USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > A history of the town of Hanover, N.H. > Part 26
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house and repairs, and three years later $400 additional was voted for additions and repairs.
About this time the policy of the care of the poor by the county was under discussion, and in 1851 Hanover voted against the proposition to buy two county farms by 75 to 37. The establish- ment of a single farm was completed in 1864, when a farm was purchased by the county in Haverhill and buildings were erected. Hanover was not in accord with this modern policy and for many years held its farm for the sake of those of its poor for whom the county farm seemed inappropriate. The strength of the feeling was shown in 1860, when a proposition in favor of the county farm was voted down by 86 to 3, and seven years later it was voted not to give up the town pauper settlement, while a proposal to sell the county farm was carried by 129 ayes to 23 noes.
This question continued to be discussed at times for more than forty years. At length it was decided to transfer the care of the poor to the county, and finally in 1903 the town poor farm was sold for $4,000 and its inmates transferred to the county farm. The town farm, beautifully situated on the Pinneo Hill road, has now passed into the possession of the Hanover Water Company, as part of the watershed of the reservoir. For a time overseers of the poor were still appointed by the town and special sums assigned to aid poor persons in the town, particularly for care during illness, were comparable in amount to the sum paid for care of town poor by the county. Gradually, however, as the new policy became established the conservatism of the town yielded to the simplicity and apparent desirability of the new system.
CHAPTER XIX
NEWSPAPERS AND PRINTERS
A PRINTING office was established in 1778 through the efforts of the College authorities in that part of Hanover then styled Dresden, soon after the first union with Vermont, and as an essential feature of the plan to locate the capital of the new State near the College. An application was first directed by Dr. Wheelock, through the Rev. Elijah Lathrop, to Mr. Trumbull, a printer in Norwich, Connecticut, and an apprentice of his, one "Huffe" (Hough), was selected as the likeliest man for the busi- ness, but owing to circumstances he could not be obtained with sufficient promptness to meet the urgency of the call and therefore John Wheelock was sent down on a special mission in May or June, 1778, to conclude the business if possible.
There was in New London, Connecticut, a printer of experience by the name of Timothy Green, who had also a branch office at Norwich under the title of "Green and Spooner," in charge of Judah Padock Spooner, a native of New London and a brother of Rebecca Spooner, the wife of Timothy Green or of his son of the same name. The result of Wheelock's negotiations was that types were furnished by Mr. Green and that Alden Spooner, a brother of Judah, ten years his junior and then about twenty years of age, was dispatched from the Norwich office to set up the desired enterprise at Dresden. A half acre of land, on which the "Ton- tine" afterward stood, was given by the College for a building lot, by way of inducement, but as there was no building on the land Spooner established his printing office in the "south end of the College," which stood near the southeast corner of the present Green.1
Judah probably retained a certain connection with the business, since we find his name often associated in it with that of Alden, but there is no evidence that he ever came to reside in Dresden. On the contrary, accounts for 1778-79, preserved in the State archives of Vermont, though drawn in favor of "Judah P. and Alden Spooner," were paid to Alden, and the Council in making
1 Ms. Diary of Sergeant Major John Hawkins, quoted in an article on The Dresden Press in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine for May, 1920, by Harold Goddard Rugg, to whom I am much indebted for helpful suggestions.
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settlement recognized him alone in its vote of June 3, 1779,1 and further, it was with him, as we shall see, that the ineffectual nego- tiations were had in the winter of 1779-80 for a removal of the press to Westminster. Besides, the name of Alden alone is found upon the title page of four of the most important works sent out from the Dresden press, and he alone was recognized by the College in the disposition of the building lot given by it to the printer.
The office was in working order by early autumn. As expected, the official printing of the State of Vermont was entrusted to the office, and in the joint names of the brothers, by the Assembly on October 10, 1778. The first item of their bill for "commissions" is dated October 15. At the end of the year, in October, 1779, the union having failed for the time, the Vermonters became impatient at having the official printer located outside the limits of the State, and the Assembly set on foot negotiations with Alden Spooner to remove from Dresden to Westminster "without loss of time," and ordered, if he declined, that another printer should be procured to settle there.
