USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 8
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
The first farms were diversified, subsistence farms. Corn, wheat, hay, wood, flax, maple products, butter, poultry, beef, pork, eggs and fruit were some of the products raised to sell or barter. A Dartmouth Eagle ad of 1795 said that Rufus Graves needed white beans and that any farmer having some could trade them for a sum half in money and half in English or India goods. Joel Hunting- ton wanted to buy cherry, birch and maple boards for his cabinet and chair manufactory. The Eagle regularly offered cash for rags at the office any time. And cash was scarce. The average family saw less than a hundred dollars a year during this time of early settle- ment. Trading was necessary to existence. Money was used to measure the value of the goods but itself seldom changed hands. Farmers would cut and draw logs to the river where they were valued at six pence apiece. Payment was sometimes made in calico at seventy-five cents a yard. Think of cutting and hauling ten huge logs several miles for a yard of cloth! Eggs were priced at ten cents a dozen and apples and potatoes were two bushels for a quarter. This sounds wonderful until we also note that a man worked all day, i.e. fourteen hours, on the road with his own pair of oxen for a dollar and a teacher was lucky to receive three dollars a week.
Books were valued highly. Some of the families of Etna and Hanover Center were given the privilege of borrowing books from
72
East Wheelock Street 1879
The Village from Sand Hill (Lebanon Street) 1865
The Village from the West Lebanon road south of Mink Brook 1865
...
.... ....
Jonathan Freeman house at Hanover Center (1936); built about 1798
灣灣電機載業
Hayes Hall and Store at Etna; built 1833, burned 1922
Town Meeting at Hayes Hall
Doorway of Jonathan Freeman house at Hanover Center (1936)
Folks, Farms and Fun in East Hanover
the College library. Newspapers and letters were passed from family to family. Lost and stolen horses and cows were advertised in the papers and also in the warnings for town meetings. In 1794 George Woodward of Norwich had a supply of English hardware which he was "determined to dispose of at as small an advantage as any in the country." James Duncan Jr. of Lebanon probably drew some business from local farms when he advertised his new oil mill where he was going to make linseed oil to sell or exchange for flax or country produce. The papers gave rules for refining sugar, and Haverhill Academy hoped to secure more pupils. A Salisbury barn burned because of burning candles left unattended while the husking bee guests enjoyed refreshments in the house.
Dr. Joel Brown ran a cider mill in season between the present sites of the Gerstenberger and Sausville homes. Benjamin Hatch, Jonathan Freeman and others were granted liquor licenses by the town at various times, so there seems to have been an abundant supply of chill-chasing tonic. Supplies came by teams or sleds. Roads were broken after each winter storm by all the farmers. The one farthest up the road started with his oxen, stopped at the next place for cider and cake, was joined by this neighbor and they both drove on to the next until all the teams were happily packing down the road in a long procession.
Along with the daily work and play there were times of great sadness. One of these fell in the summer of 1800. During July and August almost every family suffered helplessly as children choked and died of the "throat distemper." Smallpox was greatly feared. Accidents killed then as now. A runaway horse was just as lethal as defective brakes, and saws and axes hurt as much as high tension wires. Fires were disastrous and insurance protection was prac- tically unknown. Neighbors helped each other in these emergen- cies and when the Center store burned the largest Boston whole- saler absorbed much of the loss and restocked the new store.
Good times leavened daily life through the two centuries. Husk- ing bees and apple parings, house warmings and barn raisings, spelling bees and sliding parties were some of the social activities. Local lore is full of "the time we had that play." And do you re- member the "Time Machine" he built for that entertainment? (You went in, the wheels turned, odd noises were heard and a sur- prisingly different creature came out.) That minstrel show was fun. We took it to all the towns around and made quite a bit of money, too.
73
Hanover Bicentennial Book
Sometimes the shows were imported-the glass blower, the trained horses, slides, lectures and movies in Hayes Hall. And long before movies, the circus came along the stage road. Mules and horses pulled the cages and wagons. There was usually one large and one small elephant. Everyone turned out, sometimes very early in the morning, to watch and many took time to go and see the show.
