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REPORT: In search of Deacon Samuel Fisher in Londonderry, New Hampshire
By Michelle Stone Copyright 2023
On Saturday, 8 October 2022, Mark Fisher and his wife, Michelle Stone, visited the town of Londonderry in Rockingham County, New Hampshire to see for themselves the house and gravesite of Mark's great-great-great-great-grandfather, Deacon Samuel Fisher. This ancestor was the man in Mark's direct paternal lineage who immigrated from northern Ireland to America, in the 18th century. Oddly enough, when Mark and Michelle returned home from their trip, they realized that Mark's parents, John Crocker Fisher III and Jo Ann Fisher, had also once visited Londonderry, New Hampshire on the same sort of genealogical expedition--exactly 35 years earlier, on either the 7th or 8th of October 1987. Their having gone first and documented what they'd found then made the 2022 trail much easier.
First, a Few Words About Samuel Fisher
The first written account the family has found of this immigrant forefather had its origin as a sensational and horrifying oral history told among family members and the Londonderry community, and was eventually provided for publication, probably by one or more of Samuel's grandchildren. This written record appeared in a book entitled The History of Londonderry, Comprising the Towns of Derry and Londonderry, N. H., written by the Reverend Edward L. Parker and published by a Boston firm in 1851, over 100 years after Samuel had arrived in America as a young man, and 45 years after his death. That written account (pages 218-220) goes like this:
Dea[con]. Samuel Fisher was born in the north of Ireland, in the year 1722, and was of Scottish descent. His father was a weaver. Dea. Fisher came to America in 1740, in the nineteenth year of his age [i.e. age 18]. The ship in which he came was usually spoken of as "The starved ship." The vessel was so scantily supplied with provision, that long before the voyage was completed, one pint of oat-meal for each individual on board, and a proportionate allowance of water, was all that remained. Mr. Fisher once went to the mate with a tablespoon to obtain some water, which was refused him, there being but two-thirds of a chunk-bottle full on board. Mr. Fisher's custom was, to take a table-spoonful of meal daily, and having moistened it with salt water, to eat it raw. The passengers and crew, having subsisted in this manner for fourteen days, were at length reduced to the necessity of eating the bodies of those who died. Even this resource failed them, and at length Mr. Fisher was selected to give up his life to preserve the lives of the rest. [Note: Some later accounts claim that Samuel had been the unlucky one to draw the short straw among the passengers to be sacrificed.] Providentially, however, a vessel hove in sight, and their signals of distress being observed they obtained relief and were saved. So deep an impression did the horrors of that passage make upon the mind of Mr. Fisher, that, in after life, he could never see, without pain, the least morsel of food wasted, or a pail of water thrown carelessly upon the ground.
On his arrival in this country, he was bound by the captain to a man in Roxbury [near Boston], for the payment of his passage [i.e. he was an indentured servant for a time]. He came to Londonderry [some accounts say he walked there, a distance of about 50 miles], probably about one or two years after, and became a member of the family of Mr. Matthew Taylor, whose daughter he married, when he was twenty-five years of age. [Agnes Taylor, Samuel's first wife, died in childbirth two years later, in 1747, when she was 22; their only child, Nancy Fisher Cunningham Ela, survived, married twice, had at least five children, and died at age 89 in Londonderry.] He was made a ruling elder [i.e. a Deacon] of the church in the West Parish, during the ministry of Rev. David MacGregor, and remained in this office until he was no longer able to perform its duties on account of his age. He seemed to be well instructed in the great principles of the gospel, as set forth in the Westminster Catechism, and in the Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland [i.e. what became the Presbyterian church in America]. These principles he taught diligently to his children, for whose spiritual welfare he felt a deep solicitude. . . .
Deacon Fisher was married three times, and had twelve children; eleven of whom arrived at adult age, and ten of whom survived him. [Samuel's second wife was Agnes Wilson; they had four children and she died at age 26; his third wife was Sarah Barber; they had seven children and she outlived him and died at the age of 80 in Londonderry in 1813.] Ten of his children were married, and most of them lived to advanced age. The average age of four of them was ninety-one years. His descendants now (1850) number nine hundred and fifteen, and are scattered through nearly all the States of the Union, through Nova Scotia, and the Canadas. Some of them are ministers, and some elders in the church. It is estimated, that three-fourths of those over twenty years of age are professors of religion.
