Orace Moulton, North Hampton's Last Ox-man
Orace Moulton, North Hampton’s Last Ox-man
In 1929 Reverend Edgar Warren interviewed North Hampton native Orace Jackson Moulton, and recapped the conversation in an article in the Exeter News-letter. Ruth Griffin gave a copy of that article to former Historical Society curator Priscilla Leavitt. Priscilla adapted it for a 2003 Old Home Day essay. Between the two sources and a bit of research, here’s Orace’s story.
But first, what exactly are oxen? Steers or cows but, in most cases, steers that have been castrated. They were used extensively as work animals in New England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in farming, logging, and other heavy-moving tasks. Two oxen were yoked together, and depending upon the job, several pairs of yoked oxen might be employed.
Orace Jackson Moulton was born in 1861 and named after two uncles, Andrew Jackson Fogg and Orace Fogg “who was killed at the battle of Bull Run a few months before I was born.” The two uncles are buried in the graveyard behind North Hampton School. Orace Fogg’s name shows up among the Civil War volunteers inscribed on the war monument in front of the Clerk/Collector’s office (stone building).
Why would parents name a child after Andrew Jackson you might ask. I leave it to the reader to research the 1824 and 1828 presidential elections, and New England politics in that era.
And how did Uncle Orace get the name Orace? “Grandsir [grandfather] Fogg used to go a-fishing and on one of his trips to Labrador met a sailor on another vessel whose first name was Orace, and struck up a friendship with him. The name impressed grandsir so much he bestowed it upon a son, and in time it was handed down to me. I guess I am the only man in the world who bears the name.”
Orace Moulton early on enjoyed being an “ox man”. At the age of four, his father made him a goad, a stick that was used to train and command oxen. The tot set up two chairs and practiced “geeing” (hard “g”) and ‘”hawing”, oxen commands for turning left or right. At age six he drove a yoke of oxen for his uncle, Joseph Moulton. Two of his uncle’s friends came along and remarked “You’ve got a pretty small boy to drive for you.” The uncle retorted, “I would rather have that boy drive oxen for me than any man in the State of New Hampshire.”
Orace claimed that “Oxen were very common when I was a boy in the late 1860s. There wasn’t a farm in North Hampton that didn’t carry one or two yoke. Every one planned to sell a pair in the Spring for beef. Now, in 1929, I am the only man in North Hampton that keeps oxen.”
“The trouble nowadays is that every farmer wants an auto. And autos and farming don’t go together. Autos, tractors and high priced hired men skim the cream off the profits. As Fred Cotton says, ‘Any man that works can buy an auto, but mighty few can afford to run one.’ ”
“I’ll tell you the advantages of oxen over horses. They are more profitable in every way on a farm. Any day of the year, you can sell an ox and get what he is worth. If you have a horse, you have to hunt around for a buyer and take what you can get for him.
“If a horse breaks a leg you have to shoot him, bury him, and he is a total loss. But if any ox meets with an accident like that you can kill him and dress him at once and beef [meat] is not injured in any way.”
About his farm. It was on Atlantic Avenue a half mile from the railroad depot. Orace had 150 acres with forty acres in grass, and the remainder in pasture and woodlands. The house remains and is located at the corner of Atlantic and Spruce Meadow. Acreage, as you might guess, is markedly reduced.
Living reasonably close to Town Hall, one would think Orace and his oxen may have been called upon to help move Town Hall back in 1885. We know Joseph Dearborn was paid $200 to move the 1844 building from across Atlantic Avenue in the vicinity of the Belle Shaw (Pathways) house to its current location. Did Joseph need to get help from Orace and others? Just how many yoke of oxen might it have taken? How long did it take? Was there a celebration afterwards?
We know from Orace and other sources about the 1883 moving of the “old” Hampton Academy from the Academy Green in Hampton (originally Meetinghouse Green) to land donated by Christopher Toppan on Academy Avenue. It took eighty yoke of oxen and cables provided by the Portsmouth Naval Yard to move the building almost half a mile, done within seventeen minutes.
Orace allowed as how he believed “people were happier and better off in the old times…Everyone was a neighbor to everybody else….It was more social years ago. Why in winter hardly an evening passed without somebody dropping in. Father would take the lantern and go down cellar and draw a pitcher of cider and bring up a basket of apples and all hands would sit before the open fire and eat apples and sip cider all the evening.”
He relayed the story about when his grandfather Jonathan Moulton had his house built on the lane off Mill Road in 1807. “His neighbors turned out and framed the house for him. When the frame was raised, a man stood on the ridgepole, with a bottle of rum in one hand and proposed the following toast.
“Here is a frame built good and strong;
An able man to carry it on;
Jonathan’s economy and Olive’s delight;
Framed last week and raised before Saturday night.”
“I feel I came on the scene a little too late! I don’t seem to belong to this rushing age. If I could have a choice of the best 70 years to live, I would have chosen the 70 years before I came. In other words, I would have died the day I was born.”
Born during the Civil War, Orace Moulton lived until 1943, dying while another major war raged on.