The town kept its roads open in the winter with men hired to “break” the roads in their neighborhoods. In 1858 the town “voted $113 for the year for breaking roads. Men to be hired for $.08 per hour; oxen for $.10 per hour; horses for the same rate as oxen and cows for less.” They did this by packing the roads with rollers like the one shown in the photograph, from Sutton, VT. Rolled snow made a good surface for sleighs and sleds.

The first record of a town purchase of equipment specifically for road maintenance came in the form of a vote in the March town meeting of 1882 instructing the selectmen to purchase a road scraper: “Voted to instruct the selectmen to purchase a road scraper.” The treasurer’s report shows it cost $60. It was likely similar to the ones illustrated in this advertisement from the late 19^th century:

Six years later, the selectmen recommended a serious upgrade in town equipment.

Article 7 on the March 31, 1888 warrant read: “To see if the own will vote to purchase one American Champion Road Machine.”  As the name suggests, this was quite a machine.  The picture of the American Champion below shows it to be a horse- or ox-drawn grading machine with a blade that can be angled and leveled. It had two operators; one who drove the team and the other who adjusted the blade.

Voters of the town passed over article 7. Chastened, the selectmen waited five years before trying again. From the records of the March 1893 town meeting:

“Article #5 To see if the town will buy a road machine or pass any vote in relation thereto.”

“Voted to instruct the selectmen to purchase a road machine. “

The treasurer’s report for 1893 reflects the purchase of a “John Hadlock road machine” for $250.  John Hadlock was the Milford, New Hampshire agent for American Champion Road Machine.

Early in the twentieth century automobiles began to travel Nelson roads made smoother, no doubt, by the new road machine. The first “resident” automobile came to town as the property of William L. Story.  The Story Farm cellar hole can still be seen at the foot of Jonathan Smith’s driveway on the aptly named Story Road. A year later Wayland Tolman, Wilmer C. Tolman, Albertis Wilder and Willie L. Guillow all owned the machines. That same year Fred A. Fisher brought the first motorcycle to town. But in 1915 Nelson was still hiring ox teams and their owners to maintain its highways. Though the town may have moved on to the use of motorized equipment earlier, the first record of such a purchase occurs in 1927.

The selectmen placed a tractor on the March 8, 1927 warrant:

“Article 5 Voted to buy a tractor.” The voters approved.

“Voted that $500 of the purchase price of the tractor be raised by taxation and the balance borrowed. “  The meeting recessed until 2PM on March 26^th when voters met to decide what kind of tractor to purchase.  One can imagine tractor dealers bringing their machines to show off to Nelson voters.

The record of the meeting reads as follows:

“Motion made and passed that vote be taken by ballot to see what kind of tractor to buy.

Result of vote.  Whole number of ballots cast 28

Fordson had 3

Cleveland had 25”

The Cleveland was considerably more expensive than the Fordson and was a tracked vehicle, not a wheeled machine like its competitor. The meeting voted to raise $500 in the current year and issue notes for three years; tractor payments totaled $3,233.

______________________________________________________

Sources: Nelson Town Records, Google Books

The author is grateful to Sue Kingsbury for her skillful editing.

To see additional articles that Rick Church has written about Nelson history, click here.

Nelson’s earliest roads were made and maintained by hand, using men and teams of oxen — the same methods that cleared farms. Road layouts reflected that labor intensity. They tended to be built straight up and down hills rather than be bench cut, and they were likely to follow property lines and avoid using already cleared and productive farmland. However, early property deeds made it clear that all property was “subject to all necessary highways.” Between its founding and today, Nelson has laid out, built, relocated and improved several hundred roads.

In May 1834 the selectmen received a petition from a number of residents to layout a new road. A public meeting was held and the town approved the following road: “Beginning at the Stoddard line near the brook in said Nelson thence south 34 degrees west through land of James Clark 12 rods to a stake and stones. Thence south 12 degrees west 16 rods 9 links. Thence south 5 degrees west 20 rods 12 links to the bank of the brook. Thence south 40 degrees west across the brook to the old road near James Clark’s cider mill 6 rods. The above line is to be the center of the highway which is to be 3 rods wide.”

This road is part of the current Old Stoddard Road from the Stoddard town line to the big culvert that carries Bailey Brook.  The stone foundation visible on the north side of the road today is probably James Clark’s cider mill.

For construction purposes, road layouts were divided into lots. The town set up contracts for different lots of the new road, and they were put out to bid.

The following is lot number 1: November 6, 1834:

“Conditions of sale [contract to build] of a piece of road in Nelson near James Clark’s.  Lot number 1 is 12 rods to be made 20 feet wide from the center of ditches and 20 inches crowning and all the stone and roots to be taken out that will come within 15 inches of the top of the road and all necessary sluiceways to be put in where needed and covered with hemlock plank or stone the whole to be done in a thorough and workmanlike manner.”

Another road contract, in1836, read:

“Lot number 4 of a road near the Widow Stiles.  Said road to be made 20 feet wide from the center of the ditches and 20 inches crowning and all the stone and roots to be taken out that will come within 15 inches of the top of the road and all necessary sluiceways to be made and covered with good sound hemlock plank 2 ½ inches thick or good covered stone, the plank to be 18 feet long the whole to be done in a thorough and workmanlike manner and to be completed by the 20^th of September, 1836.  Bid off to Joseph Osgood at $1.97 [per rod].  19 ½ rods.”

Old stone culvert off Nubanusit Pond Road

These records are the earliest records of formal road specifications. Twenty feet of width would allow the careful passage of two carriages. Provision was made for water management with crowning of 20” — particularly good for the steep hill sections and the specification of “sluiceways” [culverts] made of stone or thick hemlock planks.  At the prevailing, town-set rates for roadwork ($0.08 for a man and $0.06 for a team of oxen) we can estimate that Mr. Osgood needed about 12 hours to construct each rod (16.5 feet) of road.

Roads were mostly built and maintained by the people who lived nearby. The earliest records show the town meeting setting daily rates for work on the roads. A proprietor’s meeting in 1772 decided as follows: “Shareholders may work off their taxes on the roads.  Rates as follows: 2 shillings 6 pence per man per day; 2 shillings for a yoke of oxen; 1 shilling 6 pence for a plow; 1 shilling for a cart.” With cash to pay taxes scarce, and a need for roads, it was the only workable system.  Workdays were set at 9 hours. A pair of oxen was soon worth as much as a man. In fact as late as 1915 a man with a pair of oxen was paid twice what a man alone was paid for roadwork.

