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- OLD STEVENSTOWN OR SALISBURY FORT
Adapted from Journal Transcript- 1930
Stevenstown (afterwards incorporated as Salisbury) was for some years a frontier settlement of the British colonies exposed to sudden and deadly attacks from the Indians, who were allied with the French. To the North extended an unbroken wilderness as far as the settlement of Canada, and the little hamlet was without neighbors for ten years. Sometime between 1746 and 1750 a fort was built here, and located about 40 rods south of the cemetery near the Old Stage Coach Road on the Webster Intervale. It was surrounded by eight acres of cleared land that had been cultivated earlier.
The little township got its name Stevenstown from Major Stevens, who died on October 26, 1749, six days after the grant was issued to him through the Masonian proprietors . He actually was granted the land in December, 1748. It would be eighty years to a month before the town of Franklin was chartered.
Seven years before the Revolution Stevenstown became a part of Salisbury and after that until it was incorporated in Franklin, the
settlement was called Salisbury Lower Village, and the Salisbury Fort. The naming of this territory (says Dr. Dearborn) would seem to have been singularly inappropriate for Salisbury means” the town of health and safety" which Salisbury certainly was not at that time. "The Lower Village" however, was quite the most important part of the community for more than thirty years, after it became a part of Franklin, and when the time came
for the development of the larger opportunities which lay within the
township lines it was the brain and brawn of "The Lower Village" which bore the greater part of the burden.
Early in the winter of 1755, Governor Wentworth ordered
Col. Joseph Blanchard of Dunstable to raise a regiment of 600 men and to
rendezvous at the fort in Stevenstown AKA Salisbury Fort. Various scouting parties were employed west of the Merrimack and on the frontiers about the Pemigewasset
and Winnipesaukee Rivers, and the Colonel spent about six weeks at the fort
. He was preparing boats for transporting his troops and baggage up the
river to Crown Point. He did not realize you couldn’t get there from here by
boat until he tried and failed.*
It has seemed fitting for Abigail Webster Chapter, D. A. R., to
mark the historic sites in some way. In 1930 a boulder was set near the site
of the first log cabin built within the limits of what is now Franklin.
The next year it was proposed to place a marker upon the almost
obliterated site of the” Old Salisbury Fort." The proceeds of the play,
"Color Schemes" which was given on a Friday night at Library Hall in 1930,
went for that purpose. *** ABIGAIL WEBSTER CHAPTER TO MARK SITE 1930
In the 1990’s it was said that a part of the fort – a log- was dug up but disintegrated when it reached the air.
* The Stevenstown Fort was said to be modeled after Fort Dummer in Vermont.
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- [COLOR:38,38,38,255,255,255]The following excerpt is from The History of Manchester, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. It describes an attack by “savages in the interests of the French,” a band of about 30 Abenaki.the 15th day of August [1754], they made a successful attack on our frontier, on the house of Mr. Phillip Call, in Stevenstown. This town was subsequently known as Salisbury and the attack was made in that part of Salisbury, west of, and upon the Merrimack, now included in the town of, Franklin.Call [Sarah Trussell Call], her daughter-in-law, wife of Phillip Call, Jr. and an infant of the latter, were alone in the house, while the Calls, father and son, and Timothy Cook their hired man, were at work in the field.the approach of the Indians, Mrs. Call the elder, met them at the door, and was immediately killed with a blow from a tomahawk, her body falling near the door, and her blood drenching her own threashold! [sic]younger Mrs. Call, with her infant in her arms, crawled into a hole behind the chimney, where she succeeded in keeping her child quiet, and thus escaped from sure destruction.Calls, father and son, and Cook, saw the Indians, and attempted to get into the house before them, but could not succeed. They were so near the house, as to hear the blow with which Mrs. Call was killed.however the number of the Indians, they fled to the woods and the Calls escaped.ran to the river and plunged in, but was pursued, shot in the water, and his scalp taken.Indians, some thirty in number, rifled the house, took Mrs. Call’s scalp, and then retreated up the river.Calls soon notified the garrison at Contoocook of the attack, and a party of eight men followed in pursuit.Indians waited in ambush for them, but showed themselves too soon, and the English party taking to the woods escaped, with the exception of Enos Bishop, who after firing upon the Indians several times was at length taken and carried to Canada as a captive.“[:COLOR]
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1686 - 1754 (68 years)
