Local History

By the 1850s, residents in the Coaticook area, including Barsnton are fighting with Stanstead over the location of the Railroad running from Portland, Maine, into Canada. Daniel Way and Harry Hollister, are shareholders of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad (2 shares each!). Coaticook is chosen and the region develops quickly as a result of the economic boom that follows. Way’s Carding Works, as Daniel’s mill is then called, is prospering.

Daniel Way lives at the entrance of the settlement, by the first bridge. Cloth manufacture is his trade. At the far end of the settlement, by the bridge at the foot of Chemin Madore, lives Harry Hollister. He has been operating a saw mill and a grist mill for several years.

The waters of the Niger had attracted settlers to the area as early as 1796, long before Daniel and Lorenzo Way’s arrival. By the late 1830s, several families were established.

So who was waiting for Daniel Way and his young family in Canada after 1816?

Keziah Jaquith, Daniel Way’s future wife, was born on November 16, 1793. She was the second daughter of Jesse Jaquith and Keziah Hathorn.

We’ll catch up with the Gustins, Macks and Millers near the U.S.-Canada border later. For now, their nephew Daniel Way, born in 1794, is growing up in Marlow, Cheshire County, NH.

The Way family thus came in 1787 to the area of Marlow, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, joining some 200 souls just recently settled there.