The town was divided into “highway districts” (as many as seventeen at one point) and a highway surveyor elected for each one.  Property taxes were levied separately to pay for town services like roads, schools and the minister’s salary. Highway taxes were turned over to the Highway Surveyors for collection. With the money collected or work done in lieu of highway taxes, the highway surveyor kept the roads in his district in repair. The following is a transcript of highway surveyor, Thaddeus Barker’s, warrant to collect the highway taxes and maintain the roads in his district:

5/29/1815

To Thaddeus Barker Surveyor of Highways in the Town of Nelson: In the name of the State of New Hampshire, you are required to warn the several persons in the above list [listed below] of Taxes, to work out the several sums annexed on the Road in Nelson aforesaid; beginning at the post guide by Doctor Goodell’s thence by Henry Wheeler’s, by Esek Phillips’ to the Roxbury line; thence by your own house to the Roxbury Line…. And you are to allow each man eight cents for each hour’s faithful labor and six cents for each hour’s work of a yoke of oxen and the common price for utensils…. J. Robbins, S. Griffin, N. Osgood, Selectmen

Highway taxes owed [in dollars and cents]:

This district included Lead Mine Road and old roads leading south from “5 B Farm” to Roxbury near Woodward pond.

Barker was authorized to get the work or collect the taxes. Nelson records contain numerous small paper receipts taxpayers received for work done in lieu of taxes. A typical example:

Nelson June 9, 1871 $0.40 received of Lydia Robbins. Forty cents in labor on the highway. Jewett Morse Agent

Sources: Nelson Town Records, The Ethan Tolman Papers

The author is grateful to Sue Kingsbury for her skillful editing.

Breed Batchellor was the town’s first resident, settling as early as 1766.  He moved into an early structure built by Josiah Billings just over the east line of Keene in Monadnock Number Six, comfortably in Roxbury today.  That part of Keene was settled sparsely, but Batchellor’s home had access to Keene over Keene roads.  Dr. Nathaniel Breed followed Batchellor, building a large log cabin on the Old Stoddard Road followed shortly thereafter by Joseph Stanhope who built on the north slope of Osgood Hill on today’s Homestead Lane. Aaron Beel, James Bancroft, Phineas Stanford, Thomas Upham and Eleazer Twitchell are mentioned in the first road records as living in town. Certainly they created trails to serve their farms and these probably became the first roads.

In 1768 Breed Batchellor and Nathaniel Breed were appointed to layout roads.
Their layout is lost but we know there were at least five early roads that predate the first recorded layout in 1773:

• From the site of the future Packersfield meetinghouse to Keene
• From the meetinghouse site to Joseph Stanhope’s and on to Limerick (Stoddard)
• From the meetinghouse site to the outlet of Pleasant Pond (Silver Lake)
• From the meetinghouse site to the outlet of Center Pond
• From the outlet of Pleasant Pond to Eleazer Twitchell’s

The first of these connected our town with the region’s most established town: Keene. It went from the old meetinghouse site west along the current Lead Mine Road as far as the house currently owned by Dorothy Iselin, where it turned south through the woods.  Then as now, it shortly crosses a brook and turns west south west and runs north of Woodward Pond. It comes out at the old Roxbury Center and passes Breed Batchellor’s cellar hole in present-day Roxbury. Roxbury calls its end “Middle Town Road” today.

The second early road connected Nathaniel Breed and Joseph Stanhope to the center and led to the neighboring town of Limerick. The third and fourth connected the two earliest mills to the center and the last connected another early resident and may have gone on to connect to Dublin.

Our early roads connected the people who lived here, the early mill sites and the common where the meetinghouse was and the Nelson Cemetery is today.  It was also important to connect to the surrounding towns of Keene, Dublin, Marlborough, Hancock and Stoddard.  Modern cartographers may be surprised by this list, but there was no Sullivan, Roxbury or Harrisville when Nelson built its early roads.  Other inter-town roads were established to Hancock and Marlborough.

A map or roads in 1774, the year of incorporation, probably looked like this:

Monadnock Number Six Roads at Incorporation (click on this image to see a larger version)

First recorded road layout:
Records of Proprietors’ Meetings Monadnock #6
July 1773 Extract from Records:

“From the Dublin Line near Mr. Wood’s mill to the meetinghouse. Beginning on the town line (Nelson/ Dublin) near the SE corner of Joseph’s Mason’s land and then runs northerly to a red oak then to a stake and stones a little north of the Corn Mill [at the outlet of Pleasant Pond] and the NW corner mark of the road leading from said mill to Twitchell’s to a large red oak tree near Pratt’s barn … Then between Aaron Beel’s house and barn and John Adams’ land then to a small beech at the line on the north side of John Adams’ land to a large rock with stones on top on the line between Thomas Morse’s and Ensign Batchellor’s land to a white ash on the southeast side of a Great Hill then under the east side of said hill to a stake and stones then crossing the centerline into the northeast quarter then 3 rods west of the southeast corner of the ten acres on common land. All marks are three chops facing the road.”

The above road layout is a good example of early road descriptions. It states the road’s purpose: connecting Dublin and Mr. Wood’s Mill to the meetinghouse. It described landmarks that would have been known to Monadnock Number Six inhabitants at the time, both man-made and natural terrain features. It made reference to the map of 1768 showing the division of the town into quarters with a centerline dividing the town east to west.

Those early residents probably called the road: “ The Road from Daniel Wood’s Mill to the Meetinghouse.” The road connected the meetinghouse to Dublin starting at the Dublin line at the outlet of Pleasant Pond, swung just east of the pond on what is now Breed Pond Road in Harrisville, then headed north on Crickett Hill Road, past the Pratt barn and Aaron Beel’s house and barn (still in Harrisville). Today it goes through the woods east of the Silver Lake until it joins the Hardy Hill Road eventually joining the road to Keene (Lead Mine Road today) at the site of the original meetinghouse.  It passes cellar holes and early houses. They are not in the road description as they all came later.

