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girls in patriotism. He died without entering into old age, for he was always ready to entertain a new idea. Let
us glance at his name and inheritance. He was well named, and ever appreciated his heritage. In his Christian,
middle, and family name, is a suggestion. In each lies a story.
"Charles," as we say, is the Norman form of the old Teutonic Carl, meaning strong, valiant, commanding. The
Hungarians named a king Carl.
"Carleton" is the ton or town of Carl or Charles.
"Coffin" in old English meant a cask, chest, casket, box of any kind.
The Latin Cophinum was usually a basket. When Wickliffe translated the Gospel, he rendered the verse at
Matt. xiv. 20, "They took up of that which remained over of the broken pieces, twelve coffins full."
The name as a family name is still found in England, but all the Coffins in America are descended from
Tristram Coffin, who sailed from Plymouth, England, in 1642, and in 1660 settled in Nantucket. The most
ancient seat of the name and family of the Coffins in England is Portledge, in the parish of Alwington. To his
house, and last earthly home, in Brookline, Mass., built under his own eye, and in which Charles Carleton
Coffin died, he gave the name of Alwington.
"Carleton's" grandfather, Peter Coffin, married Rebecca Hazeltine, of Chester, N. H., whose ancestors had
come from England to Salem, Mass., in 1637, and settled at Bradford. Carleton has told something of his
ancestry and kin in his "History of Boscawen." In his later years, in the eighties of this century, at the repeated
and urgent request of his wife, Carleton wrote out, or, rather, jotted down, some notes for the story of the
earlier portion of his life. He was to have written a volume had his wife succeeded, after due perseverance, in
overcoming his modesty entitled "Recollections of Seventy Years." To this, we, also, that is, the biographer
and others, often urged him. It was not to be.
Excepting, then, these hastily jotted notes, Mr. Coffin never indicated, gave directions, or prepared materials
for his biography. To the story of his life, as gathered from his own rough notes, intended for after-reference
and elaboration, let us at once proceed, without further introduction.
CHAPTER Page 5
CHAPTER II.
OF REVOLUTIONARY SIRES.
The Coffins of America are descended from Tristram Coffin of England and Nantucket. Charles Carleton
Coffin was born of Revolutionary sires. He first saw light in the southwest corner room of a house which
stood on Water Street, in Boscawen, N. H., which his grandfather, Captain Peter Coffin, had built in 1766.
This ancestor, "an energetic, plucky, good-natured, genial man," married Rebecca Hazeltine, of Chester, N. H.
When the frame of the house was up and the corner room partitioned off, the bride and groom began
housekeeping. Her wedding outfit was a feather bed, a frying-pan, a dinner-pot, and some wooden and pewter
plates. She was just the kind of a woman to be the mother of patriots and to make the Revolution a success.
The couple had been married nine years, when the news of the marching of the British upon Lexington
reached Boscawen, on the afternoon of the 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
CHAPTER II. 6
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 White Mountains, causing the death of the
Willey family, was more detailed. This event has been thrillingly described by Thomas Starr King. The
irrepressible small boy wanted to "go to meeting" on Sunday. Being told that he could not, he cried himself to
sleep. When he awoke he mounted his "horse," a broomstick, and cantered up the road for a half mile.
Captured by a lady, he resisted vigorously, while she pointed to the waters running in white streams down the
hills through the flooded meadows and telling him he would be drowned.
Meanwhile the hired man at home was poling the well under the sweep and "the old oaken bucket," thinking
the little fellow might have leaned over the curb and tumbled in. Shortly afterwards he came near disappearing
altogether from this world by tumbling into the water-trough, being fished out by his sister Mary.
In the old kitchen, a pair of deer's horns fastened into the wall held the long-barrelled musket which his
grandfather had carried in the campaign of 1777. A round beaver hat, bullet, button, and spoon moulds, and
home-made pewter spoons and buttons, were among other things which impressed themselves upon the
sensitive films of the child's memory.
