Let us quote again from Mr. Coffin’s
autobiographical notes:
“In 1836 my father, catching
the speculation fever of the period, accompanied by
my uncle and brother-in-law, went to Illinois, and
left quite an amount of money for the purchase of
government land. My father owned several shares
in the Concord Bank. The speculative fever pervaded
the entire community, speculation in lands
in Maine and in Illinois. The result was a great
inflation of prices, the issuing of a great
amount of promises to pay, with a grand collapse which
brought ruin and poverty to many households.
The year of 1838 was one of great distress. The
wheat and corn crop was scant. Flour was worth
$16 a barrel. I remember going often to mill
with a grist of oats, which was bolted into flour
for want of wheat. The Concord Bank failed, the
Western lands were worthless. Wool could not be
sold, and the shearing for that year was taken to
the town of Nelson, in Cheshire County, and manufactured
into satinets and cassimeres, on shares. One of
the pieces of cassimere was dyed with a claret tinge,
from which I had my first Sunday suit.
“Up to this period, nearly all
my clothing was manufactured in the family loom and
cleaned at the clothing and fulling mill. In very
early boyhood, my Sunday suit was a swallow-tailed
coat, and hat of the stove-pipe pattern.
“The year 1840 was one of great
political excitement, known to history
as the Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign. General
Harrison, the Whig candidate, was popularly supposed
to live in a log cabin and drink hard cider.
On June 17th, there was an immense gathering of Whigs
at Concord. It was one of the greatest days of
my life. Six weeks prior to that date, I thought
of nothing but the coming event. I was seventeen
years old, with a clear and flexible voice, and I
quickly learned the Harrison songs. I went to
the convention with my brothers and cousins, in a
four-wheeled lumber wagon, drawn by four horses, with
a white banner, having the words ’Boscawen Whig
Delegation.’ We had flags, and the horses’
heads labelled ’Harrison and Tyler.’
We had a roasted pig, mince pies, cakes, doughnuts
and cheese, and a keg of cider. Before reaching
Concord we were joined by the log cabin from Franklin,
with coon skins, bear traps, etc., dangling from
its sides. Boscawen sent nearly every Whig voter
to the meeting. I hurrahed and sung, and was
wild with excitement. I remember three of the
speakers, George Wilson, of Keene, Horace
Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, a
young man, and Henry Wilson, also a young man, both
of them natives of New Hampshire. Wilson had
attended school with my brother at the academy in Concord,
in 1837, then having the high-sounding name of Concord
Literary Institute. Wilson was a shoemaker, then
residing in Natick, Mass., and was known as the ‘Natick
Cobbler.’ The songs have nearly all faded
from memory. I recall one line of our description
of the prospective departure of Van Buren’s
cabinet from the White House:
“‘Let
each as we go take a fork and a spoon.’
“There was one entitled ’Up
Salt River,’ descriptive of the approaching
fate of the Democratic party. Another ran:
“’Oh,
what has caused this great commotion the country through?
It
is the ball, a rolling on
For
Tippecanoe and Tyler too.’
“Then came the chorus:
“‘Van,
Van, is a used-up man.’
“In 1839, I had a fancy that
I should like to be a merchant, and was taken to Newburyport
and placed with a firm of wholesale and retail grocers.
I was obliged to be up at 4.30, open the store, care
for the horse, curry him, swallow my breakfast in
a hurry, also my dinner and supper, and close the
store at nine. It was only an experiment on my
part, and after five weeks of such life, finding that
I was compelled to do dishonest work, I concluded
that I never would attempt to be a princely merchant,
and took the stage for home. It was a delightful
ride home on the top of the rocking coach, with the
driver lashing his whip and his horses doing their
best.
“I think it was in 1841 that Daniel Webster attended the
Merrimac County Agricultural Fair at Fisherville, now Penacook. I was there with
a fine yoke of oxen which won his admiration. He asked me as to their age and
weight, and to whom they belonged. He recognized nearly all of his old
acquaintances. I saw him many times during the following year. He was in the
prime of life, in personal appearance a remarkable man.”
