I availed myself
of the invitation. My uncle's eye was so
trained by dwelling among and observing
grand scenes of nature that he could estimate
a painter's merits by one long look at the can-
vas, and his comments on some of the efforts
of struggling genius were highly amusing.
During my first visit to North Conway, I
became so attached to the hills and valleys,
my uncle and aunt, the birds and squirrels,
the dog Rover and the horae Charlie, that
I was loath to heed a summons to return,
and my mother feared that my love for home
was permanently broken. On a later visit, in
1850, my friend Robert A. Hutchins was with
me. Both were welcome to the boundless
Personal Recollections. 107
hospitalities of the farm. We walked from
North Conway to the mountains, going on
the first day as far as Ethan Crawford's.
Next day we trudged up through the Great
Notch, dined at Thomas Crawford's, the
original Notch House (built in 1828, burned
in 1864), and returned in the evening to
Ethan's. The Saco river swarmed with trout.
We took enough in a half hour to furnish
the people at the liotel a good supper and
breakfast. It was not a common affair for
people to be making pedestrian journeys
around the mountains, and Ethan Crawford
did not know exactly what to think of us.
At length he inquired about our connections
in Concord, and being told, he said, " Boys,
I know your fathers well. If you are walk-
ing around these mountains because you are
out of money, tell me, and I will lend you
whatever j^ou need." Of course we thanked
the old gentleman for his kindness, told him
we were walking for the fun of it, and better
to enjoy the scenery, and returned to Con-
way by the way we had come, confessing to
some fatigue from our fifty-mile tramp.
On our way down the valley, the tiller of a
small farm hailed us, and learning we were
from Concord and knew relatives of his, in-
sisted on our entering his cottage and sharing
108 Sixty Years in Concord.
his humble dinner, which I rememl)er was salt
codfish and potatoes, though trout were very
abundant iu a brook hurrying by his door.
My school-days came to a sudden and in-
glorious end. My father had been wanting
me to be a printer, but I had seen so much
of the dark side of the " art preservative of
all arts " that I shrank from it, and he patient-
ly let me have my own way. Therefore we
were going along in 1848 in uncertainty as to
what I should do, and he advised that I revisit
school. Mr. Hall Roberts, who was then rather
eccentric, had been, as before mentioned, a
principal at the Bell school, but, in conse-
quence of some disagreement with the school-
committee, had left, and was teaching a class
in the vestry of the Baptist church ; so to
this latter place I repaired. The teacher
inquired what I was to study, and I replied
that I was to be guided by his judgment,
whereupon he proposed delving further in
the same old books. My mind was resolved :
I went home and told my father that I was
done going to such schools. This from a
boy of seventeen probably amused him.
''Very well," said he, "you can come to
work in the office this afternoon." I was
ready when the hour struck, and for months
Personal Recollections, 109
and months inked book forms, standing be-
hind a hand press, using a handle and frame
wliich carried double rollers, distributing ink
on the rollers by means of a wooden cylinder
which in its turn was revolved by a crank.
This was by no means easy. Edmund S.
Chadwick and George E. Jenks were the
pressmen with whom I toiled most. There
were three hand presses, and a long-haired,
ignorant fellow named John Powell was my
illustrious rival at another press. At my
press we were ambitious to do a large quan-
tity of good work. A " token " an hour was
deemed a fair stint, but on a long job of way-
bills for some railroad we struck them off at
the rate of a token in forty minutes. This
was done on a favorite press, which was
about ruined in the great fire of 1851.
In January, 1849, Mr. John F. Brown took
me for a clerk in his bookstore, where I
wanted to be for the sake of reading. This
store was at the southeast corner of the state-
house park, squarely in space now occupied
by Capitol street where that street joins Main.
It was the lineal descendant of a bookstore
owned early in the century by Isaac and
Walter II. Hill, later by Hill & Moore and
Horatio Hill & Co., and the old sign, bearing
a portrait of the philosopher, diplomatist.
110 Sixty Years in Concord,
and man of letters, Benjamin Franklin,
painted by Marshall, an artist of some celeb-
rity, had been over it since 1810 or 1811.
The wood-work and the original lettering of
this sign were done by William Low, of
Low & Damon. A picture of the building,
erected by John Leach in 1827 for Isaac Hill,
in which this store was when I came to know
it, constitutes the heading to the second page
editorials of the Patriot of that day. The
building was burnt in April, 1864.
My father told me that bookselling would
not do for a permanent occupation ; but I did
not take a long look ahead, and thought that
an attractive store, full of books which could
be read in leisure hours, was a good enough
goal. My salary was to be $50 the fii'st year.
Mr. Brown was a good-tempered employer ;
he never reprimanded me, and I served him
well. There was an older clerk when I
began, but he did not stay. When Mr.
Brown went away to the great " trade sales "
or book auctions in Boston and New York
he left me alone, and I deposited our sales-
money in the Mechanicks bank on Park
street, with Mr. George Minot as cashier.
Commercial travellers were not often seen
then, but Messrs. Hogan & Thompson, of
Philadelphia, had a salesman from whom Mr.
Pergonal Recollections, 111
Brown bought blank books and stationery
when he came on semi-annual visits to Con-
cord. Six months' credit was allowed on
these purchases. Almost all the finst-rate
writing-paper of that day came from England
and France, that of Monier, a French maker,
being preferred by Mr. Brown. He would
hold a sheet up to the light and exhibit the
water-mark with much apparent satisfaction.
On Harper & Brothers' publications a dis-
count of twenty per cent, from retail prices
was allowed to us. This discount was
deemed too small, and was the cause of con-
tinual growling among country booksellers.
Mr. Brown, wlio beean bookselling in
1836, was the publislier of Dudley Leavitt's
Farmers' Almanac and of Brown's Pocket
Memorandum or diary, both of which had a
large sale ; also of Tytler's Universal His-
tory, printed from old plates, and Putnam &
Hodges' Grammar, which last was somewhat
revolutionary in its rules, and did not go off
very well. Mr. Putnam was Rev. John M.,
a Congregational clergyman in Dunbarton.
I think Mr. Hodges was, or had been, a Bap-
tist clergyman in the same town. I often
heard those three interested persons wonder-
ing why there was not more demand foi-
their kind of grammar. Dudley Leavitt
112 Sixty Years in Concord,
then lived in Meredith, and the stage-drivers
pointed out his house to passengei-s as that
of a person of great renown. The copy for
his almanac, for which Mr. Brown paid $100
a year, was then made ready for many ensu-
ing years. He had been (1818-'19) a teacher
at the Bell school when my father was one of
his pupils. I remember him as a courtly man
with gentle manners.
Among our book-buyei-s was Mr. Mason
W. Tappan, who had a law office at Bradford.
His practice was to go around the store by
himself, select a good lot of books, and buy
them without haggling. His visits were fre-
quent and welcome. No reader of this will
need to be told that he became member of
congress from our district, 1855-'61, and was
colonel of the Fii^t New Hampshire regiment
in the War of the Rebellion.
Ex-Governor Isaac Hill, when at home from
Washington, was frequently at our store,
and seemed to enjoy conversation with Mr.
Brown, who belonged to the same political
party ; but the governor, as was his wont, did
most of the talking. He had been a fierce
opponent of Daniel Webster, attacking him
politically and personally in the Patriot ;
but I remember one of those calls, which
occurred probably in the winter of 1849-'50,
Personal Recollections. 113
when Mr. Hill, just home from Washington,
came in, and told Mr. Brown that he had
met Mr. Webster, the old resentments had
been forgotten, they had enjoyed a most
agreeable interview, talked about New Hamp-
shire, about farming, and kindred subjects,
and became good friends. "And Daniel
Webster is," said Mr. Hill, enthusiastically,
" the greatest man who ever lived in Ameri-
ca ! " As Mr. Hill died early in 1851, this
personal friendliness was probably never
again interrupted. Governor Hill was an
enthusiast about farming, and a fluent talker
about the merits of pine-plain lands and
Chenango and New York red potatoes.
Gen. Franklin Pierce came in rather often.
He was then, in the view of himself and a
very few intimates, a likely enough candidate
for the presidency of the United States in
1852, a scheme to effect his nomination hav-
ing been considered, on his return from the
Mexican war in 1848, by himself, Pierre
Soul6 of Louisiana (Pierce's minister to
Spain), Edmund Ruffin of Virginia (who
fired the first cannon shot at Fort Sumter in
1861), ex-Congressman John S. Barbour of
Virginia (who was active in Pierce's behalf
in the Baltimore convention of June, 1852),
and probably Jefferson Davis (Pierce's secre-
8
114 Sixty Tears in Concord.
tary of war), as well ' as othei^. This is
related on the authority of a friend who had
the general's full confidence. Judge Levi
Woodbury, of Portsmouth, had early in 1851
been put in the foreground as a candidate for
the presidency by the Democratic state con-
vention .of New Hampshire, but he died in
September of that year. General Pierce was
trimming his political sails so carefully to
catch the Southern breeze, in the winter of
1851-'52, that he squelched a movement to
invite Louis Kossuth to visit Concord, be-
cause the Hungarian patriot was not well
received at Richmond, or some like Southern
city.* All the talk of that time about the
presidential nomination being an utter sur-
prise to him was mere political claptrap.
Charles H. Peaslee, Asa Fowler, Calvin
Ainsworth, and other men of that coterie,
were often in the bookstore, as was Jesse A.
Gove, who had been a lieutenant with Gen-
eral Pierce in the Mexican war, w;as after-
ward colonel of the Twenty-second Massa-
chusetts regiment, and was killed in battle on
the Virginia peninsula in June, 1862. Col-
onel Gove was then reading law. Among
the local law students of about that period
*In regard to Kossuth, Charles Samner wrote to his brother
George from Washington, Jan. 5, 1852, "There is a wretched
opposition to him here proceeding from slavery."
Personal Recollections, 116
were Col. John H. George, Francis B. Pea-
body, since of Chicago, William B. Gale,
since a distinguished Massachusetts lawyer,
Sidney Webster and Stratford Canning Bai-
ley, afterward of New York city.
There was another rather frequent and
somewhat dangerous visitor: this was Sam-
uel G. Chase, of Hopkinton, a man of Hercu-
lean size and strange fancies. Rather gentle
in his ordinary moods, he never came in with-
out inquiring if I was a son of Judge Upham,
toward whom he did not feel kindly, for he
had a crg^y notion that the judge was keep-
ing the Concord Railroad out of his personal
possession. Once he came in with a gun,
and seemed to be hunting for the judge, but
left the weapon in the store until he Avent
.home in the evening. Afterward he shot at
a Hopkinton man, toward whom he had
some dislike, and was committed to the asy-
lum for the insane.
Another queer visitor became an habitual
lounger on the premises. His custom was to
go behind the counter, find some book, and
busy himself in reading it, always in the
vicinity of the money-drawer. After a time
suspicion led me to fasten a bell to the
drawer with a whalebone spring fixed so it
must ring if the drawer was opened. The
116 Sixty Years in Concord-
denouement came with startling promptness.
The thief came to the store when Mr. Brown
was out, but Mrs. Brown happened by some
fortunate chance to come in. Our visitor
took his accustomed position, and when he
thought himself unobserved, the bell rang
loudly, — a sort of vigilance-committee ring,
heard very distinctly all over the store.
He discovered that he was detected, and
departed. In response to a note from Mr.
Brown he returned that evening, confessed,
and eventually made restitution of a sum
sufficient, he said, to cover his stealings ; so
he was promised immunity from exposure.
He was not what our people called "' town
born," that is, not by birth a Concord boy.
St. Valentine's was an eventful day, for
sending valentines was a prevalent custom.
Those which we sold came from New York.
Some were regarded as very elegant, and cost
two or three dollars each, but those called
comic were hideous things, unfit to be put
in the mail ; — nearly all found ready sale
at retail prices about double the wholesale
cost.
Macaulay's History of England, at least
two volumes of it, was published in London
in 1849, and American publishers made haste
to reprint it. Harper & Brothers got out an
Pergonal Recollections. 117
edition in a few days after they obtained a
copy, at two dollars a volume. Phillips,
Sampson & Co., of Boston, followed this
with one at a dollar a volume, and Harper &
Brothers retorted with another at fifty cents ;
so almost everybody was just then reading
history.
Harper^s Magazine was started in 1850,
and there was some local demand for it,
though less than a dozen copies monthly were
taken at our store during the first year of its
existejice. It was a reprint of articles se-
lected from English magazines, and the first
number had but three engravings in addition
to some fashion plates. However, it was bet-
ter than Godey^s Ladt/'s Book or Graham's
Magazine^ which had been in favor, and was
said by the publishers to be " unsurpassed by
any similar publication in the world." The
work of the engravers and printers was much
inferior to that of the magazines of to-day.
The American Art Union was a respecta-
ble New York lottery of that day. Any per-
son, by the payment of five dollars, could
obtain a valuable engraving, and entitle him-
self to a chance of drawing by lot some
more valuable book, picture, bronze, or
statue. Mr. Baruch Biddle was fortunate
enough to draw Audubon's Birds of Amer-
118 Sixty Years in Concord,
ica, several volumes, with life-size colored
plates — ^a splendid prize ; but Mr. Biddle was
not an ornithologist, so he left the work with
Mr. Brown to be sold if a satisfactory price
could be obtained. It remained in the store,
an object of much interest, for several months,
but eventually went to a distant buyer, at, I
think, $300. Copies are reported to have
sold in London recently for $1,725.
The sword presented to General Pierce,
under vote of the legislature of New Hamp-
shire in June, 1849, for service in the Mexi-
can war, was on exhibition at the bookstore
as long as it attracted any curiosity. The
general received a similar weapon from ladies
of Concord in May, 1847, and the presentfi-
tion speech was made by the daughter of a
clergyman.
The Franklin Bookstore, as Mr. Brown
called it, appeared to be prosperous, and its
owner contented ; therefore it was a consider-
able surprise when Mr. B. W. Sanborn, who
had a bookstore just across the street, came
over in May, 1850, and, with very little talk
or ado, bought the whole concern, — books,
stationery, fancy goods, and Mr. Brown's
share in the building. The second year of
my clerkship was passing, and the fifty dol-
lai-s salary had been doubled ; but it had been
Personal Recollections, 119
made plain to me that my father was right,
that I had better not be a book-seller ; so, re-
maining with the new proprietor only long
^ enough for his assistants to become familiar
with the shop, I went out to see what other
way of business might open.
\
VIII. ^
At the end of this bookselling experience
my father was en route for Europe with his
brother Andrew, the superintendent of the
New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane, in
the prosecution of a plan for travel long cher-
ished by them both. As the coach for the
railway station took him from our door, on a
bright July morning in 1850, Mr. Nathan
Stickney, usually one of the selectmen of the
town, drove by, and being a witness to the
leave-taking, said to my friend George Gault,
who was driving with him, that he never ex-
pected to see Mr. McFarland again. That is
how the dangers of sailing to Europe were
estimated in Concord. My father's voyages
to Liverpool and from London were made by
way of the Grinnell, Minturn & Co. New
York line of sailing packets, some of the best
ships in which were built in Portsmouth, and
at least one of them had a New Hampshire
captain.
I was so fortunate as not to be long out of
employment. Mr. Ruf us Lane, who has been
mentioned before as a compositor in my
Personal Me collections, 121
. father's printing-office, had become clerk and
time-keeper at the machine shop of the Con-
cord Railroad at $1.17 a day, and I was hired
to assist him temporarily in the preparation
of some tabular statements. Then I was at
the postoffice two or three weeks, serving
under Major Ephraim Hutchins, who had
given up the Phoenix hotel, and was eighth
in the honorable line of Concord postmasters.
By this time the work which I had done under
Mr. Lane's supervision had been noticed in
the office of the superintendent of the Con-
cord Railroad, and I was engaged to serve as
a junior clerk in that office for |!20 a month.
The Concord Railroad had been chartered
as early as 1835. It was contemplated at first
to build from Lowell to Concord. The dis-
tance from Nashua to Concord is less than
thirty-five miles, and the elevation to be over-
come in that distance is less than one hun-
dred and seventeen feet. Engineers estimated
the cost of a single track with sufficient roll-
ing stock would be $550,000 ; this was, how-
ever, for a line on the west side of the Merri-
mack all the way, which would require no
long bridges. It was difficult to raise even
the above named sum. Pecuniary troubles,
which culminated in 1837, exerted a depress-
ing influence, but in 1840 a resolute effort
122 ' Sixty Years in Concord,
was made. Messrs. Joseph Low, Nathaniel
G. Upham, and Charles H. Peaslee, a com-
mittee of the corporators, made a report,
which was of the nature of a prospectus, giv-
ing details of cost and probable traffic, as
well as some careful estimates made by Peter
Clark, of Nashua, who had been agent of the
Nashua & Lowell Railroad, and was engaged
to go over this line as an expert. These gen-
tlemen mentioned as an encouraging circum-
stance that a railroad had been constructed
from Montreal southerly to St. Johns on the
Sorel or Richelieu river ; also that a toll-gate-
man just below Concord had kept statistics,
which proved that 35,760 tons of freight had
passed through his gate by teams in one year,
while the Concord Boating Company carried
7,039 tons; and the stage-coaches on the
Mammoth road carried 29,758 passengers in
the year ending Sept. 30, 1840. The freight
rate from Boston to Concord by canal-boat
was f 5 per ton ; going back with the stream
it was one dollar less. A boat was five days
coming up and four days returning, and the
capacity of a boat was fifteen tons. There
were twenty boats, three men to each. (The
freight rate by boat in 1815 was thirteen dol-
lars per ton up stream and eight dollars down
stream.) The fare for a passenger between
Personal Recollections, 123
Boston and Concord when it was stage-coach-
ing all the way was $3, later by coach and
cars it was $2.50, and by the Mammoth road
it became as low as $2. The freight rate by
teams before boats began to run was $20 a
ton.
Seeking town aid for railroads was a resort
of even that day. In 1836 the town of Con-
cord voted to apply to the legislature for
authority to subscribe for shares in this en-
terprise, and to borrow money wherewith to
make payment therefor. In January, 1837,
such authority was obtained, and subscrip-
tions were made for eight hundred shares of
fifty dollars each. In 1841, disturbed by the
magnitude of the undertaking, six hundred
shares (on which the first assessment had
been paid), were turned over free of cost to
the Concord Literary Institution, which sold
them to Gen. Joseph Low for $675, and other
disposition was made of a remaining lot of
two hundred shares. This was a greater
mistake than George Gault and I made when
we hid our burlesque ballots in the Stickney
wood-pile. The dividends of the corporation,
from the date of its opening in September,
1842, average a little more than nine per
cent, per annum. Each one hundred dollars
invested has returned directly to its owner
124 Sixty Years in Concord,
(May, 1890) four hundred and thirty dollars,
while the property has been greatly improved,
and the investment is apparently as safe as
ever. There have been some fluctuations in
this prosperity. In 1855 business was not
satisfactory, and but six per cent, was divided.
If my memory is not at fault, there was but
one through daily passenger train on each of
the roads north of Concord that year.
Although it was feared at one period that
the Concord road might be compelled to make
its northern terminus at Amoskeag, at least
temporarily, means wei*e obtained to complete
it as a single track on the line adopted, with
two bridges over the Merrimack, and suffi-
cient buildings and rolling stock, for some-
thing less than $800,000. The iron rails came
from England, weighed fifty-six pounds per
yard, and cost on the wharf in Boston about
#55 a ton. Now the best steel rails, weighing
seventy-two pounds per yard, cost $35 a ton.
The second track was laid in 1848, and the
capital increased to $1,500,000. The corpo-
ration owned at first but three locomotives,
the " Souhegan," " Piscataquog," and "Amos-
keag," to which the " Hooksett " and " Pena-
cook " were shortly added, each of ten tons'
weight. Taken altogether, they weighed less
than the " General Lafayette" of to-day. The
Pergonal Recollections, 126
" Suncook," which weighed fourteen tons,
was obtained in 1845 or 18i6, and was re-
garded as a tremendous affair. It stood on
four driving-wheels, without a forward truck,
and was awkward in movement, but it did
good work. If I am not mistaken, I saw it
onee back up into the Northern yard, hitch to
a train of fifty-seven long, loaded cars, drag
them from the side track, and then awav to
Nashua in a most resolute, self-reliant way.
In 1847, when annual statistics began to
be deemed worthy of publication, the mileage
of Concord Railroad trains was stated at
143,251 ; passengers carried numbered 203,-
505; freight carried, 103,371 tons. In 1889
the passenger carried numbered 893,110;
tons of freight, 1,652,322.
In the report of a committee of stockholders
made in 1851 is a statement in regard to the
lands and station buildings of the company.
The lands in Concord were a little more than
sixteen acres. The first passenger station
had been removed, and converted into a car-
house ; and tiie second one, designed by Mr.
Richard Bond, an architect of Boston, had
been built by our townsman, Philip Watson.
This building in outward appearance was
about what our city hall would be if the
dome and piazza were removed, the wings
126 Sixty Years in Concord,
lengthened, and a piazza constructed in front
of each wing. Within it on the lower floor
were the train-house and the necessary
adjuncts; on the second floor were a large
hall, and the offices of four railway corpora-
tions, — the Concord, the Northern, the Mon-
treal, and the Portsmouth. The Concord
company's offices were in the southwest cor-
ner, and other rooms were furnished to the
other companies free of rent. The hall, sixty-
three by sixty-nine feet in area, was the most
convenient one in Concord (then or since),
being up only one flight, and reached by two
broad, easy staircases. The rent charged
was four or five dollars an evening, a little
more if the company furnished a ticket-
seller. Some notable events took place
within its walls. Madame Parodi sung there,
so did Adelina Patti, then (1853) ten years
old, and so did Madame Anna Bishop, accom-
panied by the great master of the harp,
Bochsa. Ole Bull was there with his violin.
Washington Allston's great picture of Bel-
shazza's Feast was shown in an adjoining
room, in March, 18-19. The lecturers of the
Concord Lyceum,* for fees of $20 each, oc-
^This was an association of young men who assembled
one evening in each week in the hall of the Natural History
Society for improvement in debate. On one appointed even-
ing the question was, '* Ought Concord to adopt a city char-
ter?" and public attention to the discussion was invited.
Personal Recollections, 127
cupied its platform, — Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, John G. Saxe, Thom-
as Starr King, Dr. J. V. C. Smith, ex-tnayor
of Boston, and the ex-actress. Miss E. Kim-
berly, reader of Shakespeare. Gen. Frank-
lin Pierce was received there, and made a
public address on his return from the War
with Mexico, in January, 1848 ; and there, in
1856, a meeting was held which resolved that
he be received in "solemn, mournful silence,"
when as president of the United States he
visited Concord in a partisan way during the
Kansas-Nebraska agitation and the Buchanan-
Fremont presidential campaign. The first
state fair, held in October, 1850, was partly
in this hall, partly in the company's machine-
shop, and partly on the meadows east of the
station. Tickets to these various places of
exhibition were sold in a temporary shed on
the south platform of the passenger station.
The hall continued in full popularity, al-
though the evening trains were an occasional
element of disturbance, until 1855, when
Phoenix hall was built on Main street.
The invitation was rather g^enerally accepted, and the ladi^s
and gentlemen who assembled must have been amused when
one of the disputants, Samuel Hermann, a Bohemian boy
^ho was learning of Ivory Hall the trade of a silversmith,
and spoke English imperfectly, gravely argued in favor of
the charter because its adoption would transmute Concord
directly into a metropolis like New York or Boston. After
leaving Concord, Samuel entered Trinity college.
128 Sixty Years m Concord.
Public affairs and political meetings were
occasionally held at Depot hall until it was
burned in 1859. One of the last uses to
which the old place was put was the drying
on its floor of a remainder of two car loads of
cotton, which took fire on the way from
Boston to Manchester, and was by the good
management of Conductor Freeman Webster
run off the track into the pond at Winchester,
Mass.
The personal organization when I joined
it was formidable for a short road. It resem-
bled a military company with more musical
instruments than muskets. The president
was Isaac Spaulding, who lived at Nashua :
he was the largest stockholder, and was paid
•f 1,000 a year. He was a timid man in deal-
ing with men, but sensible and practical ;
kept one eye on the Boston stock-market
where he ventured his money, and the other
on Peter Clark — after Peter became hostile
to the road. Hon. N. G. Upham was the
superintendent at $2,000 a year, performing
also many duties which are now regarded as
belonging to a president, for which, being a
trained lawyer, he was abundantly qualified.
Mr. Upham had been a judge of the superior
court of New Hampshire, and probably some
of the good law which I liad, as hereinbefore
Personal Recollections, 129
mentioned, toted up and down the stairs in
the Historical Society's building, was of his
making. The judge, as he was always called
on the road, was a man of foresight, thought-
ful, and watchful of any legislative or politi-
cal influences which might be harmful to
railways. He was annoyed by gadflies of
the press and. forum, who swarmed together
at certain seasons and joined forces for an
attack. These people carried their hostilities
into the legislature, where they were con-
fronted by a most respectable lobby, com-
posed of persons whose names, if listed here
in connection with the little (f 15 and $25
and $50) fees which they received, would
excite both wonder and merriment. The
judge managed all the relations of the com-
pany toward the public, and with connecting
roads, in a most satisfactory manner. His
administration was careful, honest, and suc-
cessful. There were questions as to division
of traffic and earnings so well settled then
as to become established railway customs.
There were also physical uncertainties ; —
one of our people thought a snow-plow
might be driven by a hand-car ; another, that
snow would prevent trains from ever run-
ning north of Concord in winter. The judge
himself had a dreamy mind for mechanical
9
130 Sixty Years iri Coveord,
mattei^, and was at some disadvantage on
that account. He was also nearsighted, and
rather fearful that something was going on
just beyond his vision not altogether to his
liking. Curiously enough, he once made an
attempt to test the sight of Phineas Davis,
a passenger-train engineer, who liad, it was
hinted, some visual defect. The judge, with
spectacles carefully burnished and adjusted,
called Phineas off the engine, walked up
and down the platform in conversation with
him, and suddenly inquired if he could see
some object which was then in the distance ;
but nobody ever knew whicli could better see
the target, the judge or the engineer.
Mr. Harvey Rice was the master mechanic
in the iron-shop, and Mr. John Kimball filled
a like place in the wood-shop. Each was
paid $1,000 a year ; but these salaries seemed
so generous in that day, that when a list
of employees and their compensation was
printed in the annual reports, they were
stated at $3.19i per day, to soothe the vision
of stockholders who might each, like Mrs.
John Gilpin, have a frugal mind. Mr. James
A. Weston was the civil engineer, at the same
salary, in charge of repairs of the line and
construction. It does not look as if either of
these gentlemen was overpaid. Mr. Rice has
Personal Recollections, 131
since been master mechanic, or superintendent
of motive power, of vastly greater roads, such
as the Erie. Mr. Kimball has gained honors
of many kinds, and so has Mr. Weston ; in
fact, the state paid the latter as much to be
governor. Hon. Benjamin A. Kimball had
just entered on his connection with the com-
pany. George G. Sanborn, since local treas-
urer of the Northern Pacific Railroad, sold
tickets in the passenger station, and got
ff 1.67 a day for doing it. Elliott Chickering,
an incorruptible man of the old Whig school,
was the wood-buyer, and charged fl.50 a
day for his work. He had risen from the
position of switchman. His coon-skin cap
and cigar pointing skyward were familiar
objects in winter. John H. Elliott, who had
been a stage-coach agent, was the general
ticket agent at $800 per annum ; John C.
Gault, who has since been general manager
of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, and
held other like positions in the West, was
a clerk in the Manchester freight-house at
$1.42 a day; Nathaniel P. Lovering, the
treasurer, earned in 1850 a salary of $1,000
per annum, and had an office in Boston, on
State street, in the Merchants Exchange, — a
building which was one of the architectural
wonders of New England, but just now
132 Sixty Years in Concord,
pulled down as a mere cumberer of the
ground. I told my father, after his return
from Europe, about Mr. Lovering's princely
income (with another salary from the Pas-
sumpsic Co.), and he encouraged me to hope
that I might sometime do as well. Reuben
Sherburne, since a most prosperous Boston
merchant, was the master of transportation^
equivalent to general freight agent, and re-
ceipted for #1,200 per annum. George A.
Pillsbury, the Minneapolis millionaire, who
has just given to Concord the Margaret
Pillsbury Hospital, succeeded Mr. Chicker-
ing as wood-buyer, and came on the road
a little later; as did also William S. Kim-
ball, the rich tobacconist of Rochester, N. Y.,
who worked in the machine-sliop, and now
and then made a trip as fireman on a loco-
motive. Now he has in his greenhouse
1125,000 worth of orchids. The railroad
seems to have been as good a training-school
as an Institute of Technology.
Mr. James W. Sargent, at #700 a year, was
my immediate superior. He was called pay-
master and superintendent's clerk, but his
duties were like those given to a local treas-
urer of to-day. He had been a teacher of
penmanship, and could keep a tidy set of
books with entries of formal routine char-
Personal Recollectioms, 133
acter; was particular about his pens and
paper ; but got started fairly too late in life,
or had not self-reliance and mental reach
enough ever to get a greater railroad place.
He took a department clerkship at Washing-
ton in July, 1869.
Beside this indoor life at the desk, I was
given some open air duties ; was often sent
to Nashua with a message to our president,
or to the Nasliua Bank, of which he was also
president, to exchange money taken on the
road for circulating notes of its own, every
bank being then in intense rivalry with every
other to keep its own notes out and to get
other bills in.
Levi P. Wright, the conductor who ran the
heavy passenger train from Boston, which
reached Concord at 10 : 30 a. m. and returned
at 3:30 p. m., and who had an adequate
sense of the dignity of the duties which he
was performing for $54.17 a month, caught
me at Nashua on my first errand, and pulled
me up for an introduction to Mr. F. M.
Stimson, station agent ($50 a month), and
George W. Page, ticket-seller ($24 a month),
as Mr. Sargent's "new boy." I knew he
was quizzing me a little for my shyness in
a new relation, but as Page had been a school-
mate of mine, this did nobody any harm, and
134 Sixty Years in Concord.
it was not very long before I gained courage
enough to run Mr. Wright's train when he
wanted a day off from duty.
In public estimation the conductors were
the most important railway officials. They
were seen daily, while the rules and time-
tables, and brief messages from headquarters,
to control such useful and dignified gentle-
men, were not apparent. Beside Mr, Wright,
there were George Clougli and William Dole,
each at $50 a month. Mr. Clough began
when the road began, having previously been
a stage-coachman, and served down to 1866,
twenty-four solid years. Mr. Dole had been
landlord of the Phoenix, and obtained his
position on the road by purchase from his
predecessor, Ira Foster, on the payment of
$500, as commissions were formerly sold in
the British army. I never heard of another
case of purchase of place on a railroad train.