Following out the usual small boy's instinct of destruction, he once sallied out down to the "karsey"
(causeway) to spear frogs with a weapon made by his brother. It was a sharpened nail in the end of a
broomstick. Stepping on a log and making a stab at a "pull paddock," he slipped and fell head foremost into
the mud and slime. Scrambling out, he hied homeward, and entering the parlor, filled with company, he was
greeted with shouts of laughter. Even worse was it to be dubbed by his brother and the hired man a "mud
lark."
Carleton's first and greatest teachers were his mother and father. After these, came formal instruction by
means of letters and books, classes and schools. Carleton's religious and dogmatic education began with the
New England Primer, and progressed with the hymns of that famous Congregationalist, Doctor Watts. When
five years old, at the foot of a long line of boys and girls, he toed the mark, a crack in the kitchen floor, and
recited verses from the Bible. Sunday-school instruction was then in its beginning at Boscawen. The first
hymn he learned was:
"Life is the time to serve the Lord."
After mastering
"In Adam's fall We sinned all,"
the infantile ganglions got tangled up between the "sleigh" in the carriage-house, and the act of pussy in
mauling the poor little mouse, unmentioned, but of importance, in the couplet:
CHAPTER II. 7
"The cat doth play, And after slay."
Having heard of and seen the sleigh before learning the synonym for "kill," the little New Hampshire boy was
as much bothered as a Chinese child who first hears one sound which has many meanings, and only gradually
clears up the mystery as the ideographs are mastered.
From the very first, the boy had an ear sensitive to music. The playing of Enoch Little, his first school-teacher,
and afterwards his brother-in-law, upon the bass viol, was very sweet. Napoleon was never prouder of his
victories at Austerlitz than was little Carleton of his first reward of merit. This was a bit of white paper two
inches square, bordered with yellow from the paint-box of a beautiful young lady who had written in the
middle, "To a good little boy."
The first social event of importance was the marriage of his sister Apphia to Enoch Little, Nov. 29, 1829,
when a room-full of cousins, uncles, and aunts gathered together. After a chapter read from the Bible, and a
long address by the clergyman, the marital ceremony was performed, followed by a hymn read and sung, and
a prayer. Although this healthy small boy, Carleton, had been given a big slice of wedding cake with white
frosting on the top, he felt himself injured, and was hotly jealous of his brother Enoch, who had secured a
slice with a big red sugar strawberry on the frosting. After eating voraciously, he hid the remainder of his cake
in the mortise of a beam beside the back chamber stairs. On visiting it next morning for secret indulgence, he
found that the rats had enjoyed the wedding feast, too. Nothing was left. His first toy watch was to him an
event of vast significance, and he slept with it under his pillow. When also he had donned his first pair of
trousers, he strutted like a turkey cock and said, "I look just like a grand sir." Children in those days often
spoke of men advanced in years as "grand sirs."
The boy was ten years old when President Andrew Jackson visited Concord. Everybody went to see "Old
Hickory." In the yellow-bottomed chaise, paterfamilias Coffin took his boy Carleton and his daughter Elvira,
the former having four pence ha'penny to spend. Federal currency was not plentiful in those days, and the
people still used the old nomenclature, of pounds, shillings, and pence, which was Teutonic even before it was
English or American. Rejoicing in his orange, his stick of candy, and his supply of seed cakes, young
Carleton, from the window of the old North Meeting House, saw the military parade and the hero of New
Orleans. With thin features and white hair, Jackson sat superbly on a white horse, bowing right and left to the
multitude. Martin Van Buren was one of the party.
Another event, long to be remembered by a child who had never before been out late at night, was when, with
a party of boys seven or eight in number, he went a-spearing on Great Pond. In the calm darkness they walked
around the pond down the brook to the falls. With a bright jack-light, made of pitch-pine-knots, everything
seemed strange and exciting to the boy who was making his first acquaintance of the wilderness world by
night. His brother Enoch speared an eel that weighed four pounds, and a pickerel of the same weight. The
party did not get home till 2 A. M., but the expedition was a glorious one and long talked over. The only sad
feature in this rich experience was in his mother's worrying while her youngest child was away.
