it. One was shot on the road from East Weare to Dunbar¬ 
ton, and the tree from which it fell was shown for many 
years. The bird weighed twenty-five pounds, and it was so 
fat that it burst open when it struck the ground.” No date 
is given, but apparently this was before the Revolution. In 
the neighboring hamlet of Francestown “wild Turkeys 
were occasionally seen” a century ago. In W. R. Cochran's 
“History of Francestown, N. H..” (1895) is the statement 
that “Oliver Butterfield said that he had seen them in flocks 
on the mountain (i. e., Crotched Mt., 2000 ft., in the West¬ 
ern part of Francestown), and that Dr. Farley, in 1815, 
brought one down from the top of the highest tree ‘with one 
shot in the eye.' They were exceedingly cunning and wary 
and hard to secure.” Turkeys were also found at Hancock, 
just to the west of Francestown, in the latter part of the 
eighteenth century, and here, too, the surviving flocks were 
dependent on their keenness of sense to avoid destruction. 
The following passage is from Hayward's “History of Han¬ 
cock”: “Wild turkeys were frequently seen. Joseph Sy- 
monds, Sr., saw one or more in the road near his house 
(this between 1779 and 1820), Edmund Davis shot a large 
one near his home (No. 28) (between 1779 and 1806). 
They were frequently heard by the Goodhue family, who 
lived near Antrim line (about 1790). Their headquarters 
seem to have been in what was then known as ‘Tophet 
Swamp' (now called Swamp Woods), near the line between 
Peterboro and Hancock. 
“Simeon Lakin, Sr., who had become somewhat acquain¬ 
ted with their habits when a soldier (in the Revolution), de¬ 
termined to secure some of them. They were pretty quiet 
during the day, but Mr. Lakin found their roosting place 
and scattered unthreshed rye from this place to the cleared 
land near Samuel Ames’ mill (No. 1). Here he built a 
bough house. After the turkeys were well baited, Mr. Lakin 
and his neighbor, Nathan Brooks, . . . went down in the 
night and waited for them to come out for their morning 
meal. With the early dawn they made their appearance, 
led by a staid old gobbler. Mr. Brooks was so excited that 
9 
