118 



S!)c Jaanncv'e jHontljli) bisilor. 



jng they walked up Sixth street, to what is now l<nown 

 as Franklin square, discussing the great public aOairs 

 with which they were exclusively occupied, and then, 

 for the first lime, he cave language to liis thoughts, and 

 revealed to his cousin his purpose. At the first glance, 

 his policy was strongly repudiated; however his rea- 

 soning was so cogent and conclusive that he succeeded 

 in exacting a promise from k*aniuei to second llie nom- 

 ination he intended to make that day, and to move an 

 immediate adjournment, to enable the members to talk 

 the matter over among themselves. He accordingly 

 arose in his place and commenced his great speech. — 

 \le spoke of the crisis that had been forced upon the 

 Colonies — the importance of a Chief to rally upon, 

 and the necessity of clioosing one suited to the occa- 

 sion; then, in the most eloquent and graphic manner, 

 he described the qualities necessary in such a chieftain. 

 After he had conlcuded,he paused and inquired: "Have 

 we such an individual ? 1 answer, we have^a mem- 

 ber of our own body!" lie then proceeded: '^ I nom- 

 inate as Connnaniler-in-Chief of the Armies of the 

 thirteen Colonies, George W.^shington, of Vir- 

 ginia." 



It is said that Washington, with all the others, had 

 been deeply interested throughout, and at the moment 

 the nomination was being made, had liis eye intently 

 fi.xed upon the speaker, expecting to hear either the 

 name of Ward or Lee pronounced; but when Jiis own 

 was given instead, he darted from tlie liall with the 

 speed of thought: indeed, the whole house was taken 

 by surprise. He was the last man thought of in that 

 connection, and had a bomb-shell suddenly descended 

 and burst in their midst, it could not have produced 

 half the consternation created by the nomination.. — 

 Samuel Adams promptly seconded the motion, and 

 moved an adjournment, which was carried. The sub- 

 ject was fully discussed ad interim, and the next 

 day they came together and unanimously conferred 

 the command — how wisely afier events have demon- 

 strated — upon George Washington. 



The Editor of the Visitor again an Itinerant. 



An indispo.^ition, whose fatal terniiiiation be- 

 fore this time had been anticipated, as well by 

 ourselves as by olliers, had pievented for the last 

 three years, those itinerant rambles about the 

 country wliicli bad always been so interesting, 

 and wbicb, if the pen could be tnade to impart 

 any portion of the animation we feel at witness- 

 ing each successive step in improvement, might 

 in some degree also interest the readers of the 

 Visitor. Artificial means, aided by the painful 

 experience of years of suflTering, have enabled 

 us not only to leave our home in inid-sun)mer, 

 when the attacks have heretofore been most 

 prostrating, but relieved us from the iear of con- 

 sequences from the physical effort of writing. — 

 Willi our former horrors for the excesses of the 

 Thompsonian practice somewhat allayed, for the 

 last five months we have taken daily oiu' dose of 

 lobelia, which after a temporary nausea of a few 

 minutes duration, gives us the better appetite for 

 breakfast: this, with a soothing |iill, sometimes 

 at evening, has so restored the rest at night as to 

 make the bed desirable which was before looked 

 upon as a |)lace of dread. And in this month of 

 August, after a fine hay season and the gathering 

 in of the smaller grains, our piu'pose is to travel 

 in tlio.se ways we have either never trodden or 

 have not travelled for years, to mark the sources 

 of that wonderful enterprise anil intelligence 

 which have made of our own Now England 

 such a country as, for its age, is without parallel 

 in the history of any other people under the sun. 

 While we look into the newspapers and other 

 publications of the <Iay for tlio description of 

 events that are occuring in foreign lands and at 

 distant points of our own country, the progress 

 or retrocession of things in our own iieighbor- 

 liood passes along from year to year without re- 

 mark. Of niucli greater interest, years hence, 

 will be lh<; ordinary occurrences of the present 

 time all about us, than the detail of farts involv- 

 ing the interests of strangers at a ilislanee. 



The rapid railroad communication, to which 

 we have been accustomed for the last four years. 



having turned us while travelling on business 

 from the old travelled roads, we were induced to 

 a return of the former ci;stom of a jog-trot jour- 

 nev to visit friends in Massachusetts, near the 

 confines of our own Slate..v 



In the afsi'rnoon of Thursday, August 13, pass- 

 ing on the river west side to Manchester, we 

 found, in the distance of si.xteeii miles, the ride 

 full half an hour nearer for the^ improved road — 

 improved more from tJ;c absence of heavy cut- 

 ting wagon and stage wheels, than from the work 

 upon it. H(;avj', indeed, used to bo the tax of 

 keeping this road in passable repair: it was no 

 place for ease in a liglit carriage in its best cst:ite. 

 A single rainy day's travel would spoil the work 

 of several days' repairs, cutting deeper and deep- 

 er the wheel ruts, until, of necessity, the rlrivers 

 and teamsters were obliged to change the wlicel- 

 vvay to a new position, soniRlimes filling the old 

 ruts with the rim of earth-mud which had be- 

 fore been thrown nut, ;it oilror times seeking a 

 new path wherever the wilened margin of the 

 highway would permit it. The road now liad 

 become, under the wear of numerous light car- 

 riage*, smooth and hard. Nothing by the way 

 seems to have suffered from the change of travel 

 to the railroad upon the west side to Hooksctt, 

 and east side thence to Manchester, but the gains 

 of the taverners, who made a ))rofitabIe business 

 in the accommodation of fams and triivellers ; 

 but this deficiency, great ;!S it is in a sparse pop- 

 ulation, upon a river bank soil considered more 

 sterile than almost any other .soil, seems to have 

 been more than made up in the improved condi- 

 tion of the houses, the lands and their several 

 appendages. The agricultiuc, all the way down, 

 has been much changed for t!ie better. At dif- 

 ferent [loints, lying along side the river banks, 

 are superb masses of exoelleiit clay. These have 

 been improved in the maniifjicture of bricks, 

 with which the extensive city of Manchester, in- 

 cluding some of the largest factory buildings in 

 North America, has grown up williin the last 

 few years, as if by enchatitment. The quslity of 

 these bricks is shown in the rich, deep cherry 

 lustre reflecting from the e;ist to the west, some 

 half a mile distant, under the bright rays of an 

 afternoon sun. 



