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In this vicinity we miss the blue Harebell, the identical harebell of Ellen Douglas, which I remember waving its exquisite flowers along the banks of the Merrimack, and again at Brattleboro', below the cascade in the village, where it has climbed the precipitous sides of old buildings, and nods inaccessibly from their crevices, in that picturesque spot, looking down on the hurrying river.
In November, Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, Kirk Boott, Warren Dutton, Paul Moody, and John W. Boott, visited the canal, which they now controlled, perambulated the ground, and planned for the future. February 5, 1822, these gentlemen and others were incorporated as the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, with Warren Dutton as president.
Hazen's tribulations were by no means ended, for on the voyage the Merrimack was unluckily cast away on Fox Island and a good deal of her cargo, together with papers containing accounts of the Company's business, was lost. However, all the passengers were saved, as well as most of their valuables, and were brought to St. John in Captain Drinkwater's sloop.
The French war ended, Captain Webster, in compensation for his services, received a grant of land in the mountain wilderness at the head of the Merrimack, where, as miller and farmer, he lived and reared his family. The Revolutionary War summoned this noble yeoman to arms once more.
In this unhappy strife for precedent, which has been repeated on later occasions by princes and society persons, the young wife seemed to be fated as an unwilling sacrifice; but summoning spirit to leave her father's wigwam she launched a canoe on the Merrimack, hoping to make her way along that watery highway to her husband's domain.
Hist. Col. Hist. Assoc. After the charter granted to the Council for New England in 1620, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason procured, August 10, 1622, a patent for "all that part of y^e maine land in New England lying vpon y^e Sea Coast betwixt y^e rivers of Merrimack & Sagadahock and to y^e furthest heads of y^e said Rivers and soe forwards up into the land westward untill threescore miles be finished from y^e first entrance of the aforesaid rivers and half way over that is to say to the midst of the said two rivers w^ch bounds and limitts the lands aforesaid togeather w^th all Islands and Isletts w^th in five leagues distance of y^e premisses and abutting vpon y^e same or any part or parcell thereoff."
Awaking the nurse and a white lad who had been taken prisoner also, she took the Indians' own tomahawks and dispatched the men and one woman. The brave white women then spiked all the cannon save one and taking the scalps of their victims with them, they embarked on the Merrimack, then high with the spring floods, and soon reached Haverhill.
Like a loitering pilgrim, it sparkled up to me in recognition as it glided along and bore away my little frets and fatigues on its bosom. When the work "went well," I sat in the window-seat, and let my fancies fly whither they would, downward to the sea, or upward to the hills that hid the mountain-cradle of the Merrimack.
But I do not think you ever had a single minister, or any learned scholar, in your family, or ever owned a whole island, in the Merrimack river as my family, the Harmons, always have done, since the country was first settled and probably always shall, for the next five hundred years." To this Thomas Putnam had no answer.
During my father's life, a few years before my birth, his thoughts had been turned towards the new manufacturing town growing up on the banks of the Merrimack. He had once taken a journey there, with the possibility in his mind of making the place his home, his limited income furnishing no adequate promise of a maintenance for his large family of daughters.
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