On August 21, 1954 the fifteenth reunion of the Clough Society was at Canterbury, N. H. On the drive that afternoon, we placed flowers at the lonely cemetery where Jeremiah Clough, Jr. sleeps within a stone-walled enclosure that is marked by a granite monument that was given in his honor by the Canterbury Clough Society about forty years ago.
If you read on page 105 in the Clough Book about the lineage of Jeremiah-4 you will call to mind that his father was Jeremiah-3, one of the first settlers in Canterbury in 1736. The Indians became increasingly menacing and in 1744 Jeremiah-3 built a fort that was the most northern defense in the Colony and became the eastern terminus of the Province Road that extended across the Colony to Fort No. 4, later called Charlestown, N. H.
Nobody can estimate the hundreds of years before this date that the Indians had traversed this trail. The Penacook Tribe claimed the territory for their hunting grounds. In the spring and fall, the redmen replenished their supplies with many wild geese that settled on Lake Sunapee for rest on the flights to and fro to the north and south. The name Sunapee is from the two words, suna-a wild goose, and nipi-a lake, in the language of the Abanaki Nation of which the Penacooks were a tribe.
The well trodden trail became the pathway for scouts as soon as the Indians became hostile and the famous band of Captain Robert Rogers Rangers knew every mile of its course. Later the provincial legislature ordered that this trail be cut widely enough to permit the colonial troops to march from Clough’s Fort in Canterbury to Fort No. 4 which was the most northern stockade on the bank of the Connecticut River with three other defenses on the river to the south.
The Society Daughters of Colonial Wars in New Hampshire is tracing this Province Road from Canterbury to Charlestown with the intention of setting markers at ‘strategic spots. The first will be placed near the cemetery of Jeremiah-4 adjacent to the site of the fort that his father constructed.