William Lang (1730/34-1812) was born in Portsmouth, NH, where he married Elizabeth Rand (1730-) in 1751. They had seven children, all of them born in Portsmouth. Lang was a soldier in the French & Indian War.
William and Elizabeth (Rand) Lang came to Goshen from Portsmouth, NH after their 1770 purchase of a 53-acre lot in Wendell (now Sunapee). They built their one-story house near the intersection of today’s Cross and Brook Roads. South of the house, across today’s Gunnison Brook (named Wendell’s Mill Stream then) a brickyard was built by later family members and advertised in the New Hampshire Spectator in 1831.
Locally, “Lang’s Chimney” was a town landmark in Mill Village, found about 40 yards east of the town hall. It is said that this is where Lang stopped to rest on his way home from Fort No 4 in Charlestown, NH. As he aged, William Lang became “mentally deranged” and was confined to his house. A year before his death his wife Elizabeth applied for Town aid, and they were bid off to Robert Lear, who supported them for a year for $79.00 (approximately $1,746 today).