USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 10
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Edmund Freeman first built a log house about a half mile from the river, but before he moved to Lebanon in 1780 he had built a house in Hanover Center northeast of the present village. Jona- than Freeman always lived in the Center. The Huntingtons built at once on a hill top, as did Jonathan Lord, and later Captain Spencer, to say nothing of the Tenneys, Wrights, and Emersons who settled on the slopes of Moose Mountain. Isaac Houston, Stephen Kimball, and Samuel Hayes built on the top of Hayes Hill; Abel Parks on the hill top now owned by Millett Morgan; the Chandlers, Bentons, and Wests settled in the high area west of Moose Mountain later known as the Arvin District; the Slades, Millers, Topliffes and Storrses built on the high ground in what became known as the North Neighborhood in the northern part of the town between Hanover Center and Lyme Center. The
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Masons, Curtices, and Thomases lived on the high land on the slope of Pinneo Hill above the intervale which later became the Hanover Reservoir. Hanover Center and its vicinity to the north was settled by the Freemans, Camps, Hurlbutts, Dows and Fel- lowses. All these people felt that the farm land was better and more easily cleared on these hardwood-covered slopes, and their "wind" for hill climbing must have been excellent, as well as that of their children, horses and oxen! It is a notable fact that in the old highway surveys, though much is made of getting around swamps and over brooks, there is absolutely no mention of the grade of a hill, even for the Wolfeboro road over Moose Moun- tain.
By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the early productivity of the farms had diminished and the children of large families had begun to drift away. The boys tired of digging boulders, good only for stone walls or house foundations, out of the rocky pastures, and went west or to the cities, particularly after they had been away to the Civil War. The girls married these boys and went with them, or quite frequently married Dartmouth graduates who were returning to other parts of the country. The older people, fighting a losing battle with the land, tended to move to the villages, Etna or Hanover Plain or Lebanon, where there were more neighbors and living was not quite so hard, though of course there are many rugged exceptions to prove this rule.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century many of these farms were bought by farming folk of Scotch or French ancestry from New York State or Canada, particularly the region of Cha- teaugay, N. Y., and Huntington County, P. Q. Around the turn of the century, before the day of the automobile, the outlying areas on the back roads seemed increasingly inaccessible, and many acres formerly tilled were allowed to revert to woodland, and the houses on them disappeared or fell into great disrepair. With the coming of the Ford it became much easier for farmers to get back and forth to town, and the appearance of the four- wheel-drive jeep after the second World War has made possible a movement back to the hills. It is much easier now, even in the mud season, to live in the country and work in the town. Further- more, people from the cities are again seeking the old homes on the Hanover hill tops as summer or permanent residences.
Without this brief glimpse of the history of the township it is impossible to understand the old houses which still remain. Each
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of them has experienced many changes. They have witnessed peri- ods of great hope and happiness, alternating with others of depres- sion and neglect. They have fallen into disrepair and then been renovated and "brought up to date." Some have experienced this cycle several times. None is a museum piece surviving intact from the time it was built. A few are excellent restorations, and many are fine comfortable homes bearing witness to the efforts of their several owners, and particularly the women of the household, to provide a good life for a growing family.
In a single chapter it is of course necessary to set some limits to the houses studied. We have in this bicentennial year chosen to deal only with those still standing that were built during the first fifty years after the town was chartered in 1761; that is, by 1811. Many of the surviving old houses, in fact some of the most inter- esting and attractive ones, were built several years after that, and it is hoped that at a later date someone will study and write of them.
There are records of the exact dates at which a few of these houses were built, but information about most of them is elusive. The memories of older residents in the town and the traditions that have been handed down in their families have been of great assistance. Whenever possible the facts thus transmitted or gleaned in other ways have been checked, corroborated or corrected by search of town records, highway allotments, printed histories, maps, deeds, manuscript letters and diaries, and the like. Particularly valuable have been the genealogical records of Hanover compiled by Dr. G. D. Frost and preserved in the Baker Library Archives room and the map with highway records prepared by Prof. J. W. Goldthwait and published as Appendix II in Lord's History of Hanover. The files in the Baker Archives, graciously made accessi- ble by the staff, have been most helpful. The conclusions reached by such investigation are embodied in the account which follows. Any errors or omissions are purely inadvertent and I am sorry for them.