Thus far it will be seen that there
was little in Mr. Coffin’s life and surroundings
that could not be easily told of the average New England
youth. Besides summer work on the farm, and “chores”
about the house, he had taken several terms at the
academy in Boscawen. During the winter of 1841-42,
while unable to do any outdoor work, on account of
sickness, he bought a text-book on land-surveying and
learned something of the science and art, yet more
for pastime than from any expectation of making it
useful.
Nevertheless, that book had a powerful
influence upon his life. It gave him an idea,
through the application of measurement to the earth’s
surface, of that order and beauty of those mathematical
principles after which the Creator built the universe.
It opened his eyes to the vast modification of the
landscape, and the earth itself, by man’s work
upon its crust. It gave him the engineer’s
eye. Henceforth he became interested in the capacity
of every portion of the country, which came under
his notice, for the roads, fields, gardens, and parks
of peace, and for the making of forts, military roads,
and the strategy of battle. In a word, the book
and its study gave him an enrichment of life which
fitted him to enjoy the world by travel, and to understand
the arena of war, theatres of usefulness
to which Providence was to call him in after-life.
In August, 1843, in his twenty-first
year, he became a student at Pembroke Academy.
The term of ten weeks seemed ever afterwards in his
memory one of the golden periods of his life.
The teacher, Charles G. M. Burnham, was enthusiastic
and magnetic, having few rules, and placing his pupils
upon their honor. It was not so much what Carleton
learned from books, as association with the one hundred
and sixty young men and women of his own age, which
here so stimulated him.
From the academy he advanced to be
teacher of the district school on Corser Hill,
in West Boscawen, but after three weeks of pedagogy
was obliged to leave on account of sickness.
He passed the remainder of the winter in lumbering,
rising at 4 A. M. to feed his team of horses.
While breakfast was preparing he studied books, ate
the meal by candle-light, and then was off with his
lunch of cold meat, bread, and apple pie. From
the woods to the bank of the Merrimac the distance
was three miles, and three or four trips were made
daily in drawing the long and heavy logs to the water.
Returning home after dark, he ate supper by candle-light,
fed his horses, and gave an hour to study before bedtime.
The summer of 1844 was one of hard
toil on the farm. In July he became of age, and
during the autumn worked on his brother-in-law’s
farm, rising at five and frequently finishing about
9 P. M. It is no wonder that all through his life
Mr. Coffin showed a deep sympathy, born of personal
experience, with men who are bound down to physical
toil. Nevertheless, the fine arts were not neglected.
He had already learned to play the “seraphine,”
the instrument which has been developed into the reed
organ. He started the project, in 1842, of getting
one for the church. By great efforts sixty dollars
were raised and an instrument purchased in Concord.
Mr. Coffin became the “organist,” and
also taught singing in the schoolhouse. Three
of his nieces, excellent singers, assisted him.
The time had now come for the young
man to strike out in the world for himself. Like
most New England youth, his eyes were on Boston.
With a recommendation from his friend, the minister,
he took the stage to Concord. The next day he
was in Boston, then a city of 75,000 people, with
the water dashing against the embankment of Charles
Street, opposite the Common, and with only one road
leading out to Roxbury. Sloops and schooners,
loaded with coal and timber, sailed over the spot
where afterwards stood his house, at N Dartmouth
Street. In a word, the “Back Bay”
and “South End” were then unknown.
Boston city, shaped like a pond lily laid flat, had
its long stem reaching to the solid land southward
on the Dorchester and Roxbury hills.
Young Carleton went to Mount Vernon
Church on Ashburton Place, the pastor, Dr. E. N. Kirk,
being in the prime of his power, and the church crowded.
The country boy from New Hampshire became a member
of the choir and enjoyed the Friday night rehearsals.
He found employment at one dollar a day in a commission
store, 84 Utica Street, with the firm of Lowell &
Hinckley. The former, a brother of James Russell
Lowell, had a son, a bright little boy, who afterwards
became the superb cavalry commander at the battle
of Cedar Creek in 1864. Carleton boarded on Beacon
Street, next door to the present Athenaeum Building.
The firm dissolved by Mr. Lowell’s entering the
Athenaeum. Carleton returned to his native town
to vote. He became a farm laborer with his brother-in-law,
passing a summer of laborious toil, frequently fourteen
and sixteen hours, with but little rest.
