USA > New Hampshire > Carroll County > Sandwich > Sandwich, New Hampshire, 1763-1963 : bi-centennial observance, August 18 through August 24. > Part 3
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CENTER SANDWICH
The village of Center Sandwich was not settled until some time after Daniel Beede and his company of settlers were established on Wentworth Hill, Little's Pond, and Lower Corner. That settlement, with its schools, store, inn, and law offices, was long to remain the intellectual as well as the business center of the town. But the houses of the people, by 1776, were not all in the area of early settlement; and by 1800 they had pene- trated still further into the wilderness. Daniel Beede himself had set up mills on Red Hill River (at the present bridge as one approaches the village of Center Sandwich from Moultonboro). In those days water- power ran the mills, and this was the best stream he had found, and nearest to the settlement. In the annals of the time we read that travelers between the river and Lower Corner had to travel armed to protect themselves from wolves.
With the setting up of the saw and grist mills, a small settlement grew up around them, and other pioneers pushed on further to see what lay beyond. About 1790 Samuel Ambrose of Moultonboro settled on Burleigh Hill, and later came down to what is now the location of G. Roland Smith's place. Ambrose set up his blacksmith shop across the street, a busy place, for the blacksmith of those days did more than shoe horses. Everything of iron had to be forged out by hand, even such simple things as nails. By 1793 Daniel Hoit was running his store, and there was a scattering of houses, and a meeting house built as early as 1780. Up to 1810 there was no house on the Ring but that of William Ferguson, a Revolutionary War soldier, which stood on the site of the present town hall. The north side of Main Street was covered by an orchard, and on the south side there was one solitary house. From there a narrow road ran thru a forest of ancient pines to the mills on the river. Samuel Ambrose in 1806 built the house on the corner, now known as the Village
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Inn. Mr. Ambrose became a man of consequence in town. He was selectman in 1809, '13 and '14. The Carroll County History says of him: "He held many offices of trust, was administer of estates, guardian of minors, and was a leading member of the Freewill Baptist Church, and a deacon nearly all his life. He gained and held the confidence of nearly all who came to know him." When the postoffice was established in the Center in 1828, he was its first postmaster. This was in the days when mail was brought twice a week by stage from Dover. Picture of stage on back cover.
By 1800 church people were meeting in the new Baptist meeting- house on the site where it now stands, and this building was also used for the very earliest town meetings. Quaker families had settled on the road to Lower Corner, and built the first Quaker Meeting House, north of the present Quaker Burying Ground, on Wentworth Hill.
Cyrus Beede, who had apparently succeeded his father in control of the mill properties, in the early 1900's built his handsome two-story house on this road, the first house of that size in town. Others followed: General Daniel Hoit's house in the village, built in 1806, and the August- ine Blanchard house (beyond the Library) built in 1822, both of which we can today point to with pride. General Hoit served the town as representative and senator for many years, and the Blanchards, father and son, had mill interests in what is now East Sandwich, and a mill near Squam Lake for expressing linseed oil from the great quantities of flax grown in Sandwich at that time. Like others, he had hopes that the settlement growing up near Squam would become the future village, but when he realized that "Hoit's Corners" was where the larger settle- ment would be, he and his son purchased land and water rights on Red Hill River from Cyrus Beede, and started their fulling mill there.
Another ancient house in the village of Center Sandwich is the so-called Burleigh house on the road leading north (now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Howard Doughty). This was built about 1805 by Dr. Lot Cook. He was prominent in town affairs, a selectman in 1811 and 12, town clerk 1815-'19, quite a politician, and a warm adherent of President Jefferson. After "a heap of livin' " in this house, it came by inheritance to a Burleigh in Massachusetts, who gave it to Mrs. Charles E. Burleigh in 1879, and Burleighs continued to occupy it until 1935 when the last one died. It was beautifully restored by Mr. and Mrs. George H. Wilde, parents of Mrs. Doughty.
