USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Holderness > An abbreviated history of Holderness, New Hampshire, 1761-1961 > Part 1
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M. L
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01096 3749
led
ABBREVIATED HISTORY OF HOLDERNESS
N.H.
1761-1961
[Campton]
Hundred Acre Lots: Second Division
2
1
3
4.
Simpson
Baker
Pitman
S7
Mt. Prospect
5
Hill
S. viewnost
6
Ennis!
Caveno
3
7
Harves
4
8
Sliverman
for Br
Dr. Cox
Per A Brown W. Ellison
9
Downing
5
Second Range 13
2
S ShepardSE 1. Barthel J. Dr. Metros
10
Sarah Milchel
Fourth Range
6
W. Simpson
Wer FAL
Towe Brook
Squam Mts.
Wentworth
13
1803
Mach IA
SeeGe
S.P. g.
Bowman I'd
Harvey
30 J. Wentworth
18
31
17
21
Cox e
22°
ATKinson
Shepard
Ur
33
Lane
C . Bamford in
Dog Cove
Fr: farrow 53
56 month
Fifth Range
4
8 cox
= Kelley
19 Cox
28.
School &T
9 S. L. fr B. N.
Simpson
Campbell
ver Hampton
[Centre Harbor
HOLDERNESS AS ALLOTTED FROM 1761-1774
Sandwich
First Range
1
2
3
4
BIN.
Bergin
Byflori
Moultonborough
Wall's
11
Trille T. Shepard
10
J. Shepriz
13
7
Ellison
Long Neck LOT
Contre Harbor
Eleison
51
16
S.P. g.
15
Shepard 32
-
23
Salter
24 williams
25 Lamb
2
5
14
Bamford
Cox
6
3
Kennedy
Mooney
1 globe
12 hibrid
College Road (1211)
26 Hamilta
Smith
27 Bergin
13 Cox
Cox
$2
Minister
J. Shepard Y
12
Barron
East Church
gookein
32
Kelsey
Seat
34
12
Third Range
Howe
minister
Voleo
15.2
1
Simpson
AN ABBREVIATED HISTORY OF HOLDERNESS, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1761-1961
The town of Holderness had its actual beginning when a charter was granted in 1751 but it was still a very much suspected area as far as safety went. All through here was known as the "Great Waste" because it was along the line of the Indian trail from St. Fran- cis in Canada to the ocean at the mouth of the An- droscoggin. The Indian raiders had carried many peo- ple, mostly women, away captive through this area and until the Treaty of Peace, negotiated in Paris in 1753, people were very uncertain of coming up to set- tle here. In 1751 a charter had been granted and a township laid out by Samuel Lane, surveyor. On Octo- ber 15 in that year, His Excellency Benning Went- worth laid before the Council "a petition of Thomas Shepard and others, praying for a grant of His Ma- jesty's land of the contents of six miles square on Pemidgwasset River on the east side thereof as sur- veyed and planned by Samuel Lane, surveyor," to which Council did advise and consent. This petition was signed by sixty-four persons to whom the grant was made. In it the name of what we call the Squam river is there called Cohoss river, that is, "the river of the woods." In the early days the junction of Ames Brook and Squam River, near the southwest corner of the town, was known as "the old Cohoss." It was the boys' regular swimming hole. 1986722
The lake was known as "Cusumpy" as late as 1784. The earliest map showing the Holderness region is dated 1756. By 1781 it was "Kusumpe" but in 1784 the "Surveyor General of Lands for the Northern Dis- trict of North America," called it "Squam or Kusum- pe." In 1813, when President Dwight of Yale came this way on one of his tours he felt Squam was too barbaric a name and announced "we shall take the lib- erty to call it (Squam) by the name of 'Sullivan' from Major General Sullivan formerly president of the state." Somehow the name did not stick. The Indians probably called it both names. Squam meaning simply water, while Cusumpy appears to come from "Coos" woods and "Nipe" stream or pond. In October, 1752, Samuel Lane laid out a plan of lots in the Intervale
1
D
beside the river. Each proprietor drew for three lots and in the midst of this section a square of land con- taining four acres was reserved for a church and has ever since been called Church Hill. The other names have existed only on the map. The map itself repre- sents an intention only, as the charter lapsed, probably for fear of the savages.
