USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 5
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After the Wolfeboro Road, two other highways opened up, meandering along the ridges southeast of Etna-one across Pork Hill to Ruddsboro still in use, and a second across Mt. Tug toward Lake Mascoma. This second road has long been aban- doned, though in early days it was an artery of communication with "Lebanon City." The Greensboro Road was soon to follow.
Already, however, Freeman and his followers had established the plan of Hanover village proper, much as it is today. A highway had been plotted along the course of what is now Main Street, from the southwest corner of the College Green to Mink Brook Meadow. Shortly thereafter a county road was laid out from Plain- field to Lebanon, thence into Hanover, running diagonally across the Green and north toward Lyme.
The labor inherent in building those first through roads stag- gers the imagination. The first step was "underbrushing through," as the process was called. Bushes and saplings were cut down and burned, making it possible for a horseman or packhorse to pass. The lay of the terrain, with its inevitable streams, hills and ra- vines, of necessity lent a serpentine course to the route. After cutting down and burning, yoked oxen hauled out the giant tree stumps. Even then, the roots of the larger trees swelled beneath the surface of the earth, like outsized molehills, among which horses stumbled, floundered and broke their legs. Rainwater transformed many low places into practically permanent swamps and marshes.
Such conditions gave rise to the most common of the early roads: the corduroy road. The supply of wood being endless, it was put to every conceivable use, including road-building. Trees half a foot in thickness were trimmed of branches, the trunks laid parallel to each other to form a road over wet places. The result- ing surface, ridged like the cotton corduroy in common use at the time, suggested its name. Soil was shoveled in between the logs and on top, tamped down to form some sort of surface; but the next rain invariably washed it clean and the whole laborious process must be repeated.
But for Hanover and her neighboring towns, toward the end of the century, the day of the turnpike and vast changes were
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dawning. With its heavier foundation of stone, the turnpike came to be the road best adapted to the country through which it must pass. Its name derived from the gate erected at regular intervals along the way, levying upon the traveler tolls which helped to de- fray the cost of maintenance. The charges were determined ac- cording to the distance traveled, the type of vehicle, the number and kind of cattle being driven.
In general, the charge for each ten miles was 121/2¢ for every wagon with two horses or oxen; 25¢ for every coach, phaeton, or other pleasure carriage with two horses; 12¢ for every one-horse pleasure carriage (then, as now, pleasure ran into money); 4¢ for every horse and rider; 20¢ for a score of cattle or horses; and 6¢ for a score of sheep or hogs.
The first New Hampshire turnpike was completed in 1797, at an average cost of $900 per mile. It was built in general accord- ance with the principles of a Scotch engineer, John Loudon Mc- Adam. As they grew and developed, the turnpikes proved to be more durable than any other kind of road in New Hampshire. They were the forerunners of today's macadamized highways.
The route most closely associated with Hanover, since it was the main link between the town itself and civilization to the south- east, was known as the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike. The corporation charter was granted in 1800 by the state legislature, with authority to build "from the east bank of the Connecticut River in Lebanon, nearly opposite the mouth of the White River, to the west bank of the Merrimac in Salisbury or Boscawen; and a branch running to it southeasterly from the White River Falls Bridge in Hanover."
Much of this noted turnpike originally had been an Indian trail. In the memoirs of George Ticknor, Dartmouth graduate of 1807, we find a description of this route as it was in 1802. Tick- nor's father had been educated at Dartmouth and from time to time made the trip from the family homestead in Boston to visit his Alma Mater. These are the young George Ticknor's words:
My mother went with him (to Hanover) and so did I. The distance was hardly 120 miles, but it was a hard week's work with a carriage and a pair of horses, the carriage being what used to be called a "coachee." One day I recollect we made with difficulty 13 miles, and the road was so rough and dangerous that my mother was put on horseback and two men were hired to go on foot, with ropes to steady the carriage over the most difficult places.