Let us return to the subject of industry and commerce, and how it affected the future of the tiny village known as Center Sandwich. In the late 1700's John Beede, Revolutionary soldier and nephew of Daniel Beede, the pioneer, penetrated to the shores of Squam lake with a group of laborers, and on the brook between Barville Pond and Squam Lake erected a mill. It had stones for grinding grain and was said to be a board mill, too, and became of considerable consequence in the economy of the region. So much so, in fact, that John Beede and Governor John Taylor Gilman planned to make this location the business center of
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The Doughty House - One of the Oldest Houses in Town
Sandwich. The governor bought considerable land in the area; and to- gether they conducted large lumbering operations in the region. Stores were set up and families "settled in." But the picture was changed when the road through Sandwich Notch was opened in 1801. It had been a mere trail. Now long caravans of wagons, or in winter long lines of red pungs, drawn by teams of oxen and laden with freight, passed directly thru the village of Center Sandwich on their way to Portland and shipping. They came from New York through Vermont, even Canada. This ended the dream of a town on the lake; merchants moved hurriedly to "Hoit's Corners" and the Center boomed.
In 1790, twenty-two or three years after it was settled, the population of Sandwich as a whole was 902. In 1800 it was 1413; in 1810, when families near the coast were heading for the new settlements in droves, it was 2232; and the town stood sixth among the towns in the state. By 1830 it had reached its peak, 2743. In Center Sandwich there were three general stores, an apothecary shop, tin shops, cabinet makers, car- penters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, tanneries, makers of shoes and hats, including the high beaver variety, and the several mills on the river. These, in time, were increased by a miil for grinding salt and later, one for making cider pails -- one stave white, one stave brown, and so around. All the cloth being homespun, people brought their weaving to the Blanchard fulling mill to be napped, sheared, and finished. Naturally with all this industry, the town needed a bank, so the Carroll County Bank was founded by Moulton H. Marston about 1845. (Carroll County, incidently, was set off in 1840. Sandwich had previously been in Straf-
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ford County and early Sandwich deeds and records are still housed in Dover). The bank was on the present location of the Russell house, or close to it, and it occupied the second floor.
When it ceased operations in 1872, the rooms were used for the Sandwich Savings Bank which was incorporated that same year. Down- stairs housed a millinery shop. Later Robert Russell ran a harness shop for thirty-four years, and for a time he let Daniel Folsom store, in the back shop, the coffins he made in back of his house on the Lake road. When the savings bank moved, Folsom took over that area for storage, too. Then followed a series of small general stores, with the last occupant Lorenzo Hull, a Civil War veteran who had a watch repair shop in the building and whose family lived in the finished attic. When Julia Sherman Hoyt came back to the family homestead to spend the summer with her sisters, the close proximity of the bank building was an eyesore to her, so she bought it. The upper story was moved to the farm of Willis Marston on Diamond Ledge Road where it can be seen today as the John Hurley cottage. The basement was razed and the land graded. All of which proves that in the old Sandwich nothing was ever allowed to sit idle or be wasted.
Thru all its history Sandwich has been so full of interesting people, it is difficult to know which ones to mention in this brief history. Elijah Skinner (1786-1871) however, is one of the "must's." Jedidiah Skinner and his four sons, of which the youngest was Elijah, came to North Sandwich about 1800 from Connecticut, and in no time North Sandwich was being called Skinner Corners. This was in kindness to the widow of Clark who was inconsolable at his death. Two of the boys set up store in the North, but Clark drowned in fording the mad river at Thorn- ton, and Elijah soon after brought his stock of goods to the Center and opened a store. He settled on Skinner Street (which, too, was named for the family). He was probably the most remarkable man who ever lived in Sandwich. He is described as very tall with fiery red hair that stood straight out from his head. He was an ardent Methodist, and in 1824 gave up his store to devote himself to building the Methodist Church, in which he had persuaded General Hoit to join him. In 1844 and 45 he represented the town in the States Legislature, but it was in his powers of invention that his genius stood out. The Carroll County History says of him: "In many ways he was fifty years ahead of his time. He foresaw the rapid strides of invention and talked of railroads, locomo- tives, of sending news along wires by electricity; and conversing in this manner many years before these improvements were developed, people fancied him almost insane." From 1825 he worked on his inventions and secured fourteen patents on an important scientific principle. He invent- ed a serpentine water wheel about 1840, but found that almost the same thing had been patented in France. Next, he developed what he termed an endless screw and demonstrated it in a mill on Lake Winnepiseogee. He invented a lock to lock and unlock a series of doors at one time, a principle now used in locking cells of prisons. He first introduced stoves into Sandwich. Elijah youngest son, Daniel, inherited his father's gift for invention. He had helped Elijah making patterns, and some of his own ideas would have made his fortune if he had money to patent them. Finally, in 1883, he patented a parcel transmitter, the forerunner of
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Skinner's Cash Transmitter. He sold his interest in the latter to the Lamson Store Service Company for enough to make him comfortable for life.