Fourth of July was always a big day. Some years the celebration would be in the pine grove at the Center and again it would be on the Etna Common. Events would include distinguished speak- ers (the Governor honored us on several occasions), parades, mu- sic, booming cannon, flags, military drills, food, drink and horse races. (One time Charley Hurlbutt won by cutting across the com- mon. They argued but decided the prize was his because it wasn't written anywhere as against the rules.)
Family reunions, Centennial Celebrations for churches and schools, Old Home Days and Fairs have all taken place in this neighborhood-activities which grew out of the everlasting faith of the people in the fundamental importance of homes, churches and schools.
From our two hundred year look, we see many enjoying affairs outside of the community. The first College Commencement was the beginning of thousands of opportunities for fun and learning connected with the school. Lectures, sermons, plays and musicals were very soon open to the public. For years, Grandma Derby re- calls, Commencement was the big day.
We got up early and did the chores and packed a lunch and hitched up the horse. There was so much to see. Peddlers in their booths and tents set up all about the campus. And on that day the college build- ings were open to visitors. The children thought that museum was a wonderful place. [They still do.] We hitched our teams all around the green. We met everyone and caught up on all the news. Oh! it was a great day!
The historic sense of the people was sharpened by the 1911 sesquicentennial celebration. These stop signs in town history give people a chance to fit themselves into the national story. Men and women who have planted gardens on our hillsides have had some part in all the major events of United States history.
During the Revolution, Jonathan Woodward and Silas Tenney saw General Arnold desert and Mrs. Arnold having hysterics.
74
Folks, Farms and Fun in East Hanover
Augustus Storrs witnessed André's execution, and local militia protected the immediate frontier more than once.
Jonathan Freeman was a member of the Continental Congress. His letters make casual mention of a visit with "the General and his lady" at Mount Vernon and a tour of the "new" city of Wash- ington with the manager. These fascinating facts are mixed with references to the price of wheat, the progress of the lottery, proper spiritual tone and a very contemporary comment on the difficulty of collecting money.
Our short-lived Moravian Community was characteristic of similar experiments throughout the country. It was located on the first left hand road off Ruddsboro Road. In 1799 the Chandler family organized a group of farmers. Each one agreed to put all of his crops and earnings into a common fund from which each would draw an equal share. Henry Chandler was one of the first to be dissatisfied when he saw money for a coat he had tailored go to a "lazier family." When William Chandler decided that his portion should be larger than the others because all the hay and grain was stored in his barn, the members voted to disband.
People got excited about national elections. An old letter tells of neighbors "fighting with their tongues."
Letters written by members of East Hanover's Woodward fam- ily that have been preserved reveal much of the daily life of the mid-nineteenth century with overtones of the impact upon it of national events. Mrs. Mary Woodward Howard, the storekeeper's wife at the Center, wrote to her sister in the West-"December 1848: Gold! Gold! is all the rage." And it was. There is a stone in the cemetery at the Center inscribed to a young man who died in Stockton, California in 1849. Many went away to look for gold but others searched the Hanover hills. A lead mine and a granite quarry were opened and functioned for awhile in the Ruddsboro district. And for years children believed that a peddler who had hanged himself under the bridge at the Potomac (Clayton Green- wood's) had hidden gold somewhere in the area.
In March 1863 Mrs. Woodward wrote, "Charley wants to en- list in the cavalry." Mary's brother, Orville Woodward, com- mented, "It's a horable war." And here is a forever, then and now sort of remark from this same Orville: "I am about the same, full of trouble and pains, but can eat my allowance and do a good day's work."
Mary topped Orville when, after giving the family, weight and
75
Hanover Bicentennial Book
gender of all the new babies, she said, "This having babies I have not much of an opinion of, have you, Sis?" Population growth was then as now national news. In one four-year period Hanover's population almost doubled and it increased steadily until 1850. Immigration and babies gave the census-takers more work. Al- though they had more babies (one lady said that every spring she felt better when she had had her baby and made her soap) it was a rare family that raised more than half of these children. For a while after 1850, the collapse of the sheep boom and the lure of the West made our population curve dip.
Emigration was partly balanced by immigration. Irish names appeared in the personals very early. Orville Woodward mentions other immigrants when he writes, "Some French folks live in Uncle David's house. They're working on the mountain to chop six hundred cords of wood."
