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An early settler visits the Keene of today

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is based loosely on the real life of Abner Sanger, 1739-1822, who lived in Keene for most of his 83 years.

His greatest contribution to American history, particularly this region, is  his diary. Sanger recorded the weather, his comings and goings, and his strong opinions about life in Keene and nearby Dublin.

That 446-page journal, “Very Poor and of a Lo Make,”  was transcribed and edited by Lois Stabler and published by the Historical Society of Cheshire County. The journal gives insight into the real world of a working man.  It was truly a simple life.  Sanger is buried in the Washington Street cemetery. He died just as he came into the world and lived here in Keene: a common man.

We tried to imagine Sanger’s reactions if he dropped into Keene today.  This article examines how Keene’s environment has changed in the two centuries since Sanger helped move oxen up Main Street as a laborer for hire.

CAROLYN MARTIN
Sentinel staff

Sensory overload.

The noise. The view. The smells. The people. All those people.

Abner Sanger walked to the common in Keene yesterday, slightly bent over,  holding on to his wooden stick cane, amazed at what he had seen on his walk. And what he didn’t see.

“Where is the mountain?” Sanger asked. In his time, Mount Monadnock watched over  parts of the town from a distance, a secure landmark of this region. There weren’t tall buildings to hamper the view, because there weren’t many buildings at all.

Two hundred years ago, Main Street was a quieter place. Down at the lower end, about 40 houses fronted the street, sitting on small farms that extended behind them. Several businesses were clustered at the upper end, near the common.

The street was framed with picket fences, but looking neat was an afterthought. The fences kept the sheep and cattle out of the yard and  garden.

Keene was a wide-open landscape because trees and rocks had been removed. “That was hard, hard work, and one of the reasons I’m bent over today,”  Sanger said.

“We had to clear out this swampy place to make it worth something, to make a living,” Sanger said. “Now look at what you’ve done. Where are  the farms? How can you eat?”

As he walked down the street, and caught a glimpse of Mount Monadnock, he was surprised once again. During his day, dry land to farm was at a premium, and so the settlers worked up the mountain, clearing its trees.

To Sanger and his contemporaries, trees were sort of mysterious menaces to  farming.

“Europeans were actually afraid of the forests, and wanted to make this area  look like home, with fields and fences,” Tom Wessels, environmental  professor at Antioch New England Graduate School explained.

Back at the common, Sanger strolled around the small park, flinching when  noisy motorcycles rounded the rotary. He was impressed with the concrete  sidewalks — a big improvement over the first sidewalk in Keene made of wooden  planks back in 1803.

Two hundred years ago, the Congregational Church sat right in the common,  surrounded by dirt. The land was a gathering spot for livestock being moved  through town.

Now, the common is designed for two-legged animals, rather than four, with a  lawn, gazebo and fountain. “How on earth does that tiny stream flow up and  over those rocks?” Sanger asked.

When told the common was a park, and the fountain was there for pleasure,  Sanger shook his balding gray head and frowned. During his lifetime, there  were no such frivolous adornments in town.

Ask Sanger about the environmental movement in his day and you get a blank  stare. Laws designed to protect the environment and its inhabitants, including people, didn’t come for 170 years after Sanger’s time.

“Protect the land? For what?” Sanger demanded. "There's plenty of it to go  around, and there’s no harm in using it for your own good.” That was the conventional wisdom in his day. There had always been plenty, and it was assumed there would always be plenty  of clean water, trees, game, birds and land to go around.

The country was new — fewer than 2,000 people lived in Keene.

“What’s that smell?” Sanger asked. Not surprisingly, Sanger’s nose was super-sensitive to the strange chemical compounds in our everyday air, starting with by vehicle exhaust.

In the late 1700s, the prevailing smell was of wood smoke, and sometimes it could be heavy. Smoke came from home fireplaces in houses, and from fires  clearing fields of brush, or burning timber to clear trees to allow more  farming.

On some cold, still winter days, the air pollution was very strong, with the  stagnant, smoky air hanging heavy in the Keene valley. The wood smoke made it generally cloudier in Keene in Sanger’s day than it is now.

In the late 1700s, the Ashuelot River and other streams were places both to dump wastes and to draw drinking water, and they would eventually power mills.

Water pollution began during Sanger’s later years, as Keene grew and  people put waste from their homes or businesses directly into the streams. Things got worse when fabric mills moved into Keene and dumped dyes into the water during the 1800s.

The quality of drinking water for each person depended upon the site of  the source. Sanger dug a well to tap into ground water, and others drank right out of the closest stream to the house.

