Mr. Enoch P. Young, of Hampton, as agent of the Rockingham Farmers' Mutual Fire Insurance Company, has just settled his fiftieth consecutive yearly premium account, and his twenty-fifth assessment account. Mr. Young became agent of the the company in 1854. Prior to his appointment, the late Uri Lamprey, of Hampton, was agent, and upon the election of President Franklin Pierce (New Hampshire's 14th President of the United States of America), political affairs connected with the administration called Mr. Lamprey to Washington, and he resigned his agency, to be succeeded by Mr. Young. Mr. Young is the oldest agent and the oldest official now living who is in connection with the company.

During the fifty years that he has been an agent, his success as a collector, his accuracy in describing the risks, his promptness in settling his accounts and his interest in the welfare of the farmers has been unexcelled by that of any person connected with the company. Although an octogenarian, Mr. Young is still thoroughly efficient in all the duties pertaining to his agency, and promises many years of usefulness to the company in which he takes so much just pride.

In the quarter century, 1875-1900, the greater farmers still used oxen, and of such was Newell Healey who had gone from Hampton Falls to Kensington to buy a large farm.

My father worked for Newell and Newell would have him take his oxen to be shod in Hampton by Enoch P. Young.

The blacksmith was, in those days, a center of gossip and story-telling and Mr. Young, then a man near seventy, was king of all in that field.

Near the end of the century, say 1898 to 1900, Mr. Young took to writing his stories as well as telling them, and they were published in the Exeter News-Letter, Hampton at that time having no paper of its own. Mr. Young's stories were largely of Hampton people and life in the period around 1830-1840.

In my collections of old newspapers which last week burned, I had a file of Mr. Young's letters, some of which escaped the flame, and I turn to such of March 24, 1899 and read Mr. Young's story of The Old-Time Housewife. It's an interesting bit of history and true to fact and shows the skill and courage and hard work of the women of Hampton and its nine daughter towns of 125 years ago.

Cooking was in the large brick oven by the fireplace with its Dutch Oven, its iron crane on which was hung the iron kettle, its tinder-box in which was material to strike a flame (there were no matches) except "the Lucifer match" which our sailors were bringing to Boston from Europe. And the cook-stove was not then yet in use.

Women made their own cloth on the clumsy, the spinning wheel, the carding machine of wood, etc.

Mr. Young was not a literary man but his stories were gems and would today make a most interesting book.

I don't know whether E. P. Young has any posterity in Hampton, but if there be such they have reason to be proud of such a man as an ancestor.

In 1899 and 1900, Mr. Young wrote a long series of pieces for the Exeter News-Letter telling of the Hampton of his young days between 1835 and 1845.

The decade of 1830-1840 was still the day of the travelling tailor.

Instead of going to Portsmouth or Newburyport for a new suit or coat or pants, you waited for the wandering tailor. He would be put up two or three nights and during the days would make up the needed garments.

Also, as he sat and plied his needle, he was a great entertainer, while at work he would tell stories that the listener would be repeating for a year.

His tools were a "goose" to press the cloth flat, then his needle and the "busheling," and then the sewing when like a man from China he sat crosslegged on the floor.

And the travelling shoemaker was then in the land. He, with apiece of cow-hide, his awl and needles, knives and shears, would make up the foot-wear for the family.

My grandfather, who lived up in Hill, used to tell how the wandering shoe-maker came there, and made up four pair of cow-hide boots for the eight large boys or young men.

Each lad had the boots every other day. Those having boots would go to the woods, cut and haul up with oxen and steers the wood, and the other four would stand on a plank with thick woolen socks and saw and split the same, the next day taking their turn with the boots.

The item about which Mr. Young liked most to tell about was the old fall training days of the militia companies.

The Third Regiment took in six town, Hampton, Seabrook, Hampton Falls, Kensington, South Hampton and North Hampton. Three town made a brigade.

Men between 16 and fifty met at a May gathering, their weapons inspected, and their assignments made. At the fall meeting there was the general muster of the six towns.

The men were drilled, shot to see which company had the best shooting, then came wrestlers, each company putting forth its best man.

On the side-lines were sold candy, cigars and tobacco and on the sly some New England rum. Each company had its group of rifle-shooters, its cannon and men to man it. Hampton drilling was in Toppan field.

When meeting at Hampton, they lined up before the old Moulton House, then standing on the common, and marched around the circle, around the old graveyard and Memorial Green.

Two men were living in Hampton in 1900 who would come to Young's shop and tell of those old musters, they were Zaccheus Brown and Daniel Redman. Brown was living and telling of old days at the age of 88 and Redman was then 84, and both hearty and strong.