1948Moses Varney came from England [N.B. dgw: have this a conflicting information] sometime previous to the Revolutionary War, and settled in Dover, N.H. He is said to have possessed considerable property, owning three vessels, but during the war his fortune was lost. His wife, however, still retained a small amount of money in her own right, and in the early eighties he decided to visit Wolfeborough and make a home there. The pair journeyed on horseback to Merry Meeting Bay, and from there, through the forest to Wolfeborough. Mr. Varney purchased that portion of the Sewall lot lying east of the main road and south of Smith's River, being bounded by the highway, the river, and the mill-lot. He built a dwelling-house a little east of the site of Brewster Memorial Hall, and established a tannery north of the present location of the Bank Building. He had previously carried on the business of tanning, and no doubt proposed to combine that with farming in Wolfeborough. He had several children - among them, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Richard, Judith, Ruth, Sarah. The daughters becamse respectively the wives of ? Wiggin, James Wiggin, and Paul H. Varney.
It is probable that Mr. Varney did not at first take his family to Wolfeborough, as the next spring Richard, a lad in his teens, drew his young sister, Ruth, on a handsled from Merry Meeting Bay, across the lake to Wolfeborough. It was night when they neared the shore, and discovering that the ice was weak, they did not proceed directly to Sewall's Landing as their way led, bu steered for Clark's Point, and reached the shore in safety. That night a gale of wind sprang up, and the next morning no ice was to be seen in that part of the lake.
Mr. Varney continued in the tanning business several years, probably until his son Joseph was established on the other side of the river. In 1792 he served as selectman. While living on the Sewall lot, a daughter died, and was there buried; the place of interment is not known. |