USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 11
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
A house which long stood on North Main Street on the present site of Sanborn House is supposed to have been built about 1786 by an otherwise unidentified Thaddeus White. Deacon Samuel Long lived in it from about 1819 to 1847, followed until 1875 by Daniel Blaisdell, the College treasurer. Much later it was the home of another treasurer, C. P. Chase. It had undergone several transformations and because of the many gables its additions had acquired was then known familiarly as "The House of Seven Gables." In 1925 it was purchased by Professor Ernest R. Greene, who had been living in it for several years, and moved by him to its present location at 38 East Wheelock Street. It is now occu- pied by Mr. and Mrs. David F. Hawke.
When the Rev. Sylvanus Ripley found his farmhouse too small for the comfort of his growing family, he built, as we have said, in
104
East side of the Green in the 1880s
North side of the Green 1897; from the left: the White Church (1795), Choate house (1786), Lord house (1802), Rood house (1824)
LE
IHIN
West side of the Green in the 1890s; from the left: Bank Building (1870), Sanborn house (1815), Proctor house (1810), Shurtleff-Brown house (1790), Hubbard house (1843), Crosby Hall (1810), White Church (1795)
South side of the Green 1867; from the left: Bissell Hall, Crane-Currier house (built 1773, burned 1887), Dartmouth Hotel
...
Gates house 1865; built 1785, on site of Wilson Museum
"The Golden Corner" 1881, residence of A. P. Balch; built 1875, burned 1900; on site of College Hall
Professor Brown house 1867, on site of College Hall; built by Richard Lang 1795
The Webster Cottage, erected 1785
Early Houses in the Village on the Plain
1786 on his own land on the north side of the Green a big new house, known to us for over forty years as Choate House. The family was already living in the still unfinished dwelling on Feb- ruary 5, 1787, when Mr. Ripley was killed by being thrown from a sleigh in Mill Village on his return from a preaching service at Hanover Center. His widow continued there until 1794, when she sold the property to George Foote and returned to her farmhouse. Mr. Foote kept it as an inn for a few years, "with victualing and lodging accommodations for travellers."
In 1801 it passed into the possession of Mills Olcott Esq., lead- ing citizen of the village for half a century, and became a center of culture and hospitality. Mr. Olcott's daughter Helen was mar- ried in 1825 in the east parlor of this house to Rufus Choate. After Olcott's death, his daughter Sarah and her husband, William H. Duncan, occupied the house until her decease in 1854. For the next sixty-three years, except for one brief interval, it was the home of pastors of the College Church-Dr. John Richards, Dr. Samuel P. Leeds, and the Rev. Robert Falconer. Dr. and Mrs. Leeds, whose occupancy extended from 1864 to 1913, named it "The Maples," although most of the citizens called it simply "the Leeds house."
In 1915 it was bought by the College and in 1920 modernized and made into a two-family house for faculty, called Choate House. In 1927, when the space for Baker Library was being cleared, it was moved to 27A North Main Street, where it is now used for the offices of educational research. In its new location it was brought after 140 years face to face with Sylvanus Ripley's older house, the Webster Cottage.
Choate House was always considered one of the "elegant" resi- dences in the village, ranking next to the Wheelock mansion in historic interest. Fortunately, it has undergone less structural change than the other old houses and retains many of its original features. It is a hipped roof, two-chimney type of house, with eight brick fireplaces and a central hall between the chimneys, whence a stairway leads to the second floor. Three of the eight main rooms still have wooden shutters at the windows which can be pushed back out of sight within the walls when not in use. All the fireplaces remain, most of them in their original state, with the old mantels. The stairway in the hall and the exposed corner posts in the rooms are unchanged, as is the sash of the twenty-four- paned windows. Some old glass persists, but the long-famous panes
105
Hanover Bicentennial Book
on which the names and initials of many of the Olcotts were cut with a diamond have disappeared. In the attic one may inspect the four massive handhewn pine rafters, nine by ten inches, which support the hipped roof, and in the cellar still larger timbers span- ning brick supports which uphold the great chimneys. The two ells and the front porch with its unusual baluster posts were not a part of the original plan, but were evidently added during the Olcott ownership.
