CHAPTER I

ANCESTRY.--BIRTHPLACE

About 1640 a mere handful of English colonists went out from Boston, and made the first settlement in the town of Andover, Essex County, Massachusetts. They laid out their homes on the Cochichewick, a stream which flows out of the Great Pond in North Andover, and falls into the Merrimac River on the south side a few miles below Lawrence. The infant settlement was known as Cochichewick until 1646, when it was incorporated as a town under its present name, after the Andover in Hampshire, England, the birthplace of some of the settlers.

Among the first who thus planted their hearthstones in the wilderness was John Stevens. His name stands fifth in an old list in the town records containing "the names of all the householders in order as they came to town." The mists of the past still allow a few glimpses of this sturdy Puritan settler. He was admitted a freeman of the colony, June 2, 1641 (Old Style). He was appointed by the General Court, May 15, 1654, one of a committee of three to settle the boundary between the towns of Haverhill and Salisbury, a duty satisfactorily performed. He was sergeant in the military company of the town, a post then equivalent to captain or commander. According to Savage, N.E. Genealogies, vol. i., p. 186, John Stevens lived at Caversham, County Oxford, England, and came to America in the Confidence from Southampton in 1638.

Large, substantial head and foot stones of slate, sculptured and lettered in the quaint fashion of his day, still mark the resting-place of John Stevens, after the storms of now two and a third centuries, in the oldest graveyard of Cochichewick, situated opposite the Kittredge mansion, and about half a mile north of the old parish meeting-house in North Andover. He died April 11, 1662, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, and was therefore thirty-five years old when he founded his future home. John Stevens was evidently a man of note and substance, the worthy progenitor of a prolific family, which has filled Andover with his descendants, and put forth from time to time strong, flourishing branches into all quarters of the country. It may indeed be safely said that there is scarcely a State in the Union which does not contain descendants of this sturdy Puritan.

His son Nathan, the first male child born in Andover, lies buried near him under a broad freestone slab with an inscription to "Coun^{clr} Nathan Stevens, who deceased February y^e 19, 1717, in y^e 75 year of his age." The memorials of many others of his descendants stand thickly scattered through the quaint old burial-ground. Not the least interesting of these relics is a stone "In memory of Primus, who was a faithful servant of Mr. Benjamin Stevens, Jr., who died July 25, 1792, aged 72 years, 5 months, and 16 days."

A vigorous, long-lived race sprang from the loins of this first settler John, a hardy, thrifty race of plain New England farmers, honest and straightforward, with plenty of solid, shrewd good sense, bearing manfully the toils and hardships of colonial days, and contributing its quota of ministers and deacons to the church, and officers and soldiers to the wars with the Indians and the French. In 1679 a grant of land was made to Ephraim Stevens, son of the first settler, in recompense of his losses by the Indians. In 1689 Lieutenant John Stevens, another son, perished in the expedition against Louisburg. In 1698 Abiel Stevens, a grandson, was captured by the Indians, but made his escape. In 1755 Captain Asa Stevens and Ensign James Stevens died in the Lake George campaign. Upon the state muster-rolls appear the names of twelve Stevenses of Andover as soldiers in the Revolution.

The subject of this work, Isaac Ingalls Stevens, was the seventh in direct descent from John Stevens, the founder of Andover,--1 John Stevens, 2 Joseph, 3 James, 4 James, 5 Jonathan, 6 Isaac, 7 Isaac Ingalls Stevens.

Joseph was the fourth son of the first settler John. He was deacon in the church. He married Mary Ingalls May 20, 1679, and died February 25, 1743, aged 88.

James was the second son of Joseph, married Dorothy Fry, March, 1712, and died May 25, 1769, aged 84. He participated in the military affairs and contests with the Indians and French of his times, commanded a company at the capture of Louisburg, and for his services was granted a tract of land in Maine. He was a deputy to the General Court. His gravestone bears the title of captain.

Captain James's eldest son was also named James. He was born in 1720, and married Sarah Peabody in 1745. This James was an energetic, promising young man, with a young wife and two boys, when in 1754 a recruiting party with colors, drum, and fife went about Andover beating up recruits for the French and Indian war then raging. The young men all hung back. "Make me a captain," said James Stevens, "and I will raise a company for the war." This remark led to his receiving the commission of ensign. He raised a company of the young men of Andover, and marched away at their head to the shores of Lake George, in New York, where, November 28, 1755, he died of camp fever, with the rank of lieutenant.

