52 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



After a century and a half of constant trapping and with the 

 spread of settlements into the eastern part of the country, the 

 beaver was extirpated from the coastal regions of New England 

 and greatly reduced in numbers elsewhere in the eastern 

 United States. It is said that the Indians were careful to leave 

 a certain proportion of the beavers to continue the stock, or to 

 kill adult animals and leave the younger ones to mature, but 

 the insatiate white trappers killed old and young indiscrimi- 

 nately and took as many as possible for their immediate gain, 

 with the result that the animals, bit by bit, were killed out from 

 the more accessible parts of their eastern range. Yet the re- 

 mains of their dams lasted for many years after the beavers 

 had gone and often were mentioned as monuments in land 

 conveyances, while the old beaver ponds silted up and became 

 grassy meadows, where frequently the earlier settlers, pushing 

 their way up the streams into the interior, found the only 

 available pasturage for their cattle. In southern New Hamp- 

 shire the last beaver in the town of Rindge is said to have been 

 killed about 1780 (Stearns, E. S., "History of the Town of 

 Rindge, N. H.," 1875); and the last one in the town of Peter- 

 borough about 1790 (Smith, A., "History of the Town of 

 Peterborough, N. H.," 1876). In the town of Pawlet, southern 

 Vermont, the "last" beaver was killed about 1800 by one 

 Ansel Whedon, who came upon it in his cornfield and slew it 

 with a hoe (Hollister, H., Vermont Hist. Mag., vol. 3, p. 890, 

 1877). On the Maine coast near Wells, the local, historian 

 records that a trapper took 17 beavers there in 1755, but they 

 seem to have quite gone before many years after. In northern 

 New England, the beaver, though greatly reduced, has never 

 been quite exterminated. Zadock Thompson, writing in 1842 

 ("History of Vermont," p. 39, 1842), believed that they were 

 then nearly if not quite gone and mentions that the last one 

 that he knew of was killed in Essex County, about 1830. 

 Probably a few lingered in this northeastern corner of the 

 State until much later, for at that time this region was nearly 

 a primeval wilderness. Indeed, F. S. Hoag in 1909, after 

 having made many inquiries among the trappers of Vermont, 

 was credibly informed by a W. E. Balch that the last beaver he 

 knew of in the State lived at Neale's Pond, north of Lunenburg, 

 Essex County, about 20 years before (about 1890). He be- 

 lieved that it was completely extinct in Vermont by 1909. 