The engine-drivers were next in public
regard, and were a rather remarkable groups
Seth Hopkins and his brother William were
the eldest in rank, and ran the two best
passenger trains, at $2.25 a day. A run to
Nashua and back was reckoned a day's work.
Seth was a strong, fearless man, rough in
speech, punctual, always demanding the best
engine, giving it no gentle usage, and getting
Per807ial Mecollections, 135
its utmost out of it. He dared risks which
others might shrink from, such as letting
water go below all the gauges to get the
utmost steam space in the boiler, in a com-
petitive trial of engines at Lowell. This
experiment resulted in a dead failure, for the
fusible plug melted, and out went his fire ;
but coolness and careful judgment carried
him safely through a hazardous experience of
twenty years. He said that his train was run
on the theory that every switch was set wrong
for him all the way from Concord to Nashua
and back.
William Hopkins was a different character,
fearful of danger, alert, and watchful as a
lynx. Careful of his engine, he was esteemed
liighly by the master mechanics. A collision
at Goff's falls in May, 1854, which came
about through no fault of his, frightened
him out of the service, because through this
accident he discovered that his own prudence
could not keep peril at arm's length. In that
case, having reversed his engine and opened
the sand-box, he jumped overboard, and came
to himself among the wreck, with the red
contents of a demijohn flung out of the ex-
press car dripping from his clothing. There
was no doubt of his fright, but a reassuring
smell of old brandy in the air revived him.
136 Sixty Years in Concord,
and he proved toHbe uninjured. Still he left
the road soon afterward, took a contract for
stone work on the Boston & Lowell Railway,
and before long was instantly killed by the
fall of a derrick.
Phineas Davis, at $2 a daj'^, was a patient,
gentle man, full of good intentions, but
rather nervous ; went over his engine while
it was in motion, and at train stops was out
with a wrench or an oil-can to doctor some
rattle or squeak. He went into a damaged
culvert with the engine " Jolin Kimball," on
the Manchester & Lawrence division, in
1864, and was killed.
Charles F. Barrett, at that time in receipt
of $2 a day, was an easy-going man, careful
and conscientious. No more successful driver
ever stood on a locomotive. Forty-three years
in charge of an engine, without an accident
involving loss of life or injury to peraon or
property laid at his door, is a record that
tells its own story of vigilance and capability.
I was once sent down the road in charge of a
special train carrying the Canadian mail for
Europe, which had been delayed north of
Concord, and we started about the time the
mail should have been in East Boston. The
steamship was waiting, and we had direc-
tions to go as far as Lowell without the usual
Personal Recollections. 137
change of engines at Nashua. I heard some-
body tell Mr. Barrett to run as fast as possi-
ble, — but there was a thick fog in the air, and
he would not go an inch in a mile faster than
was safe ; so the Cunarder had to wait until
the sleepy Canadian mail agent got on board,
about two and a half hours late, with the
wonderful Royal mail, perhaps fifteen bushels
of it.
When the Manchester & Lawrence line to
Boston was completed, in 1850, a sharp com-
petition sprung up. In September of that
year it was determined by the managers of
the line via Lowell to put on two daily ex-
press trains between Concord and Boston,
and the Concord company furnished one train
which went through to Boston and back
without change of engine or driver. This
train left Concord at 6: 15 a. m., and return-
ing left Boston at 5 : 25 p. m. There were
but three way stops, and the time going
toward Boston was an hour and fifty-five
minutes ; returning, it was two hours. Seth
Hopkins ran our train with the " General
Stark " engine, built by the Amoskeag Manu-
facturing Co., and day by day that train was
delivered at each end of the run on time ;
but I think the Boston & Lowell train,
which was given the same running time, left
138 Sixty Years in Concord,
Boston at 8:15 a. m., and returning left
Concord at 4 p. m., drawn usually by the
" Baldwin," sometimes by the " McNeil," did
not reach Concord squarely on time in the
whole season, much to the chargin of the
driver, Lester Aldrich, who declared to our
superintendent that no engine then owned by
the Lowell company had boiler capacity and
power enough to make the run. The truth
is, that the Lowell company had not then
much heart in its long travel. It was a fav-
orite statement of one of its directors, that
the business of their Woburn branch was
worth more to them than everything they
got from above Lowell. My recollection as
to the time made by our express train of
1850 may be questioned by local railroad
men of to-day ; but the statement is con-
firmed by the Pathfinder Railway Guide^ the
manager of which has very kindly referred to
his files for that year, and finds that the train
left Concord at 6 : 15, Manchester at 6 : 40,
and reached Boston at 8 : 10. Returning, it
left Boston at 5 : 25, Nashua at 6 : 25, Man-
chester at 6 : 50, and reached Concord at
7 : 25. No train over the same line is doing
better now. It was fixed in my memory that
the downward time of our company's train
was one hour and forty-five minutes, and so
Personal Recollections. 139-
thought Harvey Rice, then master mechanic,
and Charles P. Webster, then fireman on the
" Gen. Stark," but I suppose we cannot go
behind the record in the Pathfinder,
About that time the Amoskeag Manufac-
turing Company completed a tall engine
called the " Mameluke," with driving-wheels
seven feet high. Standing on the ground I
could just touch the top of those wheels
with an outstretched finger. Our company
was urged to buy this engine for the express
train, and some trial runs were made with it,
but the "General," with wheels five and a
half feet high", was equal to the service : the
"Mameluke" was as great a terror to the
master mechanics as the cavalry of the desert
were to Mohammed Ali, and the purchase
was never made. Charles F. Barrett once
drove this engine, with six passenger cars,
from Concord to Nashua in forty-two min-
utes, with Levi P. Wright conductor, and
George Little baggageman. On this trip the
" Mameluke " ran ten miles at the rate of one
mile in one minute and two seconds. A
recent mayor of Manchester, D. B. Varney,
rode on the front of the engine, a badly
frightened man. The " Mameluke " was
eventually reduced in height, and found a
buyer in the New York Central Company.
140 Sixty Years in Concord,
It was a part of my work to make the
monthly payment of wages to employees of
the road. At the machine-shop it was the
rule to cover the pay-roll with a sheet of
blotting-paper, with an opening therein, which
sheet was slid around to enable a man to
sign for his own pay without disturbing his
peace of mind by seeing what other men were
• paid. Daniel Law, a big blacksmith, once
committed a notable breach of etiquette by
lifting the blotting paper and reading the
whole list. Station agents could of course
be reached for payment by passenger trains,
but to find section-men I caught rides on
freight trains and hand-cars, or, if nothing
else served, track walking was the resource.
The risks of robbery would forbid that kind
of tramping now.
After our company took control of the
Manchester & Lawrence there was more
train service for the passenger conductors,
and I made trips often for one or another of
them. For three successive weeks I did the
work of a conductor, one hundred and fifty-
eight miles a day, beside some office work.
This was when the old rail chairs were in
the track, and the clatter of wheels as they
rolled over the rail joints filled my ears by
day and echoed in my slumbers all night.
Personal Recollections. 141
Nothing was allowed for such extra service,
and it was not in itself much to my liking ;
but it carried me to Lawrence often, where
at the right season I loitered about the then
grassy site of the present Pacific mills, and
saw great draughts of shad taken by fisher-
men using a seine ; — also, and this was of
much more consequence to me, I gained in
that then small city an acquaintance which
was the most fortunate of my life.
There were trains taken over the road at
some times to which I look back with won-
der that nobody was hurt. Think of the
thronged state fairs, and running out of
Manchester, in the twilight, without air-
brakes or Miller platforms, seventeen cars
crowded with passengers, some of whom
were rather hilarious. That no accident
occurred on these occasions is abundant evi-
dence of the patience, skill, and caution of
the engineers. There were the Central Ver-
mont trains also, which during some winters
were late every evening, and a special trip
to Nashua became necessary, with a late
return on the engine, up the cold, dark val-
ley, past the black factories and the blacker
canals, hurtling along into the shuddering
air, with the headlight cleaving a narrow
rift in the darkness, its rays gleaming a lit-
142 Sixty Years in Concord.
tie way off on the cold rails, and reflected
dimly by the white switch targets. William
Hopkins (may he rest in peace!) on dark,
sleety nights leaned far out of the cab side-
window, facing the storm, to get the farthest
possible view around curves, incidentally
muttering something else than benedictions
for people who took the risk of running over
the Manchester crossings ahead of the flying
*' Tahanto " or " Passaconaway."
After appropriating for our engines the
local Indian names, mythology was resorted
to, and the '' Titan " came on the road. One
of our master mechanics read somewhere of
the " wheel of Ixion," and deputized me to
find out who that personage was. Search
was made in a friend's Dictionary of Mythol-
ogy, and the quest being satisfactory, Ixion
gave his name to a freight engine. I tried
to induce the authorities to g6 into poetry,
and have a '* Tam O'Shanter " and " John
Gilpin," but they never did.
It is sometimes wondered how conductors,
with so few errors, collect the tickets of pas-
sengers who get on at way stations and dis-
tribute themselves through a train. There
are various ways of identifying such, but the
expectancy which shows in the face of an
honest passenger when the conductor ap-
Personal Recollections, 143
proaches aids as much as anything. I have
known men to jump on a train, and be to
all appearance fast asleep before the con-
ductor could get to them.
There was little or no Sunday work. The
only Sunday train was an infrequent one to
take along the Canadian mail, if the fort-
nightly Cunard steamship happened to come
into Boston on a Sunday morning. It was
a whistle of this train below Concord which
brought Joseph A. Gilmore (then in trade)
to his feet and out of the Firet Baptist
church, one forenoon, to ascertain the price
of grain in Liverpool; and when Rev. Dr.
Cummings went Monday morning to the
store to rebuke his parishioner, Mr. Gil-
more saw him approaching, and, as he came
within hearing, shouted to the teamster to
hurry up to the pastor's house with a bar-
rel of the best flour.
I have already mentioned Mr. Reuben
Sherburne, our master of transportation. His
office was in the early days at the freight-
house in Boston, where his duties were per-
formed in a most accurate and business-like
way. Judge Upham determined that this
office should be in Concord, and Mr. Sher-
burne came here as early as 1852, remaining
not very long before he was appointed super-
144 Sixty Year% in Concord,
intendent of the Vermont Central. Mr.
James A. Weston became master of trans-
portation, and brought about my transfer as
clerk to that office. On taking possession,
Mr. Weston did not ask for any explanation
of affairs, nor did Mr. Sherburne volunteer
any; so I had a puzzle in studying books,
papers, and letters to pick up the thread of
affairs, for Mr. Weston remained the civil
engineer of the company, and gave his per-
sonal care to the duties of that office. There
had been a belief on our road that nobody
but Mr. Sherburne and his brothers knew
anything worth knowing about freight busi-
ness, with the possible exception of Mr. Will-
iam M. Parker of the Northern, and it did
not add to my comfort, during the trials of
those first two or three weeks, to have friends
coming in with curious faces to witness the
tremendous failure to which they said we
were doomed ; but patience and study solved
all the problems, and fortunately the company
did not have to take the freight trains off the
road.
My most intimate railroad friends were
George E. Todd, since superintendent of the
Northern ; James R. Kendrick, since superin-
tendent of the Old Colony ; Henry C. Sher-
burne, not long ago president of the North-
Pergonal Recollections, 145
em ; George G. Sanborn, now of St. Paul,
Minn. ; O. A. Clough, now of The South pub-
lishing company of New York ; Charles H.
Ham, since of Chicago, author of the book,
" Manual Training," and a writer on political,
financial, and social topics ; ' John Kimball
and Benjamin A. Kimball of Concord, James
A. Weston of Manchester, and Charles I.
Elliott. It may be worth recording that all
these are living except the last named, who
was killed by an accident at the Dalles, Ore.,
Aug. 29, 1861.* During the summer of 1854
Charles H. Ham and I took a three-months
vacation and went to Labmdor, of which voy-
age something will be written in another
chapter.
Judge Upham was in Europe from July,
1853, to January, 1855, and during his ab-
sence the road was run by a triumvirate,
with the president, Mr. Spaulding, as procon-
sul. This plan was a failure in some ways,
— one of its results being that when the
judge returned our department of the office
was out of favor, and before long its duties
fell upon me. I endetivored to do all the in-
door and some of the out-door duties without
a clerk, but found after less than a year's
trial that I should ruin my sight by careful
*Mr. Kendrick, Mr. Todd, and Mr. Weston have since
died.
10
146 Sixty Years in Concord.
work on books ruled with close horizontal
and perpendicular lines of various colors, so
I bowed myself out in the summer of 18567
but have always looked back to those six
years' service in the Concord Railroad staff
with contentment and pleasure.
The corporation at that time was managed
with considerable regard to the growth and
welfare of Concord, and I am sure that if
Judge Upham had been in actual control at
a later period, the shameless taking up of the
direct rails to Portsmouth, and the building
of the Pittsfield line from Hooksett, would
not have been perpetrated.
IX.
Oil the northeastern coast, not far from
where Canada terminates and Labrador be-
gins, where the Gulf of St. Lawrence nar-
rows into the Strait of Belleisle, is an inlet
of the sea named Bonne Esperance bay. It
is in the same latitude as the city of London.
Forty years ago Newburyport fishermen
called it, or a portion of it, Salmon River
harbor. It is an inlet of considerable extent,
irregular in shape, and the impression on my
memory is that it has twice the surface of
Sunapee lake. The main channel leading to
it from the strait opens from the southward,
— broad, deep, and easy to navigate. There is
another channel from the eastward, narrower
and less useful. The shores of this distant
bay are rocky elevations of moderate height,
rising abruptly from the water's edge, or
marshv lowland. Much of the lowland and
some of the upland is covered with soft moss
so deep that walking in any direction is diffi-
cult. One considerable stream — the River
au Saumou — finds its way into Bonne Espe-
rance bay through a rocky opening, and a
fiord two miles long in the northern shore.
148 Sixty Years in Concord.
Connected with Bonne Esperance bay, by
channels within the islands, is another equal-
ly spacious, called on the old charts Esqui-
maux bay. Into this flows a river also called
the Esquimaux, sometimes the Styx, which
really is, I think, St. Paul's river.
There is near the shore nothing like what
we call woodland. The few spruces, birches,
and firs which grow are dwarfed to the mere
height of a man's elbow. Where there is soil
it is thin and sandy, capable of producing in
the short summer of that latitude nothing of
much value to man or beast. Grass grows in
sheltered places, and a few strawberries are
found, not like the delicious ones abundant
on the Upper Saguenay. There are also
raspberries, blueberries, stunted and bitter,
and an abundance of what the fishermen call
baked apples, a name given in Labrador to
the fruit of the Ruhus Chamcemorus^ or cloud-
berry. It grows profusely at the top of little
plants as tall as a shoot of pennyroyal, each
stalk producing a berry. This berry, as it de-
velops, is first greenish white, then red, and
when ripe it takes an amber shade. It is then
about the size and shape of a blackberry, and
tastes like a baked sweet apple. When ripe,
and also during the state of redness, this fruit
is a welcome addition to the food served on a
Personal Meeollections. 149
fishing vessel. On the schooner that I knew,
the cook's galley was most prolific of fried
codfish and boiled potatoes. Other culi-
nary achievements came forth occasionally,
such as baked beans, eggs of the muiTe or
foolish guillemot,* cod's hefid chowder, and
"gundy," a mysterious compound of hard
bread and molasses, of which a small quan-
tity lasted a long time. Tliis dainty is said
to be not yet unknown at sea. On a great
occasion, which may have been the Fourth
of July, the cook produced a dried-apple pie
and a sheet of gingerbread. It may not be
opportune to dwell thus on affairs of the
kitchen, but the hunger of fishermen is pro-
verbial.
Further north than Bonne Esperance bay
a kindlier soil produces some potatoes, tur-
nips, and cabbages, but no grains. At Bron-
son's station, above Rigolette, a friend of
mine saw in 1859, growing on the south
slope of a hill, potatoes, beets, onions, and
radishes. On Bonne Esperance bay, inex-
pressively dreary as it must be in winter, a
few hardy people dwelt in the summer of
1854. Among them was John Goddard, a
sturdy Englishman, whose weather-beaten
* In September, 1836. the schooner " Martha Jane," of Fall
River, arrived in Portland with two thousand dozen murre's
egS^s from the coast of Labrador.
160 Sixty Years in Concord.
house, on a rocky harbor island, was kept
in order by an Indian wife, and defended
by as fierce a team of Esquimaux dogs as
could well be collected. Two miles away
lived John Haywood, and an aged man
named Chalker, whose daughter Haywood
married. These people had some nets ex-
tended for salmon, and kept a few articles,
such as cloths, powder, and cutlery, for sale
or for barter; and Goddard dealt in rum,
which goes everywhere and carries a curse
with it.
Away to the northward, or northwestward
— for the general line of the coast trends in
the latter direction — at Bradore, Hopedale,
Henley Harbor, and Batteau Harbor, are or
were larger settlements of like people. There
were also a few Moravian mission-stations ;
and all along the coast was traffic in furs, oil,
and fish. The means of life were wrung from
the stormy sea, or from the lonely interior
wilderness, where the people dwelt in winter.
During some recent years the fisheries have
failed, and succor of the Newfoundland gov-
ernment has been necessary. The coast is
not now a resort for New England fisher-
men, although last year (1890) the fishing is
reported to have been excellent. There was
a long series of years when the codfisheries
Persofial Recollections, 151
on this coast were abundant in their yield.
A Boston shipmaster, Frederick Nickerson.
now dead, told me a dozen or morp yeai-s
ago, that when he was a boy, probably about
1840, he was on the Labrador coast in a large
ship from Boston, which was loaded with
salted and dried codfish bought on the coast,
for which a good sale was found in Spain
and Portugal, those Catholic countries being
great markets for fish. Such voyages in such
ships were not uncommon then ; but it must
be rare, indeed, that a square-rigged vessel is
now seen on that lonely shore beyond Belle-
isle, though ships of the Hudson Bay Com-
pany continue to make annual* voyages to
York Factory. At the time of which I am
writing, small vessels came regularly from
London and took away the furs, fish, and oil
accumulated by English agents.
Hearing occasionally, as we did, in the
interior of New England, of these Labra-
dor fisheries, and the healthful influences of
the occupation and the summer climate, it
seemed wise in the spring of 1854 to try
whether such a radical change of air, scene,-
and mode of life would not be recreative in
many ways, and my employers were so kind
as to give me a three-months vacation. I
determined to go a-fishing, and my railroad
152 Sixty Yearn in Concord.
friend, Charles H. Ham, declared, to my sur-
prise, that he would go too. Therefore we
repaired to Newburyport, where several fish-
ing schooners owned by Mr. Richard Dodge,
of Hampton Falls, and Mr. Isaac H. Board-
man, of Newburyport, made annual voyages
to Labrador, and took passage in the "An-
gelia," a fore-and-aft schooner of one hun-
dred tons' measurement, whereof William
Morgan was master and part owner. This
Captain Morgan dwelt in Seabrook, and
sailed the seas only in summer: in winter
he was a follower of St. Crispin. Many of
the crew might be styled web-footed shoe-
makers, not' being sailoi^ of much experi-
ence ; in fact, we had only one man on board,
the mate, John Daley, who could have passed
for an able seaman. He took pride in relat-
ing how he placed a gilt star at the top of
the maintopgallantmast of the famous ship
" Dreadnaught," when slie was built at New-
buryport.
My friend and myself set out as passen-
gers, agreeing to pay fifty dollars each as pas-
sage money for the round trip ; and there was
another fellow in the cabin, from Newmarket.
Contrary winds kept our schooner in port
three days beyond the one appointed for sail-
ing, and meanwhile we explored Newbury-
Personal Recollections,. 153
port, looked at the open eh arches, waniiered
through the old cemetery, and deciphered
epitaphs, quaint and curious, — among them
a queer inscription to a good woman who
died from " swallowing a pea at her own ta-
ble, and sweetly breathed her soul away," etc.
On the ninth of June the "Angelia " sailed
away on a course east by south, designed to
carry her past Cape Sable on the Nova Scotia
shore. Most people might have supposed, as
I did, with school-day map in mind, that the
direction would be northward of east. The
weather was delightful, many sails were in
sight, and on the evening of the second day
Cape Sable was passed. With a fair wind,
on summer seas, we flew along the Nova
Scotia and Cape Breton shores, past Sambro
Head, Halifax, and Louisburg, and on the
evening of the fourth day turned through
Millelieu passage into the Gulf of St. Law-
rence. Here came on the morrow what was
not so agreeable, — fog and storm ; and a lum-
ber-laden ship from Quebec, bound to Europe,
came rather near running us down. Cape
Forlorn Hope, Cape Ray, and Cape St. George
were sighted dimly, and on June sixteenth
refuge from a threatening gale was found in
the great Bay of Islands on the west shore of
Newfoundland.
154 . Sixty Years in Concord,
The grandeur of the Bay of Islands will
some day be more widely known. All the
navies of the world might float on its impe-
rial bosom. Its shores are majestic hills.
Mr. S. G. W. Benjamin, in the " Cruise of
the 'Alice May,' " printed in the Century
Magazine for 1884, and afterward in book
form by D. Appleton & Co., says of it, —
I never shall forget how Guernsey island
looked that morning, as the little schooner
ran under its tremendous cliffs and tacked.
One thousand feet above us it towered, a ver-
tical rock, over which the mists drove like
smoke. Although we were fully a mile from
it, it fairly seemed but a stone's-throw from
the ship. This Gibraltar-like rock lies mid-
way in the channel. Although it is two full
miles from South Head, it was impossible to
believe it. The cliffs on each side were so
vast, it was only by timing the distance as
we tacked from side to side that I could
credit what the chart and dividei*s stated.
But even after I was convinced that it was
two long miles between the headlands, I
could not realize it until I had seen the
heights at all times of the day and in all
states of the atmosphere.
After struggling at her task all the morn-
ing, the "Alice May " finally reached into
the Bay of Islands, and came abreast of Sark
Harbor. The sun came out, the clouds rolled
away, and the magnificent scenery of the Bay
of Islands lay around us. Tlie coast scenery
Personal Mecollections* 155
of the world offers few prospects more grand,
more varied, more eiichantingly beautiful than
this. Certainly on the Atlantic coast of North
America its equal is not to be found.
The Bay of Islands is about twelve miles
square. Its entrance is guarded by Guern-
sey, Pearl, and Tweed islands, which are all
exceedingly lofty. Opposite Guernsey is
Sark mountain ; it is isolated, and rises one
thousand three hundred and six feet, ter-
minating in what is called South Head.
Adjoining Sark mountain is Sark harbor, a
deep, narrow, and most romantic cove, al-
most enclosed by overhanging, densely wood-
ed crags, offering safe anchorage, but liable
to furious squalls. Eastward of this opens a
lovely bay called York harbor, protected by
a low, wooded isle. This delicious sheet of
water is dominated on tlie east by the sub-
lime grandeur of Blomidon, which terminates
one of the coast ranges. Blomidon is two
thousand and forty-three feet high, and is
crowned with an overhanging rampart of
rock, which abuts on a nearly vertical slope
that plunges fifteen hundred feet. In one
spot the crags take the form of an enormous
eagle's claw burying its talons in the side of
the mountain. From the summit a waterfall
slips over the edge of the cliff, and dangles
downward like a flexible band of silver,
until lost in impenetrable forests which
clothe the base of Blomidon. These forests
form one of the most remarkable features of
the Bay of Islands. The southern side of
the bay is a mass of tangled woods, gener-
156 Sixty Years in Concord,
ally spruce, birch, and fir, interlocking their
boughs, and intertwined by an almost impen-
etrable thicket. There are tracts in that sol-
itude where the axe has never rung since the
creation. Bear, deer, beaver, partridges, and
hare abound in these woods. The flanking
ranges of Bloraidon are wild in form, present-
ing abrupt peaks springing out of the woods,
and valleys bathed in delicate hues. Com-
parisons are considered odious, but I could
not help comparing this part of the shores of
the bay to the shores of the Clyde and the
adjoining Trosachs.
The southern side of the Bay of Islands is
lined with lofty ranges of precipices, more
bare than those already described, but rival-
ling them in beauty. Their stern and sterile
character really enhances the loveliness of
the tints in which an afternoon light suf-
fuses them. They are clear cut in outline,
and rose gray and tender purple in color.
Frequently among the higher crags of
these mountains of Newfoundland patches
of snow, many acres in extent, were seen.
We were assured that this snow never leaves
these spots, where it lies even in midsum-
mer thirty to fifty feet deep at no greater
altitude than fifteen hundred feet above the
sea. The north shore is cleft by wonderful
fiords called the North and South Arms.
The cliffs which enclose them rise perpendic-
ularly from the water for many hundred feet.
About the centre of the bay lies Harbor
island. We headed for it, proposing to find
an anchorage there, the water elsewhere be-
Personal Recollections. 157
ing generally of great depth. The full moon
arose superbly while we were drifting in the
channel between Harbor island and Blomi-
don, and we finally anchored near French-
man's cove, at the. foot of this sublime moun-
tain. We seemed to \yQ in a fabled region.
The scenery we had seen during the day pro-
duced such impressions of grandeur and pri-
meval .solitude, that I should not have been
in the least surprised if gigantic cyclopean
beings had waded out from the vast over-
hanging forests which draped the cliffs under
which our little ship was anchored.
The following day opened calm and lovely.
Far away a number of schooners could be
seen at the mouth of the H umber river. It
was fortunate we saw them there, for it gave
us an opportunity of gauging the height of
the cliffs which skirt the bay. Vessels with
masts ninety feet high were mere white
specks against the cliffs when miles this side
of them. We put the helm up, and decided
to run to the head of navigation on the Hum-
ber. It was a wild, exciting sail of some
twenty miles, between lofty shores of novel
and remarkable loveliness.
The western and southern coasts of New-
foundland are a constant source of entangle-
ment between the English and the French
governments. The matter is sufficiently
complicated, various treaties having failed
to settle the question so that it can stay
settled. As the matter now stands, it seems
that the French have a right to put up fish
stages and temporary huts for summer use
168 Sixty Years in Concord.
immediately by the water. But they cannot
erect permanent dwellings, nor are they per-
mitted to purchase land unless they become
British citizens. But while claiming legis-
lative and judicial rights at the Bay of Is-
lands, the English do not dare to give a
title to land, and it is impossible for any
one to acquire the fee simple of even enough
to build upon.
Going out of the bay we had a dead beat
against the breeze to South Head; but the
day was superb, as if this noble bay wished
to fix a favorable impression upon the mem-
ory of the voyagers who had come so far to
see it. Blomidon soared majestically above
us, the monarch of that mountain land,
crowned with a wreath of roseate clouds,
and the surrounding isles were suffused with
the glow of a peaceful sunset. The water
of the Bay of Islands is as blue as that of the
Mediterranean. In this case it cannot be
due to a larger proportion of salt, which is the
cause of the intense hues of the sea in warm
climates, so it must be attributed to the great
depth of the Newfoundland bay. As I gazed
entranced on the lovely scene before me, 1
was able for the first time to realize, by the
aid of the golden haze veiling the long slopes
and tumbling steeps, the grandeur of the
Sierras which inclose the Bay of Islands.
The silence was intensified by the silvery
waterfalls dropping from crag to crag many
hundred feet with an ethereal motion, and
Personal Recollections. 159
yet giving forth no echo or sound of their
dashing, so distant were they from our ship :
but to the eye they appeared to be only a
few brief furlongs away. The full moon
loomed above the mountain-tops, solemn and
glorious; and in that weird stillness, and
touched by an awesome feeling creeping over
us, as if we were alone in all the mysterious
vastness of an unknown and unexplored re-
gion, our little schooner, seeming puny as a
cork-boat, was fanned past the Titanic cliffs
which form the gateway of the bay. It was
two in the morning. No sound was heard ex-
cept now and then the low sighing of a pass-
ing gust through the sails, or the long, low,
far-away boom of the surf rolling into the
caves of the implacable cliffs, and reverberat-
ing with muffled thunder down that iron-
bound coast.
At the magnificent Bay of Islands we cut
a supply of stove wood. Snow fell on the
heights the night of the seventeenth of June,
and next day a brook which had its source
back among the hills was found to be too
cold for trout-fishing. The woods were
lonely and trackless. No white man had,
so we were told, ever crossed the island from
shore to shore.* A smart little French armed
cutter, a sort of watch-dog of the fisheries,
came in during the evening of our arrival.
* There is now a railroad across the island .
160 Sixty Years in Concord,
We held on to this anchorage three days,
glad to have escaped the tedious storm in
the Gulf. The cold came down from the
hill-tops, and it seemed that we had ex-
changed the air of June for that of Decem-
ber in New England. Hail fell on our deck
for hours on the eighteenth, and on the
nineteenth a man, who died on a schooner
which had run in like ours to escape the
gale, was buried in a lonely spot on the
beach, with only the eternal hills to mark
his grave. I attempted a pencil drawing of
an impressive mountain rising out of the
sea, which has somehow been preserved and
which is found, by comparison with illus-
trations in the Century magazine from which
I have quoted, to be a view of Guernsey
island. On June twentieth we sailed out of
this grand haven — very attractive it looked
as we were leaving it for the rough sea-^and
on that and two following days were tossed
on the waters of the Gulf, always in sight
of the snowy Newfoundland hills ; but on
the morning of the twenty-third, circling by
an iceberg, a huge crystal mass, sky blue,
streaked with creamy white, we gained the
bay of Bonne Esperance, fourteen days out
from Newburyport.
Under the treaty made with Great Britain
Personal Recollections, 161
in 1818, fishermen of the United States have
the right to fish on the coast and in the bays
of Labrador, and to land and cure fish on
any part of the unoccupied shore. Codfish
were taken there b}'^ two methods. When
they came in large schools, chasing the cap-
lin and launce, they were caught by seining ;
later in the season, when they were scat-
tered, hooks were usQd. Trawling was not
then practised. The success of our crew
was not equal to their expectation. They
were less fortunate with the seine than
either of the crews of five other Newburyport
schooners lying near us. To the deep-sea
fishing our Newburyport schooners sent
every week-day more than twenty boats,
built in a style formerly and perhaps still
common at Hampton beach — sharp at either
end, broad in the centre, carrying fore and
aft sails, safe in rough water — all painted
white as a sea-gull's wing, each carrying two
men. To the same fishing came numerous
less tidy boats from a dozen Nova Scotia
and Newfoundland vessels harbored a few
miles from our anchorage, the crews of
which did us an ill turn if they found oppor-
tunity.
