USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > A history of the town of Hanover, N.H. > Part 8
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
The park affords an ideal place for the winter sports of the Dartmouth Outing Club, and toboggan chutes and ski jumps have been constructed at considerable expense within the Vale of Tempe, and in connection with Hilton Field the park gives oppor- tunity for ski and snow shoe races of all kinds. The expense of such construction was largely met through the generosity of the Rev. John Edgar Johnson of Philadelphia, who has taken a remarkable interest in the out-door activities of the students of the College.
As time went on, especially after the death, June 11, 1911, of Professor Wells, to whom the development of the park was a matter of personal pride, it was felt by its owners that it would be better to bring it under public direction, and accordingly a plan was devised whereby its control should pass jointly to the Trustees of the College and the village precinct. This plan was accepted by the Trustees April 26, 1913, and by the precinct at its annual meeting March 27, 1913. It provided that the immediate management of the park should be in the hands of two persons, with equal authority, one appointed by the Trustees, and the other, known as "Park Commissioner," elected by the precinct. The Trustees appointed Charles P. Chase, their then treasurer, and Adna P. Storrs was elected by the precinct. It was provided that either the Trustees or the precinct could withdraw from the control and management of the property on giving a year's written notice to that effect.
There are many things tending to utility or beauty that have to do with the growth of the village, of which it is difficult to give
74
History of Hanover
an exact account. Of such are the trees that adorn the streets. One looking down from the tower on Observatory Hill on a summer's day can see but a part of the village, on account of the thick screen of foliage which hides it. The fine old elms in the central part date from 1844, when through the efforts of the "Hanover Ornamental Tree Association," formed the year before, a great number of shade trees was planted along the streets. Like all such organizations this association, having served its immediate purpose, became inactive, but under various names, such as the Village Improvement Society, has been revived from time to time, and many young trees have been set out to replace those that died, or to keep pace with the extension of the streets. Many indi- viduals have had their share in the work, but for many years Mr. Lucien B. Downing had a general oversight of the shade trees of the village, trimming the old trees and planting new ones. A more general and systematic movement in 1911 under the direc- tion of Dr. H. N. Kingsford, resulted in the setting out of 382 new trees and the pruning of old ones. Until very recently the trees have never suffered severely from any of the insect pests that have been so injurious in some localities. Their worst enemy was the gas that escaped from the wooden mains with which the gas company experimented at its formation in 1872. By it some of the finest trees in the village were killed and others were seriously injured. Again, some of the oldest and largest trees have been killed by fires. Originally maples were planted as well as elms, but these have proved less long lived, and as they have decayed and been cut down they have been replaced by elms, which at present are almost exclusively the shade trees of the village.
The streets naturally suffered from the thick shade in which they often were, as in the spring of the year, and after long rains they were deep in mud which was slow to dry, and it was not until the movement for good roads throughout the State developed about 1910, that the streets were constructed in a way to give a firm surface in wet times. The sidewalks, which at their beginning were of dirt, suffered from the same cause. In dry weather they were very pleasant, but equally disagreeable in times of rain, and in the spring were almost impassable, except to the wearers of rubber boots, while the nocturnal traveler was in danger of being mired. The beginning of a better state came in 1886, when Mr. Joseph Emerson put a walk of tar concrete about his house on the corner now occupied by the Casque and Gauntlet Society. The result was so satisfactory that his example was soon followed by
75
The Village at the College
others, the College putting in a large amount of such walk the next year, and within a few years the entire village was provided with firm sidewalks on almost every street. To the difficulty of making one's way about the streets from mud was added that of darkness, for until of late years there were no means of lighting them at night. The earliest artificial light used in the village, unless we except the occasional use of pine knots, was candles, but these, of course, were useless in the streets, the only help which they could give being their use in lanterns made of perforated tin. In course of time candles in the houses gave way to whale oil and then to illuminating fluids, but these were unsuited for use in the streets. Then came kerosene, and a few individuals placed lamps in front of their dwellings, but their light seemed to inten- sify the encompassing darkness. About 1870 an attempt at public lighting was made by installing a gasoline light at the corner of Main Street and Cemetery Lane, but it was not a suc- cess. A gas company was chartered in 1872 1 and gas posts were soon erected by vote of the village precinct in different parts of the village, of which an account will be found in the section on the Fire Precinct (Chap. XVII) .
