USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > New London > Mirror to America : a history of New London, New Hampshire, 1900-1950 > Part 4
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A delightful account of all aspects of the transportation business at the turn of the century is that by E. V. Mitchell, The Horse and Buggy Age in New England, New York, 1937, passim. See also Life, January 2, 1950, pp. 14-15.
8There are nostalgic accounts of the old snow rollers in an article by H. S. Pearson in the New Hampshire Troubadour, January, 1949, and in an editorial in the Boston Herald, February 1, 1948.
9The Woodsum Steamboat Company had been formed in 1876, and was at the high point of success in the years following 1900. The names of its ships were interesting: one was named for a lady in the Woodsum family; the "Armenia White" was named for an early resident of Pine Cliff; two others had mountain names; while the "Weetamo" had an Indian name drawn from a legend popularized by John Greenleaf Whittier in his poem, "The Bridal of Pennacook," Poetical Works, Cambridge, 1857, pp. 15-16.
Two New London men still active in 1950 were connected with events of the steamboat era on Lake Sunapee. W. M. Kidder drove a coach which met the steamers at Lakeside, and B. A. Hoban served for several years as purser on the "Armenia White."
10F. J-T., February 3, 1903. Two years before, a cautious New Lon- doner had written to the press as follows: "It seems to us to be an unwise move for a little inland town accommodated as well as we are. We have two mails a day now, and three in summer. It seems best to let well enough alone." F. J-T., February 1, 1901.
11There are caustic comments on this matter by the New London reporter in the F. J-T., August 28, 1909.
12Data summarized in U. S. News and World Report, January 20, 1950, pp. 11-12.
13Information on New London farmers in 1900 from Ira S. Littlefield in a letter to the writer, September 19, 1950. The resident farmer at Colby Homestead in 1900 was George D. Sholes. Data on prices in 1900 drawn from F. J-T., May 18, August 24, October 19, 1900. That summer going wages offered women for general housework were $4 a week; ibid., June 8.
14F. J-T., October 12, 1900. In this same summer of 1900 the Boston and Maine Railroad erected a picket fence around two graves near its
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
tracks at Potter Place. They were those of Richard Potter and his wife. It was for this famed 19th century prestidigitator that the town was named; see The Granite Monthly, August, 1878.
15The quotation is from "Aunt Abbie" Phelps, an octogenarian New Hampshire storekeeper, in the Boston Herald, March 14, 1951. See also R. M. Dorson, Jonathan Draws the Long Bow, Cambridge, Mass., 1946.
16 Appreciation for the long-vanished tin peddlers of New England is voiced by W. R. Webster, Connecticut: Birthplace of American Liberty, Princeton, N. J., 1945, p. 14; see also J. T. Adams, ed., Album of American History, New York, 1948, IV, p. 276.
17Ruel Whitcomb, the last of the workmen in the old scythe shops, died in the autumn of 1902; F. J-T., October 31, 1902.
18In 1870 there had been ninety manufacturing plants in the seven contiguous towns of New London, Wilmot, Sutton, Springfield, Sunapee, Salisbury, and Warner, with an annual output valued at $1,250,000. Data cited by S. A. Spiller in Neighborhood Exchange, June 10, 1949, p. 2. By 1900 fewer than a third of these industries were still operating, and the economy of the several towns was suffering.
19Lord, History, pp. 643-663.
20F. J-T., September 21, 1900. Twin Lake Villa opened as a hotel in the summer of 1900. Between that date and 1925 the Annex and thirty-six cottages were built to supplement its facilities.
21F. J-T., November 22, 1901.
22The New London Baptist Church bell is No. 339 on the stock-book list of the Revere Foundry. It was cast in 1826, the last year in which the business remained in the hands of the founding family. The Revere Foundry made 398 bells in all; 77 are known to be in existence in 1950; and 8 of these are in New Hampshire. The New London Baptist Church bell weighs 680 pounds.
23N. L. T. Rpt. for 1902 contains a memorial page in honor of Mrs. Keil, who had died on August 26 of that year. Of her it is said: "She was endowed by nature and acquirement for her work, and she taught in the Colby Hill school for 24 consecutive successful terms."
24In 1950 with an American population almost precisely double that revealed by the census of 1900, there were 61/2 million youth in high schools, or 67% of all persons in the eligible age group.
25Rowe, First Century, pp. 196-220.