Society was still basically agricultural but farm life was chang- ing. Merino sheep brought from Spain by Consul Jarvis of Weathersfield Bow were the big news among farmers. From 1830 to 1850 and for a short time during the Civil War, sheep were profitable and many were pastured on our hills, more than 12,000 at one time. Although real profits vanished after the Civil War, hope died hard here in Hanover. There were still over 6,000 woollies in town in 1884 and it was 1887 before the count went as low as 393.
Dr. Harry Storrs remembers relatives who acquired a lifelong dislike for mutton because of the custom of taking turns killing a sheep and sharing the meat with the neighbors. Another undesir- able characteristic of the Merinos was their "darned wrinkled hide. They were the meanest critters to shear."
As the sheep count decreased the cattle count increased, and a few farmers raised poultry. Creameries were located in various parts of the town until Hood established one in Norwich, then a wagon collected the farmers' milk. Bacteria count and butterfat tests became important. The Agricultural College at Hanover, state and county fairs, the extension service and 4-H clubs all helped improve farming stock and practice.
The Shakers deserve a brief mention here. Their model farms, excellent seeds and prize-winning stock helped make better farm- ing all around. The Shaker peddler wagons were always welcome and a favorite outing for many a farm boy was to hitch up and take his girl over to the Enfield Shaker Colony for dinner and
76
Folks, Farms and Fun in East Hanover
shopping. One girl recalls buying at various times pressed ginger, herbs, sweet flag, broadcloth and sweaters.
Prices and wages both increased from early days. In 1886 pota- toes were fifty cents a bushel, poultry, cheese and butter were ten cents a pound and a man and his team earned about three dollars a day.
The railroad came to Lebanon and Hanover in 1847 but horses were far from obsolete. Stages met the cars and oxen and horses moved houses, ploughed and carried crops and people.
There was still trading, but more cash circulated; folks bought more and better clothes, parlor stoves and metal beds were the status symbols of the day. Farmers bought new metal tools, equip- ment and copper-toed boots for the boys. Sons of the first settlers had usually gone to meeting barefooted. There were more books and paper now. Birch bark was not so commonly used.
Some left the farms for factories and others took in piece work to do. We read that Mary Howard bound seventy-seven pairs of heavy cloth shoes in nine weeks. She also braided hats, hired a cow to make butter to sell and was justly proud of roasting corn the first week of August. Each farm still carried on a variety of activ- ities but was not quite so self-sufficient as a generation before. Wheat went west with the sheep as an important crop. Howard's farm at one time counted "three horses, two cows, eighteen sheep, three geese, ten hens, a pig, a 'horg,' a dog and two cats." They raised potatoes, barley, oats, India wheat and peas.
Life followed the seasons: planting, hoeing, strawberrying, hay- ing; raspberries, blueberries, early apples, vegetables; preserving, pickling, harvesting; hunting, butchering, getting out wood, log- ging, syruping; greens and fishing. (Salted suckers were a staple in many homes.) And of course there were the endless daily chores of lugging water, getting wood, cooking, cleaning, sewing, knitting and caring for the "critters." We feel for Isaac Howard being "too tired" to go to meeting.
As the mills attracted workers and the Baptist movement grew, Mill Village gradually became the center of town affairs. There are two stories about the change in name. One says that it was changed as a result of a contest won by Mrs. Laura Camp Barnes; the other says that the town clerk, George Bridgman, "got sick and tired of half the village mail going to the Mill Village in Goshen and figured that the name on the Aetna Life Insurance calendar was not so common and you might as well drop the silent
77
Hanover Bicentennial Book
A so it wouldn't be misspelled all the time." Both stories agree that the change was made because there were other Mill Villages in the state.
Town meetings were held in Hayes Hall, a long room over the largest store in the village, until it burned in 1922. East Hanover residents took a certain perverse pleasure in the fact that the "aris- tocracy of the plain" had to come to the country to vote and they still tell of the meeting when a new professor made the motion that a meeting place be designated in the center of the town. Im- mediately a farmer offered to build one in the "center of the town" if they all would agree to go there, the geographic center being, of course, several miles farther from the college settlement.
