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^arm^rs JlaiitUg Msitou 



THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR, 



PUJJMSHKU BY 



ISAAC HILL, & SONS, 



ISSUED ON THE LAST DAY OF EVERT MONTH, 



At Athenian Building. 



{Ji^General Aoent3. — H. A. Bill, Keene, N H. j John 

 Marsh, VVa^ihingtoii St. Huston, Mass.; Charles Warren, 

 Brifiley Row, Worcester. Mass.; Thomas Chandler, Bedford, 

 N. If. 



TERMS,— To sinele subscriber^!, FiJ^y Cents. Ten per 

 cent, will be allowed to the person who sIkiM send more than 

 one subscriber. Twelve copies will be sent for the advance 

 payment of Five Dollars: tweiity-ftve copies for Ten Dollars; 

 sixty copies for Twenty Dollars. The payraeni in every case to 

 be rnadc in advance. 



QCf.^loHcy and subscriptions^ by a regulation of the Post Master 

 Oeneralf may in all cases be remitted by the Post Mastery free vj 

 postage. ' 



OO" All genllemtn who have heretofore acted as Agents are 

 requested to continue their Agency. Old subscribers who 

 come under the new terms, wili please notify us of the names 

 already on our books. 



gJ^O OTIILY VISITOR 



CONCORD, N. H., APRIL 30, 1S47. 



The Prosperity of a lon^-Iived race of Farm- 

 ers, and ether matters, with an icy introduc- 

 tion. 



\Vc liave the card of dim- friend and kinsman, 

 John Hill, of "20,000 loiis of ke, for sale b;/ the 

 cargo, Ion or hundred weight, Ao. 103, F. H. Mar- 

 kel, Boston."" This ice at the wholesale price of 

 $1,75 per ton, delivered on board ship at the 

 wharf in Charfegtown, would amount to the snug 

 little sum of $35,000. Mr. Hill in limes past 

 went a little beyond others in this business of ice 

 cutting. Three or four years ago, when Boston 

 harbor was frozen over and the obstruction of the 

 Cunard steamers from Liverpool was anticiiiated, 

 Mr. Hill was employed as the efficient tnan to 

 cut a channel through the ice several miles down 

 the harbor, into the open, unfrozen roadstead. In 

 that perilous undertaking, going personally ahead 

 In the work, he fell while bounding from one to 

 another cake of ice, broke one of the main thews 

 of the leg, and was so injured that for njoiiths it 

 was anticipated that the best surgical and medi- 

 cal skill would scarcely be able to save life. That 

 skill, with an excellent constitution, however, ilid 

 prevail ; and Mr. Hill yet lives to pursue a busi- 

 ness that is by no means of little consetpience to 

 hundreds of New England farmers witliin.con- 

 venient reach of the growing trade of the prin- 

 cipal mart of New England. 



Mr. Hill, in connexion with his father and bro- 

 ther.'!, owns and carries on a market garden and 

 fruit farm seven miles out of Boston, in West 

 Cambridge, on a portion of the land which has 

 been owned and cultivated in the family name 

 of Hill for the last two hundred years. Almost 

 every morning, with the exception of Sundays, 

 nt sunrise may be found in the Quincy market the 

 venerable father of this family, in his striped 

 frock, having come in seven miles bringing in 

 his market cart with the fresh products of this 

 farm. With the exception of a cousin and his 

 family of sons in the same neighborhood, James 



Hill; Esfj., the father of John Hill finds perhaps 

 not his ecpial in the Quincy Market to produce 

 the first and earliest green peas and potatoes, the 

 earliest and largest tomatoes, the most luscious 

 and large peaches, with almost every variety of 

 vegetable and fruit produced from tlie land in 

 this climate. 