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In spite of these difficulties, somehow the first stage from Han- over to Boston began its run in 1806, over this same perilous route. Passenger stages, however, at that time were still scarce in the Hanover region; and while oxcarts were in general use on the farms, two-wheeled wagons, heavy and clumsily built, were em- ployed for all overland transportation. Since the smallest villages furnished freight enough for several teams, the aggregate was large. Every day, Sundays included, the teams passed through the towns lying along the turnpikes; and no vocation called for more robust men than that of teamster. Long whip in hand, the drivers strode beside their teams, twenty miles a day on an average. The whip was their badge of office, seldom applied to a horse. The teamsters' calling demanded assets other than brawn: keen traders they must be, to sell advantageously the goods they carried to town, and to choose wisely for the return trip. Hanover's mer- chants, like those of other villages, themselves seldom visited the cities. They depended wholly on the teamsters for their wares.
The early two-wheeled carts soon gave way to wagons of com- modious size. Each horse was responsible for a ton of freight. But there were other carriers as well: a three-horse team called a "spike," a two-horse team called a "podanger"; a single horse with cart was known as a "gimlet." Whenever the smaller teams became mired-down in the mud, the regulars always rallied to the assist- ance of those in trouble.
In winter, when Hanover and her neighboring towns lay half- buried in snow, the freight wagons generally were housed. Dozens of sleighs took their place. At this season the farmer no longer re- lied on the teamster; he himself carried his produce to town, just as his father had done in the days before the Revolution. Summer and autumn were the farmer's seasons of increase; winter was his time of trade and recreation.
Word was circulated, chiefly at the Sabbath nooning, that at daybreak on a certain date the long trip to market would get under way. Often thirty or more neighbors from Hanover or Lyme or Orford would start out together on the long road to the coast. Two-horse "pungs" or single-horse "pods" were closely packed with farm produce. Anything that a New Hampshire farm yielded could be sold in Portsmouth or Salem or Boston: frozen venison, poultry and hogs; wheels of cheese, four to a cask; firkins of butter; sheepskins and deer hides; pelts of fox and bear and
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fisher-cat; yarn spun by the women on long summer evenings; yards of linsey-woolsey woven by work-gnarled hands.
So closely packed were the sleighs that no seat remained for the driver. He stood on a small step in the rear, protected by the sleigh's high back from the biting winds that swept down from the north. Often he ran alongside his team to keep from freezing.
Tavern-keepers whose inns lay along the route would have grown rich if all these travelers had paid their board. But even the more prosperous farmer carried his own food, as well as oats for the horses. A portion of the oats might be deposited with the tavern-keeper on the way down to be used on the way home. The farmer's wife saw to it that there was plenty of provender for the journey: the inevitable doughnuts; roast pork and cooked sausage; rye-and-injun bread. And always a huge pot of frozen bean porridge hanging at the side of the sleigh, giving rise to the nursery jingle:
Bean porridge hot, bean porridge cold; Bean porridge in the pot, nine days old.
Now and again chunks of the frozen porridge would be chopped off and thawed for refreshment. A tavern meal cost 25¢, and what Yankee farmer worth his salt would expend on victuals such an outlay of capital?
The tavern-keeper, for his part, reaped his profits from the sol- acing liquors he sold, as well as sleeping accommodations offered. The latter were simple enough. Great fires, replenished through- out the night, were built in taproom and parlor. Each driver stretched out on fur robe or blanket, feet to the fire. For this rude lodging the charge was ten cents; but the sale of rum and toddy, of mulled cider and flip, poured a steady stream of silver into the pockets of the tavern-keeper-a man who deserves special mention in passing, for he was a major medium of communication through whom news of the day was spread. Coming as he did into contact with leaders in politics, in business and in law, the tavern-keeper sharpened his wits and grew wise in counsel. Frequently he was the most influential man in town, prominent in local affairs. His tavern was of great social and economic importance in the com- munity.
Possibly it was due to this fact that the inn-keeper and his hostelry were subject to constant legislation by the provincial As- sembly of New Hampshire. For example: no landlord could
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"knowingly harbor in house, barn or stable, any rogues, vaga- bonds, thieves, sturdy beggars, masterless men or women." This legislative scrutiny increased after the stagecoach lines inaugu- rated regular schedules, ushering in a new era of transportation.
