USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > New London > Mirror to America : a history of New London, New Hampshire, 1900-1950 > Part 5
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Despite these progressive actions, the residents of New London proved cold to the allurements of a publicly-financed airport or landing strips within the Town limits.21 As early as 1932 there was some talk of a seaplane base on Pleasant Lake, but this project was speedily quashed by the Public Service Commission of New Hampshire.22 At the March meet- ing in 1936 the Town voted down a proposed airport adjacent to the Country Club, to be financed largely by Federal funds. 28 Eleven years later, despite the stimulus which World War II gave to aviation in the minds of scores of veterans, a proposal to build a Town airport on the old Tracy farm was again vetoed by the citizens at the March meeting. There was interest in flying in New London, but not sufficient to make the people appropriate funds for the purpose. In 1950, therefore, aviation
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
enthusiasts had to go to Newport for the nearest facilities on land, and to Newbury for the closest available seaplane land- ing base.
Notwithstanding the strongly Republican attitude of the Town on national issues, the voters adopted a curiously in- consistent position toward the several "pump-priming" ex- pedients of the New Deal in the 1930's. On certain matters, such as Federal aid for an airport above referred to, the Town flatly rejected the offer. A similar feeling was apparent in the voters at a special school district meeting in 1933. Admit- tedly the Town needed a new school building, and the Fed- eral government stood ready to make grants and loans to render this possible. Nevertheless, by a vote of 128-18 the proposition was negatived.24 On the other hand, in 1933 at a special Town Meeting the voters authorized the Selectmen to apply for Federal relief funds for an extension to the sewer system.25 The next year with equal satisfaction the Town accepted Federal Emergency Relief funds for the establish- ment of a local nursery school in the Baptist Church Parish House. Miss Elizabeth Healey was sent to organize the school, and she was assisted in its management by Miss Dorothy Goings of New London. The school ran for several months, and was popular with the mothers of young children in the Town.26 In the same year Civil Works Administration grants gave employment to a dozen men clearing underbrush around the shores of the Morgan Pond reservoir, and in 1939 Public Works Administration funds were gladly accepted by the Town to help finance the laying of several thousand feet of water and of sewer pipes.27 Under these emergency grants to New London, the work was always efficiently done with skilled supervision, and there was no laziness, graft, or waste of money in their administration.
As they had hitherto done, the voters between 1900 and 1950 regularly authorized annual appropriations for certain anniversaries in the Town calendar and for some kinds of recreational activity. Memorial Day observances, for example, were subsidized to the amount of $25 yearly between 1900 and
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
1911; after that and until 1926 the grant was $50; then it gradually increased until by 1950 it had risen to $150. Sup- port for Old Home Week was less consistent. In 1915 the Town voted $50 for this purpose, contingent upon a similar expenditure of privately-raised funds. In 1924 the grant was $100, but the very next year no support at all was voted. In 1931 the voters authorized $250 for the event, but that figure was not reached again. Likewise was the situation con- cerning summer band concerts. In 1908 the Town voted $100 for them, the New London Cornet Band to be the beneficiary. This figure appeared usually in Town warrants thereafter until 1939, when it rose to $125. During the course of World War II there were no appropriations for this purpose, but in 1948 that practice was resumed with an annual subsidy of $500. The voters were fickle, however, and in 1950 refused any appropriation. In 1934 came the initial support for a Town skating rink, when $200 was raised for it. Fifteen years later the amount annually voted for the rink had risen to $500.
As final aspects of these miscellaneous phases of Town business, three other matters may be noted. In 1933 the March meeting authorized the appointment by the Selectmen of a committee to begin consideration of a supplement to Mrs. Myra Lord's history of New London, which volume had terminated in 1899. Named to the original committee were the Rev. Harold W. Buker, Oren D. Crockett, William M. Kidder, Charles E. Shepard, and Stanley A. Spiller. There were annual reports of progress on the work, and small amounts of money were raised for the committee's activities in 1936, 1939, 1940, 1945, and 1946. Personnel changed by death or removal from the Town, but in 1947 the then existing committee agreed to ask Dr. J. Duane Squires to prepare a manuscript covering the half century from 1900 to 1950, and submit it to the voters at the Town Meeting of 1951. Mrs. Nancy Lord Daniels, granddaughter of the original historian, was invited to pre- pare the genealogical data for the new book.