.After consulting Mr. Green, to whom the types belonged, Alden signified in March, 1780, his willingness to move "as soon as the court house could be repaired so as to make it convenient for his business and he could procure paper." But the matter seems to have gone no farther, for in June, 1780, the Council took new steps "to procure a printer in this State," and on August 18 rati- fied 2 an agreement with Mr. Timothy Green of New London "on condition that Mr. Green send his son to print for this State in lieu of Mr. Spooner." To expedite the plan Ezra Stiles was specially deputed by the Assembly to repair to New London and facilitate the removing of the types and other apparatus, and young Timothy Green and Judah P. Spooner came up from Connecticut and established themselves at Westminster in the fall of the same year, 1780. On the first day of November Judah went to Dresden and brought thence the types ( for the transportation of which up- ward of £4 was charged), but not the press, so far as appears. To them was given the printing of State papers and currency, and in February, 1781, they began the publication of the Gazette and Postboy, the first newspaper ever published in Vermont.
It seems to be certain that Alden Spooner did not remove to Westminster. The accounts of the State with that office were
1 Vt. Gov. and Council, Vol. I, p. 303.
2 Vt. Gov. and Council, II, 39.
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charged and allowed in favor of Judah alone, and when, in June, 1781, Judah Spooner and Green with others were charged with making unlawful issues of State currency, Alden's name did not appear among them. It is probable that he returned to Norwich, Connecticut, sometime in 1780 or 1781. In May, 1782, the Trustees of the College conveyed to John Young the half acre lot, before mentioned, "in consideration that he hath purchased of Alden Spooner the same lot which was engaged by the Rev. Dr. Wheelock, founder and late President of Dartmouth College, to be conveyed gratis to said Spooner as an encouragement for his settling in the vicinity of said College in the character and capacity of a printer, which the said Spooner hath fulfilled on his part, and hath requested conveyance of said lot to be made to said Young." 1
In March, 1782, the Vermont Assembly signified its dissatis- faction with the printer at Westminster and for a year made . ineffectual attempts to provide another. A new committee, formed in February, 1783, of which one member was Abel Curtis of Norwich, Vermont (author of the Grammar mentioned later), contracted in March with George Hough of Norwich, Connecticut (the "Huffe" of Mr. Lathrop), in behalf of himself and Alden Spooner, to undertake the business for five years, in consequence of which they "left other valuable employments" and established themselves at Windsor. There on the 7th of August, 1783, they began the publication of the Vermont Journal and Universal Advertiser, which Spooner maintained until his death, but with the title, from 1792, of Spooner's Vermont Journal. Hough left him at the close of the year 1788 and in August, 1789, removed to Concord, New Hampshire, where he established the Concord Herald, the earliest paper printed there. Alden Spooner died suddenly at Windsor May 2, 1827, in the seventieth year of his age. While at Dresden Spooner printed in a very creditable man- ner several important documents.
The first newspaper published in western New Hampshire was The Dresden Mercury, which was issued from the press of Alden Spooner at Dresden in 1779. The existence of such a paper has been questioned, but within a few years five copies of it have come to light, two being in the library of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, one in the New York Public Library, a fourth in the library of Dartmouth College, and one in a private library in Rutland, Vermont. The date of the first issue is established by an entry in the manuscript diary of Sergeant
1 Grafton County Deeds, Lib. g. fol. 523.
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Major John Hawkins, now in the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, in which, under date of May 6, 1779, writing at Piermont, New Hampshire, where he was at that time with his regiment, he said : "This day I had the perusal of the 1st No. of the Dresden Mercury, dated May 4th."
How long the paper was issued is not known, but one of the copies preserved carries the date of September 27, 1779. One num- ber is known to have contained the valedictory address, given in August, 1779, by Samuel Wood, afterward a minister at Bos- cawen, New Hampshire, which was also issued as a pamphlet, entitled "An Oration on Early Education," with the imprint of J. P. and A. Spooner.