Unlike the Hardy Hill Road today it did not follow the contour line, but left the current Hardy Hill Road and went over the shoulder of Hardy Hill (the Great Hill) behind what is now Betsy Street’s house. The description reads, in part: “to a white ash on the southeast side of a Great Hill then under the east side of said hill to a stake and stones then crossing the centerline into the northeast quarter then 3 rods west of the southeast corner of the ten acres on common land.” Having come over the hill, the road probably turned east and passed the Street house (built about 20 years after the road by the Reverend Gad Newell). That house had doors facing the road to the south and east.  The road was moved to its current location in 1912.

Terrain was a big factor in early road building. Roads tended to follow original lot lines perhaps because they formed property boundaries and laying them out on those lines did less damage to early mowings, pastures and orchards. Roads tended to be built right over hills rather than following contour lines. In our hilly town contour lines meant bench cuts in hillsides made by hand. Horses and horse-drawn wagons fared much better straight up or down rather than having to negotiate a side hill.

The Road from Daniel Wood’s Mill to the Meetinghouse

In the years between 1773 and 1820 the town grew rapidly toward its population peak. The original pattern of a few roads radiating out from the center to other towns pausing to connect settlers on the way grew to include other “spokes” as well as a network of connector roads. The network looked a bit like a spider’s web heavily modified by the limitations of our local terrain.

Road Network 1820

There are 174 records of road layouts, road abandonments and changes in the path of old roads from the Corn Mill Road through the year 1820 near Nelson’s population peak.  Each was laid out by the selectmen and approved by town meeting. The process of laying out roads was so hectic at one point that a committee was appointed to determine which of the three roads to Hancock would be the official one.

The foundation of the saw mill on Center Pond Brook

Settlement in Monadnock Number Six came quickly once it got started. A list of settlers in the Masonian Papers in 1770 showed 5 settlers. In the three reports on settlement produced in 1773 and 1774 there were fifty-four different family names identified as moving into Monadnock Number Six. The final pre-incorporation survey of settlement detailed thirty-three houses and four camps in Nelson. The houses were almost all log cabins (24) but the nine frame houses were testament to the existence of a sawmill at the outlet of Center Pond. There was a gristmill at the outlet of Silver Lake as early as 1771.

The settlement pattern could best be described as uneven. The town had been divided into four quarters named for compass quadrants and after their principal landowners: The Northeast Quarter was called Batchellor’s Quarter. The Northwest — Packer’s Quarter. The Southeast Quarter was called Blanchard’s Quarter and the Southwest Quarter was named the Proprietor’s Quarter. There was no settlement at all in Packer’s Quarter until after the Revolution. The area we know today as Munsonville was entirely undeveloped.

The quarters were further divided into rectangles of approximately 100 acres and the early land sales were made in these units so no clearing was very near another. Most cleared plots were small. Sixteen were less than five acres; eleven more between six and ten acres and thirteen farms had cleared more than ten acres. From the earliest days crude roads, often only bridal paths connected the emerging farms.

Breed Batchellor had arrived first and seems to have purchased a farm already being developed by a mysterious early settler named Josiah Billings. By 1774 Batchellor had a frame house and barn with one hundred acres cleared. That one farm accounted for 25% of the cleared land. The next farm in size belonged to the town’s second settler, Nathaniel Breed. Dr. Breed had built a double pole house and had 45 acres cleared. His son-in-law and near neighbor, Abijah Brown, built a board house and cleared 25 acres. John Adams, Aaron Beel, Joseph Stanhope and James Bancroft had cleared 20 acres each. At more than a mile apart, none of these early clearings abutted each other.

Whether a settler lived in a log cabin or a board house depended on when that settler arrived and when the sawmill at the outlet of Center Pond went into operation. We could possibly date that to around 1771 or 1772 based on the arrival of James Bancroft and Abijah Brown in 1771, the first residents after Breed Batchellor to build frame houses. John Farwell bought his land in 1772 and built a frame house. Elihu Higbe, the first housewright, bought his property in October of 1770.

Information from early deeds tells us much about the early settlers. In addition to the names of the buyer and seller, the price date and property description, early deeds tell us where the parties lived and what their primary occupation was. Most came from Massachusetts while some came from Connecticut and others from nearby towns: Swanzey, Keene and Dublin.

Most were farmers by trade. Deeds for forty-nine early settlers exist at the Cheshire County Registry of Deeds detail twenty-nine yeomen, ten husbandmen, two gentlemen, two doctors, and one miller, housewright, cordwainer, blacksmith, cooper and laborer. Yeomen were substantial farmers who owned their own farms. Husbandmen were smaller farmers who either worked on the farms of others or owned small farms themselves. The great majority of lots in early Nelson were purchased using mortgage financing. All undoubtedly raised much of their own food, but the early population of Nelson could get barrels for storing food from Amos Skinner, the local cooper; get their harnesses repaired by a cordwainer named Joshua Lawrence, their nails from Aaron Beel, the blacksmith; proper frame houses built by housewright, Elihu Higbe, their grain milled by Daniel Wood and have their medical needs looked after by Dr. Nathaniel Breed or Dr. Thomas Frink.

One wonders how all these people came to settle here. The farmers were probably looking for cheaper, bigger farms. The skilled people probably saw a market with houses to build and equipment to repair as the land was cleared. With the rough work and plenty of births there was work for doctors and midwives, too. Did these people find Packersfield on their own or were they recruited? The fact of one only one each of several critical tradesmen suggests recruitment. The new town needed the variety of skills these settlers represented.

A number of them came from the same towns in Massachusetts. There were five families from Mansfield, four from the Rutland/Princeton area and three from Hubbardston. We can be fairly certain the first two mills were not an accident. Breed Batchellor built the sawmill at the outlet of Center Pond and it is virtually certain Daniel Wood was recruited to build the gristmill at Silver Lake. Early proprietor’s records for Keene reveal that the proprietors paid a very handsome subsidy to a miller to set up and run a gristmill for the town. Gristmills undoubtedly were expensive to build and the miller often took his pay in the form of a portion of the grain produced by grinding a farmer’s wheat, rye, Indian corn or barley. Establishing a mill for a settling town would be both costly and speculative. At the same time the proprietors could not attract settlers without both a gristmill and a sawmill.

