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While I started out using Lyford, 1912, History of the Town of Canterbury, New Hampshire 1727-1912, in two volumes, which my family has an original copy of and Hoyt, 1897, Old Families of Salisbury and Amesbury (New Hampshire), which I found in the City of St. Louis Library, Genealogy Room for the foundation of this book, I soon delved into the research end for this book. Wherever possible I went back and checked both Llyford and Hoyt?s information with original records. I soon started expanding the original work with information I gleaned from all my research. I tried to footnote everything that did not come from Llyford and Hoyt. I then went and added the wills of any I could find to make this more of a ?story? than just genie lines and dates. This has taken hundreds of hours of research, typing and reams of paper. I printed out all the research I used to write this book, so I could back tract easily. Most of my research material came from pre nineteen hundred information, as that was when most people were busy writing their genealogies

It is most likely that most of the Morrill?s of the Northeast part of the country are descendants of ABRAHAM MORRILL. So opens most of the books I have found written on ?the Morrill?s? or the descendents of Abraham Morrill.

In doing the research for this book I came across a few other interesting facts. Most of Abraham?s male and quite a few of the female descendents were educated people for the times. The males could read and write many leaving books in their wills. When one considers the cost of owning a book in the 1600 and 1700?s,, the Morrill?s must have considered the cost worthwhile.

Many were active in government, either on the local or state level. They represented their towns in the State legislative, owned, and ran their own businesses. Many also seemed to be blacksmiths; trades handed down by father to sons. Most owned not just the lot of land their houses sat upon, but large acreage and farms. One even owned a square mile of land by the time he died!

When the call for arms came, to help with the struggle for freedom in the new country, they answered the call! From sixteen to sixty, they went to fight. Ezekiel Morrill, at the age of 70 and six of his sons served in the Revolutionary War as well as cousins and uncles.

They were a religious lot, not a few of them becoming deacons of their churches or reverends of their towns. Some even were a bit to far ahead of their times and ran against the grain, but even with that they were still accepted as an integral part of the community.

While this book is mostly facts and dates take a few moments, while you are reading, to look between the lines. Read the wills I have included and think about what they left behind to the next generation. Was it a book? Or perhaps the pewter plates and spoon? Most people of the early colonial times ate from wood or earthen bowls, with carved wooden spoons.

And lastly, while we do not know much about the women who raised, married and buried the men named Morrill we know they came from ?good? stock, as we are a part of them.