We agree that you use your influence that these persons do not receive the least encouragement to return to dwell among us, they not deserving favor, as they left us in the righteous cause we were engaged in, fighting for our undoubted rights and liberties, and as many of them acted the part of the most inveterate enemies. And further,--that they do not receive any favor of any kind, as we esteem them as persons not deserving it, but the contrary. You are further directed to use your influence, that those who are already returned, be treated according to their deserts. In the War of 1812 there were more than two hundred men in Bedford armed and in readiness to march whenever called upon, and in this two hundred was one company of about sixty men over forty years of age and therefore exempt from military duty. In the War of the Rebellion Bedford invariably filled its quota without draft and without high bounties, and it paid its war debt promptly. It was in this community of stalwart, clear-headed, freedom-loving, sturdily honest, and uncompromisingly sincere men and women, that Zachariah Chandler was born and that the foundations of his character were durably laid. FOOTNOTES: [1] The glass for the meeting-house was procured before the building was ready for it, and it was loaned to different members; the careful record kept shows how scarce and costly an article it then was. CHAPTER II. PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD. The Chandlers of New England are the descendants of William Chandler, who came from England in the days of the Puritan immigration--about 1637--and settled in Roxbury, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Chandlers of Bedford, N. H., are the posterity of one of his descendants, Zechariah Chandler of Roxbury, who was among the grantees of Souhegan-East in the right of his wife, the daughter of a soldier in King Philip's War. They were the conspicuous English family in that Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlement, and their farm is the only one in that town which is still in possession of the lineal descendants of an original grantee. That Zechariah Chandler was a man of some means is shown by this document, which is still on record and reads curiously enough in the biography of a most inveterate and powerful opponent of slavery and the slave power: BOSTON, November 11, 1740. Received of Mr. Zechariah Chandler, one hundred and ten pounds, in full, for a Negro Boy, sold and delivered him for my master, John Jones. £110 WM. MERCHANT, Jun'r.