Since, then, definite dates of building can so seldom be assigned to houses outside the village at the College and since, in my own experience, an old house is much more interesting if one can drive by it and visualize it in its setting, the list which follows is not ar- ranged chronologically but by the sequence of the houses on the roads of the town.
Let us begin then by going out the Greensboro road to Etna.
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On this road there stands one very old house, that of Charles Han- chette, built by Samuel Green soon after he settled in town in 1782. It is interesting as one of the few representatives of the "plank" house.
In the village of Etna the residence of Roy Stevens is the oldest house extant. It was built by Isaac Bridgman before the Revolu- tionary War, and in it are incorporated some of the old logs from Bridgman's original log cabin of 1768. Another house perhaps nearly as old is Alvin Poland's, always called the "Mill House" be- cause it was occupied for more than a century by one miller after another who tended the old grist mill near by. Other apparently ancient dwellings in Etna, but for which definite dates and names of builders are unknown, are those of Helen Hart, Fred Coburn, Philip Northway, Don Nichols, Miss Margaret Bridgman and Harley Camp. On the hill to the west of this village the house now owned by Robert Adams is said to have been built by Timothy Owen in the late eighteenth century.
Situated just off the Ruddsboro road out of Etna, Millett Mor- gan's house, built by Abel Parks not long after 1800, contains original pine paneling and wainscoting. Nathaniel Emerson's house, whose builder and date are not known, evidences its age by its plank walls similar to those in the Green-Hanchette house. On a branch road to the north from the Ruddsboro road stands the two-story hipped roof dwelling of Berton F. Hewes, built by Wil- liam Chandler in 1798. And a short road east of the main highway between Etna and Hanover Center leads to the cottage house of Colby Bent, erected according to the Grafton County Gazetteer by Webster Hall in 1781.
At the Center the finest old house is that built by Jonathan Freeman Esq. about 1798, of two stories, with a pitched roof and large central chimney. Particularly noteworthy are the Palladian window in the finely proportioned front and the inside "Indian" shutters. It is now owned and occupied by the William Baileys. Arthur Gerstenberger's house was built by Capt. Amos Kinne soon after his arrival in Hanover in 1794. It contains modern sheathing on the original handhewn frame. The Lang house, al- though its date and builder are unknown, has long been consid- ered by the Center residents to be one of the oldest houses in the vicinity. Some of the original interior finish has been well pre- served.
The two-story house on the Wolfeboro road a short distance east
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of the Center, now owned by Joseph Fogg, was built by Richard Foster on the old Eden Burroughs farm, but whether before or after 1811 is not known. Across the road from this house stands another two-story dwelling, now Wesley LaBombard's, built about 1790 by Isaac Bridgman Jr., son of the Isaac Bridgman who earlier erected the Roy Stevens house in Etna. On the road from the Center to Spencer Hill stands the residence built by Isaac Fellows who settled there in 1799. He built first a small house, which is now the ell, and then as the family grew added a larger house at the side. It is now occupied by Gabriel Elder.
In the North Neighborhood the interesting small house owned by George Wrightson dates back to the mid-178os, when it was erected by Salmon Dow. The only house now standing on the Wardrobe road is the story and a half one with its very high and steep pitched roof, built also in the 178os, by Nathaniel Hurlbutt; it is now unoccupied. Near the North Neighborhood schoolhouse the two-story house now the Rennie Nursing Home was built soon after 1800 by Elijah Miller. Harry Macomber's house, of two stories but only one room in depth, built by Samuel Slade before 1791 contains some fine old pine paneling. To the northeast Wil- liam Rennie's house, erected by Eli Hurlbutt, is supposed to date from the 1790s. Augustus Storrs, who came to Hanover in 1792, built Edwin Lord's house, presumably not long after his arrival here.
The section of the town now known as the Etna Highlands and including both Pork and Hayes Hills was settled early. James Campion's house, built by Silas Tenney in 1800, is a good ex- ample of the two-story pitched roof dwelling with central chim- ney. It contains inside wooden shutters of the sort usually called "Indian." The home of the Rev. Wilbur Bull is another "plank" house, in this instance one instead of two rooms deep. The date and builder are not known, nor are they for the house of James Campion Jr., although it is evidently of early construction.