“This tastes terrible!” Sanger said, after taking a sip of Keene’s treated tap water. “How can you quench your thirst with this foul liquid?” Sanger tried, but couldn’t describe the taste — not surprising, since the chemicals used to disinfect public drinking water didn’t exist in his lifetime.

Today’s drinking water is regularly monitored and treated against a long list of contaminants. Sanger’s water was naturally filtered as it moved through the soils and flowed in the streams. However, it wasn’t protected or treated against bacteria from dead animals, or human and animal wastes.

Keene’s early settlers didn’t restrain themselves from using the land or other natural resources. Parks? Most of the region was wilderness.

The idea of preserving parkland came later, in 1849, when the local Forest Tree Society was founded. Efforts to put trees down Keene’s Main Street in 1844 were fought by shopkeepers, who said consumers wouldn’t be able to see their stores and signs. Aesthetics came second to commerce.

Undaunted, in 1851, the Forest Tree Society marked off a 50-foot section of  the common, planted a few trees, and built a fence around them for protection. Keene’s first park was born.

What does Sanger think of Ashuelot River Park on West Street? “Not  much,” he sharply replied.  “What good is it? You can’t get to the river,  except to stare at it. Where are the saw and grist mills?”

Rather than a power source or waste disposal site, today the river is regarded as a beautiful asset to be enjoyed and protected. Sanger smiled, and shook his head. “You people sure seem to have a lot of time on your hands.”

An easier pace of life that developed long after Sanger’s time helped spawn parks and preservation for recreation in the late 1800s. “People had spare time and extra money, so they could make use of parks,” said Alan Rumrill, executive director of the Historical Society of Cheshire County.

Major land preservation came to Keene in the late 1880s, when Wheelock Park was created from a gift of land and timber that was set aside for the public.

One hundred years later, the Hancock-based Harris Center for Conservation Education is a major steward of land preservation, protecting 3,000 acres from development, and creating a supersanctuary of 8,000 acres of land in southwestern New  Hampshire.

And what of the wildlife?

The European invasion of America came in many forms: people, plants, and  values.

The settlers’ mission was to clear the land for farming. As the landscape  changed from forest to fields, it became more conducive to European pasture  plants.

The plants traveled across the ocean in soils used as ballast for ships. Once  in port in Boston or Portsmouth, the soil was dumped. The plant’s wind-blown  seeds dispersed into pastures and made their way across the region.

Sanger lived during a farming economy, which would continue for many decades.  In 1800, about half the land was used in agriculture. The settlers continued clearing the forests until 1850.

As the forests disappeared, so did the wildlife. "We had many fine hunters  with good aim,” Sanger explained. “When the animals got harder to find, we figured it was because we’d shot so many.”

People were causing the decline in game, but not with guns — with plows and  axes. As the landscape changed, habitats were destroyed, and species  disappeared.

“The 1800s was a bad century of decline for wildlife in the area,” Meade Cadot of the Harris Center said. “The wildlife would return in the 1900s.”

The settlers worked hard to tame the country for farming and towns. Organized hunts cleared out bears and wolves. Predators lost their turf.  Wolves were especially troublesome because they attacked sheep. In 1782, a wolf pelt brought a bounty of 40 shillings.

Salmon and shad used to run up the Connecticut River and into the Ashuelot  River. They were popular catches when Sanger wet his hook as a boy.

But as Keene grew, so did the demand for goods, which increased the number of mills. Dams were built to protect and propel mills, and they blocked the fish from coming upstream.

In 1791, the town formed a committee to inspect mill dams for state-mandated  sluices that let the fish come into the Ashuelot.

Walking through the Washington Street cemetery yesterday, down by Beaver  Brook, Sanger exclaimed,  “It’s a beaver!” He was somewhat alarmed. By his adulthood in the  late 1700s, there were no beavers left in the Monadnock Region.

There have been thousands of changes in Keene since Abner Sanger made his way through life as a laborer and farmer.

With progress, there are growing pains.  The city and her people have moved beyond simply surviving, to thriving.  Today, Keene is poised to redefine progress by considering both the economic and environmental well-being of the residents here. People talk of progress, but they don’t want to lose the quality of local life.

After six hours of touring his hometown yesterday, Sanger had seen enough. He  gathered his cane and turned to leave.

Were there words of wisdom offered from a historical perspective?

Sanger paused, leaning on the old worn stick. “What would you like to find, if you came back here in 50 or 100 years?”

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