USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > A history of the town of Hanover, N.H. > Part 6
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
College Church was built in 1795, an account of which may be found in the writer's History of Dartmouth College. Next to the church is a house built by Professor Sylvanus Ripley on an acre given him by the College. As already stated, it was not completed at the time of his death, February 5, 1787, although occupied by his family, and in 1794 it was sold by Mrs. Ripley to George Foot, who set up a tavern there, but he seems to have been involved in trouble with the authorities, for there is no record of a license being issued to him, and in November, 1797, he advertised 1 that he would take down his sign for a tavern and in lieu thereof would open a house for victualing and for lodging accommodations for travelers. He continued in the house until 1801 or 1802, but he mortgaged it to Richard Lang, to whom it came by foreclosure and from him it passed in December, 1801, to Mills Olcott, who made it his home until his death in 1845. It was occupied in succession by his son-in-law, William H. Duncan, Rev. Dr. John Richards, Professor Clement Long and Rev. Dr. S. P. Leeds, the last from 1861 to 1910, when the ownership of the place passed to the College.
Next to this was the house, known as the "Lord house," from its being the residence for many years of President Lord. It was built in 1802 by William H. Woodward in preparation for his marriage the same year. His family continued to reside in it after his death in 1818, but in 1830 it was bought by President Lord, and it remained in his family until it was bought by Andrew Moody in 1872, from whose estate it came to the College in 1894. In 1920 the main part of the house was removed to 41 College Street.
Webster Hall covers the site of two former buildings, one of which, known as the "Rood house," was built in 1824 by Benjamin Perkins, who after serving as a clerk for Richard Lang set up in trade on his own account in the Tontine in 1818. He removed to . Boston in 1830 and the house, after passing through several hands, was bought by Professor Peabody and after his death in 1839 was used by his widow for a girls' school. The school met with great success, but on Mrs. Peabody's marriage in 1850 it passed to Mrs. L. C. Dickinson, who for a similar reason trans- ferred it in two years to Professor O. P. Hubbard. In 1856 he took the school to his own house (on the site of the present Administration Building), and a new school was opened in the old place by Mrs. Julia M. Sherman, which continued until 1863. After being occupied for two years by President Smith the house
1 Dartmouth Gazette, November 13, 1797.
54
History of Hanover
was bought by Rev. Heman Rood, who lived in it until his death in 1882. Four years later it was purchased by Hon. L. P. Morton and given to the College, and finally was torn down to make room for Webster Hall.
The other building was a square, two-story, hip-roofed struc- ture on the extreme corner, known as "Lang hall" from its occupancy by Richard Lang as a general store from 1791 to 1820, when he removed his business to the west side of the Green. From 1830 to 1838 the building was the bookstore and printing office of Thomas Mann, and from that date it was used for students' rooms until it was given, in 1865, to Dr. A. B. Crosby on the condition that he would move the building and fill the cellar hole. He fulfilled the condition, removing the house to a position back of his father's house on Main Street and converting it into a residence.
The house occupied by the Graduate Club (No. 32) stands on the site of the house built by Professor Bezaleel Woodward in 1771, on land given him by the College. After his death the property was sold in 1808 to General James Poole, who lived there until his death in 1828, having also a potash in his garden. Five or six years later the house was burned. There is a tradition that the original house had been burned before, but if so, I do not know when it was or who built the second house. The present house was built in 1842 by Mrs. Abigail Dewey, widow of William W. Dewey, who built the house now owned by Pro- fessor Fletcher, which she sold in order to buy the Poole lot and build upon it.
Elm House (No. 36) stands on a part of the Woodward lot which in 1808 was owned by Luke Dewey and on which he had a blacksmith shop. The low ground beyond Elm Street then extended as a ravine some distance to the south, and on its western slope stood the shop, which was reached from the highway on the east by a corduroy bridge. The present house was built soon after 1810 by James S. Brown, a saddler, who previously had a shop across the street. This house was built on the slope of the ravine and had a basement toward the north, in which Brown had his shop until 1817, when he removed to the Tontine. From 1821 to 1824 the house was owned and occupied by Dr. Daniel Oliver, when he exchanged it with the College for the house of Dr. Perkins on the west side of the Green. Ten years later, during which the College had as tenants William T. Had- dock, a lawyer, Professor Benjamin Hale, a Mrs. Carrington,
55
The Village at the College
and Rev. Robert Page, it was sold to Dr. Asa Crosby. It remained in the Crosby family more than sixty years, Professor Alpheus Crosby being in it from 1836 to 1849, and Dr. Thomas R. Crosby from 1854 to 1872, and after him his widow until 1897. It was bought by the College and in 1898 changed, first into a dormitory, and later into tenements.
