USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 19
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During the 1938 hurricane most of the oldest and largest trees growing on the slopes of the esker were uprooted or broken. De- struction was also heavy in the area near the ski jump but fortu- nately most of the trees on the flat next to the river escaped injury. The salvaged logs were sawed in a mill set up near the Reservoir Road along with the logs from College Park. The construction of a new and higher dam on the Connecticut at Wilder some ten years ago, necessitated the removal of part of the trees along the steep river bank and along the shores at the mouth of Girl Brook. Among the trees cut in the latter area was a group of fourteen particularly choice old pines with straight clear lower boles. The largest of these measured 33 inches in diameter at breast height.
Today the most attractive area in Pine Park is the flat next to the river bank sometimes referred to as "The Cathedral Pines." Here disturbances by man and wind over past years are least evident. The overstory of white pines, with an occasional paper birch, consists of trees about eighty-five years old and about one hundred feet in height. Annual sample measurements indicate that these trees, bought of Arabella Hutchinson, have doubled in volume since the thinning made in the winter of 1924-1925. An irregular understory of young hardwoods and softwoods assures
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replacements for the future. Pine Park is the only large forested area in Hanover dedicated entirely to public use.
The Hanover Improvement Society is a voluntary corporation formed in 1922 to operate the Nugget Theatre. Since its forma- tion the Society has appropriated funds in excess of $250,000 for the benefit of the community. The more expensive items for which money has been appropriated are: the purchase of trucks and other equipment for the Fire and Street Departments, the care and planting of street trees, new sidewalks, Storrs Pond, and contributions toward clearing the ice at Occom Pond. In 1956 the Society volunteered to act for the community and purchased the so-called Tavern Block on South Main Street for use as a parking lot. This project was the result of the combined efforts of the Hanover Improvement Society, the Hanover Planning Board, Dartmouth College and the Precinct Commissioners.
Among the earliest expenditures made by the Society for the Precinct were those for the purchase of two fully equipped trucks for the Fire Department and the construction of a cement side- walk from Main Street to Ledyard Bridge. The need for this particular sidewalk was obvious as at that time practically all travel to and from Hanover was by rail via the Norwich and Hanover station. The desirability of a good sidewalk in this loca- tion had been called to the attention of the Village Improvement Society by Professor Charles F. Emerson nearly thirty years earlier! In later years travel from this point declined rapidly, and on December 1, 1959 the station was closed permanently.
Storrs Pond is a three-quarter mile long, one hundred-acre body of water named after Adna D. Storrs, the first president of the Society, and one of its original twenty members. A cement dam was built across Camp Brook with C.W.A. labor a short distance from where the brook enters the Connecticut River. An artificial beach with a bathhouse and other facilities, reached from the Reservoir Road, was constructed at the south end of the pond and officially opened to the public July 1, 1935. Here hundreds of children have learned to swim, other somewhat older people have improved their techniques and many have qualified as life guards, all under the skillful direction of Professor Sidney C. Hazelton and his assistants.
During the years that the Society used the original Nugget Theatre, on the site of the present telegraph office, many changes
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were made in the building. The first major improvements were made in 1927 when a new lobby, entered from West Wheelock Street, was added, new seats installed and the interior redecorated. Nine years later the roof was raised, a balcony added, the lounge enlarged and the interior renovated. The end of the old building as a theatre came on an early January morning in 1944 soon after smoke was discovered seeping through the roof. The alarm was given but even before the heating plant whistle ceased to blow, the roof was blown upward by a terrific explosion. The front portion of the building was repaired by the Society, remodelled and now is leased by the Western Union Telegraph Company. Eventually the remains of the old theatre walls were razed.
For several years through arrangements with Dartmouth Col- lege movies were shown in Webster Hall where "the many por- traits of Daniel hanging on the walls saw more shows than the most eager sophomore." In the fall of 1951 the present Nugget opposite the Post Office was opened. The dignified exterior, the gracious lobby decorated with murals depicting early Hanover scenes, and the quiet comfortable auditorium are in sharp con- trast to the first building. Patrons who once sought entertainment in the original Nugget with its crowded entrance, sheet-metal covered, radiator decorated walls can best appreciate the advan- tages of the present structure. Gone with the old building, but unwept in their passing, are the barrages of peanuts and apple cores that too often enveloped late entrants as they passed down its aisles.
