According to some pundits, New England has very good soil – if you can find it among the rocks.

Except for those places in the river floodplains, such as along the Merrimack, this area’s best crop – as another pundit or two have said – is stones.

On the outer edges of all of the towns along the now abandoned roads are cellar holes, foundations of the homes of the earliest settlers, who tried farming among those rocks and gave up.

This area reached a high point in population before the Civil War – population heights that weren’t reached again until the late 1900s. In the 1840s, the first parts of the Midwest were opened and the young men left for better land. The Civil War showed our men what farmland should be like, and many of those who returned from the war left again.

The first settlers had little choice. A map of a proposed township someplace was drawn up in Boston dividing it into plots of the desired size – in Lyndeborough, 60 acres – with little regard for the topography, although allowance was granted for water and mountains.

Each settler was required to build a home and clear a certain amount of land within a given period.

Lyndeborough is known for its mountains – four of them divide the town geographically. Voters have long taken steps to protect them, especially the tops, from development.

They first enacted “zoning by elevation,” a concept new at the time, taking into account the poor soil, steep slopes and ledges. It requires larger lots the higher up you go.

The second restriction is soil-based zoning. Any lot less than 5 acres must meet higher standards for soil because of the need for private wells and septic systems. The higher elevations have remained open – and covered with blueberries.

The current plan is conservation. Almost 200 acres on the top of Rose Mountain is under consideration for purchase by the Piscataquog Land Trust.

The mountain is named for Abraham Rose, a Revolutionary War soldier who arrived in town from Sandwich, Mass., in 1787.

The town history says there were buildings on the site, but there is no record of who built them.

Rose and his wife, Deziah, who were married before coming to town, raised seven children on their mountainside. However, before his death in 1851, he moved to the home of his son Brackley Rose, who lived on Center Road. The house is still known as The Rose Farm, although the last Rose, Willard, left town around 1902.

The Roses’ house on the mountain apparently fell down, since there is no record of anyone else living there. The cellar hole of that house was located recently by members of the land trust, and they say it will be preserved.

Abraham Rose was born in 1759, and enlisted in the army for three months at age 17. He served for more than seven years, was at Valley Forge, and witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

He then served in the navy for another three years before deciding he needed a quieter life and moved to Lyndeborough.

Rose is said to have been “positive in his opinions, blunt and direct in speech, and when he had anything to say it was expressed in no uncertain terms.”

Those traits seem to have been passed along to succeeding generations. Just attend a town meeting.

And, if so inclined, donate to the preservation of Rose Mountain.

Keep up with the past with Another Perspective, which runs monthly in The Telegraph. Jessie Salisbury can be reached at 654-9704 or jessies@tellink.net.