His eldest son, Jonathan, inherited a due share of his father's spirit, for we find him hastening to Bunker Hill, and fighting manfully in the battle. He served on other occasions during the Revolutionary war, and after a successful dash upon the enemy writes the following interesting letter to his sister:--

LOVING SISTER,--These will inform you that I am very well at present, and have been so ever since I came from home, and I hope you and all my friends enjoy the same state of health.

We have been up to Ticonderoga and took almost four hundred prisoners of the British Army, and relieved one hundred of our men that were prisoners there.

Our army have come from Ticonderoga down as far as Pawlet, about sixty miles, and expect to march to Stillwater very soon. So no more at present.

I remain, Your Loving Brother, JONATHAN STEVENS.

PAWLET, October ye 1st, 1777.

Jonathan married Susannah Bragg, December 15, 1773, and raised thirteen children,--Jonathan, Susannah, James, Dolly, Jeremy, Hannah, Isaac, Nathaniel, Dolly, Moses, Sarah, Oliver, and William.

He united the business of a currier and tanner to his ancestral pursuit of farming, and achieved the modest independence he so well merited. The house that he occupied for many years stood on the old road that passed along the western border of the Cochichewick meadows, that were long since flooded and converted into a lake, the extension of the Great Pond, for the water supply of the woolen mills of his son Nathaniel, and the cellar is still visible on the west side of the road, some three hundred yards from its junction with the road from the village of North Andover to the mills. He afterwards built one of those large, square, substantial mansions, once common in New England, on the crest of the high ground east of the village, and commanding noble views of the hamlet, the Great Pond, and the Cochichewick valley and the mills. This house was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1876.

Jonathan Stevens purchased, for sixpence an acre, a large tract of land in Maine, which he divided into three farms, and bestowed upon his sons Jonathan, James, and Isaac. They settled, and named the place Andover, after their native town, and the descendants of the two former still reside there.

Jonathan Stevens was a tall, large man of fresh, ruddy complexion and fine appearance. He was fond of relating the incidents of the battle of Bunker Hill, and used to recount the tale to his children and grandchildren every Fourth of July,--how Putnam went along the line and commanded them not to fire until they could see the whites of the Redcoats' eyes; and how Abbot, the strongest man in town, bore a wounded comrade off the field on his back. On the anniversary of the battle he invariably invited his comrades in the fight to his house, and entertained them with New England rum and hearty, old-fashioned hospitality, while the veterans fought the battle o'er again. He sat among the veterans of the battle at Webster's magnificent oration in dedication of the Bunker Hill monument. On his eighty-fourth birthday he worked with his men in the hay field, keeping up with the best all day, and suffered no ill effect from the unwonted exertion. He died April 13, 1834, at the age of eighty-seven. In 1799 he gave the tract of land upon which was erected Franklin Academy, on the hill north of the meeting-house.

Jonathan's brother James, Captain James's other son, also served in the Revolutionary war, and left a diary of the siege of Boston, recently discovered in the garret of an old mansion in Andover, which opens like an epic:--

"April ye 19, 1775. This morning about seven o'clock we had a larum that the Regulars were gone to Concord. We gathered to the meeting house, and then started for Concord. We went through Tewksbury into Billerica. We stopped at Pollard's, and ate some biscuits and cheese on the common. We started and went on to Bedford, and we heard that the Regulars had gone back to Boston. So we went through Bedford. As we went into Lexington we went to the meeting house, and there we came to the destruction of the Regulars. They killed eight of our men, and shot a cannon ball through the meeting house. We went along through Lexington, and we saw several Regulars dead on the road, and some of our men, and three or four houses were burnt, and some horses and hogs were killed. They plundered in every house they could get into. They stove in windows and broke in tops of desks. We met the men a coming back very fast," etc.

Jonathan's fourth son was Isaac, born in 1785. On reaching manhood he went before the mast on a voyage to China, and brought back, as a gift to his mother, a beautiful china tea-set. After his return from sea he went to Andover, Maine, to settle upon the lands bestowed by his father upon himself and brothers, Jonathan and James.

With characteristic energy, Isaac Stevens set to work clearing his land, and reducing rebellious nature to orderly submission. While thus at work in the woods one day, a heavy tree fell upon and crushed him to the earth; his left leg was terribly mangled, the bones broken in two places, and he received other serious injuries. The doctors insisted that the leg must be taken off in order to save his life, but Isaac Stevens with inflexible resolution refused to allow the amputation, and after a long, painful illness finally recovered. The limb, however, in the process of healing, became materially shorter and permanently stiffened, so that he was unable to bend the knee joint, and during the remainder of his life the wound broke out afresh periodically, and caused him great suffering. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered to bear the journey, he returned to his native Andover, where, under his mother's careful nursing, he slowly recovered from the terrible injuries he had received.

