New London Archives

Ski Tows

2012-01-23T13:53:00.001-05:00

Winter sports may be off to a slow start this year for lack of natural snow, but that wasn't always the case. Since the 1930s, New Londoners have promoted the town's winter recreation as a means of attracting visitors during the off season. Local children, of course, made their own excitement, and many residents still have memories of thrilling rides down the South Pleasant Street hill on a double-runner sled. Their parents, meanwhile, organized winter carnivals and constructed ski areas to embrace, and perhaps profit from, the snowbound months.

The second ski tow (1948–1961)

New London's first ski tow, off of Seamans Road, operated in 1939 and 1940. Colby Junior College wanted to offer skiing for its students (then all women), so it hired three young men, Harold Buker, Maurice Shepard, and Dick Messer, to provide a lift. They anchored a 1929 Ford Model A to a Kearsarge Telephone Co. pole and ran a rope around one of the rear wheels, jacked up and fender-less. It served its purpose, but the second world war intervened. Shepard was stationed in Newfoundland. Buker's bomber was downed in the North Sea, and he became a German POW. Messer was killed on the final day of hostilities in Europe.

Sketch of the GMC truck-powered tow rope

But interest in skiing was renewed after the war, and in November 1947 a small group organized the New London Outing Club to help construct a local ski tow. It leased property from Camp Tonawanda on Pleasant Lake and bulldozed a trail up the hill towards Seamans Road—with volunteers and other assistance from the college and local businesses. They built a warming hut and installed an 800-foot rope tow.

Postcard view of Pleasant Lake (c. 1955)

On January 3, 1948 the Northeast Ski Tow opened. The slope was operated as a private venture by Wes Blake, who had prior experience, but when it proved less profitable than expected, the New London Outing Club purchased Blake's share for $3,100 (with $2,000 borrowed from the bank in Newport). The club took over the lease, equipment, and operations.

The non-profit Outing Club hoped that a successful ski tow would help fund other programs like skating, swimming and even contribute to the Information Booth. In his 1948 Planning Board report, Chairman Ken Rich wrote: "We are glad to report satisfactory progress on the ski area with the erection of a ski tow and we hope through other organizations to see a skating rink before another year."

For all their optimism, the early years were lean, presenting frequent cash flow problems. Club Treasurer Mary Wright recalled that she often called on founder and president Bill Clough, Jr. to cover overdrafts. The ski area did become self-funding—especially during early-snow years when the slopes could open in time for the Christmas break. Despite modest expansion to three trails, demands for more terrain, more instruction, and more lift capacity prompted the search for a new hill. The old ski tow closed in March 1961, and King Ridge Ski Area opened the following December. Having introduced the sport to a post-war generation of townspeople, college students, and visitors, the ski tow had served the community well.

References:

Buker, Harold W., Jr. Oral History Interview (April 1992)
Clough, Dr. William, Jr. "The Outing Club and King Ridge" (September 1976)
Lauridsen, Laurids. "New London's Northeast Slopes" (January 1976)
Squires, J. Duane. Mirror to America: A History of New London, New Hampshire 1900–1950
Stecker, Anne Page. Our Voices, Our Town: A History of New London, New Hampshire 1950–2000

Biblical Marginalia

2011-12-01T12:26:00.000-05:00

Title page of the 1731 New Testament, to which

Job Seamans added his own notation: "I began

to go to school the 12th day of July 1762." He
was by then 14 years old. Ordained as a
Baptist minister in 1772, he accepted a call
to the New London church in 1788, and his
pastorate spanned the next 40 years.

In 1936, New London's public library hosted an exhibit to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bible's legal, English-language publication. The exhibit probably did not also commemorate the 1536 execution of William Tyndale, judged guilty of having published his own earlier, illegal translation. That pocket-sized edition was a hot commodity, and about a third of the 18,000 printed in Antwerp made their way to England. Before his sentenced strangulation, Tyndale's final words were: "Lord, open the king of England's eyes!" In fact, Henry VIII had already sanctioned the production of an English-language Bible, and in 1535 Miles Coverdale produced the work—relying heavily (estimates range from 60 to 80%) on Tyndale's translation.

