A PLEASANT REMINISCENCE.
The following is from the pen of the late Gen. Walter Harriman, who gave much examination to the early history of the town of Salisbury, and no little research into the character of its inhabitants, he having been a native and a long time resident of the adjoining town of Warner.-This intro by John Dearborn History of Salisbury 1890
Published in the Granite Monthly May 1880:
A DAY WITH THE WEBSTERS
One bright morning in August, 1875, we ( Mrs. H. and myself) took a suitable team at Concord, with one day’s rations, and, in light marching order, set off for Elms Farm, Shaw’s Corner and Searle Hill. We desired more light on a few points in reference to the early life of Daniel Webster. At Boscawen Plains, that ancient village, with its broad street, shaded houses and “magnificent distances,” we made our first halt. A venerable lady of intelligence and culture gave us the information we there sought. She knew Daniel Webster and his brother Ezekiel. She related interesting anecdotes concerning their life in Boscawen, and pointed out the exact spot where, in 1805, Daniel Webster opened his first law office, and commenced (as he used to express it) “making writs.” He occupied this office but two years, when he gave it up to Ezekiel, and went to Portsmouth. This office, at the Plains, was a small building attached to a dwelling house, just above the ancient cemetery, and on the same side of the street, but it was removed from this place many years ago, and the ground on which it stood is now a shaded lawn.
Some of the readers of this periodical will remember how the country was shocked by the sudden termination of the life of Ezekiel Webster. On the 10th day of April, 1829, while arguing a case in the Court-House at Concord, he fell lifeless to the floor.
Having visited the ancient cemetery at Boscawen, and particularly noticed the inscriptions on the tombstones of Ezekiel Webster and his first wife, we proceeded on our journey. We soon passed the county buildings (and the magnificent farm connected therewith) which overlook the charming valley of the Merrimack, and came to Stirrup-Iron Brook, which comes down from Salisbury, passes under the Northern Railroad and falls into the river. This brook takes its name from the circumstances, that, sometime after the independence of the colonies was acknowledged, Gen. Dearborn, of Revolutionary fame, while going, on horseback, to visit a sister at Andover, in fording this stream, which was then at a high stage of water, lost one of his stirrup-irons.
We cross the railroad and are soon looking both to the right and left upon the broad, smooth acres of the Elms Farm (now the Orphans’ Home). To this place Daniel Webster was brought, with the family, when he was about one year of age, and around this sacred spot clustered all his early recollections. He owned this farm, after his father’s decease, and made annual pilgrimages to it till the year he died. Here was the theatre of his early sports and joys, as well as trials and disappointments. Here his school days began; from here he went to Philips Academy at Exeter for a term of six months, when fourteen years of age; from here he went to Boscawen Plains, under the instruction of Rev. Samuel Wood, D.D., to prepare for college, in the spring of 1797; from here he went to Dartmouth, and when he graduated, with distinction, in 1801, it was right here where he entered the law office of Thomas W. Thompson, as a student of Blackstone.
This Thompson first opened an office at Salisbury South Road, but after remaining there a year he came down to the river road, where his office was nearly opposite the Webster House. This office was removed many years ago and made the ell of a house standing on the hill towards Shaw’s Corner. Thompson finally went to Concord, and after a life of industry and success, having filled the chair of Speaker of our House of Representatives in June, and served as Senator in the Congress of the United States from June, 1814, to March, 1817 (to fill a vacancy), he died and was buried in Concord.
With reverent step we entered the Webster cemetery at the Elms Farm; saw where Captain Ebenezer Webster and his wife, Abigail, (the parents of Daniel) as well as many others of his kindred, were laid to rest, and we felt that this was the proper place for the dust of the great expounder to sleep instead of being secreted off in that lonely pasture at Marshfield. We felt, too, that Webster made a mistake in cultivating the barren slopes of Green Harbor and making a home there, when the Elms Farm presented opportunities so much better. We visited the celebrated oak tree on which (as tradition has it) Daniel hung his scythe after failing to make it suit him, hung in any other way. But the tree was then dead on the mow-field. Time had laid it low, as it had him who had often basked in its shade.