This was in April. On the 20th of August, just after sunset, in the calm summer night, little Carleton looked
into his mother's eyes for the last time, and saw the heaving breast gradually become still. It was the first great
sorrow of his life.
CHAPTER II. 8
CHAPTER III.
THE DAYS OF HOMESPUN.
Carleton's memories of school-days have little perhaps that is uncommon. He remembers the typical struggle
between the teacher and the big boy who, despite resistance, was soundly thrashed. Those were the days of
physical rather than moral argument, of punishment before judicial inquiry. Once young Carleton had marked
his face with a pencil, making the scholars laugh. Called up by the man behind the desk, and asked whether he
had done it purposely, the frightened boy, not knowing what to say, answered first yes, and then no. "Don't
tell a lie, sir," roared the master, and down came the blows upon the boy's hands, while up came the sense of
injustice and the longing for revenge. The boy took his seat with tingling palms and a heart hot with the sense
of wrong, but no tears fell.
It was his father's rule that if the children were punished at school, they should have the punishment repeated
at home. This was the sentiment of the time and the method of discipline believed to be best for moulding
boys and girls into law-abiding citizens. In the evening, tender-hearted and with pain in his soul, but fearing to
relax and let down the bars to admit a herd of evils, the father doomed his son to stay at home, ordering as a
punishment the reading of the narrative of Ananias and Sapphira.
From that hour throughout his life Carleton hated this particular scripture. He had told no lie, he did not know
what he had said, yet he was old enough to feel the injustice of the punishment. It rankled in memory for
years. Temporarily he hated the teacher and the Bible, and the episode diminished for awhile his respect for
law and order.
The next ten years of Carleton's life may be told in his own words, as follows:
"The year of 1830 may be taken as a general date for a new order of social life. The years prior to that date
were the days of homespun. I remember the loom in the garret, the great and small spinning-wheels, the
warping bars, quill wheel, reels, swifts, and other rude mechanisms for spinning and weaving. My eldest sister
learned to spin and weave. My second sister Mary and sister Elvira both could spin on the large wheel, but did
not learn to weave. I myself learned to twist yarn on the large wheel, and was set to winding it into balls.
"The linen and the tow cloths were bleached on the grass in the orchard, and it was my business to keep it
sprinkled during the hot days, to take it in at night and on rainy days, to prevent mildew. In those 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.
CHAPTER III. 9
"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 employment to the negroes even when he did not need their services.
Society was against the Africans, and they needed help. They were not particularly nice in their ways, nor
were they likely to improve while all the world was against them. Mr. Coffin's idea was to improve them.
About this time Whittier's poems, especially those depicting slave life, had a great influence upon young
Carleton. Learning the poems, he declaimed them in schools and lyceums. The first week in June, which was
not only election time, but also anniversary week in Concord, with no end of meetings, was mightily enjoyed
by the future war correspondent. He attended them, and listened to Garrison, Thompson, Weld, Stanton, Abby
K. Foster, and other agitators. The disruption of the anti-slavery societies, and the violence of the churches,
were matters of great grief to Carleton's father, who began early to vote for James G. Birney. He would not
vote for Henry Clay. When Carleton's uncle, B. T. Kimball, and his three sons undertook to sustain the
CHAPTER III. 10
anti-slavery agitator, and also interrupter of church services, in the meeting-house on Corser Hill, on Sunday
afternoon, the obnoxious orator was removed by force at the order of the justice of the peace. In the
disciplinary measures inaugurated by the church, Mr. Kimball and his three sons and daughters were
excommunicated. This proved an unhappy affair, resulting in great bitterness and dissension.
Carleton thus tells his own story of amateur soldiering:
"Those were the days of military trainings. In September, 1836, came the mustering of the 21st Regiment,
New Hampshire militia. My brother Frederic was captain of the light infantry. I played first the triangle and
then the drum in his company. I knew all the evolutions laid down in the book. The boys of Boscawen formed
a company and elected me captain. I was thirteen years old, full of military ardor. I drilled them in a few
evolutions till they could execute them as well as the best soldiers of the adult companies. We wore white
frocks trimmed with red braid and three-cornered pasteboard caps with a bronzed eagle on the front. Muster
was on Corser Hill. One of the boys could squeak out a tune on the fife. One boy played the bass drum, and
another the small drum.
