Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-11-23

Descendants Of old-Time Raiders Ia.
jority Of Population in Many Towns.

jox1ty Of Population in Many Towns.
From the Boston Transcript
Mr.. Charles Francis Adams put Park
mans "Montcalm and Wolfe. In his grip
and went to see Quebec. He has since told
us that his visit convinced him that Park
man was not strategist or tactician,
and his experience on that occasion gave
cumulative forcs to his plea for military
history. Doubtless Mr.. Adams IL right In
bis criticism. but there was a field of milf
tary history In which Parkman was so
graphic that you feel he must have been at
home. The frontier fights, In which there
were no tactics to speak of, and the STRAIT
egg was that of the Indian or the back
woodsmen. he narrates so wildly that you
cin almost smell the powder or put your
hands on your crown to feel II your scalp
Is still there. In his "Frontenac and New
France he has chapter on the border
conflicts. the French-Indian raids headed
by Hertel de Rouvel and other French par
tisans against York. Wells and OYSTER
River, now Durham. Always an interest
ing chapter, its caption New France and
New England" 1t Is peculiarly so il YOU
sit down in Berwick Me-, to read II. In
the FIRST place, woosters river at which
Hertel fought a short, fierce fight to get
away from his pursuers. is not more than
mile and a half from the station at Som
ellsworth, which is separated from Berwick
only by bridge traversed In three min
utes. Durham is but a few minutes travel
by steam from Somersworth. Wells Is but
fifteen miles distant. York you can reach
by trolley. with two changes between Som
ellsworth and the beach. Patriotic socie--
ties are marking the sites of the ancient
garrison, and you cannot miss the spot
where behind palisades stout Capt. Con-
vers. who commanded at Wells. stood off
with thirty miltiamen swarms of Indians
and Canadians. But to begin at the begin
ming, you will find Wooster's river today
looking much the. same as 1t did when
Hertel fought there, an ambitious brook
flowing In the shadow Of thick broodng
woods. There is little cove near the
county bridge where the tug of the fighting
came and near 1t is the grave Of one OF the
provincial captains who was slain there
There We're Lords and Wooosters present
Mt that fierce tussle for control of the old
bridge. and there are Lords and Woosters
living today not far from the scene of ac-s
ton who will point out to you Just where
their ancestors more than two hundred
years ago fought, bled and died.
The friend to whom the Listener is In
debted for these notes thought as he re-
read Parkman's chapter in sight of Woos-
ter's river, that Parkman, If alive and pres
ent, might be inclined to revise his esti-
mate OF events in view of the revolution
which Industrial causes have worked In the
region, for today 1t is racially more New
France than New England. Somersworth
Great Falls is a busy little city, of whose
population fully neutrality-suspicious. three
fourths-are French A business man eSti-
mates that of the 5000 persons in the place
certainly 5000 French, possibly 5000.
They have their French quarter of the city.
There are French stores, where the French
trade, and the Yankee tradeSmen keenly
feel the effect of this commercial clannish-
ness. In the SOmersworth station the off,
ctal warnings against eXpectoration are in
two languages. Within seventy-five miles
of Boston you read in black type that 1t is
"defundu de cracher," and this on the au-
thority of the ''conseil general" which
means the state board of health. Other Of
fetal placards are in the two languages.
simply because the city is biracial and bids
fair so to remain. The French first came
to Somersworth more than forty years ago
to succeed the Americans in the mills, but
they and their descendants and the recruits
that have flowed in tacitly refuse to be as
simulated by Anglo-Saxondom. They are
as French as ever in their ways. light
hearted. jovial but not drunken. sociable,
talkative, vehement In manner and explo-
sive in talk. OF course they have to pick
up some English, but even the little boys
who are the grandsons of 1.-The original
French" prefer the Gallo tongue. When
they are playing base ball muff is more
likely TO call out sac NOM than one of
the epithets familiar on the lips of Yankee
critics of the national game.
What is true of Somersworth applies In
large measure TO Dover and Rochester. the
three cities being almost neighbors, and is
beginning 30 be applicable TO the towns
around them. the thrifty French buy up
the abandoned farms with their savings in
the mills. The descendant of some man
who followed Hertel &c Rouvel may today
be cultivating acres which he has bought
of a descendant of one of the English bor-
derers who SO stoutly confronted the Cana
dian raiders. If you would see something
of the French character In its hours of en-
joyment go to the trolley park on an even
ing when there Is music and watch the
young people who flock thither from SOM
xvr,rfh "a fr.x,
They have dressed up" the young ladies
In particular, and there is something like
a hint from Paris In the costumes of those
who cluster around the pavilion wherein is
stationed the band of the I'd Regiment,
New Hampshire National Guard.