AUBURN, NEW HAMPSHIRE 1719-1969.
By Carl Cheswell Forsaith '13. Manchester:Lew A. Cummings Co. 1970. 375 pp.With illustrations, maps, and genealogicaltables. $6.95.
This is an unusual town history, because the existence of Auburn as a town came late. Incorporated in 1845, it had been a part of the fine old town of Chester 125 years before it had an identity of its own, and thus nearly half of this volume deals with events and persons before there was an Auburn. It is also unusual because the treatment Dr. Forsaith has chosen to follow is topical, not chronological. This adds to the confusion of the late start by never quite keeping clear the time of an event; moreover, the topical treatment does not seem to be historical at all. Too often generalizations lead the reader astray. He wonders why the book was not entitled The Way of Life in Rural NewEngland in the 19th Century, with ChangingDevelopments in the 20th.
Fascinated by statistics, the author overdoes them, especially in Chapters VI through VIII. The reader bogs down in them, for who cares what was the average annual salary from 1890 to 1969 of the town dog-catcher? Forsaith suggests that a bored reader can turn to a new page; undoubtedly, most readers will. How much more useful a summarized fact would be in place of a long mathematical table of relatively unimportant figures!
Much careful research has been made into the ways of life in pioneer and post-pioneer days, and the accounts of how men and women labored and sacrificed to make a meager living for themselves and their families under what seem to be overwhelming odds are interesting and informative. Detailed accounts of farm life, combined with supplementary occupations, of travel and trade, stores and taverns, are clear, accurate, and sometimes excellent. The expositions of the construction and operation of the up-and-down saw, the grist mill, and the old-time hand loom are the best I have seen anywhere.
But disappointment comes to the reader in that this account does not seem to be a history of a definite, clearcut, individual town known as Auburn. Instead it is the town of X in the county of Y, for it might be any agricultural New Hampshire town. This is because, unlike the common run of New England town histories, in this one the individual inhabitants are largely absent. There are lists of names and an occasional identifying fact, but on the whole the reader reaches the end of the book without having made the intimate acquaintance of any distinctly Auburn residents. After all, it is people who make history; remove them and all that is left are isolated facts and objects set forth in impersonal description.
This is a pleasantly published work, with good paper, clear and attractive print, many interesting small pictures, helpful maps and diagrams, but unfortunately with a distressing number of typographical errors.
An authority on the histories of Henniker,Hanover, and Dartmouth College, ProfessorChilds edited Hanover, a Bicentennial Book 1761-1961 composed of 22 chapters ofwhich he wrote two, "Personages andEccentrics" and "Town and Gown."