"We had a great surprise. The Bellows Falls Band, from Walpole, New Hampshire, was travelling to play at
musters, and as none of the adult companies hired them, they offered their services to us free.
"My company paraded in rear of the meeting-house. My brother, with the light infantry, was the first company
at drill. He had two fifes and drums. Nearly all the companies were parading, but the regimental line had not
been formed when we made our appearance. What a commotion! It was a splendid band of about fifteen
members, two trombones, cornets, bugles, clarionets, fife. No other company had more than fifes or
clarionets. It was a grand crash which the band gave. The next moment the people were astonished to see a
company of boys marching proudly upon the green, up and down, changing front, marching by files, in
echelon, by platoons.
"We took our place in line on the field, were inspected, reviewed, and complimented by Maj Gen. Anthony
Colby, afterwards governor of the State.
"When I gave the salute, the crowd applauded. It was the great day of all others in my boyhood. Several of the
farmers gave us a grand dinner. In the afternoon we took part in the sham fight with our little cannon, and
covered ourselves with glory against the big artillery.
"I think that I manifested good common sense when, at the close of the day, I complimented the soldiers on
their behavior, and resigned my commission. I knew that we could never attain equal glory again, and that it
was better to resign when at the zenith of fame than to go out as a fading star."
CHAPTER III. 11
CHAPTER IV.
POLITICS, TRAVEL, AND BUSINESS.
Let us quote again from Mr. Coffin's autobiographical notes:
"In 1836 my father, catching the speculation fever of the period, accompanied by my uncle and
brother-in-law, went to Illinois, and left quite an amount of money for the purchase of government land. My
father owned several shares in the Concord Bank. The speculative fever pervaded the entire
community, speculation in lands in Maine and in Illinois. The result was a great inflation of prices, the
issuing of a great amount of promises to pay, with a grand collapse which brought ruin and poverty to many
households. The year of 1838 was one of great distress. The wheat and corn crop was scant. Flour was worth
$16 a barrel. I remember going often to mill with a grist of oats, which was bolted into flour for want of
wheat. The Concord Bank failed, the Western lands were worthless. Wool could not be sold, and the shearing
for that year was taken to the town of Nelson, in Cheshire County, and manufactured into satinets and
cassimeres, on shares. One of the pieces of cassimere was dyed with a claret tinge, from which I had my first
Sunday suit.
"Up to this period, nearly all my clothing was manufactured in the family loom and cleaned at the clothing
and fulling mill. In very early boyhood, my Sunday suit was a swallow-tailed coat, and hat of the stove-pipe
pattern.
"The year 1840 was one of great political excitement, known to history as the Log Cabin and Hard Cider
Campaign. General Harrison, the Whig candidate, was popularly supposed to live in a log cabin and drink
hard cider. On June 17th, there was an immense gathering of Whigs at Concord. It was one of the greatest
days of my life. Six weeks prior to that date, I thought of nothing but the coming event. I was seventeen years
old, with a clear and flexible voice, and I quickly learned the Harrison songs. I went to the convention with
my brothers and cousins, in a four-wheeled lumber wagon, drawn by four horses, with a white banner, having
the words 'Boscawen Whig Delegation.' We had flags, and the horses' heads labelled 'Harrison and Tyler.' We
had a roasted pig, mince pies, cakes, doughnuts and cheese, and a keg of cider. Before reaching Concord we
were joined by the log cabin from Franklin, with coon skins, bear traps, etc., dangling from its sides.
Boscawen sent nearly every Whig voter to the meeting. I hurrahed and sung, and was wild with excitement. I
remember three of the speakers, George Wilson, of Keene, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune,
a young man, and Henry Wilson, also a young man, both of them natives of New Hampshire. Wilson had
attended school with my brother at the academy in Concord, in 1837, then having the high-sounding name of
Concord Literary Institute. Wilson was a shoemaker, then residing in Natick, Mass., and was known as the
'Natick Cobbler.' The songs have nearly all faded from memory. I recall one line of our description of the
prospective departure of Van Buren's cabinet from the White House:
"'Let each as we go take a fork and a spoon.'
