106 



^l)c jTarmcr'g inontl)l|j bisitor. 



Alanafactures upon Agriculture. 



We know of no more beiiiiiiful writer of liis 

 a<re in the Statu than George IJarstow, Esq. of 

 IMiijicliesier. Tlie lute aniiiversarj' of American 

 ]i]ile|ien(letiee waff celebrated alNasliiia, and Mr. 

 I!ar,*tow delivered llie addies.s. From it, as a|)- 

 jmsite to llie condition of the Granite Slate, and 

 especially of the central valley of it throng h 

 which flow the waters of the MerriniacU, we ex- 

 tract the follouin;,', which we find in a neighbor- 

 ing ncws[)a|)er : 



".Mr. 15. said: New Hampshire must and will 

 be a mamilactiiriii;,' Slate. She cannot escape 

 from her destiny. It is written as with a pen of 

 iron and the point of a diamond, on every featnre 

 of her rii'.'u<d liice. The eye of every practical 

 man must see this. Lufiy monnlains, noble wa- 

 terfalls, deep and rapid rivers — these are the in- 

 (licalion.s of what New Hampshire is fated to he. 

 Who can look at onr majestic hills and the slreanjs 

 tli.it floiv li-om ilii.'m, and then abrnail,at the frnit- 

 fid West and the ever-blouminj;' Soiilh, vvilhont 

 saying th;it these great natural advant.ij.'es of ours 

 are destined to be used to supply those sections 

 of onr o^^n coimlry and ihe world which are des- 

 titute of these lacilliies, but are abnnflantly com- 

 pefis.ited in 'lie supeiior power of prndiu-lion ? 

 1 repeal that New Hampshire must and will be 

 a maunliicturinj: Stale. In the economy of na- 

 turi: it is so decreed. It will result from the op- 

 eration of n.'itural causes airainst which man, 

 even if he were disposed, could raise no effect- 

 ual barrier. Whoever strives to impede onr 

 maindiiclurinseslablishinents, aims a blow at the 

 prosperity an<l power of New England. 



" The place in wliich we are asseujiiled, [said 

 Mr. B.] reminds us of Ibis. Once the Imliaii was 

 here. On Ihe earlh beneath us perhaps his ar- 

 rows fell. Voiider he chased the fijiiig deer. 

 More than a cenlury ago the Indian's bow was 

 broken and he fl 'd. Still Nashua remained as it 

 was, a waste. 'I'he husbandman scorned to till 

 the rock. He could reap no harvest on these ste- 

 rile sands. Such was the coud-ititm of Naslma 

 when the genius of industry came to preside over 

 these waK'r-falls. Brhold the change. Here 

 stands a beautiful village, with its pidilic build. 

 iui;s, its gardens, its ranks of trees, its sclioid- 

 boiises and the lu'ighbiuing spires. The wild 

 bird is no hniL'er the solitary teuaiil of the river. 

 The Water-Wlu'el is Ihe bird that is fleslined to 

 dip iis wings 111 all our streams and drink of their 

 waves !" 



