USA > New Hampshire > Belknap County > Meredith > Old Meredith and vicinity > Part 11
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We regret that we cannot write more in detail about the strong, rugged char- acters of these pioneers. Godly men and women, largely, whom we delight to contemplate. If we weep as we recall the past, or joy in remembering, no words could be more appropriate to our thought than these lines of Lowell:
"As life runs on, the road grows strange, With faces new, and near the end The milestones into headstones change, 'Neath every one a friend."
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Center
Harbor
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to
Gilman
Old Road
Road
New
Little
Pond
Advent
Gave
ilistome
ELLey
Govs,
lovejoy
o BEAR
Sands
ISLAND
Stineda
Spindle
Pt
MEREDITH NECK AND BEAR ISLAND Mary Gale Hibbard
Between Meredith Bay and Center Harbor lies Meredith Neck, extending into Lake Winnepesaukee. It is not a long and narrow neck of land, but two miles or more in width, divided near the end into what seem like three smaller "necks," although we find that Stonedam Island, high and formerly well wooded, which forms the end of the second division, is separated from the main land by a very narrow channel, called the "Gut," or "Sally's Gut," over which there was at one time a bridge.
Nearest the Weirs, sloping down from the Pinnacle, Spindle Point extends into the lake. It is recognized by its lighthouse-not a real lighthouse one finds on going nearer. The largest and widest of the three divisions lies opposite Bear Is- land, the side nearer Stonedam being indented with many coves. Between two of these coves is a long point or neck with a narrow "carry"; there is an island
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also near this point. It is into the marshy land at the end of one of these coves, Fish Cove, that Page Brook empties, its mouth hidden by water plants and marsh grass. At the extreme southwestern end of this division is a point with a camp at the end, about as long as Spindle Point and even narrower. This is sometimes called the "Spindle of the Neck." Surely a land of "Necks"!
The Neck has its hills also. The Pinnacle is the highest: from the boulder on its top is an unusually fine view of the lake and its bays and islands, as well as of the mountains. From the Neck the Belknaps are the same "twin peaks" that Whittier viewed from Center Harbor. On the northeast lie Chocorua and the Sandwich range with Red Hill in the foreground. The Ossipee range, long and massive, rises back of Bear Island nearer the east.
From the steep little hill near Page Pond, the "Little" pond of the map, the peak of the northern Kearsarge or Pequawket comes into view, and from the rocky little Millstone Hill near Advent Cove one looks down on the bay and is- lands lying between Bear Island and Center Harbor; while from every little hillock in the pastures and at every turn of the road some new view of lake or mountain catches the eye. It is not strange that from a farming region, with a few mills on its streams, the Neck is fast changing into a summer colony, with motor cars filling the roads, motor boats driving away the loons, and airplanes whirring overhead.
To drive to the Neck in old times one went up Center Harbor Hill from Mere- dith Village and, taking the first turn on the right, went higher yet and then down the hill; it is at the foot of this hill that the "New Road" comes in; this is the one commonly used now, coming from the village along the shore of Meredith Bay. A trip down the Neck means turning a right angle at frequent intervals,-down, across, then down again.
Let us go down the Neck, zigzagging along, climbing Mead Hill, down again, climbing Meetinghouse Hill, then down, turning down the "Ferry Road" to what is now known as Lovejoy's Sands. Here we find a beach and the public wharf, from which it is an easy trip by boat to the main wharf at Bear Island. It is at this end of the island that the Maloons were found in early days. Had we been here then we might have seen Waldo Maloon coming across in his horse boat. The camps along the shore here have Chocorua in full view, and on a clear day Carter Dome shows its top in the hollow by Paugus.
Instead of crossing here let us turn back to the main road and having come to the end, where we are confronted by two pairs of bars, let us go through at the left and walk down through the woods.
Where the distance is the shortest between the shore and Bear Island there was a ferry,-that is, you hailed Aunt Dolly Nichols and she rowed across and took you over. Dolly Nichols was a well known character. She lived alone on the Neal land, now owned by Mr. E. C. Mansfield, in a little shack that neighbors had built for her. Here she fished and furnished food and drink to those who came that way. She was small but muscular; it is said that not only could she row from the Weirs with a barrel of rum, loading it herself, but when she reached home she could pull it up over her knees to her lap and take a drink out of the bung- hole.
