Charles Carleton Coffin | Page 6

days a girl
began to prepare for marriage as soon as she could use a needle,
stitching bits of calico together for quilts. She must spin and weave her
own sheets and pillow-cases and blankets.
"All of my clothes, up to the age of fourteen, were homespun. My first
'boughten' jacket was an olive green broadcloth,--a remnant which was
bought cheap because it was a remnant. I wore it at an evening party
given by my schoolmate. We were twenty or more boys and girls, and I
was regarded by my mates with jealousy. I was an aristocrat, all
because I wore broadcloth.
"It was the period of open fireplaces. Stoves were just being introduced.
We could play blind man's buff in the old kitchen with great zest
without running over stoves.
"It was the period of brown bread, apple and milk, boiled dinners,
pumpkin pies. We had very little cake. Pork and beans and Indian
pudding were standard dishes, only the pudding was eaten first. My
father had always been accustomed to that order. His second marriage
was in 1835, and my stepmother, or rather my sister Mary, who was
teaching school in Concord and had learned the new way, brought
about the change in the order of serving the food.
"Prior to 1830 there was no stove in the meeting-house, and the

introduction of the first stove brought about a deal of trouble. One man
objected, the air stifled him. It was therefore voted that on one Sunday
in each month there should be no fire.
"It was a bitter experience,--riding two and one-half miles to meeting,
sitting through the long service with the mercury at zero. Only we did
not know how cold it was, not having a thermometer. My father
purchased one about 1838. I think there was one earlier in the town.
"The Sunday noons were spent around the fireplaces. The old men
smoked their pipes.
"In 1835, religious meetings were held in all the school districts,
usually in the kitchens of the farmhouses. There was a deep religious
interest. Protracted meetings, held three days in succession, were
frequently attended by all the ministers of surrounding towns. I became
impressed with a sense of my condition as a sinner, and resolved to
become a Christian. I united with the church the first Sunday in May,
1835, in my twelfth year. I knew very little about the spiritual life, but I
have no doubt that I have been saved from many temptations by the
course then pursued. The thought that I was a member of the church
was ever a restraint in temptation."
The anti-slavery agitation reached Boscawen in 1835, and Carleton's
father became an ardent friend of the slaves. In the Webster
meeting-house the boy attended a gathering at which a theological
student gave an address, using an illustration in the peroration which
made a lasting impression upon the youthful mind. At a country
barn-raising, the frame was partly up, but the strength of the raisers was
gone. "It won't go, it won't go," was the cry. An old man who was
making pins threw down his axe, and shouted, "It will go," and put his
shoulder to a post, and it did go. So would it be with anti-slavery.
The boy Carleton became an ardent abolitionist from this time forth. He
read the Liberator, Herald of Freedom, Emancipator, and all the
anti-slavery tracts and pamphlets which he could get hold of. In his
bedroom, he had hanging on the wall the picture of a negro in chains.
The last thing he saw at night, and the first that met his eyes in the

morning, was this picture, with the words, "Am I not a man and a
brother?"
With their usual conservatism, the churches generally were hostile to
the movement and methods of the anti-slavery agitation. There was an
intense prejudice against the blacks. The only negro in town was a
servant girl, who used to sit solitary and alone in the colored people's
pew in the gallery. When three families of black folks moved into a
deserted house in Boscawen, near Beaver Dam Brook, and their
children made their appearance in Corser Hill school, a great
commotion at once ensued in the town. After the Sunday evening
prayer-meeting, which was for "the conversion of the world," it was
agreed by the legal voters that "if the niggers persisted in attending
school," it should be discontinued. Accordingly the children left the
Corser Hill school, and went into what was, "religiously speaking," a
heathen district, where, however, the prejudice against black people
was not so strong, and there were received into the school.
Thereupon, out of pure devotion to principle, Carleton's father
protested against the action of the Corser Hill people, and, to show his
sympathy, gave