The main part of Roland Lewin's house, 10 Pleasant Street, was built by Ezra Carpenter in 1787 on College Street, on a site be- tween the road and the Medical Building. When Dr. Nathan Smith founded the Medical School in 1797, his first lectures were held in this house, it is said. Dr. Smith continued to use it for pur- poses connected with the School after the Medical Building was erected in 1812, and it became known as the "Old Medical House." Though much out of repair, it was moved in 1835 to its present site, where with Jabez Bingham's 1772 house serving as an ell it became what is now the Lewin residence. Dr. E. E. Smith, referring to it soon after it was moved, calls it "the house in the field at the extreme southwest corner of the village on a lane lead- ing to the swimming hole in Mink Brook."
Samuel McClure built a large fine house in 1790 on the site of the present Parkhurst Hall, and in his garden to the north of it a shop in which he plied his trades of barber and tailor and kept the post office during his term as postmaster from 1792 to 1797. On McClure's removal from town in 1807 the Rev. Roswell Shurtleff bought the property. He lived in the big house, but turned the shop into a rooming house for students, using part of it for a hall known as the "Lyceum." When the University de- prived the College of all its buildings, freshman classes were held here in the room of Joseph Porter of the Class of 1820. About 1839 this Lyceum building was moved to 23 West Wheelock Street, owned and occupied for seventy years by Luman Boutwell and his son Luman Jr., the village cabinetmaker. It is now owned by Mrs. Robert Hawes.
In 1791 the College erected on a quarter-acre lot between the present Parkhurst and Crosby Halls a building called "Moor's Academy," to serve the Moor's Charity School for Indians, which in the absence of many redskins to educate had become largely a preparatory school for the children of the village. Phinehas Annis, who had just completed the cupola on Dartmouth Hall, was the
106
Early Houses in the Village on the Plain
builder. The second story of the building housed the printing office of Josiah Dunham and his successor, Moses Davis, for about ten years. In 1826 the College records call the building "dilapi- dated, ruinous, and unworthy of repair." Nevertheless, in 1835 Phineas Clement bought it, and hauling it up to 34 North Main Street remodeled it as a residence on his farm, which comprised all the land between that point and the present golf links. From the Rev. Joseph B. Morse, a later owner, it became known as the Morse farmhouse. In 1920 C. P. Clark purchased it and adapted it for use as a dormitory and dining hall for the Clark School. To- day it is again owned by the College, and now named East Hall.
Unity House, at 23 South Park Street, was built in 1795 on the present site of College Hall by Richard Lang, the principal mer- chant in the early village. He first intended to make of it a large store building with a hall in the second story, but before it was finished changed his plans and altered it into a beautiful colonial dwelling house for himself. Here he resided until his death in 1841.
He was succeeded by his son-in-law, Professor Charles B. Had- dock, who improved the grounds and developed an attractive gar- den, considered something of a showplace. Leaving Hanover in 1851 to become chargé d'affaires at the court of Portugal, Mr. Had- dock was followed in possession of the house by Professor Samuel G. Brown, who remained in it until 1867, when he assumed the presidency of Hamilton College. The property soon passed into the hands of the wealthy railroad man, Adna P. Balch, who decided to remove the Brown house and build himself a more pretentious mansion on this, "the Golden Corner." He sold the house in 1875 to William H. Gibbs, a tailor, who started to move it eastward, but falling into financial difficulties sold it in transitu to Dr. Carle- ton P. Frost. Dr. Frost moved it on to 11 East Wheelock Street where the Chi Phi House now stands and remodeled it into a resi- dence for himself.
Up to this time the house had presented a handsome appear- ance. It was a large, finely proportioned, two-story dwelling, with a hipped roof and two big chimneys, a beautifully decorated cor- nice and frieze, matched with similar delicately cut details over the tops of the twenty-four-paned windows below, and a graceful entrance and doorway, surmounted by a Palladian window. It was, of course, painted white with green blinds and surrounded by an ornamental picket fence.
107
Hanover Bicentennial Book
Dr. Frost, in obedience to the prevailing taste of the 1870s, added a third story under a Mansard roof, an ornate and heavy front porch, new windows and dark paint, and thus thoroughly destroyed its pristine loveliness. He and his family occupied it un- til his death in 1896. His heirs sold it in 1903 to the Chi Phi fra- ternity, by whom it was again sold in 1927 to be replaced by a brick building. Mrs. Claude A. Palmer of California purchased it for the cost of moving it and transferred it to its present place, where she rented rooms for a year or so to students before selling it to the College to be made into an apartment house. This build- ing is the last one erected in the eighteenth century which sur- vives.
