Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/439

 NORTHERN COOS. 401

lowed the course of the river through to Canada, of the wonderful fertility of the soil in the valley of the upper Connecticut, made their way through the forests and commenced a settlement on the river and in the valley of the Indian Stream. They were mostly driven away by hostile bands of Indians during the war of 181 2.

" Some of these returned after the close of the war, bringing others with them, and in 1820 there were probably about forty families settled along the north bank of the river, the setdement extending about eight miles north and east from the mouth of Indian Stream.

"In 1820-22 surveys were made along the Connecticut and some 10,000 acres of land marked out in lots of one and two hundred acres each, by Moses Davis and Jonathan Eastman, for an association of proprietors who claimed to derive their title to these lands by deed from one Philip, a chief of the St. Francis tribe of Indians. (See house journals, N. H. Legislature, No- vember session, 1824, now in state library.)

" These lands were offered to settlers by the proprietors, in alternate lots, on condition of making stipulated improvements thereon within a given period, working on roads, etc., or in other words doing settlers' duty, as it was termed.

"In 1S24, at the June session of the New Hampshire Legislature, the atten- tion of the state government was called to the encroachments of these settlers on lands north of the parallel of 45° north latitude, which it claimed as part of its public domain, and a committee was accordingly appointed to proceed to the territory, make the necessary investigations and report the fact at the No- vember session. The committee reported some fifty-eight setders on the lands.

"The state repudiated the Indian or Proprietary title, but in view of the hardships endured by these pioneers, and their having entered upon their lands in good faith, ciuieted them in their title to the lands in their possession, to the amount of two hundred acres each, excepting Jeremiah Tabor, who was quieted in the amount of five hundred acres and Nathaniel Perkins in the amount of seven hundred acres. (See journal before referred to.)

"Among the early settlers, 1816-1824-, in this town I would mention Nath- aniel Perkins from New Hampton, N. H., John Haynes from Lisbon, Richard I. Blanchard from Haverhill, N. H., Ebenezer Fletcher from Charlestown (No. 4), father of Hiram Adams Fletclier, for a long period a prominent member of the Coos bar, and who died at Lancaster in 1880, aged seventy-four years. Also Kimball B. Fletcher, now a prominent citizen of Lancaster. Mr. Fletcher brought considerable money with him from Charlestown ; erected a large saw and grist mill; in 1826 a large barn, and cleared up an extensive farm, and finally moved to Colebrook, where he died about i860. Also Gen. Moody Bedel, father of Hon. Hazen Bedel, of Colebrook, N. H., and (ien. John Bedel whose portrait and biographical sketch appeared in a recent number of the Granite Monthly, was among the early settlers here, removing from Haverhill, N. H., here with his family in 1816. Gen. Bedel rendered very effi- cient service in the war of 181 2, commanding a regiment at Ticonderoga and at Lundy's Lane.

" But little attention was paid by the state to this section for some twelve years subsequent to this period. The citizens in the mean time having for their mutual protection formed a government of their own, very democratic in form, having a written constitution and code of laws ; the supreme power vested in a council of five, annually chosen ; a judiciary system for the collection of debts and the prevention and punishment of crime ; a military company duly organ- ized and e(iuipped — probably more as a police force than for offensive or de- fensive purposes.

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