Samuel Hayes, a pioneer settler on the hill that takes its name from his family, built in the eighteenth century the house now owned by A. P. Farnsworth. Capt. Stephen Kimball lived in the Dr. John R. Sibley house from 1791, the date of his arrival in East Hanover, to 1796, when he removed to the Plain. On the spur road to the east, once part of the main highway from Han- over over Mt. Tug to East Lebanon and Elisha Payne's sawmill at Lake Mascoma, stands the two-story dwelling built in the early
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1790s by Isaac Houston as a tavern. It is now owned by Maurice Laramie.
On the long highway from the Lebanon line through Ruddsboro and the Arvin district and thence over the Three Mile Road nearly to the Lyme line several old dwellings still remain. The Victor W. Goodrich house, of "plank" construction, is thought to have been built by Jonathan Hatch as early as 1810. The Robert Fellows house is said to have been erected in the 1790s by John D. Kingsbury. The house next south of the Ruddsboro cemetery, now Ernest Dana's, was built by Lemuel Dow Jr. in 1790 or soon there- after. By 1800 Asa Bridgman had erected a dwelling north of the cemetery, which still stands and is owned by Elmer Dana.
At the five corners in the Arvin district Howard Randall's house was built, perhaps before the Revolutionary War, by Deacon Stephen Benton, who came to Hanover in 1768. The first death in the new town was that of Mr. Benton's infant son Alfred on Au- gust 25, 1768. The Louis Menand house, with its fine old interior finish, is of about the same date, built by John Tenney, who ar- rived here by oxteam in June 1770. Still further to the north David Tenney erected in the 178os the dwellinghouse owned by William Straub. The Kendall heirs own a house that Moses Emer- son built shortly before 1800.
There are a few old houses still standing in the northwest part of the township. On Route 10 the large, square, hipped roof house owned by Wilson W. Fullington was constructed in 1796 by John Smith. His nephew, Edward Smith Jr., about the same time built the house now owned by Norman Davis north of Slade Brook. Harry Albaugh's house, built by William Woodward, is supposed also to date from the eighteenth century. The house at the lower reservoir, owned by the Hanover Water Works Company but now unoccupied, probably was built by Jeremiah Thomas, perhaps as early as 1790.
On the north slope of Pinneo Hill the house occupied by Carl W. Plant was erected by Joseph Pinneo, who settled there shortly after 1790. The house of David Croall on the Dogford road is a very old one, presumably built at an early date by Titus Wood- ward or Dyer Willis. An excellent specimen of early farmhouse construction stands on the Goodfellow road. It was built just be- fore 1800 by Hezekiah Huntington who gave the name to the hill on which it is situated. Of two stories, with pitched roof and cen- tral chimney, it still possesses fine original paneling and a beauti-
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ful stairway. Col. Florimond Duke now owns it. Close to the Lyme line on the road that leads from the west to the North Neighbor- hood, Roy Rennie owns a house built early by Nathaniel Wood- ward, who came from Connecticut in 1782 with his bride on horse- back, to clear this farm and make his home on this spot.
These then are the houses scattered across the outlying districts of our township that we can with reasonable certainty assign to the first fifty years of Hanover's existence. They have weathered the vicissitudes of more than a hundred and fifty years. Perhaps some of them will still be here at our tercentenary.
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9 Early Houses in the Village on the Plain by Jeannette Mather Lord
O N the Hanover Plain the earliest houses were built by settlers who had left the pleasures and comforts and so- cial amenities of a more cultivated life in Connecticut for the New Hampshire frontier. Here they built dwellings which have made for gracious living during the successive two centuries.
Their houses were constructed of the material at hand, mainly lumber from the forest of gigantic white pines which grew on the slope up from the river and across the plain itself 175 feet above the river. Hanover had no architects in those days. The settlers followed the general style of architecture known in Connecticut and their houses were erected by skilled carpenters who had learned from experience that good sound construction was the first necessity. To this could be added paneling, curved moldings, and graceful cornices when the cost was not prohibitive. These build- ers were expert in adapting detail to their need and had a sense of proportion and an appreciation of line that we find most satisfac- tory. The frames of these houses are as sound today as when they were built.