The mills were busy. There was one near the present home of Mr. Patrick Lynch and a saw mill on the first falls up Ruddsboro Road. The only saw mill left in town is owned by our selectman, Niles Lacoss, and is Diesel powered. Many remember the four mills located in Etna Village. They changed through the years and the water power has been turned to many uses. Two saw mills, a grist mill and a ladder factory are the way they are commonly remembered now, but in the fall cider was made in two or three places and at one time there were two ladder factories. Derby's factory held a patent on an improved extension ladder which en- joyed a wide distribution. People tell of being awakened by thirty teams going up through the village from Lebanon at five o'clock in the morning to haul logs from Moose Mountain for the saw mill. The yard across from the mill was piled full of logs and the area below the store was filled at noon with horses eating their lunch.
The village had other business establishments, stores, harness shops, a blacksmith shop, a cooperage shop as well as a school and church. And societies-formal and informal-sprouted everywhere. When something needed to be done, someone started a club to do it. The Village Improvement Society had a long life. It was re- sponsible for cinder bicycle paths, new shade trees, kerosene street lights and lots of pleasure. Willie Spencer, postmaster and lamp- lighter, going through the village every night with his wagon load of clean filled lamps which he changed by standing on the seat of his wagon is one of our "remember whens." Willie's wife was named Ziporah, fittingly shortened to Zip.
The Village Improvement Society was followed by the Men's Club for all of the men of the Center and Etna. Their most color-
78
Folks, Farms and Fun in East Hanover
ful activity was the annual fair held on one of the commons. There were big tents for meals and exhibits. Some years more than a hundred cattle were shown. There was always a big parade com- plete with floats, horses, horribles, bicycles and sometimes a twenty-piece band from Norwich. A horse-drawn, merry-go-round sort of ride was very popular. Eight forty-foot poles with seats on the ends which would hold five adults or eight children were fastened to a tall mast. You could ride for five minutes for five cents which was hardly long enough to read all the advertisements which fluttered overhead.
A Fish and Game Club sponsored stocking a section of Mink Brook for children and developed good programs on firearm safety and conservation. A Square Dance Group carried on the tradition that old and young can enjoy an evening together. Presently the village is proud of its up-to-date fire equipment and active volun- teers, and a Women's Auxiliary organizes help for fire-stricken families and is a nucleus for Civil Defense.
But what has the twentieth century brought to the farms? So few are left that if the present trend continues, our grandchildren will have to go to a zoo to see horses and cows. The whole town had fewer farm animals in 1957 than could be found on just the town farm a century earlier. Our present farmers specialize, de- velop quality produce and work long hours to continue operating at all. The decline of the town farm is an interesting story by itself. The Hanover Water Company formed in 1893 did not feel at first that it was necessary to control the whole drainage area. By 1900 there was some concern over the situation and a motion passed town meeting to sell the town farm to the water company. A few months later a second town meeting rescinded the vote and there the matter rested until the typhoid epidemic of 1903 in Ithaca, New York, hit three thousand students and many townspeople. Within a few months the town farm and the six other farms in the Reservoir District were vacated and sold to the Water Company. Most of our farms, however, folded under economic pressures.
Other changes paralleled the disappearance of the farms. The first telephone was subscribed in 1910. Few realized when the Boston Globe of 1903 carried the story of the first plane flown by the Wright brothers that one set of the great-grandparents of the famous pair were Sally Freeman, a daughter of Hanover's first settler, and Daniel Wright of the Hanover Center Wrights. Sally and Daniel were married in Hanover in 1785 and moved to Ohio
79
Hanover Bicentennial Book
in 1814. By the end of the first decade of our century there were a dozen Fords around. Some heard their first radio in Wilson Hall in 1920. Later, a neighbor who owned the first set would tune in, ring central, place one ear phone in a bowl next to the telephone and then the operator would call other members of the commu- nity who wanted to listen.
A resurrected early settler would find television sets, jet planes, modern kitchens and hard-surfaced roads hard to believe. There are some things from this brief story he would be pleased to recognize.
We are proud of the many instances of neighborliness and mu- tual helpfulness. We no longer get together to do the chores for a farmer who was kicked by his ox, but people still have troubles and the neighbors help.