It was time now for the old Granite
State to be opened by the railway. The Northern
Railroad had been chartered, and preliminary surveys
were to be made. Young Carleton, seizing the opportunity,
went to Franklin, saw the president, and told him
who he was. He was at once offered a position
as chainman, and told to report two weeks later.
The other chainman gave Carleton the leading end, intending
that the Boscawen boy, and not himself, should drag
it and drive the stake. Carleton did not object,
for he was looking beyond the chain.
The compass-man was an old gentleman
dim of eyesight and slow of action. Young Carleton
drove his first stake, at a point one hundred feet
north of the Concord railway depot, which was opened
in the month of August, 1845. The old compass-man
then set his compass for a second sight, but before
he could get out his spectacles and put them on, young
Carleton read the point to him. When, through
his glasses, the old gentleman had verified the reading,
he was delighted. Promotion for Carleton was
now sure. Before night he was not only dragging
the chain, but was sighting the instrument. The
result, two days later, was promotion to the charge
of the party. What he had learned of land surveying
was producing its fruit. In the autumn he was
employed as the head of a party to make the preliminary
survey of the Concord and Portsmouth road.
Unfortunately, during this surveying
campaign, he received a wound which caused slight
permanent lameness and disqualified him for military
service. It came about in this way. He was
engaged in some work while an axe-man behind him was
chopping away some bushes and undergrowth. The
latter gave a swing of the axe which came out too far
and cut through the boot and large tendon of Carleton’s
left ankle. With skilled medical attention, rest,
and care, the wound would have soon healed up, but
owing to lack of skill, and to carelessness and exposure,
the wound gave him considerable trouble, and once reopened.
In after-life, when overwearied, this part of the limb
was very troublesome.
It was not all toil for Carleton.
The time of love had already come, and the days of
marriage were not far off. The object of his devotion
was Miss Sally Russell Farmer, the daughter of Colonel
John Farmer, of Boscawen. On February 18, 1846,
amid the winter winds, the fire of a holy union for
life was kindled, and its glow was unflickering during
more than fifty years. In ancestry and relationship,
the Farmers of Boscawen were allied with the Russells
of England, Sir William, of bygone centuries,
and Lord John, of our own memory. Carleton found
a true “help-meet” in Sally Coffin.
Though no children ever came to bless their union,
it was as perfect, though even more hallowed and beautified,
on the day it was severed, as when first begun.
The following summer was one full
of days of toil in the engineering department of the
Northern railway, Carleton being engaged upon the
first section to be opened from Concord to Franklin.
The engineering was difficult, and the work heavy.
Breakfast was eaten at six in the morning, and dinner
wherever it could be found along the road. Seldom
could the young engineer rise from his arithmetical
calculations until midnight.
Weary with such exacting mental and
physical labor, he resigned his position, and became
a contractor. First he supplied the Concord railroad
with 200,000 feet of lumber, which he purchased at
the various mills. This venture being profitable,
he engaged in the lumber trade, furnishing beams for
a large factory, timber for a new railway station
at Concord, and for a ship at Medford. It was
while transacting some business in Lowell, that he
saw President Polk, James Buchanan, Levi Woodbury,
and other political magnates of the period, who, however,
were rather coldly received on account of the annexation
of Texas, and war with Mexico.
Wishing for a home of his own, Carleton
now bought a farm in West Boscawen, and began housekeeping
in the following November. He carried on extensive
lumber operations, hiring a large number of men and
teams. He rose between four and five in the morning,
and was in the woods, four miles away, at sunrise,
working through the day, and reaching home after dark
to care for the cattle and horses and milk the cows.
None of his men worked harder than he.
Although railroad building stimulated
prices and gave activity to business men, the flush
times were followed by depression. To secure
the construction of a railway to the mast yard, Carleton
subscribed to the stock, and, under the individual
liability law of that period, was compelled to take
as much more to relieve the company from debt.
Soon he found, however, in spite of hard work for both
himself and his wife, that farming and lumbering together
rendered no adequate returns. Relief to mind
and body was found in the weekly arrival of Littell’s
Living Age and two or three weekly papers, in agricultural
meetings at Concord and Manchester, and in the formation
of the State Agricultural Society, of which Carleton
was one of the founders.