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THE HOLLOW TRUNK OF A TREE THAT NOW COVERS AUNT DOLLY'S WELL
Many stories are told of her. She was a sister of Robert Bryant and an aunt of Mrs. Clark on the Neck. One story that Mrs. Cushing heard from her mother, Mrs. Clark, runs something like this:
Aunt Dolly spent the evening with the Clarks one March day. It was snowing when she started for home and as the big flakes fell faster she lost her way while trying to find the place to cross on the ice; so she settled down under a hemlock tree to pass the rest of the night.
In the morning she crossed to the island, and when she came near her own
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house she saw an ax standing by the door. "That man don't take as good care of his ax as I do of mine," she said; "I always put mine in the shed"; and so she passed on to James Bickford's nearer the "Carry."
Could Aunt Dolly herself a few days later have picked out the tree that had sheltered her? Probably not; yet a hemlock, neither very old nor very large, has been pointed out as the very one under which she lay down when lost on the main- land some seventy-five years ago.
Dolly Nichols spent the very last of her life at the Town Farm on the Neck, and her bones are among those buried in an unmarked spot. She had a husband and two sons. The Nichols name will be linked with Center Harbor through the gift of the library there.
Sheep and cattle were påstured on the island in the summer in later years, and taken to the Neck to winter. Near Aunt Dolly's well are the stone walls of a little sheep pen on the shore, where a flat stone formed a convenient landing place when the sheep were carried to the island.
Now not even a single cow is kept on the island, although a few years ago they might be seen in the fall returning to the main land on a flat boat towed by steamer or motor boat. A man's life was lost not many years ago, because the flat boat was so leaky it sank in even so short a passage.
The widest part of the island is at White Mountain Park, as the small map shows. The island is about three miles long, and is of a wasplike shape, with the "Carry" at the waist; each end is high in the middle, and there is a wide view of lake and mountains, even without climbing Mr. Mansfield's tower, although the view is much finer from the tower. The peak of Mt. Washington can be seen from Bear Island.
A road from near Aunt Dolly's led across to the Dockham place. Theophilus Dockham is said to have been the first Dockham on the island, and when we re- turn to the mainland we shall find his descendants there. The people of Bear Island and the Neck were closely knit together by family ties. South of the Dockhams were Bickfords. There was Eleazar Bickford and later his son of the same name; his son Charles we shall find on the mainland later. Near the south end of the island was Jonathan Bickford, whose sons, Joseph and Charles, al- though living on the Neck, still owned many acres at the end of the island until their death a few years ago.
Going north from White Mountain Park along the shore we pass the old bury- ing ground; going north back of the camps there is a trail, easily lost, to carry one to the "Deserted Village,"-really two cellar holes and a spring, "Feverbush Spring," with the site of the old schoolhouse not far away. There can be no village where each man's homestead contains about a hundred acres. It was here that James Bickford lived. He had four sons: James, Alonzo, Oliver and Moses. One of the cellar holes was a place of refuge long ago. Oliver Bickford's house had two parts to its cellar, one reached only from above, the other with an outside door. When the officers were hunting him as a deserter in the Civil War the snow was on the ground and his tracks could have been followed, and the cellar was searched, but he was not found. He was hidden in the outer cellar which he had reached by a secret passage between the two cellars. The stones
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have fallen into disorder now, and we cannot prove the story by showing the passage.
Between these houses and the "Carry" was the old schoolhouse, about equally distant from the two ends of the island. After the schoolhouse on Meeting House Hill on the Neck was built about eighty years ago, the children from the island often walked across on the ice to attend school there. The long winter term made nearly all of the school year in early times. There was no meeting house ever on the island, and the number of families at one time has been given variously, four- teen or fifteen at most probably. The ice would sometimes prove treacherous, as when one of the Maloons sank near the shore of the island. He was coming back from the mainland with the school children. The ice was rotten near the wharf; he alone lost his life, it is supposed because he was kept down by the weight of the nails he was taking back to the island in his pockets.
Along the shore opposite the Neck north of the "Carry" is a deep cove with a sandy beach and below it a point, where the Puffer camp now stands, called "Jerry's Point"; the cove itself was called the "Gulf." There is a bear story that belongs here.
