Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/48

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��THE GRANITE MONTHLY,

��Chester in 1710. Of his children, Josiah, born in 1 751, married Susan- nah Emerson, the daughter of Samuel Emerson, Esq.. a substantial Chester farmer, who was a man of such judg- ment and integrity that he was chosen to fill the various town offices of Ches- ter, and to decide nearly all local controversies beyond review or appeal. Young Dearborn learned the trade of a shoemaker, but, on the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, entered the army as a private, and was sta- tioned at Portsmouth under Col. Jo- seph Cilley. Afterward he did hon- orable service, first as a private, and then as a lieutenant in northern New York, and finally closed his enlistment by an expedition to Newport, R. I., in 1778.

Returning from the war, he and his family found a new home thirty miles westward in Weare. It was not an unfitting location. With its sixty square miles still mostly covered with a dense forest of oak, maple, and beech, with its uneven surface no where rising into high hills, it had a strong soil, which, when cultivated, yielded large crops of hay and grain. It was already a growing township, and thirty years later became one of the four leading farming towns of the state. Here Josiah Dearborn passed his life, raising a family of twelve children, ten of whom were sons. Samuel, the fifth son, and father of the subject of this sketch, was born in 1792. The district-school system Avas not organized in New Hampshire until 1S06, and the children of that time had scanty opportunities for in- struction. Samuel Dearborn and his brothers were reaching manhood, when farming in the eastern states was depressed by the recent war with England and the occurrence of sev- eral cold summers. Migration west- ward had commenced, and the Dear- borns for a time debated the expedi- ency of a removal to the Western Reserve. They at length decided to locate in Vermont, and, from 1814 to 1S20, five of the brothers and a

��sister removed to Corinth, a town in the eastern part of Orange county. Here Samuel Dearborn settled upon a farm, soon after married Miss Fanny Brown, of Vershire, whose parents were natives of Chester, N. H., and here he passed a long and useful life. He died December 12, 1 871, in the eightieth year of his age. Plis wife had died in 1836. Of scholarly tastes, he was for many years a teacher of winter schools. An active member of the Free-will Baptist denomination, his religion was a life rather than a creed.

Cornelius Van Ness Dearborn, the son of Samuel and Fanny. Dear- born, was born in Corinth, Vt., May 14, 1832. His name was in compli- ment to the then ablest statesman of the state, who had filled the offices of governor and minister to Spain. Cor- nelius was the voungest but one of seven children. His childhood was passed in a strictly agricultural com-

��Corinth,

��lying

��among

��the

��raunity

foot-hills of the Green Mountains, is one of the best farming towns in east- ern Vermont. Without railway fa- cilities, with scanty water-power, its inhabitants depend for a livelihood upon the products of the soil, from which by industry they gain a sub- stantial income. Few in Corinth have ever accumulated more than what is now regarded as a fair competency, and very few have encountered ex- treme poverty. A more industrious, law-abiding, practically sensible peo- ple would be difficult to find.

When four years old younj, born met childhood gence, forethought, and womanly vir- tues had been the life and light of the household. He early joined his older brothers in the labors of the farm, attending the district school for a few weeks in summer and ten or twelve weeks each winter. When fif- teen years old he attended the spring term of the Corinth Academy, and continued at intervals for several terms later. In the winter of 1848-49, his

��old young Dear- with the saddest loss of a mother, whose intelli-

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