Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/371

Rh 1813. Previous to the ownership of Minot it was a portion of the Henry Gerrish title, according to the original grant of 1774, and re-apportionment of 1802. This Col. Henry Gerrish was the original surveyor of the township, in 1779. This has been considered by some as a "survey upon paper," merely, but there was a strong witness, we believe, as late as 1815, in favor of his actual survey, at least upon the southern or "Lloyd's Hill" line, where were his initials distinctly marked, "H. G.," upon a corner tree still flourishing.

He was a native of Boscawen, and, at the breaking out of the Revolution was thirty-two years of age, and was an active leader in the affairs of that community. At the age of twenty-four he was prominent in the civil as well as military affairs of the province, and was a delegate to the first state convention, in 1774. Being a land surveyor, his services were often in demand in locating and mapping these wild northern districts. He was a captain of militia at the opening of the war, and marched with his company to Medford upon the receipt of the news of the battle of Lexington. He was present at the surrender of Burgoyne, fighting in that action against the left flank of the British; and he was clerk at the sale of the plunder captured at Batten Kill at that time.

He was a celebrated blacksmith, as well as land-surveyor, and forged mill-cranks and made mill-saws, it is said, upon a common anvil, at his smithy's forge. In after years, as population increased and the tide of travel by carriages and with heavy teams set in along the valley of the Merrimack, he established a tavern known as the "Travelers' Home," where in generous, old-fashioned style, he dispensed hospitality to the traveling public. Col. Gerrish, by means of his knowledge of the lands and affairs in this northern part of the state, became an extensive land-owner, large tracts coming into his possession at low tax rates. He was a son of Capt. Stephen Gerrish, also one of the original grantees of Whitefield, and a man of note and esteem in those early eighteenth century days, a native of Newbury, Mass.

What is now known as the Chase lot, numbered one in the eleventh range, was originally a long, triangular shaped section, having its base to the south-west, against the Parker lot, and running along the Dalton line to a point just north of the B., C. & M. Railroad station, and containing 72 acres. In the revised allotment it fell to the share of Benjamin Newhall, or Newell, as many of the family now write the name. There were three of them among the grantees of the town, all from Lynn, Mass., where the progenitors of the American Newells first located, about A. D. 1630.

Benjamin and Aaron were brothers, and successful cordwainers in their native Lynnfield. Increase, who was of another branch of the same family, was an officer in the Revolutionary army. He was a tanner by trade, and also an inn-keeper. He died in 1815, at the old homestead of his lineal ancestors. Descendants of this same Newhall family still reside in town, in the persons of Abel S. Newell, Mrs. Bailey Dame, and Mrs. Col. Joseph Colby.

But the Newhalls failed to "keep their titles clear" in Whitefield, and Capt. French paid the accumulated taxes on the seventy-two acre triangle, and held it for the future occupation of Elder Jonathan Chase, who took possession in 1824. He located his primitive home on the extreme northern or narrowest point of the lot, and many of the passing generation well remember the old log house, as it stood just below the present "Brown Lumber Company's" mills. The little trout stream, known in those days as "Chase's-brook," came rollicking down from the Dalton hills, entering John's river just in the rear of the house.

A gravelly mound of peculiar formation, thought by some to have been of artificial origin, stood just in front of