When some of the Dockham family in very early days lived on the shore of Meredith Bay not far north of the Pinnacle, two young men, one a Dockham, one a Prescott, started on the ice for a fishing trip; one had a jack-knife, one an ax. They made their way around to the "Gulf " on the Bear Island shore. Here they found a bear hibernating in a cave. This was a great piece of good luck, but how were they to get him with no gun? This is the way they did it: the man with the knife tied it with his fishline to the end of a long pole and prodded the bear until he roused him, then the man with the ax struck, at exactly the right moment, the blow that killed him as he made a rush from the cave. After cutting some small trees, they dragged him home on poles over the ice. It was a long hard trip, so it was after dark when they reached the cove on Meredith Bay.
In the morning the little girl of the family, waking up, saw the bear skin hang- ing from the rafters, and, frightened, hid her head under the bedclothes; again she looked and again hid her head; she was persuaded to look once again, when they said, "You mustn't be frightened, Lizzie, this is only your new pair of shoes." She had never had a pair of shoes, and in her pride she lost her fear. Mrs. Cush- ing, who told us this story, is the great-granddaughter of this little girl, and she was told and has always believed that this was the bear that gave Bear Island its name.
On the high land at the north of the island lived the Maloons. Robert Bryant, who was evidently of a roving disposition, is said to have been the first to live on the spot where Waldo Maloon settled later. Of Waldo Maloon's five children, we shall find his son Stephen and his daughter Melissa, Mrs. Leonard S. Davis, on the Neck. Where his old house stood is the Bear Island House, where for many years Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Lovejoy kept a homelike boarding house.
Now the shores of the island are lined with camps, and in the winter all are closed, unless one or two are found open in the fishing season or when the ice- houses are being filled. The old names-Jerry's Point, Rum Point, the Gulf-are almost forgotten. The old families have gone, and now we too must pass from the island to the mainland.
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Recrossing to the ferry place on the Neck, we see many summer homes along the shore. At the end of the road is that of Captain Lewis of the Uncle Sam, but we are looking for old houses only, so we follow the road north through the land of D. Stillman Lovejoy, who owns both woodland and a long stretch of shore and spends his summers at Gypsy Camp. If we were in a row boat or canoe, we should turn in at Black Cove, divided by a point into two coves. Sometimes one may see a lily or two there, sometimes in days past an eagle would fly quite low, or a big blue heron sail just over one's head, or a pair of loons might be teaching one or two baby loons to swim.
We pass out now through one gate and enter the Cushing grounds through an- other. It took only a few minutes for a bolt of lightning helped by a high wind to wipe out the Cushing house and barn on the Kelley place, now known as "Stone Ax Farm." Ben Quinby had lived there before Lucian Kelley, and it is said that Robert Bryant built half of the old barn. A modern house and barn stand near where the old house stood. From the hilly pasture as well as from the house there is a fine view of the Belknaps.
Only a narrow strip of water separates the Neck from Stonedam Island, which, with Bear Island, was added to the town of Meredith in 1799. It was on this side of the island that Jacob R. Wilkinson settled. There is on this side of the island also a rock called the "tar rock," a large boulder with a natural hollow in the top, and leading from it a channel to catch the pitch, that may have been chipped out by the Indians. The white men who came after them also made pitch there of pine knots and cones, and used this on the seams of their boats to make them tight.
On the west side of Stonedam there was another house, and on a level spot on that side are two or three unmarked graves. On the very top of the steep little hill in the center of the island there is a craterlike hollow, and in this there used to be a frogpond, and one may be there now. The island has been lumbered over, and now is covered with second growth, but in years past Mrs. Cushing has found frogs in this most unlikely spot. We expect to see soon a new house there, as the whole island has been bought by Robert D. Judkins, now of California.
After returning to the highway, we find a group of buildings a little farther north on the left. Opposite these on the right is a small cellar hole, and it was here that Polly Quinby, the widow of Ben, spent her last days. The old house turning its back to the road is the old Clark house built by Theophilus, the father of Thomas and Joseph Clark. The old log cabin that he built is still there, en- closed in the front of the house, but none of it can be seen from the outside.