Enlarging upon his subject, we might remark, 

 as evidence oftlie ucinual dependence <d' all pur- 

 suits in this eomitry, .\L'ricultine iipcui Mannliuv 

 turi!S and vice ver.sa, that the ground before him, 

 as it is recollected by the editor of the Visitor, 

 furnished ample demonstralion. Ancient Dun- 

 slable, located upon both sides of the present line 

 between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, was 

 one of the first settled towns of New Hampshire 

 westerly of the highlands ilividing the waters of 

 I'i.-cataipin and .Merrimack. ]t is more than one 

 hundred tiiid twenty years since one of the early 

 heroes of that town lust his life in the bold expe- 

 dition fiir into the wilderness of Ihe Pequawkelt 

 c'amtry, iImmi the source of Indian annoyance and 

 muriler all ahmg Ihe unprotected frontier. We 

 remember the place where Nashua now is, forty- 

 fiiur years. The late enlerprisiiii; nnri errant 

 Robert Flelclicr of Amherst, who considered the 

 lucrative office of Clerk of the Courts in old Hills- 

 borough as an heir loom vested by right in his 

 ow n f imily, erected and established a trading 

 Blore at Nashua, to catch all the business of tint 

 northerly halvtfs of New Hamiishire and Ver- 

 iriont, which of necessiiy concentrated twelve 

 miles below Amherst at the point of the preseiil 

 location of Nusliuu and Nashville villages : Sani- 

 iicd I'resttni from New Ipswich, by trade a |uinl- 

 er, who had attempted uiisuccessfidly to eslablish 

 tla; " Village M('sseiiger" newspaper at .Ambersl, 

 was clerk uiid store iiianuger for Mr. Fletcher, 



who was seldom himself present. A wholesale 

 trade went on at this place and at Mont Vernon, 

 where the fiither of George Wilkins Kendall, 

 then recently an officer in what was called by 

 way of reproach John Adams' Oxford army, con- 

 ducted business: for both, the County Clerk of 

 aristocratic hauteur, was Ihe owner responsible. 

 Trade went on ajiparently |)rosi)eroiis some three 

 years; when the running of deputy-sherifl^s' lior- 

 ses to clutch ill several places at effects on mesne 

 process astounded the neighborhood of Amhei'sl 

 plain with the intelligence that the proudest, high- 

 est-bearing man of the county had failed and 

 '• broken all to bits." The trade of the Nash- 

 ua store, somewhat restricted, wus continued af- 

 terwards. The store was accompanied by a sin- 

 gle tavern at the |ioint of roads, being we believe 

 the same location as the present "Indian Head" 

 tavern, a name given it as the residence of the 

 latest Indians of that neighborhood: this tavern 

 was long kept by the late Timothy Taylor, Esq., 

 who was so.iietimes representative of Dunstable 

 in the Legislature. The settled parts of Dunsta- 

 ble were from two to five miles below the Nash- 

 ua river along the banks of the Merrimack. Sir. 

 Fletcher undertook the first boating ol" goods and 

 [M-oduce up the river to Nashua, and for that pia-- 

 pose cleared out or made new channels from the 

 mouth of the Nashua to the village. At that 

 place there was no immediate fiill of water snfli- 

 cient for extensive mauufacturiug purposes ; and 

 the manufacturing interest has for years lelt here 

 a serious inconvenience from the failure. To 

 concentrate the force of the water power, a ca- 

 nal, taking out llie water at falls some two miles 

 above, was constructed along the dry sand bed 

 of the river bank, through which the water, until 

 the intervening bank had obtained the tine age 

 and stability, filleted and broke. In process of 

 lime a book-binder, a miller, and some few other 

 mechanics settled down there, till the place came 

 lo be called " Nashua Village." But all around 

 il, within sight for ihe dislance of miles, was a 

 diminuiive growth of scrub oaks and pitch pines 

 in a soil of insufficient tenacity to bear a grass 

 sward. Now and then a more promising part 

 was taken up for the cnltivalion of an isolated 

 rye-field, piii under the plough once in four or 



several years of any interior village in the State 

 and second now only to the new city of Man- 

 chester, which has outstripped all other towns of 

 New England for an equal space of time, in ra- 

 pidity of growth and prosperity of the business 

 of manuntctures. As one of the consequences 

 of the manufiictnring prosperity of Nashua, wo 

 find the products of Agriculture growing and 

 thriving all iibout it. As early as 1840, we saw 

 fine fields of corn and potatoes on the thin stunt 

 oak barrens, and clover and grass growing upon 

 the plains through which the general opinion had 

 been that the whole nutritive aliment would be 

 leached as often as cnltivalion was attempted.— 

 Several years ago the Hon. Jesse Bowers, who 

 inherits the Lovewell farm as a part of his pos- 

 sessions, found out the way of niising twenty-five 

 to thirty bushels of rye every year, on land sup- 

 posed lo be only capable of yielding less than one 

 third of Ihe quantity once in four years; and he 

 actually succeeded in growing Indian corn as a 

 subsequent crop upon the same land at the rale 

 of forty or fifty bushels to the acre. 



