USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 4
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That the White River Falls were eventually locked was due to the enterprise and energy of Mills Olcott. In March 1806 one Gordon Whitmore, who operated mills at the falls, persuaded Olcott to join him in constructing a "slip" about the existing dam for the purpose of passing lumber by the falls. The estimated cost was $300. It soon became apparent, however, that more extensive works were needed, and, Whitmore being without capital, Olcott agreed to advance the funds for the building of an adequate sys- tem of dams and locks. To secure the future of his project Olcott now petitioned the New Hampshire Legislature for the privilege of locking the falls and levying tolls. The petition was granted; and the White River Falls Company was incorporated June 12, 1807, Olcott being the sole incorporator. By the terms of incor- poration the Company was permitted to set its own tolls for a period of twelve years.
For four difficult years Olcott struggled with his problem. Time and again freshets partially destroyed the dams and locks, and on one occasion led to the drowning of three of the workmen. Whit- more as superintendent proved incompetent and had to be re- placed. Financially Olcott was forced to extend his credit to the limit, borrowing money at twelve and even eighteen per cent.
The works, on the New Hampshire side of the river, were finally opened to traffic in the spring of 1810. They consisted of a dam and three locks at the upper falls (that is, the middle bar, the
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upper bar having been adequately covered by the raising of the dam) and a dam and two locks at the lower bar. Instead of an in- vestment of $300 as originally contemplated, the works had cost nearly $23,000 plus some $5,000 interest on borrowed money. Sub- sequent litigation in which Olcott had to defend the interests of his Company must have raised the total cost to nearly $40,000.
Although the opening of the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike in 1804, and later of the Coos and Grafton Turnpikes, diverted much of the freight traffic from the river, Olcott insured the suc- cess of his venture by persuading the New Hampshire Legislature to enact two important measures. The first of these forced the lumber interests to float their logs down river in great rafts made up of "boxes," 60' by 12', which could be detached from the rafts, passed through the locks and reunited below. It was this measure, according to Olcott, that made his works profitable. The second measure, passed in recognition of the heavy costs of construction, freed the White River Falls Company from taxation for a period of ten years. As already noted the Company had been given the right to set its own tolls, a privilege it continued to exercise long after the original grant had lapsed. For many years these tolls, the highest on the river, were $1.00 per ton for merchandise and lum- ber and $2.00 for each boat. From the record of toll receipts, kept for upwards of half a century, it would appear that Olcott's fore- sight had paid off in "most ample and satisfactory returns."
Following the death of Mr. Olcott in 1845 and that of Mrs. Olcott three years later, the Company was re-incorporated as the White River Falls Corporation with plans to utilize the power at the falls for manufacturing. Although nothing came of this, the locks were maintained a few years longer until the coming of the railroad in 1847 ended what was left of the freight traffic on the river, and the closing of the locks and canal at Bellows Falls in 1858 brought the lumber traffic to a close. And so the story of Olcott's locks passed into history, though the Corporation retained its franchise until 1881 when it passed into other hands.
Up to the middle 1820's efforts to improve the navigation of the Connecticut above Hartford had been confined to the build- ing of locks and canals about the falls. Now came more grandiose schemes. Impressed by the success of the Erie Canal, and caught up in the resulting canal craze, the "Canalites" proposed the con- struction of a canal paralleling the river from Northampton to Barnet, Vermont. On the other hand the "Riverites" would merge
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Hanover Bicentennial Book
the existing canal and lock companies on the river into a single corporation, build additional dams, locks and canals, and develop an extensive system of slack water navigation. Despite a vigorous and ably conducted propaganda campaign by both groups nothing was done. The capital was just not available. Hanover and Nor- wich were never to enjoy the benefits of cheap canal transporta- tion.
In a final effort to provide better transportation facilities for the upper Connecticut valley the Connecticut River Valley Steam- boat Company undertook in 1831 to build and operate six little steamboats to run between the falls, the existing locks and canals being too narrow to pass steamboats of sufficient size and power for effective use on the river. In late June, 1831, however, the smallest of the boats, the John Ledyard, made an experimental voyage up the river from Hartford. Ably piloted by Captain Sam Nutt of White River, the little steamboat, a stern wheeler, passed gaily up through the locks and canals. No doubt Hanoverians were at the falls or on the bridge to cheer her passing. Wells River was reached without trouble, but there a bar prevented further adventure, and the John Ledyard turned downstream, her de- parture immortalized by a Haverhill bard.
