Money, the having and not having of which makes all the difference
- Alisa Kline
- Nov 15, 2024
- 6 min read
We met Thomas Miner in last week’s post. Canaan's second settler, Miner was an original grantee who had come to Canaan for an adventure and because he “wanted to be able to kiss his wife on Sunday.” In other words, he found the Connecticut blue laws to be oppressive.
Thomas Scofield, Canaan’s first settler, was already in residence when Miner arrived. Scofield too sought relief from the laws of Connecticut and also from the nearness of neighbors, believing neighbors and laws to be connected things.
Page 16
“I’ve been jammed in crowds all my life,” says Scofield, “and I’m up here to get away from them, can’t bear to be crowded, never could; came away from Connecticut because there was too many people and too much law.”
I spent most of my adult life in Texas and I understand where Miner and Scofield were coming from. Avoiding rules might be the Texas state motto, and I can tell you from first-hand experience, New England is still much more invested in rules than is Texas. Probably for the better.
The early denizens of Canaan came by their ruleaphilia naturally. They were decendants of the Pilgrims who, lost, washed up on unknown land, before leaving the Mayflower to even take a look around, held a meeting and wrote down a bunch of rules. I promise you, a ship full of Texans would have taken years to even think about writing down rules. Way too much to get accomplished first. No amount of rules keeps you fed.
But the people who wrote the Mayflower Compact believed in a very real God. Following the rules was the only thing keeping you from eternal damnation. Without rules, how were you to know what to do, what path to walk? Rules are the very thing that the abolitionists, the historical heroes of Wallace's book, used as fuel for their righteous quest. The big message of the abolitionists was simply “you can’t have slaves because it’s wrong.” They spent decades trying to convince people who were making money either by owning slaves or by doing business with those who did. And they did. Eventually.
This stand-off, with one side pointing out that something is obviously wrong and the other knowing that they can get away with it, is the central struggle of humanity. Everyone contains both impulses within them. That’s why they are both so familiar. We somehow know right from wrong and we all try to get away with stuff.
Because of the vicissitudes of ocean currents and wind, the most religious bunch of people imaginable ended up at one end of America. They didn’t so much prosper as persist and once they acquired the ability and technology to get somewhere else, they did.
But while they were here, they provided a geographic and moral counterweight to the slave-owning South. They didn’t have the power to do anything about evil, but they never stopped reminding everyone that slavery was evil and no country in which it occurred could earn God’s favor.
They lived their lives and made mistakes. They themselves were not always good. But they were sincere in the belief that rules would make it better. The alternative to rule of law is simply rule of the strong. That was the King and the old world. This was the New World. So, New Hampshire simply kept on keeping on, each challenge being one more test God placed before his children.
In reading about Canaan’s early years, I’m amazed that these people kept at it. Were there seriously no better options? Even to get bread, or rather the grain to make it, required great effort.
Page 20
For several years it occurred that a man must walk to Lebanon, where a mill had been built, work a day to earn a bushel of “bread corn” and have it ground, then pack it upon his back to his home in the forest, by that blind trail through the forest.
That grain wasn’t just sustenance, it was currency.
Page 21
It happened, a few years after the settlers came in, there was a failure of crops. There was but one man in town who had corn in his crib, our old friend, Maj. Samuel Jones, who was a man of wealth and influence, living on South Road, west of Beaver Brook.
He was a kind man, considerate to his poor neighbors, to many of whom he gave employment. It is related that Col. Ezekiel Wells, also a man of wealth and influence, went to the major to purchase corn, confident that his social position was such as to bar a refusal, and thus he would save the trouble of going to Lebanon.
But the major was inexorable. He replied : “Colonel, you have a good horse and plenty of money, and can get your corn with but little personal inconvenience. I want a good deal of work done, and these neighbors of mine have nothing else to pay for my corn. It wouldn’t be right for me to sell you my corn and send these men all the way over to Lebanon on foot. No, Colonel, can’t do it, we must help one another.”
Labor was also currency. It was the currency that men offered in exchange for the grain. It was the currency that saved them a long walk and a day’s labor in Lebanon. Labor, cows, grain, these things were currency well into the 1800s.
Page 76
The inventory for 1794 contains 141 names, three of them nonresidents. The total amount of tax raised was 161 pounds and two shillings. Under the head of “money on hand or at interest,” “Samuel Noice” is taxed for fifteen pounds for 1793. No other person has “Money on hand.” […] It would appear that all the rest of the people traded on “Grane,” calves, pigs, or whatever they could produce for “exchange.”
Samuel Noice is Samuel Noyes, for whom Noyes Academy was named. Scanning the town records of 1799, there were still only a smattering of people with Money on Hand.
With all the things early Canaanites used in place of money, one might be surprised that some men came to Canaan to get rich. They imagined wealth lay beneath the towering forests and their small early stake could be sold for much more once the inevitable land boom began. In his chapter on Old Families, Wallace retells how Daniel Blaisdell rescued Canaan from taxes it could not hope to pay because Caleb Seabury tried to goose land prices.
Page 507
More than a hundred years ago a tax was levied by the Legislature which was very burdensome to some of the new towns. Caleb Seabury was said to have been the occasion of it. He was sent to Exeter as a representative. He thought he would signalize his term of office by assuring the Legislature of the great wealth of Canaan. Its soil yielded spontaneously and enriched its people.
In other words, Caleb Seabury served in the New Hampshire legislature as the representative from Canaan. While there, he spent a great deal of time talking up how amazingly prosperous Canaan was. He spoke like a salesman on a used car lot.
Seabury, with an eye towards improving his investment, overstated the prosperity of the town. The legislature responded reasonably, asking higher taxes from such wealthy people.
The next year Mr. Blaisdell was sent to Exeter to ask for the modification of the law. He told them that it was true that the lands of Canaan were exceedingly rich and fruitful. It was like all other new soil upon which the timber forests had been reduced to ashes. If they would make wheat, rye and corn, legal tender for taxes, it would relieve the people greatly, but there was no money and no market for their commodities. Lands, cattle, hogs, ashes, grain, etc, were the circulating medium. Nearly all purchases were made by way of exchange. In this way he pleaded with them, until they consented to modify the law, which greatly pleased the people and made him more popular than ever.
Everyone who came had their eye on the prize, an outcome they imagined they might achieve if only they kept working and kept their faith.
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