Thirty-four imprints of his press are known, though not all are extant. Among them besides handbills, proclamations and broad- sides, are various official publications of the State of Vermont, a sermon preached by the Rev. Eden Burroughs, several pamphlets by Ira Allen, Ethan Allen, and others concerning the New Hamp- shire Grants and the State of Vermont, a couple of publications for Dartmouth College, a few fugitive pieces, and one book, the forerunner of its kind, entitled :
A Compend of English Grammar, being an attempt to point out the fundamental principles of the English language in a concise and intelligible manner, and to assist in writing and speaking the same with accuracy and correctness. Written by Abel Curtis, A. B. Dresden (Dartmouth College). Printed by J. P. and A. Spooner, 1779.
This is said to have been the earliest purely English Grammar written and published in America. It had forty-nine pages, meas- uring seven and a half by four and a half inches. But a single copy is known to exist, formerly in the possession of the Rev. Henry A. Hazen of Boston.1
The press that was used in Dresden seems to have been an ancient and historic one. It is said to have been the first printing press ever worked in New England, having been brought from England in 1638 by Jose Glover, who died at sea. It was set up at Cambridge by his widow, in the house of President Dunster of Harvard College, Stephen Daye being the first printer. From President Dunster, who acquired the press after his marriage to Mrs. Glover, the press passed to Samuel Green, and through him to his descendants, the patrons of the Spooners, from whom Alden
1 The Dartmouth for October 19, 1877, has an article by Mr. Hazen in regard to this Grammar. A complete list of Spooner's publications is given in the article on The Dresden Press already referred to in the note on page 261.
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is said to have purchased it before going to Dresden. He took it with him to Windsor, and after passing through several hands it was, many years later, picked up as a relic and deposited in the State House at Montpelier, where it now remains.1
For the next thirteen years Hanover, so far as we know, was without a printer. There was indeed little for one to do, and in case of need, after 1783, Windsor was not far away. The College in truth required such services hardly at all. No catalogues were then issued, and not a single charge for printing is discovered in the College accounts during the period in question.
But in 1793 a printing office was established by Josiah Dunham in a chamber of the Academy building, that stood near the spot now occupied by Chandler Hall, at the northwest corner of the College Green. Dunham was graduated from the College in 1789, and served the four ensuing years as master of Moor's School. He then turned his attention to printing and to literature. He set up the first book store and promptly began, on July 22, 1793, the issue of a newspaper, which he entitled The Eagle or Dartmouth Centinel, and published every Monday. The price, if taken at the office of publication, was seven shillings a year, and the charge for advertising was four shillings for twelve lines for the first three weeks and two shillings for a second like period. The paper was "dedicated to politics and the Belles Lettres." Its four pages, in dimensions eleven by seventeen inches, having four columns neatly printed, contained but few items, being occupied with national and foreign news, advertisements and literary matter, including a poetical column headed "Aonian Rill" and furnished now and then with an original poem by the editor, who possessed some talent in that direction, and who at one time while here set out to print a volume of his fugitive pieces, but we think that he did not accomplish it.
Mr. Dunham conducted the enterprise in all its branches until the end of February, 1795, when he transferred the printing department to his nephew, John M. Dunham, who a month later associated with himself Benjamin True. Under the name of "Dunham and True" they carried on the business two years, but at the expiration of that period, in the middle of March, 1797, they separated, young Dunham removing to Haverhill, while Mr. True remained in Hanover until his death in the summer of 1798.
1 Granite State Journal, July 14, 1883. The same paper in the issue of August 18, 1883, has long articles on the early printers of Vermont, with an account of the Spooners.
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During all this time the paper was regularly issued, Josiah Dunham retaining the editorial management of it until May, 1796. Upon the death of True it came, under the simple name of The Eagle, into the hands of Moses Fiske, a graduate of 1786 and seven years. a tutor in the College, by whom it was conducted for a year, when its publication ceased in June, 1799, to be resumed, however, after an interval of two months under the title of the Dartmouth Gazette, by Moses Davis, a young and enterprising printer from Concord where he had edited The Mirror, who now purchased the business from the heirs of Mr. True.
