INTRODUCTION

An unexpected benefit of this year’s rainy summer has been extra time to read! This led to a great discovery in the archives of the Andover Historical Society, which was a series of scrapbooks compiled by W.A. Bachelder. They contain clippings of articles taken from the Merrimack Journal (previous to the Journal Transcript), all of which pertain to East Andover, its people, and sometimes even its animals!

 This article, which was written May 19, 1893, was taken from Scrap Book #5, which contains clippings from the years 1893, 1894, and 1895. __________________________________________________________

 
“Sheep have certain instincts just as dogs and cats do. Some sixty or so years ago (1833), what is called the Clough pasture, was used or owned by Mr. Enoch Brown of Deerfield for pasturing his sheep. He drove them from his home in Deerfield to this pasture on the side of Ragged Mountain at the proper time.

 One year, two of his sheep, each having a lamb, he thought it best to keep at home, when he drove the main flock to the old pasturage. In a few days, these 2 sheep and their lambs were missing. Mr. Brown was able to trace them on the road towards Concord, but no farther. After several days, he wrote to Samuel Swett, who had the care of the pasture and the sheep, to find out if the sheep had been seen by him. Mr. Brown wrote of the particular ear markings that were upon the missing sheep.

 In the meantime, Mr. Swett had noticed two sheep, each with a lamb by her side, in his field, which was near the old sheep pasture. He immediately took measures to examine them, and found them to be the very sheep and lambs that had left Mr. Brown’s home in Deerfield, forty or more miles away! They had crossed the Merrimack River, and found their way under or through the toll gates or skipped around them, as men sometimes did, all without the help of man. They must have remembered the “old ways and walked in them.” Their old Mountain, summer home, and the sheep folks of the old family they found, must have all been happy to be reunited.”

 This article, which I found so interesting, reminded me of the old nursery rhyme about Little Bo Peep: “Leave them alone and they will come home, wagging their tails behind them.”