Between a Road and a Wet Place

A door-sill stone? At the mid-point of the east foundation wall.

Lost in Names

The history of most of the land divided here in Canterbury by the first European owners begins in 1727. But rather than possess one of the numbered lots, by 1743 Ezekliel Morreil was buying 40 acre Home lots in the area that became the center of Canterbury. In 1752 he made good use of these holdings by selling the town an odd-shaped 40 acre tract of land that was becoming the center of town. That same day, by a vote at town meeting 25 June 1752, he was granted about 100 acres of land some distance north of the center. The voters were probably pleased with themselves at their good fortune of converting some rugged upland into much needed valuable land they were already settling.

Morrill was a Concord resident and probably also believed he had made a good deal. And it is quite probable that when he sold the 100 acre parcel of land on 23 May 1776 he may have been anticipating the Declaration of Independence. Maybe he was raising cash to help with the Revolution. He had already been very active in the development of the town, having served in many roles. He directed the building of the 1756 town house, was voted selectman, was active in creating the Congregational Church, and examined the accounts of the town.

The buyer, William Hazeltine, paid “One hundred and twenty three pounds of money”, as recorded in his deed. Said deed he apparently kept at home until 13 September 1824, just a year after Merrimack County was created, as that was where it was recorded in Book 3, Page 281, 48 years later!

A man by the name Hazeltine is noted several times in Volume One of James Otis Lyford’s “History of the Town of Canterbury 1727-1912. He was known as being active in town affairs as well as showing up on the tax rolls beginning in 1779 (P. 65).That year he served as a Grand Juror at the Court of General Sessions in Portsmouth (P. 188). In November of 1790 he was an early signatory of the first covenant of the Congregational Church of Canterbury (P. 306).

But the record in Lyford of the activity of William Hazeltine was confusing to follow.

For example, a man named William Hazelton was elected “constable and collector” [of taxes] in 1794 and served until 1816 (P. 104). He also appears several more times as a home-owner (P. 411, 416, 418, and 462), at a location that matches the description in the Ezekiel Morrill 1776 deed. Must be our guy!

In consulting the Genealogy Volume of Lyford, we quickly discover that Lyford reports that William’s last “name is variously spelled Hazeltine, Haseltine, Haselton, and Hazelton in the town records” (P. 188). Furthermore, a man named William Hazelton married Amanda Frances Morrill on 2 August 1864 and had 5 children with her in Forest Glen Ill. Clearly not the William who appears several times in the town records, as our William died in 1826. Thus, there was only one man named William Hazeltine in Canterbury.

The names of the occupants of that appears to be our site author Lyford reported were Obadiah Clough, Ralph Streeter, William Avery, and Mrs. Sarah Bennett (P. 416). Except for Obadiah, these others are not much noted in Lyford, and maybe they were all tenants of the Hazeltine farm?

Location Details

Warning. This site hosts a vibrant sprinkling of poison ivy!

Turning to the location of the foundation, there is a good match between existing stone walls and the current tax map when aligned with the original lot layouts. The plan included here illustrates the configuration of the foundation but not the lots, and yet we know that it is only about 250 feet from the site of the Hazeltine homestead. Both are on the land granted to Ezekiel Morrill.

Our First Look

We were required to remove dozens of low-hanging branches from the various sized saplings on the site before we began to make sense of the features of the house foundation. The long axis of the structure is parallel with the approximately north-west running road and thus we assume the front door faces south-west.

The subject foundation is poorly located just a dozen feet west from a now flooded meadow, and when documented the root cellar, which is below the level of the water in the meadow, was flooded almost half its depth. We can assume that when built there were no beavers around, the meadow was only seasonally wet, and possibly the cellar was reasonably dry. As there was no well to be found, nor any foundation of a barn, we made our time-tested conclusion, that this was probably tenant housing for the hired help working for the prosperous Hazeltine homestead to the north.

The layout of this home appears to be a traditional traditional center chimney building, with the brick mound with the remains of the fireplaces and chimney located in the center. A small root cellar occupies the south end of the foundation and the remainder of the space within the perimeter to the north and beyond the brick mound is crawl space.

As is expected of any ancient stone structure close to a still active road, no cut granite stones from the sills remain and many sill shim stones attesting to their absence were discovered. Assuming 2 fireplaces in a house of this size, most of the bricks are missing, and those present are deeply entangled in forest duff and tree roots.

We found the site studded with several large White Pines (one 30” in diameter), a few both young and mature deciduous trees, most of them in the way of clearing the site. Furthermore, the N-E corner is buried in a huge confusion of fallen pine trees and branches.

The Work, and Some Findings

Our first morning of work consisted of removing many fallen branches, pruning saplings, and raking back organic debris to open whatever foundation stones were there to view. The relatively small root cellar had no large debris from trees in it, but as noted above it was flooded. About 35% of the foundation is taken up by the root cellar, which contains fallen stones, leaves, and mostly, water. We believe the footprint of the structure was 20 feet by 38 feet.