Of the houses still standing that were built in the village in the first fifty years after the founding of the town only two remain on their original sites (the Heneage house and Crosby Hall); all have had their interiors changed. Some were moved early in the nine- teenth century, many others as late as the 1920s. Some of Han- over's beautiful trees have been sacrificed to allow the houses to pass along the streets, and some houses have been razed when it was impossible to move them without damaging trees. Thus the beautiful Proctor house, built in 1810 by Ebenezer Adams on the lot where McNutt Hall now stands, was torn down because there was not room enough to move it out into the street between the big elms then standing in front of it.
All the early history of the village centers on Eleazar Wheelock. It grew under his direction, for by gifts of land for settlement he was responsible for the coming of men without whom the opera- tion of the College could not go on. Thus he secured by corre-
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spondence and invitation a physician, a taverner, a tailor, a shoe- maker, a carpenter, a mason, a steward, a printer, besides teachers for the College, a barber, a joiner, and two farmers. In 1771 the trustees of the College set aside a plot of twenty acres "to en- courage and accommodate settlers." Of the houses built by these earliest grantees in the first decade (1770-1780), six still survive and are lived in today: the tavern, Wheelock's mansion, and houses of the farmer, the carpenter, the mason and one tutor.
The oldest house in the village is the one owned and occupied by the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at 6 West Wheelock Street. It was the first two-story house on the Plain (except that of Beza- leel Woodward which was raised the same day and afterward burned), and was built in 1771 as a tavern by Aaron Storrs, from Lebanon, Connecticut, on the southwest corner of Main and Wheelock Streets, flush with the road, on the space now occupied by the front lawn of the Casque and Gauntlet House. From Storrs it passed into the possession of Rufus Graves, merchant and pro- moter of the first bridge across the river, and in 1793 was bought by Dr. Samuel Alden. Dr. Alden in 1823 built the brick house di- rectly in the rear of this one and when finished moved his house- hold goods out of the back door of the old house into the front door of the new one. Then he moved the old house into what was then his garden, the position it now occupies. Willis Kinsman re- sided in it for many years and in 1844 erected behind it a public bath house with a hot water heater and four wooden tubs, the first such in the village. In 1909 it passed into possession of the fra- ternity. Enlarged and much changed, with four Doric columns added to its plain, unadorned exterior, it bears little resemblance today to its original appearance.
Jabez Bingham, a nephew of President Wheelock, accompanied Madam Wheelock and her retinue to Hanover in the autumn of 1770, driving the oxteam which transported the baggage and pro- visions. The next year the College granted him an acre of land "to encourage him to settle here as its farmer." On this lot he built in 1772 a small house, on the present site of the Dartmouth National Bank. Little is known about it, save that it had many owners over the years and sheltered a varied succession of shops. About 1833 it was moved to what is now 10 Pleasant Street and today is the ell of Roland Lewin's residence.
The most famous, best preserved and certainly the most inter- esting of all the old houses in the village is the mansion house of
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President Eleazar Wheelock, erected in 1773 on the present site of Reed Hall. On that site it housed successively the families of the two Presidents Wheelock and of President Allen of the University and after 1821 the tenants of Allen who included for short inter- vals President Tyler and President Lord. In order to make room for the erection of Reed Hall it was moved in 1839 across the Green to a site on River Street (now West Wheelock), where today it serves as the beautiful and efficient home of the Howe Library. A detailed account of its history is given in Chapter 21.
Comfort Sever, a carpenter from Stillwater, N. Y., arrived in Hanover in September 1773 and settled near the College under the patronage of President Wheelock. That same year plans for a large hall for the College, not realized until the building of Dart- mouth Hall many years later, were made by Wheelock in consulta- tion with Sever. The next year, 1774, he was granted a choice lot of one acre on the west side of the Green on which he built his house. It stood on what is now the open lawn just south of Robin- son Hall, and was a long two-story building with its gable end toward the street. After having housed stores and at one time a printing establishment, it was for more than thirty years the office of Daniel Blaisdell, the College treasurer.
To make way for a new bank building the Sever house was moved in 1870 to 16 West Wheelock Street, where it became the home of Michael McCarthy. His grandson, Fred McCarthy, lives in the house today.