The decisive defeat of the French in Quebec in 1759 made the land safe for occupation. In 1761 Gov- ernor Benning Wentworth issued grants for eighteen townships. It was under one of these grants that Hol- derness was finally settled. The charter as it appears today is a much worn document, patched with strips of paper. It is printed in the conventional form with the blank spaces filled in by hand with ink. The name of George III stands at the top. It incorporates into a township a piece of land six miles square "beginning at a red oak at the foot of the great Falls of the Pem- idgwasset River (now Livermore Falls), thence run- ning east six miles, then turning off at right angles and running south six miles, then turning off again and running westerly six miles to a white pine tree marked, standing on the bank of the river aforesaid, then running up said river northerly as that runs to the Bound first above mentioned as Bound begun at." As soon as there are fifty families actually settled they may have two fairs, on dates left blank in the charter. Also, a market may be kept open one or two days of each week. Lieutenant Thomas Shepard is to call the first Town Meeting and act as moderator. Five conditions accompany these privileges : first, that every grantee shall cultivate five acres out of every fifty, within two years; second, that all white and other pine trees, suitable for making masts for the Royal Navy, be reserved for that purpose; third, that a tract of the township be marked out for town lots, each of one acre; fourth, that for four years, the tax on the town- ship shall be one ear of Indian corn, to be paid on Christmas Day; and fifth, that after that time, every proprietor, settler or inhabitant shall pay annually on Christmas Day one shilling Proclamation Money for every hundred acres which he owns, settles or pos- sesses.
2
The charter was signed by Governor Wentworth and by Theodore Atkinson, secretary of the colony, on the 24th of October, 1761.
The following names of grantees are taken from the list on the back of the charter:
Major John Wentworth
Samuel Wentworth, Esq. of Boston
Thomas Harvey
Robert Harvey
Samuel Sheppard 3d
Joseph Sheppard
Edward Hall Bergin
Joseph Baker
William Curry
Nicholas Gookin
William Kennedy
John Muckleroy
Thomas Willie
William Simpson, senr
John Sheppard, senr
David Simpson
Thomas Sheppard
William Simpson, junr
Samuel Sheppard, senr
Joseph Simpson
Charles Bamford
Samuel Wentworth, Esq.
Joseph Ellison
Murry Hambleton
Richard Ellison
Theodore Atkinson, Esq.
William Ellison
Richd Wibird, Esq.
Robert Bamford
John Downing, Esq.
William Smith
William Campbell
Mrs. Sarah Mitchell (John Kavenah & ) (John Innis )
Henry Wallis
Henry Lane
Revd Arthur Brown
William Kelley
Henry Hill
Thomas Vokes
John Sheppard, junr
James Kielley
William Williams
Wm. Cox
Samuel Lamb
Charles Cox John Cox
Derry Pitman
Edward Cox
Samuel Livermore
Joseph Cox
Charles Bamford, junr
William Cox
Mk Hg Wentworth, Esq.
John Birgin
Richard Salter, and
Hercules Mooney
Joseph Bartlett of Newton
The seven shares which completed the number stated on the face of the charter, consisted of one for the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, one for the School, one for the First Settled Min- ister in communion with the Church of England, one for a glebe for the Church of England as by Law Es-
3
William Garrow
Charles Cox, junr
tablished, and three for his Excellency the Governor. This provision of land for the governor appears in most of the charters of this period. In Holderness it amount- ed to eight hundred acres.
The charter gave the township thus erected the name of New Holderness. This name of Holderness is well known in England where it belongs to a consider- able peninsula of Yorkshire which juts out into the North Sea north of the Humber. Beverly, with its fam- ous Minister, is on the western border. The first syl- lable, like that in the name of Holland, means hollow or low lying, "ness" means peninsula, "der" perhaps survives from the ancient name of the District before King Alfred - Deira. It seems somewhat comic to call this very up and down area after a piece of flat seacoast. The English Domesday Book compiled for William, the Conqueror, about the year 1070, contains a list of the landholders of this old Holderness. When Little John, Robinhood's companion, "took service with the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the sheriff asked him where he belonged, he said that his name was Green- leaf and that he lived in Holderness.
"In Holdernesse sir, I was borne I-wys all of my dame ; Men cal me Reynolde Grenelef Whan I am at home."
To this day there are Greenleafs living in our town of Holderness of whom John Greenleaf Whittier was a connection.