26Nathaniel W. Colby, often mentioned in these pages, was the son of Nathaniel L. Colby. The senior Colby was for many years one of New Hampshire's leading Baptist clergymen and was president of the Board of Trustees at Colby Academy. Mrs. N. W. Colby - better known as Emma L. Colby -, like her husband, was an active citizen of New London, and was still prominent in Town affairs in 1950.
27Lord, History, p. 559. Mrs. Lord's husband, Edward O. Lord, was the original librarian.
28New Hampshire was the first State in the nation to require every town to establish a public library, and to rule that there should be an annual grant of public funds to support the institution.
29Lloyd Morris, Postscript to Yesterday, New York, 1947, pp. 3 ff.
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
30"Mr. Edison has perfected the phonograph," announced Harper's Weekly, May 13, 1899.
31J. T. Adams, ed. op. cit., pp. 50, 90, 191, 207; also Cornelius Wey- gandt, New Hampshire Neighbors, New York, 1937, pp. 111-112.
32 Julius Duscha, "A Change in the Menu," New York Times Maga- zine, December 11, 1949, p. 67.
33The Poems of Kitty Gay, pp. 38-39; note also "Three Generations of Stew Makers, "Neighborhood Exchange," January 9, 1950.
34"Winter Bells," an editorial in the New York Times, January 9, 1948.
35The Winslow House on Mt. Kearsarge, named for the commander of the "U. S. S. Kearsarge" which had destroyed the "C. S. S. Alabama" off Cherbourg, France, in June, 1864, had been burned on November 29, 1899. But picnic and mountain climbing parties continued to visit its site at the historic "halfway" point up the mountain side.
The interesting aspects of the Shaker settlement at Enfield as they could have been seen by visitors in the early 1900's are well described by Marguerite Melcher, The Shaker Adventure, Princeton, N. J. 1941, passim.
36Rowe, First Century, p. 199, asserts that Headmaster Mckean and his wife rode a tandem bicycle on their first trip to visit their new post at Colby Academy. How speedy the bicycle age could be on occasion is shown by the fact that in 1899, the same year that Dr. Mckean came to New London, one Charles M. Murphy rode a bicycle for a mile in 58 seconds! Murphy died in 1950; his speed exploit is mentioned in his obituary, New York Times, February 18, 1950.
37On the perennial charm of a rural New Hampshire fair, see C. M. Webster, Town Meeting Country, New York, 1945, pp. 159-161.
38In the summer of 1949 the New London Service Organization was responsible for placing the name, Karl Sholes, on the Town Monument.
39One New London man, Joseph Cutting, went to the Klondike in 1905. More remarkable, however, as a fact about Mr. Cutting was his relationship to the American War for Independence. In 1950 Joseph Cutting and his sister, Mrs. Julia Cutting Thompson, were perhaps the last brother and sister in the U. S. to be able to say that their own grand- father was a soldier under George Washington in the Revolutionary War of 1775-1783!
40Important decisions were often made by Secretary Hay in the quiet of his Lake Sunapee retreat. Note, for example, his communications dated there on September 14, 1900 and August 16, 1903, as cited by A. L. P. Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, New York, 1928, pp. 257-258 and pp. 342-343. President Theodore Roosevelt visited Secretary Hay at Lake Sunapee in the summer of 1902; F. J-T., September 5, 1902. Hay died at his summer estate on July 1, 1905. See W. R. Thayer, The Life of John Hay, Boston, 1908, II, pp. 72, 407.
14Yet one gloomy observer wrote in the autumn of 1900: "Some of our young men show a disparity to be a little fast, using bad language, disa- greeable, smoking five cent cigars, and cigarettes. They know it all, and want no advice for the future." F. J-T., September 21, 1900.
42Howard G. Brunsman, Chief, Population and Housing Division, Bureau of the Census, to the writer, January 8, 1951.
Part One: Public Affairs
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Town Meetings and Town Business
"In these smallest units of American government, these 'cells' of pure democracy, the citizens rule directly. Here the lowliest inhabitant has a personal part in his town government. . .. For his will may become the will of the town meeting, and the will of the town meeting regarding town affairs is the law within the town's boundaries - at least until the next meeting rolls around. Here the citizen is sovereign, and well he knows it, and so do the town officers whom he elected to perform the town chores for him."
