Exploring a site: #4 Hutchinson/Greenleaf 1

History

To begin with a deep look at the history of this lot, we note that generations of the original settlers occupied this land for 11,500 or so years. Because this land was not much favored for growing crops or settling in villages, we believe that while the hunting may have been very productive here, little other activity took place. Thus for the first hundred years of European settlement here in the Western World, little changed in these hills for the indigenous people. However, through disease, warfare, and treaties the area became “open” to the new settlers as the British royal owners began laying out towns further and further from the Atlantic Coast.

 The early history of this site is documented on page 1 in “History of the Town of Canterbury” by James Otis Lyford, 1912. So here we go, back to Lyford’s rendering of the original 20 May,1727 charter of the town given by the representative of King George II, when Royal Lieutenant Governor John Wentworth gathered 199 men at the meeting house at Oyster River Falls in the town of Durham. By the end of that meeting these men became the Proprietors (owners) of 121 square miles of frontier country, later known as Canterbury, Loudon, and Northfield. That day Paul Gerrish, Paul Wentworth, and John Smith were appointed to be the first selectmen. However, the next step needed to open the land to occupation by people of European ancestry didn’t occur until four years later, 27 May 1731 when the Proprietors “drew lots”.

That meant that the numbers 1 thru 199 were placed in a container and each man drew a number, which became his lot. In this case a “40 acre Home Lot”. The record shows that by then the survey and division of the prime land of the town had been completed. While the team that surveyed and marked out the lots on the ground were charged with making the lots to be 40 acres each, the survey crew chief had the option of making the lot larger if the quality of the land was marginal. Thus, when we look at a modern map we can see that sometimes the acreage was not actually 40 acres. For example, Home Lot #95 seems to be missing from the other Home Lots and is among some other oddly placed lots. It is located mostly on the west side of Foster Road, and due to the poor quality of the land, is actually about 73 acres on the ground. So while we do know who the first Proprietor was for your lot, we can state with no certainty the actual size of the lot unless we measure it on the ground.

More History

Most of the Proprietors were land speculators, not settlers, yet the first owner of lot #37, Ichabod Chesley, kept his holding for 16 years, passing it on in 1743 to Ephraim Clough, from a family well known in this town. This lot appears in the Deed records to have changed hands at least 5 times in the following 68 years. That year, 1811, on January First (RCRD Book 211, Page 163), Moses Brown sold this lot to Edmund Greenleaf, which supposedly was in the division of 40 acre Home Lots, and he built his family home. However, Lyford reports (Page 437) that this was “a house that burned before it was finished”.

What we found, and some Conclusions

The site was difficult to see from the road as the brush along Foster road is dense, and because the cellar hole is elevated above the road. Also complicating the view is the existence of several hundred feet of blue plastic maple sap tubing throughout the site. Very distracting!

While the heavily eroded cellar hole of this ruined foundation has been exposed to the elements for over 210 years, the earthen mound from the digging of the cellar clearly delineates the footprint of the original structure.

The fieldstone wall on the south side is the only one with all or most of the stones present, although most of them have tumbled into the excavated hole. A few stones delineate the approximate location of the west and north walls. Much of the north east corner is occupied by the foundation of the chimney stack and reduces the size of the cellar by about 25%. The two retaining walls of this mound display a scattering of stones, with many from the west side tumbled into the cellar, and few remaining scattered near the south wall.

With the east side of the structure only several feet from Foster Road, a somewhat orderly assemblage of very well formed stones appear to be the base or remains of the actual front door sill.

Taken as a whole as seen from the road, the foundation presents as the south ½ of a classical center chimney house, as there is no evidence of a north ½ foundation above a crawl space. However, if the typical shallow foundation had been there, it could have easily been removed.

Digging Down

Just about 25 feet north of the north-west corner of the foundation is the very interesting well. With a large earth mound west of the well, undoubtedly the residue of digging the well, there can be no doubt that the well was dug. As discovered, the ground around the “mouth” of the well including the stone structure itself was completely covered by duff, rounded medium sized rocks, earth, and grass, which when removed revealed that the well had been back-filled by dumping rocks into it. Haphazardly placed with large air gaps between them. The walls of the well are in place. We only speculated that the well had been completely finished, and abandoned at the time of the fire, and quickly filled in.

By gently scratching around the earthen footprint of the site, four artifacts were discovered. Near the middle of the chimney base, about 2 inches below the surface of a dark “topsoil” we retrieved a very heavily encrusted adjustable iron wrench 5 inches long.

On the embankment at the extreme South West corner, about 1 ½ inches below the surface in mineral earth we excavated a small (4 inch) fragment of a cast iron pot, apparently partially melted. Very near the South East corner we recovered four tiny (3/8 inch) clear glass shards, apparently part of a container, less than an inch below the topsoil surface.

In order to determine the depth of the cellar we excavated a 12X16 inch oval hole about in the center of the cellar. The organic material was a sticky, black muck with little mineral content. It contained a considerable number of red brick fragments of all sizes (maybe 6 or 8% by volume). Some being the size of oat berries, through many the size of peas, almonds and peach pits, and some all the way to ¼ and ½ bricks. This writer speculates that the heat of the fire (or 2 centuries in the ground) caused them to disaggregate. One 95% intact brick was recovered. An occasional fist-sized rock was also found. This mix continued most of the way to mineral earth. Two shards of pottery were collected here. Within a depth of 10 inches many horizontal layers of charred wood were discovered. At first very thin (1/16 inch), most are no larger than a match. In this layer we recovered what appears to be a heavily encrusted iron object about 4 inches long, apparently  an oxen shoe.

 At this level some of the charcoal approached ¾ inch in thickness, but rarely longer than 1 inch. Occasionally more organic muck was found in the charcoal layers, along with several small pottery shards.

Finally, at 14 inches two more ceramic shards on a crusty layer of  tan, medium grained sand, maybe somewhat lithified (by the heat?) Here and there also a few rounded 1 or 2 inch stones embedded in the sand.

Presumably Foster Road was there during the construction, and the site had access. But after the fire, the roadside stone wall opening was closed. And as of yet, we have not discovered when this road was laid out by the town.

Obviously there was no need to build a barn and indeed we discovered no such foundation.

In addition, at a later time, the land upon which this relic rests was a 4 acre apple orchard for many years, then after being abandoned for many years, has for several decades been operated as part of a sugar maple grove, now by Brian Hutchinson of Hackleboro Road. These almost two centuries of agricultural activity has probably contributed to the collapsed state of the field stone structure.

Epilog

Lyford reports (P. 437) that after the fire Greenleaf rebuilt nearby, and we surmise that he had completed and occupied this new home by 1812. The record also shows that the Greenleaf family sells land with a house to Simeon B. Foster in 1845 who is known to have lived there (but now a cellar hole: see our report Greenleaf 2-A) fewer than 200 feet north of this site, on the north side of Hackleboro Road. Which in the mind of this writer explains the missing bricks on the chimney base: Greenleaf took them to his new construction, and possibly along with some foundation stones.

It is possible that other, as yet undiscovered evidence may exist that would amend or contradict our findings.