The watchmaker's shop of Jedediah Baldwin on the present site of the Bridgman Block was burned in 1800, but immediately re- placed. This new building was of two stories, gable end to the street, with a narrow fifteen-foot front graced by a bow window for display purposes. The second story contained a small hall for dancing, with an arched ceiling and spring floor. Over the years it housed the post office and a variety of tradesmen's shops. The bow window was removed about mid-century, and the building became a shoemaker's shop. The date of its removal is not defi- nitely known, but was probably in the 1870s. It was taken to 3 Pleas- ant Street, turned with its long side to the street, remodeled and extensively enlarged ; it then became the home of M. M. Amaral, a Main Street barber for forty years. The house has undergone further changes in recent years and is now owned by Ellis O. Briggs. About the only remaining feature of the original Baldwin shop is the arched ceiling of the public hall in the second story.
The house currently at 41 College Street, known to all as the President Lord house, was built in 1802 on the north side of the Green, next door to the Olcott house, for William H. Woodward in preparation for his impending marriage. He was a lawyer, son of Bezaleel Woodward and grandson of Eleazar Wheelock, and was the first male child born on Hanover Plain.
The actual builder of the house is thought to have been Joseph Emerson of Norwich, Vermont, because of its close resemblance to houses in that town known to have been erected by Mr. Emerson. The original house, to which a large ell was later added, had a central hall and only four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs, with a spring floor for dancing in the upper west chamber. The roof was a low hipped one and the two large chimneys were lo-
108
Early Houses in the Village on the Plain
cated next to the end walls. The long axis ran parallel to the street, with the front door in the center; unbroken pilasters rose at the corners of the house, and there was a pediment over the door and a decorative frieze below the cornice. The classic front porch was added in 1865.
Mr. Woodward died in 1818, but his widow continued to live in the house until 1830, when it was occupied by President Nathan Lord. It gains historic interest from having been the president's house from 1830 to 1863, with Mr. Lord still living in it until his death in 1870. It remained in the family until 1894 when it was sold to the College. From that time until 1903 it was used as a residence hall for unmarried faculty members. In 1898 the administrative offices of the College were moved into the main part of the house, and in 1903 extended into the ell as well.
The College administration vacated it upon the building of Parkhurst Hall in 1911, and it remained empty to 1920, when it was moved to its present location, completely remodeled, and rented to a succession of faculty families. The original chimneys and fireplaces were not moved, but new ones were added at the new site; the mantels, however, were preserved. The spring floor was removed, and the porch replaced by a smaller one. Some of the window seats in the fifteen-inch-thick walls remain, and the spaciousness of the rooms abides. In 1927 the College sold it to Professor Arthur Fairbanks, whose wife was a granddaughter of Nathan Lord. In 1944 their daughter, Mary Lord Fairbanks, presented it to the College in memory of her great-grandfather, President Lord. It is currently used as a dormitory for medical students.
Rev. Zephaniah S. Moore came to Hanover in 1810 as professor of Latin and Greek in the College, and at once began the erection of his fine brick house, now known as Crosby Hall. This is the second of the two houses built on the Plain during the first fifty years of Hanover's existence that still stand on their original sites. In 1815 Professor Moore resigned to become president of Wil- liams College, and his house was bought by Dr. Reuben D. Mus- sey, who had come to town the year before to lecture in the Medical School. After a distinguished service as teacher and prac- tising surgeon here, he resigned in 1838 to go to the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati.
Dr. Dixi Crosby came to replace him and took over his house as well as his chair of surgery in the Medical School. Dr. Crosby
109
Hanover Bicentennial Book
died in 1873, but his family continued to reside in the house until it was bought by the College in 1884. It was in this home in 1853 that Dr. Crosby and Professor Oliver P. Hubbard performed the first scientific examination of crude oil which led to the beginning of the world's petroleum industry.
After the College purchased the house it was rented to faculty tenants until 1896. Up until this time it had retained its original appearance-a large square brick house, with pitch roof and with a modest porch at its front door. There was a small ell in the rear, and behind it a large barn, in which Dr. Mussey had stabled the six swift horses that he kept ever ready to transport him long distances over the hills of the north country in answer to urgent calls.
