Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/204

 190

��MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN HOPKINTON.

��Hampshire frontier, it became the facile resort of thieves, smugglers, counter- feiters, and other outlaws, seeking the awards of their nefarious traffic. The obscure haunts of wood and dell afford- ed many an opportunity of conducting outlawry, which has left too few reliable data to encourage an exact narration. Horse-thieving, smuggling and counter- feiting were conducted by gangs of ac- complices that operated on a line ex- tending from Canada to Massachu- setts. Secret meetings. were held in out-of-the-way places, like the dark glen on the Sibley brook, as it ap- proaches the meadow on Dolloph's brook, where, on a dark, rainy night, a party is said to have discovered a whole convention of men, supposed to be consulting for mutual criminal advan- tage. Smuggling was carried on in goods surreptitiously ponveyed across the Canada border and thence south- wardly to places of profitable destina- tion. Goods were conveyed in par- cels, united in lots, and distributed again in packages, to suit the conven- ience of the operators. The partially settled state of the country facilitated these operations so far that, with all the wariness of public officials, very little progress was made in arresting the crime. The counterfeiters dealt both in spurious notes and coin ; the former were largely purchased in Canada, and the latter to some extent, possibly, manufactured here. In the chimney of an old house on the Sibley farm, taken down in 1878, by Dr. C. P. Gage of Concord, was a vault or cavity, un- like anything customarily found in old chimneys, and supposed to have been designed in furtherance of counter- feiting. The fact that a former propri- etor was confined in the State Prison in Charlestown, Mass., for dealing in spurious money, added force to the suspicion. Different places in this town have been pointed out as possi- ble or probable scenes of former crimi- nalities in the line described, and which now belong to a shadowy histo- ric past.

The present subject would be in- complete without a reference to the use of intoxicating liquors. At the time of

��the settlement of Hopkinton, the prac- tice of alcoholic stimulation was essen- tially universal. Rum, or some other intoxicant, was considered an indispen- sable household article. Alcoholic liquors were drank at home and abroad. All social courtesies were confirmed in drinking. The neighbor who congratulated at the event of birth, the friend at the fireside, the laborer in the field, the customer at the counter, the guest at the wedding, the clergy- man on his parochial rounds, and the mourner at the funeral, were all treated to liquor. On gala days and occasions fabulous quantities of intoxicants were consumed. When the first Baptist church in the town was raised, the brethren provided a barrel of rum, and a complimentary supply of sugar, for the refreshment of the company. Dur- ing one town-meeting in the older time, over sixty dollars worth of liquor was sold in small quantities* in one store alone. During the continuance of the general traffic in liquor, Ira A. Putney, a teamster, conveyed from the lower country into one store in this town, thirty-six hogsheads of rum in six weeks. Possibly a considerable part of this quantity was consumed in other places, being distributed to traders more distant from the southern centres of wholesale traffic.

Previously to the great temperance reformation, which begun in this town about fifty years ago, the popular traffic in and consumption of alcoholic liquors was carried on without special moral consideration, though to some extent under legal cognition. f The redemp-

the store of Abel Kimball. There were thirty- eight charges in the bill, and they were all for small quantities of liquor, ranging from a dram to a "point," including glasses and "mugs of flip." The evidence of mutual settlement at the bottom of the account is as follows :
 * In 1783, Rev. Elijah Fletcher settled a bill at

Jan. 29, 1783. Reckoned and Settled all account! from the Beginning of the World to this Day, and nothing Due on either Side.

Elijah Fletcher. Aisel Kimball.

fThe following extract from the records of this town illustrates :

STAIE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. Merrimack ss.

To the Honorable Samuel Morrill, Judge of the Probate for said County.

We, your Petitioners, humbly sheweth that-

��■ of Hopkinton, in said county, is in a habit of being almost continually intoxicated, which un-

�� �