There is a shop still standing where Thomas Clark made chairs and also wooden ware for household use; there is nothing left now of the blacksmith shop where Joseph Clark made chains, and andirons also, in addition to common blacksmith work. Almon Plummer lived later in the old Clark house; the Dickinson house is not, of course, an old house, and here, too, there is a new road leading to the shore-a shore of points and coves.
We find farther north on the right the old Jesse Lovejoy place, where his son Ezra spent his summers until a few years ago; his son Solomon was known by all both on the mainland and on Bear Island. There is a camp for boys here now.
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The land beyond was Bickford land from shore to shore. John Dockham had once had a house on the left, but he had moved to the Gilford shore. Beyond his old cellar hole was the Charles and Joseph Bickford house, moved now to higher land and made most attractive, with as little change as possible, by Mr. and Mrs. H. Stuart Bosson.
On the right, Charles, son of Eleazar Bickford of Bear Island, had built a house, and later another farther north, where now Mr. Davis's new bungalow stands. This second house was built about seventy-nine years ago, and passed from the Bickford family eighteen years ago, when Charles Henry Bickford moved to Laconia. The Clarks moved there from their old house with their daughter and son-in-law, Mr. Davis. One Sunday evening a few years ago the neighbors, eager to be of use but helpless, stood and watched the fire creep on foot by foot from the barn to the house. No one knew that the barn had been struck, and for hours the fire smouldered in the hay. This old barn was made of two yet older, one Eleazar's from Bear Island, and the other one that had been moved from near the older house.
After Bickfords came Lovejoys again. David, the brother of Jesse and father of D. Stillman Lovejoy of Lakeport, lived in the house at the head of the ferry road (Mr. Leech's now); a third brother, Herbert, pronounced always Harbart, lived in the old Madison Chase house nearer the shore. We are told that they were the sons of Caleb, the first Lovejoy to settle in Meredith. Herbert had two sons and a daughter, Mrs. Almon Plummer; Mrs. Dickinson is his granddaughter. His house is in ruins now, but makes a pleasing picture, surrounded by trees and shrubs, and by the "Bouncing Bets" found in old dooryards.
The house where Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Lovejoy lived after leaving Bear Is- land was at one time a Bickford house, and yet another has become the little brown "House Wren" where Mrs. Downes spends her summers. Lovejoys and Bickfords, bound together by family ties, and now not one, when winter comes, can be found on the Neck.
Back of these last houses on the west runs the brook, Page Brook, flowing down from the pond and swampy land and emptying into the cove. There were mills here, one a ruin now, the last boards having been sawed twenty-five years ago; a most interesting ruin, with the little mill-pond filled with water plants, and cardi- nals growing along the sides of the brook. This is another spot where Robert Bryant is said to have lived for a time, and the foundations of the Plummer house are plainly seen.
By crossing the brook and walking through the pasture, we can pass the spot where the James Roberts house once stood, for we are now in the Roberts neigh- borhood. John Roberts was one of the first settlers on the Neck, and in this sunny field was the house of one of his sons, James. There are apple trees near and a few years ago a bee-house was still standing there; the house itself took a little trip up the lane to get a better view, and restored and enlarged, belongs now to Mrs. John Downes.
As we walk up the lane, after turning aside to see the dam and little shingle mill, we find two cellar holes. The small one on the right with birches growing in it was that of Moody Roberts, the son of James, who ran the little mill for a time;
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that on the left was that of John Clark, whose wife was a Roberts. Both of these houses and the Clark barn were torn down.
It is a pleasant walk up the lane, and on reaching the road we look up at the James Roberts house on its new site. Back of it in a sunny spot nearer the water is the Kelley cellar. On our left as we turn north on the main road is the old John Roberts place, set low on ground sloping from the road. It has been a chicken farm for a number of years.
Where Mr. Boynton lives was the Stephen Maloon place, and earlier yet it was the home of Madison Chase, son of Thomas. The house on the right, now empty, was where Colby Dockham, the grandson of Theophilus of Bear Island, succeeded
H
MEREDITH NECK MEETING HOUSE
his father, Nathaniel. Then come the graveyard, the schoolhouse and the meet- ing house, and just beyond the top of the hill a road ran down to Advent Cove on the east. This was the most settled part of the Neck.
