USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > A history of the town of Hanover, N.H. > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33
'Autobiography of Amos Kendall, p. 23.
34
History of Hanover
win's business passed in 1815 to John Dobie, who, in partnership with a man named Copp, opened a shop in the old Commons Hall.
In 1829 Douglass built on the south edge of this lot a duplicate of Baldwin's shop and so near to it that the chambers of both buildings were reached by a common flight of stairs between them. The building was occupied by different traders until it was bought by the village precinct in 1875 for an engine house, and when the engines were transferred to the old brick school house at the top of River Hill it was sold to H. H. Clough, then living in the old Gilbert house, and was by him moved to the rear of the lot, where it is used by W. H. Rand as part of his store.
The house now owned by the precinct (No. 15) was built by John Young, who came here from Gunthwaite (Lisbon) and married Theodora, daughter of President Eleazar Wheelock and widow of Alexander Phelps. Young bought of the College for £36 a lot of land five rods and thirteen and a half feet on the street and twenty rods deep, on which he built this house, which after his death in 1786 passed through various hands, being leased with its barn, in February, 1801, by John Wheelock to Nathan Smith until December for an ear of corn and later it came into the possession of Abraham Dunklee, a shoemaker, who had a shop in the Tontine in 1815, and who had the position of hogreef in 1804, of constable in 1814 and 1815, and of sealer of leather in 1816. The house was bought by the precinct of the estate of William Walker in 1906.
Dunklee built a house just south of the precinct house, which was afterward used as a bakery by a man named Sturtevant, from whom the baking business passed in succession to Cross and Hyde. to E. K. Smith and T. J. Emmons, and then to Emmons alone. Emmons had bought of G. W. Kibling a candy business, which the latter had carried on in the house just north of the present bank building, but when Smith and Emmons separated in the manage- ment of the bakery, Smith bought of Emmons the candy business and moved it to the northern edge of the village to a shop which he built for the purpose, and which afterward was made into a dwelling house and now belongs to the Theta Chi fraternity. In 1852 Smith, having bought of Emmons the baking business also, built as a bakery a second shop, immediately north of the candy shop, thus carrying both businesses to the northern part of the village on Rope Ferry Road. From 1854 the Dunklee house was occupied by Dr. J. A. Smith until it was purchased by Newton S. Huntington. From him, in 1899, it came into the hands of
35
The Village at the College
F. A. Musgrove who turned it into a printing office and after it was burned, May 3, 1914, erected the present brick building (No. 17) in its place.
In 1835 a lane was opened between the two Dunklee houses, to give access to a livery stable, facing easterly into the lane, built by Amos Dudley. This stable came into the hands of Ira B. Allen, and in 1869, as a part of extensive improvements, was turned around to face north and enlarged, and the lane, known since as "Allen Lane," was opened through to School Street. The stable, which in the change from horses to automobiles had be- come a garage, was burned May 13, 1925.
The lot next south of the Dunklee house, six rods by twenty, was given by the College to Professor John Smith in 1780 as part of his settlement in his professorship. He built a house near the middle of it, in which he lived and had the bookstore already men- tioned, and later a shop was built on the north side of the lot. After the death of Mrs. Smith, Professor John Hubbard lived for a time in the house, which after several transfers came into the possession of the College, and in 1869 it was moved away to a position on South Street just west of the lower hotel, where it was burned with the hotel, July 11, 1888. The shop was moved to the north side of Lebanon Street, just east of the present bank, and was rented as a tinshop, then became a barn and was torn down. The Episcopal rectory was built on the lot in 1869, and the little chapel for the use of a parish school in 1871. A strip on the southern side of Professor Smith's lot was sold to Alfred Morse, who built on it, about 1842, a house that was for many years the home of S. W. Cobb and is now No. 23 Main Street.
The lot next south of this, ten rods wide by sixteen deep, was granted by the College to Barnabas Perkins of Lebanon, shop- joiner, December 31, 1778. Within a few years it passed through various hands and in 1793 it came to Asa Holden, who kept a tavern there in 1794 and 1795, but I do not find by whom the house was built, or in what year. Holden died in 1797, and in the next year Deacon Benoni Dewey opened there a tavern and "Coffee House," and it continued until 1802, when he moved to the Brewster place at the southwest corner of the Green. The tavern stand, which he left, was continued by others until 1806, when Moses Davis opened in it his printing office, with the post office in the south side. His daughter, Mrs. Watson, occupied it later and changed the gambrel roof to a pitch roof.
