Project Gutenberg's The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, by Various

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Title: The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2

Author: Various

Release Date: February 9, 2006 [EBook #17722]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Sylvester Marsh]

THE BAY STATE MONTHLY.

_A Massachusetts Magazine._

VOL. III. MAY, 1885. NO. II.

* * * * *

SYLVESTER MARSH.

[THE PROJECTOR OF THE MOUNT WASHINGTON RAILROAD.]

By Charles Carleton Coffin.

There were few settlers in the Pemigewasset Valley when John Marsh of
East Haddam, Connecticut, at the close of the last century, with his
wife, Mehitable Percival Marsh, travelling up the valley of the
Merrimack, selected the town of Campton, New Hampshire, as their future
home. It was a humble home. Around them was the forest with its lofty
pines, gigantic oaks, and sturdy elms, to be leveled by the stalwart
blows of the vigorous young farmer. The first settlers of the region
endured many hardships--toiled early and late, but industry brought its
rewards. The forest disappeared; green fields appeared upon the broad
intervales and sunny hillsides. A troop of children came to gladden the
home. The ninth child of a family of eleven received the name of
Sylvester, born September 30, 1803.

The home was located among the foot-hills on the east bank of the
Pemigewasset; it looked out upon a wide expanse of meadow lands, and
upon mountains as delectable as those seen by the Christian pilgrim from
the palace Beautiful in Bunyan's matchless allegory.

It was a period ante-dating the employment of machinery. Advancement
was by brawn, rather than by brains. Three years before the birth of
Sylvester Marsh an Englishman, Arthur Scholfield, determined to make
America his home. He was a machinist. England was building up her system
of manufactures, starting out upon her