In 1896 the building was remodeled into a dormitory and named Crosby Hall. The present pillars were placed on the front; a third story and a big wooden annex, larger than the main brick house, were added, furnishing residence quarters for fifty-five students. In 1949 its interior was entirely made over to fit it for accommodating the Alumni Records and other administrative offices for which there was no longer room in Parkhurst.
On the present site of Steele Hall, Aaron Hutchinson, a Leba- non lawyer, built a house in 1810 for his son Henry and his bride, Mary Woodward, granddaughter to Eleazar Wheelock. Henry was also a lawyer, for several years in partnership with his brother-in- law, William H. Woodward. He removed to New York City in 1825, and his house was taken over by Professor William Cham- berlain. The latter died in 1830, but his widow continued in the house until her own death in 1850. She was succeeded in owner- ship and occupancy by her daughter Sarah, wife of Professor John N. Putnam. Mr. Putnam died in 1863, and in the following year Professor William A. Packard purchased the property, but in 1870 he moved on to Princeton, and Dr. Edward Spaulding, a trustee of the College, bought the building to hold it for faculty rental. For three years it was occupied by bachelor instructors, and in 1873 passed into the possession of Professor John K. Lord, who held it until 1920 when it was sold to the College. The main house was then moved to a new location, 39 College Street, and bought by a son of Professor Lord, Dr. Frederic P. Lord, who both mod- ernized it and restored some of its original simplicity that had be- come obscured by changes in the Victorian era.
The outstanding feature of the house is the graceful stairway
110
Early Houses in the Village on the Plain
with its original woodwork. The fireplaces are still adorned with the old mantels, and the dado in the present living room is com- posed of twenty-one-and-a-half-inch boards which go back to 1810. Differing from its neighbors, this house has low-studded rooms on the ground floor but high-ceilinged ones on the second. It has been suggested that too much rum may have been served to the citizens and workmen when they gathered for the house raising, and that in their muddlement they placed the frames upside down!
In 1956 Dr. Lord sold the house again to the College. Mr. and Mrs. John R. Scotford are living in it today.
On the southeast corner of Elm and College Streets James S. Brown, a saddler, built a house, begun in 1811 but not finished until 1812, if that date, cut into one of the bricks found in the big central chimney when it was pulled down, is correct-and it probably is. How long the saddler lived in it is uncertain, but it became the property of Dr. Daniel Oliver in 1821, who sold it to the College in 1824. It was occupied by a series of tenants until purchased in 1834 by Dr. Asa Crosby, a retired physician who came to Hanover to spend the last two years of his life. From three of his seventeen children sprang the distinguished Crosby families of our town. Alpheus Crosby, professor of Greek, succeeded his father in 1836 in the occupancy of this house, to be followed in 1874 by his brother, Dr. Thomas R. Crosby, whose widow sold the property in 1897 to the College. It was made into a dormitory, named Elm House, in 1903, and reconverted into a dwelling house for faculty members in 1909. To make room for the build- ing of Baker Library it was sold to Professor and Mrs. Sidney Cox in 1927, who moved it to its present location at 26 East Wheelock Street. It has recently passed once more into the possession of the College and is now occupied by Mrs. M. C. Lathem. The unusual spiral stairway in the entrance hall and the living room fireplace mantel, with matching under-window moldings, are the most in- teresting survivals of the original building.
In these nineteen houses remaining on Hanover Plain from the town's first half-century we have a goodly heritage. Most of them are sturdy and well preserved, and with proper care should be houses of gracious living for another century.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for the contribution to this paper of research by Marjory Lord Packard and Frederick Chase.
111
IO Main Street
by Phoebe Storrs Stebbins
N TO doubt the path leading to Hanover along the river bank was steep and rough so that it proved easier to cross Mink Brook somewhat to the east where the meadow was flat and the brook not so deep for fording. Then it continued northward up the hill onto the plain where Dr. Wheelock had his settlement. Though probably used many years previously, it was not until 1775 that Main Street was officially recognized as a road leading from the southwest corner of the Common to the Half Mile road near the Lebanon line. Later it crossed the Common diagonally, joining what is now College Street to become the River Road to the north.
Many of the early businesses were on the northeast side of the Common, though there were others scattered all about. The in- dependence of the early settlers of Hanover from the rest of the world can be seen by the types of their work-the hatter, pottery maker, weaver, blacksmith, owners of potash and tannery, shoe- maker, tinsmith and many others.
