This contains a transcription of the Scofields from The History of Canaan, New Hampshire by William Allen Wallace, edited by James Burns Wallace, Concord, N.H.: The Rumford Press, 1910.
John Scofield was in his lifetime a prominent man in the affairs of this town. A well-poised, sincere man, and the people had great trust in his integrity and good common sense and conferred upon him all the offices and honors in their power to bestow. These offices he held almost continuously during the eighteen years he remained here and he had the pleasure of seeing his sons, Eleazer and John, Jr., as they grew up to be men, honored for the same sterling qualities that distinguished himself. Mr. Scofield lived to see the patriots successful in all their plans and the country freed from the rule of George the Third, of whom Thackeray says: “` George, be a king,’ were the words which the king’s mother was forever croaking in the ears of her son. And a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be.” Mr. Scofield wore knee buckles and breeches. Tall and of most enduring constitution. No respect for the weather; all kinds were alike to him; summer’s heat and winter’s cold. He was an Englishman and a Baptist. Mr. Scofield was not a soldier in the Revolution. “On the nineteenth of April in seventy-five,” he was sixty years old, and beyond the age limit for service in the field. He was buried on the spot chosen by himself for that purpose, upon his own lands and a headstone of clay slate, which he wrought out with his own hands, excepting the date of his death, was placed over his grave, where it remained, exposed to the storms of more than ninety years, quietly marking the resting place of the brave dust that was gathered beneath, and might have continued to remain for ninety years longer a silent sentinel there, but for the foolish vanity of a man who thought to win renown for antiquarian research by lugging that stone off, and placing it in the dusty and damp cellar of the New Hampshire Historical Society at Concord, where the dust accumulated upon it so as to obscure [page 494] the inscription. And that man signalized his ignoble feat by attaching to the stone a sketch of Mr. Scofield, which was only remarkable for its blunders and mistakes in dates. Disce omnes cui bono. This stone remained in the box it was received in the cellar of the society until 1905, when the town at its annual meeting, saw fit to recognize the services and trials of this man by requesting that it be returned to Canaan.
The town also voted to place a fence around the spot where Mr. Scofield’s dust lay, the better to preserve his grave and those buried beside him. The stone was placed in the Town Library on account of its condition, it not being deemed advisable to place it at the head of his grave. On the stone is carved this inscription:
IN MEMORY OF
JOHN SCOFIELD
Who died July 5th. 1784
In his 69th. year
Blessed are ye dead who die in, the Lord.
On the footstone, now standing at the foot of his grave, was carved “Mr. John Scofield.” The grave is located in the south part of the pasture of the old James Pattee farm on South Road, which Daniel Pattee bought in 1799. This farm was cleared by Samuel Jones, Mr. Scofield’s son-in-law.
At some unknown date a burial place was laid out in that lone pasture. Years ago there were eleven mounds, arranged due east and west. At only one of them, Mr. Scofield’s, was there a gravestone. Field stones are placed at the head and foot of some of the others. Five of them were short, indicating children. Mrs. Scofield was buried beside her husband and a Mrs. Floyd is said to have been buried in another. And this is all that is known of those buried there.
Mrs. Scofield, whose maiden name was Sarah Crocker, she who so bravely walked with her children, while her husband hauled his handsled from Lebanon, in that dreary December day in ’66, survived her husband in her old homestead for twelve years. She died September 4, 1796, and her grave was never marked. The reason for this apparent neglect to mark the old graves was cogent with the people. There were no skilful workers [page 495] in stone among them, and they could hardly afford the expense of sending abroad for monuments of marble or granite. Nearly all the old stones set up in our cemeteries are the handiwork of some member of the family of the deceased, wrought from stones which still have their counterparts in this town. The last will and testament of Mrs. Scofield, witnessed several years before her death, is copied below. It is written in the handwriting of Thomas Baldwin and is witnessed by him. The spelling and capitalization of the original are retained.
In The Name of God, Amen, The Last Will & Testament of Sarah Scofield of Canaan in the County of Grafton and State of New Hampshire.