The half-acre lot next north of Comfort Sever's, on the corner of Cemetery (now Sanborn) Lane and North Main Street, was granted in 1774 to William Winton, a mason by trade, who at once built a house on it. Three years later, in the spring of 1777, he enlisted in the First New Hampshire Regiment, was wounded in the battle of Saratoga and died September 28, 1777. George Williston, an architect and carpenter, came to Hanover in 1811 to work on the house being built for Dr. Cyrus Perkins on the Win- ton lot. Williston bought the Winton house then standing there and moved it to a site at the extreme end of Back Street, now 13 Maple Street. At that time the woods were still standing very near it. After Williston's death in 1819, his widow Achsah and daughter Harriet continued to live in the house until Harriet's marriage in 1840 to Everett K. Smith, the cracker man. It was then successively the home of Jeremiah Brooks and John McCarthy, who sold it in 1888 to School District No. 1.
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The present owner, who purchased it from the school district, is Clarence Cofran. He shows his visitors handhewn beams, "pun- kin pine" once covered with plaster, old H-hinges lost many years under innumerable coats of paint, and old glass in the windows.
The little story-and-a-half farmhouse, known for the last seventy years as the Webster Cottage, was built in 1780 by the Rev. Syl- vanus Ripley on land given to his wife, Abigail Wheelock, by her father Eleazar. It is the only house surviving in the village that was built during the Revolutionary War. For a century and a half it stood on its original site at the corner of North Main Street and Webster Avenue, facing east down Elm Street, but just before Silsby Hall was built in 1928 it was moved to its present location at 27B North Main Street.
In 1786 Mr. Ripley built a new house on the Green and the family removed thither. After his death his widow and children returned in 1794 to the small farmhouse where they lived until 1802. It was in the college year of 1800-1801 that Daniel Webster occupied the little south chamber under the roof, reached by a narrow, steep twelve-step stairs with a sharp turn in it. Some time afterwards a lawyer, William Smith, resided in this house and here in 1822 his son Henry was born. Later Henry, the founder of Wellesley College, changed his name to Henry Fowle Durant.
Through a large part of the nineteenth century it was called the McMurphy house, from its owners and occupants, the Misses Mary T. and Lucy J. McMurphy, who conducted in it a popular board- ing house for students. From 1900 on it was occupied in both its locations by Professor P. O. Skinner and later his widow. Mrs. Skinner (Alice Van Leer Carrick), a collector of early American antiques, furnished the house beautifully with objects suitable to the period of its building. From the volume on antique hunting which she entitled The Next-to-Nothing House it acquired still another name.
This house is less changed in outside appearance than most of the early dwellings still extant. Probably its exterior is exactly the same as when built except for the little enclosed porch at its front door. Within, old fireplaces and some of the original woodwork and hardware survive. It is now unoccupied.
These six houses from the first decade of our village's existence are representative ones, little houses and farmhouses as well as the Wheelock mansion, the most important of all the old dwellings.
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They tell us much of the taste and culture of our forebears in Hanover.
Eight more houses built before 1800 survive. The oldest of them is the present Eastman Drug Store building on the southeast corner of Main and South Streets. Built by Dr. Laban Gates about 1785 on the site of Wilson Museum at Wheelock and College Streets, it remained in his family until 1845. Serving afterward for many years as a rooming and tenement house, it was moved to its present location in 1884 to make way for the erection of Wilson Hall. Its good lines and proportions still remain, but the hand- some and imposing appearance of its former state, with dignified doorway and fine windows in the gable end facing the street, as revealed in early photographs, is but slightly evident today.
The only surviving eighteenth century house on the Plain that still stands on its original site is that of Mrs. H. R. Heneage at 60 South Main Street. Who built it and when is not known, but it was already there in 1786, occupied by Benjamin Coult, and later in the same year by Eleazar Fitch, a hatter. In 1788 the College sold it to Humphrey Farrar Esq., for forty years a prosperous and prominent citizen of the village. Albert Wainwright, the tinsmith, purchased it in 1836; it remained in his family until 1911, and is often called the Wainwright house. It was also sometimes called the Webster house from a belief, afterwards proved wrong, that Daniel once roomed in it. Later owners before Mrs. Heneage were Mrs. Laura Phelps and her daughter, Mrs. Pierce Crosby. Appar- ently only in size and general outline does it retain its original ap- pearance; the interior has been entirely changed.
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