sympathy. From fighting for a principle he invariably passed to fighting for his own way, and he was unable to see that the one cause was not as righteous as the other. His portrait—a daguerreotype—shows hardness and endurance and immovability. There is no humility in the heavy lip and square-set mouth, no aspiration in the shrewd eyes; the high forehead is merely forbidding.[1]
All Mark Baker's children were born in the little farmhouse in Bow, between 1808 and 1821. There were three sons—Samuel, Albert, and George Sullivan—and three daughters—Abigail, Martha, and Mary.[2] The family also included Mark Baker's mother. According to pioneer custom the early Bakers had built their house on top of the hill upon which their farm lay, fully half a mile from the public road, which at that point follows the course of the Merrimac River in the valley. However inconvenient and impractical this choice of a site may have been, it left nothing to be desired in the view. Across the green valley of woods and fields, through which flows the white-banked river, one can see from the Baker hill-top the long blue ranges of the White Mountains. Nearer at hand there are glimpses of clean white villages, and at the left is the city of Concord. The nearest house is out of sight at the foot of the hill. In Mark Baker's day it was occupied by his brother James, with whom Mark was not in friendly relation.
The house itself is of wood, unpainted, and extremely small
- ↑ In his last years he was afflicted with a palsy of the head and hands, and suffered from facial cancer although it did not cause his death. Of his family, nearly all have died of cancer in some form. His two eldest daughters and their three children, and two of his sons, Samuel and George, all died of the dread disease.
- ↑ Samuel Dow, born July 8, 1808; Albert, born February 5, 1810; George Sullivan, born August 7, 1812; Abigail Barnard, born January 15, 1816; Martha Smith, born January 19, 1819; Mary A. Morse, born July 16, 1821.
