USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 9
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Hanover Goes to War
Characteristic of the distinguished service in the Revolution of many Hanover citizens is the record of James Dean (1748-1823). As a student of Wheelock and a graduate of the College in 1773, Dean had spent several years in missionary work among the In- dians. Ten days after Bunker Hill, he returned to Hanover from a long trip among the Oneidas with such important information about the disposition of enemy troops that he was sent to report the facts to the Provincial Congress in Exeter and then to the Con- tinental Congress in Philadelphia, where with the help of Patrick Henry he secured pathetically needed help for this area. Dean later served with distinction as Major under General Schuyler in the Continental Armies throughout the war.
Aside from local units of His Majesty's Militia, the first military organizations mustered in Hanover appear to be the two com- panies of infantry mentioned in August 1775, one from the Col- lege district commanded by Captain Samuel McClure and the other from the eastern section of the town, commanded by Cap- tain Edmund Freeman, Hanover's first settler. In November 1775 a group of thirty-four Hanover citizens served with distinction under Generals Schuyler and Montgomery at the siege of St. Johns and later at Quebec. In the same year Major Robert Rogers, for- merly of the Rangers, made a dramatic appearance in Hanover, soon after his arrest as a Tory in Philadelphia. Eleazar Wheelock sent an appropriately suspicious account of this to General Wash- ington, but Rogers escaped from the state and recruited troops for the British elsewhere.
Hanover soldiers served in the battles of White Plains, Trenton, and Princeton in 1776, responded valiantly to repeated calls for duty during the critical years of 1777-1778 at Saratoga, Benning- ton and elsewhere, and even after the surrender of Cornwallis in 1781 companies of militia including Hanover citizens patrolled the northern frontier until the spring of 1782. Almost without ex- ception throughout this conflict, men from this "infant settle- ment" richly deserved the reputation reflected in the anecdote about New Hampshire troops at Princeton. "What troops are those?" General Washington is reported to have asked. To which General John Sullivan replied "Full-blooded Yankees, Sir, from New Hampshire." One such Yankee, Stockman Sweat from Han- over, in reply to a question about how he managed to capture five Hessians single-handed, gave the classic explanation, "I sur- rounded 'em, Sir."
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War has never come physically nearer to Hanover in all her his- tory than on October 16, 1780. A party of about three hundred In- dians, commanded by a British lieutenant, planned to attack New- bury but learned that this village was well prepared and so determined to attack Hanover and with this intent moved through Chelsea to Tunbridge. There scouts reported that the river was too wide and too cold to cross and the savages therefore moved on to Royalton, which they burned and plundered. Pursuit was promptly organized in Hanover and elsewhere, but the Indians fled with twenty-six prisoners. One of these, Experience Davis, who had left Hanover in 1777 to become the first settler in Ran- dolph, near Royalton, and who was seized in that place, escaped from captivity in Canada, laboriously made his way back to Han- over and then returned to his farm in Randolph where he proudly lived until 1809. This experience of Experience Davis attests the foresight of those who named him and conveys succinctly the spirit of his times.
In the War of 1812 Hanover's enthusiasm for combat seems to have been easily restrained, because of its Federalist alignment at the time and also because several Hanover citizens were influential in organizing vigorous opposition to the national policy of de- taching units of the State Militia for national service. Despite all this, Hanover men in 1813 served under Captain Edmund Free- man, grd in a company of infantry assigned to Stewartstown for the purpose of controlling British smuggling. The record also shows that Hanover soldiers under Captain Courson defended Portsmouth in 1814 when attack upon this essential port seemed imminent. Although New Hampshire combat units served in the Indian Stream War of 1835 and in the Florida War against the Seminoles in 1836, no Hanover citizens are listed in the accounts available to this writer. The town, like most of New England, was opposed to the Mexican War of 1846-1848, on the ground that it was a war of aggression, not of defense, but six men of Hanover served in Company D, Ninth United States Infantry. One pic- turesque member of this contingent was Charles Burrell, not a native of Hanover but a soldier of fortune who had become a fa- vorite with students because of his tales of service in the armies of Europe including Napoleon's Old Guard at Waterloo. In Mexico, however, Burrell's service was abruptly ended by desertion and he found his way back to Hanover, where he was discovered one
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morning lying in a state of exhaustion under the fence around the Green.
