A review of the lives of these men, who made for the town its honorable history, brings prominently to one’s mind the frequency of instances in which each gained by his own exertions his influence and reputation.  It is one of the best criterions of excellent social and political institutions.  Lemuel Pomeroy, who in 1799 brought his anvil to Pittsfield; George N. Briggs, who served as an apprentice four years, working for eight dollars a year; Thomas F. Plunkett, who for five years travelled from town to town in Eastern New York, carrying on a trade with householders and country dealers; John Todd, who worked his way through college against poverty and ill-health; these are names that deserve to be handed down to following generations, to the end that their influence may still remain as an incitement to honest and unwearied efforts by successors ready to emulate, though not to imitate, the examples set before them.

* * * * *

Robert Rogers, the Ranger.

By Joseph B. Walker.

No man has been universally great.  Individuals who have made themselves prominent among their fellows have done so by achievements in special directions only, and confined to limited portions of their lives.  Particularly true is this remark when applied to Major Robert Rogers, the Ranger, who, in our last French war, greatly distinguished himself as a partisan commander, and gained as wide fame as did any other soldier of equal rank and opportunity.

I do not introduce him here as a saint, for, as is well known, no quality of sanctity ever entered his composition; but rather, as the resolute commander of resolute men, in desperate encounters with a desperate foe; as a man eminently fitted for the rough work given him to do.  And just here and now I am reminded of a remark made in his old age by the late Moody Kent, for a long period an able member of the New Hampshire bar, and there the associate of Governor Plummer, George Sullivan, and Judge Jeremiah Smith, as well as of Jeremiah Mason, and the two Websters, Ezekiel and Daniel, all of whom he survived.  Said Mr. Kent, one day, evidently looking forward to the termination of his career, “Could Zeke Webster have been living at my decease he would have spoken as well of me, yes, as well of me as he could.”  If one can summon to his mind and heart the kindly charity attributed to Mr. Webster, he may, should he care for it, find a comfortable hour in the society of this famous Ranger.  He was born of Scotch-Irish parents, in the good old Scotch-Irish town of Londonderry, New Hampshire, in the year 1727.[A] At the time of his birth, this was a frontier town, and its log houses were the last civilized abodes which the traveller passed as he went up the Merrimack valley on his way to Canada.  It was the seed-town from which were afterwards planted the ten or a dozen other Scotch-Irish townships of New Hampshire.[B] It was the first to introduce and scatter abroad Presbyterian principles and Irish potatoes over considerable sections of this Province.