Seeking Parmenter is a unique and lyrically written memoir. Brought vividly to life for us in this succinct memoir is a. Praise for Seeking Parmenter

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1 Praise for Seeking Parmenter Seeking Parmenter is a unique and yricay written memoir that is not focused on the author s reationships with peope, but rather a famiy s reationship with pace. What becomes so evident from Butterfied s return as an octogenarian to his chidhood farmscape is that both andscape and peope intricatey mod each other. Tom Wesses Author of Reading the Forested Landscape and Forest Forensics; Former Director of the Environmenta Bioogy Program at Antioch New Engand Graduate Schoo Brought vividy to ife for us in this succinct memoir is a subsistence farm in southern New Hampshire that was in continuous operation from 1800 to During a of that time it was in the good hands of one famiy progressing through fuy six generations. The author, who grew up on the farm during its fina agricutura years, with access to extensive famiy diaries and other records, as we as to reevant town reports, has been abe to offer us a fascinating pay-by-pay description of the evoution of farming, with a of its ups and downs, sounds and smes, and sweeping drama through the passage of those 160 years of enormous technoogica advances and socia changes. And thus beginning in 1960, with the farm sti in the same ownership for now even two further generations, the open and is being quiety recaimed by nature, a phenomenon of od-fied forest succession that the author has been continuay observing and anayzing with awe and devotion. So here we have a voume not ony of importance to the many descendants of our eary New Engand s hard-scrabbe farmers, but one that wi as we broaden and otherwise enrich anyone devoted to American history on the one hand and to New Engand s ecoogica dynamics on the other in its sow recovery when human disruptions cease. Arthur H. Westing, M.F., Ph.D. Putney, Vermont, 17 Apri 2015 O bservationa, poetic and refreshingy nonjudgmenta, Seeking Parmenter twines the human and natura history of a cassic New Engand farm into a seamess narrative tod through the

2 author s journey across the andscape and time. We shoud a be so ucky as Chares Butterfied to have such a ifeong attachment to a pace on the and. Ryan Owens Executive Director, Monadnock Conservancy Seeking Parmenter is a moving and evocative exporation of the intertwining of pace and history. Chares Butterfied grew up on a rura farm in southern New Hampshire. In this memoir of pace, he returns to his chidhood farm and shows us what it might mean to be open to the presences of the past that are inevitaby embedded in the paces where we find ourseves. And with the eye of a naturaist Butterfied sees the ways in which the many other beings who ive in paces change over time, incuding those with roots and eaves, as we as feathers and fur. Fu of fascinating observations, at times yrica, Seeking Parmenter is an inteigent and beautifu book. It is aso a wise book, inviting us on a journey of understanding our own pace in a more-than-human word. Wiiam Edegass Professor of Phiosophy and Environmenta Studies, Marboro Coege Coeditor of the journa, Environmenta Phiosophy

3 SEEKING PARMENTER a memoir of pace Chares Butterfied Pen and Ink Drawings by Chuck McLean Hobbebush Books Brookine, New Hampshire

4 Copyright 2015 by Chares Butterfied A rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the pubisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critica artices and reviews. Composed in 11.1/14.3 Monotype Bembo Book with Neue Haas Unica Pro dispay at Hobbebush Books Printed in the United States of America Pen and ink drawings and map by Chuck McLean ISBN: Library of Congress Contro Number: Hobbebush Books 17-A Od Miford Road Brookine, New Hampshire

5 Contents Map 2 Preface 3 Part I Seeking Parmenter 9 Part II Waking a Wa 25 Part III Where Parmenter Fows 63 Part IV Parmenter Without Us 117 George Parmenter s Obigation 135 The Generations 139 Notes 143 Acknowedgments 147

6 Aso by Chares Butterfied Poetry Another Light (with Larry Richardson) Fied Notes Biography In the Shadow of Cedars

7 to Nancy

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9 Scratch a name in a andscape and history bubbes up ike a spring CHET RAYMO

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11 Preface Waking the rura highway (NH Route 31) between Antrim Center and Cinton Viage, I reach the od Parmenter farm. My eye goes to the arge sign propped up in a fied grown wid: For Sae 33 Acres But when I ook across the ragged open space and into the disheveed woods beyond, I see something ese. I picture Guernseys feeding. Across a stone wa men buid a oad of hay, the hayrack drawn by a singe arge horse. A chubby woman emerges from a henhouse carrying eggs in a pai. Her daughter opens the shutters on a sab-sheathed roadside stand. Behind the stand, a ten-year-od boy moves on his knees down a ong row of beans, siding a bushe basket beside him as he picks. I can aso imagine a budozer scraping wide swaths of the second-growth fied s dark soi, heaps of sand and grave to one side. Concrete forms are stacked beside the stone wa. The od pasture is being shaped for something, but I can t te what. A house with two-car garage? A gardening center? A mini-mart? An anima sheter? There is no point in etting my imagination range at wi. Time wi te, for there is no ide and. I pass by the negected fied and meet a sim, young woman, mother of Amos Parmenter s great-great-great-great-greatgrandsons, tugging out poison ivy roots and sumac shoots to prepare paces for her perennias beside a stone wa Amos aid 3

