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 siting 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 I, 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 (1731) 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, in actuality surveyors had the option of adjusting the size of the lot to account for swampy land or rock outcrops and ledges. Thus, when we look at a modern map we can see that sometimes the acreage was not actually 40 acres. The same is true for this lot. So while we may know who the first Proprietor was for this lot, we can state with no certainty the actual size of the lot until someone examines the surveyor’s records.

This site is very close to the border of two 40 Acre parcels in the Home Lot Division of land: lots 80 and 81. For this report we are assuming it is in Lot #81, and we know the first owner was Thomas Young.

As an additional point of reference, this site is within the boundaries of the famous Clough Tavern land, and thus is a part of the history of the Clough family. The ell of the Tavern is generally believed to have been built in 1744. And in fact, there is an ancient town record that documents the fact that on 26 February 1750/1 a short section of road was laid out “which goes by Capt. Clough’s Mill…..on the west side” (V. 1-P.36). We can assume that he built his simple dwelling some time before the mill and the road which would have been there in some form for several years was officially recognized on that date. We also note that this is the oldest record by 12 years that we have seen regarding the layout of a road in Canterbury. This road goes behind the site, and well before any structure was located here.

Finally, the old maps available to us do indicate that by 1892 the house was only a cellar hole and a memory. Thus it has been exposed to starry nights for at least 133 years [in 2025]. Maybe! The 1892 Hurd Town Atlas is known as a reliable source of information. But here we believe it to be in error. For there is a contradiction between a photo of this Clough/Faulkner home taken in winter that includes power or telephone lines passing by the house, and the 1892 date. The general understanding is that the Shakers installed telephones (1901), and electricity (1910) earlier than the town itself. Thus, the house was probably gone between 1904 and 1914. Starry skies shining for maybe 110 years!

The names of the occupants were available to author James Otis Lyford who wrote “History of the Town of Canterbury  1727-1912.”In volume 1 He reported them as M.P. Sargent (who built it before 1858), then Prescott Webber, Russell Burdeen, Martin Streeter, Henry McDaniel, Tristram McDaniel. Joseph Faulkner, and Edward Willard. However, ownership records document the fact that the land under this site was owned during the existence of this building by the Clough family. Yet Lyford just provided us with the occupant’s names. And none of them were Cloughs. Maybe they were all tenants?

Further reading in Lyford reveals a hint of the life stories of the inhabitants and confirms that all of them were probably tenants. Meet them here.

Moses P. Sargent is scarcely mentioned by Lyford, though he seems to have been married to a woman named Valerie, and shows up at this location on the 1858 Walling Merrimack Country Map. Furthermore, Lyford, on page 287 mentions that in 1859 Sargent was paid by the town “$150 in damages to wife for being thrown off a bridge.”! Will we ever be able to know more about that incident?

How long Prescott J. Webber and his wife Iantha Hutchins resided there is not reported, but they had no children who might have inherited it. More connections between the Webbers and Cloughs are in the “P.S.” below.

 We estimate that Russell A. Burdeen may have moved in around 1873, the year he married Almira Emily Abbott who was 12 years his senior and had been married once before. They also had no children. He died in 1884, which we make note of because of a marriage in 1888 described below.

Martin V.B. Streeter married Elizabeth McDaniel and they may have moved in around 1877. Interestingly, his sister Lydia B. Streeter married Elizabeth’s brother Tristram McDaniel in 1860. He may have been the brother of the next inhabitant, Henry McDaniel who appears no other time in the Lyford history. Next in residence was the same Tristram McDaniel who was presumably still married to Lydia B.

Then Joseph Faulkner contributed to the story because his name appears on the [undated] photo of the house which we include below. Finally, Lyford reports that Edward F. Willard inhabited the place, and we surmise it was around 1888 as that is the date of his marriage to Almira Emily Abbott. The very same women of a previous paragraph. This was her third marriage and she was 15 years his senior!

P.S.  Two well known Canterbury citizens may have also had a connection to this house and the Clough family, and here we take a leap of imagination and propose that a couple Webber women were connected to this place. Col. David McCrillis (b.1754) had a daughter named Nancy (b. 1783) who married Nehemiah Clough Jr, and two of their 8 children married Webber folk.  That’s about it for “hints of the life stories of the inhabitants of this house”.

Now just a cellar hole and foundation nestled in a deep forest, seen here before the power lines were set, with an open field stretching out to the south.

Clearly this photo was taken of the house after the preceding photo, as now there are power or phone lines present, and the young tree sprout is now an 8 foot tree!

