Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/42

 3°

��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��mansion-house that had been built by Nathaniel, and moved into it with the wife he had recently married, Miss Ann, daughter of Rev. John Taylor, of Milton, a descendant of one of the Pilgrim fathers.* The new mistress of the Oilman house, as it was there- after termed, was a woman of large culture, strong mind, and great beauty of person. Her first child, who was born just a year after her marriage lacking two days, was named for her father, a patronymic that was famous in New Hampshire in after years. The early years of marriage were somewhat disturbed by the rumors of war, that blew fateful and threatening from the frontiers, and his second son, who bore his own name, was an infant of scarcely two months, when Nicholas Gilman marched, as lieutenant, under his uncle, Peter, to join in the opera- tions around Lake George, in 1755.

Prior to the Revolution he held many important civil and military ap- pointments under the government of the magnificent Wentworths. Between him and the last royal governor, the cultivated and enterprising Sir John, there was a strong personal friendship. When the storm of the Revolution came, he threw ail of his influence into the patriot cause ; but this did not antagonize him with the governor, who declared that when the rebellion should be put down, Col. Gilman should be spared all punishment. No other man shared his friendship to such a degree, save Maj. Benjamin Thompson, who was afterward Count Rum ford.

Nicholas Gilman was one of the great men of New Hampshire during the Revolutionary period. He had wealth, large ability, and a great name, and he threw them all into the scale for the patriot cause. Nor did he shirk the toils incumbent on the pat- riot of '76. He won, it is true, no glory in the field of carnage. His was not the genius of a man of war, but

Mary Chilton, who, according to tradition, was the first woman of the Pilgrims to set her toot on Plymouth Kock.
 * Miss Ann Taylor was a lineal descendant of

��that of a man of peace.^He was needed at home, and the services of Meshech Weare himself could have been better dispensed with than those of Col. Gilman. From 1775 to J7&2 he was Treasurer of the state of New Hampshire. Beside this, he was Con- tinental Loan Officer, one of the chief members of the committee of safety, and councilor of the state from 1777 to the day of his death. His relation, therefore, to the financial affairs of New Hampshire, resembled much that of Robert Morris to those of the nation. He was an active and accomplished man of business, and his prudence and skill in finance were remarkable. New Hampshire had no abler servant in the field, at home or abroad, than Col. Gilman, and perhaps it is not say- ing too much to state that he furnished a fourth part of the brains of New Hampshire in the Revolution, the other members of the quartette being Meshech Weare, Samuel Livermore, and Josiah Bartlett. Moreover, his own personal strength and the influ- ence of his able sons and numerous friends, furnished a firm support to the patriot cause in the eastern part of the state, which, if such powerful influence had been lacking, would probably have been overawed by the authority of the crown.

Col. Gilman survived the treaty of peace but one year. He died in the prime of life, April 7, 1783. His wife preceded him to the grave by a few days, dying March 17, 17S3. Their tombs are still visible, in the old cem- etery of Exeter. They were the parents of three sons. John Taylor, Nicholas, and Nathaniel Oilman, all prominent men of New Hampshire in their (lay.

The mansion occupied by this dis- tinguished worthy from the time of his marriage to that of his death, is still standing on Water street. It occupies a slight eminence, overlooking the street and the river, with the front fac- ing the south-east. The old house has been kept in pretty good repair, and has never been altered nor in any

�� �