On the part of the lot below the tavern were built two houses,
1136778
36
History of Hanover
one in 1836 by F. A. Haynes (No. 27), by whom it was first occupied, then by his widow, who lived to be ninety-eight years old, dying on February 25, 1907, and after her by her son, Adna, until his death in 1916; the second house (No. 29), whose builder is unrecorded, was occupied at times as a store and more often as a dwelling, until it was burned in the fire of 1888. The house now next the Haynes house was built by P. H. Whitcomb in 1889.
Below the Perkins lot was one, ten rods by sixteen, granted by the College to Charles Sexton, a blacksmith. Gamaliel Loomis acquired it in 1783 and built a large house (No. 31) upon it at the corner, prior to 1795, in which year it passed into the hands of Moses Brigham and Levi Parks, but on their failure it was bought by James Wheelock in 1797 and opened as a tavern in 1802, when Benoni Dewey took his "Coffee House" up the street. Under various names and with many proprietors it continued, intermittently, as a tavern for seventy-five years. Its most pros- perous period was from 1821 to 1838, when it was kept by Captain Ebenezer Symmes, who removed his bakery from across the street and farther up, to rear of the tavern, which he enlarged by putting across the front a piazza, two stories high and covered by an extension of the roof. In 1838 he sold the place to Jonathan G. Currier, and he in turn, after leasing it in succession to Joseph Barber and Alvan Tubbs, sold it to Horace Frary, who kept it for some years as the "Hanover Inn." Before that, it had been the "Union House," afterward the "American House" in 1854, and again the "Hanover Inn" in 1858. For many years it was the "Lower Hotel," then after a season of neglect it was bought in 1868 by the College and turned into a dormitory, named "South Hall" and designed especially for use by the students of the Agri- cultural College, then newly established. As a dormitory it was never regarded with favor, and after being deserted by the stu- dents it was used as a tenement, and after the destruction of the Dartmouth Hotel in January, 1887, it again became a kind of tavern, until it also was destroyed by fire, July 11, 1888. The present building on the lot was erected by Dorrance B. Currier in 1894, the ground floor having been arranged for stores, which have had a great variety of occupants, and the second floor for lodgings in connection with a restaurant in the lower story. The inn thus arranged has had an intermittent and checkered existence.
On the southwest corner of Main and South Streets (the latter then a lane) a lot, four by sixteen rods, was leased by the College to George Walton, tailor, in 1786, on condition that he build before
37
The Village at the College
September 1, 1789, "exactly on this lot," a framed dwelling, thirty-eight feet long, twenty feet wide and of seventeen feet posts. As Walton was living there in 1796 and had his tailor shop in the rear of his house (No. 33), it would appear that the condition of the deed was fulfilled. Since that time the house has been occupied mostly by business men of the village. On the next lot was a house, always innocent of paint, that was built by Lake Coffeen in 1786 and torn down about 1860, in which Professor John Hubbard lived and died. Professor Hubbard had his garden in 1810 on the lot next south of this house, which had been leased in 1787 to one William Gilbert, on a condition like that of Walton's, but the condition was not met and the lot remained vacant until 1825, when the house now standing there and owned by the estate of Dorrance B. Currier (No. 37), was built by Thomas D. Carpenter, whose father, Nathaniel, lived just south of Mink Brook on this road.
Below this were several houses, one a small one-story building, standing endwise to the street and long occupied by an old negro woman, born in slavery and known as "Aunt Sophy," who died in 1878, and another where Horace P. Chamberlain lived, with a gambrel roof, lengthwise on the road, which continued until 1901, when it disappeared to give way to what is now number 39. The last house on that side of the street was a small one-and- a-half-story house, built by John Coty about 1870.