Orrin N. Roberts tells of watching when he was a boy, nearly eighty years ago, the framing of the meeting house of hewn timbers, as well as the building of the schoolhouse. There was a parsonage built also farther down on the right and the Rev. J. G. Smith lived there for a time.
Solomon Lovejoy, a short time before his death, told a story of the minister's daughter. A young man had been calling upon her one Sunday evening and had lingered too long in the twilight, and as they stood talking by the well they heard her father coming out to draw a pail of water. The young man quickly clam- bered over and held the rope so firmly that it was impossible to pull up the bucket.
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While Mr. Smith went for a lantern, the visitor fled. A minister's daughter was not supposed to have visitors on Sunday.
Another story, told by Mrs. Lincoln of the Prospect House, shows the feeling in old times in regard to the Sabbath, as they preferred to call Sunday. The minis- ter on the Center Harbor road had two children, and one Sunday afternoon when their parents thought that they were sitting on the front doorstep reading a good book, the little boy got out his bow and arrow and was so careless as to shoot an arrow into his little sister's eye. Her screams brought her father and mother; the father immediately knelt and prayed that his son might be forgiven for playing on the Sabbath. When the mother reached them she pulled the arrow from her daughter's eye.
The parsonage on the Neck was moved away later, and the meeting house as we know it now, is a neat, well-kept building. Our picture shows it as it was in earlier days, with John C. Young of Lakeport standing beside it. This region around Meeting House Hill used to be a center for the Adventists; and the cove on the northeast was called Advent Cove. The boys from all around, even from the Bartlett neighborhood, would go across hill and swamp to watch their meetings. Mrs. Eva Beede Odell in her story, "Roxy's Good Angel," gives a good picture of the neighborhood.
Chase Wiggin lived close by Advent Cove, and there were others of the same name; there was also another Bickford house. A short distance down, almost directly east of the meeting house, stood the house of Thomas Roberts, another son of John, the first settler of the name. Thomas Roberts had four sons and many of his descendants are living in or near the town of Meredith. No member of the family has lived in this house for many years, but we are indebted for many facts to Orrin N. Roberts who carries in his memory a map of the Neck and the names of all those who lived there in his boyhood. His son, Fred S. Roberts of
THOMAS E. ROBERTS HOMESTEAD, MEREDITH NECK
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Laconia, has given us this picture of the old house, standing in its sunny spot with the two poplars still on guard.
Where there used to be a gate and a narrow country road, there is now a good highway, leading to summer homes instead of to farmhouses. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson live in the corner where her father, James Bickford, used to live. It was first the Stephen Boardman place; James Bickford had married his grand- daughter. The swampy land lower down on the right used to be flooded in wet seasons, but the boards that formed a dam were removed a few years ago. The Knowles place, where Mrs. Fogg now lives, is sometimes spoken of as the Gov. Gilman place.
Opposite is the house built by Leonard S. Davis, whose wife was Melissa Ma- loon, and above were two Clark houses, one still standing. Where Clarence J. Gordon lived for a number of years, there had been earlier a Nichols family, Nathaniel Nichols having lost his life when the Meredith Town House fell. Mr. Gordon, a New Hampton man, married the daughter of Alonzo Bickford, the son of James, and they made their home in this house where he had lived until their removal to New Hampton (Winona) a few years ago.
There is an old road starting near this house and running over McNeil Hill; we will pass on, however, by the main road to the Mead neighborhood. William, one of the three sons of William Mead who was an early settler on the Province Road, moved to the Neck. The first house on the left, at the top of Mead Hill, was built by his son William, the third William. The front of this house is not quite so old as the back. Its hall was painted, however, in the old style by an artist who wandered down the Neck seeking work; the tall trees reach from base- board to ceiling, and here and there among their trunks we spy a tiny elephant. This well-built, well-kept house has now passed from the family, having been sold recently by Arthur J. Mead. The house opposite is not so old and is called the Roberts place.
After going down Mead Hill and crossing another brook, passing the Club House and a road that goes now to summer homes only, we reach the place where the second William Mead built his first house. This was on the side nearer the lake, opposite the large willow tree; and Mrs. Wyatt tells us that the traveled road passed near where the present house now stands. This second house, built of brick about one hundred years ago, is set well back from the road, facing the Belknaps, and is shaded by fine trees.
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