Then came the Civil War and men enlisted from all parts of town. There were Sandwich men in many regiments. Col. Enoch Q. Fellows, for example, who had been to West Point along with McClellan and "Stone- wall" Jackson (1844), saw service at South Mountain and Antietam. He was made a colonel first of the Third N. H. Regiment, and again of the "Fighting Ninth;" and later (following a period of illness which took him out of action) was appointed by President Lincoln as brigadier-general of the United States Volunteers and a considerable part of his service was in that capacity. His home in Sandwich was on the Ring, obliquely across from Town Hall owned now by Carlton and Marston Heard of Manches- ter, cousins of Postmaster Stuart W. Heard.
With the close of the Civil War normal life resumed as well as it could. Returning soldiers took their wives and children back to their own homes again, after they had spent the four bleak years with relatives in the village. The new decade saw veterans and veterans' widows living on their pensions. In time a handsome bronze memorial was dedicated to the men who fought in the conflict. It can now be seen in the Went- worth Library. It was formerly in Town Hall, and we understand that someday soon it may be returned there.
Next came the era of boarding houses. Besides two hotels in the village, almost every farmhouse of any size accommodated guests. A directory of 1891 lists 18 boarding houses in Sandwich with usual rates from $5 to $8 a week; $10 a week at the Sandwich House; a very few boarding house proprietors daring to charge as much as $12. Whole families came for the summer, at first with Saratoga trunks strapped on top of the stage coach that brought them up from Center Harbor (where they'd arrived from the Weirs by boat!) Later they came into the vil- lage in the early automobiles : the Maxwells, Peerless and Pierce Arrow. There is a story about a young fellow who made considerable speed in one of these cars ; and on one occasion, when he drew up at the drug store in the Center, jumped out and with a flourish threw open the rear door, he found his lady passenger lying there quietly in a dead faint. Besides the bucolic joys of a summer in the country, a traveling circus sometimes enlivened the scene. In Sandwich it used to set up on the Lake road about opposite the town pound, and tales have been told of the lion and tiger parked there in their cages, setting the village in a tissy.
In the '80's there were new industries. The mills on the river had all burned down together one night in 1869 when the old dye house caught fire and it spread to all the rest. Doubtless sawmills had been put up during the interval, but some of the other mills were hardly needed in these later days when new fangled machinery had taken over and was doing the manufacturing job more quickly, though probably not any better. The creamery was set up in 1889 where Burleigh Brook crossed Red Hill Road. It was first owned by a corporation, and later managed by J. Alphonso Smith, who had a hand in almost everything progressive about the village. Milk was brought to the creamery in ten gallon cans
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by neighboring farmers, the cream separated by power machines and made into butter. The farmers took back the skim milk to feed their pigs and chickens or their wives made Dutch cheese of it. The butter was pressed into prints and sold for an average of 25ยข a pound. It was shipped around to stores and hotels and a fine business resulted for over ten years ; then the plant closed down.
In 1880 a shook mill was set up in the Red Hill district, using the red oak which was so plentiful there. For the uninitiated, a shook is a bundle of curved staves with headings which, put together, make a hogshead. They were shipped in bundles (to save space) to the West Indies and came back to this country full of molasses. The mill moved along after a time to Mill Bridge near Squam, and eventually to Lee's Mills in Moultonboro. It brought much money into Sandwich and adjoining towns over a considerable period of time; and left vivid memories in the minds of the young boys watching, of strong men working mightily amid fire and smoke, and doing it all so easily.
Sandwich slipped with its accustomed grace from the colonial era into the Victorian. In the '90's it had its Library Association, with lit- erary evenings, where readings and tableux mingled with solos and in- strumental music. It had Daniel G. Beede's excellent school, run the last ten years by his wife. The churches, in spite of reduced numbers, were filling their expected niche. When the two church bells rang out on Sunday morning, dozens of doors in the Center opened wide and whole family groups stepped out and moved sedately up the tree-lined streets for the services.