Of the two houses on Elm Street, the one on the south side has had a moving history, having been once Rowley Hall, of which an account is given elsewhere. On its site was an earlier house, built in the thirties by Dr. Edward Smith, occupied in the forties as a girls' school by Mrs. J. M. Ellis, and then for twenty years by Rev. David Kimball, the printer, and after that by various tenants until it was burned in 1881. The house on the north side of the street was built in 1875 by Frederick Chase as a home for his sister-in-law, Mrs. Walter W. Chase, from whose estate it passed to Professor James F. Colby in 1897.
The house on the northwest corner of College and Elm Streets (No. 38), now the home of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, was built by Deacon Benoni Dewey, a blacksmith, who came from Springfield, Mass., in 1779, and before settling in Hanover had a shop on the Vermont side of the river near Pompanoosuc. In 1782 he bought of Bezaleel Woodward two acres on this corner and lived there in a small house. From 1798 to 1809 he kept a tavern in the southern part of the village, but in 1809, having drawn a prize of $500 in a lottery, he built the two-story house now on the corner and thereafter kept tavern there. From 1816 to 1835 the business was conducted by his son, William W. Dewey, as a temperance house. A post and sign stood at the corner, there was a barn midway on Elm Street and a large shed on College Street near the big elm tree. Mr. W. W. Dewey 1 occupied the house until 1857, when it was purchased by the College for a building site for the Chandler Scientific School, but as another site was preferred the property was sold in 1867 to Frederick Chase and occupied by him and his family from 1874 to 1916, when it was sold to the fraternity. Rufus Choate, when tutor in the College, occupied the southwest chamber.
It is difficult to be sure of the dates of all the houses farther up College street. Some houses and barns have disappeared. At one time all the land on both sides of the road from the Medical College as far as Park Street belonged to Dr. Nathan Smith, but after his departure it was divided among different owners.
1 Commonly known as "Corset Bill" (according to Dr. E. E. Smith).
56
History of Hanover
The house of Professor Robert Fletcher (No. 42) was built by William W. Dewey about 1820. The builder and first occupants of the house next above (No. 44) I do not know, but later for many years it was the residence of Sewall Coffin, then of James S. Adams, of Louis Pollens, and after the death of Mrs. Pollens in 1915 it was bought by Mrs. Laura E. A. Phelps and became the residence of her daughter, Mrs. W. Pierce Crosby. I also do not know who built the house on the southwest corner of College and Maynard Streets (No. 46), or when it was built, but it probably is almost as old as its nearest neighbor. It was owned for many years by G. L. Osgood and rented by him to students and known as the "Lyme Hotel," but in 1866 it was bought by James Thomas, who lived in it until 1881. He was followed in succession by Owen McCarthy, Clarence W. Scott and George D. Lord. The house on the northwest corner of the same streets (No. 48) was begun in 1842 by S. R. Everett and finished by G. L. Osgood, a carpenter for many years employed by the College. Here also he rented rooms to students, and helped his sons through College by making molasses candy for them to sell. Number 50 was built by Dr. George H. Parker in 1917. The house now occupied by Mrs. D. C. Wells (No. 52), remodeled for her in 1912, was originally a carpenter's shop belonging to a man named William Henry Burbeck, and removed from its place near Wheeler Hall to its present site before 1860. The house of the Misses Dewey (No. 56) was built by their father, George Dewey, in 1842, although the barn is older, having belonged to the Woodward farm. In early times a large house and barn, belonging to Dr. George Eager, stood at the top of the first pitch of Potash Hill, near the large elm tree that stood there until recently, but they disappeared long ago. There was for many years a tavern a mile and a half north of the village, standing just above the house of W. J. Record. It was kept from 1799 to 1806 by R. W. Gould, proprietor of the Haverhill stage, and afterward by Josiah Goodrich. On both sides of the road for a quarter of a mile there was a double row of maples, said to have ban set out by Richard Lang, making a fine avenue until cut down in 1885 by J. L. Bridgman.
Returning again to the northeast corner of the Green, we find what in early times was one of the busiest places in the village, for across the street from Richard Lang's store were several buildings that were used for various kinds of trade.
