A CHAPTER OF PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS.

BY JEREMIAH SPOFFORD, FROM THE EDITION OF 1869.

To relieve the dry details of names and dates, and with the hope of interesting some who may not find their names, or those of their ancestors, on these pages, the writer proposes to devote a space to the times which have passed in review during his somewhat extended period of observation, and in which six generations have been more or less interested,--having seen this number of generations in several instances, including his own direct line.

It was my fortune to come upon the stage of action immediately after the Revolution. The friends by whom I was surrounded in my earliest years had been actors in it; many had served in the armies, others had devoted a large part of their estates and an important period of their lives to its success, were imbued with its spirit, and it was the subject of their daily conversation and their evening tales. In addition to these, a few of the surviving soldiers of the old French War still lingered here. I have heard an ancient connection of the family relate how he, with other soldiers, drew the cannon across a morass, and up the height in the rear, and accomplished the capture of Louisburg, in 1775. And one of the captors of Quebec, who fought on the Plains of Abraham, still walked among us. I call to mind the appearance and conversation of many soldiers of the Revolution, who fought at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Trenton, and have a vivid recollection of the spirit and interest with which they "fought their battles o'er again," and gloried in its final success, while they related its sufferings and privations. The late Rev. Dr. Samuel Spring, who went as chaplain with Arnold and Burr up the Kennebec, and through the wilderness of Maine and Canada, and stood by Montgomery when he fell on the cold night of Dec. 31, 1775, before the walls of Quebec, was many years pastor of the North Church of Newburyport. I have seen him many times, and heard him preach in Mr. Braman's pulpit in Georgetown. The spot, marked with a marble slab bolted to the everlasting rock, inscribed, "Here fell Gen. Montgomery, Dec. 31, 1775," I visited Sept. 27, 1850. It is at the upper end of the river street, whose width alone separates the river from the frowning cliff two hundred feet in height, which street no gate or barrier now intercepts.

I knew a tall member of Washington's life-guard, who used to labor for my father and others. I was acquainted for years with a neighbor, whose forehead was grazed by a ball at Bunker Hill, and had a distant relative whose arm was shot off by a cannon ball at Trenton. Two others of my acquaintance survived the horrors of the Jersey prison ship.

Our family, I believe, was to a man devoted to the cause of American independence. I never heard of one who was a Tory. Two were soldiers for long terms. They were mostly substantial farmers and heads of families. They were both officers and soldiers in the local militia, and performed short terms of service in arms, and bore heavily the taxes, privations, and hardships of the war.

I have a commission of my great-grandfather, John Spofford (of the third generation), as lieutenant, signed by Gov. Shute in 1721. He was captain in 1731.⁽¹⁾ I have a commission of Abner Spofford, as captain in the local militia in 1743. His brother, Daniel, was colonel in 1775, and marched in command of the regiment to Cambridge, arriving too late to share in the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1776. No name is oftener recorded as on the Committee of Safety and other committees for raising men and money during the war, and he represented the town in the Legislature in 1776, and was of the convention that formed the State Constitution of 1780. Eliphalet, my grandfather, was captain of a company, and my father a private, in the march to Cambridge. William, brother to Eliphalet, is supposed to have died in the army, in the French and Indian War of 1755, and Moody Spofford, Esq., the eminent architect, was lieutenant in an expedition to Ticonderoga during the War of the Revolution.

Many others of the family did good service in the great Rebellion. Several lost their lives, and one, a resident at the South, served voluntarily in the Rebel Army.

I have seen many of the officers and soldiers of the army of the Revolution, of the War of 1812, and of 1861, and it is curious to observe that notwithstanding the general simplicity of the times and the poverty of the nation, the show and cost of the uniforms of the armies, especially among the officers, were double in former times to those during the late Rebellion.

An immense change has taken place in the use of books and newspapers and magazines within my recollection. A post rider came his weekly rounds with the Newburyport Herald through Newbury, Bradford, Boxford, and Rowley, and it was the only paper that came into this region previous to 1800. There was no post-office in Groveland till 1809, nor in Georgetown or Bradford till some years later. I was postmaster here some years,⁽²⁾ and have seen the quarterly returns of this office the first year; the receipts did not exceed five dollars per quarter, and the delivery of but a single Boston paper. Though books and papers were not sown broadcast over the country as at present, yet what they had were much more thoroughly read and studied. With one or two papers a week, nearly every article was perused, and many an article or item fixed in memory. While books and periodicals have increased a hundred-fold, and the cost of education fourfold, it is doubtful whether the people are any better qualified for the duties of life than formerly.

A few of the fourth generation of the Spofford family were on the stage when I first took knowledge of my surroundings. One grandfather, Col. Daniel Spofford,⁽³⁾ survived till my sixteenth, and his eighty-fourth year, and died April, 1803. He was active in body and mind to his last year. He wore a green cap when about his work, and a white wig in the deacon's seat at church. Samuel and Amos, heads of other families in Boxford, were of the same generation, and several females are still in my memory. Probably many others of that generation survived to this century in their distant homes, but as they were diligent laborers and roads were bad, visits were few and far between. Mails and post-offices were scarcely known, so that very little knowledge was ever transmitted from the descendants of those who removed to distant places, and many members of the family have owned themselves indebted to the first edition of our humble pamphlet for any knowledge of their ancestry in England, or several of the first generations in this country.

Many houses in the early generations were situated in the open fields, and the people passed out on the Sabbath and other occasions through gates and bars. Such was the situation of my native place through the whole of my grandfather's occupancy and down to 1797, when I remember the removal of several gates. I can now show many neglected paths through pastures and woods, deep worn by the heavy teams which conveyed the timber to mill or market, over which a chaise or light wagon never passed.