We know our first miller, Daniel Wood, did make some money for his effort. He bought the six-acre site of the future mill for 1 pound 16 schillings in June of 1771 and sold it, with building and a gristmill on the property, for a 55 pound profit in February 1774. That was enough money to buy a 100 acres farm with some land cleared and a log cabin. No record of him residing in Monadnock Six after the sale exists. William Beal became the next miller at Silver Lake.

As Monadnock Number Six became Packersfield it would need roads, a meetinghouse, a minister of the gospel, schools and a full, working town government. It was on the cusp of becoming a real town.

Sources: Nelson Town Records, New Hampshire State Papers: Town Charters; Deeds of land: Cheshire County Registry of Deeds; Samuel Wadsworth, in his Historical Notes with Keyed Map of Keene and Roxbury 1932, and New Hampshire State Papers Volume VIII

Severing the Last Colonial Ties

The close of the Revolution saw a much-changed Packersfield.  Breed Batchellor, the man who was ultimately the agent of His Majesty’s Royal Governor, had fled the town in 1777 to join the British Army and he eventually drowned in Nova Scotia. Thomas Packer, for whom the town had been named, had died in 1771, but after the Revolution his son, Thomas, began to sell the family holdings which included the land from the French’s Farm and the Warners all the way north and west to the Stoddard and Sullivan town lines including all we know today as Munsonville.

Parke Struthers and Samuel Wadsworth wrote that the original naming right had come with Packer’s promise to deed 500 acres to the town. His failure to fulfill that promise is said to be the reason the town began the effort to change its name, shedding any outward evidence of the early association. There is little direct evidence of Packer’s original promise. Book 3 page 249 at the Cheshire County Registry records that Thomas Packer sold Josiah Willard and Breed Batchellor 104 acres of land in the Northeast Quarter of Packersfield for five schillings on September 3, 1768 “ for the common public use of the inhabitants of said quarter.”  Five schillings was almost a gift, as the land was worth something in the neighborhood of ten times that. When he fled in 1777, Batchellor still owned the 104 acres; it passed out of his family in 1824 never having been put to public use.

Two other factors are possible motives for the push to re-name Packersfield. Packer’s agent in town, Breed Batchellor, had fled in disgrace. When Batchellor fled political support probably disappeared. Packer’s reputation for high handedness may have offended people. In 1768 Packer had pushed ahead the execution of a young school teacher, Ruth Blay of South Hampton, who was accused of killing her illegitimate child.  He is said to have rushed the hanging so he could have his supper. The governor’s stay of execution arrived too late.

For whatever reason the town wanted no more of Packer and at town meeting held January 29, 1778 voted to have the name of the town changed to Sullivan.  They were to try three times during the next thirty-six years.

The documentable record, of this process is not entirely clear. The effort in 1778 to name the town after General John Sullivan, New Hampshire’s highest-ranking soldier, was unsuccessful.  The current Town of Sullivan was ultimately formed from parts of Packersfield, Keene, Stoddard and Gilsum in 1787. But that was nine years later.

In 1783 Packersfield tried again. At a Town meeting held on March 31st the town “Voted to have the town of Packersfield called Groton.” The vote was 35-0.  There is a town named Groton in New Hampshire, but it wasn’t Groton at the time.  It had been chartered in 1761 as Cockermouth after Charles Wyndham, Baron Cockermouth. Cockermouth’s efforts to change its name began in 1788 when it tried to become Danbury. It had no luck, but did successfully petition for Groton in 1796 naming the town after Groton, Massachusetts home of one of its original proprietors.  There is no record of why the name Groton was chosen by Packersfield residents or why it got nowhere in the Legislature.

The final chapter is odd to say the least. Packersfield voters met in town meeting on the second Tuesday of March 1814 and “voted to instruct the selectmen to petition the General Court to change the name of Packersfield to Troy.” There is a flowery document in the Nelson Archives dated in June 1814 signed by legislative officials and the governor changing the name to Nelson effective in November 1814. The act signed June 13, 1814 said in part: ”Whereas the Selectmen of said Packersfield have petitioned the Legislature to have the name of said town altered to that of Nelson…..” The town of Troy was formed and incorporated in 1815, named after Troy, New York.

What happened between the March vote of the town meeting and state action in June?  There is no record of the Packersfield voters changing their minds. The Sentinel published in Keene at that time is silent except to record the fact of the state action.  The records of the New Hampshire General Court only record that they changed the name to Nelson on petition of the residents. The timing of the Packersfield petition and the 1815 incorporation of Troy is close enough to suggest the name “Troy” was already spoken for.

Nelson was probably named in honor of Admiral Lord Nelson, hero of the battle of Trafalgar (1805.) Trafalgar was a resounding naval victory by England over the combined fleets of France and Spain. Nelson died at the height of the fight. Parke Struthers explains naming our town after a British naval hero during a war with that country, by pointing to the Anglophile sympathies prevalent in New England at the time and the return to power in the statehouse in Concord of the anti-war, anti-embargo Federalist Party. Voters in New Hampshire had thrown out the pro-war and Francophile Republican Party.

Hardy family lore records another possible connection: Admiral Nelson died in the arms of his most trusted aid and flag captain, Captain Thomas Hardy. Nelson and Hardy had served together since Hardy served as First Lieutenant on Nelson’s ship Captain in 1797. Hardy was present at his wounding and death aboard the HMS Victory. Among the Admiral’s dying words were: “Kiss me Hardy.” The American branch of the Hardy family was an early settler of Packersfield, Noah Hardy arriving in 1779.  The family is still resident in Nelson in the person of Al Struthers.

There was strong feeling in Packersfield against the foreign policy of the United States at the time. The Embargo Act of 1807 outlawed trade with England and France. It was an attempt to forestall war and was ardently opposed by the trade-dependent New England states and keenly felt in Packersfield. There was much sentiment in New England to leave the union. On January 16, 1809 Packersfield voters approved a lengthy petition to the Congress of the United States that read in part:

“We are generally cultivators of the soil earning our bread by the sweat of the brow.  Many of us are in debt for our land or buildings; we have no means of paying our contracts or taxes, or purchasing necessaries for our families but by selling our surplus produce.  Of this modest payment we are deprived by the embargo restrictions. Impressed with the truth of those considerations we exercise the privilege granted us by our excellent constitution and earnestly pray that your honors would repeal the embargo laws and relieve your petitioners from its calamities.”