On January 1, 1779, President Wheelock gave to his son
57
The Village at the College
Eleazar for a building lot the parcel of land where Rollins Chapel now is, twelve rods on the road and fourteen rods deep, and after his father's death the next April, Eleazar received as the balance of his inheritance, the land adjoining this parcel on the east, including the hill and the flat beyond it. On the northwest corner of the lot, next the road, he built a house which continued until 1884, when it was torn down to make room for the new chapel, just north of which it stood. In 1783 Eleazar conveyed the property to Daniel Gould, and in 1806 it was bought by General James Poole and converted into a store, which continued a center of active business for twenty-six years under General Poole, until his death in 1828, and then under his former clerk, Daniel B. Johonnot. It was later a private residence and much used for students' rooms. Directly north of this house, near the present path to Richardson Hall, stood from 1784 Wheelock's malt house, to which site it was moved in that year from its original position of 1771, a rod or two farther north. After it was moved it was fitted up in two stories for a storehouse and shops. In 1814 Henry Hutchinson had a law office there, and in the next year there was a tailor's shop in the second story. Afterward the building was used as rooms for students and was known as the "Fort." It was burned in March, 1829. 1
After disposing of his old house on the main road about 1784, 2 Wheelock built for himself a one-story house of considerable size on the crest of the ridge directly east of the present chapel, and in 1790 conveyed to Colonel Aaron Kinsman the lot, eight rods wide and eighteen deep, on which the chapel is, reserving to his house a road, one rod wide and running due east from the north- east corner of the Green, which he dedicated to public use "for a common pass way forever."
On this lane three structures were erected : Colonel Kinsman's great Commons Hall at the corner, about 1790, next, a house fifteen rods to the east by Increase Kimball about 1803, and mid- way between these two, about June, 1807, a large store and hall by Samuel H. G. Rowley. Wheelock engaged in trade but was unfortunate, and in January, 1795, his lands and house came into the hands of Ebenezer Woodward, who took up his residence in the house on the hill and kept there a store and boarding house. He sold it to President John Wheelock, who rented it to tenants, and at his death gave it with other property to the University,
1 Memorial of College Life, A. Crosby, pp. 18, 33.
2 Dr. Richards says "soon after 1775." Phoenix, July, 1855.
58
History of Hanover
with remainder to Princeton College. On this account it after- ward went by the name of "Princeton House." From its situa- tion it was also popularly called in 1828-29 the "Acropolis," and was so styled in the College Catalogue. President Brown lived in it in 1816-1817. It was afterward occupied by Mrs. Martha Porter, a sister of Mills Olcott and widow of Ben Porter, with her children. The old house, a large, rambling, one-story affair, built in the form of a letter H, the recesses being filled up later, fell into disgrace and dilapidation, and from occupancy by students passed to poorer tenants and was destroyed by fire January 25, 1830. The site was bought by the College for $105 in 1847. The last reminder of it, the old well, long covered with a flat stone, disappeared on the building of North Fayerweather Hall in 1907.
In after years Mrs. Brinley, Mrs. Porter's daughter, wrote lovingly of the house :1
It was a picturesque old residence occupying the highest site in the village. It was a large, faded, tranquil looking one-story house, covering a good deal of ground, of no special color, but mellow with the lapse of time and changing seasons. The prospect which it commanded on every side was wide and full of variety and heavenly beauty. Even as children we were never tired of looking at the distant blue line of sky, the far off mountains in the north, the low ridge of jagged rocky hills in the rear and the great purple and gold summit of Ascutney, now almost within arms length, which we believed to be a celestial highway to the battlements of God's home. Directly opposite to us across the river were our own beloved hills of Vermont, the hills of our birthright, the hills of the setting sun. The village of Hanover was just below us, fresh, compact, and shining as a mosaic, with its venerable college, solemn old church, and clusters of white dwellings in a square setting of young elm trees which lent a graceful shade to the romantic footpaths round the common.
The house built by Increase Kimball stood opposite the north- east corner of Wentworth Hall and was occupied for a short time by Kimball's sister, Mrs. Betsey True, but in 1804 it was taken by General James Poole for a general store, and two years later he removed the store to College Street, as has been said, being succeeded by Samuel H. G. Rowley, who brought his business here from the west side of the Green, and who in the next year, 1807, built the hall already mentioned. The Kimball house was bought by the College in 1837 and was torn down about 1850.
