Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/372

 33 6

��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��the ancient domicile, about where the office of the lumber company now is located. Previous to the Chase own- ership, however, and following that of Capt. French, there was a division of titles, Reynold Way and Calvin White having sixty acres off the south end, and Elias Bascom the remaining twelve acres in the acute angle of the lot. These were all united in 1824 in the latter ownership, and conveyed to John Perkins, and by him sold to Elder Chase. Afterward, in 1829, it came into possession of Hon. A. M. Chase, a son of fonathan.

The title of Joseph Hart, one of the grantees of the town by the pleasure of the royal governor, John Went- worth, Esq., was numbered fifty-six, which, in the second, or re-survey, be- came two in the eleventh and eight in the seventh ranges, the former of which, in the later years, formed a part of the J. M. Gove farm. But it knew other owners before a permanent settler was secured ; ior Mr. Hart, like many or most of his associates, failed to pay his portion of the necessary assessments, and Samuel Minot secured the title from Edward Cutts, the United States collector of taxes. Minot had paid the demands against it for many years before taking a deed. It afterward formed a part of the thousand or two acre tract purchased by Asa King, and we believe Capt. N. C. King first com- menced the clearing of it. Through the hands of various owners passed the western division of thirty acres, until in 1852 James Gilchrist deeded it to A. M. Chase, and it now forms a part of the present Chase homestead.

Jonathan Chase came hither from Unity, his birth-place, in 1824, with his family, a wife and four children, the one son being the late Hon. A. M. Chase. This Jonathan was a preacher of some renown in the Methodist church. He was a descendant through a long line of noted Thomases, Sam- uels, Josephs, and Jonathans, from that Aquila who came from Cornwall, England, in 1639, settling in Hamp- ton. There were warriors, and min-

��isters, and merchants, and judges, scattered all along the line from Aquila to Jonathan. For a hundred years or more they retained the ancient heraldic insignia to which they were entitled in the days of English chivalry. It is described in the early records as elab- orate and noteworthy. There were four silvery crosses on a field of red, on a blue corner of which was a gold- en lion passu/!/. The crest — a golden lion rampant, holding in his paws a silver cross. Beneath the arms proper was the ancient family motto — " For- ward."

After a score or more of years in their primitive house, the family moved into a commodious frame cottage sit- uated just north of the present resi- dence of Alison Brown. It was like the traditional "old red farm-house" of New England ; and as we see it now against our life's morning horizon, it was embowered in lilacs and roses that almost hid the eastern front, leaning over the path from the gate, and sweet- ening all the air.

This second generation of the Chase family homestead was burned in the summer of 1854, the same season that is remembered in town as the " vear of conflagrations," when so many thou- sand acres of valuable timber lands were left a scene of black desolation.

It was from this cottage upon the hill-side that Jonathan, when he grew old, was carried across the vallev to the grave-yard yonder, in a retired corner of which a plain marble shaft tells the reader that Rev. Jonathan Chase died November n, 1836, aged 63. He was called the pioneer of Methodism in Whitefield. Many o£ his religious ideas were of the stern old Puritanic stamp, but he is remembered by surviving associates and neighbors with kindness and respect.

Situated in the midst of charming prospects of the grand old hills, upon a broad plain just south of the burned red cottage site, thay had builded a large and commodious modern farm- house, adapted to the increased wants of the family, and here, for many years,

�� �