To those travelling over the same system of ex- 

 hausting crops natural to every new country 

 vvheje there is plenty of room to take np new 

 fields, Mr. Bowers'experiment was taken and con- 

 sidered to be that kind of improvement in firm- 

 ing wliich none but such as had plenty of means 

 and money could afford lo undertake. He might 

 once or twice obtain an extraordinary crop upon 

 this leached and leaching land ; but il was not 

 equal to one chance in twenty that he did not lose 

 by il. Manure upon such land in a dry season 

 would be thrown away : labor would be useless. 

 At best the crop would be of less vsilue than might 

 with certainty be anticipated upon a rich, reten- 

 tive soil— upon that hard |)an through which wa- 

 ter could not soak ofl'and the strength of manure 

 could not be sunk dovvn so as lo be beyond reach 

 forever. 



Ill a hasty interview with our old friend, we 

 fijuuil that lie coiitluues with constant succe.ss the 

 cultivation of his light lands to obtain as good if 

 not more profitable crops than are usual upon 

 those which have been regarded as the very best. 

 Iiiileed in llio course of half a dozen years, lands 

 treated in his mode come to be considered no 



five years, yielding from six to eight bu.-hcis to longer of the chuiacler of liglit, evanescent, ste- 

 rile soils. With the accumulating fertility ofeach 

 successive year, the appearance of these fields is 

 so changed lliat the spectator, who does not un- 

 derstand the operation, regards the better cultiva- 

 tion as rrsiilling rather from the soil itself th.iii 

 from the skilful operation which makes il fruil- 

 fiil. 



.\s a consequence of the growth of mannfuc- 

 luring towns and villages in New Hampshire, will 

 be a change and improvement in the cultivation 

 of the soil of llio Granite Statu which must make 

 il etpial in pioportinu to its acres to any other 

 State or couniry. By means of employment in 

 the mannf icturing operations and of the increas- 

 ed facilities of reaching distant markets by rail- 

 roads and other cheapened modes of transport, 

 no farmer now need fear the loss of any surplus 

 produce left on his hands. Ill the call fur perish- 

 able articles ri ipiired lor every day's use. New 

 lOiiglaiid has the advantage of demand above all 

 the newer parts of the country, which is more 

 llian equivalent to the greater labor here neces- 

 sary to produce them. We have llie ndvanluge 

 of convenient neii'bborhood access, as well in 

 tratlic and business as in the social relations, that 

 ihc soulhein and western new Stales know not 

 yet how to realize. In all public improvements 



the Jicre — an article a little better for light ami 

 bright bread than the same grain grown upon a 

 richer soil. 



The land of Nashua, and for some distance 

 about, was a meie waste: none supposed that 

 the vegetables lor a family couhl there be made 

 to grow in a dry seastui. A garden, which was 

 not made with un aitilicial clay bottom and trans- 

 portation of a richer soil, would not be Httempled 

 but by those willing to incur the risque of losing 

 their whole labor. Some of the Dunstable fiirm- 

 ers, who were so fortimiite as to ]iossess alluvial 

 patches upon the river, cultiv.ited the extensive 

 rye fields to good advantage, where lliey had 

 lariie iracts lo lay idle. We used to hear of (Jen. 

 Lovewell, one oftlie nearest farmers to the Nasli- 

 ua village, raising his hundreds of busliel.- of rye 

 upon his forty and fifty acres, being able to supply 

 with bread Ihi! poor neighbors around him. But 

 lor [irofitiilile agriculture beyond the \{)W alluvion 

 upon Ihe Mi rrimack, Ihe two Diinstabhts were 

 some of the poorest of the poor New England 

 towns. 



Upon that part of these townships called " In- 

 dian Head," Ihe most sterile of the whole Hack, 

 has grown up the flourishing village, enibracing 

 at this time jiorlions of two towns, the largest for 