During this era between the Revolution and the Civil War the New Hampshire State Militia deteriorated because of repeated legislative enactments contrived with political and mercenary rather than military objectives. The effect of this policy is clear from the following statement of Governor Ichabod Goodwin: "When the (Civil) War broke out, there was no military organiza- tion in the State, except some few independent companies forming a regiment. Indeed there was very little military interest. . The towns had generally neglected to keep an enrollment of the militia. ... There was no course for us but voluntary enlist- ment." Such words at such a time must have humiliated Hanover's veterans of the wars discussed above, but humiliation was soon for- gotten in the rapid sequence of subsequent events.
To the first appeal for volunteers issued by President Lincoln in 1861 fifty-one residents of this town responded, in addition to members of the College. In 1862 thirty-three citizens answered the call, but as the year progressed the town meeting deemed it wise to encourage wider enrollment by voting a bonus of $100 and this measure secured a few additional enlistments. As elsewhere, the Conscription Act of 1863 did not meet with unanimous approval here and a September town meeting of that year voted a bonus of $300 to each drafted man; further financial support for those who accepted the obligation of military service was voted in a town meeting of December 1863. As a result of these generous decisions thirty-five enlistments were secured in Hanover during the year. In 1864 several successive additions by vote of the town raised the bonus to $500 for volunteers for one year of service and for drafted men or substitutes to the highest figure permitted by law. Enlist- ments and reenlistments in the town for 1864 were fifty-seven. In 1865 the bonus offered by this town was increased for the seventh time. Thus at the end of the Civil War Hanover had voted to raise or borrow for recruitment and bonus a sum in excess of $78,000; the town came to the end of this trying era with a war debt of $42,000. To all branches of the Armed Forces Hanover had sup- plied 154 men, or with reenlistments, 183. Of these about fifty died or were wounded during the conflict. It is not strange that the next two or three decades were not conspicuous for military spirit in this community.
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The response of the College was equally immediate and hon- orable. The first college student in the Union Armies was Charles Douglas Lee '62 who enlisted May 8, 1861, in the First New Hampshire Regiment. During the summer of 1861 a company called the Dartmouth Zouaves was organized for daily drill on the campus under officers from Norwich University. In 1862 the seri- ous threat to Washington aroused still greater excitement in the College and led to the formation by S. S. Burr '63 of the Dart- mouth Cavaliers. Thirty-five students enlisted in this cavalry troop and with fifty from other colleges served under Captain Burr as Company B, Seventh Squadron, Rhode Island Cavalry. At the ex- piration of their service in September 1863 some of the Cavaliers reenlisted but the majority returned to Hanover, dismayed to learn that they must take examinations which they had missed during service. Captain Burr, however, returned at once to Rhode Island and secured from Brown University permission for the members of his command to enter Brown without examination. This offer may have influenced Dartmouth authorities to rescind their former decision; in any event the Dartmouth Cavaliers re- entered Dartmouth without examination. From 1861 to 1865 the enrollment of the College shrank from 358 to 230. The "Roll of Honor" includes 652 members of Dartmouth classes from 1822 to 1884 and records the names of many far past the normal years of military service and of many others who served as boys and subse- quently attended college. It has been computed that this Roll represents a "larger percentage than from any other college in the North."
Space does not permit enumeration of the distinguished records achieved by many of these Hanover men. Typical of such service is the military career of the officer memorialized in Baker Library, Lieutenant Colonel Fisher Ames Baker '59, Commanding Officer, Eighteenth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers. As a junior in college Baker was captain of the Dartmouth Greys, an undergradu- ate unit which drilled diligently on the campus with rifles donated by a company of disbanded Hanover Militia and with a flag pre- sented by the young ladies of Mrs. Sherman's School which then stood on the present site of Webster Hall. This flag of bright blue silk bore the romantic motto POST PROELIA PRAEMIA, After Battles Come Rewards,-a modest reference to the rewards at the disposal of Mrs. Sherman's young ladies?