On the east side of the road the lot at the top of the hill was leased by the College in 1787 to Stephen S. Swett, from whom it passed by several changes to Joseph L. Dewey in 1814, and he conveyed it in 1850 to Jonathan G. Currier, having built, probably at once, the house (No. 52) now upon it, but not in its present form, as it was rebuilt and enlarged in 1869 by Mr. Currier. Below this place several lots were granted in early times. On the first, lived for many years with her family a negro woman, Jane Wentworth, widow of Charles, a janitor of the College, who died before 1823. Other negroes lived in an adjoining house, and this circumstance gave the name to the hill which to this day has been known as "Negro Hill." On the next lot a house and barn were built at an early date and were granted by the College in 1795 to Joseph Lee, and he in the next year sold the north half with the buildings to John Stone, "busbandman," who in that year was licensed to keep a tavern. The buildings seem to have been replaced by a large rambling structure that soon fell into decay and was used as a tenement by the lowest characters, and
38
History of Hanover
from its motley tenants was called the "Seven Nations." It finally became so obnoxious that it was torn down with the con- sent of its owner, Ebenezer Brewster, by the students in 1833.1 On the site of these houses two houses were built in 1923 by A. W. Guyer and R. J. Putnam. The Benton place at the foot of the hill was the farm of Ralph Wheelock, but the original house was burned in 1840, and the present brick house was built by Reuben Benton.
The two lots north of Mr. Currier's place were conveyed by the College in 1785, the lower one to Michael Duguet, Wheelock's "baker, brewer and cook," and the upper one to Ebenezer Fitch, a hatter, from whom it passed in succession to Adam Rice, a bricklayer, and Isaac Bissell, a cordwainer, but both lots in 1823 came into the possession of Anthony Morse, from whom the southernmost of the two houses retains the name of the "Morse place" (No. 50). The house that now stands above it (No. 48), on the southeast corner of Main and South Streets, was moved there in 1884 to make room for Wilson Hall, on whose site it had stood since 1785, when it was built by Dr. Laban Gates.
The land fronting on Main Street, between Lebanon and South Streets, was originally, as now, divided into two lots. Whether the house standing on the lower lot (No. 46) is the only one ever built there, I do not know. We find the place occupied in 1786 by Lieutenant Benjamin Coult, but in 1788 the College conveyed it to Humphrey Farrar "with a large house standing thereon." Mr. Farrar was a prominent citizen, who came here from Lincoln, Mass., before 1778, and whose four sons were graduated from the College between 1794 and 1801. He also bought the adjoining lot on the north and transferred them both in 1801 to Levi Parks, from whom they passed to Parks' Boston creditors four years later, but in 1810 they were owned by John Holmes. The original Farrar lot came into the possession of President John Wheelock and passed to the Allens, by whom it was rented for many years. It was bought by Albert Wainwright, a tinsmith, in 1836 and remained in the possession of his family until 1911, when it was bought by Mrs. Laura A. W. Phelps.
The lot at the southeast corner of Lebanon Street was given by the College in 1778 to Jabez Bingham, Wheelock's nephew, and by him conveyed, in connection with the lot on the north side of the street, to Dr. Gideon Tiffany. For some years it followed the
1 See the writer's History of Dartmouth College, II, p. 257.
39
The Village at the College
fortunes of the Farrar lot, but in 1813 it was bought by Mrs. Hannah Holkins, who lived on it in a small one-story house built of timbers of enormous size. In 1835 it was purchased by Major William Tenney, a blacksmith, who built the brick house now standing on it (No. 42). In 1883 it came into the possession of E. P. Storrs. Early in the century a gun house stood on the rear of the lot, which was burned in 1846 on a Sunday, the fire originating with a fire ball in the hands of a boy, a relic of the Fourth of July just passed. In the rear of the Farrar place there was for many years a brick yard.
The land along Main Street, between Lebanon and Wheelock Streets, has passed through so many hands and has been the seat of so many traders that it would not be worth while to follow out the changes in detail, even if it were possible. The corner lot, where the bank now stands (No. 40), was given by the College in 1771 to Jabez Bingham to encourage his settling here as its farmer. In the next year he built a house near the middle of the lot, about where a blacksmith shop long stood, and in 1778-79 he had a store there. In 1782, describing himself as of South Hadley, Mass., trader, he sold the property to Dr. Gideon Tiffany of Keene, and within the next thirty years it had many owners and was used for many purposes. Thus, in 1796, it was bought by Heman Pomroy, whom, in 1801, we find occupying it as a tailor's shop and as a general store, which he advertised 1 as a few rods south of Dewey's Coffee House and opposite the Hanover Bookstore, and in which he was followed the next year by Aaron Wright. Later still, in 1815, it was owned by Justin Hinds, who kept a bookstore, as has been before stated, "next door south of Dewey's tavern," and about 1833 the house was moved to the southwest corner of the village, where it afterward became the ell of B. E. Lewin's former house.