The city of Manchester, in ilie space of ten 

 years, has made already as great progress as 

 LovN'ell did in the fiijit twenty years. The am- 

 ple buildings of its three great corporations are 

 laid out on a much greater and more magnificent 

 scale. The value of its real properly has in- 

 creased in an eiiually prosperous ratio, anti the 

 profils from its recent Uiaiiuliictures have been 

 without parallel, perhaps in this or any other 

 country. These jirofits have not been earned to 

 be carried away to any considerable extent — they 

 have been cxpendeil mainly upon the .same 

 ground, in the creation of new liictories not to 

 go behind liioso which have c;;n-ned tlie capital 

 to build them. 



JManchesfcr has already become the object of 

 attraction as the youngest and largest town, the 

 first and oii!\ city of the Granite State, lis ini- 

 inense water-power, greater than can be cou- 

 ccntraled at any other point in New England 

 probably, has as yet hut begun to be used. — 

 'I'wenly years more of prosperous mibuiliictures 

 may make it the largest town of New England, 

 with the exception, perhaps, of the ciiy of JJos- 

 ton. The Manchester corporations are situated 

 along the cast bank of the Merrimack, against 

 and below the Amoskcng falls, from the lie;id of 

 vvhicli the water is taken and carried by and 



through an upper and lower eaiial, the first of 

 which already extends about a mile and a half 

 up and down the river, and the other takes the 

 water once used to be again U'Jed, wherever a 

 tiivorable location lor an erection occurs. The 

 buildings of the corporation are exclusively of 

 the brick from the iierfect clay and deep cherry- 

 red burn, which characterize the article as made 

 in this neighborhood. The large factories gene- 

 rally lay in their whole length along the river:— 

 higher up the bank, and further east, are the 

 dwelling-houses for llie persons employed, run- 

 ning at right angles, and in blocks, east and 

 west. JJetween the liictories and the dwelling- 

 houses, along and at the level of the upper canal 

 bank, runs the Concord railroad, the ground of 

 which, through the city, as well as at llooksett 

 and Bow in the two falls above, was given by the 

 .'\moskeag corporation to the railroad. It is a 

 liict not unworthy of remark, that in the time 

 the railroad was constructing, the business of 

 the Amoskeag company alone increased to a 

 sufficient magnitude to enable that part of the 

 railroad, half the whole distance, running from 

 Manchester to Nashua, tu pay six per cent, on 

 the cost of the road and its fi.xtures! Eastward 

 of the corporations, in their whole extent, is Elm 

 street, a broad way we believe six rods over, 

 dividing them from that part of the town occu- 

 [lied by the men of all bu.smesF, merchants, 

 tradesmen, niech:inics and tin; professions. If 

 there was any fault in laying out the city, it was 

 thai the transverse streets were made too nar- 

 row, and the i)urchasers of lots covered them 

 with buildings in loo ne.ir contiguity. Rents 

 were so high, and vacant houses wer« so speedi- 

 ly caught up, that almost every man who pur- 

 chased was anxious to coverall his ground. For 

 this reason, the wooden part of Manchester, em- 

 bracing several of its churches, has become 

 dangerous as a tinder-box to provoke conflagra- 

 tion. A splendid town-house on the west or 

 corpoialion side of Elm street, erected by the 

 town, at an expense of ssme §25,000, lias been 

 once burned : another beautiful building, with 

 the same purposes has been speedily erected on 

 the same ground. N.?ar it, in a row of store 

 brick blocks, is a large and capacious brick 

 .Methodist church, with stores in the basement. 

 In the city proper, several open squares have 

 been left from sale by the (buudalion corpora- 

 tion. To the south of the city, land alreaily oc- 

 cupied as a cemetery has also been reserved, — 

 Three bridges within the distance of a mile, one 

 of llieui directly over the head of the fa!!.<, look- 

 ing down upon the rocky iibysscs ihrougb which 

 the vvaters flow, making, besides the m;iin chan- 

 nel on the westerly side, several islands ilireclly 

 upon the falls, unite Manchcsler wiih Goffstowii 

 and the village of Amoskeag, the silo of the old 

 factories. The spacious McGregnie farm on the 

 wesi bank, extending over a mile, is also the 

 properly ofihe parenl corpoialion. In the own- 

 ership of the same corpoialion, are the main 

 part of the locks and canals at Amoskeag, as 

 well as those at Hooksctt eight miles, and liow, 

 twelve miles above — the former being a fall of 

 iwcniy-five, and ihi! hitler a fall of about fifteen 

 feet. The former ha.s an extensive factory, be- 

 longing to this corpornlion : the water-power of 

 lln; latter has not yet been taken up for factory 

 uses. 



The prosperity of Manchester has given an 

 impetus to the business of the valley of Ihe riv- 

 er, both above and below. Lowell is built up 

 considerably now by bricks niunufactured near 



