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Ktmn 



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STXvX^ 



CONDUCTED BY ISAAC HllA.. 



' TnO^E WHO L.^E 



OR IS THE EARTH ARE THE CHO«IS HOfLE OT G.iD, WHIUB UREA5IS HE KiS M IDE HIS PECULIiU DEPOSITt FOR J1.-BST»NTI«I. »ND 1.EKUINE T IRTUt."— J,#trso». 



VOLUME VI. 



CONCORD, N. H. MARCH 30, 184). 



NUMBER 3. 



THK FAUMEIt'S MONTHLY VISITOK, 



PIHMSHEIJ BY 



ISAAC HILL, & SONS, 



ISSL'EU ON TIIF, L\^V CAY llK EVERV MO.NTH, 



At No. 3, Hill's Brick Block. 



33-OExrB«i, AfiEXTs.— B. CooR, Keene, N H. : Thomaj 

 Fv. UAsirioN, Wiishiuclnii.City, U. C. ; John Marjh, Wash- 

 liintoh St. Buston, Mass. ; Ujiaei.es Warren, lirinley Uow, 

 WorCL->t :-r, Mass. 



TERMS.— To sijifle substribira. Fifty Cents. Tin pi.v 

 cent. >viJI bi .Tlliiwed to thf person who shall sunil moiv Umii 

 one subaci-iber. Twelve copies will be aeiit for the advance 

 payment of F'ce BoUars; twenty-five copies for Teit Dollars; 

 sixty copies for Tlccnlij Dollars-. The payment in every case to 

 be made in advance. 



^t^Maiicy and suincriptions, hrfa rcirulatiun of the Post Master 

 Oeneral, iitaij in all cancj be remitted liy the Post Master^ free of 

 postage, 



!f5--All s"-"'! 'men wlio have her' t<ifore acted aa Agents aie 

 requested to eontinu" their .'Vseiicy. Old subscribers who 

 tome und r the luu' terms, will plvase notify us of the names 

 alreadj- uii our books. 



<lI)c iUoutl)ij btsitnv. 



*' Man that is born of a woman liath but a ft'W days, and 

 is full of trouMc. Tie cometh up and is cut down like a 

 llower. He tleeth as it were a shadow, and never con- 

 linueti) in one stay." 



More th:iii fiTiy-pix yeari^ lind transpiretl since, 

 jil an n;irl_v agp, t«o kiiiilred luiart.s were united 

 ill tlie lioiiils nt' iiiiitiiiiioiiy in that part or Cliarles- 

 lowM, Mas.^acliutiells, iimv i'oin[;risiiii; a portion 

 of ilie town of Soiiiervilie ; and from tiie year 

 1787 niilil very near tlie close of tlie year 1843, a 

 |)enod of li(iy-si.f years, in a family of nine cliil- 

 dren wlioso aire.-* succeeding; each other differed 

 from twenty-two to thirty-tiix montlis, not a death 

 liad occurred in eitlier parentsor children. Com- 

 inenciny the world, like a large portion of the 

 fjimilics of the last century in New England, 

 wiili little or no property other than the excellent 

 haliits of iniiu.siiy and capacity for lahcr nnd in- 

 telligent efi'ort wliicli had lieen l>ef)Ueathed from 

 their tiitliei>i and mothers, this (iiiiiily was marred 

 ill that good fortune which has attended others 

 of the same generation in an eminent degree, by 

 n single casualty which a wise and lieneficent 

 Providence had seen to scatter in the various 

 succeeding generations of the same name that 

 have passed ofi' the stage in the last two hundred 

 years since ihe ancestors of this nsine first land- 

 ed al Cliarleslovvn. 



Isaac Hill, senior, father to the editor of the 

 Visitor, ditil at Ashliiirnham, .Massachiiseits, Dec. 

