Author: William F. Whitcher

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-07-28

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9781332089932

Excerpt from One Hundred and Fifth Anniversary Observance and Dedication of Soldiers' Monument: At Haverhill, N. H. September 20, 1912 The English Haverhill is a quaint old parish and market town, picturesquely situated, with its one long street, in a valley on a branch line of the Great Eastern railway, with two manufacturing industries, one for cotton, the other for silk fabrics, and with a population of about 4,500. The bustling, prosperous, manufacturing city on the Merrimac, with its 40,000 population, was known as "Old Haverhill" within the memory of many here today, and our Haverhill, its namesake, was and still is new in comparison with that municipality, which, more than twenty years ago, celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Our Haverhill, however, with its one hundred and fifty years of life, takes on the dignity of age when compared with the three other Haverhills on the world's map - one in Lawrence County, Ohio, another in Marshall County, Iowa, and still another in Butler County, Kansas, each a small farming township, and each with a population of less than four hundred. Towns as well as individuals have a character and individuality of their own, the result of varied influences. In its one hundred and fifty years of life Haverhill has had its own peculiar characteristics. It has differed from its neighbors. It still differs. It is not Bath, Coventry-Benton, or Piermont; it has been, and is, unlike its twin sister, Newbury, Vermont. It is Haverhill. Its people have been Haverhill people. Its history is peculiarly its own. Its settlement was not an accident. For a period of fifty years and more previous to such settlement, there was on the part of the colonists in northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire knowledge of a Coos country on the Connecticut, possessing a soil of marvelous fertility, forests of heavy and valuable growth, and streams furnishing abundant fish and ample water-power for mills. Trappers had visited it, captives had been carried by Indians through it to Canada, so that as early as 1704 Penhallow mentions a French-Indian fort, and corn planted at Coos high up on the Connecticut river. Rev. John Williams, who in that same year was carried, with more than a hundred others, captive from Deerfield, Mass., to Canada, in his narrative published some years later, speaks of Coos as if it were a region well known. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.