The resolution had passed 117 – 1. Clearly the townspeople were severely affected by the national policy.

One wonders what was the ultimate process that let to Packersfield being re-named Nelson . Perhaps a poke in the federal eye was just fine with a farming community so adversely affected by the hated trade embargo. With its early, difficult years behind them, settlers thus began the difficult job of building their town.

Sources: Nelson Town Records, New Hampshire State Papers: Town Charters; Deeds of land: Cheshire County Registry of Deeds; Samuel Wadsworth, Historical Notes with Keyed Map of Keene and Roxbury 1932, A History of Nelson New Hampshire 1767-1967, Parke H. Struthers, editor; Nelson a Personal History, Christopher Hibbert, 1994; and New Hampshire Town Names and Where They Came From, Elmer Munson Hunt, 1970; Harpers Monthly Magazine June-November 1921: The Town that was Strawberry Banke

Packersfield sent many of its young men to fight for independence and bought military supplies to support the effort.  A petition sent by vote of the town meeting reflected the commitment Packersfield was making to the war and its dread of Breed Batchellor, the Tory in their midst.

Town Meeting April 4, 1777
“Voted to send the following petition to Colonel Enoch Hale: [Hale was colonel of the 15th New Hampshire Militia Regiment.]
They [the citizens] are generally of a mind that as they are fighting their enemies they have one more dangerous to fight against at home than any abroad. Name by Major Breed Batchellor who from the very first appeared inimical to the People of America and has discouraged the cause thereof and threatened the lives and the health of the good people of this town so that some that have intended to have gone in the service are afraid to leave home and to have their families exposed to his resentment. The committee of the town have for above a year endeavored to have him brought to a proper trial but could not be heard.  And when the committee of other towns tried and condemned him in the goal, he was let at liberty without our knowledge to our astonishment. And all the information we could get after inquiring was that the goaler to your honor told us he was at liberty. And since we hear he has been tried at the General Court without the proper evidence which might have been produced if summoned which we think an arbitrary proceeding viz. so looked on by our neighbors. We are willing and have signed to abide by the order of the Continental Congress. We think the state ought to allow General Washington either to make them that are enemies swear to be friends or try them as foes.

And Breed Batchellor has had his name returned to you as a man to go in the service and has done nothing but still refuses. He is much the [reviled] man in this town. We have sent near half our number the first year and more than our proportion since and have lost a number in the war and there is but five young men left in town.  And they have bin in the war and we are poor, but we would see justice done us. We will do the utmost of our ability in the common cause.”
Signed,
Nathaniel Breed, Town Clerk

The meeting also voted that Lieutenant Amos Skinner go with Captain Eleazur Twitchell to carry the petition.

On June 17th the New Hampshire General Court issued what amounted to a warrant for Batchellor’s arrest: It voted that “the said Breed Batchellor and Robert Gilmore be confined to close keeping on some goal in this state, there to remain until further order of this Court or the Committee of Safety, or until they are otherwise liberated by due course of law.”

Samuel Wadsworth, in his Historical Notes with Keyed Map of Keene and Roxbury 1932, describes Batchellor’s final months in Packersfield:
“Being a staunch and outspoken Tory and a man of considerable wealth, public feeling against him was very strong. In 1776 and in the early part of 1777, to escape the wrath of the patriots, he hid himself for some three months in a cave south of his house where is wife supplied him with food. His hiding place becoming known he fled toward the Pinnacle followed by Patriots who forced him to the top of the hill where he was surrounded on all sides except the north. This being a precipice some 50 feet high, the patriots believed Batchellor could not escape but he knew a cleft in the rock, down which he made his way and afterwards went to Canada. Batchellor joined the British Army and in the battle of Bennington (August 1777) he was recognized by Richard Farwell, a former townsman, who fired at him, wounding him in the shoulder so badly that his arm was nearly useless afterwards and ending his active career.”

Breed Batchellor had come full circle. He had been born in Wenham, Mass. December 11, 1740.  At age 16 he joined the British Army serving in the Crown Point campaign of the French and Indian War. Afterward he learned the surveying trade. Wadsworth describes him as an energetic man of great natural ability. During his association with Packersfield, he bought 11,310 acres of land. When he fled to join the British Army in 1777 the remaining 3,516 acres including his home farm was seized by the state and sold at public auction. His wife Ruth had to petition the legislature to allow her to keep the homestead. She was successful and several of Batchellor’s sons lived in the area after his exile and death.

The family’s direct connection with Nelson ceased when the southeastern part of Nelson where the family lived was separated from Packersfield by the legislature in 1812.  With pieces of Keene and Marlborough, it became the town of Roxbury.  Ruth and her son, John, owned the original Batchellor farm comprising 260 acres in what had been the southwest corner Packersfield until they sold it in 1828 when Ruth would have been 82 years old. She moved to Keene to live with her daughter Bestey Chase at the Chase Tavern on Court Street. She is buried in the Court Street Cemetery.

Years later the town would change its name, severing its ties with Thomas Packer, too.

Sources: Nelson Town Records,   New Hampshire State Papers: Town Charters; Deeds of land: Cheshire County Registry of Deeds; Samuel Wadsworth, in his Historical Notes with Keyed Map of Keene and Roxbury 1932, and New Hampshire State Papers Volume VIII

We dont know what our early Nelson forebears looked like, but we can speculate that they might have appeared something like this.

At the proprietor’s meeting in March 1773 the town voted to petition the royal governor for incorporation as a town. Breed Batchellor was appointed agent to present the petition on behalf of the Monadnock Number Six proprietors. Almost immediately Batchellor heard rumors that the Blanchard family would fight him.

The Blanchard family was important in early New Hampshire. Joseph was Agent for the Masonian Proprietors when they made the Monadnock Number Six grant. His son, Joseph JR was the surveyor that fixed its boundaries. Another son, Thomas, was one of the Monadnock Number Six proprietors though he immediately sold his share to Thomas Packer. Joseph had a stake in all of the towns granted by the Masonian Proprietors and was active with his associates in trading stakes in one town for those in another. The Blanchard family ended up with substantial stakes in Nelson, Dublin, Stoddard and Acworth.