Davis was a very bright man with a talent for business, of great industry and many attractive qualities, which rendered him a gen- eral favorite. He married, in October, 1800, Miss Nancy Fuller, a sister of a classmate and an intimate friend of Daniel Webster, for whom the house of the father, Deacon Caleb Fuller, was a favorite and delightful resort. Davis shared the intimacy and retained throughout his short life a warm place in Webster's heart. Webster manifested his interest by frequent literary contributions in prose and poetry, generally, but not always, indicated by the signature of "Icarus." Webster's help was highly valued by Davis and was rendered occasionally even after graduation. Among other things the customary New Year's poetical address to the postman for 1803 is understood to have been from his pen. It is quite possible that other motives combined with his friendship for Davis to stimulate his literary efforts, for he records in his frag- ment of an autobiography that he earned his board a year while in College "by superintending the literary department of a little weekly paper." In 1803 Davis offered the editorial management of the paper to Webster's brother, Ezekiel, who declined it.1
On August 6, 1803, Davis started also a bi-weekly sheet of four pages, quarto, in size ten inches by twelve, entitled the Literary Tablet, made up of selections, with some original matter, and devoted exclusively to literature. Though avowedly published by Moses Davis, it purported to be under the editorial direction of "Nicholas Orlando." It is impossible to say for whom this appella- tion stood, but there is no doubt that both the Websters wrote for it, as did others.2 This little Tablet survived through four volumes until August 5, 1807. Besides these two papers a very considerable amount of miscellaneous printing was done, and well done, in his
1 Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster, Vol. I, passim in the carlier letters. For the offer to Ezekiel see ibid., p. 136.
2 Webster's Private Cor., Vol. I, pp. 136, 138.
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office. Sermons and other pamphlets with Davis' imprint are not very rare, and some small books likewise were issued from his press. He began also, in 1802, the printing for the first time of a complete annual catalogue of the officers and students of the Col- lege, occupying, however, only one side of a broad sheet. Davis was of a delicate constitution and owing to his unremitting labors fell into a hopeless decline and died July 24, 1808, at the age of thirty-one, leaving a wife and two little children.
The Gazette for the next three months was "printed for the proprietor by Colburn and Day," who in no other way are known to us. In October Mrs. Davis disposed of the office to two brothers, Charles and William S. Spear, by whom the paper was continued without interruption to April 24, 1811. During the last half year of that period the Spears were joined by a third brother, Henry, but the partnership having been dissolved in April, 1811, two of the brothers removed to Concord, where they published the Concord Gazette, while Charles remained at Han- over. The publication of the Dartmouth Gazette was resumed by him June 5, 1811, and continued without a break until June, 1820, though called from the last of 1813 to February, .1816, the Dartmouth Gazette and Grafton and Coos Advertiser, but in its later years, though it sang, as was rather scornfully said, "the music of the Spears," it lacked something of the ability that char- acterized it under Dunham and Davis.
In politics the paper, as both the Eagle and the Gazette, was strongly Federalist. In the College troubles of 1815 to 1819 the Gazette, though at first assuming an impartial attitude, soon ardently espoused the side of the old Board, in sympathy with the overwhelming local sentiment, while Josiah Dunham, the former editor of the Eagle, took in the Washingtonian at Windsor with still greater ardor the side of his old friend, President Wheelock. But the President, in order to have a home organ to balance the Gazette, caused a rival paper to be established here in February, 1816, by David Watson, Jr., afterward of Woodstock, Vermont. The new paper bore the name of The American, and assumed at the first an air of moderation, claiming in politics to be above party-simply American-but without much delay it disclosed its true mission and fell practically into line with the Concord Patriot. President Wheelock died April 5, 1817, and the paper did not survive him, its last issue being on the second of the same month. Watson's office was at the north end of the "Tontine" until Octo- ber 16, 1816, and thereafter in the middle section of the same
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building. Watson removed to Woodstock, Vermont, in the spring of 1818, where he remained as a printer till 1832.1 The price of the American was $2.00 a year.
