Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/193

 THE WARN1':R home at PORTSMOUTH.

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��are a foot and a half in thickness, composed entirely of brick, every one of which was imported from Holland. As quarried stone was not in general use then for underpinning the bricks extend beneath the earth and«are laid had a stately way of living then as now, and the Warner liouse is a fine and substantial sample of the archi- tecture of that period. The mansion cost in building ^'6,000.
 * ' headers and stretchers." The rich

Singularly enough the house does not bear the name of the builder. He was Capt. Archibald Macpheadris, a yellow-haired Scotchman, as crotch- ety as his late conntryman, Carlyle, an indefatigable worker, a prosperous merchant and speculator, whose thriit brought him wealth. He was exten- sively engaged in the fur and lumber trade, and was the leading projector of the first iron works established in America. The land of the company was in what is now Barrington. There was one foundry on Lamprey river. How long the work was continued is not known.*

The social distinctions of Captain Macpheadris were many and impor- tant. He had a large household of servants and slaves, four African Can- daces sewing in parlor and kitchen. He owned at one time nearly twelve thousand acres of land, and kept some thousand shee]:), from whose fleece his extensive househould was almost wholly clothed. On his estate twenty cows were milked, and a

Court of iMassachusetts granted to the company, of Avhich Capt. ^Macpheadris was the head, a slijJ of land two miles wide, at the head of Dover line, by way of encourageinent in the manufacture of iron. This land v,as to furnish fuel for tlie i; on vrorks, and a location for settling the, foreign operatives. The work must have gone on for several years, and doidjtless fell thi-ough by the death of its prime originator, >Macphea- dris. Some of the iron fixtures in use in the AVanier mansion were manufac- tured at the Lamprey river iron works.
 * It was in 1719 that the General

AUTHOIi.

��cheese was made for every day in the year. This was the agricultural and domestic side ; the social life con- sisted of gay entertainments, visiting from house to house, fox-hunting and horse-riding over his lands — up the Piscataqua and the Saco, with his agents, after furs and timber, and over to Barrington and Durham to oversee his iron works. He also had civil duties to perform ; he was a magis- trate and justice, and from 1720 till his death he was a member of the king's council. He erected this man- sion in the years 171S and '23, and died in 1728, aged about sixty years.

The honorable councillor married, late in life, Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children of the first Gov- ernor John Wentworth. and sister to Benning Wentworth. By her he had an only child, Mary Macpheadris, born 1726. Miss Macpheadris grew up a beautiful girl, and was for a long time the belle of Portsmouth. One of her suitors was Benjamin Plummer, Esq., who died in i 744, aged twenty- four years. He bequeathed in his will numerous and valuable presents to the young lady that he loved. Mary Macpheadris afterwards married John Osborne, who died young, a few years after his marriage. For her second husband she married Hon. Jonathan Warner, Oct. i, 1760, who gave his name to the mansion.

Mr. Warner was a widower at the time of his marriage with the mistress of the Macpheadris house. He was the son of Hon. or Col. Daniel War- ner and Sarah (Hill) Warner, and was born in 1726, at what is now known as the Buckminster House on Isling- ton street, which was built by his father in 1720. Daniel \\'arner was a prominent man in the middle of the last century. He was one of the patricians of New Hampshire. His goodly house, with " its antique fix- tures," Was one of the public orna- ments of Portsmouth. He himself was a leader in civil and social life. His name, with the prefix of " Col- onel," is attached to many of the pro-

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