We are glad, too, that we have been good neighbors to the folks in next-door towns. Way back in 1816 our doctors went to War- ren to help in their spotted fever epidemic. (We call it meningitis today.) Then there was that May morning in 1887 when a hill farmer shouted, "Hurry, Thomas, Leb is all afire," and we joined firefighters from all over the state.
Lebanon has always been especially close to the people of the eastern neighborhoods. For years most of the children went to high school in Lebanon, farmers traded there and some girls and boys took dancing lessons of Miss Sara Winnek from Boston in the lower town hall.
We like the gumption and ingenuity of these folks who have lived here before us and are proud it still flourishes. One very capable young mother of the Center turns her hand to an almost unbelievable variety of tasks. A partial list includes sewing all kinds of clothes from evening gowns to suits and coats, driving a tractor, operating a chain saw, chopping wood, laying brick, paper- ing, building cabinets, repairing spark plugs and mufflers, knit- ting, crocheting, canning, freezing, hunting, fishing, syruping, in- stalling electric outlets and doing professional hair cuts and permanents, not to mention a fair share of community service.
We are interested in the progress of our young people and we are proud of our special people-ministers, writers, teachers and lawyers who have become known beyond the town. There have been a surprisingly large number of these mildly famous people. In 1849 the Rev. E. B. Foster (one of the six minister sons of Rich- ard Foster) prepared a list of those born in and around Hanover
80
Folks, Farms and Fun in East Hanover
Center who had entered professional life. He was able to name seventy-nine and of these thirty-one had received a college educa- tion. We are equally proud of the many kindly, honest, hard- working, fun-loving, ordinary humans who have been raised in these hills.
We are proud to have lived and grown with Doctor Wheelock's school. The young men have taught in our schools, filled our churches with youthful preaching and song, they have put in winter wood for elderly couples and they have sometimes dropped bewildered freshmen in our wilderness to diffidently knock on our doors to ask the way. This changing, interesting group of young men have added flavor and color to our lives and in spite of some "in the family" criticism it is our college, too.
We like the place. It is a beautiful spot to live in and a number of discriminating people from the city who have driven over "the mountain road" in the fall think so, too.
A blue and white hardtop convertible just went by. A young fellow is clearing a place for a new house over on the other side of Lord's Hill. I wonder if he knows the story of Jonathan Lord and his son whipping each other by turns to keep awake that cold day on their way home from the grist mill. Maybe I will get a chance to talk to him at the next church supper.
81
7 Hanover Goes to War by John B. Stearns
E LEAZAR WHEELOCK'S Diary for June 16, 1775, records: "The noise of cannon, supposed to be at Boston, was heard all day," and for June 17: "The same report of can- non. We wait with impatience to hear the occasion and the event." It is further reported that the sound was first detected in Hanover by an Indian student in the College, Daniel Simons '77, who was lying with ear to the ground and that the same sound was dis- tinctly heard in several other towns of the region. The "occasion" was soon interpreted locally as the Battle of Bunker (Breed's) Hill, and the "event" was naturally of vital importance to the four hun- dred or so pioneers who then constituted the town of Hanover. It is tempting to surmise that Hanover's ardor for active participa- tion in the early events of the Revolution might have been some- what dampened by the cordial interest in the town shown until his resignation in 1766 by Governor Benning Wentworth and par- ticularly by the intimate friendship between President Eleazar Wheelock and Governor John Wentworth. Both Royal Governors were loyal to the Crown of England and England had been a prin- cipal source of financial support for the College from the first.
Whether the reverberations of Bunker Hill heard at Hanover were physical or psychic phenomena, the "occasion" and the "event" of that day found the town well established in a posture of defense and firmly committed to the American cause. Partially, no doubt, this was the result of the logic of such events as the com- plete withdrawal of British support to the College and the flight to England in May 1775 of Governor John Wentworth. On the other hand, there seems to be audible in the following excerpt from a vote of a Hanover town meeting of 1775 an undertone familiar to students of the later military history of this town: ". .. we highly approve of the measures entered into by the American Congress ... and our hearty thanks are due to that reputable body ... for their indefatigable zeal in concerting measures for the security of the liberties of the American colonies." If Tory sympathy was present, it does not appear in the record.
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.