Big things were happening. The first mail had been received at Dartmouth College by messenger in 1773-a six-day trip from Hartford, Connecticut. After the Revolution, the first official postal service in New Hampshire was established by the state legislature on February 12, 1791. Four routes were set up to be traversed by post-riders on regular schedules. The earliest reference to Han- over in the United States postal records in Washington shows that from October 1 to December 31, 1792, Ozias Silsby carried the mail from Hanover to Portsmouth. A letter written on a single sheet of paper cost six cents within an area of thirty miles from town. The charges increased with the distance, reaching twenty- five cents for four hundred miles or over. If two sheets of paper were used, the charge was doubled.
The lot of the post-rider was unenviable at any season, espe- cially so during the winter months. Adding to the hazards of weather, highwaymen and footpads were by no means unknown. Before the Revolution, the rider's plea "I am on His Majesty's service" sometimes prevailed for safety's sake; but after regular routes and hours had been established, the post-rider often was forced to rely on his own wits and the swift hoofs of his mount. At the onset of the Revolution, the Committee of Safety ap- pointed a post-rider, for three months, who was to ride from Ports- mouth to Haverhill by way of Conway and Plymouth, thence down the Connecticut to Charlestown and back to Plymouth. He was to make the trip once in two weeks and to receive the "sum of 70 hard dollars, or paper money equivalent."
In 1803 a passenger stagecoach, carrying the Dartmouth Gazette with it, began running on weekly schedule between Hanover and Haverhill-the latter already a prosperous staging center. A per- manent line was established presently between Concord and Haverhill through Plymouth. Scarcely was this under way when a rival line was started which passed through Hanover to connect with the stage line for New York. Lesser lines of coaches sprang up, running to the White Mountains, to Montpelier, Vermont, to Chelsea and elsewhere. Thus the stagecoach and the mails opened up a new way of life for the inland settlers-a means of transporta-
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tion to and communication with Hanover's neighboring towns, as well as to the distant cities of the coast.
The War of 1812, with the British blockade of the eastern sea- board, brought land transportation to a peak of activity. Back and forth from upper New Hampshire and Vermont, to Boston, Ports- mouth and Salem, rolled the great covered wagons-the famous Conestogas of Pennsylvania. With their six- or eight-horse teams they carried the products of soil and forest to the towns, returning with merchandise essential to the well-being of the inland dwellers.
Roswell T. Smith, born in Hanover in 1825, in a manuscript completed in his later years has left a colorful note about stage- coach travel in his youth. Mr. Smith has this to say:
In addition to the regular Hanover-Haverhill line, a mail coach carry- ing six passengers ran daily where the River Road now is, until it struck the county road for Lyme. ... It was called "The Telegraph Line" and ran with great regularity and speed, regardless of the state of the roads. The six splendid horses seldom broke their trot except as they passed over the crest of a hill, down which and across the valley they would go upon the run. We miss some fine things in our day! One can almost hear the thunder of the horses crossing Slate Brook Bridge, and see the leaders as they shake their manes at the top of the hill, and change their run into a trot.
Concord had become one of the chief staging towns in New England. Lines fanned out from the state capital to all parts of New Hampshire, and three stage runs were on regular schedule each week from Concord to Hanover. The stages left Concord at 5 A.M. and reached their destination at 4 P.M. The southbound stages clipped a full hour off this time, leaving Hanover at 6 A.M. and arriving in Concord at 4 P.M. The route taken was the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike and the fare was five cents per mile.
The early coaches themselves were likened to "everything from a distiller's vat to a diving-bell; with sundry violon-cello cases hung between the front and back springs." Other travelers likened the coach's motion to "that of a vessel in a heavy sea, straining all her timbers, with a low moaning sound as she drives over the boisterous waves." The average coach had three seats on the in- side, accommodating three passengers on each, and one sitting out- side with the driver. Each coach had its name blazoned on its sides
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From Oxcart to Airplane
in fulgid colors; or possibly the picture of a post-boy blowing his horn, with a gilded inscription beneath the flying hoofs of his horse:
He comes, the herald of a noisy world, News from all nations lumbering at his back!
Use of the stagecoach was frequently denounced from the pul- pit, in this spirit:
Those who travel in these coaches contract an idle habit of body; be- come weary and listless when they have ridden but a few miles, and then are unable to travel on horseback or to endure frost, rain or snow.