In 1944 the Town Meeting considered the establishment of a postwar public works fund. Authorized by a statute of
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
New Hampshire's General Court in 1943, this was a proposal to lay aside funds which could be used after the close of hostili- ties to provide employment and useful public works in the several communities of New Hampshire. Attractive as this idea appeared on the surface, its was rejected by the voters, largely on the grounds that it was unnecessary in such a Town as New London. But the same year the people ap- plauded the judgment of the Selectmen in issuing the Town Report for the first time with a picture on the cover.28 Two years later this annual document was still further improved by including a frontispiece, showing the State and National officers who represented the voters, together with certain historical data regarding the Town.29
4. New London's Outreach in Public Affairs
New London is one of 224 towns in New Hampshire. It is in the Second Congressional District, the fifth Counci- lor District, the Seventh State Senatorial District, and is entitled to one representative to the General Court of New Hampshire.30 Through these relationships to the Nation and to the State New London voters secure their formal political contacts with the larger areas of American public life. During the half century from 1900 to 1950, no New London citizen was elected either a U. S. Senator or a Con- gressman. Thanks to the coming into effect of the 16th Amend- ment to the U. S. Constitution in 1913, however, the following year New London voters for the first time participated in the direct selection of U. S. Senators. Nineteen men represented New London in the General Court during the fifty years under review, several of them for more than one term. The representative from New London with the longest tenure of office in the State Legislature was Stanley A. Spiller, elected for four consecutive biennial terms beginning in 1942. Three New London men, Herbert D. Swift, Paul B. Gay, and James C. Cleveland, served as State Senators, being first elected for the two-year term in 1942, in 1946, and in 1950. Frederic E. Everett of New London was State Highway Commissioner
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
from 1915 to 1949 - at his retirement he was the senior High- way Commissioner in all the forty-eight States -, and George W. Philbrick of New London began a twelve year term as one of the three Commissioners of Merrimack County on April 1,1938.31
The fundamental law of New Hampshire has a provision permitting periodic constitutional-revision conventions. Be- tween 1900 and 1950 six such gatherings were held at Concord. At the Constitutional Convention of 1902 the New London representative was Jacob H. Todd. Ten years later New Lon- don's voters sent Headmaster Justin O. Wellman of Colby Academy to the Constitutional Convention of 1912. Again, at the Constitutional Convention of 1918 and at its adjourned sessions in January, 1920, and in January, 1921, Headmaster Wellman represented the Town. In the 1930 Constitutional Convention James E. Shepard was the New London delegate. President H. Leslie Sawyer of Colby Junior College repre- sented New London in the Constitutional Convention of 1938, while Herbert D. Swift was elected as the Town delegate for the Constitutional Convention of 1948.
An interesting development in the outreach of New London was the growing trend toward regional cooperation. Shortly after the First World War, enterprising citizens of Sun- apee had organized the Lake Sunapee Board of Trade. In 1924 this group asked the voters of New London and Newbury to contribute $300 each for publicizing the Lake Sunapee area. New London citizens accepted the challenge and voted the funds that year.32 But in 1925 they passed over a similar article in the Town Warrant, and only at irregular intervals there- after did they repeat the initial appropriation. In 1931 the newly-formed New London Civic Association urged the citi- zens to vote $500 for advertising the Town, but the voters re- jected an article in the Warrant which would have authorized this subsidy. In March, 1937, several New London residents, notably the Rev. Harold W. Buker and Stanley A. Spiller, helped to organize the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region Asso- ciation. This was a voluntary, cooperative, non-profit associa-
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
tion, seeking to be a publicity and development medium for thirty-eight towns in western New Hampshire, ranging from Orford on the north to Hillsboro on the south. Because of its central location, New London was for some years the seat of the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region executive office, and Messrs. Buker and Spiller served respectively as president and secretary. Beginning in 1938 the Town voted a small annual appropriation for the promotional work of this agency.33
One of the principal endeavors of the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region in its early years was to develop the area around Mt. Sunapee as one of New England's leading recrea- tion centers. Shortly before Pearl Harbor, legislation was enacted by the General Court to construct a lift up Mt. Suna- pee. Not until some months after V-J Day, however, were materials available, and the Mt. Sunapee Chair Lift was not opened to the public until late in 1948. The old Edgemont) station on the railroad was formally renamed Mount Sunapee on January 24, 1949,34 and the adjacent Mount Sunapee State Park prepared for busy times ahead. Giving employment to several men from New London as well as from other neigh- boring towns, the whole project, alike for winter and summer recreation, will always be a lasting monument to the coopera- tive and energetic promotional work of the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region Association and its friends and supporters throughout the State.
