on of Hampton, on the Eastern Railroad, by which many trains
pass daily.

[Illustration]

For the historical student the region affords much of interest. Here, in
the village of Hampton, in the year 1638, in the month of October,
settled the Reverend Stephen Batchelder [Bachiler] and his followers,
intent to serve God in their own way and establish homes in the
wilderness. The river and adjoining country was then known as
Winnicunnett. The settlers, for the most part, came from Norfolk,
England, and so desirable did they find their adopted home that many
descendants of the original grantees occupy to-day the land opened and
cleared by their ancestors. In this town, in 1657, settled Ebenezer
Webster, the direct progenitor of the Great Expounder, and here the
family remained for several generations.

Within the limits of the old township, which was bounded on the south by
the present Massachusetts line, on the north by Portsmouth and Exeter,
and extended ten miles inland, were included the territory of some half
dozen of the adjoining townships of to-day. Here lived Meshach Weare,
who guided the New Hampshire ship of state through the troublous times
of the Revolution. Over yonder, near the site of the first log
meeting-house, is pointed out the gambrel-roofed house of General
Jonathan Moulton, the great land-owner. He it was, in the good old
colony days, who drove a very large and fat ox from his township of
Moultonborough, and delivered it to the jovial Governor Wentworth as a
present to his excellency, and said there was nothing to pay. When the
governor insisted on making some return, General Moulton informed him
that there was an ungranted gore of land adjoining his earlier grant
which he would accept. In this manner he came into possession of the
town of New Hampton--a very ample return for the ox; at least, so
asserts tradition.

Colonel Christopher Toppan, in those early days, was largely engaged in
ship-building. For many years the people of Hampton were employed in
domestic and foreign commerce, and it was not until the advent of the
railroad that Hampton surrendered its dreams of commercial
aggrandizement.

One road leads up the coast to Rye and Portsmouth; another, through a
most charming country, to Exeter; another, to Salisbury and Newburyport,
and many others inland in every direction.

Boar's Head is the best base from which to operate to rediscover the
whole adjoining territory.

The first house