Gas was used in the streets as long as the gas company con- tinued, but as the company never was on a paying basis it went out of business on the introduction of electricity in 1893. This was introduced on the establishing of the Mascoma Electric Light and Gas Company, which had its plant between Lebanon and West Lebanon. Incandescent lights replaced the gas and the number of lamps was increased as different parts of the village called for service. The hour of putting out the lights was put forward, first to twelve o'clock, then to one, and finally until morning, and at length no regard was had to the full of the moon. The use of gas in private houses was never general, owing to its great expense, the original price being $8 a thousand feet, which the company claimed was not excessive in view of the rich quality of the gas, but the convenience and comparative cheapness of electric lighting (it being but little more than that of kerosene) soon brought it into universal use.
One of the necessities of village life is water. The earliest supply in Hanover was from springs and wells. As the forests were cut down the springs failed and wells became the source of supply. The first successful well was dug by Wheelock in the
1 An account of this company may be found in the writer's History of Dart- mouth College, II, p. 384.
76
History of Hanover
low ground just west of the southwest corner of the present Reed Hall, directly under the existing sidewalk. It was afterward filled up, and the well long used to supply the College buildings was dug some years later on the eastern side of the Green. But the wells, supplemented as they were by cisterns, were insuf- ficient and in prolonged droughts gave out entirely, so that the villagers were sometimes forced to draw water from Mink Brook. The earliest attempt to provide a lasting supply was in 1805, when several persons united to bring water through wooden logs from springs near the top of Corey Hill, below Velvet Rocks. This. however, proved unreliable, and in 1821 an aqueduct company, with a capital of $5,000, was formed, in which B. J. Gilbert, Mills Olcott, Amos Brewster and Ebenezer Adams were the leaders. A half acre of ground, rich in springs, in the Greens- borough district, at the foot of the hill on the south side of Mink Brook was bought, the water was gathered in a series of small reservoirs and brought in pipes to the village. This aqueduct, enlarged in 1880 under the direction of Frederick Chase, then president of the company, by an increase in the supply and in the size of the conveying pipe, is still in partial use ; but even after its enlargement it was insufficient to supply the increasing wants of the community. In 1893 the Hanover Water Works Company was formed by the joint action of the College and the village precinct, under the immediate impulse of the President of the College, William J. Tucker. Its permanent organization was effected with Robert Fletcher as president and engineer, Edward P. Storrs as superintendent, Perley R. Bugbee as clerk and treas- urer, and a board of seven directors including the three officers already mentioned and William J. Tucker, A. A. Mckenzie and E. T. Ford, of Hanover, and Frank S. Streeter of Concord. Various plans were considered. One was to construct a dam on Mink Brook far enough from the village to give a sufficient head ; another was to establish a pumping station for taking water from the river with a provision for filtering, but a gravity system was finally adopted.
