Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/142

 I20 THE GRANITE MONTHLY,

��THE OLD RED MILL.

��BY GENERAL WALTER HARRIMAN.

OUR New England towns made early provision for the gospel and the grist-mill. Both of these were deemed indispensable by our ancestors, and the settlers of Penacook were not an exception to the general rule. Par- son Walker, with his learning, his industry .and his great influence, was promptly on the ground. In 1729 the grist-mill put in an appearance. It stood where the east village now is, and the wheel was driven by Mill Brook, which issues from Turtle Pond. On the same stream, further up, a j\/7t:/-mill was erected the same year, the crank of which was brought on a horse's back from Haverhill, Massachusetts. But the Old Red Mill was not yet, nor here. It came a few years later, and on the west side of the Merrimack River, being the first mill, of any kind, on that side of the river in the territory now embraced in Merri- mack County.

In the south-westerly part of Concord, within a mile of Bow line, and about the same distance from Hopkinton line and the corner of Dunbarton, there is a body of water, three fourths of a mile in length, surrounded by low, swampy ground, and abounding in fish, which bears the unpoetic name of Turkey Pond. The name comes from a supposed resemblance in the shape of the pond to our common Thanksgiving fowl. The outlet of this deep basin of water is called Turkey River, which flows northerly a short distance, and falls into Little Turkey Pond — thence in a south-easterly direction, through shaded vales, till it joins the Merrimack, two miles below the State- House. On this unpretending stream, which has run red with the blood of Indians, and which has been immortalized in song, stands the Old Red Mill.

At a meeting of the proprietors of Penacook, October 13, 1732: —

Fofeof, That any Person that is agreeable and shall be accepted of by the Pro- prietors of Penny Cook that will build a Grist Mill on Turkey River in Penny Cooli for the use of the Proprietors shall have one hundred acres of Land conven- ient to the mill and the Benefit of the whole Str am of said Turkey River.

It appears from the records that the proprietors were more successful in their hunt for persons that were "agreeable" than Diogenes was, with his lantern, in finding honest men in Athens, — for, at a legal meeting in March, 1733, they voted, " that Mr. Henry Lovejoy and Mr. Birachias Farnum be accepted and approved of for building of mills on Turkey River in Penny Cook."

At the same meeting: —

Vottd That in case the above-said Henry Lovejoj^ and Barachias Farnum, or their heirs or assigns, shall ever forfeit the mills above-mention d unto the proprie- tors, the proprietors shall pay the said Lovejoy and Farnum, or their heirs and assigns, the value of on(^ half of the iron work and stones of the said mi Is, as they shall be valued when the mills shall be forfeited.

Voted^ That the before-mentioned Lovejoy and Farnum shall not be ob'iged to tend the grist-mill on any days in the vveek except Mondays and Fridays, (pro- vided they grind all the grain that shall be brought to the mills on said days,) during the terra of ten years from the date hereof.

These two energetic men (Lovejoy and Farnum), in the summer of 1733, when all the region about Turkey River was a '' howling wilderness," when Concord contained but a handful of white people, and perhaps an equal num- ber of savages; when, for ten years thereafter, not a settler stepped foot in

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