Another type of outreach in which New London parti- cipated in the years after World War II was the Council of Towns of New Hampshire, promoted by the indefatigable Stanley A. Spiller. Organized in 1947, the Council of Towns chose Spiller as its first president, and launched an ambitious program for the building-up of the small towns throughout the State. Only 31 of the 224 towns in New Hampshire - of which New London was one - had as large a population in 1947 as they had in 1860. The Council sought to encourage summer residents to purchase property in the small towns, and to build up a system of trails in the back country of the
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
State which, in contrast to the trunk highways, would appeal to all forms of slow transportation, including hikers, horse- drawn vehicles, and horseback riders.35
In concluding this summary of the outreach of one small town into the larger areas of State and National affairs, it may be emphasized again that consistently throughout its history New London has demonstrated an awareness of and an interest in the great issues of each generation. For example, in 1908 the voters at the March meeting passed a strong resolution directed to New Hampshire's Congressional delegation, urging that every vestige of human slavery be speedily extirpated from the newly-acquired Philippine Islands. In 1917, barely four weeks before the U. S. Declaration of war on Imperial Ger- many, the Town Meeting unanimously resolved to urge upon Congress the immediate enactment of measures ". . . calculated to strengthen the entire nation." Copies of this resolution were sent to Governor Keyes in Concord and to Washington.37 Again, in March, 1945, six weeks prior to the United Nations Conference in San Francisco, by an overwhelming vote the Town endorsed the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, and urged their use as a basis for a post-war world organization.38 Throughout the years since 1900 New London was a "dry town," and in 1933 at the March meeting voted against the repeal of the 18th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.39 In each "local option" referendum, placed on the biennial ballot during the 1940's, New London's voters rejected alike the sale of beer and the installation of a State liquor store within the Town limits.
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
NOTES FOR CHAPTER TWO
The quotation at the head of this chapter is from an article by L. H. Robbins in the New York Times Magazine, March 23, 1947.
1On these two incidents see respectively the Manchester Morning Union, March 19, 1946, and the Newport Guardian and Kearsarge-Sunapee Sun, March 16, 1950.
2Lists of Town officers for all positions named in this and subsequent chapters, covering the years from 1900 to 1950 inclusive, are given below, Appendix I, pp. 265ff. See also Directory of New Hampshire Municipal and County Officials, Concord, N. H., 1950, pp. 29, 42.
3F. J-T., March 13, 1919.
4Previous to this decision, the only time since 1900 when a non- partisan spirit in the choice of Town officers was manifest was at the March meeting of 1918. "For the first time in the history of the town, the annual meeting day elections were conducted under the banner of non-partisanship. Nearly every office was filled in a quiet, unostentatious manner, there being only one choice for the position." F. J-T., March 14, 1918. That month, of course, witnessed a crisis in World War I, and throughout the nation the attitude of unity was stressed.
5F. J-T., October 28, 1926.
6These are reported on in each annual Town Report. See, for example, N. L. T. Rpt. for 1949, pp. 40-46.
7T. C. Records, Vol. 7, p. 433.
8What is left of the old "Hearse house" in 1950 comprised a part of the building in which the Four Seasons Gift Shop was located.
9New London's Civil War record is finely summarized in Lord, History, pp. 413-420.
10There is a list of these persons and the amount of their contri- butions in T. C. Records, Vol. 7, pp. 426-427.
11T. C. Records, Vol. 7, pp. 467-468.
12F. J-T., June 20, 1918. The new building was declared by its donor to be a memorial to his father, Dr. Solomon A. Whipple, New London's physician from 1849-1884.
13F. J-T., August 24, 1933. This was a correct statement. The writer has examined the zoning rules for Soo-Nipi Park as promulgated by Dr. Quackenbos on October 17, 1892, and filed by him with the Registrar of Deeds of Merrimack County.
14It is given in full in the New London News, January 31, 1934.