It's gone! it's gone! the day is past, And night's dark shade is o'er us cast, And farther, farther, farther still, The steamboat's winding through the vale, The bells ring out their farewell peal, The cannons roar o'er hill, through dale, We'll hail the day when Captain Nutt Sailed up our fair Connecticut.
The boat designed for the Wells River-Hanover service was built at Wells River by Captain Nutt, and named the Adam Duncan. Unfortunately, by the time the vessel was completed in the spring of 1832 the Steamboat Company was in financial trouble. It failed the following summer. Meantime, after a suc- cessful trial, the Adam Duncan undertook a Fourth of July ex- cursion to Hanover. It ended in tragedy, for the connecting pipe between the boilers burst. "Several of the passengers were in the fire room," says one of them, "but no one was injured except Dr. Dean of Bath who jumped overboard and was drowned." The Adam Duncan was never to see service on the river. The following
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year she was auctioned off to Mills Olcott for $435, and eventually was floated to Hanover where her engine was removed and shipped to Hartford for sale. The hull seems to have rotted away on the bank above the falls.
For many of the good people of Hanover and Norwich the necessity of crossing the river was more important than transporta- tion along the river. The early settlers, no doubt, used their canoes or crude flatboats, but about 1770 one John Sargent who kept a tavern near the landing on the Vermont side established a public ferry where the bridge now stands. Unfortunately for Sargent, who was soon in the bad graces of Dr. Wheelock for selling rum to the students, the jurisdiction of New Hampshire, as fixed by George III in 1764, extended to the west bank of the river, and the Pro- vincial authorities claimed control of all ferry rights. On petition of Dr. Wheelock in 1772 Governor Wentworth, acting for the Crown, granted these rights to the Trustees of Dartmouth College and their assigns "to cover the whole length of the township of Hanover." This ferry monopoly not only angered Sargent who for a time defiantly continued to operate his ferry, but even more the town of Norwich which asserted for some years its right to a half interest in the ferry. Eventually Sargent came to terms with the College. The difficulties with Norwich seem to have ended in 1784 when a Norwich town meeting voted "that the Committee who were appointed to build the boat two years ago for a ferry boat between this town and Dresden, be directed to lock up said boat and dispose of the same to the best advantage."
After passing through a number of hands, the ferry lease was taken over in 1793 by Dr. Joseph Lewis who maintained the ferry, toll free to the clergy and College officials, as well as to those who did business at his grist mill, until the first bridge was built in 1796. For many years there was no formal road to the ferry on either side of the river. Not until 1778 did Norwich lay out a highway "to the ferry place near John Sargent's." On the Hanover side an old cart path up the ravine gradually grew into a highway, now West Wheelock Street, but it was not formally laid out until 1797 after the toll bridge had been built.
Up the river from the main ferry three other ferries operated at one time or another under the College grant. The first of these was the "Rope Ferry" (so called because the boat was attached to a rope stretched across the river) at the mouth of Girl Brook and the Vale of Tempe, connecting on the Vermont side with a road
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Hanover Bicentennial Book
to the home of Lieutenant-Governor Olcott (now the Albert H. Johnson place) and the old Norwich meetinghouse, and on the Hanover side approached by "Rope Ferry Road," as it was called as early as 1793. When this ferry was first established is unknown. That it persisted after the College had assigned its ferry rights to the Bridge Company is evident from complaints of trespass in the records of the Bridge Proprietors as late as 1806. Some distance above the "Rope Ferry," near the home of Timothy Smith, a sec- ond ferry operated where a winter road had long been in use across the ice. This ferry seems to have been in existence as late as 1840, but, if so, in defiance of the rights of the Bridge Company. The northern-most ferry was just below the mouth of the Pom- panoosuc. Here there had been a ferry of sorts since the earliest settlements, but in 1785 the Trustees leased the rights to Isaac Rogers. In 1804 the ferry passed into the hands of Timothy Bush of Norwich, but apparently was not kept up, for a few years later the Trustees refused to re-establish it. However, something in the nature of a ferry was maintained in the vicinity for many years.