As the town grew older there was more contact with other com- munities. Businesses grew and changed. To see this let us choose a housewife every fifty years after the chartering of the town and accompany her while she shops in Hanover.
It is now 1811: James Madison is President. Mistress 1811 with her husband comes down the road from the north end of the village by horse and wagon to start her shopping day. On her left (somewhat north of the present site of Rollins Chapel) she passes the saddling business of James S. Brown where are for sale har- nesses, gentlemen's or ladies' saddles, portmanteaus and "slay bells." Mr. Brown is looking for a boy to be his apprentice.
Beyond this is the general store of James Poole. Here a customer is unloading a barrel of wood ashes in payment of past debts, at ten pence per bushel. The ashes will go to Mr. Poole's potash works to be made into potash to be sold for the manufacture of soap. Potash has become less valuable since the Europeans have
112
Main Street
learned a process of soap making without it. Mr. Poole will also accept wheat, flaxseed, old pewter, rags or cash for his goods.
Across the road on the corner (where Webster Hall is now) stands Richard Lang's general store. Mr. Lang is unloading a wagon of molasses, coffee, rum, sugar, tea, iron bars and English glass. Four tired horses are being unharnessed by a boy and will en- joy a rest, for it has taken them a week over very bumpy roads to carry their burden to Hanover. Mistress 1811 seldom sees much money but she has two chickens she has raised which Mr. Lang will exchange for a gallon of molasses and two pounds of coffee. The chickens will ride back to Salem, Massachusetts, when the team goes back, along with butter, cheese and pork with which Mr. Lang will pay his creditors there.
Mistress 1811 puts her wares into her wagon and they jostle across the Common-looking back to the north to admire the white steeple of the church against the sky. The distant moun- tains are pretty today. A cow wanders about among the stumps. It is quite swampy down toward the southeast of the Green.
Across the Common her husband lets her out by the dwelling of Richard Lang on the northwest corner of Main and West Wheelock Streets and goes off to the blacksmith. She lifts her skirts carefully out of the mud and goes to the building beyond Mr. Lang's where Spear's store is located. Here Charles Spear pub- lishes the weekly Dartmouth Gazette. A postrunner is saddling his horse to take the news to Enfield and Lebanon. Mr. Spear also runs a bookstore. He has just received David McClure's The Memoirs of Eleazar Wheelock and is recommending Coelebs in Search of a Wife-in two volumes-as comprehending observations on domestic habits, manners, religion and morals. But it is not books that interest her today; rather an elixir of health her neigh- bor has recommended: "a pleasant, cordial stomachic bitter designed for the removal of jaundice, bilious hypochondriacal complaints and a preservative against contagious disorders, and inclemency of the weather." Each tin box sells for two shillings six pence. She takes a box and promises to bring Mr. Spear pay- ment in butter soon.
She wanders down the west side of Main Street past Dr. Samuel Alden's white house on the corner, built by Aaron Storrs for a tavern in 1771. And on to Dr. Alden's store with the elegant white pillars, built by Rufus Graves. Upstairs are hall and offices. Dr. Alden has a general store in the main part of the building with a
113
Hanover Bicentennial Book
little wing to the south for drugs. He has just received a shipment of goods up the river from New York and she is glad to see Vir- ginia tobacco and snuff for her father.
She passes The Green Store, a little shop that John Robie has taken over since the death of Jedediah Baldwin, the watchmaker. A little farther down the street she stops at Mrs. Susanna Smith's house and shop, The Hanover Bookstore. Mrs. Smith has carried on the business since her husband, the professor, died in 1809. Like Charles Spear she sells not only books but general merchan- dise-dry goods, groceries, and a good supply of West India goods. Mistress 1811 admires the new paper hangings, oil cloth, cassi- meres and calicoes, and looks fondly at the fine hair trunks. She chats a bit with Mrs. Smith and goes back into the bright light of the street. She looks down past the tavern to Professor Hubbard's house at the top of the hill but decides to cross the street to Aaron Wright's on the northeast corner of Main and Lebanon Streets. Mr. Wright, a "taylor," has just taken over the duties of post- master and she goes in to see if there is mail for anyone at home. There are letters waiting for residents of Hartford, Fairlee, Nor- wich and "Lime" as well as Hanover. There is no such thing as mail delivery in 1811 and one must stop at the post office to in- quire. Uncalled for letters are listed in the weekly Gazette.
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.