The company had a paid up capital of $45,000 of which the College contributed $25,000 and the precinct $20,000, and an additional $20,000 was raised by bonds. A tract of land two miles northeast of the village, through which flowed a small brook which gathered the water from a considerable drainage area, was purchased and a dam twenty-nine feet high was built where the land narrowed into the ravine through which the
77
The Village at the College
brook made its way out. The ground was largely cleared of vegetable growth and a reservoir was constructed, capable of stor- ing 135,000,000 gallons, which by a raising of the dam in 1914 and 1915 was enlarged to a capacity of 161,400,000 gallons, afford- ing a supply for all domestic purposes and for fire protection. The whole drainage area, 1,240 acres, has been protected from pollution by the purchase of all the surrounding farms, and by the removal of the former occupants and the exclusion of all agricultural operations. The work was begun in the summer, the construction of the dam and the laying of the pipes being let to a contractor, Lucien A. Taylor of Worcester, Massachusetts, but under the supervision for the company of Professor Robert Fletcher of the Thayer School. It progressed so well that water was impounded in the late autumn, and although some use was made of it during the following winter it was not until the reservoir received the melting snows of spring that it was filled and that the water became satisfactory for common use. For many years the supply was sufficient, although in some dry seasons, before the dam was raised, there was some anxiety lest there should be a scarcity, but the rapid growth of the village and the College, with the greatly increased requirements for water, led by 1920 to the consideration of an increased supply. The annual pre- cipitation on the drainage area was sufficient to supply all needs, but the capacity of the reservoir was not large enough to retain the water of the melting snows of spring or the extraordinary rainfalls in summer and thus to insure against scarcity in occa- sional times of drouth. Various plans for a supplementary supply were considered, but it was not until 1925 that it was decided to construct a reservoir farther up on the drainage tract, and in the summer of that year a supplementary reservoir was made about a quarter of a mile above the older one and seventy- two feet higher in elevation. This reservoir of about thirty-four acres in extent has a capacity of 135,000,000 gallons. Its maxi- mum depth is twenty-four feet and, when full, its minimum depth, at the stone embankment which surrounds it, is five feet. There is the ordinary spillway to provide for overflow, but the discharge of the water, when needed to supplement the lower reservoir, is through two ten-inch pipes, one having a six-inch branch and all terminating in an upward bend so that the water is thrown upward in jets to a height of fifteen feet, being thus aerated as it falls back into the pools from which it makes its way
78
History of Hanover
into the lower reservoir. The cost of this second construction was about $40,000.1
The success of the company, financially and otherwise, has been complete. It has been profitable as an investment to the College and the village, and has been of inestimable value in protection from fires. Its use was followed by an extension of the system of sewers which had been begun in 1890 as a private enterprise by residents at the north end of the village in connection with the construction of a sewer for the Hospital, and which now, owing to the great increase in the use of water in private dwell- ings and in the College buildings through the introduction of bath and toilet rooms, became an imperative necessity for the village. The sewers gradually took the place of open drains and cesspools until, in 1915, the authorities required the latter to be wholly abandoned and that each house be connected with a per- manent sewer.
The relation of the village to the outside world, as far as it depended upon means of communication by mails and roads. has been told in the writer's History of Dartmouth College. The service of the telegraph and express companies reached Hanover about the same time. The express came with the railroad in 1847, at first in the rudest way and only once in the week, and, as there was no local agent, packages were left on the platform of the railroad station to be claimed by the consignees. The risk and uncertainty of such a proceeding soon led Joseph Emerson, a merchant of the village, to take charge of the articles, but he assumed no responsibility for their delivery, not even when, after a few years, the company had an office of its own in the little building next to Mr. Emerson's store, or when Mr. Emerson became agent of the express company. As a favor he would some- times deliver packages on a little wheelbarrow, but it was not until late years that the express company acquired a delivery wagon and assumed responsibilities for delivery. It long held its original office, but fires and building operations have forced it to
1 The following statistics were given in 1893 :
Length of 14" pipe 992 ft. Greatest depth at reservoir 22.5 ft.
Length of 12" pipe 10509 ft. Area of reservoir 34.5 acres
Length of 10" pipe 2547 ft.
Greatest head at Inn 158 ft.
Length of 8" pipe 6652 ft. Static pressure 67.5 1bs.
Length of 6" pipe 10595 f Mean annual rainfall 33 to 36 in.
Maximum rainfall 45 in.
Length of 4" pipe 5204 ft.
Minimum rainfall 24 in.
1 A full account of the reservoirs is to be found in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine for May, 1926, by Professor Robert Fletcher.
79
The Village at the College
many changes of location. The first telegraph office, as has been said, was opened about 1852 in the building next to the Dartmouth Hotel.
The first telephone exchange was established in Hanover in 1901 with 26 subscribers, though a single telephone on the White River Junction exchange (earlier on the Lebanon exchange) was in use for more than ten years before in Mr. Storrs' bookstore. In 1905 an automatic switchboard was installed with 86 sub- scribers ; in 1912 this was replaced by a central office switchboard to serve 264 subscribers; the equipment has been enlarged as demand for telephone service increased till at the present time (1927) it serves more than a thousand subscribers.
