Samuel Merrill, 1928, reprint 1983

Some Eighteenth Century Migrations - Chapter XI, pp125-152

Concord, NH

    Among the 119 signers of a petition, in 1721, for the grant of a township on the Merrimack River at a place known by the Indians as Penacook was John Merrill. This John⁴ Merrill (John³, Nathaniel²) was a native of Newbury, Mass. He lived for a time at York, Me., and then removed to Haverhill, Mass., where he married and settled down. (See page 213.)

   Four years elapsed before the petition was granted by the government of the Massachusetts Bay Province, and no effective effort was made to begin settlement of the new plantation until 1727. In the early Spring of that year a party of the proprietors and their servants, forty-five or fifty persons in all, arrived, and set about the work of laying out roads, clearing land and building log cabins. John⁴ Merrill was among the number. Thereafter John Merrill made improvements from time to time, and in June, 1730, his wife and four young children arrived, prepared to spend their lives in the backwoods settlement thus established.

   Under date of 31 March, 1730, the Proprietors - - -

   "Voted, That John Merrill shall have the ferry at Penny Cook, and that said Merrill shall have twenty acres of land near the ferry of said town. . . . The said Merrill shall have four pence for a horse, two pence for a man, four pence for a beast . . ."

   A modern iron bridge, on the road leading from Concord to Pembroke, marks the site of the ancient ferry. John Merrill's homestead was on the hillside, not far from the ferry, near the junction of what in later years were Turnpike and Water Streets, north of the gas works of the present day.

   On the organization of the church in Penacook, in December, 1730, John Merrill was chosen the first deacon. A plantation or town government was not regularly established until January, 1732/3, and at that time Deacon Merrill was chosen a member of the first board of selectmen, and also one of the assessors. Aside from such facts as these, which were duly entered in the formal records of the church and the town, no account has come down to us of events in the life of the community in those earliest years. Many of the events may have seemed of considerable moment at the time, but their fate has been oblivion.

   The children of Deacon Merrill, and those of the other settlers, were in need of schooling. In 1735 he was given authority by the town to engage a teacher, and seven years later he was appointed a member of a committee to erect the first schoolhouse in town. The first meeting house in the town was a rude log structure, and no doubt the schoolhouse was architecturally similar.

   The "Plantation of Penacook" became the "Town of Rumford" in 1734, and Rumford became Concord in 1765.

   In his later years Deacon John⁴ Merrill was the stormcenter of a noted lawsuit. In November, 1750, the Proprietors of the common lands in the town of Bow, a township adjoining Concord on the south, brought an action of ejectment against John Merrill, the question at issue being the validity of a certain grant by the government of New Hampshire. The inhabitants of Rumford claimed that the original Proprietors of Bow had forfoited their rights, not having complied with the conditions of the grant, and that the land in question was included in the original grant by the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the Proprietors of Penacook. The controversy involved an old dispute regarding the boundary between the two Provinces. The suit against John Merrill was a test case, and the Proprietors of Rumford voted to defray the cost of the defence.

   The case was heard, in the first instance, in the courts of New Hampshire, and it is not surprising that the judgment favored the plaintiffs. Thereupon, in 1753, the Rumford Proprietors sent agents to England to present the case before the King in Council. The General Court of Massachusetts Bay was urged to defend the rights of those claiming under the Penacook grant, and at once voted to do so, twice granting money toward the expense of carrying the appeal to England.

   The services of Lord Mansfield, the most eminent lawyer of his day in England, were secured to present the case of John Merrill before the King in Council, and he entered upon the task with zeal. Further delays intervened, however, but in June, 1755, the case was finally decided in favor of the Rumford farmers, and John Merrill remained in possession of his home and farm to the end of his days.

   Deacon John⁴ Merrill of Concord was the progenitor of a numerous family. His sons and grandsons were pioneers in other communities, and his descendants in later generations have attained distinction in Maine and California, and in many States which lie between these geographical extremes.

Conway, NH

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