The town was called New Holderness because the charter of 1761 was a renewal of the charter of 1751. The name Holderness was given to the town in compli- ment to Robert D'Arcy, Earl of Holderness, who was Secretary of State at the time of the granting of the charter. He was the fourth and last Earl. He was re- puted to be both formal and dull, but very good na- tured and also a man of common sense. He wrote to the Governors of the Colonies in 1754 advising them to form a Union for mutual protection and defense against the combined French and Indians. A meeting was held at Albany and Theodore Atkinson, who signed the Hol- derness Charter, represented New Holderness. Ben-
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jamin Franklin came from Philadelphia. This was the forerunner of the final union of the colonies and it probably was useful in starting the idea of union, though the delegates did not agree and nothing came of it. Robert D'Arcy's sons died before him and the title thus became extinct. (We tried to find out if there might be any descendants in the female line and the committee wrote to the College of Arms in London, but they had no records to indicate anything up to date.)
In the end of October 1761, the proprietors met at Durham at an Inn and drew lots for the parcels of land which had been set out on the first map. They were afterwards called lots, because they had been drawn by lot. The first recorded settler was William Piper, whose wife Susanna Shepard, received the lot of her father John Shepard, as her dowry. In 1765, they drew for places in the first division of hundred acre lots between Little Squam and the River. Finally, in 1774, they drew for hundred acre lots of the second division, around Big Squam, north and south. There were men of distinction who drew for some of these lots, Mark Wentworth, the Governor's brother; John Downing, member of the Council; Richard Wibird, judge of probate, whose father was King's Poulterer; the Reverend Arthur Browne, rector of the Ports- mouth parish; and Samuel Livermore, his son-in-law, judge advocate of the admiralty court. Few of these had any intention of becoming citizens of Holderness. Some of the land thus granted was forfeited by fail- ure to clear it according to the requirements of the charter, and some was sold for taxes. The Governor's three shares came presently into the possession of Samuel Livermore, as Benning Wentworth had been deprived of his office for reasons among which his quiet appropriation of lands in new townships had a conspicuous place. He had left his estate to his widow, Martha Hilton (whose marriage is described in the Tales of a Wayside Inn). This so displeased his nephew and successor, John Wentworth, and others, that the titles to all "the Governor's farms," as they were called, were declared to be "null and void," and John Wentworth regranted them in the King's name. The
5
Governor's farm, so-called, came in this way into Sam- uel Livermore's hands on payment of 50-pounds for the 800 acres.
Of the original grantees there were several fam- ily groups, Ellisons, Bamfords, four Simpsons, six Shepards, seven Coxes. There are still descendants of the last two names in the neighborhood, witness the areas known as Coxboro and Shepard's Hill, where they lived until recent days.
Samuel Livermore established himself in the west- ern part of the town, living first in a medium sized house across the road from the present Captain Rus- sell Cox house. The Livermore house was outgrown, and he built a much larger one on the land overlook- ing the Pemigewasset-Intervale on the site of the present Holderness School for Boys. He became the great man of the town. He was his Majesty's Judge, but he took no sides during the Revolution. He retired to his Holderness farm and attended to such local mat- ters as required legal judgement. He must have been a very level-headed man because he retained the com- plete respect of his neighbors to such an extent that he was one of the men to attend the conventions in Philadelphia, and he was a representative from 1789 to 1793, and from 1793 to 1801 a senator in the na- tional congress. He made the 18-day journey from Holderness to Philadelphia in his own carriage, and was the man who encouraged the State of New Hamp- shire to its decision to be the ninth state to sign the Constitution and so create the United States of Amer- ica. He was charitable and kindly, as well as learned and wise, and the tale is told of him that when at the end of a good harvest a neighbor's barn was struck by lightning and destroyed, with everything in it, as the saddened owner stood among the ashes, up rode Squire Livermore on horseback, gave him a cheerful word, called out all the neighbors, Pipers, Coxes, Thompsons, Sheppards, sent them to the woods for timbers, drove to the mill for boards, got the barn raised, and closed in, and then stocked it with grain and hay from his own lofts. He died in 1803, leaving two sons who lived in the area for many years, but there are no Livermores here now.
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Samuel Sheppard was elected Clerk of the proprietors, and when town meeting began he was elected Town Clerk, an office he held for forty-one years. He kept an Inn on the west side of Owl Brook and from 1785 on, Town Meeting was held there. It is still standing. He was a person of independent mind, which he showed by a hearty disapproval of the Amer- ican Revolution, but he managed to remain as Town Clerk until his death in 1817. He was accurate, and had uncommonly legible writing. On Sundays he went to church in his wedding coat, light blue with buff facings, with long tails and large pockets, in which he carried a store of apples for the solace of small boys, presumably uneasy at church.