Toward the close of the eighteenth century there arose a growing demand for improvements in overland transportation. As the states could not tax their people for such improvements, private capital undertook to solve the problem through state-chartered toll roads and bridges. On the Connecticut the first such bridge was built by Colonel Enoch Hale at Bellows Falls in 1783. The second was built at Hanover in 1796.
In August 1794 the Trustees of the College, concerned for their ferry rights, authorized the College Treasurer to state the terms on which the College would agree to the erection of a toll bridge within the limits of the grant made by the Legislature to the White River Falls Bridge Company. It will be recalled that the northern limit of this grant had been the mouth of Mink Brook. The original intention had been to build the bridge at the falls, but, as it soon became evident that this would be quite off the probable line of traffic, the Legislature was persuaded in 1794 to extend the grant two miles farther north, making possible a bridge at the Hanover-Norwich ferry.
The College supported the bridge enterprise not only by sub- scribing for several shares of the Company stock, but by leasing to the Bridge Company its ferry rights from the Lebanon line to Rogers' Ferry. There was, however, opposition to the bridge, some
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The River
of it in Hanover but much more in Norwich where a town meet- ing voted unanimously "that we wish there might be a free bridge built over the Connecticut at the ferry at Dr. Lewis's, but in case we cannot have a free bridge built there, we rather have a ferry kept there than have a toll bridge built." To counter this opposi- tion the Bridge Proprietors assured the people of Hanover and Norwich that it had "never been their intention to obstruct the passing of Connecticut River by Dr. Lewis's by any bridge we might erect, and that we never shall obstruct the same; but every person shall ever have the liberty to pass by water or on the ice, in the same manner as they do now, and no road to the river shall ever be obstructed by us." Furthermore the Proprietors promised that the bridge would be open toll free on Sundays to people go- ing to meeting, and that no tolls would be levied during the winter months when there was passing on the ice and snow on the bridge.
The architect and builder of the bridge was Rufus Graves, Hanover merchant and one of the original incorporators of the White River Falls Bridge Company. The bridge Graves built must have been a remarkable affair. Resting on stone abutments, it crossed the river in a single span so arched that the center was some twenty feet higher than the ends. President Dwight of Yale who saw it in 1797 states that its entire length was 344 feet, its width 36 feet, and the stone abutments 40 feet square. Many of the huge pines of which it was built were sixty feet long, hewed eighteen inches square. Deacon Benoni Dewey is said to have sup- plied twenty such pines at a dollar each.
The White River Falls Bridge, as it was known for over sixty years, was opened to traffic in the fall of 1796. The cost had been almost $13,000. To raise such a sum subscribers to the two hun- dred shares of Company stock had been assessed $63.75 a share. Al- though Aaron Hutchinson of Lebanon was, and remained, the largest single shareholder, many of the shares were taken by mer- chants of Boston, Providence, Worcester and Montreal who no doubt saw in the bridge a link in an improved system of transpor- tation to the Boston market, or perhaps just a profitable invest- ment. Rufus Graves who had done much to solicit this outside capital unfortunately became so badly involved in the finances of the bridge and his mercantile interests that he shortly failed in business and left Hanover, selling out his bridge holdings.
The first bridge was short-lived, collapsing of its own weight in
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1804. No one was injured, though a horse and wagon hurrying for the doctor is said to have narrowly escaped. The shareholders were assessed, and the bridge quickly rebuilt "of such strength as to last till the timbers rot." It was for this bridge that the center pier was built, eliminating the high arch of the first bridge.
With repairs in 1823 the second bridge stood until 1839 when again in disrepair it was wholly rebuilt except for the stonework. The third bridge like its predecessors was an open bridge with a four-foot parapet on each side. It was during the building of this bridge that the Company suffered its only serious accident. A team went off the ferry, temporarily in use while the bridge was build- ing, drowning two horses.