Deacon Fisher was, in his personal appearance, tall and commanding, and his countenance was grave and solemn, so that few would willingly be guilty of levity in his presence. He died at Londonderry, April 10, 1806, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.
It was said that Samuel Fisher was trained as a weaver, like his father, and in fact, the family has preserved a small scrap of cloth (6-1/4 inches square, perhaps from a tablecloth or similar larger covering), handed down through the generations and said by Jo Ann Fisher to have "probably" been woven by him:
In fact, for a time, Londonderry, New Hampshire was widely known for its fine woven linen cloth, considered to be the best in New England and claimed to have been worn by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The first Scots settlers from northern Ireland (Ulster) in Londonderry had brought their renowned weaving skills and a stock of various seeds with them from Ireland in 1718 and were the first people to cultivate potatoes and produce trademarked linen cloth in New England.
It has also been said that Samuel's older brother, William, was also a passenger on "the starved ship" from Ireland to Boston. William and his descendants ended up settling in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada. ("About the year 1760 [after French Canada fell to Britain, with a little help from some Londonderry soldiers penetrating into Canada], a number of families emigrated from Londonderry to Nova Scotia, soon after its evacuation by the French, and settled in the towns of Truro and Londonderry." [Parker, p. 98])
Meanwhile Samuel, with support from his friends and neighbors in Londonderry, eventually became a yeoman farmer there and in time was a successful and prosperous landowner with a cider mill, able to purchase acreage 35 miles to the west in what would become Francestown, New Hampshire, where his oldest son, James Fisher, was sent to pioneer and settle. At various points in his long life Deacon Samuel Fisher, with his reputation as an honorable man and a pious Christian, served as a moderator or representative at annual town meetings and other local congresses.
Here is a note about "the starved ship" story of 1740. Samuel's personal story rings true, but descendants researching in current times have not been able to find confirmed details about it. However there was an eerily similar doomed ship named the Seaflower, which left from Belfast, northern Ireland bound for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 10 July 1741, one year after the "starved ship" was said by Parker to have sailed. According to author Daniel Rolph ["A 'Cannibal Cruise Liner' of 18th-century Immigration," Historical Society of Pennsylvania website blog, 2009], the Seaflower carried 108 passengers--
but death plagued the ship, including the Master of the vessel along with all the crew but one, leaving the passengers in mid-passage without food and provisions, or [knowing] how to sail the ship to America. Anything edible was eventually consumed, from "Tallow, Candles, etc.," until finally, the survivors "fed upon the bodies of those that died."
According to the Pennsylvania Gazette a vessel, 'his Majesty's Ship Success,' eventually came upon the derelict, and upon boarding the ill-fated ship, "they found the Body of a Man lying upon Deck partly cut up, and his Arm and Shoulder then boiling in a Pot, in Salt Water (which had been their only drink for a long Time), and so eager were the poor famish'd People for the Flesh of their dead Companions, that many of them had conceal'd Pieces of it in their Pockets, to eat as they had Opportunity." (The Pennsylvania Gazette, November 12, 1741)
The Seaflower, a Connecticut vessel, would eventually arrive in Boston, rather than Philadelphia, with sixty-five passengers barely alive, after having eaten "six Persons that Died in the Passage that as they were Cutting up the Seventh, they Espied the Success..." The poor passengers had been at sea for over sixteen weeks, until finally saved by the above Colonial vessel.
The Seaflower finally landed in Boston on Halloween, 31 October 1741. The English city fathers of Boston were not happy to have the responsibility for the "Irish" survivors dumped into their laps but they duly made some provisions for their care, which may have been the mechanism for how Samuel Fisher ended up as an indentured servant in Roxbury for a time (if indeed the Seaflower was Samuel's same "starved ship"). One can imagine he was simply glad to be spared and able to look forward to his freedom. Incidentally, at the age of 75 when he made up his own will, he included a bequest for "Toney my Negro boy, Altho I have an indenture from his Father and Mother till he is thirty two years old yet my will is that he should be free when he is twenty one years old, and at that time my Son John Fisher should give him the said Negro boy one pair of year old Stears [steers]."
