Early Recollections of Manchester.

AN ADDRESS BY MR. JOSEPH KIDDER, DELIVERED BEFORE THE

I wish to say that I am laboring under some disadvantage in speaking before the society tonight. I am not here with a prepared article, and indeed it was not expected that I should have

one, although I think it should be the purpose of every man who presents matter before this society to present it in such a way that it may be recorded and entered in the proceedings and printed records of the association.

I wish also to congratulate the President and society upon the success of the efforts that have been made by Mr. Perkins in behalf of the membership. We certainly are sure that there is a growing interest in the Historical society of Manchester, and we believe that our leading citizens generally ought to take a vital interest in this work because now is the time to preserve the history of our city and of our state. There are a great many things that have been lost simply because they have not been recorded. It was my fortune to be on intimate terms of friendship with the late Judge Nesmith of Franklin, and there probably was no man who was better informed with regard to the historic events of the last fifty or one hundred years than he was, and yet for some reason he did not commit his knowledge to writing, and when he died, of course it was lost.

Now what I have to say tonight will be mostly of a personal character, relating very largely to myself. It is not in manuscript, and indeed I do not know that anything that I shall say will be worthy of being put into print.

I think that the history of Manchester properly should be

divided into three periods or epochs. I would divide it in this way: The first period should include the history, so far as we may be able to obtain it, of the aborigines who occupied this territory for so many years. In the second place, the history should extend (for reasons which perhaps I may state hereafter) from the period of the settlement of the town until about the year 1838. The third epoch should cover the time since for an indefinite period. My remarks will be made as relating more particularly to the latter part of the second period because that covers the time of my own early life, and especially the early history of Manchester as a corporate body.

Every man perhaps has a desire to recall as far as he can the first event in his life that he can remember. I have sometimes asked people, and a great many of them, how old they were at the time of the first event that they can recall, and I find the general statement to be that but few people (when they have reached fifty years of age or more) recall events occurring be. fore they were five or six years of age. I do not know that I am an exception to that general rule, but I do recall two events that occurred when I was less than four years of age. The first event that comes to my recollection is the death of General Johr. Stark, who was my great-grandfather on my mother's side. I do not remember anything distinctly in regard to him, except his funeral ceremony. I recall the fact that I was present, and that there were military men there, and we are told by the historian that the company from Bedford, possibly the Bedford Light Infantry, attended upon that occasion.

The second event that I recall in my life was the death of my own father which took place in the latter part of the same year, 1822. I recall this perhaps on account of a peculiar circumstance. I was then less than four years of age, and while I do not remember my father in his personal looks, and while I do not recall anything that he may have said, I do remember the sad day when his remains were laid away to their final rest. I recall the fact that there were gathered around his grave

members of the Masonic fraternity, for he was a member of that organization, and then as now they were accustomed to bury their dead with ceremonies peculiar to the order, and I remember distinctly of seeing that strange sight (which was a strange sight indeed to me) of men standing around the grave wearing white aprons upon their person, and, it made a deep and lasting impression upon mẹ. or sketch of Manchester with the events of that year, and I wish to recall many things that I have been made familiar with from that date along down through a period of many years.

So I begin my little history

Of every individual and of every nation as well, on attaining to the age of responsibility the first thought is how to live and provide for the sustenance of the body, in which the soul or mind dwells and then perhaps beyond that is the thought of the beautiful. Every man to a greater or less degree has an idea of the beautiful. I have been asked why I think the Indians settled around the Amoskeag Falls, long ago. I think that they had this sense of utility or of self preservation, and how to provide for the sustenance of their bodies, and they saw at once that the Merrimack river, which in those days was full of fish, would provide them the means of living to a very large degree throughout the year. In the second place I think sometimes that they also had a clear idea of the beautiful. I remember that when I was a boy among the things that delighted me almost more than anything else was to walk upon the banks of the Merrimack river in the spring of the year when the mountain torrents came down from the north raging and roaring and foaming, as they did in those days, and as they do now in the time of a freshet, and I thought then, as I have also ever since thought, that there is no location in the state of New Hampshire, and I think I speak advisedly now, that there is no point in the state of New Hampshire more beautiful to the eye or more grand or stirring than may be found above Amoskeag Falls, looking down upon the Merrimack river and across to the hills and mountains of Goffstown and beyond. I have not lost

my admiration of the scenery about Amoskeag Falls to this day, and I do not wonder that the Indians were attracted by its beauty and grandeur.

I recall now something of the roads of Manchester at that time. There were perhaps only two or three principal roads in that part of Manchester which now constitutes our city as a city. In the other and further parts of the town there were roads about which I shall not speak, but the principal road was the River road, running from Hooksett along the line of the river down towards Nashua. Another road ran from the vicinity of the falls, through Manchester Centre, or what is now known as Hallsville, to old Londonderry, while another somewhat to the north, over the hills, reached the same point. The town was then a farming community. The people were mostly farmers, and the town itself was covered almost entirely with a dense growth of forest. Hardly any of the land on the road from Hooksett along the line of the river was more than a few rods in width between the river and the forest. The woods came down to within thirty or forty rods of the house in which General Stark lived, and along the entire distance, except in a few places there was only a small space between the forests and the Merrimack river. Of course about the Centre and older settled districts the tracts of cleared land were larger, but the town itself was mostly in those days covered with a heavy growth of wood and timber.

I also remember among other things something about the bridges we had in those days. In the earlier times there was but one bridge across the Merrimack river at this point, and no other bridge between Hooksett and Nashua, so far as I now remember. That bridge finally went to ruin and was afterwards rebuilt, but I remember when it was in a dilapidated condition going across on the timbers, for much of the business of Manchester was done not in the town of Manchester, but in the vil lage of Piscataquog, called Squog for short. There were two or three stores over there, while there was only one very small

one, or possibly two, on this side of the river, so the people of Manchester were accustomed to cross on this old bridge or by the ferry, which was in existence at that time, sometimes crossing just below what was McGregor bridge, and sometimes crossing by Merrill's Falls, but most of the transportation was done by boats because the bridge was not in a safe condition.

I also remember well about the schools in those days. Manchester in very early times turned its attention to school matters. I am not able to give the dates in reference to the formation of the schools and many other matters as should be done in a historic lecture, but this is not of that character. It is only a little bit of a talk. I remember the little old school house at the Falls. There is a very fine picture of it in the history of Manchester as given by Judge Potter. I do not know but our Presdent made the picture. I presume he did. It gives a very correct idea of the school house, and that is the first place where I attended school when a boy four or five years of age. I remember the first school master that ever taught in that school when I went there, and that was the late Judge Aaron Whittemore of Pembroke, whom I looked upon as a cold, indifferent, and hard-hearted man, but whom I later found to be cordial and genial, a very friendly man and a very excellent teacher. There were three schools in the town at the time. Besides all this, it was a common thing to have instruction for the smaller children in private schools. I remember that two of these schools were held, one in the house of John Stark, and the other in the house of Mr. Kennedy, a little above the Reform School. The people of Manchester in their earlier days were imbued with the idea that knowledge was essential not only to children, but essential to people of larger growth, and I believe that this has been a characteristic of Manchester ever since, that it has been devoted to the purposes of education and the development of the human mind.

I remember the locks and canals, and the canal that was built by Judge Blodget, although I do not know that I recall him. This