The promises made to the people of Hanover and Norwich were not always lived up to by the Bridge Proprietors. For years there was a running quarrel over the road to the water on the Hanover side. There were controversies over the tolls charged the residents of the two towns, and liberty to cross the bridge toll free in the winter months was curtailed. The general Sabbath privilege seems to have been discontinued after the collapse of the first bridge, though later restored to the clergy. Finally, in January 1852, the Proprietors unwisely voted "to discontinue the passage of the bridge free of tolls, from and after March 1, 1852."
This action of the Proprietors, in direct violation of earlier pledges, aroused intense indignation. Editorials hostile to the Pro- prietors appeared in the Dartmouth Advertiser. Meetings were held and arrangements made, and carried out, to reopen the road to the water on the Hanover side. The Proprietors met these ac- tivities with threats of prosecution, aimed particularly at Dr. Dixi Crosby and Professor Sanborn who had been prominent in the movement. In January 1854, Professor Sanborn while in Wood- stock to deliver a lecture was actually arrested at the request of the Proprietors. This further fanned the flames of resentment and led to talk of ridding the community of the bridge monopoly by town action. The Proprietors quickly realized their mistake and withdrew their suit against Professor Sanborn, but refused to yield on the issues at stake.
By this time matters were apparently getting a bit out of hand, for the records of the Proprietors indicate that the toll gate had been forced more than once. Apparently, too, teamsters were fail- ing to keep their horses at a walk on the bridge, causing dangerous vibrations in a structure which by 1854 was in a precarious condi-
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tion of disrepair. "A short time ago," reported the Dartmouth Ad- vertiser, "three of the owners happened to be on the stage to- gether. With a spice of the waggish the driver [Ira B. Allen] laid on the strings, the bridge swayed and shook so that they were really alarmed for their safety, and called out for him to stop. 'Oh! safe enough! no danger! got the owners aboard! get up along!' was the reply." With public opinion increasingly hostile to the bridge monopoly, and the bridge itself "not worth repairing," it was, perhaps, not altogether surprising that on the morning of August 6, 1854, the bridge was destroyed by fire. Arson was suspected but never proved.
For five years after the burning of the bridge transportation across the river was by ferry, an unhappy return to the eighteenth century. Plans for rebuilding the bridge were considered, but the Proprietors decided to proceed only "as soon as the public senti- ment will warrant its safety from malicious injury or destruction by fire." This failure to rebuild the bridge within the two-year grace period permitted in the ferry lease to the Bridge Company brought several letters and a petition to the Trustees of the Col- lege suggesting that the lease be revoked as forfeited.
Meantime, interest in a free bridge had been growing. In Sep- tember 1855 the Hanover Selectmen were petitioned to lay out a new highway on the site of the toll bridge. This meant a free bridge. The Selectmen refused, apparently due to a lack of interest in the eastern part of the town. Undismayed by this setback, a group headed by Dr. Crosby promptly presented a petition of similar nature to the Court of Common Pleas, which referred it to the Grafton County Commissioners. After two hearings in Han- over in August and September, 1856, the Commissioners reported to the Court "that a due regard to the public good requires that a Public Highway be laid out agreeably to the prayer of the peti- tioners," and that the town of Hanover should assume the costs. In their report the Commissioners laid out the highway, taking over the rights of the Bridge Company and those of the ferry "granted by George III to the Trustees of Dartmouth College and by said Trustees leased to said Corporation." In compensation the town was to pay $1,500 to the White River Falls Bridge Company and $833.33 to the College for its ferry rights.
To the report of the Commissioners exceptions were taken by the town and the Bridge Proprietors. The College though favoring a free bridge remained neutral. The case now went to the Su-
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preme Court of New Hampshire which, in December 1857, over- ruled all of the exceptions but one, an error on the part of the Commissioners, which it ordered corrected. Apparently the town reserved the right to take the issue to the Supreme Court of the United States, but wiser counsels prevailed. After spending some $1,000 in litigation both town and Bridge Company concluded that it would be best to accept the decision of the Commissioners. In this the College concurred, the Trustees offering to turn over to the town for construction of a free bridge the compensation awarded for their ferry rights, and to lease those rights to the town for a dollar a year.
