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show that Charles Miner and his wife, Rachel Ames, came to the town of Lempster, N. H., October 1, 1784, the same year.1

1 The exceptional extent in which the Miner pedigree can be traced, occasioned the following paragraph, which appeared in the "Boston Journal":

"Not many moderns can boast that they have seen seven generations of their family. This unusual privilege Rev. A. A. Miner is said to have, and all except the representative of the last generation, a six months old babe, in the same house. This house is that in which his eldest sister, Mrs. William B. Parker now resides, and in which his parents, grandparents, and great-grand-parents also resided. In Dr. Miner's childhood eight grand-parents and great-grand-parents lived in Lempster, five in one house and three in another. Dr. Miner is of the fourth generation in that line of seven, and the eighth of Thomas Miner, the common ancestor of the Miners in this country, who came to Boston with the elder Winthrop in 1630."

CHAPTER II.

THE MINER HOMESTEAD.

THE saying, attributed to Daniel Webster, “New Hampshire is a good State to emigrate from," may be taken in two senses. It may convey the complimentary intimation that whoever leaves it for other fields of endeavor or ambition is quite sure to take with him somewhat of the strength of its hills, and possibly a nerve toned and muscle strengthened by the hard toil enforced by its chilly atmosphere and not very thrifty soil; or it may be understood as a notice that New Hampshire is a region from which it is wisdom to take an early departure. It is unmistakably the fact that its proportion of strong men and women is exceptionally large; it is also a noticeable fact that the majority of its gifted sons and daughters seek fields of enterprise in other commonwealths. The circumstance that Alonzo A. Miner had his birth in a small farming town in the Granite State was at the outset somewhat of a presumption in his favor, and the fact that he rose to eminence in another State is in accord with many precedents. Lippincott's Gazeteer, in its edition of 1882, disposes of the place in these four lines: "Lempster, a post-village of Sullivan Co., N. H., in Lempster township, about 36 miles from Concord. It is 9 miles south

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of Newport. It has a church and a high school. Population of the township, 678." The Rev. Mr. Parker gives the following interesting sketch of what he rightly calls "A. A. Miner's native town"

"Up among the granite hills of New Hampshire, on the dry land of the watershed between the Connecticut and Merrimac Rivers, lies the town of Lempster, twenty miles north of Keene, and twelve miles south-east of Claremont. The surface is uneven, diversified with hills and mountains, and watered by many sparkling streams and silver lakes. The snow leaves late, and the frosts come early, so that the farmer has to make a continual fight against the opposing forces of nature in order to wring a livelihood from the unwilling earth.

"At the east village is a small sheet of water half a mile long and a fourth wide, seemingly surrounded by hills; but from it a stream runs to the north, and one to the south. Both find their way to the Connecticut. On the west side of this little lake on a sandy hill is the old burying ground where Dr. Miner's father, and mother, sister, grandfather, and grandmother, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother Miner, are buried, and whose graves overlook the lake.

"Here, too, is the last resting-place of the Perleys, Mrs. Miner's father and mother, and others of her family. The little village of East Lempster was not always so quiet as now. In the days when the old six-horse stage coach rattled through the town it was a place of no little thrift and activity. But since the railroads have left it ten miles from the nearest of these great thoroughfares of commerce and travel the town has decreased in numbers, and business.

"In this village is the Universalist Chapel, built more than fifty years ago by William B. Parker, who married Dr. Miner's oldest sister. Five hundred dollars was the price paid Mr. Parker for the work. It is a very unpretentious

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