They have a Wallace G.A.R. Post in Amesbury, not in commemoration of the Wallace of old Scottish fame, but of a man no less patriotic and brave who lived among themselves, an Englishman, a shoemaker. He was lame, but so anxious during the Rebellion to have his share in the struggle for the Union that he tried to get a place on board a gunboat, saying that he could "sit and shoot." As this was impossible, the town sent him to Boston as its representative, and he was in the Legislature when the members voted themselves an increase of pay. Mr. Wallace believed the thing illegal. He took the money in trust. One day after his return to Amesbury he limped up to his physician (the same one who had brought about the better construction of the new corporation houses) and handed him fifty dollars of this over pay, to be used at his discretion among the poor, explaining as he did so where the money came from, that he felt that it belonged to Amesbury, and that he returned a part through this channel.
Half way between the Mills and the Ferry stands an old well that a native of Amesbury dug by the roadside for the benefit of travellers because he had once been a captive in Arabian deserts, and had known the torments of thirst. Here was a man to whom the uses of adversity had been sweet, for they had taught him humanity. Mrs. Spofford has written an appropriate poem upon this incident.
The elms in Amesbury are very beautiful, and they are found everywhere; but on the ferry road there are magnificent ones not far from the river. They are growing on each side of the road, arching it over with their graceful boughs.
The Ferry proper near which was born Josiah Bartlett, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, is at the foot of the street that runs from the Mills down to the river. In old times there was a veritable ferry here a few rods above where the Powow empties into the Merrimack. This ferry is mentioned in the records, two years after the town had been set upon its feet. In a book written about Amesbury by Mr. Joseph Merrill, a native of the town, it is stated that the town petitioned the general Court for leave to keep a Ferry over the river at this place. This is the record from the same source:—
"The County Court held at Hampton, ye 13th of ye 8th month 1668, Mr. Edward Goodwin being presented by ye Selectmen of ye town of Amesbury to Court to keep ye Ferry over Merrimac river about ye mouth of ye Powow river where ye said Goodwin now dwelleth, the Court do allow and approve of ye sd person for one year next following and until ye Court shall take further orders therein, and ye prices to be as followeth so, for every single passenger two pence, for a horse and man six pence, and for all great cattle four pence, for sheep and other small cattle under two years old two pence per head."
In 1791 there came up a question of a bridge being built across the Merrimac. A town meeting was called to oppose the measure, and in this it was argued that a bridge would throw into disuse the ferry with which much pains had been taken. Precious old fogies! In those days, too, they lived, for they were as old as the centuries. Nothing of the mushroom about them. There is a tradition that once in Revolutionary days, Washington was carried across this ferry. But it is impossible to say what the tradition is founded upon, and how much it is worth.
As to the river, there are rivers and rivers, as the saying is; at some we marvel, some we fear and to some we make pilgrimages as to the Mecca of the faithful. But the Merrimac is a river to be loved, and to be loved the better the more familiar it is. What its poet, Whittier, says about it must be literally true:
"Our river by its valley born