"There was one entitled 'Up Salt River,' descriptive of the approaching fate of the Democratic party. Another
ran:
"'Oh, what has caused this great commotion the country through? It is the ball, a rolling on For Tippecanoe
and Tyler too.'
"Then came the chorus:
"'Van, Van, is a used-up man.'
CHAPTER IV. 12
"In 1839, I had a fancy that I should like to be a merchant, and was taken to Newburyport and placed with a
firm of wholesale and retail grocers. I was obliged to be up at 4.30, open the store, care for the horse, curry
him, swallow my breakfast in a hurry, also my dinner and supper, and close the store at nine. It was only an
experiment on my part, and after five weeks of such life, finding that I was compelled to do dishonest work, I
concluded that I never would attempt to be a princely merchant, and took the stage for home. It was a
delightful ride home on the top of the rocking coach, with the driver lashing his whip and his horses doing
their best.
"I think it was in 1841 that Daniel Webster attended the Merrimac County Agricultural Fair at Fisherville,
now Penacook. I was there with a fine yoke of oxen which won his admiration. He asked me as to their age
and weight, and to whom they belonged. He recognized nearly all of his old acquaintances. I saw him many
times during the following year. He was in the prime of life, in personal appearance a remarkable man."
Thus far it will be seen that there was little in Mr. Coffin's life and surroundings that could not be easily told
of the average New England youth. Besides summer work on the farm, and "chores" about the house, he had
taken several terms at the academy in Boscawen. During the winter of 1841-42, while unable to do any
outdoor work, on account of sickness, he bought a text-book on land-surveying and learned something of the
science and art, yet more for pastime than from any expectation of making it useful.
Nevertheless, that book had a powerful influence upon his life. It gave him an idea, through the application of
measurement to the earth's surface, of that order and beauty of those mathematical principles after which the
Creator built the universe. It opened his eyes to the vast modification of the landscape, and the earth itself, by
man's work upon its crust. It gave him the engineer's eye. Henceforth he became interested in the capacity of
every portion of the country, which came under his notice, for the roads, fields, gardens, and parks of peace,
and for the making of forts, military roads, and the strategy of battle. In a word, the book and its study gave
him an enrichment of life which fitted him to enjoy the world by travel, and to understand the arena of
war, theatres of usefulness to which Providence was to call him in after-life.
In August, 1843, in his twenty-first year, he became a student at Pembroke Academy. The term of ten weeks
seemed ever afterwards in his memory one of the golden periods of his life. The teacher, Charles G. M.
Burnham, was enthusiastic and magnetic, having few rules, and placing his pupils upon their honor. It was not
so much what Carleton learned from books, as association with the one hundred and sixty young men and
women of his own age, which here so stimulated him.
From the academy he advanced to be teacher of the district school on Corser Hill, in West Boscawen, but after
three weeks of pedagogy was obliged to leave on account of sickness. He passed the remainder of the winter
in lumbering, rising at 4 A. M. to feed his team of horses. While breakfast was preparing he studied books, ate
the meal by candle-light, and then was off with his lunch of cold meat, bread, and apple pie. From the woods
to the bank of the Merrimac the distance was three miles, and three or four trips were made daily in drawing
the long and heavy logs to the water. Returning home after dark, he ate supper by candle-light, fed his horses,
and gave an hour to study before bedtime.
The summer of 1844 was one of hard toil on the farm. In July he became of age, and during the autumn
worked on his brother-in-law's farm, rising at five and frequently finishing about 9 P. M. It is no wonder that
all through his life Mr. Coffin showed a deep sympathy, born of personal experience, with men who are
bound down to physical toil. Nevertheless, the fine arts were not neglected. He had already learned to play the
"seraphine," the instrument which has been developed into the reed organ. He started the project, in 1842, of
getting one for the church. By great efforts sixty dollars were raised and an instrument purchased in Concord.
