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��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.
��Dunstable, in i 793, Samuel Minot pur- chased the Paul VVentworth title. A part of the " Jewell hill " and vicinity are included in this division, and it was some years occupied by the town as a poor-farm. Among the pioneers who picked their way into this part of Whitefield's solitudes, was one Silas Borden, and in those early years the blazed pathway through the wilds led by Jeremy Cogswell's and Jacob Jewell's to "Borden's Corners," a name now almost unremembered save among the musty records of the town. A portion of this Paul Wentworth title is now owned and occupied by Mr. Charles Colby.
Number eleven in the conscription list of 1788, was Thomas McDonough. He was represented as being the private secretary of Gov. Wentworth, and he cast his future with that gentleman when he fled before the rising storm of liberty and democracy. There is said to have been the most intimate rela- tionship existing between them, and that the secretary "adhered to the gov- ernor's person as well as to his cause when he left Portsmouth.
That these friendly relations con- tinued, and that McDonough stood well with the government at home, is evident from the fact that after the acknowledgment of the independence of the colonies and the return of peace, he was appointed to the British con- sulship at Boston, which office he held until his death in 1805.
In 1774 he received a grant of one ninety-fourth part of the township of Whitefield, perhaps as a reward for faithful service to his master in thoss days, or what was considered as meri- torious, for "faithful silence." Little ben- efit he received from this royal gift, how- ever, for he was among those of whom it was written " certain persons who have left the state and joined with the enemies thereof." Samuel Minot, of Concord, Mass., purchased the title in 1 793, and in 18 1 2 Paul Buswell founded a house on one division of it, located in what is locally known as the " knot- hole." This Paul was a jjioneer and
��an active man in Whitefield's cariy days. He was born in Methuen, Mass., in 1773, and his wife was a native of Warner, N. H., where they were mar- ried in 181 8, and immediately settled down to the stern realities of life in this Whitefield house in the wilderness, and here their years on earth ended, — the wife Polly, in 1829, in the midst of life ; Paul in the full measure of his years, in 1845.
There was a John Cochran, of Ports- mouth, among the petitioners for White- field's ungranted lands. He was in command of Fort William and Mary, in the harbor of Portsmouth, when in 1774 Paul Revere came up post haste from Boston, bringing to the "committee of safety" a copy of a recent act of the king and council prohibiting the exportation of gvui-pow- der and military stores to America. The result of this post haste ride of Paul Revere may best be told by an extract from a letter written by CrO\'. Wentworth to Gov. Gage, and dated Portsmouth, N. H., the 14th day of December, 1774 :
" Sir : I have the honor to write it is with the utmost concern I am called upon by my duty to the king to com- municate to your excellency a most unhappy affair perpetrated here this, day.
"Yesterday, in the afternoon, Paul Revere arrived in this town, express from the committee in Boston to another committee in this town, and delivered his dis[)atch to Mr. Samuel Cutts, merchant of this place, wha immediately convened the committee, of which he is one, and as I learn laid it before them. This day, before noon, before any suspicions could be had of their intentions, about four hundred were collected together and immediate- ly proceeded to his Majesty's castle, William and Mary, at the entrance to- this harbor, and forcilily took posses- sion thereof (notwithstanding the best defence that could be made by Capt. Cochran) , and by violence carried away one hundred barrels of powder, belong- ing to the king, deposited in the castle..
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