The price of the Gazette was $1.50 a year at the office, $1.75 by mail. Its publication office remained at the old Academy building until August, 1801, when it was removed by Mr. Davis to a building on Main Street, probably north of the present bank build- ing, and in December, 1806, to a building on the opposite side of the street, which Mr. Davis also occupied as his residence, now known as No. 25. The Spears removed the office in 1809 to the second floor of the little frame building that occupied what is now the open space between College and Robinson Halls, and added to their printing a book store and a bindery and advertised book- making in all its branches. The office was transferred in Decem- ber, 1815, to the second story at the extreme south end of the Tontine, then just completed.
The Gazette, in June, 1820, went into the hands of (Ridley ) Bannister and (Lyman) Thurston, but with the issue of July 25, 1820, it took the name of the Dartmouth Herald. It started out with a magnificent program, promising to "embrace accounts of our national and state legislatures, and the most interesting articles of news, foreign and domestic; notices of improvements in the arts and sciences, especially agriculture and the mechanic arts most practiced in our own country ; and essays, original and selected, upon the mechanical and liberal Arts, Literature, Politics, Morals, and Religion. The original articles will be furnished by a society of gentlemen; and it is confidently expected will not be unworthy the interesting subjects to which a considerable space will be allotted in this paper."
This alluring promise was not long fulfilled, for the paper finally stopped with the issue of July 25, 1821, upon a dissolution of the partnership of the printers. The paper had enjoyed under its vari- ous names an existence practically continuous for twenty-seven years. It was the first, and for a long time the only, paper in the valley east of the river and north of Keene. It thus had the advan- tage of being the medium of official advertising, and enjoyed for the times a large circulation. To subscribers at a distance it was carried by postriders and was delivered through agents in the various towns from Northumberland on the north to Concord on the east and Plainfield on the river below. But the multiplication of papers
1 An account of him may be found in Dana's History of Woodstock, Ver- mont., pp. 269-271.
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and the increase of mail facilities brought competition from a distance, and as the circulation diminished the paper ceased to be profitable. It was twenty years before a serious effort was made to revive the publication of a paper in the village, and to this day only the Hanover Gazette has met with similar success.
The printing office, however, has maintained its existence without material interruption, and though some of its managers have come to financial grief, yet it has proved in the main profit- able as a job office. Its incumbents have been Ridley Bannister and Lyman Thurston from 1820 probably to 1827; Thomas Mann, with whom was associated for a time a Mr. Sweetser, from 1827 to 1840, when he failed and paid thirty cents on the dollar; and Edward A. Allen, who came from Montpelier, Vermont, in 1840 and remained to the end of 1841. He removed his office to a building two doors south of the Tontine and somewhat in the rear. About 1841 an office was opened by Alanson St. Clair and Chester C. Briggs, to which from January, 1842, to July, 1843, there was a rival office owned by W. A. Patten. Both of these were bought out and consolidated in 1843 by John E. Hood, a graduate of the College in 1841, who, after a year in Andover Theological Seminary, had edited the Essex Transcript at Ames- bury, Massachusetts, for one year before coming to Hanover. He was followed in 1845 by David Kimball, who maintained the office until 1867. He was a native of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, and a graduate of Yale College and Andover Seminary. He lived in Concord from 1835 to 1842, where he published the monthly Temperance Herald in 1835 and 1836, and also the New Hamp- shire Observer to January 1, 1839, then the same paper with its name changed to Christian Panoplist to 1840, when it was again changed to the Congregational Journal, and this he published until he removed to Franklin in 1842, from which place he removed to Hanover in 1845. After giving up the business in 1867 he went to live with his son in Cartersville, Illinois, where he died February 8, 1875, aet. eighty-four. Bela Chapin of Claremont purchased the office of Mr. Kimball in 1867 and in November took as a partner Parmenas H. Whitcomb of Sutton, New Hampshire, to whom in September, 1868, he gave up the business and returned to Claremont. The office, which since Mr. Hood's occupancy had been in the south end of the second story of the Tontine, was removed by Mr. Whitcomb to the wooden building next south of the Tontine in 1874. Mr. Whitcomb sold out to Linwood C. Gillis of Manchester in 1893, and he in turn in 1899 to Frank A.
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Musgrove, who removed the office across the street to a building which was burned in May, 1914, but was immediately replaced by the present commodious structure.
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