Clough Tavern Road. Several Scanlon family members also contributed to the investigation. As did metal detectorist Shaun Searah.

We found the site studded with both large, mature deciduous trees, and slim, dead, and falling down white pines. Our first morning of work consisted of removing many fallen branches and of raking back organic debris to open whatever foundation stones were there to view. Many branches were in the relatively small root cellar, and while we were in there clearing it out, we began bringing into view old trash, mostly iron. Nothing new about this situation. Undoubtedly some of it was dumped by the neighbors. Just can’t resist that convenient hole in the ground when cleaning out the cellar or shed.

Even when the clearing was finished there was no visible evidence of hearth stones, nor either perimeter sill stones or a door sill stone.  Bricks and brick fragments at the highway end of the foundation defined the east chimney location, which as confirmed by the photos, was off-center as it did not pierce the ridge-pole.  Even more abundant than bricks were shards and bits of bottle glass and heavily corroded metal “things”. Furthermore, a significant portion of the earth embankment delineating the foundation near Old Tilton Road contained no stones whatsoever, but appeared to be sandy gravel that had been brought in as a foundation for sill stones, be they cut or native. 

About 30% of the foundation is taken up by the root cellar, which contains many fallen stones, organic matter, bricks fragmented and complete, and was strewn with lots of trash, mostly metal. We found no clearly designated area that would have been an outside entrance to this necessity of early Canterbury life. Nor did we find any remains of a barn. There is a huge, flat, almost round granite stone lying on the ground 32 feet north of the cellar hole that may be covering a well.     Three facts have prevented us from positively measuring the size of the foundation. Most of the stones that would have supported the sill stones are missing. Because the site was very flat, little earth that could be diagnostic was moved to make what amounts to a crawl space foundation. And the west end of the perimeter was strongly disturbed by excavation activity, preventing the possibility of determining the location of the foundation at the west end. That being noted, we believe the footprint of the structure was 24 feet by 36 or even 40 feet.

The root cellar would be almost square, except for the intrusion on the left in this view of the south wall. Heavy damage right of center caused by trees.

Here is a view of the west wall. Both ends are distorted but standing, and obviously the center segment is completely collapsed. The dark spot lower-middle beside a pile of bricks is the test pit.

This north view illustrates the almost total collapse of the wall right down to bare earth in the center segment. And again, somewhat intact corners.

We saved the best for last with this east view, even with a jumble of stones everywhere. See the brick chimney mound on the left toward the road.

In looking carefully at the earlier antique photo with the house still standing it appears that there are brick chimneys at both ends of the roof, and on the near side of the ridgeline. As noted in the diagram of the site, the brick mound is off-set to the south, toward the camera, as expected. However the existence of the back chimney could not be verified on the ground because the west end of the site has been disrupted, and additionally maybe most of the bricks we expected to find here were intentionally removed.

In the west view above we pointed out the dark exploratory pit, dug to determine the depth to the cellar floor. After 14 inches of black soil, many bricks, glass fragments and rusty metal, we reached mineral earth. Soil from the dilapidated walls, mixed with all the trash lead to this being the shallowest root cellar we have documented. In truth “we” did not reach mineral earth. Young members of the Scanlon family did!

This is the part of the report where we usually report about and show photos of the wonderful old objects that bring life to an abandoned homesite. But not this time. None of the human-made objects in and around the foundation discovered during our documentation revealed anything notable about the former inhabitants. You have probably seen many of them in the four photos of the root cellar. An archeology investigator might be delighted by what we view as trash and have a different interpretation.

On the other hand, this very corroded coin was located by Shaun near a log not far from the northwest corner of the foundation.

This is what we might now call a nickel because it was worth 5 cents. Some even call it a “V Liberty Head Nickel”.

To help sort this out here is a photo of this 5 cent coin in excellent condition.

This is the “Liberty Head” side of the “V” coin.

See if you can find the stars on the artifact coin.

This site fronts on Old Tilton Road, and the oldest layout by the town dates from about 1766 and names no abutters. The June 1823 adjustment passes this site when it proceeds on the rangeway between land of Widow Mary Haines and Obediah Clough. It was further revised in November of 1834 and cites Mary Haines and Joseph Clough. We do not yet know when the house was built, but it was there by 1858, and probably missed these three events that finally got Old Tilton Road where it is now located.

The writer of this report is grateful to the Canterbury Historical Society for preserving the beautiful photographs that do much to bring the story of this house to life.

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