One of the advantages of Sandwich today is its proximity to Squam Lake. It now has its own bathing beach thru the kindness of Mrs. Richard L. Beckwith who, in her will, left the town a section of pines and sandy shore. It has good fishing, summer and winter. It seems strange that all thru the 1800's hardly anything was recorded about Squam Lake, altho during that time horse boats and sail-fitted gundalows were being used on Lake Winnepesaukee, and the first steamboat was built there in 1833.
In 1890 J. Alphonso Smith of the Center began a boat operation- an ice and milk delivery service in summer to cottagers on the lake, complementing a similar service to customers in the Center by team. Winters he cut and stored ice in a building near his wharf on what is known today as Chalmers Point. Later he moved the landing and buildings to the shore near the Dove cottage and the Great Rock. Among his boats were the "Restless," the old "Sandwich," followed by "Sandwich II," known familiarly as the "Royal Poinciana." She had her peculiarities : an unusual sound in her exhaust, for example, gave perfect timing for singing "Tammany," a popular song of the day. Ryvers Ainger worked on her, as he did on most of "Phon's boats, from 1904 on. Three days he spent on the milk and ice route, then three days teaming from the wharf. Phon's boats pulled barges and did the bulk of the freight business. All the stock and grain for the many stores in town had to be brought in by boat; lumber and such went out-the boat business was actually a link
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between Sandwich and Ashland where the railroad went thru. Mr. Ainger recalls one shipment consigned to the Frank Smith store: a ton of cheese, in wheels. In 1902 competition arrived on the scene with the or- ganization of the Asquam Transportation Co. in Ashland. They handled freight and passengers, and rented wharf space near the Sandwich Beach. Their "Chocorua" and "Halcyon" each made two trips a day. These were comparatively small passenger boats, taking people to meet the trains in Ashland or to enjoy a day visiting or shopping in the Ashland stores. The trip was fourteen miles long and, with stops, took two hours. There were other boats, including the Cusumpy, fitted with a rugged engine, and used to draw a series of rafts eight or ten feet wide. She could bring fifteen tons of freight into port each trip. The last boat Phon added was the "Mandalay," a handsome big craft which had seen service on the ocean. John Nutter, brother of Reuben N. Hodge, ran the "Mandalay" and Ryve worked on her, too. She was in great demand as a party boat to take summer folks to the popular water carnivals staged by the Mount Livermore House in Holderness. Other boats bound for the carnival towed barges behind them, each fitted with settees to seat fifty or sixty people. A busy little craft was the "Nellie G.," used by Smith & Piper of Holderness to deliver groceries around the lake, and the "Oriole," a party boat, eventually chartered to carry mail. She was owned by the Metcalfs and run by Julius Smith. Now an outboard out of Holderness does the summer mail job-no passengers, no fun! At the moment there is no way to traverse Squam Lake except by private boat.
It will be noted from the foregoing that J. Alphonso Smith was the town's most energetic citizen thru the 1880's and '90's and well into the new century. He always had a half-dozen enterprises going at once, and, with Henry Dorr, had much to do with all improvements coming into town, the telephone, for example. In his later years his prodigious memory and his fascinating stories were of tremendous value to the His- torical Society as it began the preparation of its historical books and excursions.
Sandwich has had several disastrous fires in its history. Besides that of 1869, already mentioned, when all the mills on Red Hill River burned down, there was the fire of 1913 when the town hall in the Center was destroyed with most of the town records. The present hall was built by Larkin W. Weed in 1915, J. Randolph Coolidge, architect. On Jan. 2, 1916, the Sandwich House on Main Street burned, but the barn was saved. The last great fire was on February 27, 1934, when flames starting in a building in the center of the block of stores on lower Main Street, caught fire and the flames spread in both directions so the entire block was consumed. Buildings across the street caught, too, and soon two houses and Guy Thompson's Garage (the former barn of the Sandwich House, saved in the 1916 fire) were in ruins. So at one stroke, the town lost seven homes and business places, with accompanying loss of much Stock-in-trade, personal belongings and furniture, some of the Town Clerk's record books and much of the equipment used by the Thompsons in breaking highways. There was strong feeling over the origin of
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SANDWICH MEDICAL CENTER
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Sandwich Medical Center
the fire, and a hearing lasting several days was conducted in the Town Hall, by the County Solicitor, the selectmen and a representative of the underwriters, but there was insufficient evidence to warrant legal action. Then, thanks to the Quimby Trustees and the Trustees of the J. Randolph Coolidge Foundation, the situation was studied, plans made for the future of the village, and little by little the burned area acquired so it could be developed as a unit. One has only to stand at the Lower Square and look about to see the splendid results: the new Industries building, the "green" in front of it; the widened street, ample for parking, the post- office; and beautiful Quimby Field, which was formerly a swamp.
