By Muriel Bristol | September 8, 2034
Strafford County historian John Scales listed the Milton Town Moderators and their active year numbers for four-score years, i.e, eighty years, from 1804 through 1883. (Estimates of their calculated term years appear within brackets).
Then the town voted to build a meeting-house on that site, 52×42 feet, with a porch at each end eleven feet square and a portico in front. John Fish, Gilman Jewett, and Beard Plumer were appointed a building committee. Its construction was to be completed on or before Oct. 3, 1804, and it was completed. They sold the pews at auction for $19,083. They used gallons of rum at the raising of the frame and putting on the ridge pole. The first town meeting was held in it Aug. 27, 1804. During the first four score years following its incorporation the following were moderators at town meetings: Beard Plumer, 6 years [1804-1809]; John Fish, 1 [1810]; John Remick, Jr., 8 [1811-1818]; Joseph Plumer, Jr., 4 [1819-1822]; Levi Jones, 4 [1823-1826]; John Nutter, 1 [1827]; James Roberts, 8 [1828-1835]; Hanson Hayes, 10 [1836-1845]; Charles Swasy, 3 [1846-1848]; Thomas Chapman, 2 [1849-1850]; James Berry, 2 [1851-1852]; Eli Wentworth, 1 [1853]; John D. Lyman, 1 [1854]; Asa Fox, 1 [1855]; Charles A. Varny, 3 [1856-1858]; Charles C. Hayes, 14 [1859-1872]; Charles Jones, 6 [1873-1878]; E.W. Plumer, 2 [1879-1880]; Abram Sanborn, 2 [1881-1882]; Luther Hayes, 1 [1883].
By calculation this Scales list, would take us up through 1883. Beyond that year other sources identify some subsequent Town Moderators as having been Elbridge W. Fox and Charles W. Lowe, in 1893; and John U. Simes, 1897-98.
References:
Scales, John, (1914). History of Strafford County, New Hampshire and Representative Citizens. Retrieved from books.google.com/books?id=nGsjAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA511
Wikipedia. (2024, June 24). Moderator (Town Official). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderator_(town_official)
Milton Observer 