Mr. Coffin became the "organist," and also taught singing in the schoolhouse. Three of his nieces, excellent
singers, assisted him.
The time had now come for the young man to strike out in the world for himself. Like most New England
CHAPTER IV. 13
youth, his eyes were on Boston. With a recommendation from his friend, the minister, he took the stage to
Concord. The next day he was in Boston, then a city of 75,000 people, with the water dashing against the
embankment of Charles Street, opposite the Common, and with only one road leading out to Roxbury. Sloops
and schooners, loaded with coal and timber, sailed over the spot where afterwards stood his house, at No. 81
Dartmouth Street. In a word, the "Back Bay" and "South End" were then unknown. Boston city, shaped like a
pond lily laid flat, had its long stem reaching to the solid land southward on the Dorchester and Roxbury hills.
Young Carleton went to Mount Vernon Church on Ashburton Place, the pastor, Dr. E. N. Kirk, being in the
prime of his power, and the church crowded. The country boy from New Hampshire became a member of the
choir and enjoyed the Friday night rehearsals. He found employment at one dollar a day in a commission
store, 84 Utica Street, with the firm of Lowell & Hinckley. The former, a brother of James Russell Lowell,
had a son, a bright little boy, who afterwards became the superb cavalry commander at the battle of Cedar
Creek in 1864. Carleton boarded on Beacon Street, next door to the present Athenæum Building. The firm
dissolved by Mr. Lowell's entering the Athenæum. Carleton returned to his native town to vote. He became a
farm laborer with his brother-in-law, passing a summer of laborious toil, frequently fourteen and sixteen
hours, with but little rest.
It was time now for the old Granite State to be opened by the railway. The Northern Railroad had been
chartered, and preliminary surveys were to be made. Young Carleton, seizing the opportunity, went to
Franklin, saw the president, and told him who he was. He was at once offered a position as chainman, and told
to report two weeks later. The other chainman gave Carleton the leading end, intending that the Boscawen
boy, and not himself, should drag it and drive the stake. Carleton did not object, for he was looking beyond
the chain.
The compass-man was an old gentleman dim of eyesight and slow of action. Young Carleton drove his first
stake, at a point one hundred feet north of the Concord railway depot, which was opened in the month of
August, 1845. The old compass-man then set his compass for a second sight, but before he could get out his
spectacles and put them on, young Carleton read the point to him. When, through his glasses, the old
gentleman had verified the reading, he was delighted. Promotion for Carleton was now sure. Before night he
was not only dragging the chain, but was sighting the instrument. The result, two days later, was promotion to
the charge of the party. What he had learned of land surveying was producing its fruit. In the autumn he was
employed as the head of a party to make the preliminary survey of the Concord and Portsmouth road.
Unfortunately, during this surveying campaign, he received a wound which caused slight permanent lameness
and disqualified him for military service. It came about in this way. He was engaged in some work while an
axe-man behind him was chopping away some bushes and undergrowth. The latter gave a swing of the axe
which came out too far and cut through the boot and large tendon of Carleton's left ankle. With skilled
medical attention, rest, and care, the wound would have soon healed up, but owing to lack of skill, and to
carelessness and exposure, the wound gave him considerable trouble, and once reopened. In after-life, when
overwearied, this part of the limb was very troublesome.
It was not all toil for Carleton. The time of love had already come, and the days of marriage were not far off.
The object of his devotion was Miss Sally Russell Farmer, the daughter of Colonel John Farmer, of
Boscawen. On February 18, 1846, amid the winter winds, the fire of a holy union for life was kindled, and its
glow was unflickering during more than fifty years. In ancestry and relationship, the Farmers of Boscawen
were allied with the Russells of England, Sir William, of bygone centuries, and Lord John, of our own
memory. Carleton found a true "help-meet" in Sally Coffin. Though no children ever came to bless their
union, it was as perfect, though even more hallowed and beautified, on the day it was severed, as when first
begun.
The following summer was one full of days of toil in the engineering department of the Northern railway,
Carleton being engaged upon the first section to be opened from Concord to Franklin. The engineering was
CHAPTER IV. 14
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