The coming of the automobile at the turn of the century made a real change in the life of the community. As it became easier to shop in the large centers, many small shops faded away: the milliner, the drug store and many small general stores. Today there are but three grocery stores, one each at Lower Corner, in the Center and "over North ;" and a building supply store, with additional miscellany stock, housed in the building which was once the Center Sandwich School. The churches have dwindled to two in actual use, and they have federated. Sandwich schools have integrated with Center Harbor and Meredith in the Inter- Lakes School District. There is no longer a faithful country doctor to call night or day; but we do have a comparatively new Medical Center which is staffed by a physician each Wednesday (Dr. Charles Cataldo of Meredith), and the hope that we may again have a resident doctor in town.
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THE SANDWICH CHURCHES
The Village of Center Sandwich is dominated by the beautiful spire of the Baptist Church. Every summer artists set up their easels on the green in front of the church, delighting in reproducing its stark lines and its rugged beauty. Photographers find it a study in light and shadow. It has appeared on film all over the world. During World War II Sandwich boys in service in New Guinea, in Germany, around Provi- dence, and Baltimore, and many other places, reported seeing the Center Sandwich Baptist Church on the screen, bringing to them nostalgic thoughts of home. A Japanese newspaperman visiting here photographed it, and when the next Fourth of July edition of his paper came out, the front page was blazoned with pictures of the Washington Monument, the Capitol, Bunker Hill -- and the Center Sandwich Baptist Church !
Around the corner on Main Street is the Methodist Church, a fine well- kept edifice of which any town might be proud. These two churches, one built in 1793, the other in 1848, are the only two in year-round use today. In 1960 they were completely federated, and now operate as a unit, under the capable direction of Rev. Seymour Steeves, who came to Sandwich August 1, 1956, and was ordained September 29 in the Baptist Church.
THE BAPTIST CHURCH
During the earliest years of the settlement of Sandwich, when pioneer conditions prevailed, religious services were held by itinerant missionaries and evangelists who spoke to scattered groups in private homes and in schoolhouses. The first settled minister seems to have been Elder Jacob Jewell who came here from Weare in 1778, and in 1780 was pastor of the first meeting house in Center Sandwich, built somewhere near the present Elm Hill Cemetery. It was abandoned after some twelve years use due to re-location of roads. Reverend Jewell was a Calvinist Baptist, and had been preaching only two years when Joseph Quimby, son of Capt. Aaron Quimby, came to Sandwich and, although not ordained, he preached on Sabbath afternoons in the same church in which Rev. Mr. Jewell preached mornings. He became the local leader of dissenters, and was haled many times before the local church organization for heresy, but each time the church decided in his favor. Finally the church withdrew from the Meredith Baptist Association; Jewell departed; and Quimby remained as head of the large majority group. Having been ordained in 1798, he continued to minister here for twenty years or more, preaching Free Grace, Free Will and Free Salvation. In 1803 the Sandwich church joined the New Durham Quarterly Meeting which represented the Free Will Baptist doctrine. A steady increase in membership followed-426 in 1809 alone. The Great Reformation in 1838 added more to the rolls, and it was this marked increase which led to the division of the member- ship in 1839.
For a considerable distance the Bearcamp River was taken as a boundary, with the First Church in North Sandwich with 291 members, and the Second Church in Center Sandwich with 159. (Why the Center church should be called the "Second" is unexplainable, as it was officially recognized in 1803. Known as "the old meetinghouse," it was built be-
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