Writing of this place toward the close of his life, in a letter to a friend, Webster says: “Looking out at the east windows, with a beautiful sun just breaking out, my eye sweeps along a level field of 100 acres. At the end of it, a third of a mile off, I see plain marble gravestones, designating the places where repose my father and mother, and brothers, and sisters, Mahitable, Abigail and Sarah—good scripture names, inherited from their Puritan ancestors. This fair field is before me. I could see a lamb on my part of it. I have ploughed it, raked it, but I never mowed it; somehow I could never learn to hang a scythe. My brother Joseph used to say that my father sent me to college in order to make me equal to the rest of the children.”
We crossed the mouth of Punch Brook, just above the Elms Farm, and, turning immediately to the left, proceeded on up the old road running to Shaw’s Corner. About half way up, and near where the road crosses the brook, we find the foundations of a saw-mill which Capt. Webster owned when Daniel was a lad. From letters of the latter we learn, that, while at work with his father in this mill, while listening to the roar of the water-fall and gazing on the mountains and forests in their grandeur, Daniel Webster had his first visions of future eminence, or of the possibility of it. Here, to this youth, there were “sermons in stones, tongues in trees, and books in the running brooks.”
A half a mile or more to the northward of Shaw’s Corner, on a road leading to East Andover, and on the charmed banks of Punch Brook, where the birds sing sweetly in May, is the birthplace of Daniel Webster. Here Judge Webster, coming up from Kingston, selected his farm in the wilderness. It was average land for tillage and pasture, and was quite valuable on account of its pine timber, but by years of neglect and waste the farm has become very ordinary. The old log cabin was demolished before Daniel’s birth, but the spot where it stood is still visible, as well as the foundations of the grist-mill which Capt. Webster erected on Punch Brook. The well and the historic elm are there, and a part of the little frame house in which Daniel Webster was born is there, constituting the ell of the present two story house standing on the premises. The room in which Daniel was born is there, precisely as it was Jan. l8, 1782, excepting that now there are two windows in front, whereas, at the former period, there was but one. Of all these facts we satisfied ourselves after patient and thorough investigation.
We now began our toilsome ascent. The sun having passed an hour beyond its high meridian, and our experiences for the day having been not totally unlike those of him of the olden time, who, “in weariness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings,” pursued his high calling, we halted and went into bivouac. On the eastern slope of Searle Mountain, under the shade of a large rock-maple which stood by the side of a sparkling rivulet, we supplied our wants. A fire was kindled, —the coffee-pot and frying-pan were taken from the carriage, and “salt-hoss and hard-tack” (the soldier’s fare) made the foundation of our meal. Old “Nimrod,” the faithful animal who had been ridden in the army, was not forgotten, but was led “into green pastures,” and had set before him his coveted “gallon of shoe pegs” which had been brought along for the occasion.
The summit of Searle Hill (more commonly known, perhaps, as Meeting-house Hill) was now our objective point. It is a mile west of Shaw’s Corner, on an old road leading to Salisbury Centre. The ascent of this hill, especially from the east, is attended with much labor. The hill is both long and steep—very steep, even for the mountainous regions of New Hampshire. The road is rough, and is now entirely abandoned as a public highway. Giving the horse his head, we toiled up this mountain as pedestrians. Half way up from Shaw’s Corner, on the right hand side of the road, is seen an old cellar and all the foundations of extensive farm, buildings, lint the voices which rang on that mountain side are hushed. It was William Webster, a brother to Capt. Ebenezer, who settled on this spot. Here, in his early manhood, he came and selected his home. Here he raised his large family, lived a life of usefulness and died. But this deserted place is further made memorable by the fact that Daniel Webster, after leaving Exeter Academy in the spring of 1797, and before commencing with Rev. Mr. Wood at Boscawen Plains, taught a private school for a few weeks, on this side-hill, occupying for his schoolhouse a room here in his Uncle William’s dwelling-house. Daniel had a fine class of girls and boys, and his brief charge here, it is said, was pleasant and bewitching. This was
“In life’s morning march, when his bosom Was young.”
