Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[40] spelled C-i-l-l-e-y; and Seabrook as if spelled S-a-y-b-r-o-o-k. These pronunciations show their English tone. They found no imitation in Massachusetts save in Marblehead, a purely English settlement, where Crowninshield was pronounced as if spelled G-r-u-n-s-e-l, and Florence as if spelled F-l-u-r-r-y.

The English blood is also seen from the fact that in the earlier times, in the courts of New Hampshire, more form and ceremony was observed, and more outward respect was paid to the judges. This was continued down to a later day than in any other colony.

The towns of New Hampshire, being on the frontier and in the direct line between Massachusetts and Canada, were the scene of many a conflict in the French and Indian wars that were nearly continuous for the first one hundred and twenty years after the settlement. This educated almost every one to be a trained fighter, and a man rarely ever left his home, whether for the field or for church, without taking his musket, powder-horn, and bullet-pouch. From this necessity arose the change of construction in the interior of meeting-houses. The pews of the English church at home were square, while in New Hampshire the earlier pews were slips, at the head of which sat the master with his gun always ready to answer the call of the war-whoop of the savage. So that every one who can trace his lineage back to the early settlers of New Hampshire is born of fighting stock.

I have endeavored to sketch that part of the early history of my native State which pertains to the colonists who settled it and the causes contributing to the character of its people, in order that I might demonstrate the proposition with which I began, that the stock from which one comes is very material. For if the proposition be not true, then, in a republican government, the question “of whom begotten or by whom begot?” is, and ought to be, of no consequence to any individual, or to his peers.

My paternal grandfather was born in Woodbury, Connecticut, of Irish descent, and of a most strictly Irish Presbyterian family, as his own name Zephaniah, and his uncles', Levi and Malachi, most plainly show. The branches of the family were numerous, and the names of those who were of the proper generation to take part in the War of the Revolution, will be found in the local history of that