Im primis, my Soul I Commend to God that Gave it. Trusting and Beleiving thro the Merits of His Dear Son to be accepted of Him in Peace. My body I resign to the Earth, to be Decently Interred Trusting and Believing I Shall receive it again in the Morning of the Resurrection Refined for Immortality.
My funeral charges together with all my Just Debts to be Paid out of my Estate. Item, I Give and Bequeath all my wearing apparel to my Children and Grandchildren, to be Equally Divided into Four Parts (viz) To my Beloved Daughter Merriam Jones one Quarter (and She to have the first choice). To Temperance Scofield my Beloved Daughter in law one Quarter, to my Beloved Daughter in law Lydia Scofield one Quarter, and to my Beloved Grand-daughters, Sarah Crocker and Esther Jones, one quarter to be equally Divided between them.
Item I give and bequeath to my beloved daughter Meriam Jones my bed underbed two coverlids one pair of Sheets one pair of Pillow cases.
Item I give and Bequeath al the remaining part of my Estate of Whatsoever Nature or kind to my beloved Sons Eleazer and John Scofield to be Equally Divided between them. With this Proviso that they pay To my two Grandaughters above named two pounds Ten Shillings Each to be paid out of my Household stuff or other ways to their Satisfaction Immediately after my Discease. all and every of the Bequested Premises I Will and injoin that they be Divided and injoyed as above expressed.
In Testimony Whereof I have hereunto Set my hand and Seal this 23rd day of Jany A D 1786, Signed Sealed And Confirmed in Presents of
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her
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| THOMAS BALDWIN |
SARAH + SCOFIELD
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| EKEKIEL LUNT |
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Ezekiel Lunt was a resident of Enfield. This will was never probated. Its terms were carried out without legal formality.
The sons of Mr. Scofield were Eleazer, born in 1754, and John, [page 496] born June 12, 1756. There were two daughters, Delight, who died in 1777, the wife of Gideon Rudd of Hanover, and Miriam, two years younger than John, all born in Connecticut. Before the death of their father, these young men exhibited traits of character which won the respect and confidence of their townsmen. Their opportunities for education were very limited, there being no public schools. But few of the people became distinguished for their learning, because the necessities of life compelled them to labor. They learned to read and write painfully, and if not disturbed could slowly reckon figures. The new settlements did not afford even so good advantages as the older settlements in Connecticut from whence they came and the young people had to depend chiefly upon their own efforts and the instruction of parents at home and the parents of these young people were but indifferent scholars. Mr. Scofield passed through a routine business education, while his wife was ignorant, both of letters and penmanship. But what the boys lacked in mental training was made up to them in good advice, which they stored up and followed all the days of their lives.
Eleazer married Temperance Calkins, whose father, John P., lived in a log house on the South Road, about ninety rods west of his father-in-law, Mr. George Harris. They had a family of three sons, Eleazer, Nathan, Benjamin, and two daughters, all born in Canaan. He built and lived in the house John Moore now owns. John married Lydia Clark, a sister of Dea. Josiah Clark. They had four sons and five daughters, all born in Canaan. John Scofield, Jr., was an earnest patriot of the Revolution. He was made captain of a militia company and marched on foot from Canaan to Saratoga, and had the gratification of being present at the surrender of Burgoyne. He always afterward was known as Captain Scofield, and as he grew in years, he got to be “old Captain Scofield.”
The sister Miriam, married Maj. Samuel Jones. After living together several years, two children being born to them, they separated by mutual consent, a lack of harmony being the chief reason, and the major carried her back to her mother’s house. It is reported that it gave him greater pleasure to restore her to her mother’s house than he manifested when he took her away. She was a confirmed invalid and continued with her own kindred [page 497] until her death, and was always known as “Aunt Miriam.” Major Jones sold out; emigrated to New York and married again. One son, many years afterward, revisited the scenes of his father’s early labors. Soon after the old settler’s death, Mr. Eleazer and Captain John, who had assisted in cutting the first trees for actual settlement in Canaan, began to talk to each other of emigrating, selling out their lands and making a home in Canada. Strong as were their attachments, they seemed willing to yield them all and push on and begin as settlers anew farther off.