Even when the clearing was finished there was still no evidence of hearth stones, nor perimeter sill stones. And the brick mound was buried by the activity of plants as noted above. In addition to the missing cut granite sill stones, many of the other foundation stones along the perimeter, and almost all of them related to the brick mound, are missing or covered with earth.

The ditch in the plan is possibly a ramp entrance to the root cellar.

Plan of the Foundation

Scroll to see scale.A few small stones along the west perimeter are not shown.

Photographs of the Foundation and Root Cellar

A view east of the flooded root cellar with the near-by wetland.

The view south of the root cellar wall, mostly intact.

The view west of the root cellar wall, very collapsed with intruding log.

The view north of the root cellar wall gone. With the brick mound beyond.

Overview looking north, 3 corners marked with white flags. 4th behind the pine tree.

Overview looking south of the brick mound, wall and south corners flagged.

The view north of the brick mound with red flags. Zoom to view bricks.

The view south of the brick mound with red flags and one brick exposed.

The view north on the east side-line with white flags.

The view north of the west side line with most stones gone. Two white flags.

Artifacts

This is the part of the report where we usually describe and show photos of the wonderful old objects that bring life to an abandoned homesite. But not this time. Without metal detecting we were unable to discover any iron artifacts. However, the stone we suppose is the back door-sill, when excavated, had buried on it a scattering of several dozen tiny fragments of window glass.

There are clear, green, and one blue fragment. And two, possibly three thicknesses.

Final Details

On 9 January 1790 the town laid out a road beginning almost 280 rods (4600 feet) north-west of the site and running south all the way through the Center and down Morrill Road to the Concord town-line. This was recorded in Volume 3, Page 352 of the town records.

On Page 842 of the same records is a report of a road laid out to improve the conditions of Old Tilton Road beginning just a few rods south of the subject property. This 9 June 1823 layout cites the nearby Willian Hazelton [sic] place, which as we have described, is just north of the LaPlante foundation.

The deed record here is complex and difficult, as are many searches for the history of land in Canterbury. Largely due to the crash in the value of property as the the riches of the sheep raising boom began dying out in the 1860’s. Deeds became poorly written with much of the detail of the previous 130 years becoming lost.

A 95 acre portion of the William Hazeltine farm including his house is clearly convened by deed to Philip C. Clough in 1883 (MCRD 268/402). The tiny triangular plot of land (Tract III), our subject foundation location, was part of that property. But why did Clough, in 1909, write a will (MCRP file number 21906) that passed both his farms, “my home farm and the Haseltine farm” to Henry G. Gleason (A/K/A George H. Gleason)? We find no connection of him to this family in the Lyford history.

Furthermore, we found no transfer records to Clough of the “home farm”.

While we have no paper evidence of when, the nearly original configuration of the land that became the Philip C. Clough and Mary Elizabeth Batchelder homestead farm was considered not complete and was added to. This was in the form of a small triangular shaped plot of land with (probably) a small home (our site) on it. As noted, the land, and possibly the house as well, was part of the nearby homestead of the prosperous William Hazeltine family and was situated at the extreme north west corner of the Clough place. It had become important enough to the Clough family to be purchased and included in the current LaPlante property. We assume that when this happened there was probably a house on the property occupied by a family connected to the Clough place. Location noted below.

The foundation is located approximately in the position of the “U”.

The 1918 deed (MCRD 444/127) from Gleason to Robert Lee Howe and Frances Munson Howe described this tiny parcel as Tract III. We therefore surmise that about this time it had become part of the Clough property.

There is some confusion in the records about the buildings in the area. The 1858 Walling map denotes the site was occupied by T. & A. Clough, but is gone by the time the 1892 Hurd map was published. But as Cody photographed the huge Hazeltine home in 1910, Lyford reported that it was still there but that it had been abandoned, and was gone by 1912. The Hazeltine family had already left their home, and it is possible the building on what became the LaPlant property was also gone. It may have been sold and moved, or been dismantled, or just fell into ruin. Our documentation was unable to provide enough evidence for us to have an opinion as to the reason for the disappearance of the house.

More History

To take a deep look at the history of this site, we note that generations of the original settlers occupied this land for 11,500 or so years. Because this upland was not much favored by them for growing crops or congregating 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 introduced in the first two paragraphs of this report. However, a more complete telling of the story begins on page 1 of “History of the Town of Canterbury” by James Otis Lyford, 1912. So here we go, back to Lyford’s rendering of the original charter of the town given by the representative of King George II, on 20 May, 1727, 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.

However, development of the town moved slowly, and the occupation of the land by people of European ancestry was delayed 4 years. In October of 1727, the Proprietors in town meeting voted to settle the bounds between Canterbury and the abutting towns. Three years later, they actually voted to allocate money to cause this to happen. This settling of the bounds, and the laying out of the 40 acre home lots had been completed by 27 May, 1731 as that was the day of “drawing the lots”, which meant that the numbers 1 thru 199 were placed in a container and each man drew a number, which became his lot. Our town’s history has continued 299 years.

Research, writing, and illustrations for the Cellar Hole Committee by Bill Adams

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