The Librarian's Report of 1936 says that "besides many old Bibles there were shown copies of the Bible in twelve different languages." The translation of the texts from Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and Arabic into vernacular tongues not only spread the scripture without church intermediation, but it also helped standardize spelling, punctuation and grammar as no other work had done—and it introduced entirely new words and phrases now commonplace. Furthermore, the Bible was good business. Printers saw high demand for English-language versions of the Bible, and they vied for publication privileges, often purchasing shares from those granted exclusive rights, while also defending their markets from illegal smuggling and copyright infringement. Some editions became milestones in the history of book publishing, but others were tarnished by printing errors, which led to such infamous editions as the Wicked Bible (1631), the Vinegar Bible (1717), and the Murderers' Bible (1795); some resulted in hefty fines levied against the printers.

Hannah Seamans, mother of Job Seamans, was given
this "Bibble" by her mother. It was given to the town
in 1910 by Job Seamans's great granddaughter—perhaps
the first private donation to the town's archives.

Among the "old Bibles" exhibited in the Tracy Memorial Building in 1936 must have been one passed down through the Seamans family, which included the town's first minister, Rev. Job Seamans. Printed in 1731, this quarto-sized volume was sold by Robert Freebairn & Co. of Edinburgh and large enough for use in churches. (Editions of smaller dimensions were intended for family use and private study.) With pages missing and covers detached, the condition of the Seamans Bible is poor, but it was treasured by generations who added their penmanship to the few available white spaces. The Town Archives holds a collection of Bibles that includes a half-dozen editions of various dates and sizes, but none is more interesting than the Seamans Bible for its marginalia.

All of New London's children were acquainted with the Bible. In 1867, the School Committee reported that "the text books authorized for use in the school are the Bible, Town's Readers and Spellers, Colton and Fitch's Geography, Robinson's Arithmetics, Kerl's Grammar, and Quackenbos' History of the United States." Precisely how the Bible was used in the curriculum isn't specified, but its familiar stories must have provided a convenient text for early readers and perhaps moral instruction for the older ones—as it had always done since its first translation into vernacular. In 1923, the School Committee reported that "our equipment of text-books has been increased by ... adding several supplementary readers for the primary grades, new desk copies of the Bible and several reference books."

No town library exhibit has marked this year's 400th anniversary of the King James Version, though its impact on the English language, literature, and learning has been no less significant than that of the earlier translations from which it was derived. For a brief account, you might read a National Geographic article (December 2011 issue); for more detail, the sources below are worthwhile.

References:

Bragg, Melvyn. The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language. (Arcade: 2003, 2011)
Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611–2011. (Oxford: 2011)
Crystal, David. Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language. (Oxford: 2010)
Mann, Alastair. The Scottish Book Trade, 1500–1720: Print Commerce and Print Control in Early Modern Scotland. (Tuckwell Press, 2000.)
McGrath, Alister. In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture. (Doubleday: 2001)

Who's Counting?

2011-11-21T15:40:00.001-05:00

We first began digitizing our photograph collection a few years ago. We started there because the number of requests for images surpasses all other inquiries—and because images illustrate the power of a digital database. More recently, we have also added texts, in the form of published town histories, booklets, oral history transcripts, and annual town reports.

Here is today's snapshot:

Our database of photographs contains 10,231 images.
Our database of published histories contains 23 sources, or 2,693 printed pages.
Our database of oral history transcripts contains 110 sources, or 2,114 typescript pages.
Our database of over one-hundred annual town reports contains 4,699 printed pages.

Over 10,000 images. Nearly 10,000 pages of text. Thanks to photo tagging, optical character recognition and indexing, most of this data is searchable in seconds, and it represents the most comprehensive collection of New London history ever assembled for digital researchers. Yet it still represents a mere fraction of the information held at the Archives.