 22, 1843, at the aue of 77 years. He nas liorii in 

 that part of Canil)ridge. Mass., called, according 

 to the Indian name, Mcnotoney, tiow West Cam- 

 hriike, in May, 1766, and was nine years of age 

 ;it the lime of the hatlles of Lexington ninl 

 BiinUer Mill. Almost upon the ground of his 

 hinli and liy his immediate neighbors was op- 

 ened that great drama which lias resulted in the 

 melioralion of the conditon of man in both hemi- 

 sijhures. lie was not then of age to shoulder 

 his iiiuski't' and march to ilie batlle-field ; and 

 both his father .Miraham Hill (a Ibur-year soldier 

 in the previous French war) and "his broihers 

 Abraliaui and Tlioinas (the latter of whom is the 

 only member of the family still surviving, at the 

 age of 83 years) lefttheir business nt the moment 

 of alarm, and look part both in the Lexington 

 and Bunker Hill battles. Tlie father and sons 

 rushed to the Charlesiown heights and were 

 there in the inifl.st of the contest ami conll.igra- 

 lion of ihe town; while the younger son with 

 the molhrir and two elder sisters spread and took 

 care of upwards of one hundred cocks of hay, 

 \\liichhad been mown and raked the previous 

 d.iy upon that beautiful plat of ground (now the 

 properly of James Hill, Esq. and sons) which for 

 a hundrrd yeai's past has pro<luced, year suc- 

 ceeding y.-ir, possibly a greater amount of pro- 

 duction and profit than any tract of the .-ame ex- 

 tent ill the United States. In thptaniilv of Abra- 



liam Ilill senior has the hereditary ciilamily of 

 periodical insanity in its various phases appeared 

 to a greater extent than in any other branch ; and 

 to ihi-'j calamity is it to be nttribnted that the 

 greater part of the lill; of the recently deceased 

 was marred, and the lust iweiity-tive years ren- 

 ilered little better tliaii a blank. Yet it is grati- 

 fying to hi.^ children and fliends to know that the 

 last hours of the great sufferer imiler the most 

 painful mental agony exhibited a return of that 

 bright intellect and tliat aiiiialile and excellent 

 feeling towards niankinil which eharaclerizod the 

 honest, the enterprising and ihe benovolent youth 

 at the age of twenty-one years. For the greater 

 part of the last twenty year.s, there were but few 

 people whom he could see and converse with : 

 In that time his bible was his niOft constant eom- 

 pinion. He feared the approach of all strangers 

 as thai of an enemy tind fimcied destroyer and 

 persecutor: with the exception of the jiartner of 

 his youth and his younger children, lie rarely fell 

 free for conversaiion. A great portion of his 

 lime was spent in solitude. , 



He removed from the place of I. is nativity to 

 the interior of Worcester connly, in the year 

 17D8, when the editor of the Visitor was ten years 

 of age. His father and his liimily of brothers 

 had been among the |iioneers of that successful 

 agriculture and horticidtnre which have given so 

 much credit to the little town situated only six 

 miles out of Boston — of that enler|)rise which 

 has given n value to every well ciiliivated acre of 

 ground in the town of from two to five hundred 

 dollars — and of that spirit of cultivation and in- 

 dustry which has made a whole community not 

 only independent, lint opulent. Taken as a wiiole, 

 the town of Wejt Cambridge, with n large pro- 

 porliuii of i!,s area originally either sterile earth 

 of the liardne.ss of rock covered with savins 

 of barberries, or flooded, shaking morass, pre- 

 sents a comnnmity more truly independent, with 

 abundant means of education for tlie youth of 

 both sexes, with fewer men of inlcmperate or 

 immoral habits, and wiili more of the comforts 

 of life than any other community of the same 

 number dependent almost solely upon the [iro- 

 ductions of the soil in any part of the world. 



To the great credit of thi.s little community, 

 the possession of the same ground, with its pro- 

 duction in some cases increased ten told, remains 

 in the same family, and in most cases in the same 



Quincy market of Boston) have lately becom 

 owners of magnilicent ice establisliilients at tb 

 Spy pond in West Cambridge, situaletl in the 

 midst of the lin-ins of their ancestors. A braiicb 

 of the Charlestown ruiiroad runs directly to these 

 ponds— ice houses have been erected that will 

 hold many thousand tons ; and fiom the supply 

 secured in these during the winter, ships ur« 

 loaded from the wharf at IJiiarlestown, six miles 

 distant, at any .season of the year. Many hun- 

 dred thousand dollars have been gained to the 

 commerce from the port of Hoston by the ico 

 which has been taken from the Fresh pond in 

 Cambridge, about one mile distant, and from tlie 

 Spy pond. As n preservativ e of apples and other 

 frnUs sent in ships to a great distance the ice 

 ships are found to be very convenient. Mr. Da- 

 vid Hill the last year sent out two hundred boxes 

 of ripe strawberries trom hisiiirin, in tin ice ship 

 lo one of the West India isl.ands: they were sold 

 as u luxury there for whatever price was asked. 