The detailed history of the Dartmouth Outing Club, popularly referred to as the D.O.C., belongs properly perhaps with College rather than with Town history but this organization has added immeasurably to the winter recreational facilities available to all, and some items in connection with its development should be mentioned. The first organized meeting of what was to become the Dartmouth Outing Club was called by Fred Harris in January 1910 and the first "Winter Meet" with ski-jumping and ski and snowshoe races was held the next month. The jump in the Vale of Tempe was a tiny affair by today's standards, but the jumps themselves were breath-taking to the spectators, and probably to some of the contestants as well. A larger jump was built a few years later farther down the Vale with a toboggan slide close be- side it. In 1922 the present jump in the edge of Pine Park off the
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Lyme Road was constructed with funds advanced by the College.
The ski lift at Oak Hill, east of Lyme Road, which started operations during the winter of 1935-1936 was the first lift (as contrasted to a rope tow) built in the United States. The original rough pasture with its scattered bushy pine trees has been cleared and smoothed and numerous pines planted to shade the lift itself. Oak Hill continues to be popular because of its convenient loca- tion.
The Dartmouth Skiway at Holts Ledge in Lyme is an elaborate project with five trails ranging from novice to expert, served by the 3775-foot Pomalift erected in 1956, and a new 1600-foot Mueller T-Bar lift put up in 1960. All the trails were cut through the woods in a northward exposure and all of them lie at a higher altitude than the Oak Hill slopes.
About one hundred miles of D.O.C. trails can be used by any- one with sufficient energy, winter or summer. The Appalachian trail from Maine to Georgia runs through Hanover and is a part of the Club system. Since the advent of the automobile and the construction of numerous tows, cross-country skiing has become less popular and the trails are not so widely used during the win- ter months as was earlier the case.
The most spectacular entertainment furnished by the D.O.C. for non-participants is of course the Winter Carnival with its Out- door Evening, races, ski-jumping and other attractions.
The first Children's Carnival was held on the golf course in 1917 under the auspices of, and with prizes provided by, the Han- over Inn. The next year the Dartmouth Outing Club managed the meet and continued to do so for about twenty years. Com- munity groups ran the competitions until the Ford K. Sayre Memorial Ski Council was formed (about 1948) and took over the program. The Carnival is usually held on the golf course and nearby Occom Pond in late winter with events appropriate for children in different age groups. With nearly three hundred com- petitors the rivalry is intense and the youngest winners at least are not backward in demanding their prizes immediately after the successful race; tears of disappointment are frequently seen. The oldest prize, now one among many, is the John E. Johnson Cup, awarded each year since 1922 to the child accumulating the larg- est number of points.
Ski lessons for Hanover children were started at least as early
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as 1938 by Ford K. Sayre and his wife Peggy, then managers of the Hanover Inn. After the death of Captain Sayre in 1944 a memorial fund was established in his name to continue this work with children and the next year lessons were given. After the Ford K. Sayre Memorial Ski Council was formed this organization as- sumed control of the ski instructions program as well as manage- ment of the Children's Carnival.
The program, at first limited to Hanover children, was soon broadened to include those from Norwich as well. Today it also includes children from Lyme and Thetford, and the attendance has increased from a mere handful to nearly six hundred young- sters. The children at present are charged $1.00 for nine lessons and those unable to provide their own equipment rent it for the season for a very small fee. Except for some hired coaches all the work is done by volunteers; the program is supported by gifts of money, services, and equipment. This is probably the oldest and very likely the largest children's ski instruction program in the United States.
Hanover's use and enjoyment of its fascinating outdoor en- vironment is of long standing and has expanded and deepened over the years. It is one of the strong links that binds the com- munity together.
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I7 Doctors and Hospitals by Alice H. Pollard
W HEN in June 1770, Eleazar Wheelock paid what was to be his last visit to Hanover as a president selecting a home for his School, he was accompanied by his per- sonal physician, Dr. John Crane. The doctor later helped in wrest- ing the first clearings from the wilderness, being on the scene even before Wheelock's family.