After journeying to Londonderry Samuel joined there a cohort of other Scottish-heritage families from northern Ireland whom he may well have known personally or certainly had heard of back in the Old World, including the original sixteen families of Church of Scotland believers who arrived in Boston in 1718 and who, in the following year, settled in "Nutfield" (later Londonderry, New Hampshire) under the guidance of their minister of what became the Presbyterian church in New England, the Reverend James McGregor. (He was the father of Reverend David McGregor, one-time pastor of the West Parish church where Samuel was an Elder and owned a pew.) These so-called (in America) "Scotch-Irish" families (who hated the term; they all considered themselves Scots) were descendants of a colony which had migrated from Scotland to northern Ireland (Ulster) around 1612, in search of a more prosperous, free, and peaceful existence, which they most definitely did not find there.
In 2022 Y-DNA testing analysis by the company FamilyTreeDNA confirmed that Mark and his father and their direct paternal-line male Fisher ancestors could be genetically traced all the way back to the Maeatae tribes of "Original Scots" (called "the Northern barbarians" by the Romans) who were living north of the Antonine Wall on the edge of the Highlands near Stirling, Scotland between 1,000 and 1,500 years ago.
What was found in Londonderry: Samuel Fisher's house
A photograph of unknown date has been handed down in our Fisher family, which was labeled as the house of Deacon John Fisher, who was the immigrant Deacon Samuel Fisher's youngest son, born in 1769 when Samuel was 46. Deacon John Fisher inherited the house in Londonderry when he was 37, upon his father's death in 1806. John lived there along with his mother, Samuel's third wife and widow, Sarah, until she died in 1813. John and his wife, Betsey Dean Fisher, raised their nine children there. Over the years Deacon John Fisher served Londonderry as a selectman, a town clerk, and a representative to the General Court, and was a respected elder in the West Parish church as his father had been.
When John was in his mid-60's he and Betsey and several of their grown children moved on from Londonderry, New Hampshire to Warsaw, New York via the Erie Canal around 1834 or 1835. In Warsaw John and his own son Samuel bought a new home on a tract of thickly timbered land formerly owned by Samuel McWhorter. This new Fisher farm included land in the south of the village today occupied by Cottage Court, Oatka and Orchard Streets, parts of Center and Liberty Streets, the village park (old fairgrounds), and parts of The West Hill in Warsaw where the Warsaw Salt Baths Sanitarium (founded by Deacon John's grandson and Samuel Fisher's son, Dr. John Crocker Fisher, M.D.), would later be built in 1890.
Here is that undated photograph of the Londonderry, New Hampshire Fisher home:
Thanks to Jo and John Fisher's sleuthing in and about Londonderry in 1987, Mark and Michelle were able to find the same house on Hardy Road, still looking amazingly similar in style and shape, and still in use as a private home and beautifully maintained in October 2022:
Mark and Michelle briefly snapped the photo from the road (above), without disturbing the occupants early on a Saturday morning. But in 1987 Jo and John were able to speak with the then-residents of the house and get a few better photos, including a closeup or two:
Above, the house in 1987; the stone wall along the road is still there in 2022.
The right (south) side and front of the house, 1987. It was built in the style of the typical Londonderry farmhouse of its time (circa the mid-1700's, after a sawmill had been built in the area and pioneering log cabins gave way to planks and frame houses). Typically these houses had two large front rooms flanking the front door, and a large, long kitchen with a big hearth across the single-story portion in the back of the house, with a bedroom in one corner. If a house had two stories in front, like this one, more bedrooms were included on the second floor in the front of the house.
Here's another photo of the south side of the house with what was, perhaps, the original entryway into the kitchen. And here is John Fisher III (great-great-great-grandson of immigrant Deacon Samuel Fisher and Sarah Barber Fisher, and great-great-grandson of John and Betsey Dean Fisher), standing near the front door of the home of his ancestors and the plaque which in 1987 read: "The Samuel Fisher House 1749." Was this the year the house was originally built? If so, three generations of Fishers lived there for about 85 years.
John Fisher
in the front yard near the garage, October 1987. The same antique plow is still
featured in the front yard of the home in 2022, indicating the place's farming
origins. In the immigrant Deacon Samuel Fisher's will written in 1797, he bequeathed
this home to his youngest child, Deacon John Fisher (who was probably already
living there with his own wife and young family), and conveyed his wish that
John would provide his mother, Sarah Barber Fisher (Deacon Samuel's widow) her
own room in the house and sufficient firewood for the rest of her life.