With Hanover's thrilling but costly experiences of the Civil
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War in mind one is prepared to understand why the town dis- played little evidence of martial ardor in the period 1865-1898. Even the Spanish-American War of 1898 aroused no official ex- pressions of public sentiment, although citizens of Hanover and students of the College entered the Armed Forces at this time and served with distinction.
During the early years of the First World War (1914-1918) con- siderable opposition to American entry into the conflict and some degree of sympathy for Germany were undoubtedly felt in Han- over, but by 1917 the prevailing sentiment of the community is clear from the following characteristic vote of the March town meeting: "The citizens of Hanover in Town Meeting assembled, affirm their loyal adherence to the principles of vigorous freedom fundamental to the existence of the United States. They declare their approval of the course of the President of the United States in all his efforts to protect the lives and property of their fellow citizens against piratical attacks upon the sea. . .
In 1917 the financial support supplied by the town during the Civil War was not required because all eligible men were enrolled in service by the draft. From America's entry into the war in 1917 to the Armistice of 1918 Hanover citizens to the number of 181 served in all branches of the Armed Forces, a number only slightly less than the town's total enlistment in the Civil War, which was of much longer duration. In the College the enrollment of 1500 in 1917 dropped in October 1918 to 761, of which number 651 were enlisted in the Students' Army Training Corps. To all branches of the Armed Services during World War I the College sent 3407 students and alumni; 111 died in service.
Intimate details about Hanover citizens who served in World War I are not yet available in our archives, because letters from Hanover boys at the front are kept for a generation or two in attics by mothers and others who cherish and protect them. The normal course of such documents, however, is from attic to ar- chives and thus the future historian may soon count on a rich supply. The period between the two world wars, like that after the Civil War, is nearly devoid of military activity in the town.
In the period immediately before our country entered World War II this community was not united in its opinion of the proper course of action. In traditional manner Hanover debated the is- sues pro and con but it became apparent before Pearl Harbor that the trend favored acceptance of the obligations as well as the priv-
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ileges of freedom. The College introduced defense courses in 1941 and the "accelerated program" involved the Town as well as the College in a vigorous and unifying effort which led to Civilian Pilot Training, Indoctrination Schools, the Navy V-12 College Training Program, and other activities essential to ultimate vic- tory. Hanover supplied 431 citizens to all branches of the Armed Services in World War II, of whom nineteen died in service. The College sent 11,091 students and alumni into service and 301 of these men died in service. But statistics have little power to convey what a war means to a town like Hanover or what a town like Hanover means to a war.
Throughout its history the heritage of Hanover has been en- riched and its horizons expanded by service in the Armed Forces of Hanover citizens. They deserve and they get the affection ex- pressed in the deportment of a local boy who was once drilling on the Parade Ground with his local company. A spectator from more urban areas to the south, amused at this rustic display, was so ill advised as to grin. Whereupon our soldier left his unit, knocked the grinning spectator flat and quietly returned to his place in line. "Fine of twenty-five cents," barked the Commanding Officer. "I know that and I'll pay it," replied the boy, "but when THIS outfit marches by on parade, NOBODY grins."
This incident is related of Muster Day, that boisterous and gala festival of our early eras, the only occasion of the year when all Hanover's men, women, and children met on the Parade Ground at Hanover Center, hungry, thirsty, curious, and eager to renew their pugnacity and esprit de corps. Lavish, although an inade- quate word, may suggest the nature of the preparations, beginning well in advance when the selectmen let out by contract at auction to the lowest bidder the assignment of "fodderin' the troop" with specified quantities of prime roast beef, boiled mutton, bread (wheat, rye, and "rye and Injun'"), West India rum, seed cakes, Injun' pudding, and Muster Day Gingerbread.
Citizens assembled right after breakfast, that is, about dawn, in oxcarts enough to create acute traffic problems, of which they were inordinately proud. During the morning the local units of militia marched, countermarched, wheeled and passed in review to some frisky fife-tune with this refrain:
We've found the way to make ends meet-
Drink STONE WALL and hustle.
