city of Hartford.

[Webster Historical Society Papers.]

THE WEBSTER FAMILY.

BY HON. STEPHEN M. ALLEN.

II.

The feeling between the settlers and the Indians, as narrated by Dr. Moore Russell Fletcher, became so bitter that the Indians determined on the total annihilation of the villagers, and with that intent seventy-five or eighty Indians left their tribe in the vicinity of Canada, and came down the head waters of the Pemigewassett as far as Livermore Falls, and there camped for the night. All were soon sound in sleep except one Indian, who was friendly to the settlers. He made his way to Plymouth, aroused the villagers, and informed them of their dangerous situation. The settlers, in dismay, asked each other, “What can be done?” The Indian heard their inquiries, saw their alarm, and in his Indian way, said, “Harkee me, Indian,—you no run away, no fight so many Indians. Go up river a mile, quick, make um up fires by camp-ground (holding up his fingers, five, ten, twenty), cut um sticks, like Indian roast him meat on, lay um ends in fires, put fires out. When Indians see and count um sticks he shake his head,—no fight so many pale-faces; they go back home to camp-grounds.” Next morning the villagers waited in great excitement, fear, and hope. No Indians appeared, and there was little trouble from them afterwards. Comparative peace reigned, although the Indians at times (three or four in number) passed through the quiet town of Plymouth on their way to their old camping-grounds. The villagers buried their animosity, having been told of the ill-treatment of the Indians by the State, and, instead of driving them from their houses, they fed and kept them over night when they signified a desire to stop and rest.

After many years other settlers went there; passable roads and bridges were made, and the settlement was extended up along Baker’s River almost to Rumney, and down the river nearly to Bridgewater, now called Lower Intervale. They brought in from the lower towns oxen, cows, horses, pigs, geese, and turkeys. Their furs and moose and bear-skins found ready sale in the lower towns, and afforded them the means of the most common luxuries and groceries, which could not be provided in their incomplete rural settlement.

marshfield—residence of daniel webster.

A Mr. Brown, of that part of the settlement known as the Lower Intervale, was one night returning from a neighbor’s house. In the darkness he lost the footpath, and dropped upon his hands and knees to feel for it. Instantly he felt the hair of some animal touch his face. A quick thought told him that his companion was none other than an immense bear. Mr. Brown’s presence of mind did not desert him. He knew that all domestic animals like to be rubbed or scratched, so he began rubbing up and down his companion’s breast and neck, continuing as far as the throat, while with his other hand he drew out his long hunting-knife and plunged it in to the handle, at the same instant jumping backwards with all his might. As soon as he could he made his way back to his neighbor’s house; his neighbor and another man, armed with gun, axe, long hay-fork and lantern, returned to the place of encounter, where they found Bruin already dead. Bear-steak was served all around the next morning.

Ebenezer Webster, the father of Daniel, settled at Salisbury about the time that Stephen went to Plymouth, and the hardships they underwent were very similar.

Daniel was born ten years after the Revolutionary War, and had to pass through many of the privations of the first settlers.

The clearing of the land was a tedious process, in which all boys had to participate. The forest trees were felled generally when in full foliage, about the first of June, and laid thus until the next March, when the “lopping of the limbs,” as it was called, went on, in which boys, with their small hatchets, took part.

About the middle of May, when perfectly dry, they were set on fire, and the small limbs, with the leaves, were burned. In the midst of the tree-trunks, as they lay, corn was planted in the burnt ground, and usually yielded some sixty bushels, shelled, to the acre.

In the early autumn, when the corn was in milk, bears, hedgehogs, and coons were very troublesome, for they trampled down a great deal more than they ate. Later in the autumn the chopping was infested by squirrels. All practicable means were used for killing these visitors. Bears were caught in log traps, hedgehogs were hunted with clubs, and coons were caught in steel traps. Squirrels generally visited the chopping in the daytime, and were killed with bows and arrows, and sometimes caught in box traps. All of these animals were considered good food.

Just before the frost came the corn was gathered and shucked, and afterwards husked and put into the granary. During the winter the felled trees were sometimes cut for firewood, and those remaining in the spring were “junked,” as it was called, and rolled into immense piles and burned, after which a crop of rye or wheat was sown, and hacked in with hoes, the roots of the trees preventing the movement of the harrow. The process of “junking” was a tedious one, as the burnt logs soon covered the axe-handle with smut, drying up the skin of the hands so they would often crack and bleed.

It is said that young Daniel disliked this toil very much, and was among the earliest to devise “niggering,” as it was called. In this process a stick of wood was laid across the log and lighted with fire, so it would burn down through the larger log, when fanned by the breeze, cutting it in two.

In the early spring great preparation was made for tapping the maple-trees and boiling the sap down to sugar, which was always an agreeable employment for young Daniel. Another occupation of the boy on the farm was in weeding, pulling, and spreading flax, which boys generally dislike very much.

After sheep were introduced in this locality there was a general washing of them in the brook about the first of May, after which sheep-shearing came on.

Planting, hoeing, and haying was very hard work for the boys, and very few liked it. After the harvest something was done in lumbering, and the Websters, having a small saw-mill on their farm, made shingles and boards; although for many years shingles and clapboards were mostly split by hand. Daniel was peculiarly fond of hunting and fishing, a passion which lasted his whole lifetime. Minks, musk-rats, and now and then a fox, were caught in traps, though the latter was oftener shot. Small game, such as partridges and squirrels, were very plenty in the woods, and the skins of gray squirrels were most always used for winter caps for the boys. Larger game, like moose, deer, bears, wolves, and sometimes panthers, were taken.

The schooling of boys was often among these scenes, where at home the evenings were spent in studying by the light of a pitch-pine knot.

Itinerant ministers, in those days, mostly supplied the rustic pulpit, and visited their scattered flocks through many miles of travel.

The boys were expected to be very decorous not only to the visiting ministers but to all older than themselves. Reverence was natural to Daniel Webster, and was not