The Press., 1905-11-15
tContinued from last weekly

tConttnued from last weekly
 EARLY HISTORY OF THE STAFFORD MIN
 RRAL SPRING, BY REV. 0. HAMMOND OF
 MoNsoN.
 MT. Adams is authority for the fol lowing facts of local history, that ( Col. Abijah Willard, Sam Ward and one other, bought of William Browne of Salem seven thousand acres of land in this town; and they are about erecting iron mills, furnaces, etc , and there is talk of making this a shire town, etc. Unimproved land is to be bought in this town in great plenty, for six shillings an acre, :"
 Col. Abijah Willard, who is thus referred to, lived at Lancaster, Mass , and was 8 distant relative of the staf- ford Willards, Col. William Browne of Salem was a noted land specHlator of the last century. He and his fath- CT, Hon. Samuel Browne, owped large tracts in Stafford and ip Union. Both their names are found in the minutes of the first meeting of the original proprietors of the town ot Union. Both Col. Willard and Will liam Browne were loyslists in the revolution, and the immense landed estates of Browne were eonfiscated. He was afterwards governor of Ber- muda. Previous to the revolution he was a man of the highest charac- ter. The project of iron mills was consummated eight years after MF. Adams visit by John Phelps < Co.,, who built the blast furnace in l779. The New FHrnace was built in 4796 by Nathaniel Hyde & Go. Holland county was constituted in 1786, but Stafford never became shire town. MT. Adams seems to have been an invalid of the active sort, from his report Wednesday, June 9th. He first rode to the spring, drank and plunged in. Dipped but onee.'' On his return he foHnd in Greep's closet 8 book case. "a pretty collection of books, such as Paradise Lost, Douglas History, Life of Peter, the Great, etc. He selected treatise on Log ic, and gives an interesting analysis of his light reading that June morn ing. He says II hope l shall not for get to purchase this 'treatise on Log ic, and make my sons Zone of them, John Quincy Adams, was then four years old transcribe it entirely, with their own hands, in fair characters as soon as they can write, in order to imprint it on their memories. Nor would 1t hurt my daughter to do the same. have great opinion of the exercise of transcribing ill youth."
 Having dispatched his treatise on Logic, he spent part of the forenoon lin sapntering in the pasture to see his horse,'' and oyer the fields of the leig hborheed, scanning, with a prac- tieal farmers eye, the quality of the soil, the condition of the farms, and the habits of the people. At eleven o'clock he greeted the arrival at his lodgings of Dr. MeKinstry and other friends from Taunton, Mass. "'It is not you, is it?' said the doctor. I joy and rejoice at his arrival. l can now examine him about this mineral medicinal water. Persons in your way,' said the doctor are subject to a certain weak muscle and lax fibre which occasion glooms to plague you, but the spring will brace you.'"
 In the afternoon he rode away east, a rugged road, to take view of the lands about town. Then he went to the spring with Dr. M.; after which they rode away on the western road towards Somers. ''to see improve ments, that saw yesterday from the mountain by the spring." He speaks of "high mountain, which they call Chestnut hill," on the Somers road. "Thirty people have been to the springs to-day,-the halt, the lame, the vapory, the hypochondriac, the scrofulous, etc., all resort here."
 "Thursday, June 9th. Spent this day in rambling on horse back and on foot with Dr. M., east and west, north and south. Went to the spring twice, and drank freely of it's wa ters. .''
 Rode this day beyond the meet ing house and found my old acquainJ- ance, the parson, John Willard, at his own door. He lives in a little mean looking hut. How many of my at college, worthy men, live in poor and low circum- stances ''
 MT. Adams did not intend to dis parage his old friend, the worthy parson, of Stafford, by his descrip- tion of the parsonage.
 Long afterwards, when he was years of age, he alluded to his Braintree home, at the time of the revolution, as a "little hut"