As we had lost a man overboard during
the voyage, my comrade took a share in
11
162 Sixty Yearn in Concord.
work whicli occupied some hours daily. It
was delightful to go cruising about the bay,
and a mistake that we were not provided
with a boat of our own for longer trips up
the rivers, but the schooner's yawl was for
brief periods at our service. In the salt water
of the harbor were many fine trout, which,
as they had silvery sides, red spots, and
square tail, were supposed to be the Salvio
fontinalis^ but the author of " Game Fish of
the North " calls them Sahno trutta. In the
'* Forest tind Steam '' they are mentioned as
Sahno canadensis, Their flesh was as red as
that of the salmon. No scales for weighing
were at hand, but the largest one landed
during the summer measured eighteen inches
in length, and ten inches at its largest cir-
cumference. One much larger was struck,
but escaped, carrying off a hook, as big fish
in angler's stories are apt to do. The Esqui-
maux or St. Paul's river was said to be a
fine salmon stream, but we had neither rod
nor flies suitable for taking that king of fish.
Dwellers Jilong the Labrador shore near
our anchorage had salmon nets set at favor-
able places. Two miles away were two
young men from the Isle of Jei^ey, whose
net stretched toward Belles Amours at a
point in the open sea. At one visit, on July
Personal Recollections, 168
23, I saw them take from the net twelve fine
salmon weighing from ten to fifteen pounds
each. How beautiful those fish were, so
active, so lustrous, so beautifully blue, as
we looked down upon them through the
water before they were taken from the
meshes of the net. Those Jerseymen man-
aged this fishery for a non-resident owner,
and dwelt in summer in a little cabin by the
shore.
The seal destroys many a good salmon,
taking some out of the nets. There was a
seal which would follow my boat whenever
I rowed into certain water near our anchor-
age and attempted to whistle a tune. A
kinder listener is seldom met, for he kept
only about three oars' lengths away. His
face was as gentle and his eyes as soft as
those of a little spaniel. In this water was
a small island, which has since been called
Mary Dodge's island, in honor of a visit by
a young lady of Hampton Falls.
There was some shooting as well as fish-
ing. We had two kegs of powder and plenty
of shot, not one tenth of which was used.
Sea fowl, especially black ducks, were nu-
merous. One morning, on Caribou island,
as I went out on the beach, a black duck
arose from the water's edge and went off up
164 Sixty Years in Concord.
the shore against a strong wind. Half a
mile away she turned, and came back at
great speed before the gale. I had never
shot at an object moving so fast, but held up
the gun, fired where it seemed likely the bird
and tlie shot would meet, and down came
the duck with a great thump on the beach.
There was nothing strange about this, except
that above the rush of the wind I heard dis-
tinctlv the shot strike that bird lis one hears
a handful of gravel rattle against a board
fence.
There was one singer which gave us songs
of home ; this was a red-breast robin which
from a little hill behind our schooner began
to sing regularly at daybreak, in that high
latitude about 2 : 80 o'clock. The robin is
found in summer as far north as Hudson bay.
The blue jay also goes up there, and, in fact,
many other of our New England birds.
There had been a great deal of talk on
board the " Angelia " about the Esquimaux
curlew. " Wait until you see the curlew
about August first," was what the old hands
said. Unfortunately it was late, the eleventh
of August, when the advance flocks came on
their way south, the period of their flight
being about three weeks. They alighted to
feed on berries, and were shy, but some sue-
Pergonal Recollections. 165
cess attended our shooting. The curlew is
not much smaller than a pigeon, with vari-
egated plumage in soft brown, drab, and
creamy tints. The naturalist. Pennant, saw
flocks innumerable on the hills about Chat-
teau bay from August 9 to September 6,
when they all disappeared, being on their
way from their northern breeding-places.
He says they feed on the Empetrum nigrum
(the black crowberry, which is found also
among the White Mountains), and are very
fat and delicious. They arrive at Hudson
bay in April or early in May, and breed to
the north of Albany Fort among the woods.
They are peculiar to our continent, but are
rarer than they once were.
Two days later with flocks of curlew whis-
tling all around us, the cod having disap-
peared, we left our anchorage and went
groping along the shore in quest of mack-
erel, reported to be abundant near Checat-
cca island in Mittanogue bay, about thirty
miles southwestward of Bonne Esperance.
Along this coast the shores are steep, and
wherever there is water it is safe enough for
a schooner to go. Following closely a New-
bur}^port schooner, the "' Louisiana," Captain
Hewitt, a first-rate master and fisherman, we
threaded the narrow channels, sometimes no
166 Sixty Years in Concord.
wider than twice the schooner's length, and
there was always sufficient water. One of
the sailors' yarns was about a Newburyport
schooner's tacking successfully so near shore
that a projecting crag knocked a letter out
of the name on her stern.
Four days passed at Cheeateca island and
no mackerel were taken, so the anchor was
hoisted and the homeward voj'^age began.
Storms beset us again in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and the vessel was buffeted about
for several days ; at night, when hove to
under shortened sail, the helm was lashed,
and, strange as it may seem, all hands turned
in to sleep. It was curious, too, that a crew
of fishermen who were in the* open air all
da3s frequently soaked through with rain
and sea-water, were loath to leave a small
dead-light open to admit air when they were
asleep.
In beating through the gulf, Anticosti was
sighted. A dozen years ago I saw in Boston
a map of the northern hemisphere on a pro-
jection which gave stormy, barren Anticosti
the central place in the western half of the
globe, and around it were concentric lines to
show how greatly favored Boston and New
York were in their nearness to that propi-
tious isle. This map was a caprice of some
Personal Mecolleetions, 167
enthusiast who was trying to found a colony
in the wilds of Anticosti. I think such a
colony was gathered, but, after much priva-
tion and suffering, the families composing it
were removed by the Canadian government.
The island is now owned by a Parisian man-
ufacturer of chocolate, who is fond of hunting
and fishing.
Off Scatari we took a tremendous gale
from the northward, which we feared would
land the bones of the " Angelia " on that
grave of ships, Sable island. It gave us no
time, and left us no sail wherewith to heave
to, so, without a rag of canvas set, the
schooner bounded away for her life. Sam
George, who had been a soldier in Jesse A.
Gove's company of the New England regi-
ment in the Mexican war, stood at the wheel
about midnight, in a blackness that could be
felt. It was evident that he was frightened,
for he talked all the time, and his voice was
gentle as a woman's, — which it usually was
not. " See how she steers, sir." " One spoke
of the wheel does it." " Beautiful." " Ah,
that was a big wave ; but the ' Angelia '
knows what she's about," — and so it went on
till the norther died away, sail was hoisted
on the little vessel, and her head turned to
the westward. Swearing was then resumed.
168 Sixty Year% in Concord.
(The last I knew of Sam was about 1866,
when he had just finished doing a little time
for the state in an institution at Concord,
and I became his creditor for a sum suffi-
cient to take him home to the coast.)
As we were tossing about in a rough sea
and light wind, a transatlantic steamship
from New York went by, her bright work
glistening in the sun, and the majesty of her
sweep through the waves excited our admira-
tion and envy. We had blown to the south-
ward of our course, and the captain having
no means of getting longitude, we were dur-
ing the last tliree days of the voyage looking
anxiously for land. It began to be whis-
pered around that we might be far astray,
even in our latitude, and should bring up on
the sands of New Jersey ; but on September
first " Jack " Edmunds, of Chichester, who
had been considered the greenest man of the
crew, never on blue water before, and rather
homesick all summer, was the first to descry
Cape Ann riglit ahead. When the pilot
came on board, we inquired at once if the
English and French had taken Sebastopol.
" No, they have n't, and I hope they won't,"
said he. We were just fourteen days from
Labrador. In rude health, browned by sun
and wind, and disguised in toggery of the
Pergonal Recollections, 169
sea, we rode to. Concord, and might easily
have escaped the recognition of friends on
the train.
During the following winter six articles,
entitled " A Summer in Labrador," were
printed in the Netv Hampshire Statesman^
the first venture in print of my comrade and
myself. These were read with some interest
by our townspeople, so we were assured, and
Mr. F. J. Ottarson of the New York Tribune
surprised us by taking some notice of them.
Among the Concord people who afterward
visited Labrador were Samuel C. Eastman,
Cyrus M. Murdock, David A. Warde,
Thomas W. Stewart, George W. Drew,
Benjamin T. Hutchins, .and Joseph Stickney.
The last named, one of tlie " coal kings " of
New York, now sails wherever he chooses in
his magnificent steam yacht, the " Susque-
hanna."
Since the summer of our visit Bonne
Esperance has gained something in impor-
tance. It is the residence of a local magis-
trate, has an occasional mail in summer, and
four times in winter over the snow from
Quebec. Schooners from the St. Lawrence
river go thither with considerable regularity
when ice does not prevent. There are a
chapel and a mission-house, founded by Rev.
170 Sixty Yearn in Concord.
C. C. Carpenter, now of Andover, Mass., at
which missionaries from the United States
have been stationed. There is some trade
with the interior, and sufficient stores of
needful merchandise. English, Canadian,
and United States money is current. Indians
— Montagnais and Nascopies — ^bring their
furs to market there, and the fisheries give
employment in summer to Canadians, Nova
Scotiamen, Newfoundlanders, and Jersey
Islanders. A few goats and cattle are kept,
and more comfortable homes exist ; but
poverty and want prevail generally, both on
the coast and in the interior.
X.
After leaving the Concord Railroad, as
related in a preceding chapter, some months
were spent in idleness. A weakness of the
optic nerves forbade much reading, and there
was no remunerative employment available
which did not require good vision. But
opportunity was taken to go West with my
friend George E. Todd. We visited Niag-
ara Falls, Detroit, Chicago, Quincy, and St.
Louis. We met en route Hon. Walter Har-
riman, who was "stumping" the state of
Michigan in behalf of James Buchanan, the
Democratic candidate for the presidency —
a procedure which he afterward regretted.
Mr. Todd and I had planned to part in the
West, and I, alone, visited Jacksonville, 111.,
Cincinnati and Zanesville, Ohio. Coming-
home by way of Long Island Sound, I was
near being drowned in a great storm which,
on the night of Friday, October 17, over-
whelmed, shattered, and almost sent to the
bottom the steamer '* Connecticut " of the
Norwich line.
That autumn New Hampshire was an
172 Sixty Years in Concord,
Hctive political volcano. The murderous
aggressions of slaveholders and their allies
in Kansas and Nebraska had aroused the
whole Nortli, especially New England and
states peopled by New Englanders, and
John C. Fremont had been put in nomina-
tion (June 17, 1856) as the Presidential
candidate of the new Republican party.
There is now no doubt that he made a bet-
ter candidate than he would have made
President had he been elected, — but New
England was deeply stirred, and in New
Hampshire, although she had just then a
*' favorite son " in the White House, busi-
ness gave place to public duty. The largest
flags ever seen were hung across Main street.
There were many public meetings in Con-
cord and its vicinity, and there was torch-
light marching enough to weary a profes-
sional athlete. There was a great torchlight
company gathered in Concord which went
into most of the principal towns of south-
ern New Hampshire hurrahing for Fremont.
The torchlight procession which marched in
Concord on the evening of October 23, 1856,
under the marshalship of John C. Briggs,
the engineer and bridge-builder, has never
been surpassed in its way by anything at-
tempted here. The party was virtually
Personal Recollections, 17S
beaten then, for Pennsylvania had just been
carried by the Democrats (and John W.
Forney), but did not realize the truth, and
the parade was a bold, magnificent display,
aided by the Republicans of Manchester,
Nashua, and elsewhere. Of the sixty mar-
shals and assistant marshals who marched
in the Concord portion of that procession,
at least the following, twenty-two in num-
ber, are still (1890) residents of our city:
Richard H. Ayer, D. C. Allen, Moses H.
Bradley, Horace A. Brown, George W.
Brown,* Charles W. Davis, Moody S. Far-
num, C. Horace Herbert, J. C. A. Hill, Isaac
A. Hill, James Hazelton, Benjamin A. Kim-
ball, John Kimball, James L. Mason,* Henry
McFarland, Lorenzo K. Peacock,* Hiram
Rolfe, Abial Rolfe, Thomas W. Stewart,
John H. Stewart, George E. Todd,* and
Calvin C. Webster.
This procession was, as I have already in-
timated, an astonishing demonstration. It
went over the principal streets, and then
countermarched in alternate lines in state-
house park until that square was full to over-
flowing, beside thousands of men to spare.
There were illuminated decorations, torches
the light of which shone far up in the clouds,
*Died since this was written.
174 Sixty Years in Ooncord.
and the air was full of colored fire discharged
from Roman candles. Amos S. Alexander, a
young Democratic lawyer, looking on, ex-
claimed : " Great Scott, if these fellows can
do this in the face of defeat, what would they
do with victory in view I " That and the
great Harrison-Log Cabin procession of 1840
are the two local events of that character
which have left the deepest impression on
my recollection.
The Fremont campaign failed in its cliief
object (he received one hundred and four-
teen out of two hundred and ninety-six
electoral votes), but was after all consider-
able of a success. Among other results,
New Hampshire was marshalled on the
Republican side, and affairs got into train
for the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
No one was exactly satisfied with the situa-
tion. An impression was in my mind then
that because of slavery, and the tolerance of
frauds on the ballot, trouble for the Republic
and a possible civil war were not very far
away. I mentioned this to Mr. George W.
Bentley of the Worcester & Nashua Rail-
road, an ardent Buchanan man, whom I had
met on his road as I was coming home from
the West in October, and he scouted the
idea. In the issue of the Statesman next
Personal Recollections, 175
after the votes were counted was an article
which I prepared, entitled " Encouraging
Features of the Late Election," which, look-
ing at the files of that newspaper not long
ago, I stumbled upon. There was in it some-
thing which reminded me of that foreboding
of trouble.
During the following winter I went much
into the northern part of the state on busi-
ness for the Statesman^ and was almost per-
suaded to embark in the lumber trade by pur-
chase of a share in lands and a mill on Gale
river near Bethlehem, being tempted by a
longing for out-door life in a healthful re-
gion. It was fortunate that the bargain was
not concluded, for the saw-mill, which was
said to be '^ the smartest mill in that country,"
did not prove to be a bonanza for its owners,
of whom John G. Sinclair was one. The in-
telligent advice of Mr. George McQuesten,
then of the lumber-dealing firm of Roby &
McQuesten, of Nashua, who chanced to be in
that vicinity, was influential in keeping me
out of the scheme.
Then we had another earnest political
campaign, and William Haile of Hinsdale,
the Republican candidate, was chosen gov-
ernor in March, 1857. His son is now lieu-
tenant-governor of Massachusetts. On the
176 ISixty Years in Concord.
day after election I started for Chicago to
find some occupation. My railroad friend
and Labrador comrade, Charles H. Ham, had
gone to that city early in 1856, and taken
employment in the banking-house of R. K.
Swift, Bro. & Johnston. I met him there
during the visit (before referred to) of Mr.
Todd and myself, and had been in corres-
pondence with him all winter. Looking over
a package of letters some days ago, there was
one dated Nov. 2, 1856, from which I take
the following extract :
Fuller has been making a speech on our
best chair, in the middle of the room, com-
mencing, 'I have the honor of addressing
this large and respectable audience,' etc.,
gradually rising into a eulogy on the charms
of Ophelia, the widow's daughter. I cheered
him loudly, but he soon exhausted the sub-
ject, together with his own powers.
The Fuller thus alluded to was Melville
W. Fuller, now the chief-justice of the
United States supreme court. I had met
him during my first visit to Chicago with Mr.
Todd, and afterward dwelt in the same house
with him. He was a little chap, with pleas-
ant features, light brown hair and moustache,
an easy talker, and an out-and-out Democrat
in politics. It never occurred to me that he
Peraonal Recollectioms, 177
was to be a very eminent lawyer, and sit on
the bench of the most important court in
Christendom.
The New Hampshire jnen in Chicago re-
sorted to the Briggs House on Randolph
street, where tliey gave kindly welcome to
new-comers. It was several days before I
found employment. Col. Charles G. Ham-
mond, superintendent of the Chicago, Bur-
lington & Quincy Railroad, looked at my
letters, but nothing came of that. He was
afterward on the Union Pacific, just before
myself, but did not please the directors. Mr.
John F. Tracy of the Rock Island Railroad
offered a station agency on his line — that of
Ottawa, 111., I think — if I would wait. The
man in it was wrong in some way, and Mr.
Tracy wanted to effect a settlement of his ac-
counts before dismissal. But while waiting,
Walter S. Johnson, superintendent of the
Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad — "the col-
onel " he was called — gave me the care of
that company's steamboat accounts. Two
steamboats, the " Planet " and the " Travel-
ler," were in their line on Lake Michigan,
plying between Chicago and Milwaukee,
touching at Waukegan, Kenosha, and Racine
to keep away hostile water competition.
The " Planet " was larger than the " Trav-
12
178 Sixty Yearm in Concord.
eller," and her people had extravagant ways,
so she lost money all the season, while the
'^ Traveller " a little more than made good
the loss. Johnson & Olmstead were the Mil-
waukee agents ; and George C. Drew, a tall
man with a long pipe, did the honors at the
wharf in Chicago. Charles C. Wheeler was
clerk on the " Traveller," and Frederick
Johnson, the colonel's brother, a novice from
Vermont, held the fort on the " Planet."
T. C. Butlin was captain of the "Planet"
and Barney Sweeney of the " Traveller."
Butlin became a little elated on the Fourtli
of July, when Deacon Bross of the Chicago
Tribune^ and a large excursion party, were
taken out on the lake, and gravely told me
on the wheelhouse that he could take that
multitude across the Atlantic in the
'• Planet," and she would give better satis-
faction than any other boat that ever crossed
the ocean. Considering my experience in
the " Connecticut " on Long Island Sound
the year before, I did not agree with him.
In 1887, thirty years later, I met Captain
Butlin as president of the Gooderich Steam-
boat Company in Chicago, but he could not
remember me. Captain Sweeney was also on
the wharf, master of a fine propeller. He
was the handiest man on the lake with a
Personal Recollections, 179
steamboat. It was said that he brought his
boat to a landing so softly that the contact
would barely break an eggshell, and the
" Traveller " had the name of being the best
managed boat out of Chicago.
Charles C. Wheeler, the clerk of the
*' Traveller," continued to get on in the
world until he became general superintend-
ent of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway.
He and the steward, John Leonard, worked
as faithfully for the interests of that boat as
if they had owned her. Tiie mate, Frederick
Pabst, married a daughter of Philip Best, the
Milwaukee brewer, and after a time inher-
ited the great brewery. The Pabst Brewing
Company is now one of the largest establish-
ments of similar character in the world, and
the faithful mate of the " Traveller " no
longer counts his income at about forty dol-
lars a month, but is reckoned among the mil-
lionaires of Wisconsin.
To relieve the boat clerks I did some ser-
vice on both the " Planet " and the " Trav-
eller." One night we ran at great speed far
out of the course to rescue the people on a
burning propeller, but a passing schooner
took off the crew before our arrival. The
lost propeller was loaded partly with freight
for George Hutchins & Co., of Concord. A
180 Sixty Years in Concord.
few years afterward, on December 4, 1868,
Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins were lost in the steam-
boat '' United States," which burned after a
collision on the Ohio river. One year before
the season of which I am writing, the " Trav-
eller " had rescued a part of the passengei-s
and crew of a burning steamer off Port Wash-
ington, on which occasion among the lost
was my railroad friend, Charles F. Gould,
who had been for years ticket-seller at the
Manchester station.
Among the New Hampshire colony in Chi-
cago were Andrew J. Wright, formerly a
conductor on the Northern Railroad ; Tim-
othy E. Chandler, formerly of Hopkinton,
who had been a clerk in William W. Esta-
brook's dry-goods store, the " Great Eight,"
in Concord, where he filled a place occupied
not long before by Levi P. Morton, since
vice-president of the United States ; Horace
G. and Charles C. Chase, brothers, also for-
merly of Hopkinton; Charles A. Badger, a
Warner boy, who went out in 1857, got, a
situation as clerk in the Tremont House, and
fourteen years afterward walked off the end
of a swinging, pivoted bridge in the evening,
and was drowned in the Chicago river ;
Henry P. Stanwood, from Hopkinton, who
vi/^as a Chicago & Northwestern Railroad man,
Personal Mecolleetions. 181
and died in the service of that company in
San Francisco in 1888; and Benjamin F.
Quimby, also from Hopkinton, a money-
lender and dealer in real estate. Then there
was Charles L. Epps, from Manchester, who
also went out in. 1857. In 1887, looking out
of a car window from a train entering Chi-
cago, I read on a large building the sign,
" Charles L. Epps, Malt House." Inquiry
developed the fact that this was the property
of my old acquaintance, prosperous as all
brewers and maltsters seem to be.
The Chicago of the older date (1857) had
John Wentworth, formerly of Sandwich, for
mayor, and Nathaniel Sherman Bouton, for-
merly of Concord, son of Rev. Dr. Bouton,
was city engineer. The city treasury was in
rather a lean condition, and it was said that
certain police court fines were all applied to
building the Jackson Street bridge, which
the mayor was anxious to complete.
Rev. Samuel C. Bartlett, since president of
Dartmouth college, was pastor of the New
England church, which was situated on the
North Side.
The Chicago of that day, and of this, bear
little resemblance to each other. The old
city was built on a lower grade. The streets
were soft, and at some places sometimes
182 Sixty Years in Concord,
impassable. The sidewalks were laid with
planks, oozy and slippery ; and as the streets
were being raised to the new grade, a pedes-
trian must walk along for rods with his head
on about the level of the centre of the street,
then go up steps to the plane of the new
grade, then in a short distance down again.
The ways for travellers between the North,
South, and West divisions of the citv were
very inadequate. At a somewhat later
period the embryo Chief Justice Fuller was
elected to the state legislature, and favored
the passage of a bill to incorporate the
Wabash Railway Company, which would
have given the grantees power to gridiron
Chicago with street railways. The character
of the charter was, however, discovered, a
hubbub was made in Chicago, and the bill
stopped, perhaps as much because - of the
quiet, unobtrusive way in which it had been
promoted as for any better reason.
There were a few good buildings in the
business portion of the city, and handsome
residences on Michigan and Wabash avenues,
but Chicago was probably inferior in appear-
ance to the Omaha of to-day.
Our steamboat office was on River street^
over Durant Brothers' w^holesale grocery, and
was always redolent of hams and sugar. It
JPersonal Me collections. 188
was a rude place, not half furnished, and
steamboat and railroad tickets enough for a
duke's ransom lay in piles on the floor all
summer, but none was lost. The exact lo-
cality Wiis not clear to me in 1887, so much
had the vicinity changed. It was not far
from the site of old Fort Dearborn.
The small brick house where I dwelt was
on Adams street, between Clark and State.
The site was a lot of the regular city depth,
worth at that time perhaps $75 a front foot,
and now about $3,000 a front foot, or, for
the lot alone, $3,750 then and 1150,000 now.
The street was quiet, and given up to small
houses. Now the whole square between
Adams, Dearborn, and State streets is occu-
pied by the Fair building — a great shop
under one roof and one management. The
land on which it stands is valued at
$3,000,000. The First National Bank, one
of the largest banking institutions in the
world, with $30,000,000 deposits, is a square
and a half away. The present custom-house
and post-office is a square and a half west ;
the Palmer House, a square and a half north-
east. Kinsley's, the great restaurant of the
city, is within a square. The Grand Pacific
Hotel is two squares southwest; the Union
League Club, a square and a half southwest ;
184 Sixty Years in Concord,
and the Auditorium is a square and a half
east and three squares south. The Board of
Trade is three squares southwest. There
are a dozen banks within two minutes' walk,
and both the Trilmne and Inter-Ocean offices
are within two and a half squares of it.
The financial cyclone of 1857 struck Chi-
cago most unexpectedly. It toppled over
the bank of R. K. Swift, Bro. & Johnston,
where my friend Ham was employed, like a
house of cards, and the small-fry dealers in
money hastened to put up their shutters.
Swift liad many depositors of small savings,
whose funds were subject to withdrawal
without notice, and the demands of these
people upset the bank. There had been for
a considerable time a premium of about three
per cent, on the notes of Eastern banks, while
those of some Western and all Southern
state banks had to be sold or exchanged at a
discount. There were many counterfeits in
circulation. A fellow came on board the
" Planet " in Milwaukee, and offered me
three such in succession in exchange for a
ticket to Chicago. Being told that if he had
current money it would be wise to produce
it, he replied with threats to thrash me. By
and by he discovered that he had good money
wherewith to pay his fare.
Personal Recollections. 185
About this money panic of 1857, Mr. Sam
Ward, long a famous lobbyist in Washington,
once related in my hearing the following
occurrence : He said that he was a member
of the firm of Prime, Ward & King, bankers
of New York, and that late in the fifties they
had an order from France to invest $250,000
in annuities on the life of a French gentle-
man well advanced in life. The order was
accompanied by all necessary information,
authenticated by consular certificates, etc., and
was executed. Not long afterward came an-
other like remittance and order for annuities
on the life of the same man. This command
too was executed, though not so easily, and
then came a third one of the same kind. . The
last went pretty hard, for the American trust
companies began to be suspicious, and sug-
gested that the Frenchman was a Wandering
Jew, to live forever ; but still it was done.
Time went on, and intelligence came that
the Frenchman had fallen down stairs and
broken his leg, whereupon the actuaries in
New York assembled and partook of a good
dinner, thinking they would soon be rid of
him and their obligations to him. But he
recovered, and held on bravely, drawing his
annuities " with perfect impunity and great
boldness," as a fertile imagination once de-
186 Sixty Years in Concorde
scribed the way smuggling was done through
Concord. Mr. Ward investigated the trans-
action when he was afterward in Europe,
and found his client to be a man who had
invested all his means in buying annuities in
the United States, and had heavilv insured
his life in England. He was living on his
annuities, less the annual premiums paid for
life insurance, expecting that at his death
the life insurance payments would replace
his fortune to his heirs. This affair has this
much connection with the panic of 1857 :
The Ohio Life & Trust Company of New
York was one of the companies which granted
the annuities. The cash which that company
received from the old Frenchman kept it
alive beyond its time, and when it finally
did fail, it precipitated the disastei-s of that
disastrous year.
In the autumn our boats went into winter
quarters at Milwaukee, and it was settled
that the season had not been a successful
one. The boats together had neither made
nor lost money. Mr. M. L. Sykes, repre-
senting the directors, came out from New
York to see what was the matter. He was
very bright and quick at figures, and soon
located the difficulty in the great cost of
sailing the " Planet." She was too big for
Personal Recollections. 18T
the business, and was not prudently con-
ducted. Mr. Sykes was very kind, and next
year, wlien he had succeeded " the colonel '*
as superintendent of the Chicago & Milwau-
kee road, sent for me, but meanwhile I had
become settled in business in Concord. I
had formed no special attachment to Chi-
cago, and my regard for Concord had in no
way diminished. All the while I had been
away I h"ad longed for the New England
hills and woods where the ruffed grouse
dwells, and wliere the clear, swift, cool
streams run. I had written from Chicago
some letters for the Statesman^ and my father
thought I could help him here : so, with no
conception of the possibilities about to open
to railroad men in the Great West, I bought
a one-third interest in the Statesman estab-
lishment, for which I paid $5,000, a sum
which looked quite large, about half of which
was borrowed money.
XI.
The Neiv Hampshire Statesman^ with which
my father was intimately connected for -pe-
riods amounting in all to forty years, was
founded bv Luther Robv. The first number
thereof, dated January 6, 1823, when Con-
cord had about three thousand inhabitants,
was printed in the southwest first-floor room
of the Carrigain house, now the residence
of Dr. William G. Carter. Its first editor,
Amos A. Parker, Esq., is still living (1891)
in Fitzwilliam, at the age of ninety-nine
years. As to the birthplace of the news-
paper, he writes, clearly and distinctly,
under date of Nov. 19, 1890, '' I state posi-
tively, for I know, the first number of the
New Hampshire Statesman was printed in
the Carrigain building, at the north end of
Concord street." This is like a voice out
of the long buried past — a letter from a man
wlio was living a century ago.
Shortly after its birth the Statesman went
across the street to be printed in a two-story
wooden building on the northeast corner of
the lot where my home now is. No. 203 North
Personal Recollections, 189
Main street. I remember this unpretending
building after about 1840. It was then
owned by Gen. Robert Davis, and during
its occupancy of the site mentioned was once
kept in part as a restaurant. On the night
of Oct. 3, 1850, it was shattered by a mob
'of young fellows who claimed to be deliver-
ing the North End from wine, women, and
song.
The third dwelling-place of the Statesman
was the second floor of the Dr. Ezra Carter
house, corner of North Main and Washing-
ton streets. It went down town in 1825 to
a primitive building which stood where is
now Phoenix block ; and on Feb. 11, 1826,
when my father bought a quarter interest in
it for $500, its habitation was a long third-
story apartment for printing and a second
floor room for a business ofl&ce in Farley's,
which stood where is now the Exchange
building. There were various subsequent
changes of location, all mentioned in the
Statesman of May 31, 1867, and changes
also among the partners in ownership. My
father seems to have invested in it $600
more, and labored zealously in its behalf un-
til Jan. 1, 1834, when, having in eight years
gained only $1,500 above the expenses of his
frugal living, he parted with his share. Ten
190 Sixty Years in Concord,
years later, in July, 1844, when the States-
man was owned by George O. Odlin & Co.,
he became its editor, keeping sturdil}'^ alive,
however, his own separate printing establish-
ment where the Mr. Odlin above mentioned
had been an apprentice. His connection as
editor seems to have (teased before 1850, for'
in that year he visited Europe ; but in 1851
he and Mr. George E. Jenks, who had
become his partner in 1850, bought the
Statesman for f 4,500. They were urged to
make this purchase by many prominent
Whigs of New Hampshire, and some of
Massachusetts. The paper, for a little time
under Mr. Odlin's editorial care, had been
attacking Daniel Webster, one of the charges
being laxity in affairs of personal finance.
I think Mr. Webster had not paid his sul>
scription to the Statesman promptly, and
Odlin & Co. threatened to attach his car-
riage, which was undergoing repairs at the
factory of L. Downing & Sons. These
attacks, printed in a newspaper so near Mr.
Webster's birthplace, exasperated his friends,
and they were anxious to effect an alteration
in this respect. A few New Hampshire
Whigs loaned McFarland & Jenks about
f 1,200, taking notes therefor. Most of these
notes were left in the custody of a trustee,
Personal Recollectiona, 191
and ill due time all were paid with interest —
a result which I suppose the lenders may not
have expected. Mr. Webster told my father
on some after occasion that this change in
ownership was gratifying to him.
The Statesman left its lofty quarters in
Low's (now Woodward's) building, and went
to an equally high floor in Stickney's block
in front of the state-house, occupying there
the width of two store fronts. Driven
thence at much loss by the great fire of
1851, recourse was had to the erection on
leased land of a one-story building (still
standing near the gas-holder east of the junc-
tion of Main and School streets), for which I
drew the paper plans at my father's request.
Philip Watson built it for 1400.