-L. H. Robbins
1. New London's Town Meetings
On the second Tuesday in March of each year the voters of New London assemble in their Town Hall to transact the public business listed in the Warrant. So it has been for a century and three-quarters, and so, we hope, it always will be. The Moderator bangs his gavel for order, conversation ceases in the hall, and the warrant is read. Then, article by article, the people vote their will, while the Town Clerk faithfully sets down the record of the meeting. At noon a recess permits the voters to enjoy a "collation," luncheon, or "eats," - the words may differ, but the idea is the same. In the afternoon the sessions are resumed, and the voting con- tinues until every person who wishes to has expressed himself or herself, and the last decisions have been made. Often there are moments of tense and even passionate debate. Sometimes the meeting relaxes into harmonious unity as it did when
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
congratulating the Cricenti family in 1946 as five members thereof voted for the first time, or as in 1950 when it felicitated Ira S. Littlefield on his 55th consecutive year of attendance at Town Meeting.1 At the end come adjournment and the inevitable "post mortems."
While Town Meeting routine has been about the same throughout the half century since 1900, the scope of Town business has grown. The following chart of what the annual Town Report lists as "General Government Charges" will prove the point:
General Government Charges in New London
Year
Amount
1900
$334.31
1905
450.72
1910
557.00
1915
1,018.22
1920
2,013.92
1925
1,878.15
1930
2,488.70
1935
2,783.21
1940
3,566.52
i
1945
3,169.27
1950
4,950.00
:
In 1900 salaries and expenses of the principal Town officers totalled $287.36. A decade later, these items had gone up to $700. By 1950 they totalled $2,750. But for these sums, what- ever they may have been, New London has always secured dollar for dollar in services rendered, and an administrative efficiency and budget-balancing that larger units of govern- ment are unable to attain.2 In the five decades covered by this history there has never been even the whisper of a scandal in Town business and administration. Through fifty years of changing problems and new situations, New London was served by able Selectmen and conscientious officers, whose record is a source of pride to those familiar with the facts. New London achieved its first million dollar property value
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
in 1912, when the total assessed valuation reached a figure of $1,139,000. By 1949 this figure had climbed to $2,772,834. All taxes assessed that year totalled $101,693.74; and the tax rate was $3.70.
While New London has voted Republican in every State and Presidential election since 1900, there has always been a two-party organization within the community. At times, as in 1919, the Democrats have been able to win most of the local offices.3 Republican and Democratic caucuses have usual- ly met each year before Town Meeting. Until recently, these caucuses made party nominations for most local posts. At the Town Meeting of March, 1946, however, by vote of 92-27, the people adopted the non-partisan system of balloting for Town officers, to begin in 1947. That decision lessened some- what the importance of the caucus and expedited the election process on Town Meeting day.4 In 1920, thanks to the Nine- teenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, New London's women participated for the first time in a presidential election. In March, 1926, Mrs. Emma L. Colby, the first woman in New London's history to be permitted to do so, on the invi- tation of the Moderator presided over the Town Meeting for a short time. Later that year, Mrs. Allie Sargent likewise broke all local precedent by becoming the first, albeit un- successful, candidate in New London's history for the General Court at Concord.5
Most of the matters considered by New London voters at the annual Town Meetings between 1900 and 1950 will be treated in subsequent chapters, or elsewhere in this chapter. One other topic, however, may properly be presented in this section; viz., the care of the Town cemetery. In 1900 the Town approved $50 for the cemetery; fifty years later the similar appropriation was $500. In 1910 the people voted to establish a Board of Cemetery Commissioners; to make this group responsible for maintenance of the burial places in Town; and to take custody of all funds and bequests for cemetery pur- poses. It was reported by the newly-formed Board that there had been 942 deaths in New London in the past eighty years,
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
and over 1,500 burials. In 1912 the Town voted to enlarge the old Main Street cemetery by purchasing more land; in 1949 a similar vote authorized an additional extension. In 1923 it was voted to take over the stock of the Elkins Cemetery Association and all property thereof, placing the same in charge of the Cemetery Commission. Since the formation of the Commission in 1910, there have been upwards of a hun- dred trust funds set up for the care of individual lots.6 In 1916 the Town voted to separate cemetery care as such from the custody of trust funds, and to establish a separate board for the latter purpose.7 Since that year the two boards of three persons each have had a parallel existence. The so-called "hearse house" was disposed of in 1900,8 and "hearse hire" discontinued by Town vote in 1949.