But comfortable or otherwise, these vehicles were stoutly built. They had to be. The wear and tear to which they were subjected was tremendous-ploughing through hub-deep mud, plunging into chuckholes, bumping over rocks and stumps, fording swollen streams. Not until 1826, when a carriage-maker of Concord, Lewis Downing, built what came to be known as the "Concord coach," could a passenger be assured of a reasonably safe and comfortable journey.
By this time a regular mail stagecoach had been built on a model supplied by the Post Office Department-a somewhat clumsy conveyance. In addition to the mails, this coach could carry three passengers. Often on the journey from Hanover to Haver- hill, a postilion would be waiting at the bottom of the longer hills with two horses ready-harnessed, adding his pair to the coach's four. At the top of the hill the postilion would detach his pair and return to the bottom to await the next coach. The mail coaches were not long in use, however, for the Concord style made swifter going and treated its passengers with more consideration.
The stage-driver, like the tavern-keeper, was a fixture of the day. As a means of communication he surpassed the Dartmouth Gazette and the Hanover Postal Service combined. From village to village he carried the news, often from house to house, sometimes words of health or of illness. It was not uncommon for a driver to stop his horses and walk them past a house where an anxious mother or sister waited: and the passengers in the coach would hear him call out: "Tom's doin' better, ma'am. Fever's all gone and he'll be up tomorrer." One driver on the Hanover-Ports- mouth line boasted that he bought bonnets in Portsmouth for many of the women along his route who couldn't get to town. He
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claimed that he never bought two alike, that there wasn't another driver the ladies would trust with this important service.
One of Hanover's best-known drivers of later years was Albert Wainwright. Originally a tinsmith and first owner of the Hanover Hardware Company, Wainwright operated as well a coach line between Hanover and Wilmot. When he died, in 1892, the town lost one of its most colorful personalities.
Amos Tarleton, an old landowner in Haverhill, has left a vivid description of stage-drivers on the Hanover-Haverhill line:
The winter dress of these old drivers was nearly all alike. Their cloth- ing was of heavy homespun, calfskin boots, thick trousers tucked inside the boots. Over all these were worn Canadian hand-knit stockings, very heavy and thick, colored bright red, which came up nearly to the thighs, and still over that a light leather shoe. For hand protection they wore double-pegged mittens, leather gauntlets, fur gloves, wristlets and muffettees. Their coats were generally fur or buffalo skin, with fur caps and ear protectors, wool or fur tippets. Also a red silk sash that went around the body and tied on the left side with a double bow with tassels.
But the year 1835 saw the beginning of the decline of the stage- coach and its picturesque driver, for the first actual railroads to serve eastern New England were three in number and they all opened that same year: the Boston and Lowell; the Boston and Worcester; the Boston and Providence. Soon thereafter a name that would become well-known appeared on a New Hampshire charter: the Boston and Maine.
Those of the old stage-drivers who saw the shadow cast by com- ing events took jobs as express men with the railroads, as brake- men, ticket sellers, or conductors. Somehow they could never learn to become engineers.
But throughout New Hampshire, railroading was slow to get under way. Matters dragged along until 1843, when an important meeting was held in Lebanon. This was a special convention of the "friends of internal improvements in New Hampshire." Its purpose was to stir up popular demand for a railroad that would connect Concord with the rapidly growing lines in Vermont, which already were planning to converge in White River Junc- tion. The Lebanon meeting was presided over by Charles Had- dock, professor of political economy at Dartmouth and a nephew of Daniel Webster. Haddock must have possessed something of his famous uncle's eloquence, for the desired results were soon
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From Oxcart to Airplane
evident: by December of 1844 the legislature had chartered the Northern Railroad, to run from Concord to White River Junc- tion; the Concord and Montreal, to run from Concord to Woods- ville; and the Cheshire, to run from Fitzwilliam to Walpole. Three years later the rails pushed on as far as Lebanon.
The first train from Concord to Lebanon snorted into that town on November 17, 1847, belching smoke and flame. The ubiq- uitous Daniel Webster was prominent among the passengers, an event which he commemorated in these sober words:
It is an extraordinary era in which we live. It is altogether new. The world has seen nothing like it before. I will not pretend, nobody can pretend, to see the end. But everybody knows that the age is remark- able for scientific research. . .. The ancients saw nothing like it. The moderns have seen nothing like it till the present generation.