This new situation, if not among the best,
was the best to be had just then, and the
ground rent was fifty dollars a year. It was
soon discovered from experience that the
misfortune of the fire brought with it at
least one compensation, — proof that a print-
ing-office need not always be in upper apart-
ments. In January, 1855, Concord had
about nine thousand inhabitants, and had
adopted a city charter two years before ; but
so lately as 1859 there were but one hundred
and sevent3'-two persons and firms who paid
192 Sixty Years in Concord ,
an annual tax of $50 and upward. Having
liad a fair degree of prosperity, the Stat en-
man went in 1855 to the first floor and base-
ment of the south section of the new Phoenix
block, where its annual rent was |500. The
apartments in Phoenix block were large
enough at the outset, and the location was
and continued to be satisfactory ; still, look-
ing in there a few days ago if was hard to
realize that the growing business was kept
for twelve long years within such narrow
limits.
When I joined the office we divided the
duties of proprietorship. My father did
nearly all the editorial writing, saw the man-
uscripts for the newspaper put in type, went
over book and pamphlet manuscripts, .cor-
recting them for the compositors, r^ad a
good share of the proofs, and maintained a
general oversight of our " department of the
interior." This was usually enough to keep
one busy, and I neyer knew a more punctual
and industrious man. If he had nothing
else at hand, he found a composing stick,
and took a place among the compositors.
Mr. Jenks had the job printing in charge,
estimated the cost of work offered for our
undertaking, read proofs, and cared for
mechanical details. He had a taste for
Personal Recollections. 193
stiitistics, and a Political Manual for New
Hampshire, begun in 1857 as a small affair
for legislative use, by its gradual enlarge-
ments gradually took possession of a larg^
portion of his time.
My work was mainly that of the business
office, although I did some paragraphing, and
made an occasional longer article. There
had been no professors of journalism in our
Concord schools, but my father gave me this
one helpful hint, as he applied the blue pen-
cil to some manuscript : " It is a rule as old
as Blair's Rlietoric never to end a sentence
with a preposition." Blair's Rhetoric I have
never seen, but there are sentences penned
by William Pitt and Lord Macaulay which
end with prepositions.
A Concord lawyer, no\y dead, once re-
marked in my hearing that he believed he
could produce good newspaper articles if he
could only think of something to write
about : which was equivalent to saying he
could write good articles if he *' only liad a
mind to."
The Statesman had become, before 1858,
the favorite local newspaper. Its editor
being by nature devoted to his native town,
did not fail to write at good length of what
concerned its interests. There was enougli
13
194 Sixty Years in Concord.
of politics about it to satisfy a fair-minded
Whig or Republican, and little or no vitu-
peration, for which my father had no taste.
It was a clean, handsomely-printed news-
paper, an agreeable weekly visitor to the
feminine portion of its readei"s, helpful in a
religious way, true to its party without ser-
vility, and loyal without hesitation during
the War of the Rebellion. There was a
more distinct personality in it than there can
be in papers that depend on purchased ster-
eotype plates for their selected reading.
Perhaps I cannot better illustrate what
kind of a newspaper the Statesman was to its
local readers than by introducing here, as if
this were a scrap-book, a few transcripts from
its files for the period with which I am deal-
ing, excluding for various reasons any of the
longer and weightier articles.
[May 15, 1858.]
To decorate our office front window a
little, we have placed therein an attractive
picture of the famous clipper ship "Dread-
naught," which has run from New York to
Liverpool in twelve days and a half, and two
others, one entitled " On the dock at Liver-
pool," the other " On the dock at Boston."
One of the latter represents " a fine old Irish
gentleman " about starting for America, and
the other shows the same individual, having
Personal Recollections. 195
bettered himself greatly, just about to sail
on his return voyage. One rainy day last
week quite a squad of persons were together
looking at these pictures, and we were un-
certain how they would be received until
the hearty remark, '' Faix ! hoys^ if we only
do as well as that chap lias done^^^ uttered
with an unmistakable Dublin accent, assured
us how well they were appreciated.
[May 29, 1^58.]
Some humorous writer has an ample field
by gleaning in which to make up a very
diverting account of those annual conven-
tions — the Anniversaries of New Hampshire
Railroads. These meetings are frequently
ushered in by a terrible tempest, and, with
much unanimity, terminate in the most pro-
found peace. For a month preceding the
long-awaited day, the very atmosphere is
often redolent of fire and brimstone. The
different parties charge the Manchester Mir-
ror up to the muzzle with missiles, which
those who forged them thought would carry
death into the enemy's camp. Attacks,
replies, rejoinders, and surrejoinders multi-
ply like weeds in the garden of a lazy
printer, and the public become impressed
with the belief that sundry presidents,
directors, and superintendents will bite the
dust as soon as the enraged stockholders
have opportunity to make their power felt
at the polls. But notwithstanding all these
furious newspaper denunciations — attacks,
replies, rejoinders, and surrejoinders ; in
196 Sixty Years in Concord,
spite of all the caucusing and clamoring, all
the preparation of copious supplies of printed
tickets, got up in various forms, with trans-
positions of names, the "old board" is
usually reelected. By what sorcery is this
done i Wlio is the Palinurus that pilots
tliese boards of directors through boisterous
channels into pacific seas ? Who allays
these all-engulfnig waves, white with foam
before the annual meetings, but calmed into
the repose of a summer pond when the day
of conflict comes, so that anniversaries which
promised to be vindictive and furious, pass
off like a Quaker meeting, to the surprise of
the public, and the disappointment of Boston
news reporters? Can any mortal account
for tliese things ?
[July 10, .1858.]
Mr. Solon Gould, one of the inflexible
Democrats of Ward Four in tliis city, made
a great mistake on the Fourth, which greater
Democrats than he might have made. Solon
put on his high-heeled boots after dinner,
and walked clown town to see what was
in the wind. He happened in at the State
House yard just when our Congressman,
Hon. Mason W. Tappan, was reading the
Declaration of Independence. Now Solon is
a better Democrat than ever the great Law-
giver of Athens was, but to say that his per-
ceptions are, at all hours of the day, as keen
as those of the wise man for whom he was
named, would be a reflection which it is not
Personal Recollections* 197
proper to cast, even upon a human being
long since numbered among the dead. Solon
not only happened in as Mr. Tappan was
reading Rufus Choate's "bundle of glitter-
ing generalities," but exactly as the orator
was in that part where they put it on heavy
on poor old George III, and among other
bad deeds charge the King with making
" judges dependent on his will alone for the
tenure of their offices, and the amount of
their salaries," and of creating " a multitude
of new offices, and sending hither a swarm
of new officers, to harass our people and eat
out their substance." The object of these
summary reproofs Solon took to be his friend
James Buchanan instead of old George III,
and, after denouncing the celebration as a
Black Republican affair, wheeled on his heel,
and left in profound disgust.
[July 10, 1858.]
The State House after Adjourn-
ment. We had the satisfaction, the other
day, to conduct several newspaper friends
over a portion of the city, and to exhibit to
them such " lions " as they expressed a de-
sire to see. This is a duty, the discharge
of which is particularly pleasing, unless
guests indicate a wish to see lions -which
are no lions at all. We get along with out-
of-town friends very well when the stroll is
in certain directions and beneath wealthy
arboreal shades ; but nothing more com-
pletely brings up a Concord man all stand-
198 Sixty Years in Concord.
ing than a request to be shown the interior
of the state house. We make excellent work
of it along Main and State streets, and the
streets which cross those two thoroughfares ;
go with much satisfaction to the Pond hill,
and obtain the delightful view thence over
the island to and beyond East Concord;
point for admiration to that prince among
noble elms, the one fronting the residence
of Samuel Coffin, and those ancestral ones
fronting the residences of Joseph B. Walker
and Charles Smart; look with our friends
over a large portion of the city and into ad-
jacent towns from the brow of Holt hill ;
go over the Whale's Back, and take a turn
to the Hospital pond, and thence to the Asy-
lum ; take a pull througli the new settle-
ments in Wards Five, Six, and Seven ; de-
bouch into Main street at the South End,
and come up under the elms and maples that
skirt the west side of the avenue from the
dwelling of Lewis Downing (not forgetting
the heaven-aspiring, symmetrical elm opposite
the residence of that gentleman) to the home
of Joseph A. Gilmore ; we make, let it be re-
peated, very gratifying progress when in this
line of lion showing; but when at last the
word is pronounced that the ^uest or guests
will consider a visit at the capital of New
Hampshire in the light of the play of " Ham-
let," with the part of Hamlet omitted unless
treated to an interior view of the state house,
we are instantly depressed to a point away
below zero.
Personal Recollections, 199
And into this freezing situation our friends
from Portsmouth, Salem, Lowell, and else-
where, threw us last Wednesday. We had
all been perambulating the city, and finally
brought up about half-past nine a. m. in the
delicious shade on the western steps of the
State House. We all sat there some minutes,
discoui-sing of the numbers of different legis-
latures, the number of voters neces^^ary to
choose one and each additional representa-
tive in this state ; of the district system as
now existing in Massachusetts, of our very
redundant house and our very diminutive
senate, when some one uttered the appalling
words, "CWig, isn't it about time to he going
inside the State House f "
Well, we went in, and never with
more suffusing, burning mortification. We
have known these twenty odd years that the
interior of the State House is anything but
pleasing to people conversant with elegant
public structures, and have not for a long
time, of our own mere motion, gone within
it in company with out of town friends, but
on this occasion its appearance was anything
but pleasing. It is absolutely unbecoming
to a respectable Commonwealth. Thirty-
nine years' service, and, we believe, no in-
terior repairs — not so much as a coat of paint
— has reduced it to a dirty and unwholesome
appearance, and with the Republican party
pursued like a hare upon the mountains, and
the foolish cry of *' Uxtravagance " uttered
against it by every yelping foe, the prospect
200 Sixty Years in Concord,
is that unless the State House is burned or
demolished by an earthquake, it will become
much worse before it is any better.
ft/
[May 28, 1859.]
About forty or forty-five years ago the
Columbian hotel was in the form of a long,
one-story baking establishment, conducted
by Major Peter Robhison, and from it issued
the grateful odor of new gingerbread, to tan-
talize the hungry crowd of boys and girls
who wheeled around the corner of Mr. Will-
iam Low's house (corner of Main and School
streets) on their way up town from the scho-
lastic den where they had been confined all
the forenoon. The bake-house was made
into a two-story building, and opened for
the reception of the travelling public about
thirty-eight years ago by Mr. John P. Gass.
About 1828 it was kept by Gen. John Wil-
son, from Lancaster, who brought thither
our now thriving and benevolent fellow-
citizen, Mr. Nathaniel White. As this latter
gentleman has acquired all his means by
honorable ends, it is the more creditable to
him to say that he commenced as a boy in
the Columbian, and has been upon the rise
ever since. Although many years amidst
tobacco smoke and ardent spirits, he refrained
from their use, and thus escaped the rock on
which many make shipwreck.
The Columbian was in those days an inn
where several stage-coaches put up, and
there our respected fellow-citizen, Mr. Peter
Pergonal Recollections. 201
Dudley, made his tarrying-place when he
commenced as a driver into Concord from
Plymouth. During the period when the
militia of New Hampshire was in high
feather, this tavern was tlie headquarters
of the Columbian Artillery, a company which
for several years was composed largely of
journeymen and apprentices to the printing
business in Concord; a corps of no mean
repute, which made some stir on the muster
fields of the Eleventh Regiment. Vacancies
were filled, and new commissions wet, in the
Columbian hotel. Looking back upon those
times, the wonder is that escapes were made
from the confirmed habits apt to follow such
procedures. Three drams at a half-day train-
ing were not uncommon in tlie days of the
Columbian Artillery, — a drink at the gun-
house near the site of the Unitarian church,
a drink on Pond hill brought from the
Washington tavern, and a final drink, about
7 p. m., at the official hotel of the company —
the Columbian.
The Columbian Artillery, the Concord
Light Infantry, the Troop, and the Bow and
Borough Riflemen were the uniformed com-
panies of the Eleventh Regiment, which had
May trainings and one annual autumn
encampment in this or some neighboring
town. The artillerymen used but one can-
non, which was mancBuvred by drag-ropes.
The two-days encampment wound up with a
202 . Sixty Yearn in Concord,
sham fight, when the noisiest and smelliest
kind of gunpowder was burned, but no harm
done, unless in the excitement of battle some
exhilarated warrior, like Alexander Salter
Lear of Bow, shot away the ramrod of his
old flintlock musket. My youthful soul
was filled with horror and dismay by the
racket of those sham fights.
[June 25, 1859.]
Pluck. — Certain fighting characters once
took a big oath that they would neither eat
nor drink until they had slain the Apostle
Paul. What effect this rash vow had upon
the diaphragms of those who made it, the
record does not state. The probabilities are
that the oath was made void, or the vaga-
bonds went hungry awliile, for the apostle
outlived their fury and did mucli good ser-
vice afterward.
There are lots of New Hampshire Demo-
crats, the regular leaders and drum-majors
of the party, who, we believe, have made a
solemn vow that they will not come to Con-
cord during the month of June so long as
the Black Republicans are in power. This
is a very rash vow. It keeps our Democratic
friends out of tlie pale of that civilization,
good breeding, and other healing influences
diffused here when the wisdom of the state
is assembled in council.
This article was suggested by seeing our
old friend, Gen. Israel Hunt, of Nashua, in
Personal Recollections, 203
the north lobby of the state-house last week
— a stray leaf from a gilt-edged volume. The
general manifests common sense by coming
to Concord every year, and never departing
until he has looked in upon the legislature,
probably to bestow upon it his best wishes
that the Republicans will make none but
good laws, and rule the state well. There is
both pluck and philosophy in this procedure,
which is worthy of all imitation by his Dem-
ocratic brethren. May he live a score of
years, to come up and bestow his annual
benediction on the Republican party in
power.
[March 3, I860.]
Abraham Lincoln in PHa:Nix Hall. —
Mr. Lincoln addressed the people for an hour
and a half in one of the most powerful, logi-
cal, and compact speeches to which it was
ever our fortune to listen ; an argument
against the system of slavery, and in defence
of the position of the Republican party, from
the deductions of which no reasonable man
could possibly escape. He fortified every
position assumed by proofs which it is im-
possible to gainsay, and while his speech
was at intervals enlivened by remarks which
elicited applause at the expense of the Dem-
ocratic party, there was not a single word
which tended to impair the dignity of the
speaker or weaken the force of the great
truths which he uttered.
At its conclusion nine roof-raising cheers
were given, — three for the speaker, three for
204 Sixty Years in Concord.
the Republicans of Illinois, and three for the
Republicans of New Hampshire.
In this speech Mr. Lincoln compared sla-
very to a snake which had crawled into bed
with the children, and said the difficulty was
how to deal with the snake without hurting
the children.
At the close of Mr. Lincoln's address, Mr.
Calvin C. Webster came to the writer of this,
and said very earnestly, " That man will be
the next president of the United States."
He followed Mr. Lincoln to Phoenix hotel and
made a similar remark to liim, to which Mr.
Lincoln replied that a good many men wanted
to be president. Mr. Webster afterward
went to the Chicago convention and helped
nominate Mr. Lincoln.
[January 5, 1861.]
In an Ugly Hole. — Mr. John Clark, of
Franklin, better known up and down tlie
countrv as '^ Boston John " the Dam Builder,
on Friday last week came near making a last
plunge over one of his own dams. The mill-
pond immediately above Aiken's great manu-
facturing establishment, which is frozen over
but a few days in winter, being covered with
ice on that day, some men of common weight
and rotundity liad ventured across. "Bos-
ton," as he is called for shortness, who at the
Personal Recollections, 20*5
ripe age of 71, with form erect and footsteps
firm, weighs 240 lbs., noticing the track, put
himself and his cane into the same path.
Reaching the centre of the pond in safety, he
there came to a stand, and, after the manner
of the elephant treading on a pumpkin in a
country circus, placing his foot down solid,
on trial, he settled like a line-of-battle-ship,
in medias res^ for a cooling bath, with the ice
all around him like a honeycomb.
Mr. Henry Crane happening to have his eye
at this precise moment upon that interesting
locality, went to the rescue with astonishing
velocity. He had not, however, made a dozen
strides when '' Boston " roared out to him,
" Bring me a long board " — which was done
" quicker than Jabe went to the maul," and
forthwith " Boston " and his cane were stand-
ing erect again, unharmed save a gentle chill,
which he says was at once dispelled by warm
and soothing drinks.
[January 25, 1862.]
Ex-Governor Steele was, it seems, one of
those fossils who wrapped up nvarm, nursed
their ancient wrath, and came to Concord to
join in the passage of resolves (at the state
convention) full of innuendoes against a
liost of their fellow-citizens who are working
like beavers to put down the Rebellion. The
Republicans of New Hampshire can bear to
be kicked, but when it is by such men as the
ex-governor, they can but bring to mind the
words, —
206 Sixty Years in Concord.
*' And when he saw an ass come prancing to liis cot,
* Avast! ' he cried, * at death I do n't repine,
But 'twould be double death from heels like thine/ '"
The Statesman made for years a vigorous
battle against a class of vexatious lawsuits
brought to recover damages for fictitious
injuries sustained on the highway — a battle
so vigorous and effectual that in January,
1865, a motion was made to bring the editor
before the bar of court to answer a charge of
contempt, — a motion which was dismissed
by the justice.
[October 23, 1863.]
The New Pool of Silo am. — The most
remarkable of modern curative powers is a
jury verdict, with damages assessed to the
amount of a few thousand dollars. This
paper has uniformly urged the belief that
most of what are called road cases — suits
against towns for damages occasioned by
defects in highways — have their origin in
nothing but a desire for pelf. We are half
inclined to retract our opposition in view of
the brilliant medical results of success in
suits of this character. If we could publish
certificates of the nimbleness of tongues once
speechless, the agility of legs once paralyzed,
the recovery from ailments seen and unseen
which had been pronounced beyond the reach
of surgery, all effected by trial by jury, the
public would be amazed at the curative effect
of a verdict with damages.
Personal JRecollectiotis. 207
[March 25, 1864.]
Chocorua Mountain. — We went suflB-
ciently far from home the other day to obtain
a view of the Sandwich mountains, and saw
further that notable and favorite peak which
dwellers in the region round about are wont
to speak of as " Old Chocorua." It is an
eminence of peculiar form, the twin brother
of which cannot be found in the state. The
people of Carroll county become attached to
it, as the Swiss to their hills or the Germans
to the Rhine. Many a man, either on the
wide-rolling sea or in the army, thinks every
day of this glorious old gray peak, and if
brought suddenly in sight of it, would be as
exultant as the Army of Liberation return-
ing from the last conflict with Napoleon, on
beholding their favorite river:
*' It is the Rhine — our mountain vineyards laving,
I see its bright floods shine;
Sing on the march, with every banner waving,
Sing, brothers, 't is the Rhine."
" Old Chocorua" is one of the most con-
spicuous features in the mountain region of
New Hampshire. Its ragged summit, its
isolated position, and moreover a legend con-
nected with it, cause it to be a celebrated
peaK[. . • •
If we could transfer Chocorua mountain
to Chichester, and put Sanbomton bay where
lies thQ wide intervale east of Main street,
what a glorious prospect there would be !
208 Sixty Years in Concord.
[July 25, 1864.]
A Tough Hen. — Two Concord fishermen*
over in Epsom sought refuge from a heavy
shower under a friendly roof, leaving the
paraphernalia of their sport leaning against
the side of the house. Hearing a terrible
squawking shortly afterward, they sought
the cause, and found that a hen, iji pursuit
of worms, had swallowed one containing a
fatal fish-hook, and was tugging lustily at the
line to get away. The woman of the house
expressed much regret at the occurrence, the
victim being her best hen and most reliable
layer. Every effort was made to extract the
hook, but it clung fast to the dark interior
of biddy's throat. A proposition to kill her
was overruled. After full consultation it
was determined to cut off the line, leave the
hook in the gullet of the victim, and see
what would come of it. To the surprise of
all hands, on the next day the hen laid one
of her. largest-sized eggs, and has gone on
from that day to this, fulfilling all her duties
in the most exemplary and hen-like manner,
as though nothing had happened to derange
her stomach.
[May 4, 1866.]
Capture of a Black Eagle. — Mr.
Charles Abbott, who lives on the place called
the " silk farm," near Turkey pond, in this
city, some days ago set a steel trap on a hum-
* Isaac A. Hill, with whom I have enjoyed many a good
hunt, and Benjamin E. Badger.
Personal Recollections, 209
mock above the surface of the pond to catch
some of the wild ducks which he had observed
to frequent that spot. Visiting the trap, he
found that one had been caught, and some
evil bird had devoured it. Trying his luck
again, last Saturday he caught two, and
Avhile taking them ashore in a boat a black
eagle came down so near, that, to use Mr.
Abbott's words, he was afraid the audacious
fellow would get the ducks away from him.
It was determined to try the capture of the
eagle himself, and the trap was set for him
with a suitable bait. That very same day his
majesty put his foot in it. Mr. Abbott rowed
out to the hummock, expecting a battle with
tlie bird, but to his utter surprise, as soon as
the boat reached the hummock, the eagle
walked in with the trap and chain, and seated
himself to be taken ashore. He was unin-
jured, and is now at Mr. Abbott's house,
where he beai*s his captivity without any
sulky or captious ways, suffering himself to
be approached and handled familiarly. The
spread of his wings is seven and one half
feet. Although called the black eagle, Wil-
son, the ornithologist, gives him the more
inelegant title of ''Ring Tailed Eagle."
[April 16, 1869.]
Last evening, about eight d'clock, the most
beautiful auroral display we have ever seen
was visible over Concord. It was as if some
celestial mercer had unrolled two or three
dozen pieces of silk, of the most beautiful tints
14
210 Sixty Years in Concord,
of purple, green, blue, lilac, and white, gathered
the ends into his hands at the zenith, and let
them flow down to the horizon (north, south,
east, and west). The colors were frequently
changed — sometimes quite suddenly, some-
times disolving gradually, and softly fading
before the new tints.
It is impracticable to continue these quota-
tions, but looking at the files for the period
under our review, some interesting facts pre-
sent themselves.
Among our correspondents, 1 859-' 66, were
Moses B. Goodwin, the best letter-writer we
ever had. Col. Henry W. Fuller, Charles H.
Bartlett, Esq., Capt. William F. Goodwin,
and Capt. Edward E. Sturtevant.
The Statesman was the first paper in New
Hampshire (September 5, 1859) to devote
regularly a column to paragraphs of state
news, a practice in which it soon had many
followers.
On the morning of Friday, August 6, 1859,
we did what was then thought pretty enter-
prising, — printed almost two columns about
an anniversary at Gilmanton academy whicli
occurred the day before.
During the summer of 1859 we published
lists of arrivals at the White Mountain hotels.
Our election returns were always most full
and most accurate.
Personal Recollections. 211
The Statesman advocated the introduction
of Long Pond water to our main precinct as
early as May, 1857, when it employed Mr.
John C. Briggs to make a survey, and deter-
mine the altitude of Long Pond above the
sidewalk at the corner of Main and Bridge
streets. In September, 1859, it asked, ''Shall
we have plenty of water V following this up
with articles on that subject until July 20,
1866, and perhaps longer.
In 1861 it urged the adoption of steam
engines for the Concord fire department.
The Statesman did good service toward
retaining the state-house in Concord when its
removal was threatened in June, 1864.
The paper put up the name of General
Grant as its candidate for the Presidency on
December 13, 1867.
Among the distinguished men who visited
Concord during or near the period under ex-
amination here, and not previously mentioned
as visitors, were Hannibal Hamlin, Schuyler
Colfax, Henry Wilson (once a pupil at the
Concord Literary Institution), John A. An-
drew, William Pitt Fessenden, Daniel E.
Sickles, John E. Wool, Joseph H. Hawley,
Benjamin F. Butler, Gen. T. W. Sherman of
Sherman's Battery, Benjamin R. Curtis,
Joshua L. Chamberlain, D. W. Voorhees,
212 Sixty Year 9 in Concord.
Lord Aniberley of England, and Stephen A.
Douglas.
Lady Aniberley was also here, and Mrs.
Douglas, tlie latter deemed to be one of the
most beautiful women of her time.
Mr. Douglas's visit was in July, 1860, and
(xeneral Pierce, General Peaslee, and other
prominent Democrats found it convenient to
be out of town. Henry P. Rolfe, Esq., did
the honors of the occasion. Mr. Douglas
was then out of favor with the Democratic
party of the South. Mi^. Douglas afterward,
at Newport, R. I., had something to say about
the behavior of her and her husband's friends
here, who trampled down a lawn with eager
feet, and could be seen peering through her
host's windows to gaze on her attractive
face.
The Statesman office had in this region a
reputation for doing careful printing, which
had come along as an inheritance from the
small beginning of my father in 1834 ; and in
1859 sixteen persons were employed, beside
the proprietors. A pamphlet printed to ac-
company some Shaker washing-machines to
the World's Fair in London, in 1862, was so
much admired by the judges of the fair, that
the commissioner, Hon. Frederick Smyth,
could have obtained some favorable notice
Personal Recollections. 213
for us if it had been entered in the lists for
exhibition.
Our mechanical resources were sufficient
for the time, although we were unable to
meet the wishes of a customer who in 1868
wanted a Bible printed right off, so he could
take it home that day on the 3 o'clock train.
An important accessory to our establishment
was an excellent steam engine built by Hit-
tinger & Cook, of Charlestown, Mass., which
drove the power presses, — an Adams, a Hoe
cylinder (set up in 1858), and two rattle-te-
bang Hawkes presses. There was also an
immense hand press for large posters, which
was disliked by workmen, and christened by
some of them " the man-killer."
Writing of those presses reminds me of a
local attempt made about 1851 to invent a
printing machine, or to improve some exist-
ing one. The projectors were a printer and
a railroad clerk who had wrought with tools.
Securing a place over the Patriot office, they
set about their work with enthusiasm. I
happened to witness many a consultation be-
tween these friends in interest, but never
saw the object of their endeavore.
After I joined the Statesman^ in the course
of a consultation the belief was expressed by
one of the partners that we might be so for-
214 Sixty Years in Concord.
tunate as to each gain annually, in return for
our investment and personal services, as much
as $2,000, an expectation which proved to be
well founded. There was usually an abun-
dance of advertising, of which for our issue
of April 23, 1859, we declined five columns.
In January, 1863, because of the high price
of paper, the size of our sheet was reduced,
and smaller type used ; but in January, 1866,
the full size was restored.
The Democratic party in New Hampshire
became an unhappy family as early as 1854.
The Patriot lost the state printing that year,
and the State Capital Reporter^ then two
years old, with Amos Hadley, one of its ed-
itors, as a candidate, obtained it. In 1855,
when the old party had fairly fallen from
power, there were three Concord papers in
the opposition, the Statesman^ the Reportery
and the Independent Democrat^ which last
was started in Mancliester in May, 1845.
Soon after its beginning it came to Concord,
and in 1847 absorbed the Netv Hampshire
Courier y with which the Grranite Freeman and
the Concord Q-azette had been previously
united. The G-azette had a brief existence.
Its editor was Mr. Charles F. Low, an eccen-
tric gentleman and extensive traveller, who
studied theology in Andover, law in Concord,
Personal Recolleetions, 215
was a lieutenant in the Mexican war, in 1861
was robbed by Bedouins in the valley of the
Jordan, and at last was drowned in Indian
river in Florida, Jan. 16, 1874.
Mr. Hadley was reelected public printer in
1855 and 1856. In 1857 he and his paper
were united with the Independent Democrat^
and in that year George G. Fogg, of the lat-
ter, was chosen successor to Mr. Hadley. Mr.
Fogg was a writer, but not a printer. Under
these circumstances the public printing was
not so well done that it could not be done
better, and the publishers of the Statesman
had begun to wonder, early in 1858, when
their turn at the business would come. It
never would have come with the assent of
the incumbent. Mr. Fogg had no inclina-
tion to part with his oflfice ; he was a great
believer in himself, and a strong writer,
fond of assailing both opponents and rivals.
There were many issues of his paper when
he devoted more space to attacking the
Statesman than he did to fighting the com-
mon enemy. He probably succeeded in
making a portion of his readers and the
public believe that the Statesman was not
altogether sound on the slavery question.
My father, the most transparently upright
and honest man whom I ever knew, had
21 f) Sixty Years in Concord,
neither the art nor the inclination for mak-
ing tactful use of his resources to gain any
personal end, and he had little taste for
office; but he was not quite willing to let
the Statesman stand quietly aside any longer,
and see its rivals continue to carry away the
chief recognition and favor of the party, and
beside, he wanted to do the public printing
in a careful style, as he had once before done
it, in 1846.
Our attempt to oust Mr. Fogg was made
by regular approaches. The editor of the
Statesman became a candidate before the
legislature of 1858, with small expectation
of success that season, because the rule of
two years in office would be urged forcefully
in behalf of Mr. Fogg, but with the intent
to set a stout stake in the contested ground.
One year later, in June, 1859, Mr. McFar-
land was elected, receiving 189 votes to 109
for William Butterfield.
Prior to this election the Independent
Democrat made its customary effort to ex-
hibit the Statesman as unreliable on the
slavery question. There were some Repub-
licans in the legislature whose chief reading
was the Independent Democrat^ represented
as well by David Morrill of Canterbury as
by anybody, who I have no doubt had been
Personal Recollections, 217
compelled to believe the proprietor of the
Statesman capable of owning negro slaves.
This old gun of the Independent Democrat
was spiked by the Statesman declaring itself
in favor of William H. Seward as candidate
for the Republican presidential nomination
in 1860. The editor did this witli good con-
science, decisively, early in June, 1859.
Mr. Seward was just then the hHe noir of
all pro-slavery men. In a speech made at
Rochester, N. Y., the previous year, he had
used these words in regard to the slavery
question : " It is an irrepressible conflict
between opposing and enduring forces, and
it means that the United States must and
will, sooner or later, become eitlier entirely
a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free
labor nation." Taking this downright stand
in favor of Mr. Seward, "irrepressible con-
flict" and all, probably removed all doubt
about our political standing, and we had the
public printing for the years 1859, 1860,
1861, 1862, 1865, and 1866.
Busy places as most newspaper offices are,
there are callers who expect to meet the edi-
tor. Before our time Isaac Hill received
such around the unpretending table where
he prepared the invective for the Patriot,
Here Mr. William Low, with a more fiery
218 Sixty Years in Concord,
and intense spirit even than that which ani-
mated Mr. Hill, sat by the hour to urge the
pen of his impetuous friend.
Our editorial work was done with an.
equipment as plain as Mr. Hill's. The edi-
tor of the Statesman never had a desk which
would have sold at auction for as much as
two dollars. Even this was placed where
no quiet thought ^or counsel could be had,
and no library was accessible. But there
were often agreeable callers. Among those
from out of town, none were more welcome
than George W. Nesmith of Franklin, Will-
iam H. Y. Hackett of Portsmouth, John H.