The first documented interchange between the family and Breed Batchellor was Jonathan (another son) Blanchard’s sale of 2135 acres to Batchellor in 1763. Several of Joseph’s children inherited his interests in Monadnock Number Six including James and Catherine.

In August James Blanchard petitioned the Masonian Proprietors to block incorporation. His petition made it clear that he felt incorporation with its implicit recognition of all that had taken place under the Monadnock Number Six Proprietors was inimical to him. He accused Breed Batchellor of running the operation as a personal fiefdom for his own benefit and to the detriment of Blanchard and settler interests. The petitioners asserted that the terms of the grant had not been fulfilled. Further he charged Breed Batchellor with numerous illegal activities. His charges:

• That Batchellor made all the decisions and acted to prevent others from being represented or of holding office.
• That he had caused the town to vote money, raised by the grantees, that was largely paid to himself.
• That the work (surveying and road building) had not been done.
• That he allowed people to work off town taxes on his farm.
• That Batchellor had tried to bribe settlers not to side with Blanchard.
• That he acted from publicly stated goals of ruining Blanchard.

His case rested on the fact that the terms of the grant had not been met. Those terms required that there be fifty settled families each with a house and twelve acres cleared. The petitioners claimed the lack of roads had slowed settlement and that much land was owned by people making no effort to settle. The stakes were high. Should the grant be withdrawn for non-compliance the validity of all land transactions was questionable. There were about thirty families in town and numerous other landowners who stood to lose a lot.

The petition to the Masonian Proprietors to block incorporation was not made directly by James Blanchard who was not a resident. James Bancroft whose family had purchased hundreds of acres in the southeastern quarter from the Blanchard was employed to gather signatures. The ten men petitioned that the incorporation be held up and that any shareholders deemed delinquent (no settlement activity) have their lands confiscated and delivered to people who would settle. Batchellor held many lots that fit this description as did Thomas Packer. James Blanchard had a few acres cleared, but lived in Dunstable where he grew up and had substantial property. In response Breed Batchellor, Abijah Brown and Thomas Upham compiled an inventory of settlement activities that showed thirty-six families settled and 910 acres “improved.” Their claim: the requirement was met because only 600 acres was required to be cleared (12 acres for each of 50 families).

This fact-based response wasn’t enough as both sides soon resorted to all kinds of dirty tactics.

Batchellor led the counter attack.

In October eleven different residents petitioned the governor to the effect that the charges in the petition were false: The Bancroft petition stated that sixty families were required to settle when the true requirement was only fifty. Poor roads were not the reason for slow settlement, the lack of provisions to sustain a family in the early years was. James Bancroft and the other petitioners were all from the Blanchard Quarter where Batchellor was not responsible for the roads. And, worst, the Blanchard complaint actually arose from the sale (by Breed Batchellor as Proprietors Clerk) of Blanchard land for failure to his assesments. The town was fully engaged with twenty-one of perhaps thirty residents signing one petition or the other.

In October the signers of the original petition sent another recanting their charges. Also that month Nathaniel Breed and Abijah Brown wrote to the governor saying that Breed Batchellor had promoted settlement and that the first time they had met James Blanchard he had said “if he [Batchellor] would not give up the land sold for taxes”, he would do Breed Batchellor “whatever injury he could.” The two letters contain nearly the same wording. Two former residents, now living in Charlestown, wrote nearly identical letters to the governor supporting Batchellor and claiming that Blanchard had attempted to get them to sign his false petition. One said “I heard Mr. Blanchard say he would “tare him [Batchellor]all to rags” but if he were to return the land, he would retract the petition.

James Blanchard deposed townspeople. One admitted having no money to pay taxes and being allowed to work off $4 on Batchellor’s farm. Another told the justice of the peace that Batchellor had told him that petition signers would likely be hauled in front of the governor. At Blanchard’s behest the Masonian Proprietors hired Major Josiah Willard of Keene to make an independent inventory of settlement. While out on the survey, Major Willard, asked residents if they had any complaints against Batchellor. They said the roads were so bad they could not get to their house by horse, that Batchellor had refused to let them work off taxes by building roads and that they had been threatened with summons to Portsmouth. (The exact nature of the dispute between Batchellor and Willard is not known. Perhaps it was an investment dispute; they had jointly purchased 104 acres of land from Thomas Packer in 1763.)

Batchellor petitioned the governor again in November. He said that the Masonian Proprietors had commissioned Willard of Keene “ a near kinsman of the Blanchard’s and inveterate enemy of mine”; that the survey involved riding down one road and asking people he met about acres cleared, etc., and that Willard discouraged settlement by telling people he met that they had no legal title to their land. Nathaniel Breed in a letter to the Masonian Proprietors recalled meeting Willard who had refused to look at his farm and had underreported the acreage. Nonetheless Willard’s survey was similar to the earlier one. Another resident, John Stroud, wrote that Blanchard had offered him 20 not to side with Batchellor. Finally James Bancoft, the petitioner who recanted, recanted his recantation saying Batchellor had offered a barrel of rum for the first recantation. Another settlement survey was done in January 1774.

Settlement surveys:

There is no record of how the matter was settled. We do know that Monadnock Number Six was incorporated as Packersfield on February 22, 1774. Six days later Breed Batchellor secured an extension from the Masonian Proprietors of two years to meet the terms of the grant. He gave his personal note in the amount of 100 and interest “for damages.” James Blanchard never settled and had sold his holdings within a few years of the incorporation.

We do not know anything definitive about Thomas Packer’s role. He had died, but his family was still related by marriage to the Royal Governor and had a huge investment in Monadnock Number Six. The family was well placed to help Batchellor prevail. At his death in 1771 he owned some 9,000 acres in Monadnock Number Six including the entire northwest quarter. That quarter was entirely unsettled and not even laid out in lots – not helpful to the settlement requirement. With the extension of time to settle and incorporation, Thomas Packer’s son and heir, Thomas Packer III began to sell his lots in “Packer’s Quarter” at prices double those in other parts of town just five years earlier.

