According to the record of an old inhabitant of Tyngsborough, now
dead, whose farm we were now gliding past, one of the greatest
freshets on this river took place in October, 1785, and its
height was marked by a nail driven into an apple-tree behind his
house. One of his descendants has shown this to me, and I judged
it to be at least seventeen or eighteen feet above the level of
the river at the time. According to Barber, the river rose
twenty-one feet above the common high-water mark, at Bradford in
the year 1818. Before the Lowell and Nashua railroad was built,
the engineer made inquiries of the inhabitants along the banks as
to how high they had known the river to rise. When he came to
this house he was conducted to the apple-tree, and as the nail
was not then visible, the lady of the house placed her hand on
the trunk where she said that she remembered the nail to have
been from her childhood. In the mean while the old man put his
arm inside the tree, which was hollow, and felt the point of the
nail sticking through, and it was exactly opposite to her hand.
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