While writing this sketch, has occurred the great eclipse of Aug. 7, 1869, upon which much has been written, but having witnessed the eclipse of June 16, 1806, total here, this last has appeared to me of very small account. It has called up many and some extravagant and unreliable accounts of that of 1806, of which I here record my own impressions. I was eighteen years of age, had just been studying Furguson's "Astronomy" with deep interest, and had waited with impatience two or three years for the time to arrive. The day was unclouded. The elder members of our two adjacent families were absent; my uncle and father building the first bridge from Newburyport to Plum Island. With sisters and cousins assembled we watched its advance. About 11 A. M. the light grew pale and white, but was still abundant for clear sight, till the point of the shadow passed over us. We saw its approach, and the instant we entered the circle of totality it was dark. Seven eighths of the remaining light went out, when the last pencil of rays was cut off by the moon. The dark circle of the shade of the moon was one hundred and four miles in diameter, which passed us in about four minutes. As the whole hemisphere was partially lighted, except the cone of total shade, whose point just reached our earth, it was as light within that circle as a starlight night, and some light was apparent round the edge of the moon. The sensation of viewing a scene which would not be viewed here again by any then living, was intensely interesting and never to be forgotten. When the first pencil of rays struck down upon us all interest was gone, and the light assumed its heat and color as we gradually passed out of the partial shadow. A few fowls went to roost, and crowed and cackled with surprise at the return of light. All passed on, and I alone, of those who viewed it together, remain to recall the scene.

At the date of this scene, I still resided on my paternal acres, of which no title is known to exist more ancient than the Spoffords'. Among these hills and vales and water-brooks were all my early wanderings and earliest attachments. I could point out the paths they travelled, the waterfalls they used, and cellars they built over, occupied, and deserted, and a few of the earliest houses were still remaining. I left with great reluctance, and regret that so many others have followed my example, and left those happy homes and scenes of youthful joys, to the cold calculation of strangers and foreigners.⁽⁴⁾

In my memory the roads were narrow and little travelled. The houses, all but two or three, unpainted. No single horse wagons, and but two or three double wagons, and half a dozen chaises were used in what is now Georgetown. The people were nearly all farmers, and I can recollect but two or three families who did not work on their own lands and live in their own houses.

From 1770 to 1820 there was little or no gain of inhabitants in this region, as tax lists in my possession, my own observation, and the census will show. We considered our towns, the county of Essex, and the State, filled up, and families were removing every year to people New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. Ohio alone was known, or scarcely heard named, of the great West, and much anxiety was felt how people who remained here were to be supplied with wood and timber much longer. But I have lived to see our State increase from 379,000 to 1,400,000; Boston from 20,000 to 220,000, and the towns and cities of old Essex in proportion, and our forests apparently on the increase; and the nation has gained in population from 4,000,000 to 40,000,000.

The old Georgetown church had a tall spire, and was unpainted, except the trimmings, when I left in 1813, and no bell had sounded from its tower. A Baptist church stood near Stickney's mill, with neither tower nor paint. Pastorates lasted half a century. Ordinations were great occasions. I remember that of Mr. Braman, June, 1797; its vast concourse of people, and its profusion of refreshments in private houses, and for sale on the Common.

The old church which did service that day was raised in 1769, and now completes its one hundred years. In it I attended worship from eight or ten years old to twenty-five. Well do I remember the high pulpit, the arched window, the sounding-board, the deacons' seat, and the galleries on three sides. The pews were square and surmounted with banisters; a "body of seats" occupied the centre of the house, but the seats had been taken up at different times and the space sold for pews, and such was the manner of building the two rows of pews which at first surrounded the church--the ground floor was sold and the pews were built by the owners. I have often heard my parents relate circumstances of the raising and finishing of that house, and different members of the family had an important agency in its erection. I have heard preach in that house, Dr. Spring, before named; the aged Dr. Joseph Dana, of Ipswich; Cleveland, of Essex; Huntington, of Topsfield; Bradford, of Rowley; and Professor Woods, then of West Newbury; and was personally acquainted with Dr. Parish, of Byfield, well known as an orator, theologian, and politician; and my mother, at fifteen years of age, heard the first sermon in it, by Rev. George Whitefield.

I was many years contemporary with and the friend and physician of my uncle,⁽⁵⁾ the architect and master builder of the first Haverhill bridge, in 1794, also of the Rocks and Andover bridges across the Merrimack, also one across the Connecticut, at Windsor, Vt., and across the Piscataqua between Portsmouth and Dover. Timothy Palmer, the "celebrated New England bridge builder," was his apprentice, and I distinctly recollect the model of the arch patented by him with the knowledge and consent of my uncle, with every timber and bolt in due proportion, as got up in my uncle's shop. Palmer went South with several Essex workmen and built the first bridges across the Schuylkill at Philadelphia and the Potomac at Washington. He resided many years in Newburyport.

I recollect the light and beautiful arches of the first Haverhill bridge, springing from the abutments and piers, with lattice railings for safety, as seen from Chadwick's ferry boat below. I remember being led over the unfinished bridge and seeing through into the water. Raising the floor to the middle of the framework, and a ponderous covering destroyed its picturesqueness, beauty, and symmetry.

¹ Inscription on gravestone, still legible, wherein the name is thus given:--

"CaPtEn JOHn SPaFFaRD."
In his captain's commission, bearing date May 8, 1721, and signed by Governor Samuel Shute,
the name is spelled Spauford.

His will was admitted to probate Nov. 3, 1735.

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