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10 of New Hampshire and Massachusetts to establish lotteries for raising funds to carry on the work. In a quarrel which arose between the lottery managers and Judge Blodgett, the leading projector of the Amoskeag canal, it was alleged on one hand that the lottery drawings were unfairly managed, and that the money paid over to the canal company was only a part of the proceeds. On the other hand, the lottery managers alleged that a part of the money which they did pay over was illegally used by Blodgett in building "a splendid mansion" for his own residence. The "mansion" in question was certainly built (about 1795) and occupied by Blodgett until his death in 1807; but it was asserted by him, and seems wholly probable, that the cost of its construction came entirely from his private purse. The engraving at the head of this article gives a good representation of the house and its surroundings about forty years after its erection, at which time sketches were taken from which the present drawing was made. It stood between the river and the old boating canal, below the upper locks, and a little north of the present site of the Hoyt paper mills. In 1870, or about that time, it was torn down to make way for new improvements. The writer hereof was born in this house, and, having spent his childhood and early boyhood on the place, has vivid recollections of all its surroundings. "Mansion" it has been styled, but as a matter of fact it was simply one of those large houses so much affected in New England in the last century. Somewhat more ornate in its external finish than the average of such houses,

but still a heavy, matter-of-fact structure, relieved only by the picturesque row of tall, lombardy poplars, then in fashion at houses of any pretension, and by the soft yellow and red colors in which the buildings were painted. Internally it had its large square rooms, its tall clock, its brass fire-irons in open fireplaces, its wide kitchen chimney and its great chambers and attic, common to all its class. But the attaching out-buildings were uncommonly numerous, and included a little red store, containing that indescribable and innumerable assortment of goods required by a rural community.

The owner and master of this mansion, from 1820 to 1837, was Frederick G. Stark; a man of the times; in the meridian of life contemporaneously with the canal; superintendent of all