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(Stone Wall consists of "old cider" and "new rum" blended in pro- portions to suit the individual palate and in quantities to match the occasion.) After dinner at noon, attention was drawn to the minstrels, fiddlers, auctioneers, acrobats, fakirs,-itinerant and local, old and young-who thronged the Parade Ground and its approaches. Horses were swapped, knitted goods and homemade sweets were peddled for profit and for fun, and the band played, careless perhaps of the difference between "common" and "com- pound" time but with magnificent volume and spirit. On one such occasion the incident is recalled of the village idiot, to whom all towns owe a great debt because to him has always been vouchsafed in rare degree the precious gift of full enjoyment. As he pranced beside the marching band this Muster Day, the village idiot queried "Ain't that music dreadful pretty?", thus illustrating an- other of his supernatural gifts-command of the perspicacious phrase.
Muster Day arose out of the American Revolution and out of wide belief in the words of President Washington that "to be pre- pared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." In this spirit the twenty-fourth Article of the New Hamp- shire Bill of Rights says that "a well regulated militia is the proper, natural, and sure defence of a state," and in 1786 New Hampshire accordingly enacted a law requiring, after some ex- ceptions, all able-bodied men to present themselves on Muster Day armed and equipped for military duty, and imposing fines for failure to comply. In the decade before the Civil War, Muster Day disappeared for reasons variously given as peace and prosperity, growth of the temperance movement, progress, politics, etc. At all events the Parade Grounds grew up to bushes or filling sta- tions, and other community occasions absconded with the glamor of Muster Day.
However, survivals do exist here and there. For example, those who are hungry for the things of Muster Day are urged to try the following old recipe for Muster Day Gingerbread; it is genuine and it works: "1 cup light molasses, 2 large tablespoons butter, 1 ยท teaspoon soda mixed with 3 tablespoons boiling water, 1 teaspoon ginger, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 cups flour, kneaded in but not hard. Roll into sheets, mark with fork, and bake quickly. After baking, wet top of sheets with 3 teaspoons milk mixed with 3 teaspoons molasses while gingerbread is still hot."
For readers who wish, as well they might, to learn more of Han-
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over's military history than the present account supplies, the fol- lowing bibliographical note may be of help.
For the Revolution the most readable account is that of Frederick Chase, A History of Dartmouth College and the Town of Hanover, New Hampshire, Cambridge (1891) ch. vi, pp. 318 ff; fuller detail and lists of those who served are given in C. E. Potter, The Military History of New Hampshire from its Settlement in 1623 to the Rebellion in 1861, Concord (1866). For the Civil War the best general account is that of J. K. Lord (ed. A. Fairbanks), A History of the Town of Han- over, New Hampshire, Hanover (1928), ch. xv, pp. 172 ff .; details and muster rolls are to be found in A. D. Ayling, Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866, Concord (1895). For World War I, one may consult E. F. Clark, War Record of Dartmouth College, 1917-1918, Hanover (1922), and J. K. Lord's history, cited above. Hanover citizens who served in World War II are listed in How They Served, Lebanon (1945), copies of which may be had in the office of the Town Clerk, Hanover. Many sources of further information about Hanover's military achievements are available in books, periodicals, and manuscripts preserved in the archives of Baker Library.
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8 Early Houses Outside the Village by Marjory Lord Packard
W HEN Edmund Freeman grd, his wife, two tiny children and seventeen-year-old brother Otis arrived in Hanover in May of 1765, they rather quickly put up a log house for shelter, as did the other settlers who followed them. Appar- ently there was no thought of these being permanent residences, and within ten years, usually less, the log hut was replaced with a more substantial dwelling. The only trace of these loghouses re- maining seems to be found in the Bridgman-Stevens house in Etna, built before 1771. The first two-story frame house was built in 1769 by John House near the river, two and a half miles north of the College Plain. It was used as a dwelling until it was pulled down in 1866.