CHAPTER IV
ETNA
T THE village, which since 1884 has been called "Etna," was before that time known as "Mill Village" or "Mill Neigh- borhood," or, after the division of the town into school dis- tricts in 1807, was spoken of as "District Number Five." On the establishment of a post office there in 1884, a new name being necessary as there was already a "Mill Village" post office in another part of the State, this office was called "Etna" by the desire of the inhabitants, the name being suggested by Miss Laura A. Camp, afterward Mrs. William L. Barnes, but for what reason I have been unable to ascertain.
This village, which stretches somewhat sparsely along rather more than half a mile of the original "two-mile road," owed its existence to the series of falls in Mink Brook, on the banks of which it lies. Here was laid the principal "mill lot," and here was the official gristmill of the town, built by James Murch in 1769. It stood, according to Chase's History, "substantially on the site of the present grist mill" in that village. Murch was not a millwright, only a contractor, and tradition says that the mills were actually constructed by Simeon Dewey, a blacksmith from Springfield, Massachusetts, who settled here about that time. The sawmill, that was the necessary companion of the gristmill, stood apparently half a mile farther down the brook, in easy reach of the "pine lots," not far above the present fork of the road as one goes to Lebanon or the College Plain. The mill lot of sixty acres granted to Murch about that time, covered both banks of the brook from the gristmill as far as the head of the falls.
The original mills have all disappeared, but there was an upper sawmill, of later construction, built nearly at the head of the falls, still standing on its early site, though the dam has been rebuilt about ten feet above its first position. It was bought in 1882 from William Dewey by Horace L. Huntington, who changed the upright saw to a circular saw, and in 1896 put in a gasoline engine as supplementary to the water power. Mr. Huntington also built the house adjoining the mill in 1888, and at one time
81
Etna
used the mill for a cider press. Above the sawmill and above the present bridge there was, across the brook, in early times a filling and cloth-drying mill, belonging to Moses and David Woodward, passing in 1800 into the hands of Henry D. Chandler, and later to Cushman and Walker, but it has entirely disappeared.
An eighth of a mile below stood the gristmill, originally built, as has been said, by Simeon Dewey for the contractor, Murch, from whom it passed to Asa Hill. It was once a busy place, hav- ing four runs of stones, for wheat, provender, and so forth. The first mill lasted about sixty years and was replaced about 1828 by the present structure, which was built by John Williams, a Quaker. It is impossible to follow out the sequence of owners with the times of their occupancy ; but with a break after the first, prob- ably from Williams' time, the mill passed through the hands of Deacon Asa Worth, his son, John, and then his son-in-law, Jonathan Howe, from whom it passed to John Sanborn, then to Orren P. Kinne, who sold to Corzoe S. Bastright and he to Truman S. Johnson of Lebanon who assigned it to the estate of Eunice B. Fitch and from that it passed to J. W. Spaulding. During this last ownership the old dam went out in 1884, and the expense of its restoration was so great that in the next year Spaulding sold to E. O. Ingalls. In 1889 Horace L. Huntington, who had the mill on a four years' lease, put in a water wheel and built a small addition, which he used as a shingle mill, but which he sold on the expiration of his lease to J. W. Spaulding. From Ingalls the possession passed in rapid succession to Burt W. Heath, George N. LaBombard and Burt O. Church, the last of whom tore out the mill fixtures and turned the mill into a ladder factory. Church later sold the machinery to Dean Poland, and the mill, which was dismantled, to R. E. Barrows, and he sold it to Alvin Bland in September, 1922. In 1868 John Sanborn, who then owned the mill, added a small grocery store. He was an illiterate man and could not "figure," and one day, when a man named Corey, of similar lack, bought some tea, neither could tell to how much it came. Corey suggested that they should "jump at the price," to which Sanborn assented. The sawmill just below the gristmill was built in 1873 by John Gould and Joseph F. Smalley.
The original sawmill near the "Pine Lots" was farther down the stream, not far above the bridge over the brook on the road to Lebanon. The site of the old dam and the contour of the mill yard may still be easily made out.
