Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/147

 THE

��GRANITE MONTHLY,

A NEW HAMPSHIRE MAG.^ZITsTl

Devoted to Literature, Biography, History, and State Progress.

��Vol. VIII.

��MAY AND JUNE, 1885.

��Nos. V & vr.

��SYLVESTER MARSH.*

[the projector of the mount WASHINGTON RAILROAD.]

By Charles Carleton Coffin.

��There were few settlers in the Pemi- gewasset Valley when John Marsh of East Haddam, Connecticut, at the close of the last century, with his wife, Mehit- able Percivai Marsh, travelling up the valley of the Merrimack, selected the town of Campton, New Hampshire, as their future home. It was a humble home. Around them was the forest with its lofty pines, gigantic oaks, and sturdy elms, to be leveled by the stal- wart blows of the vigorous young farmer. The first settlers of the region endured many hardships — toiled early and late, but industry brought its rewards. The forest disappeared; green fields ap- peared upon the broad intervales and sunny hillsides. A troop of children came to gladden the home. The ninth child of a family of eleven received the name of Sylvester, born September 30, 1803.

The home was located among the foot-hills on the east bank of the Pemi- gewasset ; it looked out upon a wide ex- panse of meadow lands, and upon mountains as delectable as those seen by the Christian pilgrim from the palace Beautiful in Bunyan's matchless allegory.

It was a period ante-dating the em-

��ployment of nmchinery. Advance- ment was by brawn, rather than by brains. Three years before the birth of Sylvester Marsh an Enghshman, Arthur Scholfield, determined to make America his home. He was a machinist. Eng- land was building up her system of man- ufactures, starting out upon her great career as a manufacturing nation de- termined to manufacture goods for the civilized world, and especially for the United States. Parliament had en- acted a law prohibiting the carrying of machinist's tools out of Great Britain. The young mechanic was compelled to leave his tools behind. He had a re- tentive memory and active mind; he settled in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and set himself to work to construct a ma- chine for the carding of wool, which at that time was done wholly by hand. The Pittsfield Sun of November 2, 1 80 1, contained an advertisement of the first carding machine constructed in the United States. Thus it read :

"Arthur Scholfield respectfully in- forms the inhabitants of Pittsfield and the neighboring towns that he has a card- ing machine, half a mile west of the meeting-house, where they may have

��* From the Bay State Monthly for May, 1885.

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