Sources: www.nh.searchroots.com/documents/History_Nelson_NH.txt; State Papers New Hampshire Vol. XXVII; Nelson Property Deeds, Cheshire Registry of Deeds; Nelson Town Records; Provincial Deeds, New Hampshire Archives

The task of settling Monadnock Number Six, a town eight by five miles in the middle of the wilderness, must have been daunting.  It would take a strong will to make it happen. The 25,000 acres had been granted to a set of proprietors  with the requirement that there be 50 families settled in houses with 12 acres cleared and fenced within six years of the grant.  Breed Batchellor was the leader of the effort. Thomas Packer, one of these grantees (and a Masonian Proprietor, too) may have recruited Breed Batchellor to get the town settled. Packer certainly had a sizable stake owning the entire northwest quarter of the town and more.  Batchellor’s first documented association with the town was a deed for 2135 acres purchased from Jonathan Blanchard in 1763.  Batchellor settled in 1767 and immediately became the Proprietor’s Clerk responsible to make settlement happen.  None of the original grantees ever settled perhaps because they were too old by the date of settlement (fifteen years after the grant) but probably because they’d only been speculators from the beginning. 

Presettlement

Luring settlers took a multifaceted plan. They needed roads, basic industries in the form of mills for grinding grain and sawing logs into boards and trades like blacksmithing, house building, leather working and doctoring. They also needed people to actively sell land to prospective settlers and people to finance those sales.  Ministers from nearby towns provided preaching in those early years.  Pioneering settlers were needed to encourage other, less adventuresome people, to settle as well. All needed to be able to do the hard physical work to clear rocks, fell the sometimes three foot diameter trees they found here and pull the stumps with oxen. 

Early land clearing: 1767

Batchellor probably recruited the second resident, Dr. Nathaniel Breed who arrived in 1767, built a house, began clearing land for a farm and started buying and selling land in Monadnock Number Six.  In Nathaniel Breed, Batchellor had a resident, a medical man and an active land agent.  Dr. Breed was forty when he moved from Eastham, Massachusetts with his wife and five children. The Breed’s had two more children after they arrived including Abigail born in 1769. 

Some settlement activities were impossible to carry on simultaneously. How do you build roads if there is no one here to build them? How do you entice someone to erect a sawmill when there are few customers? How do you convince those first people to come?  How is all this financed? 

Financing was actually the easy part, though collections may have been difficult.  Batchellor and the other early residents could call a proprietor’s meeting and pass motions to get things done assessing  the grantees (also called settling shares) to cover the costs.  Those early meetings must have been lightly attended, but they regularly voted money to layout lots and roads in the town.  Early residents with little ready money could work off their assessments by building roads, often to their own houses.  Non-residents paid in cash or forfeited their land to tax sales. 

Nathaniel Breed Tombstone

Nathaniel Breed built a “double pole house”, a large log cabin.  He and other early settlers built log cabins because there was no mill to saw boards lumber for board houses. Batchellor seems to have had a board house from the beginning; he lived just over the line from Keene on the first road that ran from Keene to the site of the future meetinghouse.  There were mills in Keene that could supply him with sawn boards. Settlers had had board houses in Massachusetts and wanted them in their new town as well. 

There was an early plan of roads that is now lost.  It is clear that there was a road from Keene to the site of the future meetinghouse (the current Nelson Cemetery) prior to 1773; one from that site to Stoddard (then called Limerick) following roughly the course of the Old Stoddard Road; and one from the current village to Joshua Kitteridge’s (Laughlin today) and from there to the Taylor Mill site.  In 1773 thee additional roads were built:  one from the meetinghouse to the Dublin line  at the outlet of Silver Lake, another from the meeting house up Tolman Pond and Cabot Roads to a cellar hole where James Bancroft lived, and the third from the road to Stoddard over the southwest shoulder of Osgood Hill, down Brick Yard Road and back on Tolman Pond Road to its western junction with the Cabot Road. 

Batchellor built the first sawmill himself on the brook that empties Center Pond just downstream of the bridge on Center Pond Road. Daniel Woods was enticed to build a gristmill at the outlet of Pleasant Pond, later Breed Pond and now Silver Lake.

Having the use of land they did not have to buy immediately attracted early residents.  Joseph Stanhope came to Nelson that first year building a pole house on City Hill, but only bought the place from Batchellor in August of 1769. Benjamin Day and his son, Peletiah, bought 208 acres from Breed Batchellor in May of 1774 “with the dwelling thereon.” Someone had cleared the land and built the “board house” prior to that.  It seems likely that John Proute, an early settler who moved away, had built the house, but never followed through with the purchase.  We know Proute cleared the place and was there 3 ½ years, but he never took title. The house, now owned by Maury Collins is likely the oldest house in Nelson today.

In a petition to Governor John Wentworth in 1773, Nathaniel Breed tells us something of what it took to attract settlers: “I think the town is as forward as any & as Good Roads or Better for the time it has been Setling. The Scarcity of Provisions …is the Reason that hath Hindered Some from Comeing in and Caused Others to Move Out of Town… Likewise great Numbers have had Lands Given them and Others have Bought in Order to Settle.  Mr. Batchellor has Sold land to None but Such as Promised him to settle it.” 

By 1770 there were five settlers in town.  Four years later two of these had left.  A report in 1773 lists an additional eighteen that came, cleared land and moved on.  Still by the end of that year there were about thirty families here occupying 9 board houses and 24 pole houses.  There were 5 camps housing people temporarily while they cleared land for farms.  Building a house and clearing enough land to feed a family must have taken several seasons in most cases. We know from Nathaniel Breed that many families left Monadock Number Six for “Scarcity of Provisions.” 

Of necessity a few people ran things.  Breed Batchellor made decisions in concert with a few fellow residents and his patron, Thomas Packer. The town raised money that was often paid to Batchellor for surveying, road building and other activities.  His motivation was profit and the threat that failure to settle the town by the deadline would put his title to land in Monadnock Number Six at risk.  The stakes for Batchellor were huge.  He took short cuts and made enemies in the process. 

Sources: Nelson Town Records, New Hampshire State Papers: Town Charters, Deeds of land: Cheshire County Registry of Deeds, A History of Nelson New Hampshire 1767-1967, Parke H. Struthers, editor

Nelson likely looked like this to its first settlers. Diorama at the Harvard School of Forestry in Petersham, Massachusetts. Photo courtesy of Eric Aldrich. Click image for larger rendering.

