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��NEW LONDON CENTENNIAL ADDRESS.
��James B. Colgate, of New York, a daughter of the late ex-Gov. Colby, of New London, and set to music com- posed by Mrs. Nahum T. Greenwood. Gen. McCutchins, president of the day, then made a few remarks, wel- coming the visitors to the town and its hospitalities, and closed by introducing Hon. J. Everett Sargent, of Concord, ex-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a member of one of the largest of the old families of New London, as speaker of the day, who occupied about two hours in the delivery of his address, stopping twice to allow musi- cal exercises, one being the rendering of a song written by Mrs. Geo. Rogers, of Charlestown, Mass. Music by the Franklin Band followed the address, and then came the poem, a fine pro- duction, by Mrs. Dr. R. A. Blood, of Charlestown, Mass., a daughter of Gen. McCutchins. The exercises in the church closed at twenty minutes past one, with the anthem " Strike the Cym- bals." Dinner was served in a large tent, with tables set for five hundred people, where in the course of two hours about two thousand were fed, while the militia company, Grand Army post and band dined at Town Hall, where ample preparations were made. At half past three the church was again filled, and toasts, responses, &c, were in order, N. T. Greenwood, Esq., offi- ciating as toast-master. Among the toasts offered were the following :
"The Bar" — responded to by Judge Sargent and by a letter from Hon. Walter P. Flanders, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "Our Ministers" — responses by Rev.
D. P. Morgan, of Beverly, Mass., and letter from Rev. Francis A. Gates, of Iowa. The Press, — response by James
E. G. Shepard, Esq., of Attica, N. Y., formerly of the Nashville (Tenn.) Un- ion. Our Home Interests — response by Gen. Luther McCutchins. Colby Academy and the Baptist Church — response by present pastor, Rev S. C. Fletcher. Interesting short speeches were made by several present and former residents of the town. These closed the public exercises of the day, which were naturally followed, by social
��reunions, the renewal of old acquain- tanceships, &c. The arrangements were excellent and admirably carried out, and the occasion an enjovable one throughout. A display of fireworks in the evening closed the festivities.
ADDRESS OF JUDGE SARGENT.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :
We have met today to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary or birthday of the good old town of New London, as a municipal corporation. One hundred years ago today, June 25, 1779, the Great and General Court of the state of New Hampshire passed an act incorporating the town of New London out of a tract of land that had previously been known as "Alexandria Addition." The lines of the town- ship were described in the act of incor- poration, but we shall find that the town as at first incorporated contained much territory that does not now . belong to it, and, also, that it did not contain considerable territory which now constitutes a part of it.
But although the town was not incor- porated until 1779, it had been inhab- ited several years previous to that, and in giving a historical sketch of the town, it will be not only interesting but proper and necessary to go back as far as we can trace any step of the white man ; and it would be interesting also, had we the means of doing so, to go even back of that, and to describe what savage tribes, what sons of the forest, what race of the red men for- merly frequented these hills and moun- tains and tracked their devious ways through the dense forests that then covered these hills and valleys ; who hunted , their game in these regions while the woods were yet unbroken ; and sailed upon our grassy lakes and ponds in their bark canoes, when as yet their waters had never mirrored forth the forms or the features of any of the race of pale faces, the descend- ants of the English. But all the facts in relation to these times have perished from human memorv, and all the tra- ditions in regard to former races of men who may have once in the ages of
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