The charter of 1761 provided for the support of the minister of the Church of England, but for many years the Town Meeting felt itself too poor to do any- thing definite. They fixed upon a site where they agreed to establish a graveyard and decided on the size of the church. Finally, they voted that "each in- habitant shall pay his equal share in labour, boards, shingles, and clapboards, rum and other things that shall be needed." The amount of rum required for the work of raising a meeting house was stated as ten gallons. They finally decided, in 1797, to build the church which still stands near Holderness School, once called Lady Mary Livermore's Chapel, now Old Trinity. In 1803, a second church, (was this New Trinity ?) which afterwards burned, was erected near Squam Bridge, in a corner of the present graveyard. Robert Fowle, who was the first minister, came originally as a tutor for Judge Livermore's children. He was en- couraged to apply for ordination and was made priest by Bishop Seabury in 1791. Thereafter he was called Priest Fowle, that being the title given hereabout, even for ministers of Congregational churches. Priest Fowle was a bachelor, who was one day admonished by the Ferrywoman at Plymouth, "Mr. Fowle," she said, "you ought to take to yourself a wife." "Humph !" said he. "Yes, Lady Livermore has too much on her hands to take care of yourself and the two other gen- tlemen, and you ought to be off, living on your glebe, with a family of your own." "Humph!" said he. But
7
he presently took her advice. He lived to be eighty-one and his wife to be ninety. The glebe land is on Little Squam near the present town hall. Robert Fowle was the pastor of Holderness for fifty-eight years, preach- ing alternate Sundays in his two churches. He had a large dog, which had a habit of barking at anyone who came late. Mr. Fowle was discouraged about his church. In 1829, he said of it, "it is not flourishing, and I think it will not flourish." (After all, what else could be ex- pected of a man whose only other recorded conversa- tion consisted of "Humph!")
The Free Will Baptists arrived here about 1800 and became the leading church group in the neighbor- hood, though they never used Priest Fowle's little Church. They built a handsome brick church in what is now Ashland in 1835, a wooden building in North Holderness and another in East Holderness about 1840, and later a fourth at Holderness Bridge. All but the East Holderness one are still in use.
St. Peter's in the Mountains (Episcopal), one of the most beautiful small churches in the state, was built before 1890 on Shepard's Hill. It was supposed to be used the year round, but few people struggled up the hill in Winter; however, it was often full to overflowing in Summer with people from the big, showy Mt. Livermore Hotel, the Asquam House on the crest of Shepard's Hill, cottages and campers, both boys and girls. The hotels are gone, but the church re- mains, in happy use each Summer, often crowded to the doors.
The school master in the early days was Hercules Mooney, evidently a valiant and able person, for he fought in the French and Indian war and he helped lay out "a good convenient place for a road to be cleared from Canterbury to New Holderness." After that, he returned to his school teaching until some time in 1776 when he enlisted in the military service with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After the war he again became a teacher. He removed permanently to Holderness in 1785 and died in 1800. The house he built is still standing, with sundry later additions. It is at the head of the road running down Mooney's Point.
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S
r
6
Livermore Falls
LIVERMORE FALLS TRACT
CAM
175
TGo
HOLDERNESS
. SCHOOL
A
O
L
=
O.E
SOUTH : POP. 3 1.5
PLYMOUTH FA 2.2. 00
Church Hill
Spring
O
IMO
8.& M. PR
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A SHLAR:
L
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Perch Pond
Mt. Morgan
I
ich Pond
2040 Mt Webster
To Sandwich
Oct
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DESS
SANDWICH
1497
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Mt. Livermore
11
ion Mt.
SQUAM
5
CENTER HARBOR
East Holderness
LJ
7
CENTER
HARBOR
To Meredith
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ook
We have one local name (in what was once part of Holderness, and is now Ashland, which was set off from Holderness in 1868 as a separate town) which is both commemorative, unusual and heart-warming - that name is Christian Hill; Highland Street in Ash- land runs up it. The year 1816 was known as the "starve to death" year because of the terrible cold. There was killing frost and snow every month that year. One farmer on the southern facing slopes of Christian Hill raised a crop of wheat, a little over forty bushels. His neighbors were starving because nothing of theirs had grown. There was no grazing, so no milk. He gave out sparsely to meet absolute need. The grain was ground whole, and so eaten, without sifting. He scrimped and saved to have enough seed to give to all his neighbors when the next Spring came. His name was Reuben Whitten and when he died in 1847, his neighbors had his good neighborliness en- graved on his tombstone. His house is still in use.
