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Note: Notes for DR. MOSES SPEAR:
He was with his father and 3 brothers at the Battle of Lexington and served with his brothers through the Revoulutionary War under Capt. Joseph Tower. Young Moses and Judieth lived some time in Shutesbury where his father purchased a large tract of land, put the road Spear Lane through it, and gave each of his children a home on it. After the birth of 3 children, the family moved to Vershire, VT.
At Vershire, Moses spent one summer clearing the land and constructing a log house and took his family and livestock on ice of the CT river to mouth of Onpompanoosuc, thence up that river to its source and his future home. His father, injured to hardship, made the trip with the family and passing the junction of White River on a cold March day, broke through an airhole. When they pulled the shivering but robust 56 year old father out he said "thats a cussed hole". They were all very Puritanic, father and sons Baptist Deacons. When the family remonstrated him for swearing, he came back with "Do you suppose God Almighty when he cursed the earth left out that devilish hole?"
Moses became a noted doctor for that time. No wagons or roads were available but with 5 spirited horses he covered many miles and fought the dread scourge of small pox night and day during 1814, losing 1 son, a doctor, and that son's wife and child within 2 days. His family labored unceasingly to preserve their little colony through 1816 when nothing was raised on farms, neither berries nor fruit, known in VT as "1800 and froze to death."
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