The lower floor of Rowley's building, which stood gable end to
1 Life of William T. Porter, by Francis Brinley, 16.
59
The Village at the College
the lane, was devoted to a store, while the second floor was a large and handsome hall, which was known by different names at different times, as Rowley Hall, Stewart's Hall, Dartmouth Assembly Rooms and Brown Hall. In 1817 the College, when excluded from Dartmouth Hall, secured it for a chapel and recita- tion rooms and so used it until the restoration of its own build- ings. A varied succession of storekeepers followed Rowley, all having a short tenure except John Stewart and Co., which had a hat store there from 1816 to 1821. The land was purchased by the College in 1833, and the building was bought in 1835 by Drs. Muzzey and Oliver, moved away and fitted up as a dormitory for medical students. It was placed upon the present site of Wheeler Hall, and after being used by students and having in it for several years the hall of the Phi Zeta Mu fraternity, it became a private residence and was occupied from 1854 to 1865 by J. S. Adams, by Professor C. A. Young from 1865 to 1877, and by Professor C. F. Emerson from 1877 to 1904. Mr. Emerson moved it back twenty feet from the street in 1881, but it was sold to the College in 1904 to make way for Wheeler Hall, and again took up its journey and became an apartment house at Number 3 Elm Street. The site to which Rowley Hall was first moved included the original site of Wheelock's malt house, and also a small parcel of land given by the College to Professor Ripley in payment for preaching, as well as a small bit, eight by thirteen rods, which he bought to give symmetry to the lot. In 1784 it was deeded to Jabez Bingham with houses on it, and in the next year Bingham was under appointment of the town as keeper of one of the official houses of correction.
The land above this was bought in 1772 of B. Woodward by Deacon John Payne, who at once built a house just north of the present Wheeler Hall, which he opened as an inn and kept, often to the dissatisfaction of President Wheelock, until he sold it in 1796 to Captain Stephen Kimball, who had previously lived on "Pork Hill," in the part of the town to the east of Etna. Kimball sold the south part of the property in 1804 to Luke Dewey and Calvin Eaton, blacksmiths. Eaton's ownership did not continue, and after a while Dewey abandoned the Payne house and built another just south of it, but this in turn was given up and a stone and brick house, which was burned January 1, 1918, was built by him about 1832, and in place of the blacksmith shop, which he had across the street and which was approached by the corduroy bridge, he built one in the rear of his new house. In this he
60
History of Hanover
plied his trade until about 1855, assisted by his son Amos, who lived in the house after him and gave up the shop only in 1868. What became of the second house I am not sure, but I suppose that it became the carpenter's shop which was afterward moved to become the house farther up the street, now occupied by Mrs. Wells.
The north half of this lot Kimball sold in 1806 to Dr. Nathan Smith, who at the same time bought up the greater part of the land on both sides of the road as far as Girl Brook, but in 1810 he sold this piece to Aaron Hutchinson of Lebanon, and in that year the latter built on it a house for his son Henry, who had settled in Hanover as a lawyer. Since Mr. Hutchinson left Hanover, about 1825, the house has been mainly occupied by College officers, the succession being Professors William Cham- berlain, Samuel G. Brown, John N. Putnam, William A. Packard, John K. Lord and Frederic P. Lord. In 1920 this house was moved to the next lot to the north (now No. 39), and on its site was erected the Steele Chemistry Building.
The Hutchinson lot was bounded on the north by a street or lane, three rods wide, running up the hill, laid out by the owner of the hill, Eleazar Wheelock, Jr., with the idea of selling building lots upon it. Only one half lot, however, five rods wide, was actually sold before 1790, and that to Benjamin Chase, but it was not built upon until 1811, when it was bought by Dr. Nathan Smith and the south end of it conveyed by him to the State as a site for the present Medical Building. The parcel which Dr. Smith first intended for this purpose and conveyed to the State lay up the hill, contiguous to the second lot at its northeastern corner.
Between the Medical Building and the highway was a narrow strip, eight rods deep, originally conveyed by B. Woodward to Ezra Carpenter, who in 1787 built a small two-story house upon it, which in 1792 was occupied by a shoemaker, Silas Curtis, but before the erection of the Medical Building was used for a time by Dr. Nathan Smith for some purposes connected with the Medical School and was commonly known as the "Medical House." Later it became much dilapidated and about 1850 it was moved to the southwest part of the village and became the house where Mr. B. E. Lewin lived, now No. 8 Pleasant Street.