When we visited the farm of Mr. Hill last 

 summer, he exhibited to us n grafted apple tree 

 standing near his house with the bullions evi- 

 dence, two feet in diameter, of the place in the 

 body where the scion was inserted, which he said' 

 he saw his uncle Abraham Hill engraft more than 

 sixty years since, when he was a boy : it was the 

 grand" old "spice apfile," long known as the larg- 

 est and richest fruit for pies, many thousand 

 bushels of wiiich have been sold from that neigh- 

 borhood in the Boston market. The position of 

 Mr. Hill's farm in an amphitheatre with a south- 

 easterly bearina, is peculiarly favorable for tho 

 I>roduction of iVuits: he has inore bearing peach 

 trees than any other farmer proliably in Massa- 

 chusetts. He has lately itilroduced the New Jer- 

 sey peach trees, which mature and decay much 

 sooner than the trees planted originally about 

 Boston, lasting only some eight of ten years. 

 The fruit of tlie.se li'e thinks to be decidedly bet- 

 ter than the trees raised fiom stones grown upon 

 the spot. ■ 



Retiirnitijtf, afier this wide digression, to ihu 

 subject of this notice, we may say that the de- 

 ceased was a farmer of the improvement school. 

 Filty years ago, when a resident of West Cam- 

 bridge, he and his elder brother, Abraham, as a 

 means of doubling their crop nf English hay, 

 were originals in taking a light schooner and go- 

 ing each spring to tlie islands in Boston bay, gath- 



ne. ' 'rililHlivisiims have generally taken place I eriug rock-weed which was conveyed through the 



Mystic liver at the highest point, trom whence it 

 was carted to be spread over their mowing 

 grounds ; we can just rememlier far back enough 

 to recollect that some of the elder neighbors then 

 condemned the experiment as one which would 

 probably destroy the whole crop. These tvvo 



so that what Ibrmeily constituted one farm now 

 contains lliice, four or more lariiis, each occupied 

 by an owner well off in all Ihe means of living. 

 The Pierce farm upon llic rough hills in the w<:st 

 |iari of the town adjoining Lexington, is made 

 ntn three splendid farms, each owned iiy a graml 



son of the active owner at the time* of our rirst | brothers left West Cambridge aljout the saim 



time. Isaac removed to a small farm in AsJi- 

 burnhaiii, being a part of one thousand acres of 



recollection. The largest farm in West Cam- 

 bridge lately was that tnvned by Amos Hill, ii 

 cousin of the subject of this notice, who in the 

 last flirty years has recl.aimed nearly the whole 

 of it, draining many acres of morass and re- 

 claiming other acres of sterile pine jilains or 

 light .sandy pasture grounds covered with whur- 

 lie berries and stunted o;dis. This we understand 

 is to be divided into three t'arms for as many sons. 

 James Hill and David Hill, sons of tho brother!- 



the best land in that hill town originally owned 

 by the editor's great-grandliilher on the inother'* 

 si"de; and Abraham went farther westward to the 

 then wilderness of Vermont, about twenty miles 

 west of Bellows Falls, to the township of Gr.af- 

 lon, where forty years afterwards we saw him 

 with ci'jht daiig-iiters all well married and settled 

 n life around him, and ho partially the victim for 



of Abraham Hill, sen., still live on the ground of the lirst time at the age of more than seventy 

 their ancestors of the same name: one or the vears of that malady which has come down in 

 other of these gentlemen has for the last tliirtv the lamily for .at least two centuries, temce t int 

 years almost invariably furnished the Boston ! time the revolutionary patriot rested """I' .'"» 

 market wiih llic earliest green ]>eas raised in the 



open air. The latter gentleman the last summer 

 went .ahead even of the steamboat supply of peas 

 brought from beyond the Delaware at the south. 

 He iiad finnislied in the pod about tilfy b.arrels 

 of three bushels each, tlie largest porlion of 

 which were sold at the high price of two dollars 



labors at the '.'ood old age of eighty years, being 

 the same iiL'c at which his liillier died : two 

 daughters of the same lamily, tiic youngest scaiTe- 

 ly twenty-five years ot' age, amiable and beaulilnl 

 a'nd of invcly" disposition, have also since de- 

 ceased. 



The fltlher of the editor of the Visitor earned 



the bushel or six dollarstlie barrel, before any ! to Ashbiirnham his taste und ambition fur im- 

 arrived fi-om the south. The 5ons of tlif.ie two provement: his tlrst ambition was to teur lij) the 

 gentlemen (enterprising markot m(P«hnnt? in the lUedgis nnd tr> bring into ftuiltul bearing th* 



