®1)C JTarmcr's ittontl)I|) bisitor. 



53 



wore not, if the learned man was riglil, Trotn tli« 

 entile origin in America : our Adams came here 

 first — coiieeqiienlly our star is here more "an- 

 cient " if not so " honoinhle " «s that of the fam- 

 ily which has not only figured as tlie representa- 

 tives of their country hefore many of tlie crown- 

 eil liearls of Europe, hut sustained as Presidents 

 of the United States, father niid son, nt different 

 limes, the highest office in the gift of a free peo- 

 ple. But tlie autographs of these two desceiid- 

 lints of the Puritan*, prima facie, sliow to the ad- 

 Vantage of the centenarian shoemaker, whose 

 mind seems to have been maturing and improv- 

 ing from the very start : he spells better, points 

 better, and gives at least an equally sententious 

 an<l clear definition of men and things, than his 

 learned namesake. His letter, last written, which 

 we present above, marks not the man as he would 

 have writteu eighty years ago after he had left the 

 humble school of early instruction in letters; but 

 it marks the man as having gone along with his 

 children and grandcliildren in the more improv- 

 ed scholarship of better common schools. The 

 fair handwriting with little of tremor, the spel- 

 ling nearly all correct, the sentences inost all con- 

 structed without deviation from grammatical uni- 

 ty, the most truthful meaning in the fewest words; 

 all tliese are peculiarly characteristic of the man 

 whom history should write down as of more ex- 

 traordinary perseverance ami intellect than oth- 

 eis who have stood before, and even in the place 

 of kings and emperors. 



We believe the readers of the Visitor will not 

 be itnpatient at our egotism in describing our 

 impressions, coming from the remembrance of 

 this centenarian patriarch : we hope, at least, if 

 he lives to see this notice or his nearer friends 

 shall meet it, they will excuse us for the calling 

 of names or seeking to draw their virtues or their 

 failings from their solitary abode, who have never 

 had the ambition to he emblazoned before the 

 world. 



In the neighborhood of the centenarian patri- 

 arch, but not in the same town or county, settled 

 down on lots of land, "all of a row," a family of 

 four brothers, Samuel, Stephen, John and Abra- 

 ham Gibson : they came from the lower part of 

 Middlesex county. A sister of theirs was the 

 mother of Justice Shepley of ft[aine, who was a 

 native of Grolon in the same county. Of this fam- 

 ily of Gibsons, Stephen (the father of that first of 

 self-taught physicians and farmers. Dr. Stillnian 

 Gibson of New Ipswich,) was a preacher, himself 

 self-taught in the scriptures but acceptable and do, 

 ing his work without hire, except as the free gift 

 and aid of his neighbors, who were his hearers : 

 he was of the Calvanistic Baptist faith ; and his 

 love and respect for the great apostle of that faith, 

 the Rev. Dr. Stillman of Boston, induced him to 

 name the>on after liitn. But the prince of this 

 family of Gibsons was the elder brother Samuel, 

 whose farm, in the running of lines of towns 

 hapjiened to fall within the limits of Fitchhurg, 

 while his three brothers were of Aslihy : all of 

 them were however, as neighbors, located within 

 the distance of one iiiilR from the dwelling of 

 our centenarian patriarch. The barns and build- 

 ings of Samuel Gibson, on n plain smooth-clear- 

 ed round hill, sheltered by the higher Jewell hill 

 at the north-west, in Ashburnham, may now be 

 seen standing much as they were forty-nine years 

 ago, when we first saw them. Father and son of 

 the same name then lived in a brick house of large 

 dimensions, spreading over the ground in the 

 best style of farm houses of a single story with 

 chambers, sotne furnished as lodging rooms and 



others fortified against the inroads of rats and 

 mice, to be used as granaries or meal rooms. — 

 At that early day, Dea. Gibson (for he acted in 

 that capacity, and occationally stood in the place 

 of his brother when absent, to pray with and ex- 

 hort the people) was in circumstances afHuent,and 

 always had an abundance of surplus in his gar- 

 ners, to supply destitute and needy neighbors, for 

 work or promises where there was no money to 

 |iay, and as a free gift where nothing could be 

 expected. In the course of intimate acquaint- 

 ance and frequent intercourse between two fam- 

 ilies, acquaintance and intimacy grew into a fixeil 

 fact of an intended matrimonial connection be- 

 tween the eldest son (John born in 1771) of onr 

 centenarian patriarch and the eldest daughter 

 (Dolly) of his neighbor. Deacon Gibson. In those 

 days, for ihefifting out of farmers' daughters, al- 

 most every thing was of family manuliicture : the 

 beds, bed-covering, ticking and even the easy- 

 couch of down were all created at home ; the 

 flock of geese being kept to give the necessary 

 supply. This contemplated connexion was the 

 first match in a numerous family on each side. — 

 As a single item on the female side, news came 

 down from .'Vshburnham to the West Cambridge 

 family relations that the wife's setting out of the 

 first Ashburnham John Adams was to be thirty- 

 six pairs of nice bed-sheets including a distin- 

 guished few of pure linen and others of a more 

 common kind, then called cotton linen. In these 

 days of cotton factories, there is nothing to be 

 compared in durability to the "cotton-linen" 

