COLONEL JOHN BARRON AND FAMILY

Colonel John Barron, a native of Grafton, Mass., emigrated to Lyme, N. H., in the early settlement of that town. His first wile was Abigail Derby, of Orford, who died at Lyme, leaving an infant daughter. He married for his second wife Mehitable Rogers, of Haverhill, a sister of the wife of General Absalom Peters; by whom he had a son and daughter who died in infancy, and five daughters who lived to have families of their own. Having purchased at a very cheap rate a valuable tract of land in this town, he came and settled on the same, but at what time I have not ascertained. His purchase was in the Southeast corner of the township, embracing the beautiful meadow in the bow of. the Connecticut River, at that place ; also the adjacent island, and land West, extending far back among the hills. He was living on the meadow at the time our National Independence was declared.

He subsequently carne up to the main road, if road it could then be called, and lived in a log house on the East side of the same, near the high bank of the river, on what is now called the Waterman place. Prospering in business, in the course of a few years he built a house to be occupied as a tavern, on the opposite or West side of the road, where he lived and  prosecuted the business of an inn-keeper for a long while. The house was two stories in front, one story back, and painted yellow. It has since been removed, and still stands (1868) in the near neighborhood, a little South of its old location, on the other side of the highway.  For some years the Barron family, in common with their few neighbors, were much annoyed by fear of the Indians and Tories. At times they had to hide, as well as they could, not only their valuables, but themselves. Mrs.  Barron, for safety, used to conceal her pewter dishes in some sly place in the sand bank of the river close by. Col.  John, as he was afterward called, was then Captain of a scout, under command of General Bailey, of Newbury. An alarm on a certain occasion being given that the Indians and Tories were coming, he rallied his men, only six in number, and went forth, with others from the vicinity, as far as Wildersburg, now Barre, to meet the enemy ; and lay there in ambuscade, waiting for them for three days : but they did not come. It was said Jacob Fowler, a hunter, gave them warning, so that instead of pursuing their object to burn Newbury, they turned further North, and burned Lancaster, N. H.

On this or a similar occasion, a Mr. Young, of Piermont, came and informed Mrs. Barron that the Indians were lurking around and she had better be on her guard.  She advised him to go directly home, get his gun, and join the scout. This he seemed quite reluctant to do, when the heroic woman said, with decision, " Well, Mr.  Young, bring your gun to me, and stay and take care of my children, and I will join the scout." Mrs. Whitelaw, a daughter of Colonel Barron, in addition to the above, related to me the following anecdotes.  She said the first school she ever attended was in her father's barn, and taught by Mary Rogers, who subsequently married General Absalom Peters ; and that during school hours one day an unruly heifer broke into the barn floor, among the scholars; when their mistress, with great energy, seized the little ones and threw them over into the bay, so that no great harm was done.  Her father, Mrs. Whitelaw said, had the first chaise ever owned in this place, and when she was seventeen years of age, which was in 1798, she used to ride in it to a little school which she was teaching in a corner of a house which Deacon Hardy subsequently long occupied, at the North end of Bradford village. That house, with a large addition to it, is still standing. She further said that she was the first female who rode in a chaise from Newbury Street to Ryegate; that she was then in company with Mr..Judge Noble, of Tinmouth, and that their carriage attracted as much attention as would an elephant passing along.

Mrs. Whitelaw informed me that her father influenced the Vermont Legislature to pass an act that the " Squatters," as the first settlers on the Hazen land, a tract extending through the West part of this town, were called, should be quieted in their possession, by paying to the proprietors two shillings on each acre that they claimed.  But the proprietor, disliking the low price, refused to receive anything short of hard money in payment; which he knew the poor people had not, and supposed they could not obtain. They applied in their trouble to Colonel Barron, offering him one half of their land if he would save for them the remainder. Certain men who were expected to share with Barron in this speculation, in almost the last extremity failed him; designing, as he suspected, to get the entire profit to themselves. This roused him to make a strenuous effort. He went to Colonel Freeman, of Hanover, N. H., and obtained from him letters of recommendation to men of means in Portsmouth : and by riding day and night, he succeeded in getting back with his specie in season to accomplish his object. She said she remembered well that her father's saddle bags were so heavy with hard money that, though a grown girl, she could not lift them from the floor; and that her father gave Colonel Freeman a lot of land for his kindness in the affair. This lot is understood to be the one on which Deacon Colby afterwards long lived.