2. The Town Monument and the New Town Hall
Although New London had played an active part in the great Civil War between 1861-1865, and although its most distinguished citizen, former Governor Anthony Colby, had served New Hampshire as Adjutant-General during much of that grim struggle, the Town had no village monument to commemorate the "boys in blue."9 Nor, for that matter, had it ever erected a memorial to its sons who had engaged in the War for Independence. In 1912-1913 community sentiment began to crystallize. A desire for a fitting memorial was ex- pressed, and substantial sums of money contributed by many persons for this purpose.10 At the Town Meeting of 1914, $800 was voted to complete the monument, and to inscribe thereon the names of the men of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. On September 10 of that year it was formally dedicated. In 1915 the Town appropriated the additional sum of $250 to grade and improve the grounds about the handsome granite monument, and in 1919 voted $350 to inscribe thereon the names of all local men who had been in the armed forces dur- ing World War I. In 1935 a committee was appointed to locate the graves of those designated on the monument as soldiers in the Continental Army; three years later the voters
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
authorized the placement of specially prepared markers on these graves.
Perhaps the prospect of a fine monument in front of the old Town Hall stimulated a feeling among the voters that it was time for a more adequate building for the conduct of public affairs. The venerable wooden structure, standing where the existing Town Hall now is, had been erected in 1853, and was showing its age. In 1913, on motion of Head- master Justin O. Wellman of the Colby Academy, and by a count of 76-29, the Town voted to replace the old Town Hall with a new one, the cost to be held to $9,000. A building committee was appointed, consisting of James E. Shepard, W. S. Call, Ira S. Littlefield, Reverdy F. Smith, and Horace C. Stanley. The project was postponed from year to year, however, until in 1915 a new development transpired to alter the picture. Amos H. Whipple, a son of New London who had prospered in the hotel business of Boston, died, leaving a generous legacy to his native town. 2002821 The Whipple bequest was a piece of land known as the "Nelson lot," adjacent to the property in 1950 owned by Dr. William P. Clough, Jr., and $15,000. On this property and with this money Mr. Whipple in his will expressed the desire to have erected a Whipple Memorial Library. The Town at the March meeting in 1916 voted with thanks to accept the gift with its stipulations. But a year later the Town passed another vote quite different in purpose. During the twelve months interim, with the full approval of Sherman Whipple, brother and executor of the will of the late Amos H. Whipple, an agreement had been reached to substitute a new Town Hall for the projected public library. In March, 1917, there- fore, the Town voted, with the approval of ". .. the executor and trustee named in the will of said Amos H. Whipple, that a town hall be constructed on the present town hall lot in lieu of a public library, as provided in said will, said town hall building to be substituted in the bequest for the public library therein named and subject to all conditions provided in said will."11
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
Preparations having thus been skilfully made, the new Town Hall was erected in 1917-1918, and dedicated in June, 1918.12 The old building was torn down, sold to William M. Kidder and Joseph Cutting, and by them used to erect an ad- dition to the Kidder Garage. In 1918 the Town voted $1,500 to grade the grounds and furnish the new building. Two years later the voters appropriated $250 to equip the dining room of the Town Hall. In 1922 cases were installed to care for the historic flags of the Town, those of the McCutchins Guard, the G.A.R., the Messer Rifles, and the World War I service flag. A memorial tablet within the structure carries the portrait of the benefactor, and the building is officially and properly known as Whipple Memorial Hall. It was to serve New London as a civic and social center, until 1942 as the site for basketball games, and as a theater for all moving pic- tures presented in the Town since its construction.
3. Innovations in Town Meeting Business and Other Local Public Affairs
One of the new trends in Town thinking since 1900 was the effort to establish for New London a program of zoning or planning. During the early 1930's, when such concepts be- came increasingly popular throughout the nation, the question of zoning was brought before the Town. At the annual meet- ing in March, 1933, the voters authorized the Selectmen to appoint a committee to study the applicability of such an idea to New London. Personnel of the committee as then named were Herbert D. Swift, chairman, Wendell N. Hobbs, Charles E. Shepard, Horace C. Stanley, and Fred A. Todd. This zon- ing committee made an intensive study of all existing New Hampshire municipal zoning ordinances in effect at that time, and kept in close touch with the State Planning Commission in Concord.