 manufactured in families half a century ago. It 

 was made of strong linen warp, spun upon the 

 hand wheel, filled in with cotton spun upon the 

 larger or woolen wheel : the best cotton then 

 cost thirty or forty cents per pound — it was full 

 of seeds, the cotton gin then being unknown, all 

 to be picked out by hand before it was carded 

 and spun. The whole clothing, spun upon hand 

 wheels, was made and woven by female bands 

 in each thrifty fiirmer's family. Dea. Gibson bad 

 exceeded every body else in fitting out for mar- 

 riage his handsome eldest daughter ; and our 

 present centenarian patriarch had grown into a 

 condition to afford it, not to be outdone by his 

 neighbor. He resorted to the only clay-spot up- 

 on the Cambridge farm, made the bricks and 

 erected the best square, upright house of two 

 stories and many rooms that had ever then been 

 built in Ashburnham — the best building, although' 

 perhaps not the largest, that has been erected in 

 that town from that day to this. This house 

 overlooked the one story convenient farm house 

 in which the patriarch had brought up his own 

 children, and which we believe still stands as the 

 residence of his youngest son, Walter Russell 

 Adams. To make the commencement in mar- 

 ried life of this elder son still more auspicious, a 

 hundred acres off the best end of his firm were 

 added to the patrimony. The large brick house, 

 which is now in the ownership of another name, 

 stands on an eminence from which, in the dis- 

 tance of from thirty to seventy miles, of ;i morn- 

 ing when the fog rises in Merrimack river, deno- 

 ting a clear day, the naked eye may follow the 

 course of that river nearly from Concoril, by 

 Manchester, Nashua, N. H., and Lowell to the 

 new city of Lawrence in Massachusetts. On the 

 other hand, westerly a few miles to the centre of 

 the same town, may be traced the course of the 

 Connecticut river, at about the same distance for 

 several miles north and south. In the rear of the 

 one course the mountain Agamenticus in Maine, 

 and the intervening mountains of New Hamp- 



shire up to the Jecorway peak, the high neare' 

 mountain ridge only coming down to shut out 

 the vii;w of Mount Washington. Westerly of 

 the Connecticut river, distant forty miles further, 

 comes a view of the backbone Green mountain 

 ridge in Vermont: nearer still, twenty miles, at 

 the northeast, rises the magnificent Monndnock 

 in New Hampshire ; and south about fifteen 

 miles, old Wachusett, seen far off at sea all along 

 the southern coast of Rhode Island and Massa- 

 chusetts, stands a well-known monument from 

 generation to generation of the watchful seaman 

 navigating the ocean. 



Up to the time of the death of his wife, the 

 centenarian patriarch, fitting out and setting out 

 generously sons and daughters, left himself prop- 

 erty enough scarcely to carry him out in com'fort 

 for a long life. Since labor on the farm had be- 

 come too severe for his age, he has followed the 

 business oC a shoe maker. Accident had pre- 

 vented him from making and completing a pair 

 of shoes the day he was a hundred years old 

 and his son mentioned his design to do that work , 

 the same day one year afterwards. The favorite 

 son Jatnes had left Ashburnham several years ' 

 ago and settled in that part of the State of Penn- 

 sylvania, which is as wild and rough as the most 

 hilly parts of New England — Susquehanna coun- 

 ty near the New York line, westerly of Hudson 

 river some two hundred miles. After he was 

 ninety years old the patriarch once with his own 

 horse and light wagon took this journey alone to 

 visit his son and returned to Massachusetts. A ; 

 time afterwards, about ten years ago, he left Ash- i 

 burnham without expecting to return, to spend l 

 the rest of his life iu the family of his son in the I 

 Keystone State, and he now resides at Harford, ' 

 a town irerhaps more new and rough than his 

 long cherished town of Ashburnham. 



Two or three years ago the editor had heard 

 through his relatives at Ashburnham of the let- 

 ters of the patriarch as somewhat extraordinary 

 to he written by one of his age. The widow of 

 Sam'l Gibson and mother of his eldest son's wife 

 was then living, a matron almost as remarkable 

 for carrying out work and an unshattered Intel- ' 

 lect late in life, as the patriarch himself^ The , 

 day she was one hundred years old was celebra- 

 ted at the snug one story brick farm house upon 

 the hill (long her place of residence) by a collec- p 

 tion of the farmer neighbors, male and female, 

 from the few miles around — prayers were offered 

 and a sermon preached for the occasion. As, af- 

 ter perusing and'copying one of the patriarch's 

 letters, on a visit to Ashburnham last summer, 

 the editor had sought copies of other letters from 

 the same hand, he thinks them quite too interest- .. 

 ing to have any one of them lost. Thousands of f 

 people, nearly or more remotely connected with f 

 the writer, will doubtless consider thein as better 

 reading than the most interesting fictitious narra- 

 tives sought for by the young with avidity: we 

 think they are bearable even to the general read- 

 er, even though the language may be common 

 place. We therefore begin with the earliest let- 

 ter of the series furnished by our friends, written 

 between five and six years ago to a matron near 

 his own age ,after the patriarch had removed 

 some years before from the region of his most 

 interesting family and neighborhood associations, f. 

 when he and his correspondent were alone left d 

 of all the early settlers who had first broken in " 

 upon the forest seventy-one years before: ,. 



JOHN ADAMS TO DOI.LY GIBSON. 



Harford, Sept. 15, 1841. 

 Respected friend—] hope I shall not give offence 