Thompson of Holderness, David Gillis of
Manchester, John M. Parker of Goffstown,
Joel Eastman and John McMillan of Con-
way, Aurin M. Chase of Whitefield, Richard
H. Messer and Luther McCutcheon of New
London, William M. Weed of Sandwich,
Joseph Gilman and Nathaniel Hubbard of
Tamwortli, Jacob Benton, Ossian Ray, and
Henry O. Kent of Lancaster, Cyrus Taylor
of Bristol, John S. Walker of Claremont?
Alvin Beard of Nashua, George Wadleigh
of Dover, George S. Towle of Lebanon, and
John L, Rix of Haverhill, — the last two as
fiery and impetuous as was old William Low
himself. Tliese were all, or nearly all, men
Per807ial Recollections, 219
who had come along the old Whig paths
into the Republican party, and were deemed
as reliable as the sun in its revolution.
They had always news or some good story
to tell, to lighten the editorial pen.
There are doubtless interesting incidents
disclosing themselves to all printers. I will
relate one which came to our experience in
the course of a lawsuit at Plymouth, in the
winter of 1861-'62. A firm doing business
in Concord had sued another in Grafton
county, and laid an attachment on property
to secure debt. Just before this attachment
was placed, other attachments had been laid
on the same property to secure the holders
of certain notes made by the debtors, bearing
date May 18, 1858. The Concord creditors
believed these notes to be fraudulent, and an
investigation followed. The debtors swore
that the notes were made on the day of
their date. Now these notes were written
on forms which bore the imprint of Rufus
Merrill, a stationer in Concord. Mr. Merrill
was able to testif}'' that the forms were
printed for him at our office. It proved
that the ornamental design at the left end
of the notes, an engraving of the figure of
America on the dome of the capitol of the
United States, was not owned by us until
220 Sixty Years in Concord,
March 16, 1859. So we were able to testify
that the notes were not printed until nearly
a year after they were dated, and the scheme
of the debtors was utterly frustrated.
In 1861, as a consequence of war, gold
and silver money went very suddenly out
of circulation. The disappearance of small
silver coins was a serious hindrance to busi-
ness. Postage-stamps of different denomi-
nations were used as currency, but they
became soiled and sticky. Before the gov-
ernment issued its fractional paper currency,
local attempts were made to supply a public
need. We printed checks for fractions of a
dollar for the Bank of Newbury, Vermont ;
the Ocean Bank, Newburyport, Mass.; the
Union Bank, Concord; the Carroll County
Bank, Sandwich ; the Warner Bank, Warner ;
and for others. Local traders of good repute
also issued fractional checks. Specimens of
this war-time currency are now scarce, and
-possess considerable historic interest.
The war as it went along gave cause for
another kind of printed matter. There is
among my specimens a card which is a
curiosity to young people, and is therefore
copied below. It was probably printed in
1864, when " substitute brokers " were a
rather numerous and active people.
Personal Recollections. 221
New Hampshire Union Recruiting Company.
No. 3, Hutchins Street, leading from Main street
to the Depot, Concord, N. H.
Highest Prices paid for Substitutes and Vol-
unteers.
Drafted Men or Town Agents will be furnished
at the Shortest Notice.
J. S. -Appleton; Wm. H. Conner; G. W. Dodge;
J. O. Trask ; Ed. Judkins ; J. C. Nichols;
D. S. Carr.
Considerable sums of money were gained
by substitute brokers and some of the per-
sons with whom they dealt. A recruiting
officer who was stationed here for a season
told me, years afterward, that he made as
much as $12,000 in a few weeks' service.
This was done by enlisting men for towns
which were paying large bounties for very
indifferent recruits.
Among those who did some service for the
Statesman^ at or not very far from the time
which we are recalling to view, and who
gained distinction in other walks of life,
there were, as writers, Joseph C. Abbott,
afterward adjutant-general of New Hamp-
shire, a general of the United States Volun-
teers, and senator from. North Carolina ; and
John T. Perry, afterward of the Cincinnati
Gazette ; — as printers, Jacob H. Gallinger and
!222 Sixty Years in Cojieord.
Martin A. Haynes, comrades at the case and
associate members of congress ; Col. Phin P.
Bixby of the Sixth and Maj. Edward E.
Sturtevant of the Fifth New Hampshire reg-
iments.
I was away from the Statesman from De-
cember, 1862, until January, 1866, serving
in the general staff of the army of the
United States.
XII.
»
When it became known in the autumn of
1860 that Abraham Lincoln had been elected
president, what has been called the "great
unpleasantness " began. In December, South
Carolina declared herself out of the Union,
and within two months six other states had
followed her. President Buchanan (who,
when he visited Concord in 1846, as a mem-
ber of Mr. Polk's cabinet, forgot his linen
duster and left that garment to gmce the
rotund figure of the landlord of the Ameri-
can House) proved too feeble for the emer-
gency, as all the world knows.
Nobody knew then, at least nobody in
Concord knew, how great and wise a man
Abraham Lincoln was. George G. Fogg
had visited Mr. Lincoln at Springfield, 111.,
after the nomination for the presidency, and
therefore his opinion of the president-elect
was occasionally sought. Mr. Horace L.
Hazelton, of Boston, inquired of Mr. Fogg,
before the inauguration, if Mr. Lincoln was
another Andrew Jackson, and Mr. Fogg
replied, "I wish he were a Jackson," — an
224 Sixty Years in Coiicord,
answer which did not entirely reassure Mr,
Hazelton, or those to whom Mr. Hazelton
repeated it.
There was a good deal of indifference to
the unusual proceedings at the South. Se-
cession had been threatened so long, that
when states proclaimed their withdrawal
from the Union there was neither surprise
nor excitement nor dismay. The emergency
was estimated differently by different indi-
viduals. I remember hearing a Concord
citizen, Henry P. Rolfe, Esq., say in March,
] 861, that it looked as if the constitution of
the Confederate States, adopted the preced-
ing month by a convention held at Mont-
gomery, Ala., would be ratified ultimately
by every state. North as well as South. This
would have been equivalent to a secession of
all the states from the existing Union, and
the formation of a new confederation with
slavery permitted in each state.
In the early part of February, 1861, a
Peace Congress of representatives of the
states assembled in Washington on the invi-
tation of the state of Virginia, the delegates
from New Hampshire being Asa Fowler of
Concord, Levi Chamberlain of Keene, and
Amos Tuck of Exeter. The deliberations of
this assembly, February 4-27, were interest-
Personal Hecollections. 225
«
ing but ineffectual ; — still, I remember hear-
ing Judge Fowler say, on his return to Con-
cord, thjit he was satisfied there would be no
war.
The New York Evening Post had said, in
the preceding November, that a distin-
guished gentleman at the South, being
addressed to ascertain what in his opinion
would be the end of this secession humbug,
replied, — " It will end as all such things at
the South have ended ; but you must let us
down easy. Patience and good nature on
the part of the Northern states are all that is
required to make this conclusion speedy and
sure."
The New Hampshire Statesman said, — " In
opposition to the above, we hear that ex-
President 'Pierce, whose sources of informa-
tion are said to be of the most fortunate
character, differs in opinion from this dis-
tinguished Southern gentleman, and regards
a dissolution of the Union as inevitable."
Stephen A. Douglas said privately, when
he was in Concord in July, 1860, tliat Lin-
coln would be elected and war would follow.
Who of our people then old enough to
appreciate the situation will ever forget the
months of weary waiting, from November,
1860, to March, 1861, — traitors in the cabi-
15
226 Sixty Year% in Concord.
net, in the army, and in the navy, stealing
and plundering everywhere, and not one
spark of manly courage or apparent force at
Washington, except when, on January 29,
John A. Dix, a loyal man, who had by some
strange chance become secretary of the
treasury, telegraphed to a special agent of
that department at New Orleans, who was
trying to save a revenue cutter, the captain
of which had gone over to the enemy, — ''If
any one attempts to haul down the American
flag, shoot him on the spot."
President Lincoln was inaugurated in
March. There was another month of inac-
tion, not unlike the later months of Bu-
chanan's administration, when the public
feeling was expressed by the New York
Times in a very remarkable newspaper arti-
cle entitled "Wanted— A Policy." That
article is too long for reproduction here, but
I quote its closing paragraph:
We trust this period of indecision, of
inaction, of fatal indifference, will have a
speedy end. Unless it does, we may bid
farewell to all hope of saving the Union
from destruction and the country from an-
archy. A mariner might as well face the
tempest without compass or helm, as an
administration put to sea amid such storms
as now darken our skies, without a clear and
Personal Recollections. 227
definite plan of public conduct. The coun-
try looks eagerly to President Lincoln for
the dispersion of the dark mystery that
hangs over our public affaire. The people
want something to be decided on, some
standard raised, some policy put forward,
which shall serve as a rallying-point for the
abundant but discouraged loyalty of the
American heart. In a great crisis like this,
there is no policy so fatal as that of having
no policy at all.
Then came the bombardment of Fort Sum-
ter iii Charleston harbor, and the surrender
of that fortress to the rebels on the morning
of Sunday, April 14. News of this surrender
reached Concord Sunday noon, and was com-
municated to a hundred or more persons
waiting around the telegraph office. People
were looking anxiously for a hero just then,
and on what seemed rather slender evidence
adopted Major Robert Anderson, the punc-
tilious commander of the surrendered fort.
After the war was over, there was found
among the rebel papers a letter from Ander-
son, written while he was in command at
Sumter, in which he said, " I tell you frankly,
my heart is not in this war."
On Monday morning, April 15, came the
proclamation of President Lincoln calling
for seventy-five thousand volunteers, and
228 Sixty Years in Concord,
the strange public stupor was gone. The
administration bad a policy. A great mass
meeting assembled in our city hall Friday
evening, April 19, at which patriotic ad-
dresses were made by Thomas P. Treadwell,
Henry P. Rolfe, William L. Foster, Anson S.
Marshall, Edward H. Rollins, Nathaniel S.
Berry, A. B. Thompson, Josiah Stevens,
Joseph B. Walker, Henry E. Parker, Cyrus
W. Flanders, E. E. Cummings, S. M. Vail,
and R. R. Meredith, the latter then a stu-
dent at the Methodist Institute, now a dis-
tinguished clergyman of Brooklyn, N. Y.
There was no mistaking the fervid patri-
otism of the audience.
It became known the next day that Gen-
eral Pierce wanted to be heard, so a crowd
assembled in the evening at the Eagle hotel,
and the ex-president spoke from a balcony :
Fellow-Citizens and neighbors : If I had
been apprised of your meeting last night,
seasonably, I should have been present at it,
but the notice did not reach me until this
morning. I wish to say in advance that
since my arrival here the resolution has been
read to me, and it has my cordial approval.
You call for me, my friends, as lovers of our
country and of the blessed Union which our
fathers transmitted to us, on an occasion
more grave, more momentous, fraught with
Personal Recollections, 229
more painful emotions, than any under which
I have ever addressed you; but I rejoice
that that flag floats there (pointing to the
flag).
Love for the flag of our country is a senti-
ment common to us all; at least to my
heart it is no new emotion. My father fol-
lowed it from the battle of Bunker Hill till
the enemy evacuated New York in 1783.
My brothers were with the gallant men who
upheld it in the War of 1812. Can I, can
you, fail to remember how proudly it floated
at a more recent date from Palo Alto to
Buena Vista on one line of operation, and
from the castle of San Juan d'UUoa to the
city of Mexico on another ? Never ! Can we
forget that the gallant men of the North and
of the South moved together like a band of
brothers, and mingled their blood on many
afield in the common cause? Can I, if I
would, feel other than the profoundest sad-
ness when I see that those who have so
often stood shoulder to shoulder in the face
of foreign foes are now in imminent peril of
standing face to face as the foes of each
other? — but they should have thought of
this as well as we : at all events there is
no time now to consult our feelings. The
question has resolved itself into one of
patriotism and stern duty. We cannot fail
to see what the nature of this contest is to
be, and to some limited extent the fearful-
ness of its progress and consequences. We
must not, however, turn our faces from
them, because the true way to meet danger
230 Sixty Years in Concord,
is to see it clearly and encounter it on the
advance. I, for one, will never cease to
hope, so long as the fratricidal strife is not
more fully developed than at present, that
some event, some power, may yet intervene
to save us from the most dire calamity that
ever impended over a nation. 'Xhe opinions
of many of the vast crowd I see before me,
with regard to the causes which have pro-
duced the present condition of public affairs,
are known to me, and mine are well known
to you. I do not believe aggression by
arms is a suitable or possible remedy for
existing evils. Still, neither of these mat-
ters ought to be considered now : they may
well be waived, nay, must be, until we have
seen each other through present trials and
future dangers.
Should the hope which I have expressed
not be realized, which may a beneficent
Providence forbid, and a war of aggression
be waged against the national capital and
the North, then there is no way for us, as
citizens of one of the old thirteen states, but
to stand together, and uphold the flag to the
last, with all the rights which pertain to it,
and with the fidelity and endurance of brave
men. I would advise you to stand together
with one mind and heart. Be calm, faithful,
and determined, but give no countenance to
passion and violence, which are usually un-
just, and often in periods like this the har-
bingers of domestic strife. Be just to your-
selves, just to others, true to your country ;
and may God, who so signally blessed our
Personal Recollections. 231
fathers, graciously interpose in this hour of
clouds and darkness to save both extremi-
ties of the country, and to cause the old flag
to be upheld by all hands and all hearts.
Born in the state of New Hampshire, I
intend that here shall repose my bones. I
would not live in a state the right and honor
of which I was not prepared to defend at all
hazards and to the last extremity.
This address, spoken as it was with earnest-
ness of manner, sounded well, and was re-
ceived with cheers, but there is not much
battle smoke in it. Hon. Ira Perley, who
stalked about in the dimly-lighted street,
with a half-fierce and wholly patriotic man-
ner, characterized it instantly as " late, re-
luctant, and unimportant."
In the preceding year ex-President Pierce
had written a letter to Jefferson Davis, which
was brought to light in the looting of the
Davis plantation in Mississippi in 1863, in
which he said, —
Without discussing the question of right
— of abstract power to secede — I have never
believed that actual disruption of the Union
can occur without blood ; and if through the
madness of Northern abolitionists that dire
calamity must come, the fighting will not be
along Mason and Dixon's line merely. It
will be within our own borders and in our
232 Sixty Years in Concord.
own streets, between the two classes of citi-
zens to whom I have referred. Those who
defy law and scout constitutional obligations,
will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms,
find occupation enough at home.
The ''late, reluctant, and unimportant"
speech might never have been made had the
general foreseen the discovery of his remark-
able letter.*
It was an inspiring and reassuring sight
when on Saturday morning, May 25, the
First regiment came over from Camp Union
and marched down Main street to the rail-
way station, with its ranks reaching clear
across the avenue, followed by a baggage-
train and outfit which caused the New
Yorkers to say it was the best equipped regi-
ment which had gpne to the war. I can see
exactly how that whole regiment looked, and
the figure and expression of Col. Mason W.
Tappan as he rode past the Phcenix hotel at
the head of the column, a little anxious, not
exactly glad to go, but ready to do a soldier's
dutv.
There were many such sights to follow,
for the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Elev-
♦Hon. Henry S. Foote. formerly a senator from Missis-
sippi, in his History of the Rebellion says, — *♦ Ex- President
Pierce, and several others whose letters to Mr. Davis have
lately seen the li^ht, had plied this confiding personage
with secret promises of support, upon which he built in part
his hopeb of one day wielding an imperial sceptre."
Personal Recollections. 233
enth, Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fif-
teenth, and Sixteenth regiments were all
mustered at Concord, and one after another
tramped down our broad avenue with the
sturdy tread that carried them into every
great battle of the war. Concord herself
furnished more than men enough to make a
regiment, — in fact more than thirteen hun-
dred men. They were on the Peninsula, at
Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville,
Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, the
Wilderness, Nashville, the siege of Rich-
mond, and Appomattox; with Hooker, and
Meade, and Thomas, and- Sheridan, and Sher-
man, and Grant, and their story of patience
and sacrifice will never be adequately told.
Perhaps the Second and Fifth regiments
became as famous as any. Tlie following
paragraph whs floating about as long ago as
September, 1862 :
Said an officer in the Army of the Poto-
mac, — " When there is a rough job on hand
McCiellan calls on Hooker's Division. 'Fight-
ing Joe ' looks the matter over, and if there
be a particularly hard corner, he gives that to
Grover's brigade. General Grover wants a
regiment he can rely on, and he selects the
Second New Hampshire. Then if there is
one place more difficult than all tlie rest,
Colonel Marston brings out Company B of
Concord."
234 Sixty Years in Concord^
The Fifth led the roll of all infantry regi-
ments in the total number of its casualties,
two hundred and ninety-five having been
killed or mortally wounded in its ranks.
Gen. Francis A. Walker says of the Fifth at
Antietam, —
Under cover of a ridge, at some little dis-
tance from the left, the enemy are moving
down into our rear. 'J'he movement is first
discovered by Cross of the Fifth Wew Hamp-
shire. He waits for no orders, but instantly
faces to the left and moves to the rear, dash-
ing into a race with tlie enemy for the pos-
session of a ridge that commands the field.
The two lines actually were parallel to and
not far from each other. Cross is ahead,
seizes the crest, and pours a volley from his
whole front upon the discomfited enemy, who
fell back as rapidly as they had advanced,
leaving the colors of the Fourth North Caro-
lina in the hands of the brave boys from New
Hampshire.
■
And at Gettysburg, —
The scene of the contest is the wheat-field,
so famous in the story of Gettysburg. This,
and the woods on the south and west, are
now full of the exulting enemy. Through
this space charges the fiery Cross, of the
Fifth New Hampshire, with his well approved
brigade. It is his last battle. He, indeed,
has said it, as he exchanged greetings with
Hancock on the way ; but he moves to his
Personal Recollections, 235
death with all the splendid enthusiasm he
displayed at Fair Oaks, Antietam, and Fred-
ericksburg.
In the third week of July, 1861, I hap-
pened to go to Washington for the first time,
and determined to satisfy at once my curi-
osity to see Gen. Winfield Scott, who held
the highest rank in our army. So I waited
one afternoon around his headquarters on
Seventeenth street until he came forth. His
was, as every one knows, a strong, majestic
figure, and he spoke a kindly word to all who
addressed him ; but I came awaj'- with a heavy
heart, for I could not believe that a man so
aged, so clumsy and infirm, enjoying military
fame with vanity so evident, could command
successfully a great army in the field. My
impressions were utterly unlike those obtained
three years later from the calm, thoughtful
face of General Grant, whom I saw on March
8, 1864, not far from the same spot, in the
hall of Willard's hotel, about to take com-
mand of all the armies of the North, and in
one year and one month end the war :
** He slew ourdragoD, nor, so seemed it, knew
He had done more than any simplest man might
do."
There had been in the hall of the hotel an
hour or two earlier an amusing occurrence,
236 Sixty Years in Concord.
which is described by Hon. L. E. Chittenden
in his "Recollections of President Lincoln
and His Administration " as follows :
It was in the early days of spring, and I
was living at Willard's. The outlook was
discouraging, and occurrences in the treasury
had been very depressing to friends of the
Union. I had risen early, had left my room
before dawn, and, seated by a window wliich
overlooked the avenue, in the main office, I
began to read the morning paper. The pas-
sengers from the Western trains had not yet
arrived. The gas-lights were turned down,
and that potentate, the hotel clerk, who had
not yet put on his daily air of omnipotence,
was peacefully sleeping in his cushioned arm-
chair. Two omnibuses were driven to the
entrance on Fourteenth street, with the rail-
road passengers from the West. The crowd
made the usual rush for the register; the
clerk condescended to open his eyes, and as-
sign them rooms on the upper floor (there
was no elevator), as though he felt an acute
pleasure in compelling them to make the as-
cent, and for a few moments there was bustle
and confusion. It was soon over ; the clerk
resumed his arm-chair, closed his eyes, and
his weary soul appeared to be at rest.
There were two passengers who did not
appear to be in such frantic haste. One
was a sunburned man of middle age, who
wore an army hat and a linen duster, below
which, where a small section of his trousers
Personal Recollections* 237
were visible, I caught a glimpse of the nar-
row stripe of the army uniform. He held
the younger traveller, a lad of ten years, by
the hand, and carried a small leatlier bag.
As they modestly approached the counter,
the temporary lord of tliat part of creation,
without deigning to rise from his chair, gave
the register a practised whirl, so that the
open page was presented to the elder trav-
eller, observing, as he did so, " I suppose you
will want a room together."
He named a room with a high number,
gave the usual call, "Front!" while the
guest proceeded to write his name without
making any observation. The clerk removed
the pen from behind his ear ; gave another
whirl to the register, and was about to enter
the number of the room, when — he was sud-
denly transfixed as with a bolt of lightning I
His imperial majesty became a servile menial,
thoroughly awake, and ready to grovel be-
fore the stranger. He begged a thousand
pardons; the traveller's arrival had been ex-
pected — parlor A, on the shady side of the
house, the very best apartment in the hotel,
had been prepared for his reception — it was
on the first floor, only one flight of stairs !
Might he be allowed to relieve him of his
travelling convenience? and the lordly crea-
ture actually disappeared up the stairway,
like Judas, carrying the bag.
My curiosity was excited to ascertain who it
was that had wrought such a sudden trans-
formation. I walked to the counter, and
238 Sixty Tears in Concord.
there read the lasf entry on the register.
It was : ** U. S. Grant and son, Galena, 111."
An unfortunate battle was fought during
the week of my stay in Washington, — the
Bull Run battle of July 21, 1861. The after-
noon of that day, in company with Mr. John
C. Wilson, formerly of Concord, I was loiter-
ing near the southern boundary of the White-
House grounds, and we could hear distinctly
the far-away boom of the cannon. No doubt
as to the result of the battle disturbed us,
until some hours later a tide of fugitives
came pouring over Long Bridge, and there
passed by, in a Concord wagon, our friends
Congressman Rollins and George Marston
(the latter afterward a paymaster in the
army), who had, with other sanguine gentle-
men, driven into Virginia to witness the dis-
comfiture of the rebels !
The defeated army swarmed in confusion
into the streets of Washington, and the cit}'^
for a few hours seemed to be at the mercy of
its enemies. Among a disorganized group of
soldiers I saw one with blood dried in his
hair. Inquiring if he was hurt, he replied
that he had got a rap on the head, and taking
off his cap and following with his finger a
wound ploughed in his scalp, '* Why," said
he, " here is the d d thing now !" and so
Personal Recollections. 239
saying he detached a small bullet from the
lodgment it had found after glancing around
his skull.
Chaplain Parker, of our Second regiment,
whom I saw, was shocked by the battle, and
very regretful about the result ; feared France
and England would recognize the Southern
Confederacy. I asked him about the fate of
a mutual young acquaintance, and my appre-
hensions as to that friend's safety were
calmed by an assurance that he had run to-
ward Washington at the first sound of the
cannon, as fast as his legs could carry him.
There were many people in Washington
who did not conceal their sympathy with the
Rebellion. The city itself was merely a
Southern town, like Alexandria, rambling,
unpaved, hot, and untidy, interesting to a
visitor only because of its beautiful situation,
the public buildings, and the public business.
There was in Concord, from June, 1856,
until August, 1861, a weekly newspaper
called the Democratic Standard^ which was
printed, published, and purported to be edited
by the Palmers, a father and four sons. Hon.
Edmund Burke, of Newport, a newspaper
man as early as 1833, a prominent Democrat
as far back as 1838-'44, when he represented
New Hampshire in congress, and in 1845-'49
240 Sixty Years in Concord,
when he was commissioner of patents under
the Polk administration, was supposed to do
the ablest of the writing for the Standard^
which had outright south-side views.* Mr*
Burke, whose connection with the paper was
stoutly affirmed, and denied as stoutly, was
at that time unfriendly to ex-President Pierce*
The Standard printing-office was a place
*As a specimen, I quote here the closing^ paragraphs of an
editorial from the Standard of Aug. 3, 1861:
The developments of the late disastrous battle and humil-
iatia^ defeat have dem nstrated the fact to the American
people that Abraham Lincoln is unequal to the g^rea* and
responsible position to which he has been elevated. They
show that he has not the capacity to Judge for himself and
to mark out his duty in this grreat crisis, nor the firmness to
execute his plans if he has any. It now stands confessed
that he is influenced and controlled by a set of miserable,
unprincipled, and cowardly political demagogues who sur-
round him, and wtio impudently, through him, dictate the
policy of the government, assuming even to direct the
movements of armies. What safety nas the country with
sucri a man at the head? None whatever.
This poor, weak, and incompetent president has been
driven, by the irresponsible and reckless partisans who sur-
round him, into the adoption of measures which are in
violation of the letter and spirit of the constitution, lending
directly to the subversion of public liberty and the destruc-
tion of our constitutional republic. To this malign influence
we may Justly ascribe the raising and organizing of armies,
the increase of the navy, the suspension of the hnbeas cor-
pus, the deposition of the governments of sovereign s'ates,
the usurpation of tne municipal governments of cities, and
the suppression of the press— acts which in England, at this
day. would have brought the monarch to the block. All
these violati tn< of the constitution have been committed
by Abraham Lincoln, instigated, we have no doubt, by the
sharaelens and unprincipled Black Republican demagogues
by whom he is surrounded. And Anally, the cup of infamy
is fliled to the brim by the ordering of the army into Virginia
against the advice of the greatest of our military com-
manders.
If Abraham Lincoln has any love of country left, let him
abdicate his power into the hands of an efficient Democratic
cabinet. His own party has not sufficient talent to conduct
the government successfully through this great and peril-
ous crisis. They have shown their incompetency hereto-
fore in times of peace. What can the country expect of
them in a time of war? Nothing but imbecility, blunders,,
defeats, and disgrace.
Pergonal Recollections. 241
of some mystery, to the inner precincts of
which none but its printers was admitted. Its
public room was lined with patent medicines,
taken in payment for advertisings and exposed
for sale. It claimed to have a large sub-
scription list, in the South and elsewhere, but
the heap of paper wet for the weekly printing
was guarded with jealous care from the eye
of any one who could size it up at a glance.
The Patriot never did the Standard so much
honor as to mention its name until about the
later days of the latter sheet.
After the war broke out, the Standard was,
of course, out of favor with Union men, and
regarded locally as an active scold, to be
tolerated because it might not be removed
except in some lawful way ; but the men who
had been to the front of the army, and re-
turned, took a different view of the situation.
The First regiment, three-montlis men, came
home in August, 1861, and was greeted by
the Standard^ in its issue of Aug. 8 (dated
Aug. 10), in a way which gave offence. That
issue cannot now be found, but in it the
Union army was referred to as " Old Abe's
Mob." Copies fell into the hands of returned
soldiers, and early in the afternoon of Aug. 8,
squads of uniformed men talking very earn-
estly were on Main street. One such group
16
242 Sixty Years in Concord,
near the Standard office — where the building
now called Woodward's stands — were aroused
by some unwise personal movements of the
PalmeiTS, who hopped about like tomtits on
a pump-handle, and brandished weapons at
their windows. The city marshal, and some
citizens of both political parties, endeavored
to restrain the soldiers ; but there was a
whoop in the street, a rush up the stairs, and
a thundering at the barricaded door. Bang! —
bang! — bang! went a pistol in the hand of
John B. Palmer, perhaps three shots in ail,
and the defensive force retreated to a dark
and rather inaccessible refuge in the attic.
Destruction was instantly begun. Out of the
windows went type and materials to a heap
of wretched chaos in the street. Some prop-
erty was burned. Toward evening the
Palmers were rescued by a small party of
men, conspicuous among whom was John
Foss, the large-hearted Republican warden
of the state prison, to whose stone castle the
fugitives were taken for protection ; and the
Standard ceased to exist. An editorial manu-
script picked up by a soldier, and shown to
me, was in the unmistakable handwriting
of Edmund Burke.
No one suffered much bodily harm from
this riot, which has obtained erroneous men-
Personal Meeellections. 24$
tion ia history.* The defensive force escaped
with a few bruises,
Among the foremost of those who stormed
the staircase was Charles Clark, a Concord
boy, fifteen years old, an attendant on an
ofiScer of the First regiment, who, as he
looked through a shattered panel of the door,
received through his low-crowned hat one o|
the pistol shots fired by John Palmer. Two
soldiers were hurt a little by the remainder of
Palmer's lead. Clark was not much disturbed
by his share of the shooting ; laughing gaily,
he pushed in through the demolished door.
He was fond of danger ; — in October of the
previous year he had climbed the spire of the
Unitarian church,f and stood upright on the
acorn at its top, one hundred and sixty-three
feet above the ground. This last perform-
ance was in the line of that of the sailor-
blacksmith, William S. Davis, who, one mid-
night during the Kansas-Nebraska agitation,
climbed the Democratic flag staff in front of
*There were instances of intolerance and outrage at the
North, but they were comparatively few. One of the most
notable occurred in Concord, N. H., in Aug^ust, 1863 (1). when
a newspaper that had been loud in its disloyalty was pun-
ished by a mob, mainly of newly recruited soldiers, who
gutted the office and threw the type into the street. The
sheriff's reading of the riot act consisted in climbing a
lamp-post, extending his right arm, and saving persuasively
to the rioters, *• Now, boys, I guess you had better go home."
—Short History of the War of Secession. Ticknor&Co.,
1888, p. 339.
t Destroyed by fire in 1888.
244 Sixty Tears in Concord.
the State-house, and hung at the ends ef a
cross pole, one hundred and fifty feet in the
air, the life-size eflBgies of two public men
who were the subjects of contemporary criti-
cism.
The city was sued by John B. Palmer,
and after several indecisive trials by jury,
two thousand dollars was paid to liim and
the proceedings quashed.
XIII.
Toward the end of the year 1862 I was ap-
pointed a paymaster in the army. My com-
mission, which bears for its signature the
name of Abraham Lincohi, shows the date of
appointment to have been November 26.
There were seventy persons appointed to like
positions on the same day, among them Sim-
eon D. Farns worth of Manchester, Albert H.
Hoyt of Portsmouth, and C. W. Woodman of
Dover. Repairing to Washington for assign-
ment to duty, we were detained in idleness
while a quibble was adjusted between the
treasury and the war department. The con-
troversy was, whether, being oflBcers of the
United States, the law required revenue
stamps to be affixed to our bonds of surety.
The treasury department said no, the war de-
partment said yes, and finally, about the last
of January, 1863, Secretary Stanton had his
way ; so stamps enough were applied to my
bond to send it past all scrutiny. I put on
more than were deemed necessary by the most
scrupulous solicitors, the extra ones being
placed as a reinforcement to the picket line.