It was at this time that he formed an attachment with Hannah Cummings, the daughter of a sterling farmer family like his own, and who united to a warm and affectionate heart, noble and elevated sentiments, strong good sense, and untiring industry. Their marriage followed soon after, on the 29th of September, 1814. He now relinquished the project of settling in Maine, and hired an old farmhouse with some twenty acres of land of Mr. Bridges. This house, one of the oldest in Andover, is situated at the end of Marble Ridge, a short distance south of the Great Pond, and at the point where the road from the village to Haverhill, after crossing the Essex Railroad, forks, the left branch leading on to Haverhill, while the other turns short to the right and conducts to Marble Ridge Station. The solid timbers and stockaded sides of the rear part of this old house--for the front is a later structure--were the mute witnesses of a stratagem in early Indian troubles as novel as it proved successful. The stout-hearted farmer settler was alone, with his wife and little ones about him, one night, when he discovered a large party of savages stealthily approaching, and spreading out so as to encompass his house. Hastily barricading the doors, he seized his trumpet, which he bore as trumpeter of the military company of the settlement, stole unperceived out of the house, caught and mounted his horse, and, making a circuit through the fields, gained the high road between the Indians and the village. Then, putting spurs to his steed, and pealing blast upon blast from his trumpet, he charged furiously down upon the Indians, now in the very act of assailing his domicile, who, thinking no doubt that the whole force of the country-side was upon them, incontinently fled into the forest.

Judged by the standard of these days, the young couple had an unpromising future. They were very poor, the husband a cripple, and they held as tenants a few barren acres from which to extract a livelihood. But Isaac Stevens now toiled early and late with untiring energy; he saved at every point, and turned everything to account with true Yankee thrift. He built a malt-house, and after laboring on the farm from earliest dawn until dark, would work at preparing the malt until late in the evening. His farm embraced a large meadow lying on both sides of the Cochichewick, just below where it issued from the Great Pond, but now flooded by the milldams still lower down, where he cut vast quantities of meadow hay, with which he filled his barns and fed a goodly number of horned stock during the long, rigorous winters, realizing thereby a handsome profit in the spring. His young wife joined her efforts to his, and frequently cut and made clothing for the neighbors around, in addition to the unceasing and arduous labors of a farmer's wife. Such thrift and industry could not fail of success. The Bridges house and land were purchased, largely on mortgage at first; then the wet meadow was added; then a goodly tract of generous land was bought of the father, Jonathan Stevens, and other fields and tracts were added from time to time. During the thirteen years following their marriage, the first scanty holding grew to a farm of one hundred and fifty acres of their own, and free from debt. Seven children, too, came to bless their union and increase their cares. Then the devoted wife and mother died, November 3, 1827, leaving this helpless little flock, the oldest of whom was but twelve and the youngest two years of age. Henceforth life was a heavy and unceasing labor to Isaac Stevens. The little farm grew no larger, and all his efforts were now required to maintain his family and keep free from debt. Two years afterwards he married Ann Poor, of North Andover, impelled by his situation and circumstances, with so many helpless children about him and the household economy of the farm unprovided for. The second wife failed to restore the happiness of home. She had no children, and died in 1866, four years after her husband.

Isaac Stevens was a man of deeply marked and noble characteristics. His fortitude was severely tested by the misfortune which left him a lifelong cripple. His cool courage and inflexible resolution are best illustrated by his manner of dealing with a dangerous bull he once owned. This animal grew daily more and more savage, until every one stood in fear of it except the owner, who, as often happens in such cases, persisted in thinking it quite harmless. At length, however, the bull one day chased a neighbor, who had imprudently ventured to cross the field in which it pastured, and overtaking him just as he reached the fence, tossed him high in air, so that falling fortunately on the farther side of the inclosure, he escaped with no more serious injuries than some severe bruises and a broken nose. The bull, furious at the escape of his prey, was bellowing and pawing the ground. "The bull must be shot!" cried the man who helped off the injured neighbor. But Isaac Stevens at once armed himself with a stout cudgel, coolly hobbled into the field, disregarding all remonstrances and entreaties, fixed his eye upon the enraged beast, backed him into a narrow corner where he could not escape, and thrashed him over the head with the club with such terrible severity that he was completely subdued, and ever after remained perfectly gentle and submissive.