Another incident worthy of remembrance, is that while Colonel Barron was, on a certain occasion, returning, in company with other soldiers across this State, during the Revolutionary war, one of the men, an Esquire Dutton, of Chelmsford, Mass., fell dangerously sick. There was no prospect that he would ever be able to go any further.  Barron, moved with compassion, remained with him, acting the part of a faithful friend, while the rest of their company went on. When the invalid had so far recover-ed that he could with safety be left in the family of a well disposed farmer, his friend came away. The gentle-man recovered; and through life felt and expressed the deepest sensation of gratitude and friendship towards the benefactor who had been so kind to him in a time of peculiar distress. He remembered even the place, which was Cavendish, with so deep an interest that he purchased there a farm, and made it his residence during the remnant of his days.

When this town was first settled, there was a heavy growth of pine trees in the eastern part of it, and especially on what is now called the Lower Plain. Many of them grew on the tract of land owned by Col. Barron; and I have been informed by some of the aged people that, after the close of the Revolutionary war, he and Gen. Morey entered into a contract with three Frenchmen, to deliver to them in the Connecticut river, opposite to Barron's house, one hundred masts, with, no doubt, a due proportion of smaller timber for yards and booms, for the royal navy of France, to be floated down the river to Middletown, where they were to be put on board of ships, and transported to that country. Pine trees were then plenty and money scarce. Sticks of timber sixty feet long were estimated by their average diameter at the rate of twenty-five cents an inch. According to this rule a mast sixty feet long and thirty inches in diameter would come to but seven dollars and a half. One giant mast, one hundred and sixteen feet long and forty inches in diameter, was thus delivered.   This huge pine trunk at the above rate would be estimated at not quite twenty dollars. Surely the price of lumber has greatly changed since that day.

These great trunks of trees were brought by numerous men and strong teams to the high bank of the river near Barron's residence, and on set occasions, of which due notice was given, there would be a great gathering, not only of men, but of women and children, to witness the log rolling. To see these heavy logs roll rapidly down the steep declivity and dash into the river throwing it into a violent agitation, was not a little exciting.  But as times of high glee are apt to end in some disaster, so was it in this case with one of the lively French contractors, who on returning home is said to have been hanged on the yard arm. of his vessel, for some attempt to defraud the government, of which he had been found guilty.

Col. John Barron took a very active part in procuring a charter of the town of Bradford, and for four years represented it in the State Legislature. He was also a delegate with Esquire Chamberlin to the Convention held at Bennington in December, 1700, to deliberate on the adoption of the proposed Constitution of the United States. He took a lively interest in promoting the prosperity of this town, and was generally regarded as a man of energy and influence. The Council, gathered from churches near and remote, for the ordination of the Rev.  Gardner Kellogg, was convened and accommodated Sept. 1st and 2d, 1795, at his house.

Col. Barron died at Bradford on the 14th of March, 1813, in the 69th year of his age. "Spotted Fever" was tearfully prevailing, and on the occasion of his funeral three other corpses were carried into the meeting house with his. One was that of Capt. John Andross, who was a son-in-law of Barron, another the corpse of Mrs. Ford, a sister of Capt. Andross, the third a. child of a Mr. Hoyt.  The sermon on this peculiarly sad occasion was preached by the Rev. David Sutherland, of Bath, N. H.  With regard to the family of Col. Barron, I would further say that his wife, Mehitable Rogers, died Oct. 30, 1803, aged 49 years; and his daughters married respectable men, as follows: Abigail married Elias Cheeney.  She died March 9, 1813, and he the next day, and both were buried at the same time in one grave. Rebecca married Capt. John Andross, and after his decease Amos Fisk; Mehitable married Robert Whitelaw, Esq., of Ryegate; Mary, Timothy Farrar, of Lebanon, N. H.; Relief, William Niles, Esq., of West Fairlee ; and Hannah, Dr.  Jacob Goodwin, of Colebrook, N. H Biographie Index

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