King James I awarded John Mason a charter of new land in the New Hampshire/ northern Massachusetts in 1623.   The grant included all the land between the Naumkeag (today called the Merrimack) and Pascataqua Rivers extending 60 miles inland.  The place was to be called New Hampshire and Mason’s charge was to settle the area.

Mason died in 1635 leaving only minor heirs. The title to the lands fell into dispute – a dispute resolved by a court case in 1746, which awarded the right to most of the original grant to John Tufton Mason who in turn sold his rights to a group of men who came to be styled the Masonian Proprietors.  Some of John Mason’s original grant had been settled by 1746 and those title disputes were quickly resolved in favor of the towns and settlers already established. There was not much dispute over what became Nelson; there was no one here.

The Masonian Proprietors were a group of fifteen wealthy insiders.  Many were related to the Provincial Governor, Benning Wentworth, and almost all were related to each other.  They put up £1,500 for what would become many townships.  Each put up an initial £100 and each share was assessed for costs as the proprietorship incurred them and received the proceeds of any land sales prior to any division of the township into individual lots for sale.

On December 6, 1751 the Masonian Proprietors granted Monadnock Number Six to another group of proprietors who would have the direct responsibility of settling the town. The Masonian Proprietors made their money by reserving a big block in the southwestern part of the new town for themselves.  The plan was to sell these lots and make a return on their investment. They were not obliged to settle and none did. They were also not obliged to pay the costs of the new town as it built roads and a meeting house, settled a minister and built schools.  The town was eight miles east to west and five miles north to south. It contained 24,000 acres.

Thomas Packer, one of the Proprietors (who was married to the Governor’s sister) was the largest landowner, owning the entire northwest quarter of the town. By 1753 he had purchased many additional shares in the township and by 1759 owned 32 of the 100 total grantee shares. He was the dominant figure in the early affairs of Monadnock Number Six, repeatedly elected Moderator of proprietor’s meetings. His son, Thomas Packer, JR was elected proprietor’s clerk.  The two men served in these positions from the grant in 1752 until settlers/proprietors like Breed Batchellor and Dr. Nathaniel Breed established a proprietor governing body in the town. (Eventually Monadnock Number Six was renamed Packersfield, though the name held for just a short time.)

The Monadnock Number Six Proprietors were obliged to settle the town to an agreed extent within 3 years or forfeit their grant. The Grantees, as they were called, were to “make settlement at their own expense.” By November of 1758 each double share (and there were 50 of these) was to have cleared 3 acres of land and enclosed the clearing for either mowing or tilling. They were to have built a house suitable for a family and they were to clear an additional 3 acres each year for three years. By 1762 the grantees were to have built a meetinghouse.  There were to be fifty families with a house and twelve acres cleared by 1761; the first settler actually arrived six years later in 1767.

The charter further stated that “all White pine trees fitt for masting his Majesty’s Royal Navey Growing on said tract be and are hereby granted to his Majesty…”

Things went developed slowly. Their first act was to divide the town into shares or lots and hold a public drawing where each proprietor would choose his lots. At a proprietors’ meeting held in Londonderry, the proprietors voted to choose a committee to lay out the lots in the township and to make a map of the layout.  They also assessed each share for the cost of this work. This meeting took place in October 1761.

The grant provided future support for support of the gospel and for schools: there were three 100-acre public lots.  One was reserved to support schools and the other two to support the church with one to be given to the first settled minister.   There was a ten-acre common lot to be used for public purposes. They were also to build necessary roads and the grant provided that roads could be put through any lot as needed with no compensation paid to the landowners. Expenses for surveying, road building and for any public purpose were raised by a majority of the Monadnock Number Six proprietors in a legally called meeting. The meeting could assess each share for the expenses of settling and developing the town. Any such assessment not paid within 30 days could have a portion of that owner’s land sold to meet the assessment.

Extenuating circumstances (Indian Wars was one mentioned) could extend the time allowed.  Indeed the French and Indian War (1754-1763) did occur and may have delayed Nelson’s settlement. The Monadnock Number Six proprietors seem to have been granted an extension.  The first settler, Breed Batchellor, arrived in 1767. There seem to have been at least three settlers that year.

On September 30, 1767 the pressure to settle must have been “on.” The Masonian Proprietors met to consider a petition by the proprietors of Monadnock Number Six for a further two or three years to comply with the terms of the grant which “by sundry impediments they could not comply with. But as they had done much toward making settlement agreeable to said grant, but wanted some further time… which should not require more than two or three years.”  They were granted a two-year extension.

Breed Batchellor was the first settler, settling just west of the old center of what is now Roxbury. Dr. Nathaniel Breed settled on the Old Stoddard Road about ¼ mile northeast of where the Giacomo’s live today.  Both came in 1767.  Both played a large role in the settlement of the town by buying and selling lots.

Prior to 1772 meetings were held in Londonderry and other coastal towns convenient to Thomas Packer and the other Monadnock Number Six proprietors.   In early 1768 Breed Batchellor was commissioned by the proprietors to make a plan of the town and lay out the first roads. Each settling share was assessed 50 schillings for the expenses.  In January 1769 the Batchellor plan was ratified at a proprietor’s meeting; by 1770 the records show only five settlers.  Settlement was behind schedule and the Monadnock Number Six proprietors stood to lose their grant.

Copy of Breed Batchellor’s early layout of lots in Monadnock Number Six. Click on this image to see a larger rendering.

In 1772 the first meeting of the Monadnock Number Six proprietors held here occurred at Breed Batchellor’s house. Nathaniel Breed was elected Moderator and Breed Batchellor, proprietor’s clerk.  Four acres of the common land were cleared and a meetinghouse of 25 by 30 feet built. Roadwork started with shareholders able to work off their assessments by working on the town’s roads at the rate of two schillings six pence per man per day and two schillings for a pair of oxen.

At the proprietor’s meeting in March 1773 the town voted to petition the royal governor for incorporation as a town. Breed Batchellor was appointed agent to present the petition on behalf of the Monadnock Number Six proprietors.  There were some who thought the petition premature.

To be continued . . .

Sources: State of New Hampshire Town Charters, Nelson Town Records