Such an open-ended project will never be completed, but even in this nascent state the new tools have yielded useful and interesting historical insights. We'll continue to share some of the stories here on the blog, but you are also invited to stop by the Town Archives and see for yourself.

An Industrial Imprint

2011-10-27T11:51:00.000-04:00

The H.F. Walling map of Merrimack County (1858) contains an inset of Scythe Factory Village, located at the outlet of Pleasant Pond (now Pleasant Lake). Here the Phillips, Messer, & Colby Company began forging scythe blades in 1835. The business operated for over fifty years, and its product line expanded to include hay knives and axes.

Over the period, its small, wooden factories were enlarged or rebuilt, and water-power systems were upgraded. Iron, steel, coal, and grindstones, once delivered by teamsters from Concord, arrived at Potter Place storage facilities on the Northern Railroad. Mechanics Hall and later the Masonic Hall were built. The village merited its own post office. At its peak, the reincorporated New London Scythe Company employed about 75 workers, and the new schoolhouse enrolled forty children, though rarely did so many attend.

The map depicts a compact village, complete with mills and factories, warehouses, company-owned tenements, owner-manager houses, a school, store, and blacksmith shop. Altogether it's a fine example of the industrial landscapes scattered around New England's flowing water courses.

After a long series of building removals and demolitions, that former landscape has nearly faded from view. But by tracing the millponds, sluiceways and tailraces, you might still see the imprint of our 19th century industrial heyday in unexpected places.

To learn more about Scytheville, find a copy of Reflections in a Millpond, published in 1984 for its sesquicentennial celebration, or stop by the Archives to browse the book and see more images, documents, and maps of the area.

Street Pageant

2011-09-22T16:51:00.001-04:00

Since ancient times historical pageants have provided entertainment, education, and community. Here in New London, even the nation's 1976 bicentennial failed to match the elaborate production of the town's Sesquicentennial Celebration of 1929. Role-players, horses, and oxen dramatized the town's early settlement and later growth. Seven "episodes" were acted out on a hilltop field under the banner of "Hills Against the Sky." The logistics alone were impressive: a first aid tent was erected on the site; exhibits were displayed at Assembly Hall; questions could be directed to the Information Bureau at Post Office Square (i.e. old Four Corners); a Housing Committee lodged visitors at local hotels and guest houses. Altogether, the pageant's organization required the services of nearly one hundred volunteers.

A scene from The Hills Against the Sky (August 1929)

In the same tradition, albeit on a smaller scale, New London's historical society last Saturday presented a walking tour of Main Street—complete with actors portraying a governor's wife, a Grange master, a pair of young entrepreneurs, a long-term resident of the Inn, and a town librarian and photographer's assistant. Each related stories about the earlier life and times of New London.

A group visits Colby Academy's lower campus (now Sargent Common)

Those performances were supplemented by guide-narrators, who imparted local lore on subjects ranging from town halls to pharmacies to college dorms. All of those facts, figures, anecdotes, and images were drawn from published histories and from our collections; much of the research and writing was conducted here at the Archives.

If you attended the sold-out tour and would like to follow up on something you heard along the way, please contact us. You may also review the tour's historic images at our online gallery. And if you missed the tour, watch for another one next year, as the historical society plans to move the pageant stage farther down the street.

New England Storm of '38

2011-08-28T09:50:00.005-04:00

As Irene's far-reaching wind and rain wash over New London this morning, we naturally think of the "New England" hurricane of 1938. (Storms were unnamed in those days.) That storm left an indelible, first-hand impression on one generation, and it echoed through the next, as stories of its massive destruction became a part of family and town lore.

At the Archives we hold a collection of photographs depicting the damage and the years-long cleanup that followed. The tangled mass of uprooted trees was gradually salvaged, the logs were stored in several local ponds until they could be sawn into lumber—over a million of board feet—and stumps were pulled by the thousands.