At some time there was built on the north side of the lot, with its gable toward the street, a long one-story building, having a basement and a double entrance to two stores, which harbored many and varied tenants. Here Oliver Carter had a grocery and liquor store which he sold in 1842 to G. W. Kibling who much enlarged the business. Later, Albert Wainwright took the south side for a tinshop, and in 1869 he enlarged the building with an additional story (No. 34). Still later it became the printing office of P. H. Whitcomb, who had previously had his office in the south end of the Tontine. From him it passed to E. T. Ford in 1906
1 Dartmouth Gazette, November 21, 1801.
.
40
History of Hanover
and from him to Thomas E. Ward. The house next south of it was built about 1820 by Jabez A. Douglass.
The Tontine lot, next north of Jabez Bingham's, extending eleven rods on the street, was given by the College in 1778 to Alden Spooner, the first printer, and was held by him until about 1780. No conveyance was made to him and in May, 1782, at his request, the lot was conveyed by the College to John Young. Wheelock's son-in-law, who lived across the street. What build- ings Spooner had, if any, we do not know, as his printing was in the "College," a building on the Green. Nor do we know what other early buildings there may have been on the lot. That there were some, aside from the natural employment of so valuable a site, is shown by the fact that the lot was conveyed in 1795 to Levi Parks, who thenceforth lived on it and kept a large general store there, as a rival to Richard Lang's, until 1805, when he failed and assigned this property with other lots to his Boston creditors. He mentions, as located here, his store and the house where he lives. He had been clerk of market in 1794, the hay scales being opposite his store. In 1813 the property was sold to H. L. Davenport, who began in the same year the brick Tontine, which was completed and first occupied in 1815.
The Tontine-a name probably adopted without regard to its special significance, in imitation of some large building in Connecticut familiar to the builder, and in the beginning some- times called "Fort Tontine"-was a scheme of Davenport, an active but visionary carpenter of Connecticut origin, who had in 1811 derived considerable profit from the erection of the medical building under the direction of Dr. Nathan Smith. Besides its too ambitious design-being one hundred and forty feet long, forty feet wide, and four stories in height-the building met with several misfortunes in the process of construction, and proved the financial ruin of its projector. He finally sold it for $4,000 to Joseph Emerson of Norwich and a Mr. Dame of Boston, who finished the upper story.
After being hawked about for many years without finding a pur- chaser, it was bought from Mr. Dame for $2,000 by Messrs. Ira Young and Daniel Blaisdell. They expended a like amount in raising and strengthening the southern section, which had settled about ten inches. Several years after the death of Professor Young it came into the hands of Messrs. J. G. Currier and William H. Gibbs.
Its design was faulty and it was not convenient for tenants,
PLATE III
MAIN STREET LOOKING SOUTH Showing the Tontine: about 1870
HAR T Men T'll BUTYL
THE DARTMOUTH HOTEL: ABOUT 1870
41
The Village at the College
but with all its defects the Tontine afforded shelter during more than seventy years to the chief part of the business of the village. In its earlier years it was largely occupied for students' rooms, the College at the date of its erection having for this use only Dartmouth Hall and the old Commons Hall. Efforts were made at two different times to induce the College to take the Tontine itself, once by purchase and once as a gift, but it was, as has been implied, considered something of an elephant, and the authorities declined to have anything to do with it. The rooms of the two upper stories, being in little demand for other purposes, were gradually transformed for the most part into halls for under- graduate societies by removing the upper floor in several of the sections and throwing the two upper stories into one. The first hall thus constructed was that of the Psi Upsilon, at the south end of the building, about 1860. This was followed by halls of Delta Kappa Epsilon, Phi Delta Theta, Phi Zeta Mu, Vitruvian and Sphinx.
The building was destroyed by fire in the early morning of January 4, 1887, and was replaced in the succeeding summer by the present two-story building of the same length, but of greater depth, the north half by Dorrance B. Currier and the south half by John L. Bridgman. The old building was made in three sec- tions, affording six sets of rooms on each floor, and three entrances to the upper stories. The sections were numbered from north to south one to six, or more often, counting the stair- ways, one to nine. The lower rooms at the ends of the building, north and south, and perhaps others, had at first no direct out- side entrance to adapt them for stores; such entrances being provided at a later time. It would be impossible and uninteresting to enumerate all the occupants of these stores ; it will be enough to mention some of the principal ones.