246 Sixty Years in Concord,
The bond itself was not a formidable afifair —
twenty thousand dollars — for the next day
after it was passed at the war office two hun-
dred thousand dollars was entrusted to my
care wherewith to begin service.
The duties of a paymaster were not so
simple as beginners had supposed. Soldiers
were mustered for pay at the end of each al-
ternate month, and muster rolls of the regi-
ments to which a paymaster was assigned were
transmitted to him, through the paymaster-
general, six times a year. The paymaster
extended on the rolls the sum due to each
man according to data carried on the roll it-
self. Varying rates of pay, because of differ-
ences in rank, or service in artillery, cavalry,
or infantry ; allowances for rations, for ser-
vants, for reenlistments, and for bounties ;
stoppages for loss of arms, for over-drafts of
clothing, for sutlers' bills, and fines by courts-
martial, made the duty more difficult, and —
the paymaster being liable for errors — more
hazardous than most of us had conceived*
As for myself, I would have retreated, as did
one of our New Hampshire appointees, had I
not been ashamed to admit that I dreaded to
go on. After the rolls were carefully pre-
pared, payment was made in the field as regu-
larly as funds could be provided. One clerk
Personal Mecollections, 247
was allowed ; two if the work was very heavy.
The pay and allowances of a paymaster were
those of a major of cavalry, and if I remem-
ber aright, somewhat more than $2,600 a
year.
My first detail was to the Second and
Fourth Wisconsin batteries, at Suffolk, Va.,
the 148th New York regiment at Norfolk,
and at Hampton the 139th New York, and
the soldiers in the Chesapeake General Hos-
pital, the last equal to a regiment. Paymas-
ters Arthur W. Fletcher and O. B. Latham
went at the same time to that department of
the army. Fletcher, who I was told was a
nephew of Grace Fletcher, Daniel Webster's
first wife, being the senior in rank, was con-
sidered to be in charge. The journey was by
way of Baltimore and the Chesapeake bay.
Perhaps no one knows what good a part of
our army was doing at Suffolk, but it was an
outpost, held by a few thousand men, under
command of General John J. Peck, who had
seen some service in Mexico, and had re-
joined the army from civil life.
While at Suffolk I was one night at a small
public house, and the rebel landlord, after
seeing my luggage, lodged me in a room so
queer and remote, so accessible from the ex-
terior by windows opening on shed roofs, that
248 Sixty Years in Concord. ^
it seemed prudent to protect the money-chest
with a guard of two soldiers selected from a
Pennsylvania buck-tail regiment, and there
was reason afterward to think this was a fort-
unate precaution.
On the hotel table was fried beefsteak, thin
and tough as sole-leather, with wlieaten rolls,
clayey white on the outside, dark and heavy
as pig lead within. Such Virginia cookery
as came to Northern observation during the
war fell short of its ancient reputation.
Among incidents of this fn«t visit to
" sacred soil " was a call on the rebel guerilla
Harry Gilmor, then in the jail at Norfolk.
He did not expect to be confined many days,
and his shelves were loaded with cold fowl
and pastry supplied by rebel friends.
At Newport News were visible the topmasts
of the old frigates "Congress" and "Cum-
berland," which had been sunk by the " Mer-
rimack " ten months before. When Commo-
dore Smith in the navy department, heard
that the " Congress " hauled down her flag
before she sunk, he said, " Joe's dead." Joe
was his son in command of the " Congress."
He was dead.
At the Chesapeake General Hospital the
surgeon-in-charge was turning that institu-
tion over to a successor. There was a show
Personal Recollections, 249
of dignified, shallow politeness going on be-
tween these people, and they were exhibiting
nice surgical instruments to one another, but
it seemed to me that the departing doctor
would be willing to apply a scalpel to the
anatomy of his successor.
My disbursements amounted to but $83,-
948.72 of the larger sum provided, and get-
ting back to Washington, after a week's
absence, they inquired at the paymaster-gen-
eral's office what had become of our com-
mander-in-chief, Fletcher, of whom reports
had come that he was enjoying too well the
hospitalities of the garrison at Fortress Mon-
roe ; but he returned in about two weeks.
In April, 1863 (20-27), I paid the Eighth,
Forty-first, Forty-fifth, and Fifty-fourth New
York regiments, near Falmouth, and the
153d New York, near Alexandria, Va., dis-
bursing $168,567.58. All but the last of
these regiments were in Howard's division
of the Third Army Corps, and nearly all the
men were originally from Germany. The
Eighth was commanded by Col. Felix, Prince
Salm-Salm, a near-sighted, scholarly-looking,
attractive German, a gentleman of a class
perhaps less numerous now than formerly,
ever ready for soldierly experience and adven-
ture in any cause, like Emin Pacha, provided
260 Sixty Years in Concord.
the pay be good. This was just before the
battle of Cliancellorsville (May 3-5). There
had been a period of inaction after the unfor-
tunate Burnside assault on Fredericksburg,
and amusements liad relieved the monotony
of camp. There had been some racing, and
Col. Salm-Salm had nearly broken his neck by
his horse's falling at a hurdle. This did not
prevent his giving a dinner-party, the evening
of April 22, at his comfortable quarters, in
tents pitched on a moderate elevation pro-
tected by a few low trees. At this dinner
General Daniel E. Sickles was the principal
guest, and to it he came in full martial attire,
cantering into camp followed by an aid and
an orderly. Madame Salm-Salm was the only
lady at the table. A young colored woman,
with regular features of sable blackness,
wearing a gay turban, stood behind the chair
of her mistress, to whose evident personal
beauty she made an admirable background.
The host and hostess of this festive occasion,
as well as General Sickles (who not long
before had shot Philip Barton Key), had had
in their lives more than the ordinary share of
adventure. Salm-Salm was perhaps thirty-
five, the second son of a princely family in
Germany ; had served in the armies of Prus-
sia and Austria, wasted his resources by
Pergonal Recollections. 261
extravagant living in Vienna, and emigrated
to America when the civil war broke out,
Madame Salm-Salm was born in Baltimore,
confessed to twenty-three years, and was
christened Agnes Leclercq. She grew up a
beauty, and took to horsemanship, — not to
ordinary riding either, for, after instruction
at a Philadelphia circus, in the spring of 1858
she made a successful public appearance.
She visited Southern and Western cities as a
rider and dancer, and in the autumn of that
year established herself in New York. She
married, but humdrum life did not suit her,
and one morning she walked out from her
home and never went back to it. By way of
making the affair proper, she got a divorce.
After living some months at Havana, she
came to Washington just after the war broke
out, and did not permit hereelf to be forgot-
ten, until in 1862, to the surprise of the gos-
sips, she married Prince Salm-Salm.
After our war was over the Prince went to
Mexico, became chief of staff to the Emperor
Maximillian, ^nd was uncomfortably near
being shot beside that unfortunate Austrian
when the empire collapsed, but was saved
somehow by his wife. When war was
declared between France and Prussia in
1870, Salm-Salm was a major in the Grena-
f
252 Sixty Years in Concord,
dier guards of Prussia, and was shot dead at
Gravelotte, one of the early battles of that war.
I never saw the Prince after that dinner at
Falmouth ; but one morning in the summer
of 1865, a military friend remarked in my
office at Concord that the Princess Salm-Salm
was at the Phoenix hotel. It seemed as if he
must be mistaken, but, passing that hostelry
later in the day, I saw her leave its door to
take a carriage. As a result of her persistent
entreaties all through the year 1864, her hus-
band, who was then at the West in the army
under Gen. George H. Thomas, had been
commissioned a brigadier-general.
Madame Salm-Salm told the story of her
life in our army, in Mexico, and as a nurse in
the Franco-Prussian war, in a book published
in 1877, entitled " Ten Years of My Life."
In that volume she does General Sickles and
Provost-Marshal-General James B. Fry the
favor of mention, among many others, and
speaks also of " good old Governor Gilmore
of New Hampshire." She had probably
availed herself of the friendly offices of these
gentlemen to obtain the long-sought general's
commission for Felix. Her book is untruth-
ful, and her comments on public men of that
time and on the conduct of the war are of no
value.
Personal Mecollections. 258
In May and June, 1863, near Culpeper
Court House, I paid a part of the First Ver-
mont Cavalry ; near Alexandria, the 153d
New York, and at Falmouth, the Third and
Fifth Michigan, the Seventeenth Maine, and
elsewhere a portion of the First Massachu-
setts Cavalry, which consumed fl51,512.69.
Then came the Gettysburg campaign.
About July 1 it was rumored in the streets
of Washington that rebel cavalry were in
Maryland, and it was surprising to discover
the ill-<3oncealed satisfaction which this, de-
veloped in some occupants of minor official
places. The battle of Gettysburg, the crisis
of the war, was won on July 2 and 3, and
Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on
July 4. When this news was bulletined in
Washington, rebel sympathizers went into
permanent retirement.
To revert to Concord : These great events
were a painful shock to certain citizens of
New Hampshire who were assembled in con-
vention in the state-house yard on the Fourth
of July. Ex-President Pierce was presiding.
A portrait of Vallandigham, the chief copper-
head of Ohio, whom the Statesman called
'' the great Unpronounceable," was displayed
on the platform. Voorhees, of like repute in
Indiana, spoke. The government was de-
r
254 Sixty Years in Concord.
nounced, its chief magistrate contemned, and
the war declared a failure. Tidings of the
victory at Gettysburg, which reached the
platform, were pronounced an abolition lie,
told to distress the convention. This meet-
ing was timed to give moral aid to Lee's
attempt at invasion of the North, and I never
doubted that it was held on some hint obtained
from Richmond.*
In July and August I paid all the soldiers
in convalescent camp, and the 153d New York.
Operations were disturbed, about August 5,
by the absconding of a clerk, who was fortu-
nately captured, and all his plunder (140,000)
recovered.
In September I paid at Brandy Station,
Va., the Twelfth Indiana Battery, the 110th
Pennsylvania, Seventeenth Maine, Fortieth
and 106th New York regiments.
In November, at the same place, I paid the
First Sharpshooters, Third and Fifth Michi-
gan, Seventeenth Maine, Fortieth New York,
Twentieth Indiana, and the 110th Pennsyl-
vania. These were all brigaded under the
command of Gen. Regis de Trobriand, an ex-
* Had Lee gained that battle, the Democrats would have
risen and stopped the war. With the city of New York and
Governor Seymour and Governor Parker in New Jersey, and
a majority in Pennsj'lvania, as they then would have had,
they would have so crippled us as lo end the contest. That
they would have attempted it we at home know.— -Li/e of
Bichard Henry DanOfVol. 2, p. 276.
. Personal Recollections, 255
cellent soldier, afterward the writer of " Four
Years with the Army of the Potomac." I
cannot tell better the experiences of that
period than by quoting now what I wrote
then to the Statesman,
[November 17, 1863.]
A Night in an Ambulance.
Near Bealton station a terrific peal of
thunder with a blinding flash of lightning,
followed by rain, and darkness that might be
felt, brought our party to a halt. We had
been for half an hour groping our way by
the aid of a dim lantern borne along the road
a little distance in advance. It was not later
than 6 o'clock, but that hour past sunset, in
this latitude, at this season, brings most out-
door enterprises to a pause. So it did our
journey. We cast about in search of a place
to bivouac. A cluster of small oaks seemed
best to serve the purpose, and the united
efforts of men and beasts were just sufficient
to place our ambulance within the partial
shelter of the trees. The rain continued to
pour in torrents, and peal after peal of thun-
der crashed through the grove like reports
from a battery of twelve pounders.
We left Washington that morning, most
of us bearing passes as broad as a bill of
266 Sixty Tears in Concord.
lading, bound for the Army of the Poto-
mac. Bouncing along over the Orange &
Alexandria Railroad, we reached Warren-
ton Junction to find Captain Mattocks, of
the Seventeenth Maine regiment, and forty
other good fellows, ready to escort us seven-
teen miles further, to the journey's end near
Brandy Station. The rails had not been
relaid bevond Warren ton since the rebels
retired behind Culpeper.
Within the ambulance was a gentleman
who left Natchez, Miss., when the war broke
out, because he was a Union man, and had a
desire to preserve undisturbed the vertebrae
between his head and body, which some
zealous friends had bought a rope wherewith
to sunder. In short, he was threatened with
hanging. You can ascertain what he thinks
of this rebellion without talking with him a
great while. I believe good Governor Berry
used now and then to call this an unholy rebel-
lion. Our friend in the ambulance goes fur-
ther. In this connection he uses words found
in Scripture with great force and earnestness.
His opinions are not those of the Union Dem-
ocrat^ of Manchester, N. H.
Opposite liim sat a tall young fellow from
Georgetown, D. C, who had brought gaitei-s
and spurs, to be ready for either a dance or
Personal Recollections. 257
a canter. There were two other inmates
beside your correspondent. One was the
driver, the other a sutler. They have the
zoological names of Wolff and Bull.
The captain guessed we might as well stay
where we were until daylight, so, stationing
liis guard, he and his lieutenants clambered
in among us. Private Wolff, of the 110th
Pennsylvania, put a fresh candle in the lan-
tern, which, he remarked, had been confis-
cated from the hospital department. Mr.
Bull produced a Bologna sausage, the young
fellow from Georgetown some apples, Captain
Mattocks a loaf of army biead, another indi-
vidual contributed a cold roast chicken,
and our Mississippi friend a bottle of black-
berry brandy, which he declared to be a
sovereign balm for ailments resulting from
change of temperature and drink. Although
our table furniture consisted of nothing but
a jack-knife, which Mr. Bull declared he
brought from '^ Indianny *' at the beginning
of the war, still we made a very jolly sup-
per.
It ought to be mentioned that the ambu-
lance was drawn by two mules, called Robert
and Rebecca by Private Wolff, both of them
being in sleek condition ; indeed, so sleek
that two British officers, who came down on
17
258 Sixty Years in Concord,
the same train with us to visit the army,
remarked, iu passing our establishment, that
'' those 'osses were very fat." Private Wolff
was gratified at the compliment, but judged
the gentleman could hardly belong to the
cavalry service. He remarked, further, that
he thought a great deal of these two animals,
as did his predecessor on the box, who had
gone home on a furlough and forgotten to
deliver several little parcels of money which
his comrades entrusted to his care.
Eight people might sleep very comfortably
in an ambulance if tliey had each undergone
amputation of both legs. We were unable
to make any satisfactary arrangement until
about 10 o'clock, when three of us scrambled
outside, and sat down, like an Indian pow-
wow, on a rubber blanket, and, leaning
against a tree, snatched some refreshing
naps, interrupted only by olfactory evidence
of the neighborhood of a horse who had for-
ever finished pawing in the valley and re-
joicing in his strength. These dead animals
are passed at every curve in the road, each
now representing about fl25 of the "five
twenty loan." Nobody thinks it worth while
to take off their hides and hoofs.
Behind us, around a big, blazing fire, stood
a majority of our escort, drying their coats
Personal Recollections. 269
and blankets, while others were lying full
length on the ground, with naught between
them and mother earth except a thin layer
of boughs. It is wonderful with what non-
chalance these men bear all sorts of exposure
and encoii nter every danger. A cup of steam-
ing coJBfee puts them all right after a com-
plete drenching on the most watchful picket-
line. Only a week before, these very men
around us were wading the Rappahannock
in the face of the enemy's fire, and a mere
rain-soaking is nothing compared with that.
Mosby, or any other enterprising robber,
might have made a good thing by gobbling
us up that night. Our ambulance and con-
tents, with others before and behind us on
the road, would have bought half of Rich-
mond at current rates of premium, and enti-
tled us to the most distinguished hospitali-
ties of the Libby prison.
Before daylight Private Wolff discovered
that Rebecca had lain down in the mud,
from which he aroused her, and gave her
a good currying with a wisp of hay. The
men around the fire made a kettle of cof-
fee, and before suni-ise we were on our way
again.
The Rappahannock river, at the station of
the same name, is hardly so wide as the Con-
260 Sixty Years in Concord,
toocook at Fisherville. We crossed it by a
pontoon bridge, laid down by the rebels,
which they had no time to withdraw before
the impetuous advance of the column under
Sedgwick. South of the river and close to
the water is an eminence about as high as
Kent's hill in Concord, crowned with an
ugly-looking fortification supposed by the
Johnnies (as Private Wolff calls them) to
command the bridge and adjacent ford. A
cluster of graves not far away is now the
only physical evidence of the gallantry with
which the river was crossed and the heights
carried with the bayonet. Even as we looked
on the scene of this recent success, the roar
of cannon in the advance told of another
possible encounter. It was a light battery
with Kilpatrick's cavalry, shelling the enemy
beyond Culpeper. The whole army was
put under ordera to be ready to move.
Between Rappahannock and Brandy Sta-
tion is as good a field for battle as can be
found in all Virginia. It was here that the
column which crossed at Kelley's Ford joined
that of Sedgwick, and the whole army de-
bouched upon this plain, and moved for-
ward in battle order. This is said to have
been the best opportunity to see at one glance
the whole Army of the Potomac whicli has
Personal Recollections, 261
occurred in the existence of that army.*
It was almost noon when we reached the
camp of the Seventeenth Maine regiment.
A DAY IN THE ARMY.
This brigade was the first to cross at
Kelley's Ford, in the recent forcing of the
enemy's lines back from the Rappahannock.
It is commanded by Col. Regis de Trobriand,
a French gentleman who married a lady in
Brooklyn, N. Y., and took up a residence in
this country. He is an accomplished soldier
and scholar, speaking several languages flu-
ently, and sketcliing with skill, either with
colors or with pencil. He is the only for-
eign officer against whom I have never heard
a word of detraction in the army. For the
gallantry and spirit with which this brigade
advanced and crossed at Kelley's Ford, both
the brigade and its commander have been
complimented by name in the general orders
* General de Trobriand says,— "This grand military
deployment offered one of the finest spectacles which could
be imagined. Let one picture to himself two army corps
marching on the centre, in line of battle, in mass, the
artillery in the intervals, and on the roads the flanks cov-
ered by two divisions in column, the skirmishers in advance,
the cavalry on the two wings; the reserves covering the
wagons in the rear; and all this mass of humanity in per-
fect order, rising or falling gradually according to the
undulations of the plain, with the noise of the cannon,
which did not cease throwing projectiles on the rear guard
of the Confederates in retreat. Such was the moving
picture which was given us to enjoy during that whole
afternoon."
262 Sixty Yearn in Concord,
of the Army of tlie P(^£unac. It includes
the Third and Fifth MioW^aii, Seventeenth
Maine, Fortieth New Yoilr; ^irst United
States Sharpshooters, and the 110th Penn-
sylvania regiments. These Michigan regi-
ments have been in this army from the first
Battle of Bull Run until now, and their
fame is like that of the Second Nfew Hamp-
sliire, exceeding the latter in that they shared
in the great battle of Antietam and some
later engagements, in which the Second did
i\ot.
Lieut.-Col. John Pulford, commanding the
Fifth Michigan, lias had a singular experi-
ence. He was a captain in the same regi-
ment at the battle of Malvern Hill, when it
was supporting a battery. A Mini^ ball
struck him close beside the right eye, fur-
rowing along the skull toward tlie ear.
From that instant until tliirty days after-
ward all is a blank to him. He was left
unconscious on the field, picked up and
carried to Richmond, exchanged, and finally
came to his senses in a hospital in Baltimore,
wliere, he says, he could not refrain from
abusing the atten(hints around his bedside
for trying to convince him tliat he was not
still in the smoke and fire of Malvern Hill.
Of all the famous regiments of the army.
Personal Iteeollections. 263
none will fill a brighter page in history than
those two from Michigan.
The Fortieth New York was formerly
known as the Mozart regiment. It is now
commanded by Col. Thomas W. Egan, whom
I remember to liave met in Chicago several
yeai's ago, and who was a contractor in build-
ing the Cheshire railroad in New Hampshire.
Having had other regiments and parts of
regiments consolidated with it, this is still
almost up to the maximum strength. It
was a favorite one with General Kearney,
who formerly commanded the division, of
whose gallantry the men will never cease
telling. In the Kelley's Ford affair, this
regiment captured several contrabands from
the enemy. One of these informed me that
he formerly belonged to Sergeant Thomas
of the Fifth Alabama regiment. B}^ retreat-
ing into the woods he lost the whereabouts
of his regiment, and on emerging from his
hiding-place he was picked up by Colonel
Egan. He says General Lee is held in high
estimation through the South, but that Bragg
is known as Corporal Bragg, and the sol-
diers of the rebel army in the West are
often fired by the interrogatory whether they
belong to Corporal Bragg's army. He was
with his regiment at Gettysburg, and a wit-
264 Sixty Years in Concord.
ness of the terrific charge of Ewell, which
I have often heard officers say no division
of our army would have attempted ; and,
indeed, it is doubtful if Ewell's men would
have made the essay had they not been told
tliey were to charge Pennsylvania militia.
It is fortunate for the country that no mil-
itiamen were sighting the artillery which
rent whole companies of the advancing col-
umn at each discharge.
Our contraband says that such of the
rebels as survived the charge admitted that
they were terribly defeated.
He gives a rather doubtful account of the
degree of destitution existing among the
colored people of Alabama, many of whom,
he assured me, had nothing to eat but ashes
and water. He said they might shoot " pos-
sums," which are as good to eat as hogs, if
they liad guns, but firearms are denied to
them.
He says a black man in tlie Southern army
can make a heap of money by washing offi-
cers' clothing, twenty-five cents per piece
being paid for such service. ' He says they
bring along portions of their apparel and
ask ^' de cullud boys to knock out sum ob de
dirt,*' and if they have more success than
was anticipated, the reward is greater than
Pergonal Recollections. 265
the standard price above mentioned. Colo-
nel Egan gave him a paper collar to wash,
which of course came to pieces under his
manipulations, much to his consternation.
He apologized by the explanation that he
had not been used to washing such fine
goods in the Southern army.
This contraband declares that lie would
willingly have been captured, but that Massa
Thomas had obtained a furlough for thirty
days, and he was going home with him to a
place on the Alabama river above Montgom-
ery, where Massa Thomas's father has a store
and plantation. Although making heaps of
money by washing, to use his own words, still
it took a great pile of it to buy anything,
" do's shoes costing me forty dollars," show-
ing a pair of decent brogans. Before I fin-
ished converaation with him our friend from
Mississippi came up, and hearing that his
name was Henry Jackson, took a sharp look
at him, that being the cognomen of one of
the eighteen or twenty likely boys left by
him in his sudden exit from the South. This
was another Jackson.
The Third Corps was to-day reviewed by
Major-General Sedgwick, and British visitors
to the army, on a plain, half way between
Brandy Station and the residence of Hon.
266 Sixty Years in Concord,
John Minor Botts. The remarks of this bri-
gade were not altogether complimentary to
their blockade-running guests. I have never
before seen these men in so good spirits.
Exhilarated by the last crossing of the Rap-
pahannock, they seem to have new confidence
in themselves and General Meade, and hope
to cross the Rapidan l>efore winter closes the
campaign.
[November 19, 1863.]
It has been mentioned that the First regi-
ment of Sharpshooters is one of the component
forces of the brigade of which I have been
writing. A portion of to-day has been passed
in their camp. The performances and the
renown of this regiment are equal to the ex-
pectations with which they took the field.
It is armed with Sharp's rifles, which are
" sighted " with more care than the ordinary
carbine of that manufacturer. The heavy
telescope rifles which they brought into the
field were abandoned after the siege of York-
town, at which place they served a good
purpose, but of course weapons so gigantic
proved to be unsatisfactory for marching and
skirmisliing. These Sharp's rifles are alto-
gether more useful, althougli not so perfect
for target shooting.
Company E, which was recruited in Con-
Personal Me collections, 267
cord, has thirty-three men present for duty.
It is commanded by Capt. William G. An-
drews. The members of this company have
the impression that they have been lost sight
of by friends at home, because of being
incorporated in a regiment which has nine
companies from other . states. " California
Joe," a marksman who won considerable re-
nown at Yorktown, where his activity and
skill made a piece of rebel artillery useless,
has been discharged for disability.
Some marvellous stories of the skill of the
Sharpshooters are still told. It is said that
at Kelley's Ford, where they were sent for-
ward as skirmishers — as, indeed, they are in
nearly every battle in which they participate
— the rebels suffered so severely in their rifle
pits that they dared not show tlieir heads
above the place of concealment, but, raising
their guns to a level, fired at random from
their coverts. It is certain the rebels have
a wholesome fear of them, and, recognizing
them by the peculiar report of their rifles,
keep as well out of siglit as possible. This
regiment is now commanded by Lieut.-Col.
Trepp, an officer of Swiss nativity.
An amazing tendency towards dress is
noticeable in the Army of the Potomac.
Suits of velvet are fashionable, trimmed with
268 Sixty Years in Co7icord^
gold cord, and adorned with the insignia of
rank to whicli the wearer is entitled. To
the latter may be added the Kearney cross,
or the badge of the army corps to which the
officer belongs. Corduroy is worn to a con-
siderable extent by cavalry officers. These
fanciful suits, are in addition to others made
of materials and in style to correspond
with the regulations of the army. An offi-
cer setting forth to make an evening call
on a friend is often a sight worth seeing.
The proximity of this army to Washington
enables one to manage these expenditures
for dress very readily. There is, so I am
told, a Jew, who has obtained in some way
the exclusive right to sell clothing in this
army, and he is, as may well be supposed,
doing a thriving business. The number of
these sons of Abraham who manage to attach
themselves to the army is large. Many of
the sutlers are of Hebrew lineage. One of
them, who is packing up to go away on the
next train, has a haversack full of parcels
of money, entrusted to him by soldiers, to
carry to the express office in Washington.
The burden of his thought is shown by his
remark, *' If some folks had all dis monish
to carry up for de boys, dey make as much
as fifty tollars ; scharge de poys twendy-vive
shents apeas."
Personal Recollections. 269
About a quarter of a mile from this camp
is the home of Hon. John Minor Botts.
This distinguished gentleman resides in an
ordinary Virginia farmhouse, to which are
attached outbuildings of decent description.
He has about a thousand acres of land, some
of which he has purchased since the war
began. This farm has suffered less from
depredations than others in its vicinity. Mr.
Botts has more sheep and cattle than all
others of the region round about, his flock
of the former numbering about one hundred
and fifty head.
Mr. Botts manifests a generous hospitality
to the officers of our army, having frequent
parties at dinner, and making welcome to
liis hearth all who choose to call on him.
He has extended the same civilities to the
rebel generals, making an exception of
Stuart, the cavalry officer, whom he does not
allow to cross his threshold. He is under
parole to the rebel government not to dis-
close anything which may come to his knowl-
edge detrimental to the rebel cause.
The parole given by Mr. Botts exempts
him usually from the pilfering of the rebel
army, and when our forces are in the neigh-
borhood a detachment of the provost guard
is placed in charge of his property. When
270 Sixty Years in Concord.
the I'ebels last occupied this region they
burned his fences ; so on the return of Gen-
eral Meade a detail was made from our army
to rebuild them. After a time the detailed
men became weary of rail-splitting, and com-
pleted the repairs with handy materials taken
from the borders of secesli neighbors. By
the rank and file of the army Mr. Botts is
not believed to be an unconditional Union
man. A soldier told me he had counted
among his sheep nine bell-wethei'S, and nine
different marks upon the sheep ; therefore he
believed Mr. Botts was the nominal Union
man for the county to save the cattle and
sheep of the neighborhood. He said he did
not see how a man could save himself from
the depredations of both armies unless he
carried water on both shouldei*s. The wife
of a rebel colonel residing on the next farm
told me she had never heard Mr. Botts say
anything about the Union. He is writing
his impressions about the war and the times.
So fast as any considerable portion of this is
completed, he sends it to a place of safetj'.*
[January 22, 1864.]
The First New Hampshire Battery is en-
camped on the estate of Hon. John Minor
• In 1866 Harper & Brothers published " The Great Rebel-
lion: its secret history, rise, progress, and disastrous fail-
are," by Mr. Botts, a most uninteresting book.
■^
Per%onal Recollections. 271
Botts, in a spot well sheltered by trees, of
sufficient elevation to be tolerably free from
mud, and to furnish a healthful position for
both men and horses. It was this battery
which lured a body of rebels to swift destruc-
tion at Gettysburg. Being posted in a good
position, and ordered to husband his ammu-
nition, Captain Edgell directed the firing to
cease, and retired his men to a shelter in the
lear of the guns, while he remained to watch
tlie course of the battle. Seeing the artillery
without visible protection, the rebels thought
it was abandoned, and advanced a brigade at
the charge to capture it. At this opportune
moment Captain Sdgell recalled his can-
noneers, and their rapid discharges rent the
advancing column. After eight rounds were
fired, what men were left of the brigade
threw down their arms and came in as
prisoners.
In illustration of the nonchalance with
which sutlers are placed outside the pale of
civilization, I may mention that a fellow-
passenger on the Orange & Alexandria Rail-
road pointed out to me, with all possible
seriousness, the scene of a recent accident.
*' There," said he, with unfeigned gravity,
" is where the cars ran off the track, killing
tliree men and a sutler,''^
272 Sixty Years in Concord.
Curious extremes of weather occur this
winter in this region. A few mornings since
the sun was shining warmly, and I heard the
familiar note of the blue-bird, while flying
squirrels were performing their eccentric
evolutions in close vicinity ; yet on the fol-
lowing day the air was piercing cold, and
two or three inches of snow fell.
About the end of tlie year 1868 came a
payment harder than any to which I had
been assigned. Just before Christmas day,
visiting the office of the paymaster-general,
it appeared that paymasters were being
selected by lot to go to the army and dis-
burse pay and bounty money to reenlisted
veteran volunteers, a difficult, and at that
season an unwelcome, duty. I remarked
incautiously, " Why does not the colonel
select the men he wants and tell them to
go?" When I returned to my quarters,
there lay an order for me to go. So between
December 25, 1863, and January 7, 1864,
near the Rapidan, in the wintry wind driv-
ing down from the Blue Ridge, I made
the rolls and paid the First and Second
Sharpshooters, Third and Fifth Michigan,
Fortieth and Eighty-sixth New York, Fifty-
seventh, Sixty-third, 105th, and 110th I^enn-
Per%onal Recollections, 273
sylvania regiments, Battery E First Rhode
Island Artillery, the First New Hampshire,
Fourth Maine, Tenth Massachusetts, and
Twelfth New York batteries, to the tune of
$342,542.98. This was about half a mile
from the headquarters of the army, and I
happened once to see General Meade. While
working at this payment, I .learned by expe-
rience that it is difficult to do satisfactory
pen work and correct arithmetical calcu-
lations using the heads of barrels and the
sides of boxes for desks.
