Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/327

 ITEMS AND INCIDENTS IN HOPKINTON.

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��amusing bits of experience that enliven social converse whenever they are told. The list of such relations afforded by the history of this town is too long for complete publication. We have there- fore selected a few of the best, offering them as means of the lighter entertain- ment of our readers.

INCOGNITO.

In perusing the reminisences al- ready recited to the public, the reader has noticed occasional mentions of Dolloff's brook. This rivulet courses its way from its source near the cen- ter of the town to a point near the north-eastern corner, where it empties into the Contoocook river. This trib- utary of the Contoocook receives its name from one Joseph Dolloff, or Dolph — the people pronounce it both ways. Quite early in the history of Hopkinton, Abraham Kimball, first male child born in town, built a mill on Dolloff's brook, at a point of the present highway running eastward to Buswell's Corner, where the remains of the ancient structure can be seen to this day. For the accommodation of the* mill-hands, a dug-out was con structed close by the mill's location. Being intended for a temporary con- venience, the dug-out was not always occupied. One day there came into the neighborhond two strangers — a man and a woman — with a few personal effects, which they brought along on foot, while they drove before them a cow in which they seemed to maintain exclusive proprietorship. They came from — nobody knows where — and, in want of shelter, took quarters in the aforesaid dug-out, otherwise unused at the time, and where the indulgence of the mill-owner allowed them to remain for a considerable period, subsequently to which a small framed house, stand- ing to this day, sheltered them.

Dolloff and his companion lived in Hopkinton the balance of their lives, or at least till death severed their domestic bond. Dolloff was always poor, being more or less an object of charity, and when, at the age of at least one hundred years, he left this

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��world, he took the secret of his per- sonal history with him, excepting to claim that he was a soldier under Wolfe, in 1759, and was the first man to mount the ramparts of the enemy at the battle of Quebec. Whether this claim was true or not, Dolloff was not a person of much in- dividual energy or intelligence.*

A BY-WORD.

A local proverb, or by-word, is often a product of the merest accident. Some time ago in the history of this town an instance in kind occured, de- veloping a pass-phrase that was quite common twenty-five years ago or more, if it is not even now sometimes heard. The story is as follows :

Lois Eastman was a non compos mentis. Being a pauper, and living before the purchase of a town farm, she was annually boarded out in fulfil- ment of the prevalent custom of dis- posing of the homeless poor. For many years, Lois lived on Putney's Hill. At the time of which we speak, the present main road from the center of the neighborhood to the lower village had not been constructed, and the existing highways being rather indirect, stranger travellers were liable to the necessity of inquiring the way. One day a stran- ger, doubtful of his road, knocked at the door of the house where Lois lived, to ask the way to the center of the town. Lois responded to his knock, and in answer to his question said :

"You go right down by Joe Putney's turnip yard, and by the sweet apple tree, and so on down to John Gage's."

This was indeed a part of the way to the lower village, though the direc- tion was altogether unintelligible to the

��*It is an interesting fact in this con- nection that the name of Joseph Dolloff appears in the company of Capt. Na- thaniel Folsom. of Exeter, in the regi- ment of Col. Joseph Blanchard, of Dun- stable, in the expedition against forts DuQuesne. Niagara, and Crown Point, in 1755. The same name also appears in Capt. -John Titcomb's company, in the regiment of Col. Nathaniel Meserve, of Portsmouth, in the expedition against Crown Point, in 1756.

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