This early appearance in Hanover of the academic profession in close company with the medical turned out to be a true harbinger of events to come. Just twenty-seven years later, Dr. Nathan Smith founded the Dartmouth Medical School and with it the tradition that Hanover's practicing physicians were usually allied to the College as members of the Medical School faculty.
In the case of Dr. Crane, however, his tie to Dartmouth was personal and official, and the double bond was tightly knotted. Dr. Crane served faithfully as a courier and companion. When Wheelock found that living quarters in Hanover could not be ready as soon as planned for the members of his family, it was Dr. Crane who was sent back to Connecticut to tell them. They had, however, already left for the primitive shelters awaiting them in the New Hampshire forests. Later when Eleazar Wheelock was engaged in his grim battle with the tavern keeper Payne, who persisted in demoralizing students with his sale of spirits, the president endeavored to make Dr. Crane, the town apothecary, the licensed retailer of spirits as well. The effort was unsuccessful. As Hanover's approved physician, Dr. Crane was given a choice one-acre lot on the Common's south side (now part of the Hop- kins Center site), but his fine house, built about 1773, had to be turned over some years later to Crane's business partner, Moses Chase, presumedly for debts. The house was leveled in the great winter fire of 1887.
During the American Revolution, Dr. Crane, who served three years as surgeon in the Massachusetts 6th Regiment, is said to have sold medicines in quantity and at a good price to the sur- geons of Colonel Timothy Bedel's regiment. However, in spite of
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Dr. Crane's favorable opportunities and his connection with Pres- ident Wheelock, it would appear that he did not prosper, and had little head for business.
In payment for services rendered during Wheelock's last illness in April 1779, Dr. Crane was given by the Trustees "fifteen acres of land west of the village near the river." By then, he needed money rather than lands. When Hanover's first physician himself died, seven years after his benefactor, he left his wife and children in destitute circumstances.
In marked contrast to Dr. Crane was Dr. Joseph Lewis, who lived across the river but practiced extensively in Hanover. He came to Norwich from Windsor, Connecticut, in 1767. His busi- ness acumen is said to have been surpassed only by his eccentrici- ties, neither preventing him from having an unusually successful medical career. Eyebrows to this day are lifted at some of Dr. Lewis' exploits.
He first lived in a little log house south of Blood Brook. By 1790 he had purchased John Sargent's land and house at the west end of the ferry which he successfully ran. In addition he bought and operated the mill at the Blood Brook falls.
As Dr. Lewis prospered, his wife requested that he dispense with the dirty buckskin garments which he habitually wore. Since he refused, she waited until he slept, then put the buckskins to soak under the ice in the horse trough,-leaving beside him a new suit of broadcloth. Unfortunately an emergency arose and Dr. Lewis was sent for during the night. When he discovered that his buckskins were missing, he was so irate that his wife had no choice but to produce them. The doctor wrung out the icy water, donned the garments and left on his midnight summons.
On another occasion, public opinion became aroused against him when, requiring a skeleton to study, Dr. Lewis boiled the body of an old Negro, Cato, in a kettle set on the rocks behind his house. Yet he was accounted an able doctor and was active in practice almost up to the time of his death, at eighty-six years.
More than one of Hanover's early physicians were involved in the bitter smallpox controversy which resulted in Eleazar's at- tempt in 1777 to have Dartmouth College bodily removed to New York state. Foremost among them was Dr. Laban Gates who came from Connecticut in 1774 and lived in Hanover until his death in 1836. According to the historian John K. Lord, "He was a man of great eccentricity and doubtless difficult to live with." In a day
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when divorce was almost unknown, he braved public opinion and tried valiantly but unsuccessfully to obtain a decree from his wife. He was conspicuous also for becoming a prime target for Wheelock's wrath when in 1776 he took it upon himself to inocu- late two Dartmouth students with smallpox.
At that time, the only means of protection against a severe at- tack of this disease was through an inoculation of the live virus. The result was a genuine case of smallpox, which it was hoped would prove mild. Meanwhile the inoculated patient could and often did transmit the disease to others in the immunizing process. The control of inoculation therefore was of vital concern to the community.