There were no better soldiers in the Army
of the Potomac than the Sharpshooters, the
Seventeenth Maine, Third and Fifth Michi-
gan, Fortieth New York, and the 110th
Pennsylvania regiments, heretofore men-
tioned. In April, 1864, they became the
Second Brigade of the Third Division of the
Second Corps. The experience of officers
tells in a way the service of regiments. Col.
Caspar Trepp, of the Sharpshooters, was
killed at Mine Run ; Col. George W. West,
of the Seventeenth Maine, was wounded in
the Wilderness, and discharged in March,
1865, with the rank of brevet brigadier;
Col. Byron R. Pierce, of the Third Michigan,
was made brigadier-general in June, 1864;
Col. John Pulford, whom I have mentioned
18
274 Sixty Years in Concord.
l)efore, was wounded again in the Wilder-
ness, and mustered out at the end of the war
as a brevet brigadier, having served from
beginning to end, and more than once shot
nigh unto death in the Army of the Poto-
mac.
In the " History of the Second Army
Corps," Gen. Francis A. Walker says, —
On April 22, 1864, the reenforced corps
was reviewed by General Grant. Of all the
gallant regiments which passed the review-
ing officer, two excited especial admiration, —
tlie 148th Pennsylvania and the Fortieth
New York, Colonel Egan.
*(c 7^ y^ T^ ^* y^
On the morning of May 23, 1864, a bridge
over the North Anna was held by troops of
Kershaw's Confederate division. This Han-
cock determined to carry. Two of Birney's
brigades, now under Col. Thomas W. Egan
(Fortieth New York), and Col. Byron R.
Pierce (Third Michigan), were formed for
attack, and at half past six in the morning
cliarged across the fields from nearly oppo-
site directions converging upon the earth-
work. The two brigades advanced in splen-
did style, over open ground, vying with each
other in gallantry of bearing and rapidity of
movement, and, carrying the intrenchments
without a halt, the enemy were driven pell-
mell across the river and the bridge seized.
Personal Recollections. 275
June 16, 1864. In front of Petersburg.
At eight o'clock Egan -led his brigade in
a brilliant assault upon one of the Confed-
erate redoubts (Redan No. 12), carrying it
in the verj^ style which he had displayed on
the North Anna. In the assault Egan was
wounded, but not severely.
October 27, 1864. Boydton Plank Road.
At the firet sound of the enemy's attack
on Pierce, Hancock sent Mitchell to General
Egan, directing him to face about and
assail the enemy. When Mitchell reached
General Egan, he found that gallant officer,
with the instinct of a true soldier, already in
motion. It was quite evident that in taking
position on the secondary ridge, and opening
against Mott, the enemy were oblivious to
the presence of Egan's troops, and when he
burst upon their right and rear, it must have
been like a bolt from a clear sky. Two
colors and many hundreds of prisonei*s were
captured.
One morning in March, 1864, my wife and
myself met at the Treasury Department Mr.
John E. Embler, of Newburg, N. Y., and
two ladies, his relatives, with all of whom
we had had some previous acquaintance.
He was proposing to start a national bank at
his home on the Hudson, and had a lively
curiosity to see the process of printing
national bank notes. Visitors were not gen-
erally admitted to the treasury printing
276 Sixty Years in Concord.
department, and how to get in there was the
question. He jexclaimed that being from
New York he would appeal to Secretary
Seward. My suggestion that Mr. Seward
must l)e a very busy man availed nothing.
Away Mr. Embler went to the State Depart-
ment, and came hurrying back directly with
a message from Mr. Seward inviting us all
to call. Rather reluctantly we went: it
seemed as if we must be intruding unwar-
rantably, but the secretary of state put us at
ease by a most kindly reception, and by a
friendly interest in Mr. Embler's plans. He
sent for Mr. Maunsell B. Field, an assistant
secretary of the treasury, on whose behalf
Secretary Chase in the following June pet-
ulantly resigned his secretaryship, and Mr.
Field (afterward the author of *' Memories
of Many Men and Some Women" — a book
within the pages of which may be found an
amusing account of the author's experience
in seeking office at the hands of President
Pierce), althougli he looked very cross, con-
sented to give Mr. Embler the desired access
to the printing rooms.
Mr. Embler then, in a rather hortatory
way, enjoined it on the secretary to go ahead
and put down the Rebellion, and Mr. Seward
said in reply that it was all important that
Personal Recollections, 277
the public temper be right, for, said he,
" Mr. Embler, you know that at the last elec-
tion in your own county in New York the
Republican vote was only a little larger than
the Democratic; in other words, Jefferson
Davis showed almost as mucli strength as
Abraham Lincoln," — and so he entertained
us at least half an hour with the most attrac-
tive conversation to which I ever listened.
Even when, after one or two essays to leave,
from which he restrained us, we had finally
gone, he hurried to the hall to say, in a very
gracious way, that his daughter would have
a reception that afternoon, and would be
glad to see the ladies of our party. Nothing
could have been more kind, and the ladies
went to a charming reception at the great
house on Lafayette square, where Mr. Seward
a year later was so nearly slain by an assassin.
iVfter that half hour in the great parlor of
the old State Department, I never wondered
why Governor Seward had many devoted
personal friends. Secretary Stanton, of the
War Department, with whom I once had an
interview, was a grizzly bear in comparison.
I never saw President Lincoln in Wash-
ington but twice, once at a White House
reception, and once at a hotel on the avenue
where he stopped for a glass of water ; but 1
278 Sixty Years in Concord,
dwelt for a time in the same house with Mr.
W. O. Stoddard, an attach^ of the White
House, author of '• Inside the White House
in War Times." There was some idle side-
walk criticism of the president, the only
charge that I remember hearing being that
he did not read the newspapers.
In summer evenings on Pennsylvania ave-
nue there was often seen a man whose strong,
impressive face and sturdy figure fixed itself
in my memory; years afterward, looking at
a portrait of Walt Whitman, I discovered
the unknown to have been that poet.
I paid the Sharpshooters, and the before-
mentioned Maine, Michigan, New York, and
Pennsylvania regiments, down to May, 1864 ;
then I was ordered to Concord to pay soldiers
on leave of absence or mustered out, veteran
reserve men, etc. This order came to me
unexpectedly, brought about by some one
in the Navy Department. That department
was hostile to Senator Hale because of his
public rebuke to Secretary Welles, in the
latter part of 1861, for employing George
P. Morgan (Welles's brother-in-law) to buy
ships for the government, thereby putting
into Morgan's pocket a commission of about
$70,000. Mr. Hale's term in the senate
jPersonal Recollection^. 279
expired in 1865, and the question of his
reelection came before the legislature of
1864. Maj. George P. Folsom, my prede-
cessor at Concord, was doing what he could
to forward Mr. Hale's reelection ; therefore
it was arranged for me to relieve him, and
attend merely to duties of my place. When
the senatorial election came, it resulted in
the choice of Hon. Aaron H. Cragin.
The duty at Concord was light until regi-
ments began to come home from the war.
In July and August, 1864, the disbursements
were only 168,369.16, but in the correspond-
ing months of 1865 they were thirteen times
greater. From June, 1864, until January,
1865, many men of the Second, Third,
Fourtli, Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth regi-
ments, whose terms of service had expired,
came home, and were discharged and paid
here ; also the Fourth Vermont at Brattle-
boro'.
There is . probably no other house in Con-
cord that has liad so much greenback cur-
rency in it at any one time as has No. 167
North Main street, which was my home at
that period. Express charges on great sums
of money were large, and not provided for
in the scheme of the War Department relat-
ing to paymasters, though necessary car
280 Sixty Year 9 in Concord.
fares were. So it seemed to be necessary to
go occasionally to New York or Boston to
exchange large treasury drafts for currency.
The Boston sub-treasury did not cash drafts
on its sister institution in New York, and it
happened several times that I came home
late with a sole-leather trunk full of money
(perhaps -1150,000), which was kept in the
house until it could be counted and arranged
for disbursement. There seemed to be no
better way than this, although it was the
cause of some anxiety. I had a dog, sure
to hear and announce the approach of any
unwelcome stranger, and a heavily-loaded
double gun stood in a handy place.
As I was once leaving New York on one
of these trips. Col. T. J. Leslie, the chief
paymaster of the district, desired me to carry
one hundred thousand dollars to Paymaster
J. A. Brodhead in Boston, beside the fifty
thousand dollars which I was carrying to
Concord, — all in one hundred and fifty green-
backs of one thousand dollars each, which
could be carried in a trousers' pocket. Going
on board a Fall River liner, the clerk said
every room in the boat was engaged. The
captain was near by, and I told him of the
fix I was in, getting in reply merely the
remark that no one had any business to be
Per%onal Recollections. 281
carrying so much money. There was one
more resource. The colored stewardess was
told that if she could get a stateroom for a
very tired man she would be the gainer of
five dollars, and, in no longer time than it
took for her to go to the clerk's office and
retui'n, the key to a very satisfactory room
was in my hand.
The sole-leather trunk before mentioned
was the object of some attention in the rail-
road station in Boston, as I learned yeai'S
afterward when a baggage-man checked it
to Concord, with the remark, " This is the
thing that used to have so much money in it."
When on that memorable day in April,
1865, the shattered army of General Lee
found a line of bayonets across its path of
retreat, and laid down its arms, the news
set Concord wild with rejoicing. Dignified
citizens caught up shot-guns and spent a day
making a racket on Main street. There was
also a demonstrative procession and some
boisterous hilarity.
In June, July, and August, peace being
restored, all the veterans came home ; and I
paid the Second, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh,
Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Tw^elfth, Thir-
teenth, and Fourteenth regiments, as well as
282 Sixty Years in Concord.
the New Hampshire Cavalry and Heavy
Artillery. Paymaster C. O. Benedict was
in Concord from about Aug. 1 to Sept. 10,
1865, and paid such of the mustered-out
New Hampshire regiments as are not above
mentioned. His payments amounted to about
$210,000, and that money primaril}'^ went
through my hands. It was a pretty hard,
patient strain for days and nights together.
The soldiers were anxious to get home, and
it was desirable financially that they be dis-
banded to ease the burdens of war. My own
disbursements for four months ending with
August were 11,556,742.38. This was more
than it cost to complete the Concord Rail-
road — a large amount of money to set afloat
in a town like ours, and some of it was
wasted as money is in garrison towns.
When this had been done and the last
man in uniform had gone down the street, it
seemed that peace had indeed come. The
last angry shot had been fired by Grant's
victorious legions months before in the val-
ley of the Appomattox. The Great Presi-
dent was dead. There was no beat of drum
along our highways ; — the tattered standards
of the regiments had been folded away at the
State-house, and recruiting offices closed.
Even our Governor's Horse Guards (who
Personal Recollections. 283
made tlieir first brilliant annual parade in
June, 1860, wore a superb uniform copied
from that of a corps of Austrian Hussars,
gave occasional merry dancing parties and
served famous dinners without grog, offered
their services in the field in 1861, and were
rejected because General Scott said there
would be little use for cavalry) disbanded in
December, 1865, having never had any sup-
port from the state.
By an order from Washington I was mus-
tered out January 15, 1866, and the brevet
of lieutenant-colonel came to me, for what
the War Department was so kind as to say
had been " faithful services."
XIV.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-four was the
year of a controversy about the state-house,
which edifice, and the dignities of the capi-
tal, the people of Manchester sought to cap-
ture. The strife was ended by the laying
out of Capitol street and the rebuilding of
the state-house at the expense of Concord,
the outlay being near $175,000. The im-
provements to the State-house cost $158,000.
The new street was almost a necessity, but
there was no justice in imposing the cost of
a state capitol on a community with whom
it was located by a former generation. The
loan which Concord negotiated in 1865 to
defray these costs has been a burdensome
portion of its debt, and has hindered its
growth and prosperity. It is interesting to
trace the history of this debt through the
annual reports of the city. The credit of the
city was so good in 1865 that its bonds sold
for a better price than those of the United
States. On the original issue of state-house
bonds the interest was payable in gold, and
gold remained for several years at a pre-
Personal Recollections. 285
mium. In 1875 a- fraction of the debt was
paid, and the remainder replaced with cur-
rency bonds arranged to mature in install-
ments at various dates. It is diflScult to
follow the annual interest charges with
accuracy, but it is sufficiently exact to say
that the portion of the principal of the debt
which remains unpaid, twenty-seven years
after it was contracted, is fifty-seven thou-
sand dollars, and when the last bond matures
and is paid in 1896, the city will have taxed
itself, to defray principal and interest, with-
out reckoning the cost of Capitol street, the
sum of three hundred and forty-seven thou-
sand four hundred dollars. This has been
a burden to our moderate population and
resources, and will be felt after it is re-
moved.
It ought to be remembered that Concord
people, either privately or corporately, have
given to the state the site of the state-
house and granite for the building, the site
of the old prison, the broad original lands of
the Asylum for the Insane and a contribu-
tion toward the original building, beside at
least one half the site of the state library
building. Some curious statistician may
estimate the present value of these gifts.
One of the arguments used against Con-
286 Sixty Years in Concord.
cord by its rivals in the state-house contro-
vei'sy was the riotous destruction of the
Democratic Standard in 1861 ; but Col. John
H. George, of counsel for the city, retorted
with some reminiscences of an anti-Catholic
mob down the river, which threw that spe-
cious plea out of court.
Returning to duty in the Statesman office,
there were not many occurrences of sufficient
interest to be recorded. Personal accounts
for three years were easily adjusted with my
partner. My army salary had been equal to
their respective drafts on the newspaper
treasury. The gains of business, and the
profit on a considerable investment in gov-
ernment bonds, made when '' seven thirties "
were below par, provided us witli larger
resources. It was concluded to erect a build-
ing for the printing business, and the lot at
tlie southeast corner of Main and Hutchins
streets was purchased. This was before the
name of Depot street was by some uninspired
hand affixed to the last mentioned thorough-
fare. The lot selected was a second choice.
In the general view it was too far down
town, and the locality was not sustaining a
very elevated character. During the war it
liad been occupied by a cluster of shanties
Personal Recollections. 287
known as the " Ethan *Allen," "White Pig-
eon," and "Ship Stores" saloons. One of
these shanties, or another near by, had a
painted striped pig for its sign board. Some
rather distinguished loafers and gamblers
frequented those places. But the situation
proved to be what was wanted. Plans for a
Statesman building were prepared by Mr.
Edward Dow, said by one of his townsmen
to be " the greatest artichoke in New Hamp-
shire," and the building, begun in September,
1866, was completed and occupied just
before June, 1867. It made a satisfactory
home for the newspaper for nearly a quarter
of a century.
Shortly after Abraham Lincoln became
President, in 1861, George G. Fogg of the
Independent Democrat was appointed Minis-
ter to Switzerland, and resided abroad until
1865 ; but on the accession of Andrew John-
son to the Presidency, Secretary Seward
caused George Harrington to be sent to
Switzerland, and Mr. Fogg came home in no
very amiable mood. William E. Chandler,
who had been solicitor to the Navy Depart-
ment, had taken Mr. Harrington's old place
as assistant secretary of the treasury. With
the intent to make Mr. Fogg a little happier,
Mr. Chandler gave him a commission to
288 Sixty Years in Concord.
adjudicate the title io a large quantity of
cotton held in seizure at New Orleans by
the United States government. Thither Mr.
Fogg repaired, and released nine thousand
six hundred and sixty-five bales of cotton,
valued at about two million dollars, and
retained for the government twelve bales to
which nobody made claim. By this perform-
ance, for which he received a fee of $6,000
for two months' time, and by the savings
from his ministerial salary of $7,500 in gold
per annum, Mr. Fogg acquired a comfortable
property. But the loss of the Swiss mission
had embittered liim ; and because Mr. Chand-
ler had succeeded Mr. Harrington who had
succeeded Mr. Fogg, war was declared in
the Independent Democrat ^ not only against
Mr. Chandler, but against Edward H. Rol-
lins and N. G. Ordway, then Mr. Chandler's
personal and political friends, all three being
influential members of the Republican party
of New Hampshire.
Mr. Rollins, retiring from congress in
18(57, had in May, 1869, become the secre-
tary of the Union Pacific Railroad. Col.
Ordway was sergeant-at-arms of the United
States house of representatives, to which
oflBce he was elected in 1863, and reelected
until 1875.
Personal Recollections. 289
To a man in control of a newspaper, there
often conies a temptation to use his pen in
personal attacks on people with whom he
happens to differ. Any person who will
look at the files of the Independent Democrat
or the Concord Daily Monitor (with which
the former paper was united in January,
1867) from 1866 to 1870, will find no diffi-
culty in concluding that during that period
the editor of those newspapers took no
delight in the life and public services of
either Mr. Chandler, Mr. Rollins, or Mr.
Ordway.
Tn the latter part of 1868 my father's
health failed, and he decided to relieve him-
self of newspaper care ; so it was arranged
for Mr. Rossiter Johnson to become the edi-
tor of the Statesman on January 1, 1869.
On that date the paper was enlarged, and a
larger, faster printing-press added to our
equipment. Our edition was carried to a
figure considerably higher than its average
had been, while the care and expenses of the
business were proportionately increased.
The Statesman then entered upon an "offen-
sive-defensive " campaign in behalf of Mr.
Chandler and his friends, and doubtless
startled some of its supporters by its aggres-
siveness. Its new editor was not by nature
19
290 Sixty Years in Concord,
an aggressive man — quite the contrary; still
Rev. Dr. Bouton, of Concord, and Mr. Lewis
W. Brewster, of Portsmouth, made formal
protest against the pugnacious style of our
paper — a style which was really Mr. Chand-
ler's. Dr. Bouton's letter was written on
the sermon paper with which he was himself
accustomed to wage battle with the enemy of
all righteousness.
This was also a day of political tracts, cop-
ies of which may still be found. Mr. Chand-
ler wrote some, and Col. Ordway developed
unsuspected vigor as a pamphleteer, quoting
English poetry of the time of Spenser, and
making use of his knowledge of practical
politics in New Hampshire and his adver-
sary's hasty flight from some public station
in Kansas in the stormy period of 1856. The
end of all this was what the Statesman sought
— a period of peace within the party.
In the winter of 1869-70 I visited Wash-
ington with an intent to make final settle-
ment of my military accounts, and as such
affairs with the government consume consid-
erable time, the sergeant-at-arms was so kind
as to employ me ad interim as a cashier.
Col. Ordway had originated a banking de-
partment in his office at the capitol, which
Personal Recollections, 291
collected at the treasury the monthly dues of
congressmen and placed such to their credit,
subject to withdrawal at their will, and at-
tended to any other financial business which
might be entrusted to it. This convenient
cash department had more customers than
many a country bank. The accounts of
some congressmen were often overdrawn,
while others had always satisfactory bal-
ances to their credit. The books were care-
fully written and a balance-sheet drawn daily,
for some impecunious orator might come in
for money when there was none to his credit,
and that fact being made known to him, a
call for a statement of account would follow ;
but I never knew the office to be in error.
Moses Dillon, of Wilmington, Del., who had
lived in Louisiana and was familiar with
Southern ways, was Col. Ordway's book-
keeper. He was usually very civil to all
congressmen, but there was a quantity of
*' befo'-the-wah " chivalry bottled up in the
little man, and he would have taken the field
if his fidelity had been questioned.
It was out of this office of the sergeant-at-
arms, and out of the position which I held in
it, that twenty years later Edward Silcott
bolted to Canada with thirtv thousand dol-
lars of money l)elonging to congressmen.
292 Sixty Years in Concord,
which I think the losers held that the United
States treasury must make good to them.
Charles H. Christian, then a faithful colored
attach^ of the office, is still there.
Among the customers of the office in ray
time was Congressman Stevenson Archer, of
Maryland, who in 1890 was committed to the
penitentiary of that state for embezzling
$132,000 from its treasury, of whose con-
tents he had become the custodian.
The most cautious men who did business
with us were Benjamin F. Butler, of Massa-
chusetts, and Clarkson N. Potter, of New
York, both of whom invariably affixed their
names to pay orders far above the line which
the treasury department provided for signa-
tures, close to the text of the order, as a pre-
caution that nothing should be prefixed to
what they had signed.
Oakes Ames, from Massachusetts (then re-
garded as a millionaire), seldom left anything
to his credit worth carrying on our ledger ;
but being deemed a master of finance, he had
a class of congressional pupils in that popu-
lar school, to some of whom grief came a few
years later.
The apartment of the sergeant-at-arnis,
with its hearth strewn with blazing hickory
logs, was an attractive loitering-place to
Personal Recollections, 298
many a congressman. The tall figure of
Luke P. Poland, of Vermont, clad in a
Websterian suit of blue with gilt buttons
and a buff vest, was frequently seen.
Thomas Fitch of Nevada, — who afterward
said, on the lecture platform in Tremont
Temple, he had found that although he
spoke with the tongues of men and of an-
gels, and had not Boston, it profited him
nothing, — James A. Garfield and Samuel
Shellabarger, of Ohio, Samuel S. Cox, for-
merly of the Zanesville, Ohio, district, then
of New York, Samuel J. Randall of Penn-
sylvania, John A. Bingham of Ohio, Hemy
L. Dawes, of Massachusetts, Ebon C. Inger-
soll, of Illinois, and many othei-s, could be
expected to make at least one daily call.
Those whom I have mentioned were oratore,
and there were interesting dialogues when
they met around the glowing fire.
My connection with the sergeant-at-arms
office gave me access to the floor of represen-
tatives hall. The best speaking which I hap-
pened to hear was a brilliant speech by John
A. Bingham, repelling a charge of personal
uncharitableness made against him by the
" Tall Sycamore of the Wabash," D. W. Voor-
hees, of Indiana, because Judge Bingham did
not favor the creation of a United States mis-
294 Sixty Years in Concord,
sion to Rome (not Italy). John Morrissey, the
ex-pugilist, whose hair was carefully curled,
and who wore in sutiinier a suit of white
linen, was almost never in his seat, and ap-
peared to derive no enjoyment from his mem-
bership. Fernando Wood, tall and dignified,
dressed like a Presbyterian clergyman, was,
on the contrary, constant in his attendance.
Samuel J. Randall, once a Whig, longer a
Democrat, was a restless person, often hurry-
ing hither and thither in the aisles, serving
apparently as a party whip.
The speaker's apartment was next to that
of the sergeant-at-arms, and Speaker Blaine
was an example of promptness. Exactly five
minutes before a session should begin he was
at his room, and crossing the corridor pre-
cisely as the clock marked the hour, he stood
in his place, the gavel fell, and the silver
mace was elevated to its marble pedestal at
his right. There this emblem of authority
was placed during session hours, but when
the house went into committee of the whole, .
it was removed to a lower perch. This use
of the mace came to us with English parlia-
mentary traditions. Every scliool-boy remem-
bers in his English history, Oliver Crom-
well's order in 1653 to " Take away that bau-
ble ! " Our speaker's bauble was an artistic
Personal Recollections, 295
thing, a truncheon of small rods bound to-
gether with clasps, surmounted by a globe
on which the hemispheres were engraven,
and over all stood an eagle with outstretched
wings, the metal being solid silver. This
mace has been the topic of a readable maga-
zine article.
The capitol itself is most interesting. Dur-
ing the war I had seen its dome lifted to
completion, as if disunion were an impossi-
ble thing, and watched Crawford's figure of
America as it went slowly into place to
crown the whole. Then it had been a satis-
faction to view the halls, staircases, bronzes,
marbles, paintings, and carvings. Now I had
opportunity to explore the great building
intimately. Access was had to the library,
whose custodian, Mr. A. R. Spofford, was
a New Hampshire man by birth, also to the
marble baths, and any of the committee
rooms, among the latter that of the house
committee on military affairs, decorated with
a series of scenes in Indian life painted by
Col. Seth Eastman, U. S. A., formerly a Con-
cord man.
There was in the basement of the capitol
a place which newspapers named ^' the Bas-
tile," — not exactly a dungeon, but a strong
room, where recalcitrant witnesses had some-
296 Sixty Tears in Concord,
times been confined. It had grated windows,
no direct sunlight, and would not be re-
garded as a pleasant habitation. This apart-
ment was controlled by the sergeant-at-arms,
and there Mr. John W. LeBarnes, an assist-
ant of Col. Ord way's, and myself, arranged
some involved accounts (wanted in a hurry)
relating to mileage, costs, and witness fees
of a certain congressional committee of in-
vestigation at New Orleans. LeBarnes was
familiar with the place for he liad volunta-
rily lodged there. We toiled all the after-
noon and three quarters of the night, and
when I trudged sleepil}^ to my lodgings at
the corner of West Tenth and North E
streets, I was unable to get in, and took
refuge from a storm in the doorway of Ford's
theatre (within which Abraham Lincoln was
assassinated on Good Friday, 1865), and
there in gloomy seclusion waited wearily for
the morning.
During this sojourn in Washington, which
lasted away down into summer, I came to
know many people about the capitol, — news-
paper correspondents and clerks of commit-
tees, men of as much information and ability
as the average congressman. Among such
were E. V. Smalley of the New York Tribune^
Sidney Andrews of the Boston Advertiser^
Personal Recollections. 297
U. H. Painter of the Philadelphia Inquir-
er^ George A. Bassett, clerk of the house
committee on ways and means, and Robert
J. Stevens, clerk of the committee oh appro-
priations. George Bassett was, I think, a
brother of Isaac Bassett, the tall doorkeeper
of the senate, who has been seen in that place
almost from time immemorial, and I am sure
he was of Wesley W. Bassett, who was in
1883-'4 a paymaster in the navy. They
seemed to belong to a family with a talent
for holding office.
In Washington, in the winter of 1863-'4,
I had dwelt on First street East, a site now
within the capitol grounds, at a house man-
aged by a woman with two daughters.
Among tlie guests were the Paymaster Bas-
sett above referred to, and his wife, a lively
secessionist from Maryland ; Hon. Edward
McPherson, clerk of the house of representa-
tives ; Capt. Homer C. Blake, of the navy,
who commanded the little gunboat "Hat-
teras " when she was sunk by the " Ala-
bama " in the Gulf of Mexico, and his fam-
ily; Frederick A. Aiken, a lawyer who
afterward appeared in the defence of Mrs.
Surratt, when that woman was tried for
complicity in the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln, and his wife ; two or three young
298 Sixty Year% in Concord.
army officera, and one or two not very distin-
guislied congressmen. This was a pleasant
household, and although it was observed that
the landlady seldom went out, and them
were some peculiar incidents in the domestic
circle, these circumstances caused no especial
comment. When I gained the acquaintance
of George Bassett in 1870, and told him of
my friendship with his brother in 1864, he
inquired if I knew who the landlady of the
house on First street reallv was. He said she
was the Mrs. Cunningham in whose house, on
Bond street. New York, Dr. Harvey Burdell
was murdered in 1856, she being implicated
as a principal or accessory to that crime ;
that she and her daughters had gone to San
Francisco after the war, and were identified
there as the Mrs. and Misses Cunningham.
This is, I suppose, a somewhat doubtful
story, but as proof I was shown some pho-
tographs which were rather convincing.
Nothing but time and patience was re-
quired to close my army accounts. The to-
tal sum which had been entrusted to me was
14,720,922.44, about equal to the total gold
product of California in 1848. A few vouch-
ers which were deficient in technicalities
were perfected by filing the retained dupli-
Personal Recollections. ii99
cates in which there were no defects. One
voucher was withdrawn to be filed in an-
other bureau, and as a result of the whole
settlement a small sum of money, $223.77,
came to me. This was deemed a fortunate
ending to a service which some of the older
paymasters said, in 1862, would, by reason of
errors and technicalities, involve the whole
corps in pecuniary ruin.
The paymaster-general, in a report dated
Oct. 31, 1865, speaking of the services which
his staff rendered in the later months of the
war, used the following words :
P>om the early days of June to the present
time, tliis department has made final payment
to more than eight hundred thousand officers
and men. This is an important exhibit of
work, performed chiefly within the months of
June, July, and August — two hundred and
seventy millions of money paid to eight hun-
dred thousand men. When the manner of
these payments is observed, with a knowl-
edge ofltjie particularity required in each
case, each to be computed in its several items
of pay, clothing, bounty, etc., such stoppages
as may be chargeable deducted, the final
amount stated, and the signature of each
officer and man appended in duplicate to
the receipt rolls, some idea may be formed of
the stupendous labor involved. This work,
in its immensity as to men and money, and
300 Sixty Years in Concord*
the small limit of time in which it has been
performed, lias, it is believed, no parallel in
the history of armies. For this result the
country is indebted to the zeal, intelligence,
and sleepless industry of a corps of experi-
enced paymasters, who signalized themselves
in this closing act of their military staff ser-
vice by the faithfulness and devotion to duty
which reflect the highest honor upon them.
During the War of the Rebellion the cost
of our pay department, including losses by
capture and by accident, defalcations ($541,-
000), salaries and expenses of paymasters
and clerks, was less than three fourths of
one per cent, of the total disbursements.
In the War of 1812 the expenses and defal-
cations were over Seven per cent.,— so I
have somewhere read. The "good old days"
appear to have been not so good as our own.
XV.
My relations with the Statesman news-
paper were changed in 1871. Hon. Edward
H. Rollins had become treasurer as well as
secretary of the Union Pacific Railroad, and
offered m€ the place of cashier in that com-
pany's Boston office. My connection with
that corporation began on May 9, 1871, and
ended almost seventeen years later, when
health failed and I became incapable of fur-
ther service.
There had been great scandals connected
with the construction of that railroad, which
were supposed to have been forever buried
before I went into its employment, but they
came unexpectedly, time after time, to the
surface, in congress, in law courts, and else-
wherct — like lumps of ice in a surging
stream. To recite the facts concerning those
scandals (Credit Mobilier, Ames contract,
alleged briberies, Pennsylvania tax suit, two
million dollar note, etc.) might enliven these
pages, and show with what a lavish hand the
money and securities of the company were
dealt out in the early days of the old regime,
fS02 Sixty Years in Concord,
but such recital can be deferred. Nowhere
in this narrative have I undertaken to tell
everything that I know. Curious readers
may find most of the details of the inglo-
rious story told in the reports of the Wilson
and the Poland Investigating committees of
Congress, printed in 1873. It may be need-
less for me to say that Mr. Rollins was not a
Credit Mobilier man, but it is a pleasure to
say so.
When I took up service with the Union
Pacific company, two years after it had been
driven out of New York City, because of a
raid of pettifoggers and sheriffs made at the
instance of James Fisk, Jr., it had two small
rooms on the fourth floor in Sears building
in Boston for the office of its treasurer, and
two others a little way off on the same floor,
set apart for Mr. John Duff, the vice-presi-
dent. One of the first disturbing facts which
came to my notice was, that my predecessor
as cashier sued to recover a moderate allow-
ance for overwork and special services, and
it was curious to see the resident directors
going solemnly into court with piles of com-
pany books and papers to resist the claim.
The verdict was against them for $2,267.