A church, a town common, and the Revolutionary War
The next stop was to get a look at the building serving the congregation of the Presbyterian church in Londonderry originally founded by Reverend James McGregor. This became the congregation of the West Parish church that Deacon Samuel Fisher and his family had belonged to and served in, under minister Reverend David McGregor, the son of Reverend James McGregor. Jo and John Fisher had found this church building (at 120 Pillsbury Road) in 1987 but unfortunately none of the current structures or monuments there dates back to Deacon Samuel's time:
1987 (left) and 2022 (right) photos of the plaque on the church grounds outside which reads: "By tradition, this is the stone from the foundation of the Morrison Meeting House erected in the 1770s. It was moved from the original site at Pillsbury and Hardy Roads to the Londonderry Presbyterian Church in 1985." Was the Morrison Meeting House where the West Parish congregation met during Deacon Samuel Fisher's life?
Jo and John Fisher also were able to see inside the church building and take one photo (below) in 1987 but the building was closed when Mark and Michelle visited in 2022:
Below are 1987 photos of John C. Fisher III at the church building, which was built in 1837, long after Deacon Samuel Fisher died (1806) and after his son, Deacon John Fisher and his family had moved away to New York State (circa 1835):
By 2022 an additional wing had been added to the 1837 building:
But the sanctuary's cornerstone remained in place, the same in 2022 as in 1987:
Across Pillsbury Street from the church is the Londonderry town common, adjacent to the Kent Allen Forest. This 'village green' is about a mile walk from the Samuel Fisher house. The common had originally held the first meeting house of the town. The grassy park holds a number of monuments (for the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks). Below is the Revolutionary War monument ("Dedicated to those citizens of Londonderry who fought in the Revolutionary War") installed in 1976 which seems an understated tribute to what all of the citizens of Londonderry, male and female, old and young, had to endure during those long years of bitter conflict. The Presbyterian Church appears in the background:
Deacon Samuel Fisher was in his mid-fifties when the Revolutionary War broke out, with minor children at home. He signed, in April 1776, a pledge (along with 373 other men of the town) to "oppose the Hostile proceedings of the British Fleets and Armies, against the United American Colonies." Only 16 men in town refused to sign, and they were compelled to be disarmed. Samuel also served as Londonderry's delegate to a convention in Dracut, Massachusetts which, on 26 November 1776, drew up a petition to the general courts of New Hampshire and Massachusetts urging them to enforce the Continental Congress' rulings decreeing fixed prices of necessities during that period of war speculation and the extreme depreciation of paper money. [Parker, p. 108] For these expressions of civil service in support of the war effort Samuel Fisher is listed as Patriot Ancestor no. A039674 in the honor roll of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).
These New Hampshire towns and their Scots men were almost unanimously Yankee Rebels during the War, and fiery ones, fighting for their specifically hard-won religious freedom against the British all over again, if for nothing else. Interestingly, these Fishers in New Hampshire and later in New York State were able to maintain or re-establish quite congenial family ties with their Nova Scotia relatives after the Revolution.
Londonderry sent more men into the Revolutionary battles than almost any other town in New Hampshire, and only one soldier from the town, a lieutenant, died in combat; many more men died of sickness as they fought in the states surrounding, including New York and Massachusetts. Samuel's oldest son, James, in his 20's at the time of the war, was by then a prominent leader in Francestown and was voted to be on the Committee of Safety and Inspection there. Deacon Samuel's son Samuel Jr. came of age during the war and it is not known if he served in the military; sometime after 1778 he immigrated from Londonderry to Truro, Nova Scotia where he married, stayed, and died at the age of 53. Samuel's son William died at the age of 13 in Londonderry in 1775, and Samuel's two youngest sons, Ebenezer and John, were just 12 and 7 in 1776. Once grown, they later served as town clerks around the turn of the century, 1800. John Fisher served as a representative from Londonderry to the General Court from 1816-1820; he served as a town selectman or town clerk from 1820-1824. Both boys married local sisters, Polly and Betsey Dean.
Deacon Samuel Fisher's grave
Still following in John and Jo Fisher's 1987 footsteps, we located the Old Hill Graveyard (also known as Pinkerton Cemetery) located at 49 Hovey Road, adjacent to the much newer Pillsbury Cemetery. Here we found the same and only three Fisher graves they had found, lined up in a row, each with a headstone and a footstone marker: Deacon Samuel Fisher in the middle, flanked by his second wife, Agnes Fisher, and Deacon Samuel and third wife Sarah's son, William Fisher. This Fisher family plot can be found within the cemetery at 42 degrees 53'04.1" North, 71 degrees 21'24.8" West.
