Charles Carleton Coffin | Page 3

20th of April, 1775. Captain Coffin mounted his horse and rode to Exeter, to take part in the Provincial Assembly, which gathered the next day. Two years later, he served in the campaign against Burgoyne. When the militia was called to march to Bennington, in July, 1777, one soldier could not go because he had no shirt. Mrs. Coffin had a web of tow cloth in the loom. She at once cut out the woven part, sat up all night, and made the required garment, so that he could take his place in the ranks the next morning. One month after the making of this shirt, the father of Charles Carleton Coffin was born, July 15.
When the news of Stark's victory at Bennington came, the call was for every able-bodied man to turn out, in order to defeat Burgoyne. Every well man went, including Carleton's two grandfathers, Captain Peter Coffin, who had been out in June, though not in Stark's command, and Eliphalet Kilborn. The women and children were left to gather in the crops. The wheat was ripe for the sickle, but there was not a man or boy to cut it. With her baby, one month old, in her arms, Mrs. Peter Coffin mounted the horse, leaving her other children in care of the oldest, who was but seven years old. The heroine made her way six miles through the woods, fording Black Water River to the log cabin of Enoch Little, on Little Hill, in the present town of Webster. Here were several sons, but the two eldest had gone to Bennington. Enoch, Jr., fourteen years old, could be spared to reap the ripened grain, but he was without shoes, coat, or hat, and his trousers of tow cloth were out at the knee.
"Enoch can go and help you, but he has no coat," said Mrs. Little.
"I can make him a coat," said Mrs. Coffin.
The boy sprang on the horse behind the heroic woman, who, between the baby and the boy, rode upon the horse back to the farm. Enoch took the sickle and went to the wheat field, while Mrs. Coffin made him a coat. She had no cloth, but taking a meal-bag, she cut a hole in the bottom for his head, and two other holes for his arms. Then cutting off the legs of a pair of her stockings, she sewed them on for sleeves, thus completing the garment. Going into the wheat field, she laid her baby, the father of Charles Carleton Coffin, in the shade of a tree, and bound up the cut grain into sheaves.
In 1789, when the youngest child of this Revolutionary heroine was four months old, she was left a widow, with five children. Three were daughters, the eldest being sixteen; and two were sons, the elder being twelve. With rigid economy, thrift, and hard work, she reared her family. In working out the road tax she was allowed four pence halfpenny for every cart-load of stones dumped into miry places on the highway. She helped the boys fill the cart with stones. While the boy who became Carleton's father managed the steers, hauled and dumped the load, she went on with her knitting.
Of such a daughter of the Revolution and of a Revolutionary sire was Carleton's father born. When he grew to manhood he was "tall in stature, kind-hearted, genial, public-spirited, benevolent, ever ready to relieve suffering and to help on every good cause. He was an intense lover of liberty and was always true to his convictions." He fell in love with Hannah, the daughter of Deacon Eliphalet Kilborn, of Boscawen, and the couple lived in the old house built by his father. There, after other children had been born, Charles Carleton Coffin, her youngest child, entered this world at 9 A. M., July 26, 1823. From this time forward, the mother never had a well day. After ten years of ill health and suffering, she died from too much calomel and from slow starvation, being able to take but little food on account of canker in her mouth and throat. Carleton, her pet, was very much with her during his child-life, so that his recollections of his mother were ever very clear, very tender, and profoundly influential for good.
The first event whose isolation grew defined in the mind of "the baby new to earth and sky," was an incident of 1825, when he was twenty-three months old. His maternal grandfather had shot a hawk, breaking its wing, and bringing it to the house alive. The boy baby standing in the doorway, all the family being in the yard, always remembered looking at what he called "a hen with a crooked bill." Carleton's recollection of the freshet of August, 1826, when the great slide occurred at the