Under the auspices of the New London Civic Association, several public meetings were held in the Town, at which zoning arguments pro and con were discussed. At one of these, in August, 1933, James M. Langley, chairman of the zoning
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
commission for Concord, N. H., supported the idea of zoning, and declared that the late John D. Quackenbos of New Lon- don had been one of the pioneers of zoning in the United States, with his rules for Soo-Nipi Park as promulgated in 1892.13 The State Planning authorities made recommendations for zoning New London. The text of the proposed ordinance was published late in January, 1934.14 But all these efforts were fruitless. Popular suspicion of the project as being de- structive of individual rights could not be overcome, and the committee deemed it wise to postpone final presentation of its recommendations until the Town Meeting of March, 1935. At that time the whole proposal was voted down.
Interest in the general idea, however, was far from dead, and in 1939 the Town Meeting again authorized the appoint- ment of a committee to investigate the question of zoning. This time the group designated was composed of the Select- men - Leon W. Bickford, Howard E. Todd, and Walter E. Gay -, together with B. A. Hoban, William F. Kidder, Ira S. Littlefield, and Benton B. Stanley. A non-committal report in 1940 was the only result of this committee's endeavors. In 1943 emphasis shifted to the less drastic concept of planning. At that year's Town Meeting the voters authorized the for- mation of a Town Planning Board. The original personnel was Dr. William P. Clough, Jr., chairman, Leon W. Bickford, Paul B. Gay, Ira S. Littlefield, and Wayne K. Wheeler. In 1945 the Planning Board was enlarged to seven, and at that size it has remained. In 1950 the voters granted the Planning Board additional powers under the provisions of the State Municipal Planning Act; it appeared that planning for New London had at last won a firm foothold. The chief emphasis of the Planning Board in the years between 1943 and 1950 was the construction of an accurate Town map. In 1944 $400 was voted for this purpose, and a year later $200 more was authorized.15
Another innovation in New London was the establish- ment of a Town Budget Committee under the authority of the New Hampshire Municipal Budget Act of 1935.16 Follow-
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
ing favorable Town vote in March, 1935, the Moderator ap- pointed a Budget Committee of nine: three were to hold office for three years; three for two years; and three for one year. Subsequent appointments were for a three year term, three members retiring each year. Annually, in January and February the Budget Committee held public hearings on all fiscal proposals to come before the School District and Town meetings, and made recommendations to the voters con- cerning these. From the amounts recommended by the Com- mittee, the School and Town meetings could not deviate in their appropriations by more than ten per cent. The Budget Committee functioned faithfully each year, and most citizens felt the net result of its efforts was worthwhile. Partly owing to their recommendations, in 1944 the fiscal year of New London - previously extending from February 1 of one year through January 31 of the next - was changed to cor- respond with the calendar year.17
During the half century from 1900 to 1950, the voters of New London - hesitant as they may have been concerning zoning or planning - were quite willing to approve numerous other endeavors to make the Town more attractive. Begin- ning in 1906 a Tree Warden was elected each year to exercise general charge over the trees along the roads and on public property. Although at times others held the position, for most of the years until mid-century Ira S. Littlefield discharged this responsibility. In 1922 the Town made its first appro- priation of $400 to fight the growing menace of white pine blister rust.18 More or less regularly in the years following, similar sums were approved at Town Meeting. In 1923 the voters authorized the appointment of a committee to con- sider the possibilities for a Town forest. Two years later, the committee having reported favorably, the Town appropriated $200 for reforestation on public property. In 1939 came the initial grant of Town funds for the protection and care of shade trees on public grounds and highways. In 1948 the voters approved a sum of $200 for the eradication of poison ivy along the highways of the Town, and the next year voted to
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
grade and seed the public park adjacent to the Four Corners. In 1927 the Selectmen were instructed to provide a suitable Town dump for refuse and rubbish other than garbage; in 1949 arrangements were made to take care of garbage also.
The Town's attitude on natural resources of stream and forest kept pace with the developing national movement toward conservation. In a community where the name of Theodore Roosevelt was as popular as it was in New London in the opening years of the century, this was reasonable, for "T. R." was the leading advocate of resource conservation. Even in 1900 there had been a Fish and Game Warden duly appointed for the Town. By 1917 New Hampshire law re- quired fishing licenses for all out-of-State persons, and this was strictly enforced in New London. Two years later, through the efforts of William M. Kidder and Calvin E. Sargent, Kidder Brook was closed to fishing.19 In 1935 the voters first appro- priated funds for the stocking of Lake Sunapee with trout, said grant to be conditional upon similar action by the citizens of Newbury and Sunapee. At various subsequent Town meet- ings similar grants were made. With the increase in the num- ber of fishermen and hunters in the 1940's, the State liberated many varieties of fish and numerous pheasants within the Town boundaries.20
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