Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/325

 THE

��GRANITE MONTHLY,

A NEW HAMPSHIRE MAGAZINE

Devoted to Literature, Biography, History, and State Progress.

��Vol. VI.

��JULY, 1883.

��No. 10.

��CHESTER PIKE.

��The subject of this sketch was born July 30, 1829, in the town of Cornish, N. H. Mr. Pike may be said to be possessed of prescriptive rights in the township of his nativity and residence, for, planted of others, it was by blood of his blood nurtured into permanence and prosperity.

As the traits of the parent re-appear in the qualities of the child, so the annals of the stock from whence he sprangmin- gle inseparably with the chronicles of this many-hilled town by the Connecticut. His great-grandfather and great-grand- mother Chase were the first white per- sons to settle in Cornish, and in every mention of early citizens will be found the names of Pike, Bryant, and Chase, whose blood blends with his. The friendship arising from nearness of res- idence and a common industry, which from the first had bound these families together, was soon strengthened and made permanent by the stronger tie of intermarriage.

In 1827 Eben Pike, who was the eldest son of Ebenezer and Mary Marcy Pike, of Cornish, was united in marriage with the daughter of Captain Sylvanus Bryant and Sarah Chase Bry- ant, of the same place. This lady, on her mother's side, was a cousin to the statesman, Salmon P. Chase, who for many years represented Ohio in the senate of the United States, and at the

��time of his death, as chief-justice of the supreme court, wore, with undi- minished honor and dignity, the mantle of the great Marshall.

The earliest fruit of this union was Chester Pike, whose life we are now tracing. A later son, John B. Pike, a mail-route agent between Boston and St. Albans, an efficient officer and cour- teous gentleman, is now a resident of Lebanon, in this state. The oldest son still resides in his native town, and not far from the spot where his grandpar- ents first settled, in the broad, pictur- esque valley of the Connecticut, hard by the village of Windsor, and under the shadows of Ascutney. To one so located, the relics of the past are objects of enduring interest. The very hills and valleys must awaken memories of the olden time and kindle associations of the ancestral home, which will perpet- uate the virtues and the aspirations of the dead. He can but experience something of the feeling of the de- scendants of the old families of Eng- land, who live upon their ancient estates, and saunter in the halls of old castles, or under the shadows of gnarled trees that were planted centuries ago by the founders of their line, whose ashes long since mingled with, and be- came a part of, their inalienable home- steads. The remembrance of the brave fathers and fair mother who lived in the

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