15These efforts were actively supported by many members of New London's summer residents. For example, in August, 1945, Mr. Gorham Dana, a long-time member of the Planning Commission for Brookline, Massachusetts, addressed a comprehensive memorandum on the subject to Town Clerk William F. Kidder.
16 As early as 1914 the voters had instructed the Selectmen to establish
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
a "modern form of bookkeeping" for the Town; T. C. Records, Vol. 7, p. 361.
17The N. L. T. Rpt. for 1944 is the first one under the calendar year system of accounting.
18This threat to the stately tree which still yields two-thirds of the commercial timber cut in New Hampshire was accidentally introduced into the U. S. from Germany in 1898, and has spread steadily over the Northeast since that time. The host plants which spread the disease are gooseberry and currant bushes. In 1922 New Hampshire forestry officials began pulling up these bushes in an effort to stop the blight; F. J-T., October 19, 1922. See also a series of articles entitled, "New England Forests," Monthly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, July-Septem- ber,1948; September, 1950.
19F. J-T., June 7, 1917; October 9, 1919.
20In the 1949 deer hunting season in New Hampshire, no fewer than 1558 deer were killed in Merrimack County alone, the highest county kill in any of the ten counties of the State. Of this number, 28 were killed in New London. Data from the State Fish and Game Research Division, March, 1950.
21The first "flying machine" ever seen in New London was a primitive hydroplane, which landed on Lake Sunapee in 1912; F. J-T., August 1, 1912.
22F. J-T., August 4, 1932. 23T. C. Records, Vol. 8, p. 280.
24F. J-T., August 24, 1933.
25F. J-T., September 7; September 21, 1933.
26F. J-T., November 15, 1934.
27F. J-T., March 6, 1934; June 15, 1939; July 13, 1939. The willingness of the Town to accept these federal funds was certainly related to the urgent need for employment by many men in the community. The tradi- tional Town program for helping needy persons had been limited to scanty grants annually for the "town poor," and to the use of the "tramp house," erected by the Selectmen in 1909.
28For a few years at the beginning of the century Town reports car- ried several pages of local advertising, accepted in an effort to make the publication self-supporting. Not until 1920 did the annual report begin the practice of listing all officers and standing committees of the Town in a compendium at the front.
29 Although not perhaps official business, it is interesting to note that one of the duties of New London's Selectmen since 1910 had been to present "the Boston Post cane" to the oldest living citizen of the Town. In 1950 the holder of the cane was Miss Jessie Colgate Colby, who observed her 93rd birthday in January of that year.
30State of New Hampshire Manual for the General Court, Concord, N. H., 1949, Vol. 31, p. 309.
31The relationships of Town and County may be studied in the annual reports of the Merrimack County Commissioners. In 1949 New London paid County taxes in the amount of $14,528.92. The total expenditures of
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A HISTORY OF NEW LONDON
Merrimack County that year are summarized in detail in Report of the Commissioners of Merrimack County for 1949, pp. 14-15.
32In appreciation for this support by New London taxpayers and as a help for the Town's sesquicentennial celebration in 1929 the Lake Sunapee Board of Trade that summer erected an information booth on New London's Main Street; F. J-T., July 11, 1929. It was still in use in 1950.
33The Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region Association was officially in- corporated on September 28, 1938. Incorporators were Harold W. Buker, George N. Barrett, Forest B. Coles, John R. Kelley, and Stanley A. Spiller; letter of Albert S. Carlson to the writer, June 6, 1950. The Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region, one of six into which New Hampshire has been divided for promotional purposes by the State Planning and Development Com- mission, has had its headquarters in Lebanon, N. H. since the close of World War II.
34 Boston and Maine Railroad Magazine, March 1949, p. 7.
35Press comment on the Council of Towns of New Hampshire with extensive quotation from President Spiller may be read in the Manchester Morning Union, July 30, 1947; February 4, 1949. The appeal of "quiet back-country dirt roads" is well stated in "Topics of the Times," New York Times, August 19, 1947.
36T. C. Records, Vol. 7, p. 127.
37T. C. Records, Vol. 7, p. 468: also F. J-T., March 18, 1917.
38T. C. Records, Vol. 9, p. 179.
30T. C. Records, Vol. 8, p. 207.