By the following June, when the bridge across the Connecticut was completed, regular service was established to White River Junction. In 1847 also the Connecticut and Passumpsic Rivers Railroad, chartered by the Vermont legislature in 1835, was opened from White River Junction to Wells River on the west bank of the Connecticut, and the first passenger train was run as far as Bradford on October 10. The Norwich and Hanover station at Lewiston was then established, to continue there until its clos- ing December 1, 1959. The citizens of Hanover no longer were cut off from the great cities of the United States, though only the more affluent could afford to pay $1.75 for a ticket from Lebanon to Concord, or $3.25 from Lebanon to Boston. However, many a landowner found his income augmented by the never-ending need for fuel to stoke the engines: wood. Thousands of cords each year were fed into the maws of the iron monsters as they bumped and jolted over the rails. Ties also were locally produced and cost about eighteen cents apiece.
The mail trains were the one exception to the statutory edict that no trains throughout the Granite State could be operated on Sunday; and Sunday runs were permissible only for mail reaching Boston on a Saturday. One unsung poet was moved to pen this mournful envoi:
We hear no more the clanging hoof And the stagecoach rattling by; For the steam king rules the troubled world, And the old Pike's left to die.
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Hanover Bicentennial Book
But the picture was not as wholly gloomy as the nameless poet would have us believe. A few coaches still rattled over Hanover's streets and roads, but by 1908 they were being called "hacks." One truly stylish rig is still remembered by local residents. Small and black, it sat high up on its red wheels, with two pairs of seats facing each other, shining glass windows, and elegant upholstery. It carried passengers to and from the Hanover-Norwich station at Lewiston.
There was also a larger four-horse stage with an extra and some- what hazardous seat on top. This seat and its occupant teetered up and down over the baggage rack, the only consolation being the passenger's ticket which cost but twenty-five cents for two rides. And there remained that fearful and wonderful winter vehicle known locally as "the street car." Long and low, it ran on sledlike runners, had three doors to a side and running-boards. It met all trains, and the town kids watched surreptitiously for a chance to hook their sleds onto the baggage rack at the back. Jason Dudley ("Uncle" Dudley to the kids) had charge of this contraption, mak- ing sure that the tip of his whip was handy to discourage the small fry with their sleds. Public vehicles such as these were in use in Hanover until the first automobiles began to shoulder them aside.
The coming of the railroads gave a tremendous impetus to the express business. Shrewd Yankees were quick to pounce upon the advantages of the railway's rolling stock for transporting freight to various points along the growing networks of rail. Many express companies sprang up to take care of this unforeseen windfall. Freight for the Hanover region was dropped off at Lewiston, to be picked up and delivered by Albert Wainwright or "Uncle" Dud- ley. It was no uncommon sight, however, to see packages being de- livered about town by a wheelbarrow trundled by Joseph Em- erson.
Pushing north, the first telephones were installed in Bellows Falls by the American Bell Telephone Company in 1881. But it was not until 1901 that Hanover saw its own exchange opened, with a list of twenty-six subscribers, though a single telephone on the White River Junction exchange was in use for more than ten years before in Mr. Storrs' bookshop. An automatic switchboard was installed in 1905 with eighty-six subscribers. This was re- placed seven years later by a central office switchboard to serve 264 subscribers.
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From Oxcart to Airplane
A longtime resident of Hanover recalls the early phones in these words:
Our first telephone was an enormous instrument on the wall, with a dial, something like a cribbage board. There was a little peg hanging on a chain. You put the peg in the number and drew the lever down to the peg and released it. One of my pals was the son of the Episcopal minister. My father came home one afternoon and found a whole string of children across our kitchen, holding hands. At one end of the line was this boy, with his hand in a strategic spot in the telephone apparatus, and the last child in the line had his hand in a bucket of water in the sink. When Henry would do something to the phone, an electric shock would run through the hands and arms of the children, to their howls of delight. Needless to say, my Dad took care of Henry!
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