John Fisher and headstones for (left to right) son William, Deacon/Elder Samuel Fisher, and Samuel's second wife, Agnes Fisher. 1987.
Mark Fisher found the same line of three headstones, and a corresponding line of three footstones for the same people, just as they were in 1987. Here he walks between the footstones (left) and the headstones (right).
Deacon, or "Elder" Samuel Fisher's stone had been broken at some point in the past and the lower part of it was lost; what was left was short and somewhat sunken in the ground and otherwise not totally readable.
Previously found transcripts of this headstone read: "Elder / Samuel Fisher / Died April 10, 1806. . ." His footstone is inscribed "S.F. / S.F." One wonders if this was meant to stand for both Samuel Fisher and his third wife, Sarah Barber Fisher? No other gravesite for her has been found.
Here lies buried the body of Mrs. Agnes the wife of Mr. Samuel Fisher who departed this life March 12th, 1755 in the 27th year of her age.
This was Deacon Samuel Fisher's second wife, Agnes Wilson Fisher. They had three daughters and a son, James, together. [Note: His first wife, Agnes Taylor Fisher, who died giving birth to their only child, Nancy, was buried in 1747 in the "historic" section of Forest Hill Cemetery in what is today East Derry, a portion of the town split off from Londonderry in the 1700's. Samuel and Sarah's daughter Martha Fisher, an unmarried teacher, was also buried at Forest Hill Cemetery 90 years later, in 1837.]
By the time the second Mrs. Agnes Fisher died, we can assume that this Old Hill graveyard was the closest one to the then-Fisher home; they were almost certainly living by then in the farmhouse photographed earlier. Here is her footstone (left 2022, right 1987), which reads "1755 / Mrs. Agnes Fisher":
And here are the gravemarkers for Samuel's son, William; his mother was Sarah Barber Fisher, Samuel's third wife. His footstone reads "William Fisher."
Memento Mori Erected in memory of William Fisher son of Samuel Fisher Elder & Mrs. Sarah, his wife, who died Oct 26th 1775 in ye 14th Year of his Age. Be wise in time because you may, Whilst in your Prime, be wheel'd away.
It is a great bit of fortune to find historic family gravestones in Old Hill Graveyard. These three sets of markers appear to be originals (or very good copies), and it seems the headstones have been more or less recently cleaned. The cemetery seems to have started in 1733 as a one-acre resting place for an Ann Wallace, age 20. In a later era it became known as Pinkerton Cemetery thanks to the burials in it of that distinguished family, including Major John Pinkerton, himself an Ulster immigrant, a successful town merchant and benefactor, and the principal founder of Londonderry's Pinkerton Academy. (Incorporated in 1814, this secondary school taught piety and virtue, sciences, languages, and liberal arts; Deacon John's son Samuel--and probably some of his other children too--received their equivalent of a high school education there and some went on to college). Burials here mostly took place in the mid-1700's to the early 1800's, seemed to taper off by the Civil War, and end in the 1890's. [Findagrave.com, 2023]
Over time this Old Hill/Pinkerton cemetery became severely neglected. The gravestones in it were broken, tossed around, lost and damaged by years of weather, unchecked overgrowth, and fallen trees. At some point local people decided to clean up the cemetery and unfortunately did it in a very rough manner. In a large swath in the middle of the cemetery the gravestones were moved out so that the trees and brush could be cleared and the land leveled. Many gravemarkers were lost; others were installed back in places with no guarantee of being anywhere near where the corresponding bodies had once been buried. Today the center of the cemetery seems to have almost no markers on it. But what's left of the place is today being maintained with care.
Mark and Michelle also visited Valley Cemetery in Londonderry (also known as Shipley Cemetery, located at 69 Pillsbury Road), which began accepting burials in the last decades of the 1700's. By 1851 it was "now the principal burying ground in Londonderry." [Parker p. 118-119] They had no luck finding the gravestones of Fisher relatives, but Jo and John had fortuitously photographed several in 1987, most importantly, the marker for the mother of Deacon John Fisher's wife Betsey Dean Fisher--Abigail Ellis Dean (1737-1824), Mark's great-great-great-great-grandmother.