North of this was a house built by George Foster, a tradesman of the village, about 1787, which from 1806 was the home of Dr. Nathan Smith until his departure from Hanover. It was then
61
The Village at the College
rented, and sold in 1822 to Captain E. D. Curtis, a former pro- prietor of the Dartmouth Hotel. From him it passed to his son- in-law, Joseph Pinneo, a nurseryman, and while owned and occupied by him was burned December 8, 1855. It was at that time a large two-story house, with its gable toward the road, and is one of the representative houses shown on a map of the town published in 1855. The house, until 1926 used as the President's house, was built by Professor Arthur S. Hardy in 1876, subse- quently owned and enlarged by President William J. Tucker and bought by the College in 1909.
Two other houses once stood within the limits of the present College Park, both at its northeast extremity, of which one was a large two-story house, perhaps built by John Payne, who owned the land from there to the foot of the hill, and sold by him to Captain Kimball. After the latter's death in 1807, the house was occupied by his son, Increase Kimball, through whose insane behavior it was burned in 1852. During the fire he walked about, saying, "An enemy hath done this, an enemy hath done this." He invented the first machine for making cut nails, but it was soon improved and became of no value to him, and his consequent disappointment unsettled his mind. He formed a plan for adjust- ing the controversy between the College and the University by having a university built in Norwich and made a vow that he would not shave until it was accomplished, and so for years he wore a long gray beard. He kept a tavern in his house about 1830 with a sign "unlicensed inn," as he would not sell liquors. The second house was a small building a few rods to the west of the other, which was sold to the College in 1858 and was later torn down. Near the foot of the hill, on the east side of the road, there was for the first half of the last century a potash manu- factory, and also a brick yard, while beyond the brook was a house, known as the "witch house" a name that implies a legend, but what it was I do not know. About three and a half miles north of the village, where the road comes down from Pinneo Hill, William Dewey kept a tavern as early as 1793, and for many years after.
If now we return to the village and go east on Lebanon Street from Main Street, passing the blacksmith shop and the brick yard on the south side, already mentioned, we should find at the corner of South Street an acre of land given to Patrick Field, a tailor, in 1771, in exchange for a part of the old gymnasium lot, already mentioned, on which he built a house nearly opposite the
62
History of Hanover
Gove house. South of Field's lot, on the bank of the brook, at that time constant, a parcel of one acre was given by Dr. Wheelock in his will, in 1779, to John and Mary Russell for life, and there- after to the President of Moor's Charity School for a washing place for the students. Here stood a house, built by Wheelock in 1774 for the workmen of the potash. The Russells and the Fields fell out, and one of the most amusing of the causes in our early justice's court was a prosecution in March, 1775, of the same Mary for bringing a "scandalous accusation" against "honest Mr. Field." John Russell in 1798, at the age of seventy, was gored to death by a bull. All the buildings on this side of the street east of the brick house at the corner of Main and Lebanon Streets, as far as the southeast corner of Lebanon and College Streets, were swept away by the fire of May, 1883.
Next east of the Field lot, another parcel of land, extending sixteen rods on the road, was given by Eleazar Wheelock to his nephew, Joshua Hendee, in 1770 or 1771, to encourage his settle- ment here as a shoemaker and tanner. His deed is dated April, 1774, and described the lot as "where said Hendee now lives." Hendee's house, built in 1772, stood near the eastern end of the lot, the corner of the lot being indicated by a pine stump under the northeast corner of the barn. Hendee was captain of the militia company in the College district, but he removed to Ran- dolph, Vt., about 1783, and in that year conveyed his lot in Han- over to Nicholas Gilman, who came here in the same year from Cockermouth. All the early houses that stood upon this lot, and there were several, long ago disappeared, and all the houses now in that section are of late construction. The street called Sanborn Road was opened in 1906, and Sargent Place in 1900; on the latter several houses were built from the portions of the house on the corner of Main and Wheelock Streets, which escaped the fire of 1900, and from the ell of the house of Professor Parker on Main Street. The little house in which Cornelius O'Leary lived was built out of an old shed moved there from the Caleb Ward place on the turnpike. The brick house (No. 25), now belonging to the estate of Jerome Chesley (Lebanon Street, No. 11), was built by John Williams, a Methodist minister, about 1840. Just east of the brick house there long stood a gambrel roofed house, that belonged to the farm which James Wheelock inherited from his father in 1779, and which was built before 1774. It was a fine old house of much pretension, but after being owned by several prominent residents of the village it gradually
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.