The industry and perseverance of the people had made this a flourishing community. Every season was adding to its numbers and respectability. Schools were organized in the new districts and a common education was possible under difficulties. Religion had many sincere votaries and the Baptist Church increased in numbers, although many of the good men were not within its fold.
The lands were being subdivided, and distributed freely at low prices to induce settlements. It would not be long before every man would be reduced to a hundred acres or even less.
They felt crowded, and sterling men as they were and honored and respected as such, were sired of the same disease which attacked “the old man” thirty-five years before when he exiled himself from the pleasant town in Connecticut and by devious wanderings at length found a home upon the banks of the Mascoma at Canaan. They had heard that the soil of Canada was rich and easily worked, but few stones, and extended in long level stretches of forest. It was not until after the death of their mother, some years, that their desires began to assume definite shape. About the year 1800 Captain John and his son John Bunyan, traveled up to Canada for exploration, and decided upon the spot that should be their future home. They found it a great unbroken forest, with natural features far superior to these. They returned well pleased, and two or three years afterward, packed up their household goods, their lares and penates, their wives and children, cattle, sheep and hogs, a bag of apple seeds, for it was a rule with all our ancestors, to plant an orchard as soon as the first acres were felled and started [page 498] out for their new home about a mile within the Canada line in the town of Dunspatten, now St. Armands.
They took up a large tract of land and in one year cleared thirty acres with their own hands. They built houses and barns, planted orchards and crops of all kinds, and increased and multiplied, as perservering industry always does. The entire race disappeared from among us, and their names never again appear in our records. Eleazer, his wife, three sons and two daughters, Captain John, his wife, four sons and five daughters, and Aunt Miriam, all departed together, leaving us only the graves of our first settler and his wife.
Captain John’s children were: Sarah, born January 21, 1779, she married David Tallman and had eight children; Miriam, born May 4, 1780, married Robert Barber and had two children; John Bunyan, born March 31, 1781, died September 24, 1814, married Wealthy Basford and had seven children; Lucinda, born June 28, 1784, died December 2, 1857, married Benedict Tyler and had seven children; James, born August 10, 1786, died March 8, 1849, married Olive Basford and had eleven children; Jesse, born March 31, 1789, died October 23, 1828, married Eliza Martin and had one son; Lydia, born November 23, 1791, died July 2, 1860, she married Salmon Baker and had eight children and afterwards married David F. Carpenter; Lewis, born September 13, 1794, married Eliza Bowen and had one son; Betsey, born October 4, 1797, married John Ingalls and had four children.
Capt. John Scofield owned and lived upon the farm which he sold to Levi George of Salisbury in 1803, on the north side of South Road, opposite where George Ginn now lives. He owned the land on both sides of the old road leading to the mill. He deeded the land on both sides “to the road.” That road was thrown up by the town, consequently the land reverts to the heirs of Captain Scofield. Every subsequent deed has followed the same description and no owner has recognized or assumed to give a description to a subsequent purchaser that included the road.
There were others who emigrated and went to make up the Canaan colony in Canada, either with the Scofields or soon after. [page 499] Robert Barber, Jr., who had married Miriam Scofield; Allen Miner and his wife, Sally Flint, daughter of Joseph Flint, and three children; David Clark, son of Captain Caleb, married to Sarah Basford; Prescott Clark, his brother, married to Mary Basford. Two other Basford girls had married into the Scofield family; they were the daughters of Joseph Basford, a Revolutionary soldier, who had settled in Orange. He was not long a resident of Orange. Like many other settlers in that town, he left to get rid of the exactions of Nathan Waldo, and settled at East Lebanon, where he was employed by Elisha Paine in his mill at the outlet of Mascoma Lake. William Gates, son of Reynold, a young man about eighteen years old, joined the colonists, and after the death of David Clark in 1810, married the widow. Prescott Clark had eight children.