One of the many interesting stories to follow the 1938 hurricane was that of a women's lumber camp in 1942/43 on Turkey Pond, just outside Concord, New Hampshire. Check out They Sawed Up a Storm by Sarah Shea Smith to learn more.

And here are a few images from the New London area in 1938 and later.

Cottage at Elkins (September 1938)

Logging in winter.

Logs stored in Otter Pond.

Portable saw mill.

Stacked lumber, for sale.

Poor Farm

2011-07-29T16:01:00.007-04:00

On occasion, the town of New London needed a coffin. The expense was duly reported in its financial statements.

First published in 1848, the town's annual reports provide a glimpse into the lives of its neediest inhabitants. These included the able-bodied working on its 100-acre Poor Farm, the physically ill boarding with the lowest bidders, and the mentally ill sequestered at Concord's Asylum for the Insane. There were also transfer payments to and from other towns, as paupers shuffled about the region, not always of their own volition, but still the financial responsibility of their native towns.

The March 1853 annual report says that Marcus Sargent built a coffin for the body of Lizzie Kempton sometime during the fiscal year. (The handwritten Selectmen's records say it was for "Mrs. Lizzie Kempton.") Sargent charged $3.50. The same report shows that Ruel Durgee had paid $60 for Lizzie's room and board at the Poor Farm. Both the coffin and the payment are unusual, suggesting that neither Lizzie Kempton nor Ruel Durgee (probably "Durkee") were New London residents. There were no Kemptons or Durkees among New London's 19th-century families, and Lizzie's name did not appear among the 14 town residents who died that year.

From his account books, we learn that Isaac Messer (1785-1861) of New London traded calf and sheep skins to Ruel Durkee of Croydon's East Village. Like his father, Durkee (1805-1885) was a tanner but later became a merchant and influential politician. In Croydon Flat there was another tanner and boot-maker named Silas Kempton, but with no clear relation to Lizzie. And we find another tenuous connection on the iWhipple.org genealogy site: Ruel Durkee's mother, Polly Whipple Durkee, was the cousin (once removed) of Dr. Solomon Whipple, the physician caring for those housed at New London's Poor Farm.

So, was Lizzie Kempton sick, widowed, and destitute? Did the Poor Farm function as a regional hospital? And could "Ruel Durgee" be the Ruel Durkee, model for the Jethro Bass character in Winston Churchill's popular 1906 novel, Coniston? All this seems likely but unproven. We'll keep looking for clues to this mystery. Coincidently, in that same year of 1853, according to the town clerk's records, a few residents petitioned to sell the Poor Farm. The motion was quickly tabled at the town meeting and never revived.

Here at the Archives, we are digitizing our town's annual reports to make their search and retrieval a simple task, enabling researchers to make previously unnoticed connections. In the meantime, you might want to learn more about Durkee by meeting the fictional version in Churchill's Coniston, or in what purports to be a more authentic biography, Ruel Durkee: Master of Men by George Waldo Brown (1910).

Note: The Poor Farm (or, properly, the Town Farm) was located on today's Shaker Street, near the Wilmot town line.

Blood Work

2011-06-25T18:59:00.018-04:00

Newspaper advertisements often contain interesting, sometimes amusing, snippets of history.

Advertisement for R. A. Blood, M.D.
New London Advocate (September 1872)

One of New London’s early surgeons was the aptly-named Dr. Robert A. Blood (1839–1916). He attended the New London Literary and Scientific Institution (formerly Colby Academy) before the Civil War, joined New Hampshire’s 11th Volunteers, Company F, and, badly wounded at Fredericksburg, was finally discharged in May 1863. He next decided to study medicine, training at Harvard’s medical school before establishing a short-lived practice (1871–1873) in New London. [He left to assume the practice of Dr. H.C. Bickford, his uncle and a New London native, in Charlestown, MA. Beginning in 1896, Dr. Blood served for eight years as the surgeon-general of Massachusetts.]

