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| West Running Brook from a Robert Frost book of the same title published 1928, woodcut by J. J. Lankes |
Transcribed from The Cape Ann Light and Gloucester Telegraph, Saturday, June 12, 1869, Gloucester, Massachusetts, page 2.
“A SUMMER HOLIDAY
IN THE COUNTRY
Derry, N.H., is familiar to many of our people from a
variety of causes: made familiar by the reminiscences of the fathers – of the
Londonderry women who sought our town on horseback to dispose of the products
of their spinning wheels, looms and dairies; by the Derry linen handed down by
the careful mothers as an heirloom; by intermarriage; and by reminiscences of
the school hours of those who claim Pinkerton Academy or Adams’ Female Academy
as their alma mater, including, by
the way, not a few of the present generation. It is also known to many as a
desirable summer resort, and these recall pleasant hours among its shady
retreats and attractive drives over forest roads.
The
dust of our kindred moulders in its quiet church-yards, and the ever hearty
welcome and country cheer of living representatives of the family makes it a
second home to us. It is with pleasure
therefore that we antedate our vacation by an early summer holiday, spent amid
scenes rendered familiar by visits neither few nor short.
Our route
lies along our old sea line to Salem, thence through the brown leather fields
of Peabody and almost as brown canker worm ravaged orchards of Danvers, the
meadows of Middleton golden with butter cups, on to Lawrence with its hum of
spindles, thence over the line into the Granite State to the scotch-irish
settlement of Derry nee Londonderry nee Nutfield. Here at Windham the boys have dug through a sawdust
bank into a bed of preserved snow, and are having a game of snowball on the
ninth of June – snowballing, while further on at Derry the jaded horses are struggling
through pulverized sandheaps and blinding clouds of dust.
And
this is Derry, where we pass the night and wake in the morning at the summons
of joyful bells and booming cannon. – Is this your quiet country town, with a
constant stream of teams pouring in from early dawn, and the railroad trains
landing carload after carload of passengers, until they are numbered by
thousands. Or is this ancient
muster-day, or the still more antiquated and equally famous Londonderry Fair,
celebrated in ancient legend. Is yonder
canvass the cattle-booth, and are the crowd that fills the plain engaged in
wrestling matches and sack races and all the unique Irish games brought to this
section by the first settlers?
No! the days of the Londonderry Fair are among
the things of the past, and the young men of our day have known service on other
grounds than the muster-fields of their fathers. To-day (Thursday) we meet to celebrate the
one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of ancient Nutfield.
One
hundred and fifty years ago to-day sixteen families, toilsomely and wearily,
with ox-teams doubtless, and such rude house-hold effects as were suited to
their time and condition and long journey, made their devious way over these
hills and across these vales, then tree-covered, to the brookside where a few
rough huts had been put up for their accommodation, and there set up their
household goods, and founded new homes in an untried country. They left their mother country, as long
before their ancestors had left the heaths of Scotland and emigrated to the north
of Ireland. A whole colony them, five
ship-loads, had arrived at Boston in the late summer of 1718, and had scattered
to various settlements of the colony of Massachusetts Bay. These sixteen families had passed a severe
winter, mostly on shipboard, in Casco Bay, and when spring opened had sailed up
the Merrimac to Haverhill whence pioneers had come over the hills to Nutfield,
and prepared the way for the infant settlement.
Sixteen
families then. Now the rough places have
been made smooth, fertile fields and fruitful orchards have driven back the
walnut, chestnut and butternut from which the old town took its name, and
substantial farm buildings and handsome villas have taken the places of the
rude log hut.
Less
than a hundred souls a century and a half ago, - today ten thousand people gather
from far and near, some across a continent, to do honor to the occasion.
Gilmore
does not save all his music for the Peace Jubilee, but enlivens this day with
melody worthy of his fame, and Arbuckle adds to the musical treat as Arbuckle
can. The Manchester Veterans are here,
with their black velvet knee breeches and yellow top boots, their blue swallow
tails with white lappels, and old fashioned cocked hats, accompanied by the Manchester
Concert Band.
Here
are horses and teams enough, and varied enough, for a camp meeting, tied in
every yard and along every fence and under nearly every tree: here is the knife sharpener and the ballad
vender, the soap man and the pop corn peddler, and all the auxiliaries of the
muster field: and here is the diluted lemonade and the spiritless soda and leathery
sponge cake and all the requirements for a picnic; here also is an antiquarian
tent, worthy of a modern fair.
And
here are people, people, people, to be talked to and played for and fed- yes,
fed, with more to be gathered up at the close of the feast than in the days of
the five small loaves and two fishes. To
be taked to, hour by hour, by those who have gone out, or whose ancesters have
gone out from the old township, and who have earned a position and influence in
the country at large.
Here is
the sage and benign Horace, himself born in Londonderry, who write for more
readers daily through the Tribune than we shall reach in a lifetime. Here is Senator Patterson and ex-senators and
ex-governors and dignitaries, almost without number, all of whom claim a scotch-irish
ancestry, but, paradoxically, disclaim Irish blood.
And the
burden of their talk is the same, the glorification of their ancestors, and through
their ancestors of themselves. One might
well wonder where would have been free schools, and religious toleration and
civil liberty, but for this little settlement in New Hampshire. The Scotch-Irish were honest- they bought
their lands the Indians; they were brave – their ancestors fought at Marathou;
they were patriotic, - their fathers starved rather than surrender at the siege
of Londonderry; they were witty – they had lived in Ireland, the home of
wit. What, then! Shall we claim no
virtue, no valor, no humor, because our ancestors reached these scenes via
Agawam and the banks of the Merrimac instead of more directly from the old
country?
It is a
great day for Derry, whose like will not be seen for a half century to
come. It is to Derry what the Peace
Jubilee will be to Boston, the event of the century, to be looked back upon and
talked of for a lifetime to come. And
Derry has given her visiting sons and daughters such a generous and abundant
welcome as the importance of the occasion demands; such a welcome as few small
towns can equal and none surpass.
The
show is not over, but we turn our back upon the busy scene and upon friends who
would fain detain us longer, and hastily write out this sketch of our holiday,
while we are “jogging along” homeward in the cars.
Back
over the Boston & Maine to Lawrence rolls the heavily laden train, with
steadily decreasing numbers, disgorging its living freight at station after
station, so numerous that it is a matter of surprise that any were left for
other conveyance than by rail. Salem in
one State is left far behind, and now we approach Salem the first. There just ahead is the tunnel into whose
gloom we are about to plunge, with full faith however of reaching the light
beyond; and here, on the left, speeds the merchandize train which was to have
taken us to our journey’s end, leaving us a night’s delay and Whittier’s
refrain ringing in our ears – but for the thronging depots, but for the crowded
train, but for the unavoidable delays of large travel – “it might have been.” "
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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Another Nutfield Anniversary Account from an 1869 Gloucester, Massachusetts Newspaper", Nutfield Genealogy, posted April 9, 2018, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/04/another-nutfield-anniversary-account.html: accessed [access date]).
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