In addition to President Wheelock's normal anxiety, he seems to have had an extraordinary dread of contracting smallpox him- self. He addressed a fiery letter to Dr. Gates, forbidding him to perform further inoculations on Dartmouth students and point- ing out that "He, Gates, had never had the small Pox Himself, nor any more than a theoretical acquaintance with it, or what treatment would be suitable for those who should have it."
Dr. Gates swiftly apologized, no outbreak of smallpox resulted, and the matter seemed closed. However, President Wheelock had become sensitive to the very word "inoculation." Six months later he received a petition which could not be ignored, signed by eight students and approved by fifteen townspeople, in which his per- mission for their inoculation was requested. What followed was an example of the cure, or prevention, of a disease being almost worse than the sickness itself.
With Wheelock's sanction, quarantine headquarters were set up at the isolated College mills on Mink Brook, and a supervisory committee placed in charge. Confusion began to reign when Dr. George Eager of Hanover brought in his own infected patients to the already crowded mill buildings. Wheelock then objected forcibly that only a College-approved physician should have this prerogative. A town-gown fight ensued, which resulted in the town's Committee of Safety decreeing that forthwith all inocula- tions must be suspended. Nonetheless, two students who claimed they had done so with Wheelock's permission obtained inocula- tions. The town selectmen then determined to take over complete supervision of both quarantined groups-students and townspeo- ple-and ruled that all be isolated in one place, the College-owned mills.
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At this President Wheelock's resentment was extreme. In a letter to the trustees he wrote in acid of the crucial split between College and town authority, condemning "the arbitrary power and control usurped and exercised by the town of Hanover, and their Selectmen and Committee of Safety in their name, over this College. .. . " More disturbing than the President's anger was the direct action he took in writing to Robert Livingston and George Morris, leaders of the patriot party in New York. In this letter Wheelock offered to remove Dartmouth College to that state. Fortunately the suggestion was tactfully shelved by the officials in New York.
The physician called by Wheelock "rash and presumptuous" took revenge in a rather petty spirit if a footnote from Chase's History of Dartmouth College and Hanover, N. H. is rightly in- terpreted: "Doctr. Wheelock: Sir,-I should take it as a grait Favour if you would put up your small pigs, for they Daly Do me Dam- age and as you are knowing to it, I shall take it unkind if you don't take care of them. From your humble Servt., George Eager."
It was not until Dr. Nathan Smith's coming in 1797 that Han- over had a physician of outstanding competence. He ushered in a tradition of medical excellence which has grown with time, reach- ing beyond the boundaries of the town and College, and the state itself.
Nathan Smith was twenty-one years old when as a spectator he watched an amputation being performed by Dr. Josiah Goodhue of Putney, Vermont. Upon the doctor's asking for someone to assist him, Smith volunteered. After skillfully concluding his part in the operation, even tying the arteries, he said that he, too, wanted to be a doctor. Goodhue asked him what his training had been and Smith replied, "Until last night I have labored daily with my hands."
Few knew better than he the difficulties faced by farm boys who sought medical educations. Later when Dr. Smith was practicing in Cornish, he went to President John Wheelock and the trustees, urging the founding of a medical department at Dartmouth. Told he would have to wait a year for the answer, Nathan Smith em- barked upon twelve months of study in Edinburgh and London, there buying books with his own money for the prospective medi- cal school library.
His first lectures to Dartmouth medical students took place in November 1797. In his sixteen years at the College Dr. Smith oc-
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cupied, in Oliver Wendell Holmes' words, "not a chair but a whole settee of professorships." He also carried on a far-flung rural practice, frequently teaching a medical student traveling on horseback beside him. A skilled surgeon, he was respected for hav- ing both compassion and a cool head.
It was Nathan Smith who obtained funds for a medical school building, being required himself to give the site on which it would be constructed. His own love of learning never left him, and to the end of his days he was a student of medicine.