On the top of Searle Hill, on the left hand side of the road as we are travelling, stood the first church edifice erected in Salisbury. It could not be hid. It was a large two-story building, without a steeple, with but little inside finish, and with it pulpit at a dizzy height. Think of bleak December,— the cold blasts sweeping down these old mountains, the roads blocked full in every direction,— no fire in the church, but two long sermons, reaching up to sixteenthly, every Sunday. It’s enough to make It saint shudder I
Jonathan Searle, the first occupant of this pulpit, commenced his labors here before the Revolution, viz., in 1773, and closed them, after 18 years of faithful service, in 1791. He was a graduate of Harvard,—a man of large ability and of lofty and dignified bearing. He was also a man of fine personal appearance. He wore a tri-cornered cocked hat, powdered wig, ornamented knee and shoe buckles, with the most ample surplice and gown. All the Websters worshipped in his congregation. Young Daniel was baptised here, by the Rev. Mr. Searle, in the summer of 1782. The day was pleasant and warm, but on that mountain top there was a strong breeze. After the ceremony of baptism, as the Webster family were leaving the church, a Mrs. Clay, who no doubt was an excellent lady though a little intrusive, made herself quite conspicuous. She had on a new bonnet, and a large one,— it was large for the fashion, and fashion at that time justified one simply immense. This bonnet was liberally decked with flowers, feathers and ribbons, and taking it all in all was well calculated to make a sensation on Searle Hill. This good woman pushed her way into the aisle, congratulated the minister on the felicity of his performance, congratulated Captain Webster and his wife on the auspicious event, patted little Daniel lovingly on the cheek, and chiefly cut off the view of the rest of the congregation. Just as she was leaving the vestibule of the church, a sudden flaw of wind struck her ponderous bonnet, snapped the slender thread that fastened it under her chin, and like riches that noted bonnet ” took to itself wings.” This woman called lustily on the dignified Searle, who was nearest to it, to seize the fugitive article of head-adornment; and Searle was willing, but it would be un-ministerial for him to run. She called again — “Do, Reverend sir, catch my bonnet; it will be ruined!” He quickened his pace a little, but still preserved a measured and dignified tread. The distance between pursued and pursuer began rapidly to widen, when good Mrs. Clay, becoming frantic and unguarded, sang out, “Searle, you devil you, why don’t you run!” The reverend gentleman did then accelerate his motion, and overtaking that indispensable article of headgear, bore it in triumph to its distracted owner.
A grandson of this reverend ambassador for Christ is one of the prominent and solid lawyers of Concord, and it is said that in personal appearance and in many characteristics of mind he bears a striking resemblance to his worthy ancestor.
The venerable sanctuary, which the winds and rains of heaven beat upon in the last century, has been gone a great many years, and on the old mountain, which was once the abode of numerous and thrify families, silence now reigns undisturbed. Still the distant view from the summit is as varied and grand as in the days of Daniel Webster’s infancy; still the eye takes a broad reach over mountain, mead and vale, embracing no insignificant fraction of
“This universal frame — thus wondrous fair.”
Coming on down to the South Road, where stands the chief village of Salisbury, we were fortunate in finding a Mrs. Eastman, a native of that town, and a very intelligent old lady, who was pleased to favor us with items of much interest, and who pointed out the very house,(now in a good state of preservation) in which “Daniel Webster, Esq., of Portsmouth, and Miss Grace Fletcher, of Salisbury,” were married, in June, 1808.
Night approaching, and the object of our short trip having been more than realized, we struck a bee-line for Concord.
Note the: house wherw Daniwl Webster was married is currently occupied by Dot Bartlett on route 127 near the rossroad.