In Number 1 there was, at first, a hat manufactory, John Stewart and Company. "Joseph Emerson, Samuel B. Cobb and John Stewart" advertised hat bodies manufactured at Hartford, Conn., "finished by us in the most elegant style." After one year they removed to Rowley Hall and the room became for two years the printing office of President Wheelock's paper, The American. It was then the home of several stores until 1852, when Horace Frary occupied it as a public house and liquor shop. When he became the proprietor of the Dartmouth Hotel, the place became the tailor's shop of E. D. Carpenter and so continued until the burning of the building.
.
42
History of Hanover
Number 3 began and ended as a store, but from 1821 to 1848 it was the home of the post office, which, after a transfer to the other side of the street, returned to the Tontine and occupied Number 7 from 1861 to 1887. Other than this use by the post office, Numbers 4, 6 and 7 were generally taken by stores sepa- rately, or sometimes in connection, as when they were used by Levi P. Morton, who came to Hanover as a clerk of W. W. Esta- brook of Boston, who had a store in Number 6 for several years from 1843. Morton began on his own account in a small way, but with the same qualities which later carried him to a successful business in New York City and to the vice-presidency of the United States, he extended his business until he acquired the three stores, having groceries in Number 7, and dry goods in 6 and 4, and using some of 5 as a store room, with a tailor's shop in a wooden addition in the rear. This combination was not continued after he left Hanover. Besides the post office in Number 7 from 1861, many individuals occupied the different stores, but Number 6 had the chief place of business, being occupied as a general store by E. C. Danforth, Danforth and Dewey, I. O. Dewey as Dewey and Co., N. S. Huntington, Clough and Storrs, H. H. Clough, Lincoln and Davison, and F. W. Davison, who was the occupant when the building was burned.
Number 9 at the south end of the building was likewise occupied by a great variety of interests, but was used as a tinshop by Albert Wainwright until he took the little shop just south of the Tontine, when the room which he vacated was taken by J. B. Parker for the most extensive bookstore that Hanover ever had. On his failure in 1875 he was succeeded by Newton A. Frost with a jewelry store, which continued until the time of the fire. As has been said, the rooms of the upper stories were taken to a considerable extent by students, but several lawyers, Ira Perley, Frederick Chase and Henry A. Folsom had their offices there. In the second story of the south end was the printing office for many years until removed by Mr. Whitcomb in 1873, and in the corresponding room at the north end the Dartmouth National Bank was established in 1865, where it remained until it found a new home in a brick building, which was erected in 1870 by the savings bank, with which it was connected, on the west side of Main Street where Robinson Hall now is.
The Dartmouth Hotel (Hanover Inn) lot of half an acre (7 1/3 rods wide and 11 rods long), extending originally from the Green to the Tontine lot, was given by the College in 1778 to
43
The Village at the College
General Ebenezer Brewster of Preston, Conn., for a building lot, by way of partial inducement to him to settle here as College steward. It was not intended as a tavern, but the General, after occupying for a year or two the adjoining house, which he hired of Dr. Crane, built, about 1780, a frame house on the northwest corner of his lot, and unexpectedly to the authorities set up a tavern, which he continued personally to keep until 1802, when he leased the stand to Deacon Benoni Dewey, who kept it some seven years as "Dewey's Coffee House," and was then followed by John Bush in 1809 and by William W. Poole from 1810 to 1813.
The business outgrew the old house and the General's son, Colonel Amos Brewster, was desirous to build a new and larger one, but the old gentleman was unalterably opposed to the plan. At last, in 1813, the General was persuaded to make a visit to his niece at Haverhill, and the Colonel took advantage of his absence to remove the old house and to begin with a rush the new Dartmouth Hotel on the same site. The old house was removed to the north- east corner of Main and Lebanon Streets and converted into a residence. In course of time it was bought by John Demman, a hatter, and after his death in 1857 it was occupied by his widow and later by his daughter, Sarah, as a milliner's shop until she died in September, 1899, after which it was a tenement, much neglected until, after having occupied the site exactly one hundred years, it was torn down in 1913 to make room for the present bank building.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.