Professor Knight of Yale University said of him "Dr. Smith was more extensively known than any other medical man in New Eng- land, or indeed than any man in any profession." When at the age of fifty-one, Nathan Smith moved away from Hanover, he was to found the medical schools of Yale and of Bowdoin, and to help start the University of Vermont School of Medicine. He left be- hind in Hanover an enduring ideal, which in its three-fold aspect is vital today: the practice, teaching and learning of medicine.
The town early became known as a medical center for a large rural community. In summer and early fall, distinguished doctors from Boston and New York came to teach students at the Medical School. They also acted as consultants to physicians practicing in Hanover and outlying regions. Not only did these well-known doctors bring the advantages of city medicine to the small town, but the cities all too often benefited when Hanover's excellent doctors removed their practices to these more populous centers.
The eccentricity which characterized the town's earliest doctors became individuality in the able men who appeared on the scene after the founding of the Dartmouth Medical School. In a day when diagnosis depended upon observation, and laboratory find- ings were not to be had, independence of judgment was prized. It was Dr. Dixi Crosby, who practiced and taught in Hanover for some forty-five years, who advised his students: "Depend upon yourself, young gentlemen. Take no man's diagnosis, but see with your own eyes, feel with your own fingers, judge with your own judgment, and be the disciple of no man."
Two former students took over the greater part of Nathan Smith's practice and teaching duties after his departure: Dr. Cyrus Perkins and Dr. Reuben D. Mussey. Both were popular in the community. Dr. Perkins, loyal to the cause of John Wheelock, was a trustee of the University during those times of disruptive
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struggle, and went to New York City after his side lost. He carried on a successful medical practice there for thirty years.
Dr. Mussey was a devout man and eminent surgeon. After his death, his life and work were commemorated in an address before the Dartmouth Medical School in 1869 by Dr. Alpheus B. Crosby, who said, "It was as a surgeon that he came to be most extensively known . . . he attained a national reputation. . . . He believed much in skilled surgery, something in nature, and most of all in God."
In Hanover Dr. Mussey's three ruling passions were well known: vegetarianism, the temperance cause, and music. Henry W. Longfellow, who attended the commencement of 1838, refers to two of them: "Last night I was at Dr. Mussey's, where there was music and lemonade." He taught on the Medical School fac- ulty for almost a quarter-century, then accepted in 1838 a profes- sorship in the Cincinnati Medical School. On numerous occasions Dr. Mussey revealed his independence as a man and scientist. In 1830 "the doctrine of non-union in cases of intra-capsular frac- ture" had been widely accepted, in large measure because of the work and views of Sir Astley Cooper in England. To help dis- prove the doctrine, Dr. Mussey took to England a perfectly healed specimen. By means of experiments made on himself, soaking in tubs of water containing various chemicals, he also challenged the conclusions of the famous Dr. Rush of Philadelphia, who stated that skin did not absorb.
The famous Dr. Dixi Crosby came to Hanover in 1838 after years of practice with his father, Dr. Asa Crosby, in Gilmanton, and Meredith Bridge, New Hampshire. He had received the M.D. degree from Dartmouth in 1824.
At a young age Dixi Crosby had won a reputation for medical skill and boldness. While studying medicine with his father, he was forbidden to pursue "practical anatomy" or dissection. How- ever, Dixi obtained the body of a young child which he hid in the wainscot of his father's office. After midnight, "when slum- ber's chain had bound the other members of the family," he would darken the windows and dissect till dawn; then the subject would be returned to its hiding place. When in 1838 he suc- ceeded Dr. Mussey in the Medical School, Dr. Dixi Crosby's knowledge of anatomy excelled his father's.
L. B. Richardson, the historian, writes: "Dr. Dixi Crosby was the most prominent member of the Crosby family which came
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very near dominating Hanover in his day." He carried on a suc- cessful and extensive practice, which one of his contemporaries characterized as "stretching from Lake Champlain to Boston." A man of outstanding personality and energy, he established the first hospital in Hanover, for the use of his patients and those of other Medical School doctors. It was located in the house which still stands just north of the White Church and is now occupied by Captain Howard F. Eaton. His hospital was closed upon Dr. Crosby's retirement in 1870, but its loss was keenly felt, and it later served as an impetus to the founding of Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital.
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