Always strictly observing the Sabbath, he held liberal views of religion and attended the Unitarian Church. He kept himself informed of the current events of the day, taking the New York "Tribune" and Garrison's "Liberator," and manifesting the greatest interest in education, temperance, anti-slavery, and every cause that would make mankind better or happier. "How he denied himself all comforts almost, and _quietly_ sent money to free the slave and for the temperance cause! He was a strong pillar of the foundation principles of right and justice that it would be well for young men of this day to study," said one who knew him well.

He was, above all, a man of perfect integrity and truth, and of a strict sense of justice. There was not a fibre of guile or indirection in his moral nature. He held strong and ardent convictions, noble and lofty ideals of duty and philanthropy, and an intense hatred and scorn of wrong or oppression in any form. He strongly opposed and denounced the use of liquors and tobacco, and became early in life a vehement and outspoken abolitionist of slavery, at a period when the advocacy of such doctrines demanded unusual moral courage as well as stern conviction of right. At his decease, years afterwards, he bequeathed five hundred dollars to the Anti-Slavery Society, requiring only that Wendell Phillips should deliver a lecture in the parish church of North Andover.

The untiring industry which, with his frugality and good management, enabled him to achieve comparative independence so early in life, was not the course of a drudge and miser, but of an ardent, resolute spirit spurning poverty, debt, and dependence. All through life he manifested an unconquerable aversion to debt. He loved a fast horse, and the old mare which he kept until she died, over twenty-seven years old, was, in her prime, the fastest in the town. After reading a newspaper or book, he was in the habit of giving it to a neighbor, telling him to hand it to another after perusing it. He took great pains with his orchards, and planted apple-trees along the stone walls bordering his fields. He also planted the noble elms now overhanging the old farmhouse, and the long lines of this graceful tree now bordering the road from the house to the crest of the hill overlooking the village and the road over Marble Ridge, and the numerous clumps and rows in his fields wherever a sightly eminence seemed to require such an adornment.

His children were:--

HANNAH PEABODY, born September 24, 1815, died November 24, 1840. SUSAN BRAGG, born February 14, 1817, died April 8, 1841. ISAAC INGALLS, born March 25, 1818, died September 1, 1862. ELIZABETH BARKER, born July 14, 1819, died December 10, 1846. SARAH ANN, born January 13, 1822, died February 8, 1844. MARY JANE, born August 5, 1823, died June 22, 1847. OLIVER, born June 22, 1825.

The following account of the ancestry of Hannah Cummings is given by her nephew, Dr. George Mooar, D.D., of Oakland, California, who has collected much information concerning the Cummings genealogy:--

"Hannah, wife of Isaac Stevens, was the third child of Deacon Asa and Hannah (Peabody) Cummings, born October 23, 1785, married September 29, 1814, and died November 3, 1827.

"The line from her father to the first American ancestor runs thus: Asa (6), Thomas (5), Joseph (4), Abraham (3), John (2), Isaac (1).

"Deacon Asa was born in Andover, Massachusetts, but removed in 1798 to Albany, Maine, a pioneer settler there, a trusted, intelligent, and capable citizen, who in 1803 represented his district in the General Court.

"Captain Thomas (5) was born in Topsfield and died September 3, 1765. He married Anna Kittell, the widow of Asa Johnson, of Andover.

"Captain Joseph (4), of Topsfield, was quite a character. The biographer of Dr. Manasseh Cutler says that he found among the papers of that eminent person a notice of Captain Cummings in which he is spoken of as a remarkable man, well versed in the politics of the day, and he adds: 'From the interest Dr. Cutler felt in him, he must have been a stanch patriot and Federalist.' In a notice which appears in the 'Salem Gazette' we are told that when nearly a hundred he would readily mount his horse from the ground. He died in his one hundred and second year.

"Abraham (3) was a resident of Woburn and of Dunstable.

"John (2) was quite a large proprietor in Boxford, Massachusetts, and later was one of the first fourteen proprietors of the town of Dunstable.

"Isaac (1) appears on a list of the 'Commoners of Ipswich in 1641, but appears to have arrived in America three years before. No exact knowledge of his previous residence in Great Britain has been obtained. The prevailing tradition gives him a Scottish descent.'

"An elder brother of Hannah Cummings was Dr. Asa Cummings, D.D., of Portland, Maine, eminent for classical learning and piety, and editor of the 'Christian Mirror' for many years."