3
The Enlargement of Public Services
"My Town is the place where my home is founded; where my business is situated and where my vote is cast; where my children are educated; where my neighbors dwell, and where my life is chiefly lived. It is the home spot for me. My Town has the right to my civic loyalty. It supports me and I should support it. My Town wants my citizenship, not my partisanship; my friendliness, not my dissension; my sympathy, not my criticism; my intelligence, not my indifference. My Town supplies me with protection, trade, friends, education, churches, and the right to free normal citizen- ship. It has some things that are better than others; the best things I should seek to make better, the worst things I should help to suppress. Take it all in all, it is my Town, and it is en- titled to the best there is in me.
- Franklin P. Hawkes
1. Development of Public Schools
As indicated in Chapter One, at the beginning of the century New London's educational system was limited to six one-room rural schools, whose offerings did not go beyond the eighth grade. Their combined annual cost would not have paid one teacher's salary fifty years later.1 For years after 1900 the Town Warrant carried an article annually for the raising of funds for school purposes; no separate School Warrant appears in a Town Report until that for 1916; and the School District meeting was at times a poorly-attended affair.2 The rise of the school system from a status wherein the yearly cost was less than the price of a good automobile to a point
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where it became the largest single item in the Town budget may be examined under three heads: consolidation, curricu- lum extension, and new construction.
The first step in consolidation was the consideration of securing a superintendent for the New London School District, and possibly uniting this District with neighboring towns. In 1905 New London voters agreed to this proposal of the School Board, and F. S. Sutcliffe was named as the first Super- intendent of Schools in the Town's history.3 In his initial report to the community Supt. Sutcliffe urged the prompt erection of a consolidated grade school building on New London Hill, ". .. sufficient for the accommodation of the pupils for a quarter of a century."4 At the School Meeting in March, 1906, this recommendation was adopted by the voters, who turning out that year in goodly numbers, gave the proposal their endorsement by a vote of 89-45.5 The building was constructed in the summer of 1906, and the total cost including equipment was $8,891. Ready for use by the fall term, the new structure immediately replaced the old Colby Hill School and the Pleasant Street School. The Burpee Hill School, however, continued in existence until 1914, while the Low Plain and West Part schools were not finally discontinued until 1930. From the very beginning of the consolidation movement, Elkins people resisted any suggestion that their own village school be closed, and it was still successfully functioning in 1950. The Elkins teacher, Mrs. Doris Langley, was an unusually able instructor, who in 1950 completed her twenty-fourth consecutive year of work in that school.
Consolidation in the two meanings of a supervisory union and a central school building had thus come to New London as a permanent aspect of the local educational system. Cur- ricular extension was the next development. The several super- intendents beginning with Supt. Sutcliffe all agreed that it was desirable that New London's school program be enriched and enlarged in various ways. For example, Supt. Sutcliffe in 1906 urged that drawing and elementary agriculture be
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1900 - 1950
added to the course of instruction. In 1911 Supt. Dickson recommended that the local school course be lengthened to nine years; this recommendation was adopted by the School Board and continued in effect until 1919. Supt. Toothaker in 1915 recommended that brief courses in physical geography, algebra, and elementary science be introduced, but these pro- posals seemed not to have been adopted. In 1919 the New Hampshire legislature enacted a far-reaching Educational Law which established an effective State Board of Education and a powerful Commissioner of Education. The area of Supervisory Union 43, in which New London has since been included, was laid down shortly after the passage of this statute. It comprised New London, Sunapee, Newport, and Springfield.
The most important development since 1900 in the ex- tension of New London's school curriculum, however, was un- doubtedly the decision of the Town to establish a high school. This meant continuing the course of instruction in the local schools from grades 9 to 12 inclusive. It became a necessity after the coeducational Colby Academy was reorganized as a women's junior college in 1928. For a few years various schemes were tried to overcome the problems created by this decision of the College authorities, but none was very successful. As early as March 17, 1928, at the annual School District meeting, a committee was appointed to consider the advisability of establishing a four-year high school in New London. The committee was composed of Fred A. Todd, chairman, Dr. William P. Clough, Sr., Fred Farwell, Mrs. Henry W. Kidder, and Victor H. Smith. A year later the committee unanimously recommended action in the affirma- tive.6 The School Meeting, however, declined to take action. Again, in 1930, despite further agitation on the subject, the vote at the annual School Meeting on the establishment of a New London High School was negative.7 In 1931 another committee reported to the District Meeting that a high school be organized in the Town and housed "temporarily" in the upper story of the grammar school building of 1906.
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