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Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2000 by Alfred Mayor

The full life of a busy man

Samuel Lane is not listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the busiest man who ever lived, but I would like to propose him for this dubious honor after reading The Years of the Life of Samuel Lane, 1718-1806: A New Hampshire Man and His World.

This remarkable man feared God, read books, tanned hides, made shoes for sale, farmed, surveyed lots, wrote deeds, acted as a banker, auctioneer, retailer; and at different times was elected tithingman, pound keeper; town clerk, selectman, auditor, sealer of leather, deacon and later elder of the church in the town of Stratham, New Hampshire, where he lived. He also fashioned one of the earliest surviving solid wooden globes made in America (illustrated here). He did all of these things during the day.

At other times Lane kept a daily diary for more than sixty years, which he called his "almanack." Once a year he summarized that year's events, and in later life he wrote abstracts on specific subjects, drawing on the almanacks. When he turned twenty-one, he began to keep a daybook in which he listed everything he owed and everything owed him. In 1762 he listed the 307 books in his library, assigning a number to each of them. When he was in his late seventies he made a chart summarizing what he considered the main events in his life. It is entitled "The Years of the Life of Samuel Lane, Born at Hampton oct.6.1718. with some things Remarkable Respecting Business & Setling in the World, Births of Children & Grandchildren, Deaths &c as they happened in Each year of his Life." The chart begins with Lane's reception into "the Church at Hampton" when he was eighteen, and the births and deaths only begin with his marriage in 1741. Another, undated, list is entitled "A memorandum of a Number of Gentlemen of Characte r that were in Public offices in Church and State, in the Province and State of New Hampr. and its Vicinity; of whom I have had some knowledge in their Day; who are now gone the way of all the Earth." There follow 143 names of prominent men.

Despite these extensive writings, Lane revealed little about himself--perhaps inevitably, for if he had, he would not have had the strength to set down the minutiae that make up his record. His summary of the year 1741 is characteristic of the rather sententious tenor of his musings. He wrote: "This year hes been a verry remarkable year with me I have this year (by the help of a kind Providence) bought Land to Settle upon convenient for my buisness; this year I removed from my native Town to another: this year I built me a house to dwell in: this year I raisd my Barkhouse [storing the bark needed for tanning] This year I married a wife: & this year I have been comfortably carried through many changes & difficultys and having obtained help from God Iam yet a living (though most unworthy) Samuel Lane."

It is clear that Providence and the church were most comforting for Lane--a turn of mind that entailed a certain delicacy with regard to affairs of the heart. When he met his future wife, the daughter of a weaver in Hampton, New Hampshire, he wrote: "began Acquaintance with M-ry J-rn-s." Even earthy doings on the farm demanded the same reticence. Thus he recorded the breeding of his sow with the elliptical "S-w Pigd."

The possession of land and the creation of children to work it were Lane's unwavering goals. To achieve the first in Stratham, which had been colonized for more than a century, required infinite patience in cobbling together small lots. At the end of thirty-six years he had ninety-six acres to leave to his three sons, including hayfields in thirty-seven locations, from salt marsh to upland fields. In another of his characteristic lists, he recorded "all the Land that ever I bought (as Near as I can remember)"--a list six pages long.

Lane developed an ingenious form of old-age insurance for himself and his second wife, Rachel, by giving each of his two elder sons a farm in Stratham with the proviso that he receive part of the produce, hay and firewood. His third son, Jabez, who was lame and much younger than the other two, married Rachel's daughter Eunice in 1783, and the next year Samuel Lane deeded them yet another farm in Stratham. However, the deed was not recorded until January 1800, and then only after Jabez wrote in December 1799, "honoured father, Deacon Samuel Lane...I am now in the fortieth year of my Age [and] find my Self Surrounded by a large, and consequently expensive family....When in the name of common sense, will it be necessary for me to have property, if the present is not the time."

Lane's descendants were as prudent as he, saving his compass and its tripod, his brass protractor, his surveyor's chain, brass dividers, the wooden globe, and, of course, every scrap he wrote. In 1937 this generated the publication of a selection of his papers entitled A journal for the Years 1739-1803 by Samuel Lane of Stratham, New Hampshire, by the New Hampshire Historical Society. Years later, Priscilla Lane Moore Tapley, a descendant, turned up more papers, which she loaned, and later gave, to the society with a view to a revised and expanded look at Lane's literary legacy. Jerald Brown, then a doctoral candidate in the history department of the University of New Hampshire, chose Lane and his world for his dissertation, which he completed in 1994 under the title "'Settling the World:' Family Economy in Colonial New Hampshire through Samuel Lane's Diaries." The present book is a condensed and illustrated version of Brown's dissertation edited by Donna-Belle Garvin of the New Hampshire Historical Society. These workings and reworkings constitute a worthy tribute to the compulsive Samuel Lane.