Today, if you have blood drawn and analyzed at New London Hospital, you might thank Colby-Sawyer students and alumnae. After returning from Christmas break in early 1941, Barbara Jane Baker, a third-year med-tech student from Rye, New York, died of meningitis at the old New London hospital on Main Street (near Pressey Court). In those days, blood samples were sent from the hospital to the college’s laboratory, but Baker's illness went undiagnosed. Her twelve classmates thought, as Barbara reportedly did, that the hospital should have its own facilities.

New London's China Trade

2011-06-12T12:27:00.008-04:00

Special Crops (July 1924)

As our few remaining local farmers struggle with a short and increasingly erratic growing climate, here's a story about New London's agricultural trade with China. New crops have always held the promise of new markets and profitable business, and over the years mules, merino sheep, apples, pears, and even golf-course grass have been raised for export in New London.

Dried American ginseng root was first shipped to China in the 1700s, quite successfully by John Jacob Astor and Daniel Boone, and the trade continued thereafter. The plant had been favored for centuries as a cure-all medicine, with very popular aphrodisiac side effects. But by the 1880s, America had depleted its ready supply of wild ginseng. New York fur-trading houses still solicited ginseng, especially from Native Americans, who also valued the herb and knew its woodland habitat, while farmers developed cultivated varieties to supplement their incomes.

Read more »

Lincoln Logs

2011-05-18T21:30:00.002-04:00

Sorting a box of miscellany, we ran across this numbered certificate.

Lincoln Farm Association certificate (1909)

Dated June 17, 1909 and addressed to “Lottie Brown” the text reads, in part:

You have been this day enrolled as an honorary member of the Lincoln Farm Association, a patriotic organization formed by American citizens for the purpose of preserving as a National Park, the farm on which Abraham Lincoln was born.

Here's the story.

Read more »

Mapping Everytown

2011-05-14T12:12:00.001-04:00

Imagine a map of New London that identifies the location and occupants of every building. Now expand that image to Merrimack County, to the state of New Hampshire, and finally to all the New England states. The task would require Google-sized resources today, but in the mid-1800s one man undertook that cartographic challenge.
Read more »

Catholic Heritage

2011-04-22T10:47:00.001-04:00

Voters in the Kearsarge Regional School District recently approved funds for the demolition of the former SAU 65 offices on Main Street. Unfortunately, the building has perhaps even more historical significance than its also-vacant neighbor, the New London Central School (1941).
Read more »

A Rosetta Stone

2011-04-05T21:00:00.001-04:00

Taylor's Memorandum of Weather

Sometimes one document unlocks another—a Rosetta Stone, of sorts. Recently we were reviewing a teacher’s journal from the summer of 1880. The journal entries showed the days of the week but not their calendar dates. Fortunately, she noted the weather on rainy days, creating a pattern (e.g. rain all day Friday, evening rain on Monday, rain all day on Wednesday). By itself, this would be meaningless, but with a daily history of local weather we might be able to place the journal entries on the 1880 calendar.
Read more »

Sugaring Time

2011-03-14T12:06:00.002-04:00

"Sap House" at Low Plain

Maybe next year... Here it looks like an early spring, with no snow on the ground at sugaring time. Taken on April 1, 1892, the Sap House was photographed at the end of a winter in which just 20.8 inches of snow fell at Dartmouth's Shattuck Observatory in Hanover—lowest on the record from 1866 through 1958.

A letter from Andersonville.

2011-03-08T11:09:00.001-05:00

Israel Roach letter

The Town Archives holds thousands of letters—some business, some government, some personal. Nearly all have a clear connection to the town of New London, but here's a rare and fascinating exception.

Israel Roach of Danvers, Massachusetts, was 38 years old when he volunteered for the 35th Massachusetts Regiment in 1862. Most of his comrades were more than a dozen years younger. On May 24, 1864, he and eight others from the same regiment were captured at the battle of the North Anna River, Virginia.
Read more »