The credit of the company was not then
. Personal Mecollections. 303
very high. It had been impaired by loose
management, by an incorrect ruling of Secre-
tary Boutvvell of the United States treasury
as to certain bond interests, and by sympathy
with the monetary suspension of Oakes
Ames and Oliver Ames & Sons, who had
been and still were interested in its construc-
tion and management. It had been com-
pelled to seek alliances, and was friendly
with the Pennsylvania Central Railroad
people. Thomas A. Scott was president,
and came occasionally to Boston to preside
at quarterly meetings. He was a handsome
man and kept a bottle of cologne or Florida
water on the directors' table within his reacli.
John Duff, as I have said, was the vice-presi-
dent. Unlearned in books he had a Scots-
man's shrewdness, and owned fine pictures
in which he took delight. His was a grand,
impressive face, well set off by thick white
hair. He had built railroads in the West,
but did not like to do anything on paper.
Most of the time he was in New York, where
he had a desk in a Nassau street banking
house, and no irksome responsibilities came
to him.
The floating debt of the company was
troublesome then, as it almost always was,
for it cost seven per cent., and a commission
304 Sixty Years in Ooticord.
or discount equal to another seven per cent-
per annum, to carry it, even with bonds of
the corporation pledged as collateral. Jay
Gould, when he came into the directory^
obtained for the company better rates than
these.
Under such circumstances there were trials
in the path of the treasurer, but there was
hope of brighter days. The net earnings of
the company had not been sufficient to paj'-
its interest charges. The four or five clerks
who in 1871 attended to affairs in Boston
often doubted whether their salaries were
safe for any considerable time. The mone-
tary condition is well shown by the fact that
the last of the land grant bonds, dated in
1869, had been sold and were in process of
delivery to some New York bankers at sev-
enty per cent, of their par value, or $700 for
a $1,000 bond. After paying interest on
these seven per cent, bonds with the utmost
regularity for years, they weie most of them
redeemed before maturity, some of them at
the rate of $1,120 for a bond sold at $700.
Another syndicate of bankers bought at
eighty per cent, of their par value $2,500,000
of Omaha Bridge bonds, which bore eight
per cent, interest, and had twenty-five years
to run.
J
Personal Recollections, 305
The Pennsylvania Central alliance lasted
only a year, and ended on March 6, 1872,
when some New York Central people took
up the road, and Horace F. Clark, a son-in-
law of the first Cornelius Vanderbilt, became
the president. Mr. Clark had been a mem-
ber of congress, was a lawyer, and an invet-
erate talker. At the first meeting of the
directors after he came into the company he
gave his tongue no rest. Ezra H. Baker, a
veteran Cape Cod sailor, who sat at that
meeting, remarked when the monologue was
over, '' What a president we have got! " Mr.
Clark took more personal interest in the com-
pany than did his predecessor. He upset
some of the black-mailers who had their head-
quarters in Washington. He had a hatred
of free passes tliat amounted to a monomania,
and applicants for favors of that description
met a hot reception. Mr. T. E. Sickels, then
our general superintendent, was an amused
witness of the retreat of a clergyman, amid a
storm of adjectives, biblical and otherwise,
from the bed-chamber of the president, to
which refuge the preacher had made his way
to ask for free transportion. Mr. Clark had
then fallen into a chronic nervousness, which
lasted until his death in 1873. Under his
management affairs had begun to improve.
20
306 Sixty Years in Concord,
In March, 1874, Mr. Jay Gould, having
invested heavily in the company, went into
the direction with two or three of his New
York friends. Mr. Sidney Dillon became
president, and Mr. Gould strove to bring the
company into the good opinion of investors.
Just before he became a director, a Union
Pacific share was worth in Wall street about
thirty-two dollai-s, and when years afterward
he sold out it was worth about one hundred
and ten dollars. Thus one hundred and fifty
thousand shares, his holding, would show a
profit of $11,700,000.
There was a long period during which the
treasurer had a daily letter from Jay Gould.
Mr. Gould had no amanuensis. He wrote
rapidly on liglit blue paper with dark blue
ink, and liis missives came to be known as
" blue jays." He kept no copies of those let-
ters.
In 1876, rates of fare and freiglit being
undisturbed by competition, the company's
earnings- enabled it to make dividends, and it
paid the following : In 1875, three and a half
per cent. ; in 1876, eight; in 1877, eiglit; in
1878, five and a half; in 1879, six; in 1880,
six ; in 1881, six and three quarters ; in 1882,
seven ; in 1888, seven ; in 1884, three and a
half, — making, in all, sixtj^-one and a quarter
Personal Recollections. 307
per cent. Events have proved that it would
have been wiser to have applied those divi-
dends toward extinction of the government
loan.
It was about 1875 that the company's Bos-
ton office was moved from the Sears building
to the Equitable, then just constructed.
Mr. Dillon retired from the presidency in
1884, and returned to it again in 18130, Mr.
Charles Francis Adams serving between
those dates. Mr. Dillon was naturally impa-
tient of restraint, and not over fond of '' lit-
erary fellers." When Isaac H. Bromley, of
Hartford, Conn., a very bright newspaper
man, was appointed a government director
under the Hayes administration, he called on
Mr. Dillon officially, and was told that gov-
ernment directors were " nothing but a myth
anyway." Mr. Bromley at once made some
inquiries of the secretary to ascertain just
when he and his associates were " relegated
to the domain of mythology," and Mr. Dillon
shortly afterward revised his opinion of their
materiality. Under President Adams Mr.
Bromley became an assistant to the president.
In 1877, Hon. E. H. Rollins, having been
chosen a United States senator from New
Hampshire, vacated his position with the
company. There were many applications for
308 Sixty Years in Concord,
tlie place (none from myself), but I was
elected secretary and treasurer in March of
the last named year. It would be useless to
relate the history of the office from that date
until my retirement in 1888, eleven years
later. The work was often difficult, always
confining. I never saw the road itself until
1887. Sometimes the company was in favor
in the stock market, at other times in dis-
favor. Some of the chief directors died, and
others came "in by hereditary succession.
Branch lines were constructed, more and
more bonds issued, floating debts cleared
off at one time were renewed at another, and
there was a gradual increase of responsibility,
I received from my predecessor securities of
various kinds, the face value of which was
perhaps five million dollars, and left to my
successor in like property more than eiglity-
seven millions. The mileage of the system
increased from about one thousand miles to
nearly five thousand. During a long period
the system had the management of Mr.
Sidney Dillon, who wanted men of railroad
experience around him ; at another it had
Mr. Charles Francis Adams, who preferred
Harvard graduates. Mr. Adams devoted
himself unreservedly and unselfishly to the
welfare and betterment of the corporation.
Personal Recollections. 309
He was always considerate toward his sub-
ordinates and never rufHed in temper. He
wrote better English than some of his prede-
cessors in the Union Pacific presidential
chair, as he might well do, being himself the
descendant of two presidents of the United
States and the son of a distinguished minister
to England.
The senior Charles Francis Adams once
wrote a couple of lines which ought to be
placed alongside of those of John A. Dix,
hereinbefore mentioned. On Sept. 5, 1863,
after a long setting forth of injuries done and
likely to be done to the American people by
confederate cruisers built and being built by
Englishmen, he said in a letter to Earl Rus-
sell, her Majesty's Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, " It would be superfluous for me to
point out to your Lordship that this is war."
After those words were written no more
rebel ships sailed out of English harbors.
After reading "Three Episodes of Massa-
chusetts History," I ventured to remark to
the younger Charles Francis Adams that it
seemed a pity that a man who could write
Buch interesting books had given so much
time to the management of railroads.
In 1879 the Kansas Pacific, with six hun-
dred and forty-three miles and the Denver
310 Sixty Years in Concord,
Pacific, with one hundred and six miles,
were brought into the Union Pacific system^
One hundred thousand shares in the first
named company, and forty thousand shares
in the second, had been selling at low prices,
perhaps $30 a share in the market, but by
this consolidation were made equal to the
shares of the Union Pacific company then
selling above their par value on the stock ex-
change. Any person with a pencil can fig-
ure out the profits to the holders of those
shares. Wliatever the stock ledgers of that
time may show, I think none of the then
directors of the Union Pacific company was
caught among the ^' shorts."
My connection with the Union Pacific was
fortunate for myself in not much beside hon-
orable experience. Beginning as cashier in
1871, and taking up the duties of secretary
and treasurer in 1877, other cares came to
me, — a vice-presidency in 1885, and a rather
responsible trusteeship in the same year.
These and lighter positions in forty subordi-
nate or branch companies came gradually in
my way, until, in April, 1888, I was taken
from them all, upset by an injury which, if
previous circumstances had been more kind,
might have done me no lasting harm.
Personal Recollections. Sll
Between tlie years 1877 and 1888, the com-
pany, by devolving on me duties which had
been performed by others, affected a direct
saving in saLiries of one hundred and twelve
thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, — a
sum which a receiver or member of a reorgan-
izing committee would regard as moderate
compensation and consolation for a year or
two of personal service.
The receipts and disbursements during my
seventeen years with the Union Pacific treas-
ury amounted to $247,815,531.49 ; there were
also issues of bonds, and a handliner and re-
handling of such securities as collateral for
loans and otherwise, to a vast amount, all
without error. It is probable that I should
have been held accountablefor any accidental
or other loss in the office, but there was none.
My salary afforded me a surplus over ex-
penses in seventeen years of rather more
than seventeen tliousand dollars, about half
as much as one of our hereditary directors
squeezed out of the company as boot in an
exchange of two varieties of Kansas Pacific
bonds one day in September, 1880, — a fulfil-
ment of an unwary agreement (which the
treasurer did not make) but, fortunately,
after 1873, my income from investments
exceeded my earnings.
312 Sixty Years in Concord.
Not many men whom the world calls in
any degree famous had occasion to visit the
Union Pacific office in Boston. I remember
seeing as callers in the ordinary business way -1
James G. Blaine, William D. Howells, Sir
John Rose, Samuel F. Smith, author of " My
country, 'tis of thee," George F. Hoar,
Henry Wilson, and Henry Cabot Lodge ;
Henry Ward Beecher once just looked in-
side the door. William M. Evarts came in
on one occasion with Sidney Bartlett, the
last named being the company's counsel and
the most interesting gentleman whom I knew
in Boston, — in the practice of law up to near |
the age of ninety years. Gen. E. T. Alexan- j
der, who was chief of artillery in Lee's army
at Gettysburg, was for a time one of our goy-
ernment directors. He told me that if the
rebels had been pursued vigorously just after
that battle their army could haye been de-
stroyed. James F. Wilson, of Iowa, and
Marcus A. Hanna, of Ohio, were at different
times among the government directors.
Levi P. Morton was some time a company
director; so were Andrew Carnegie, of
Pennsylvania, and Cornelius S. Bushnell, of
New Haven, Conn. Bushnell was a big,
bold personage, breezy in his manners — no
man more so. He was the builder of the
\
Personal lieeollections, 313
original " Monitor," and when that strange
vessel fought the "Merrimack" in Hampton
Roads, she was actually the property of Mr.
Bushnell and John A. Griswold, of Troy,
N. Y., for she had not then been accepted by
the government. Months before that event
it was Mr. Bushnell's bold advocacy of Eric-
sson's plans that prevailed with President
Lincoln, and afterward with the navy de-
partment, so that the construction of the
" cheese-box on a raft " was undertaken.
Among other widely-known men of finance
not hereinbefore mentioned who in later times
(1875-1887) held directorship in the com-
pany were Russell Sage, James R. Keene,
David Dows, Augustus Schell, George M.
Pullman, George G. Haven, Colgate Hoyt,
and James H. Banker. Joseph Richardson,
the builder of the '' Spite House" in New York,
was another. He was so careless in his dress
and appearance that once when he came, at an
unusually early hour, to attend a directoi's'
meeting at the Boston office, the young man
in charge of the premises, mistaking him for
an idle loafer, ordered him to clear out, at
which Richardson was greatly amused, and
he was afterward fond of telling about the
circumstance.
There are people who think that all the
314 Sixty Tears in Concord.
officers of a great corporation may, by the
help of superior information, invariably make
a great deal of money buying and selling its
securities in the stock market. Without un-
dertaking to speak for anybody else, I am
quite sure that no other set of people suf-
fered so much by the decline in value of
Union Pacific shares, which began about
1884, as did the Union Pacific directors
themselves. Samuel J. Tilden, too, although
not a director, was then a large shareholder,
and was represented in the board by Andrew
J. Green, who had been controller of the
city of New York, and was skilled in finan-
cial affairs. Mr. Tilden was himself ac-
counted a pretty shrewd man, but I do not
see how he can have lost less than half a
million dollars, for he had ten thousand
shares, which cost him a round million.
One day there came to our office a young
lady seeking a situation as a shorthand writer^
She was accompanied by her father. Both
were dressed like people of a by-gone period »
and looked exactly as if they had just stepped
out of a gallery of portraits by Gainsborough
and Romney. She was allowed to make
trial of her skill in taking down some sen-
tences of speech, and scored a failure. Be-
Personal Recollections, 315
ing told as gently as possible that our work
was probably too difficult for her until she
should have had further instruction and
practice, her father arose, and in the grand
manner put his daugliter's arm under his
own, said sometliing about his roof being
glad to give lier shelter, and they both re-
tired in a stately way, as if the whole affair
had been a scene in a comedy. It would
have been exceedingly funny, if I had been
sure it was not pathetic.
There was once in the Equitable building
a remarkable escape from death. For a time
a restaurant was kept on the loftiest floor,
where the windows commanded a fine view
of the harbor and in summer the air was
cool. A young lady and gentleman, with a
child, came there to dine. In the upper hall«
way the little one escaped their care for a
moment, and ran through the balusters of
the stair-rail, which were set wide apart^
This was on tlie eighth or ninth floor, and
there was a sheer drop in the stair-well to a
marble pavement about one hundred and
twenty feet below. A startling shriek went
through the building when the mother saw
what had happened. If the child's guardian
angel was off duty for an instant, she got
back in time. The little one went off the
816 Sixty Years in Concord.
floor with forward impetus sufficient to carry-
it across the stair-well when it had fallen
three flights, and then it struck so nicely
balanced on the sloping stair-rail that the in-
clination of the rail slid it in on to the stairs,
where a girl who was washing the steps
€aught it up, apparently not much hurt.
The richest men whom I have known were
not the most contented. One day an indi-
vidual, possessor of many millions of prop-
erty, so anxious for an increase that he after-
ward left Boston, where all his wealth had
been acquired, and went to a distant city,
where he could escape taxation on personal
estate, came to the Union Pacific office with
an eager face, called out one of the directors,
and besought to be put in the way of making
a little money. When he had gone, the gen-
tleman with whom he had been speaking said,
*' Of all the fools in the world, the biggest
are retired Boston merchants." He had him-
self been a Boston importer of East India
goods.
It is quite true that some people were con-
tinually fooling our resident directors. One
such scarcely ever came to Boston without
fleecing them. He induced them in 1876
to put a million dollars into a Jersey City
Pergonal Recollections, 317
oil refinery which the Standard Oil Company
raked in at one handful. Another very com-
mon fellow from the West worked several
schemes. He was in politics, mining, and
other transactions. In April, 1 877, represent-
ing that he was to cut a big figure in public
life, get elected governor of his state, buy a
newspaper, and be a great and good friend
to the Union Pacific Company, the directors
gave him a moderate fortune out of our treas-
ury, namely, $85,000 in the bonds of a certain
Western county ; but it all amounted to noth-
ing. This did not deter them from buying of
him later four hundred bonds and some stock
in a mining and tunnel company wluch were
of notmucli account. The worthless Nevada
Central Railway was also foisted on to tliem,
or rather on to the company, in some curious
way ; but when Alexander Graham Bell of-
fered them as individuals original stock in
his telephone patent, they witnessed his ex-
periments, and declared the invention to be a
very interesting thing, but without commer-
cial value.
Some accomplished liars visited our cash
room — brakemen detained in the East until
their money was gone; clerks who had
smoothed a mother's dying pillow and spent
318 Sixty Year% in Concord,
their last cent ; farmers returning from the
old country and landed accidentally in Bos-
ton instead of New York ; women who had
pursued eloping sisters to tlie edge of the
ocean — all wanted moneyed help back to the
Union Pacific country, and all proved to be
arrant rogues.
The State Street people transacted their
affairs with our office, and entrusted it with
their property, in a confident and most grat-
ifjdng way. It seems a curious happening,
but when I had left the office on the. evening
of April 4, 1888, little suspecting it to be for
the last time, on the way to the railroad, sta-
tion I was overtaken by a Devonshire Street
banker, who said, in casual conversation, " I
have had a great amount of business with
your office, and it has all been done right."
This was an agreeable incident to reflect
upon in the weary months of disability that
followed. I had lield tlie place longer than
any other occupant of it.
These Recollections do not connect tliem-
selves closely with Concord after the year
1871. The writing them has given me a
winter's occupation and amusement. They
may have little worth ; but if years hence a
Personal RecoUeetions. 319
copy shall remain on some neglected book-^
shelf, I hope it will have gained local value
and some flavor imparted by antiquity, like a
cask of vin ordinaire long forgotten in some
cool cellar.
Summing up now the sixty years : These
experiences with fiahermeu, printers, soldiers.
Union Pacific millionaires, and all sorts of
people, bid me say that the conclusion to
which I am brought is, that o£ all personal
possessions Christian character is the best;
Concord, July 10, 18yi.
INDEX.
Abbott, Joseph C 221
Joshua 43
Abbot, J. Stephens 84
A Baffled Fraud 219
A Boy's Library 81
Adams, Charles Francis 308, 309
A Day in the Army 261
A Hard Payment 272
Alexander,' fT. T 312
Ainsworth, Calvin 114
Allston, Washington 126
American Art Union 117
Ames, Oakes 303
Oliver . 303
Amusements in 1840 68
An Army Dinner 250
Anderson, John 41
A Night in an Ambulance 255
Annuities of a Frenchman 186
Anticosti 166
A Tough Hen 208
Auroral Display 209
Avery, Nancy 11
Badger, Benjamin E 55, 5U
Charles A 180
Stephen C 28
Barr, Frank 98
Barrett, Charles F l%, 139
Bartlett, Samuel C 181
Sidney 312
Barton, Cyrus 51
Bay of Islands 154
Beginning of the Rebellion 223
Berry, Nathaniel S 228,256
Bingham, John A 293
Birds in Labrador 164
Bishop, Anna 126
322 Index.
Bixby^PhinP . 222
Blaine» James G 294,312
Blowing^ a Church Organ 102
Boating and Rafting 72
Bombardment of Fort Sumter 227
Bonne Esperanoe Bay H7
Borough Riflemen 75
"Boston John" 204
Botts, John Minor 269
Bouton, Rev. Nathaniel 8, 33, 290
N. 8 181
Bradley, Richard 90
Brewster, Lewis W 290
Briggs,JohnC 172,211
Bromley, Isaac H 307
Buck, William D. . 22
Brown, Clara A 62
JohnF 109
Walter 56
Bull, Ole 126
Bull Run Battle 238
Burke, Edmund ' 239
Burlesque Tickets 93
Burnham, Rev. Abraham 54,63
C. G 62
Burleigh, Henry G 43
Bushnell, C. 8 312
Buying into the Statesman 187
Canadian Mails 136,143
Candidate for Shorthand Writing 314
Canterbury Shakers 97
Capture of a Black Eagle 209
Careful Printing 212
Carnegie, Andrew 312
Carter, Abiel 69
Edward P 44
Mrs. Ezra 49
JohnW.D ««
Nathaniel H .64,99
Catechism Class 51
Chadbourne, Andrew 76
Mrs. Thomas 49
William 42,61,82
Chadwick, Edmund S 98, 109
Index. 32^
Chandler, Geo. H 65
Timothy E. 180»
William B 56, 287
John 6^
John B. 21
CbauKes by Fire 39^
Chase, Samael 11&.
Chesbrough, E. S 38;
Chicago in 1867 181
Chichester Oin 33.
Chickering, Elliot 131
Chocorua Mountain 207
Church, Maria 21
Clark, Charles 24a
Horace P 30^
Peter 122, 12S
Clough, Elijah 98
George 39,66,134
Moses H 64
O.A 145.
Coasting 75
Coffin, Samuel 84, 90
Colby, George J. L. 9ft
Columbian Artillery . 75, 201
Columbian Hotel 200
Concord Boating Company 122
Concord Gazette 214
Concord in 1840 27
Concord Light Infantry 75
Concord Literary Institution 67, 12a
Concord Lyceum 126.
Concord Railroad 12i
Concord Railroad Construction 37
Concord Railroad Opening 39
Concordes State-house Expenditure .... 284
Contraband Negro 268
Crawford, Ethan 107
Crossman, Leonard 39
•* Copperhead '* Convention in Concord .... 268
Cummings, E. E. 33, 228
Dana, Napoleon J. T. 66
Davis, Phinea's 130^ 136
Robert 90
Wm.8 '.. !. 24a
1
-324 Index,
Day, Aaron . 58
Democratic Standard 239
Departure of First Regiment 232
De Trobriand, Regis 264, 261
Dillon, Sidney 306,307
jDistinguished Visiters to Concord 5, 211
M)ix, JohnA 226
Dole, William 84, 134
Douglas, Stephen A 212. 225
Mrs. S. A 212
Downing, Lewis 84
Dress in the Army 268
Drew, George W 169
Dudley, Peter 200
.Duff, John 302,313
Dumas, S.H 84
JDuties of an Army Paymaster 246
:£agle Coffee House 84
Early Foreigners 40
Early Schoolmates 44, 55
Eastman, Edson C. 55
Samuel C 169
lEagan, Thomas W 263,274
Ela, Jacob H 99
Eleventh Regiment 201
Elliott, Charles I. 145
JohnH 131
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 127
Epps, Charles L 181
Escape from Death 315
Fast Trains to Boston 137
Fifth Regiment 234
First New Hampshire Battery 270
Fish in Merrimack River 71
Fisk, James, Jr 302
Flagg, Daniel 67
Flanders, Cyrus W 228
Fogg, George G 215, 228, 287
Foster, Charles H 55
Ira 138
Stephens 22
William L. . 228
Fowler, Asa . 28, 81, 114, 224
Index, 325
Fourth of July Celebrations 52
Fourth of July Riots 3ft
Fractional Currency 220
Franklin Bookstore 10»
French, Theodore 71
Fuller, Elizabeth ea
Henry W 55^
Melville W 176,182
Qage, Nathaniel E 44
William L 44
Gallinger, Jacob H 221
Gault, George W 44, 45, 70, 77, £2. 120, 123
JohnC 131
William 15
•• General Stark " Engine 137
Gentlemen of the North End ...... 82
George, Sam 167
Gilmore, Andrew J. 98
Henry H 55
Joseph A • . . 71, 84, 143, 252
Gould, Charles F 180
Jay 304,306
Solon 196
Gove, Jesse A 114
Governor's Horse Guards 94, 282
Green, Benjamin 9a
Grecian Hall 81
Grant, Ulysses S 285
Ulysses S., his arrival in Washington 23ft
Hadley, Amos 214
Ham, Charles H 145, 176, 184
Harper^ a Magazine 117
Harriman, Walter 171
Hatch, William H 33
Haynes, Martin A 222
Timothy 97
Head, Natt 63
Herbert, Samuel 17, 27
Hill, Isaac 90, 112, 217
Holt, Abel B 84
Hoit, ♦• Old Veteran " William 36, 9&
Holmes, Oliver Wendell 127
Hopkins, Seth 39, 134, 137
William H 135. 142
V
'^'2ii Index.
Hoaseful of Money 279
Houston, Gen. Sam 89 ^
Hunt, Israel 202
Hutchins, Abel 65
Benjamin T 169 ^^
Bphralm 83, 121
Oeor^e H 56
Hamilton 84
Robert A. . . . ..... 42, 106
In an Ugly Hole 204
Income of a Business Man 25
Independent Democrat 214
Ink Rolling " Behind the Press " 109
Isms, the Day of 21
Jenks Qeorge E 96, 109, 192
Edward A 98
Johnson, Rossi ter 289
Kendall, George W 99
Kendrick, James R .144
Kent, Charles P 66
George 99
John 55
Kimball, Benjamin A 131, 145
John 130, 146
Wm. S 182
King, Thomas 8tarr 127
Kneeland, Bartholomew 7
Elizabeth 7
Susanna Sewall 7
Labrador Fisheries 150, 161
Lancaster, Clara 59
Landscape Painters of Conway 106
Lane, Rufus 98, 120
Late Rides on an Engine 141
Leavitt. Dudley ill
Leavitt's Almanac Ill
Lincoln, Abraham 203, 223
Long Pond Water 211
Lovering, N. P 131
Low, Charles F . 214
J. Hamilton 55
Joseph 28, 90, 92, 122, 123
William 110,217
Index. 327
Macaulay'8 History of England 116
Machine Shop Pay Rolls 140
Mackenzie, Alexander Slidell 58
" Mameluke " Engine . 139
Marshall, Anson S 228
McFarland Ancestry 11
Andrew "120
Rev. Asa 7, 9, 89
Asa . . 6, 11, 76, 96, 100, 120, 190, 192, 216, 289
Homestead 12
«
Elizabeth Kneeland 7
Nancy Dwight iO
McMillan, Andrew 104
Farm 104
Gilbert 104
McNeil, Wm. Qlbbs 38
Meredith, R. R • ... 228
Merrill, Rufas .219
Merrimack River 70
Military Accounts, Settlement of ... . 290, 299
Militia Trainings 75
Mittanogue Bay 165
Money and Currency 82
Money in the Pocket 280
Morril, David L 16, 100
Samuel 45, 60
William H 44
Morrill, Paul 99
Morton, Levi P 180, 312
MouUon, James 54
Murdock, Cyrus M. 169
Names of Buglnes 142
Nesmith, Oeorge W. 54
New Hampshire Court Reports .100
Newspaper Men 99
New Pool of Siloam 206
North Conway 103
Noyes, Daniel James 22, 38
Odlin. George 96, 190
John • . . 14
Woodbridge 84,85
Office of Master of Transportation 148
Old Fire Hooks 51
328 Index.
Old North Choir 18
North Church 17
Pedagogues 54
Printers 98
Railroad Men 130
Ways and Cookerj' 13
Ordway, N. G 228, 290
Owi, The (Newspaper) 36
Pabst, Frederick 179
Palmer, Albert 68
JohnB 242
Paradise Woods 74
Parker, Caleb 51
David 97
Henry E 228, 239
Joel 100
William M 144
Parodi, Teresa • .... 126
Patriotic Meeting 228
Patti, Adalina 126
Peabody, George 48
Peaslee, Charles H. . . . 114,122
Perkins, Hamilton E 75
Pembroke Academy 62
Perley, Ira .84,85,231
Perry. John T. 221
Peverly, James 90
Phelan, James 40
Phelps, Henry W 99
Phoenix Hotel 83
Pictures of Concord 73
Pierce, A. C. . 84
Franklin 28. 90, 92, 113, 118, 127, 212, 225, 228, 231
Pillsbury, Emily 58, 62
George A 132
Pluck • 202
Porter, William T 99
Printers' Ink Roller.s 101
Printing as an Art 100
Printing Machinery 213
Pulford,John 262,273
Queer People 93
Quimby, Benjamin F 181
Index. 329
Railroad Competition 137
Friends 144
Rankin, James E 55
Remarkable Newspaper Article 226
RentoD, John 80
Dr. Peter 17, 36, 80
Christie 80
Rice, Harvey 130, 139
Roberts, Hall 67, 108
Robinson, Joseph 90
Roby, Lather 30
Rolfe, Henry P 212, 224, 228
Rollins, Edward H. 288, 301, 302, 307
Salary of Country Minister 8
Salm-Salm, Felix 249
Madame 250
Sanborn, B. W. 118
Charles P 66
Edwin D. 54
Georfire Q 131, 145
George H 44
Sargent, James W 132
Saxe, John G 127
School of Mary Ann Allison 43, 50
Ruby B. Preston 41
Sally Parker 41
School Life at Pembroke 65
Schooner ♦* Angelia " 152, 167
Scene at South Church 22
Scott, W infield • . 235
Seamen's Friend Society 69
Sea Trout 162
Seavey, Shadrach 44
Seward, Wm. H., call on ....... 276
Sharpshooters 266
Sherburne, Henry C 144
Reuben 132, 143
Robert 44
Shooting 77
Sickles, Daniel E 250
Sighting Land 168
Skating 79
Smart, Charles 84
Smith, J. V. C 127
830 Index.
Smyth, Frederick . 212
Soldiers Paid in Concord 279, 281
Some things the StateBman did 210
Spaaldlng, Isaac 128
Stage Coach Fares 122
Lines 31
Stanley, Solon 88
Stan wood, Henry P 180
State Capital Reporter 214
State House after Adjournment 197
State House ControTersy 284
Statesman Building 28S
Statesman History 188
Second Regiment 23a
Steamboating . 177, 186
Stevens, Josiah . 22, 75, 228>
Stewart, Thomas W 169
Stickney, John 73, 77
Joseph 169
Nathan 49, 120
Miss Susan 49
Tavern 47
Sturtevant, Edward E 70
St. Valentine's Day 116
Substitute Brokers 220
Sunday Dress 19
Surrender of Lee 281
Swiss Singers 60
Sykes, M. L 186
Tappan, Mason W 112, 196, 282
Tenney, Jonathan 62
Ten Broeck, Petrus S 33
The Editor's Desk 218
The Printing Office 96
The Troop 76
Thomas, Rev. Moses G. 83
Thompson, A. B 228-
Benjamin 64
Thomas W. 9
Todd, George E 144, 171
Torchlight Procession of 1866 172
Towne. John 54
Town Elections 90
Town Hall 91
Index, 331
Treadwell, Thomas J 55
Thomas P 228
Tripp, Eryin B 98
Union Pacific Railroad . 801
Disbursements 811
Dividends 806
Upham, N. G 49,66,122,128
N. L 68
Vail, 8. M 228
Vir^rin.John 93
Voyage to Labrador 152
Walker, Gustavus 55
Joseph B 19, 228
Ward, Samuel . 185
Warde, David A 169
Watoon, Philip 125
Webster, Calvin C 204
Charles F 189
Daniel 69, 85, 86, 113, 190
Welcome Visitors 218
Wentworth, John 181
West's Brook 30
West, Charles H 44
Weston, James A 130, 144, 145
Wheeler, Charles C 178, 179
Whipple, Edward 44
Whihtler, George W 38
White Mountains, foot journey to 107
White, Nathaniel 200
Wilson, John C 288
Woodbury, Levi 54, 114
Wood, George 18
JohnT 68
Worcester, Rev. Thomas 88
Wright, Andrew J 180
Levi P 133, 139
Wyatt, Joseph G 84,85