The majority of the early settlers were a rather homogeneous group from adjacent towns in eastern Connecticut. They brought with them the ideals of house building with which they had been reared and felt at home. Some built the familiar story and a half house with low pitched roof, a central chimney with small en- trance hall, a room at either side in front and three smaller rooms in the rear. Often a small house was built at first, and then as the family expanded, the original house was used as an ell and a larger addition placed at the side. Occasionally a much steeper pitched roof allowed for more room from the first, particularly upstairs.
Probably the type next most frequently erected by the early settlers was the two-story, pitched roof house around a central chimney. An interesting variant found also in Norwich and Haver- hill is the two-story, pitched roof house with quite different pro- portions, and only one room instead of two rooms deep.
Another type was the nearly square, hipped roof house with central chimney. Several examples are still standing in Norwich and on the road to Haverhill, but in Hanover outside the village the old Smith-Fullington house and the Chandler-Hewes house, which has been much altered, seem to be all that remain. A vari- ant of this type has two chimneys with a large central hall between them.
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The interior construction of these early houses is a frame of handhewn rafters and beams, some shaped with a broadax, others with an adz. The rafters, usually to be seen in the attics, are braced by connecting horizontal beams (purlins) and by each other where they meet at the peak of the roof, commonly with no ridgepole. The walls consist of a layer of boards, generally horizontal, some- times upright, and often in the old houses very broad, nailed with hand-wrought nails to the studs (minor vertical posts) and covered on the outside with hand-riven clapboards. Within, laths split by hand on the spot were nailed to the studs, and to them was applied a thin coat of plaster, which, if any of it remains today under the layers of old wallpaper, can be identified by its thinness and brittle quality, quite different from modern plaster. Occasionally a sheathing of plain or paneled pine boards instead of plaster formed the inside of the walls.
Carpenters working on the renovation of old houses and home owners have discovered a number of so-called "plank" houses, a form found occasionally in Connecticut dwellings and perhaps more prevalent in this region because of the greater importance of keeping out the wintry blasts. Corner posts only were used, no studs, but beams under the roof were held up by broad two-inch vertical planks, mortised into the sills and upper beams (plates). Each plank was grooved at the edge and they were made tight by splines driven down between them. These plank walls extended from corner post to corner post and must have been a nearly wind- proof construction.
The interior finish varied with the taste, upbringing, wealth and skill of the builder, but in general in the early years in these outposts of civilization it was simple and functional. Nevertheless, the examples of fine mantels, paneling, broad plank floors, and exterior moldings to be seen in many of the oldest houses in the town testify to the general respect for superior craftsmanship which our first settlers brought with them from their former homes.
Of course at present it is not easy to visualize just how these houses looked as they stood here before 1811. Roofs and clap- boards must necessarily have been replaced if they were to sur- vive and they have been subjected to the vicissitudes of changing ownership. Sometimes old and crumbling chimneys were ripped out and fireplaces boarded up to make them safe and up-to-date. Rooms were rearranged, closets and pantries added by owners who
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wanted "modern improvements." (Captain James Spencer boasted that his new house, built in 1846, didn't have a single old-fash- ioned fireplace in it!) Sometimes through periods of neglect old interiors crumbled away, and recent owners have had to clear out almost the entire interior and start again. But often very fine fin- ish has been preserved in some rooms; the Macomber, Morgan, Duke, Lang and Menand houses are good examples.
In any story of Hanover houses built before 1811, it would be most unfair not to mention the numerous cellar holes bearing silent witness to the early settlers, many of them outstanding names on the town records, who came, built their houses, cleared large acreages, raised their families, and carried on the affairs of the town, but of whom no visible trace remains except perhaps a disintegrating stone in one of the town's nine cemeteries. On roads that have continued to be traveled to the present it was usually fire that took the houses, but in the Moose Mountain area along the long discontinued roads the houses were abandoned and al- lowed to decay.
Hanover, like all Connecticut River towns, has literally though in no sense figuratively "gone downhill." This is due in no small degree to people's changing attitude toward hills. Before a town goes down to the valleys it must first have gone up to the hill tops, and this the town of Hanover quite literally did. A few settled early on the flat ground near the river, notably the founders of Dartmouth College, Samuel Green on the road which still bears his name, and Timothy Smith who with his sons had a vast hold- ing along the river bank north from the present Fullington farm.
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