The p;iemisesof Daviil Hill and Sons lie along 

 and upon the shore of the larger Spy poiid in 

 West Cambridge, aroimd which the editor used 

 to gambol in company witli larger boys and men 

 when from six to ten years old. Astonishing to 

 us now is it to see the peacli trees teeming with 

 early fruit aiwl around them beds of garden veg- 

 etables, tomatoes, cinnamon squashes, water and 

 musk n)eIons, cucumbers succeeding as a second 

 crop early peas or potatoes — on land which in our 

 early recollection was such poor coarse sand and 

 gravel, as unaided by the " culturisl's skilful 

 hand," would scarcely grow any thing of the 

 vegetable kind. In our early youth there was suf- 

 ficient good land in the old parish of Menotaiay, 

 which was then a part of the town of Cambridge, 

 for all the purposes of the occupying farmers 

 with their families. Since that time the faniilies 

 have multiplied by a second and a third genera- 

 tion that have brought up the larger portion as 

 well of the sandy steiile plains as the rocky hard 

 ridges around them, to the highest point of pro- 

 duction. These redeemed garden fields lie alj 

 around the two beautiful Spy ponds of West Cam- 

 bridge — hundreds of acres of morass as well as 

 of upland having been brought up to the price 

 of from two to five hundred dollars to the acre 

 by the improvement of makiiig the last crop as 

 good if not belter than any of its predecessors^ 



But if the lands about the Spy ponds have been 

 thus beautifully improved, who of us when chil- 

 dren could have anticipated that the water sur- 

 face of the ponds theinselves woufd be made 

 more valuable than even the best lands in their 

 vicinity .' The twenty thousand tons of ice ad- 

 vertised as ready for delivery on the wharves at 

 Boston is a part only of what has been t;d\en this 

 winter from the larger Sl)y pond, on whose shores 

 capacious ice houses covering perhaps some 

 acres have been constructed, in which a stock 

 can be preserved always in advance in sufficient 

 quantities to supply the market for a year, if such 

 an one should happen, in which no ice should be 

 formed. 



" Fresh pond," a larger body of water than ei- 

 ther of the Spy ponds, lies partly in Cambridge 

 and partly in West Cambridge: a small branch 

 of Medford river makes an outlet into Charles 

 river and Boston bay from all three of these ponds 

 around whose shores were many acres of sunken 

 swamps, the most of which have been drained 

 and reclaimed. The Boston ice business first 

 commenced with Fresh pond. Ten or a dozen 

 years ago numerous teams were employed to 

 transport this ice from four to six miles to the city 

 and wharves upon Charles river. The ice busi- 

 ness suggested, about the lime of the conniience- 

 ment of the Lowell railroad, a railway to Fresh 

 pond, for the cheaper and quicker transport of 



that article. Out of this Fresh pond railway has 

 grown, first the Fitchhurg railroad, and aller- 

 wards the extension vvhicli takes one direction 

 to Greenfield and another branches over the 

 Cheshire hUfs, to be continued within the next 

 two years to Burlington, Vermont. 



Branching off in another direction by the shores 

 of the Spy ponds, which brings their ice as near 

 the wharves of the city of Boston in point of ex- 

 pense OS if it were cut from a pond upon Boston 

 common, another track of the railroad has been 

 extended through the heart of the fine village of 

 West Cambridge, through a gorge in the ridge, to 

 the centre of Lexington. Down this gorge runs 

 the stream upon which mills were erected for 

 the first supply of Boston market with rye and 

 iiidian corn meal, furnishing the healthy bread 

 of its first inhabjlauts. Just before the cars com- 

 menced iMiiiuing, wo visited our friend at West 

 Cambridge,. whose house was erected on land 

 which came to him as a descendant from the 

 Adams family of West Cambridge. The new 

 depot at West Cambridge usurps the place of 

 soma qf the venerable elms that stood before ttie 

 door of the ancient Adams mansion. The course 

 of the railroad on its way to Lexington had ren- 

 dered it necessary to cut off the westerly end of 

 the old mansion house itself. At the time of the 

 first spilling of the blood of the revolution at 

 Lexington some object of annoyance was pre- 

 sented by this house to the passing British army, 

 causipg ij to be riddled with bullets. Upon that 

 part of tlie hpuse which remains, the bullet holes 

 through the outside clapboards may yet be seen 

 The house wa^ built of wood, bricked up between 

 the inside and outside finishing. In that part of 

 it torn down last year, lodged in the bricks, were 

 taken ou,t many musket bullets tlischavged there 

 in the sharp conflict that took place with the 

 British when retreatitig back fiotn Concord to^ 

 wards Boston : nearly in frontof this house, when 

 on their way up, did our old "alarm-list" compa-^ 

 ny of West Cambridge ancestors arrest and shoot 

 down the horses transporting the army baggage 

 which was proceeding in the rear without a suf- 

 ficieiit guard. Tradition says of the Adams house 

 that it was erected ahout two hundred years ago 

 by the first man of that name wlio came over 

 with the earliest settlers of Charlestown and Bos- 

 ton about the year A. D, J63(5 ; that thiu Adams, 

 as a skilful millwright, was sent without the set- 

 tlement below Charlestown neck several miles, 

 to build mills upon the stream whose waters have 

 been since used both for meal mills and other 

 manufacturing purposes. The Indians, inhabit- 

 ing oil around this stream as well as the ponds, 

 continued a wigwam settlement in Menotomy 

 more than one hundred years afterwards, within 

 the memory of persons with whom we have con- 

 versed in childhood. The first Ailams family, as 

 the story went, was an acquaintance often visited 

 by the Indians. The father and mother on one 

 occasion were absent on an errand visit tQ 

 Charlestown below the neck, leaving at home, 

 two children, ahoy and girl of the ages often and 

 twelve years. The Indiana finding ttipin alpjie, 



...cr 



n 1 was 111 inj .iii.eiecmii jen. . nu= ^c„. , . ^j. j^^^^ Adams, as we have said, was a mov- 1 to his Cambridge farm at Ashburnham, fifty milea 

 ! ill the ppriuif to work. 1 be woman oi the I ' 