IN Memory of Mrs. Abigail, wife of Capt. Nathaniel Dean, of Dedham; who died March 8, 1824; AEt. 86.
Also at this cemetery are the graves of Abigail's other daughter, Mary/Polly Dean Fisher (Betsey's sister), who married Ebenezer Fisher, Deacon John's brother. Two of Ebenezer and Polly's little children, Abigail and Ellis Fisher, are also buried here.
The Lord kn[ow]eth them that are His. The remains of Mrs. Mary, wife of Lt. Eben[ezer] Fisher, who died Nov. 28, 1814, in the 45[th] year of her age. [illegible verse]
[double tombstone for sister and brother:]
IN Memory of Abigail E. Fisher Daughter of Lt. Eben[ezer] Fisher & Polly his wife, who died June 10, 1803 Aged 4 years & 8 months.
IN Memory of Ellis Fisher son of Lt. Eben[ezer] Fisher & Polly his wife, who died Sept. 16, 1804, Aged 9 months & 14 days.
Before leaving Londonderry Mark and Michelle dropped by the Town of Londonderry Historical Society located at 140 Pillsbury Road, just south down the road past the Presbyterian Church and the town common. The facility was closed and no one was around. According to their website, the Society has acquired the Reverend William Morrison house and will be installing it on their property at some point. Reverend William Morrison, who died in 1818, was the pastor of the West Parish Presbyterian church for 35 years and was no doubt well known to Deacon Samuel Fisher and his family. Reverend Morrison's house, a two-story salt-box frame construction, was built in 1725, and used to stand on Gilcrest Road before it was donated to the Society in 2006 and carefully disassembled and put into storage. It is not clear if or when it will be completely reassembled and opened to visitors at the site. The Society also owns another Morrison House, a one-story farmhouse built by a John Morrison in 1760 on Rockingham Road and moved to the Society's site in 1989 to avoid demolition. This structure now serves as the Society's museum building. There are also other structures (a barn, a carriage shed, a blacksmith shop) at the site which post-date the Fisher family's tenure in Londonderry.
Above: the barn and the John Morrison House museum building at the Town of Londonderry Historical Society.
All in all, it was a very successful, rewarding, and eye-opening visit to the home of our first Fisher family members in America, and a very moving opportunity to see the places and walk through the landscapes where our people had once lived and died.
Sources / For more information:
1. The History of Londonderry, Comprising the Towns of Derry and Londonderry, N. H., by Rev. Edwin L. Parker, Perkins and Whipple, Boston, 1851. This book is viewable, searchable, and downloadable for free in facsimile form online at Internet Archive. Contains fascinating reading about the people and what life was like in early Londonderry, including why the Scots left northern Ireland and what went on in Londonderry during the Revolutionary War. https://archive.org/details/historyoflondond00park/mode/2up
2. History of Rockingham County New Hampshire and Representative Citizens, by Charles A. Hazlett, Richmond Arnold Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois, 1915. Another book similarly accessible, mostly focusing on a later period. Derry, Chapter 24, page 283+. Londonderry, Chapter 38, page 503+. https://archive.org/details/historyofrocking00hazl
3. "A 'Cannibal Cruise Liner' of 18th-century Immigration" by Daniel Rolph, article posted 2009-04-07 09:22 at the blog of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, viewed 15 January 2023. https://hsp.org/blogs/hidden-histories/a-cannibal-cruise-liner-of-18th-century-immigration
4. "History" page posted on the website of the Londonderry [New Hampshire] Historical Society, viewed 15 January 2023. https://www.londonderryhistory.org/history/
5. "History of Derry As Narrated by Our Town Historian, Richard Holmes," article posted on the website of the Town of Derry New Hampshire, viewed 15 January 2023. https://www.derrynh.org/discover-derry/pages/history-derry
6. "Pinkerton Academy" entry at Wikipedia, viewed 15 January 2023. The Academy still exists! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Academy
7. Findagrave.com. Can be used to explore the cemeteries of Londonderry and Rockingham County, New Hampshire and to explore the user-provided information on ancestors and descendants of Deacon Samuel Fisher and his kin. Deacon Samuel's page URL is provided below; to view others, click on the Parents, Spouses, Siblings, or Children links. But beware: none of the information provided on Findagrave is guaranteed to be true. But a lot of it is true. That's the beauty and the fun of it--trying to figure it all out. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/31935542/samuel-fisher
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