There remained the hostility of the eastern part of the town which resented having to pay for a bridge it would rarely use. Feeling ran high, but thanks to a happy visit by President Lord to the store in Mill Village (now Etna) the bridge project was saved. He discussed the issue with the village leaders in a friendly spirit, and with such success, that a subsequent town meeting voted its approval.
The free bridge was built by the joint efforts of Hanover and Norwich. It was the first covered bridge and cost about $12,000 of which Hanover contributed $8,500, Norwich some $2,000, the Col- lege $833.33, and the citizens of Hanover by subscription an equal amount. Completed in June 1859, it was the first free bridge over the Connecticut. To celebrate the happy outcome of the long and bitter controversy "a large and respectable audience from Norwich and Hanover" gathered in the College church on the first of July. After speeches by Professor Sanborn and others, Doctor Crosby remarked, "It is important that our Bridge should have a name," and suggested "that our new structure be christened the 'Ledyard Free Bridge'." The motion was put and unanimously approved.
The Ledyard Free Bridge proved to be a very sturdy structure. Not only did it survive the great freshets of 1869 and 1927, but be- cause it was a covered bridge its timbers remained sound. With minor repairs in 1911, and more extensive changes in 1927 when heavy wooden arches on either side of the roadway were added, it stood for seventy-five years. In the end it succumbed only to the demand for a more substantial bridge to carry the volume and weight of modern traffic. In 1935 it was replaced by the present steel and concrete bridge at a cost of $153,000, shared by the towns of Hanover and Norwich with the aid of their respective states and the Federal government.
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The River
For two hundred years the Connecticut river has played its part in the life of the town. Without the river, indeed, the history of Hanover would certainly be far less colorful. And if its commer- cial interest to the town has long since departed, and ferry and bridge controversies are no more, the river has much to offer in serving the aesthetic and recreational needs of the community.
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4 From Oxcart to Airplane by Armstrong Sperry
T WO hundred years ago, the twin problems of transporta- tion and communication in New Hampshire followed one another as closely as a hitched oxcart followed its team of plodding oxen. In the court records of that time, the first roads were known as "trodden paths"-an apt epithet, since they were, in the beginning, trails worn deep by generations of moccasined feet. The formidable task of widening such paths to accommodate oxcart or sled, by means of the most primitive tools, confronted the first settlers of the Hanover plain.
Trees must be felled and burned, mighty stumps uprooted to lay even the rudiments of a road. Domestic cattle (next to the In- dian the best of all path-makers) established their own routes as they wound around the hillsides to pasture or drinking place.
It was not enough for a man to raise hay and grain and food for family consumption; no settlement that produced only what it consumed would prosper. Surpluses must be transported to coastal towns, to be bartered in exchange for the many essentials which no farmer, however resourceful, could produce by himself: coffee and tea, sugar and molasses, firearms and cutlery, gunpowder and salt. The church, too (perhaps that first one in Hanover Center), might be miles away, rough going for even the most devout; and small children somehow must get to the schoolhouse and be home again before dark. So it is not surprising that while the roads to and from Hanover grew slowly, infinitely slowly, they grew dog- gedly as well.
In 1769, four years after the first settlement in the Hanover region, an event occurred which would change the picture radi- cally and open up a whole new system of transportation: the Char- ter of Dartmouth College. In order to connect the College with the country estate of the Governor, ninety miles distant, the pro- vincial legislature ordered the construction of New Hampshire's first cross-country highway: the Wolfeboro Road. Climbing rug- gedly up to a 1900-foot saddle on Moose Mountain, it ran from Wolfeboro to Hanover by way of Plymouth; but no carriage
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THAT
Ledyard Bridge, completed in June, dedicated July 1, 1859. The log house is the old Ferry Company toll house, built in 1780, burned Oct. 19, 1860
Ledyard Bridge shortly before its replacement by the iron bridge
Cutting ice on the river
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Log drive 1895
Norwich and Hanover Station at train time
"The Street Car"
The Gay Nineties at the Wheelock House Starting for a picnic at Enfield in 1893
River Street (West Wheelock) 1865
From Oxcart to Airplane
passed over it for many years to come. Since this road was not completed in time for the Governor to attend the first College Commencement, he and his retinue were forced to reach Dart- mouth on horseback, by way of Plymouth and Haverhill.
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