cle's home Etta soon became light-hearted and joyous, in a measure forgetting the troubles of her early life, while Barbara resting content in the love of her noble husband, finds perfect happiness at last—After Many Years.
AN OLD SKETCH OF LANCASTER.
BY JOHN W. WEEKS.[1]
[From the Farmers' Monthly Visitor, conducted by Isaac Hill, October, 1839.]
Connecticut River, meaning in the Indian language, "the stream of many waters," passes the forty-fourth degree and thirty minutes of North Latitude and fifth degree and twenty-eight minutes East Longitude in a south westerly direction, being the north westerly boundary of the town of Lancaster, ten miles, exclusive of its windings, which are so remarkable that the country adjacent obtained from the Aborrigines the name of Coos, which in this language signified crooked, and known to the early hunters as the Upper Coos, to distinguish it from Haverhill and Newbury, which was also for a like reason called Coos by the natives, and by the hunters the Lower Coos. Colebrook has recently received, on the authority of friend Carrigain, the appelation of "Coos above the upper Coos."
Lancaster derived its name from a town of Massachusetts; it is delightfully located, the hills receding somewhat like an amphitheatre. Most of its lands are of excellent quality—its alluvials stretching nearly its whole length, and averaging about one mile in width. Israel's river rushes tumultuously westward, furnishing power for mills and machinery, to a great extent, near the centre of the town, where its waters become comparatively tranquil and gently meander for a long distance, through a most fertile soil, until they mingle with the more turbid Connecticut.
Lancaster was incorporated on the 5th of July, 1763, and owes its early settlement, like many other events in the world, to passion. David Page Esq., grand uncle of our present Governor, disatissfied with the division of the rights in Haverhill, and having been advised of the extent and fertility of our "meadows" by some of the survivors of that party of Rogers' Rangers, who, after the destruction of the village
- ↑ Hon. John W. Weeks, the writer of this sketch, and a prominent citizen of Lancaster, was a native of the town of Greenland, but removed in childhood with his father to Lancaster. His occupation was that of a house carpenter, but he took much interest in public and military affairs. In the war of 1812, he raised a company for the 11th Regiment. U. S. Infantry, winch he commanded with credit. He was brevetted for gallant service at Chippewa, and commissioned Major at the close of the war. He lived thereafter upon a farm in Lancaster until his death in 1853. He was a State Senator in 1827 and 1828, served with Ichabod Bartlett and others on the New Hampshire and Maine Boundary Commission in 1828, and was a member of Congress one term, from 1829 to 1831. He also occupied the offices of Sheriff and Treasurer of the County of Coos. He left no children. He was an uncle to William D. Weeks of Lancaster, present Judge of Probate for the County of Coos, who now occupies the farm which he formerly owned, and also to Hon. James W. Weeks, a prominent citizen of Lancaster. In politics he was an ardent Democrat, or rather Republican as the party was then called (as will readily be seen from certain expressions in this sketch) and was the political associate of such men as Jared W. Williams, John S. Wells and John H. White.