From about 1850 on, Holderness was a very quiet country district. Men went to the Civil War and some came back. The great world began little by little to take some note of the Holderness area. In the 1870's Professor Charles Norton of Yale University brought up groups of students to observe the interesting geo- logical evidence of glaciation and the typical river-cut banks in Holderness along the Pemigewasset River and throughout the lake and mountain areas, and his students spread abroad word of the beauty of the re- gion. The first Harvard and Yale boat race was rowed at Center Harbor in 1852 (a travesty of this occasion was rowed on Squam Lake in 1902).
In 1879, the Holderness School for Boys was started. It was originally housed in Judge Livermore's large house, which came to a sad end through fire. It was rebuilt and continued. There have been six head- masters: The Reverend Frederick M. Gray was the first Rector; then came the Reverend Frank C. Cool- baugh; then came the Reverend Lorin Webster, Rec- tor for thirty years, followed by the Reverend Robert Eliot Marshall, who was succeeded by the Reverend Edric Amory Weld, who resigned after twenty years; to be followed by Mr. Donald C. Hagerman, the pres- ent headmaster, a layman.
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In 1881, the first boys' camp that anybody ever thought up was built by three college boys from Ply- mouth, on what was then known as Burnt Island. They put up a building and were considerably upset to have an equally upset farmer arrive, asking to know what they thought they were doing. They had sup- posed no one owned the island. He was consoled when they bought it for the large sum of $40.00! The camp they built there became a model for all young people's camps that followed, country wide. Mr. Ernest Balch, who started it, carried on for ten years, and religious services, in the outdoor chapel built by the boys, have been continued with one brief interruption from 1881 until now. The church belongs to itself, but is nomin- ally under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of New Hamp- shire. There are ten services there every Summer and the church is served by various pastors who have Sum- mer homes around the Lake.
Our town has become a Mecca for tourists and Summer people in general; some of whom own homes, some of whom go to Summer camps such as Deep- haven and Rockywold, which are much simplified forms of living, yet not as primitive as actual camping out. This type of establishment was started by Miss Alice Bacon, and carried out and developed further by her friend and occasional colleague, Mrs. Samuel Arm- strong, whose husband started Hampton Institute for Freed Slaves. Camps of that kind have increased all over the country, but their origin was here.
The lakes and connecting river have had an in- creasing influence on the town. The drop from the lake-level to the Pemigewasset is so great and so steep (over 107 feet) that naturally, a grist mill, saw- mill and the later mills were installed there, the only other mill being the now ruined saw mill and grist mill on White Oak Brook, across from where the square-timbered block-house-fort once stood. There are still six or seven dams in Ashland, and that section of the town struggled to free itself from the burden of the supposedly useless area of Holderness, which was almost one-fourth water, with a quantity of rock- ridged hills to add to its uselessness. Ashland wished to be quit of the burden of poor citizens on very poor
10
farms. In 1868 the division took place. Ashland throve; Holderness struggled along. In Summer the waterways helped to market the produce of the Winter's lumber- ing on the islands and roadless mainland shores, and after the first hard freeze, there were ice-roads, far more level and smooth than the town ones. At least three entrances to ice-roads are still in use. From sometime in the Eighties for about forty years the lake was served by a group of steamers which were formed into the Asquam Transportation Company, whose home docks were in the Ashland River near the sawmill dam. The two oldest, the Ashland and the Kusumpe, were freighters, much employed in towing the narrow lografts, many hundred feet long, collected from the Winter timber cutting, to the river mill. The Chocorua and the Halcyon carried mail, passen- gers and express. The Nellie J., run by Smith Piper, was a floating grocery and market, which a hungry fisherman in a rowboat might hail to buy a snack as she went from camp to camp. There were various other boats to let from a "boat livery" and others, as well as a number privately owned, the earlier ones as cranky as any prima donna. The Ashland leaked and fi- nally sank. The Chocorua and the Halcyon were lost when the transportation dock and shed caught fire, but the Kusumpe, aged nearly eighty, is said to be cherished, painted and polished by a devotee at Lake- port. The Oriole mail and passenger boat also remains, well over fifty years old.
Holderness has had and is now continuing a unique activity, in the form of a complete survey of the lake, literally from top to bottom and round about. There have long been charts, but the State Fish and Game Department, in conjunction with the Squam Lake As- sociation, did a biological survey for five years, includ- ing taking bottom samples, studying fish population, diseases and so on, and now a complete system of soundings through the ice is being carried out. When finished, our lake will be the most completely docu- mented body of water in the world.
We have had our share of floods, which have ne- cessitated hasty flight by boat from the western in- tervale, and sometimes heavy losses of goods, but
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somehow the town has always recovered again and calmly returned to the low lying houses in the bottom- lands.
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