82
History of Hanover
,
A store with a hall over it was built in 1833 by Ashel Packard with the help of contributions made by the inhabitants of the village, on the condition that they were to have the hall free forl all gatherings to which a paid admission was not charged. It was occupied for a considerable time by the Universalists for their Sunday meetings. From Packard it was purchased by Horace and Walter Buck, who built an addition at each end of the building. To the business of the store the two Bucks added the opening of a hotel, which they kept for several years and then sold to Joseph Tenney. This was the only hotel that the village has ever had. The store passed in 1837 to Sanborn and Bunker, to Davis and Eaton in 1839, to Joseph Tenney in 1847, and before 1850 to A. Conant, who, after taking into associa- tion Morgan and Dodge, dropped out in 1852 and left the business to them. From 1857 to 1864 the business was carried on by Dodge and Huntington, then by J. W. Dodge, and after him by H. H. Clough, who merely rented the hall. C. W. Hayes suc- ceeded him, and in 1914 he was followed by W. H. and M. C. Trumbull, who sold it in 1918 to R. E. Barrows, who at the same time bought the brick house adjoining. The first town meeting held in the hall was in March, 1844, and afterward until its destruction it was the regular place for holding such meetings, except as presidential elections, since 1912, have been held also on the College Plain. The hall, which was without conveniences or means of ventilation, was remodeled and improved in 1917, but the building was burned together with the brick house on April 3, 1922. Apparently taking fire from a defective furnace, about the middle of the day, it was totally destroyed with its contents. Its site was between the present houses of G. M. Bridgman and R. E. Barrows.
The parade ground in front of the Baptist Church was bought of Ithamar Hall, December 11, 1829, and given for a parade ground and other public exercises. Funds for the purchase to the amount of $120 were secured by subscription and the deed was made to individuals. In course of time, these all having died and the tract no longer being required as a parade ground, the heirs of those to whom the land was deeded by Mr. Hall were brought, through the efforts of Carleton H. Camp in 1909, to give their consent to the passage of the land to the ownership of the town, in whose possession it now is. Clarence H. Camp, who then owned the Hall place, maintained that as the ground had been sold for a parade and was no longer used for that purpose,
83
Etna
it reverted to the Hall estate. A controversy of some extent arose and was settled by the town's giving a quit claim deed to a lawn and driveway in front of Camp's house and by his giving a similar deed to the town for the rest of the land.
At the beginning of the last century the Universalists, partly as the result of the disagreements in the churches at the Center, gained a considerable position in the town and had a strong hold in the "North Neighborhood" and in "Mill Village," Benjamin Miller and Eleazar Wright being the leading spirits. With them was associated a considerable number of deists, who had for a good many years an infidel library at Mill Village. Most of the deists belonged to the Democratic party and soon after 1830 they determined at a Democratic caucus that no man should be chosen to a town office who was a professor of religion. It was this sentiment that at an earlier time drew so many of them to the support of President John Wheelock in his controversy with the Trustees of the College, in which he posed as the champion of liberal theology and a martyr to orthodoxy.
The eastern part of the town has always had a strong com- munity feeling, of which the village of Etna is now largely the center. This has been manifested in its relations with the western portion of the town in a vigorous assertion of its claims to full representation in all town matters, and also in movements from time to time intended to advance its own welfare and to meet its own needs. In nothing has this spirit been shown more happily than in several attempts to establish libraries for the use of that part of the town, though none of them, until the last, has been permanently successful, owing to the lack of a suitable place for keeping the books.
As early as 1801 there was established by special charter, dated June 12, "The Proprietors of the First Social Library of Han- over." The corporators were Joseph Curtis, Samuel Kendrick, Silas Tenney, Otis Freeman, John Durkee, Leonard Dow, Zenas Coleman and Isaac Houston. The first meeting was to be called by notices posted at the "north and south meeting houses." The library seems to have been kept at the house of one of the members, changing perhaps as different members took the charge of it, but no records have been found to show how large the library became (though one volume, numbered 143, remains) or how long the organization lasted. Probably it was not active for many years, as on June 30, 1819, there was chartered the "Second Library Association in Hanover" with Henry Chandler, Silas T.
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.