12 chares butterfied up aong the road we over 200 years ago. She shows me some of the pieces of equipment she has unearthed in her digging part of a pecuiary broad-tined dung fork (we guess), a section of scythe bade, haf a heavy gate hinge, the hub of a wooden-spoked cart whee. She has paced the reics on top of the wa to set off her bright day iies. 2 When I was a senior at the University of New Hampshire, in 1953 and 54, the facuty introduced an eective course caed Senior Synthesis. I eected to enro in this survey of academic fieds, and for a dozen evenings (as I reca) I heard spokespeope for severa departments describe the nature of their discipines. Some of these areas I was famiiar with, majoring in bioogy, but many others engineering, phiosophy, anthropoogy, art, economics I knew itte about. To tie their ectures together, the professors traced the historica deveopment of their chosen fieds. The reiterated message that new ideas buid on od had a great dea to do with how my word view deveoped. I am not afraid of change. I expect it. In many instances I wecome it. I embrace emergence. Out of present conditions something different wi come. Something-more from nothing-but, is a principe of evoution. It means that any new modification arises from parts aready present. It is what comparative anatomy teaches us. I see that principe at work everywhere. I beieve it is a aw of nature. What emerges is not necessariy more 4

13 seeking parmenter comfortabe or more beautifu than the parent conditions, and in many quarters humans pay a crucia roe in guiding emergence (aas, often with unintended consequences), but we make ourseves grumpy and cynica as we grow increasingy aienated if we fai to recognize that something-more is emerging from nothing-but everywhere and a the time. 3 What is emerging on the od Parmenter pace, and from what is it emerging? The name Parmenter appears frequenty in the eariest records of Antrim, New Hampshire. But as I use it, and think about it, it is more than a surname, ancient as its derivation from 16th century Huguenot Parementier ( fitting or finishing as by a taior or seamstress) may be. My Antrim ancestors did not choose their name, nor coud the first to arrive foresee that within a coupe of generations the name woud disappear from town ros atogether. Yet Parmenter persists. Amos s genes are expressed today in some of Antrim s peope. The name endures in Parmenter Brook, the stream that originates in the town s eariest settement and fows around what was once the industria hub of Antrim. Too sma to power that industry, the eponymous brook was an essentia resource to farmers. And Parmenter persists in the name I give to this and aong the brook that Amos ceared of forest and that sustained generations of his descendants, whatever their names. Parmenter, to my mind, represents an eary American 5

14 chares butterfied idea that one can eave famiiar and stabe territory and strike out for the unknown and through dint of abor and with faith and a itte uck shape one s ife and environment. This is how thirty-year-od Amos Parmenter s search for a new home is tod: He had great difficuty in finding the town, then caed in common tak Enterum, a pronunciation not yet dead. He traveed severa mies northwest of Antrim, was dispeased with the and, and was on his return home [to Framingham, Massachusetts]; but, on being tod again of this township, he turned back and bought twenty-five acres on which there was then a sma house, which seems to have been buit and occupied some years by Tayor Josin. The rest of his arge farm he bought and ceared. Parmenter has yet another, persona, meaning. When I was six or seven years od, my grandmother took me for a ong wak from our farm to a cemetery created in the 1820s cose by the site of the Centra Society Meetinghouse that Amos Parmenter founded and where he served as deacon for forty years. We ate our picnic under a butternut tree near Deacon Parmenter s headstone. Afterwards we stroed among the graves of his immediate famiy, reading the encrusted tombstones, working out reationships. This adventure, I understood, was my initiation into my can. 4 Seeking Parmenter is not a famiy history per se, or a treatise on od-fied succession. Rather, it is an informa search for a famiy 6

15 seeking parmenter and the environment in which they ived and worked and had their infuence on their contemporaries and, in the ong run, me. For consecutive summers since 2008, I have camped aone on Parmenter and I farmed seven decades ago and ater inherited and passed aong. Though I moved away from the famiy farm to foow a career in education, my ong ife grew from here. I derive my ove of the and from what I experienced here as boy and young man. This memoir is my attempt to act on a tenet of my faith which writer Anne Michaes puts this way: If you can earn to ove one pace, sometimes you can aso earn to ove another. In my case, that other pace is emerging from what was. Right here. 7

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17 I Seeking Parmenter There is ony one singe urgent task: to attach onesef somepace in nature. rainer maria rike

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19 Through the underbrush and ferns to my eft and right, I see the granite ghosts ox-drawn and evered into pace to mark the right-of-way of one of the odest roads aid out in the sma town of Antrim in south-centra New Hampshire. On this overgrown trai, scarred once with deep whee ruts, I stumbe past the site of the od Parmenter cabin. Where I go, aone and oaded with camping gear, the Parmenter chidren watched seds pass by bearing ogs to Samue Gregg s sawmi and carts carrying grain to be ground. Now abeed private way on Antrim s tax map, this wide path, ceared of tree stumps in the 1790s, was a major business route through the town s center for eighty years. After the town voted to give up the road in 1873, it was incorporated into the Parmenter farm which had grown up on both sides, and for 100 years the ane continued to serve my famiy, inking cow pasture to barn, woodot to woodshed, and providing a shaded shortcut from itchy haymow to coo Gregg Lake. I am ugging my tent and seeping bag up the same wet hi my great-great-great-grandfather s oxen trod puing firewood and produce, mired, as they must have been at times, where underground springs sti fow and soak my boots. My campsite, on and Amos Parmenter ceared eary in Thomas Jefferson s presidency and which I owned (at a distance) for thirty-five years, is partway up this soggy sope. Just over the wa, south, stands a set of new buidings amid 11