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��SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.
��SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE DURING THE
PAST CENTURY.
��BY PROF. E. D. SANBORN.
��Statistics are quoted to show that hu- man life has been prolonged and human comforts increased within the present century. This is true ; but how have these results been brought about? Improved medical skill and superior nursing have prolonged the life of the feeble, sickly, diseased, scrofulous and consumptive patients. Better houses, warmer clothes and lighter work have enhanced their comforts. Multitudes live for scores of years who formerly could not have with- stood the hardships of the age ; hence, the average of human life has been lengthened. But laborers and thinkers do not live so long.
Those very defences against cold and rain which protect the feeble, enervate the healthy. Dr. Belknap mentions nearly a score of people in the last cent- ury, in this State, who lived beyond a hundred years. "In Londonderry the first planters lived, on an average, to eighty years ; some to ninety, and others to one hundred. Among the last was Wm. Scoby, who died at the age of one hundred and four. The last two heads of sixteen families who began the plant- ing of that town died there in 1782, aged ninety-three years each." Such exam- ples of longevity are very rare in our days. The family of Col. James Davis of Durham was remarkable for length of days. The father died at eighty-eight, the mother at one hundred and. two, and the average age of nine children was eighty-four years! The same author, speaking of the pioneers of New Hamp- shire, says : " They frequently lie out in the woods for several days or weeks to- gether, in all seasons of the year. A hut, composed of poles and bark, suffices them for shelter, and on the open side of
��it a large fire secures them from the se- verity of the weather. Wrapped in a blanket, with their feet next the fire, they pass the longest and coldest nights, and awake vigorous for labor the suc- ceeding day. Their food, when thus em- ployed, was salted pork or beef with po- tatoes and bread of Indian corn, and their best drink was water mixed with ginger." I am inclined to think that the good Doctor has given to these wood- men a greater variety of food than they actually enjoyed, for potatoes were not much cultivated in New Hampshire dur- ing the last century. I have heard my father describe the.outfit of two brothers who were sent into the woods in winter to fell the trees for early spring clearing. Their father left them in the woods for a month's residence with two bushels of beans and a small firkin of salted pork, with an iron kettle in which to cook their food. Bean porridge constituted their only rations morning and evening, and a neighboring spring furnished their bev- erage.
Even the student life of that period was as rude as the age that gave it birth. When the first college students arrived in Hanover, a century ago, they en- camped in the woods and provided, for a time, their own food. The first booths they built were too weak to withstand a storm, and one night, during a tempest, the sleepers were buried in the ruins of their temporary huts. They were, how- ever, more scared than hurt, for the hem- lock boughs and bark which sheltered them were too light to crush them. The students of that period often labored for their own support, and the college laws made it penal for any scholar to cast contempt on manual labor. My own
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