Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/291

 Concord, New HanipsJiire.

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���IXCE the men of the North made their incursion in- to the luxurious empire of the Ro- mans, they have been an aggressive and colonizing race,^ pushing their do- minion into distant countries, and over- coming their enemies and the obstacles of nature.

It is of the corporate history of an Anglo-Saxon colony, pushed out into the American wilderness, that my tale relates ; of their struggles, of their pro- gress, and of their achievements ; of the families, and of the individuals.

It is the story of a municipality evincing all the signs of youth and im- maturity attendant upon rapid growth, yet clothed v/ith graces and artificial adornments. It is a story the sequel of which will have to be written by the pen of some future annalist.

Long before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Concord, the capital of the State of New Hampshire, was the seat of Indian sovereignty over a wide area. Numberless generations of the red men had planted corn on the fertile inter- vales, speared salmon in the clear waters

��of the Merrimack, hunted game through the ancient forests, paddled in the light birch canoe, within its present limits. To them it was Penacook, and the tribe was known by the same name. Over the river, at Sugar Ball, they built a fort for protection against their enemies of the west, the Mohawks : and in that now peaceful vale there was a great battle, the one tribe with the other ; and many Indians were hurried to the happy hunting-ground, preparing the way for the advent of the white man. Back in those aboriginal days, a more dread foe than their savage neighbors attacked them ; for a plague swept over their vil- lages, and struck down old and young, leaving but a disheartened remnant to oppose the English.

For nearly a century the territory of Concord was claimed to be within the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ; and, within a few years after the first coast settlements were made, it was granted to enterprising citizens of Salem. The conditions of the grant were not complied with, so it reverted to the Colony.

About a hundred .years after the Pil- grims, there came to Massachusetts a

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