Public Records

The Declaration of Independence contains a list of “facts" proving the tyranny of "the present King of Great Britain" (George III), justifying the bold actions of the American colonies. Among them is this one:

He has called together Legislative Bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.

Ready access to public records was considered an essential element of fair and open government. It remains so today. In that spirit, the New London Town Archives has embarked on a project to identify all of the municipal records in its custody, fill gaps in coverage and content, and work more closely with town departments, boards, and committees to ensure the proper retention and disposition of municipal records—written, printed, and electronic.

New Hampshire's RSA 33-A establishes in each town a municipal records committee responsible for the systematic retention of various records (over 170 different types are specified). The committee must designate where records are kept for the duration of their mandated (minimum) retention periods. The Town Archives holds the most historically important records, to be retained “permanently,” but it also holds many others, more ephemeral and long past their normal retention dates.

We suspect that few small towns in the state have formed a municipal records committee. Despite the creation of our town archives, a rarity among New Hampshire towns, such a records committee has not met here in the last decade, or more. With the accumulated turnover on the town's boards and committees, we also suspect that many individuals now serving may be unaware of their obligations to preserve, document, and provide access to their own records and meeting minutes.

New London’s 2014 annual report lists over thirty entities that create records in the course of normal town business; the Archives holds materials (often with large chronological gaps) related to about twenty of those departments, boards, and committees. The missing records may themselves be scattered "at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant.” By convening a Municipal Records Committee, we hope to improve the preservation and availability of our public records and will post project milestones here.

Whipple Hall

Amos H. Whipple

In 1916 the town of New London did not want a new public library. It wanted a new town hall. So when the conditional bequest of Boston hotelier Amos H. Whipple (1856–1916) offered land and $15,000 for a library, the selectmen asked its executor to alter the terms, and Whipple Memorial Library became Whipple Memorial Town Hall—named for Amos's parents, both deceased.

Sherman L. Whipple (1862–1930) was executor of his older brother's estate. Sherman was by then an eminent Boston trial lawyer, having earned in a single case the extraordinary fee of $225,000. An alumnus and longtime trustee of Colby Academy, he maintained ties to New London, where he was born and raised. The new town hall, he knew, would benefit not only the townspeople, as his brother wished, but also Colby Academy students, who used the performance stage and auditorium regularly over the next 40 years. Sherman chose a Boston architectural firm, Strickland & Law, newly formed in 1916. It may have been Sidney Strickland's first public commission, but he was prepared.

Whipple Hall lantern

Sidney T. Strickland (1880–1954) graduated from MIT's architecture program, completed a three-year course of study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and then worked as a draftsman for the respected Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, three assistants of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). When Strickland's father-in-law, Charles Rutan, died in 1915, that collaborative dissolved, and Strickland was on his own.

Strickland's undergraduate thesis of 1905 was entitled "Design for a City Hall...". He considered the special requirements of civic spaces and developed guiding principles that he could apply even to a much smaller project like New London's town hall. We also know that Strickland studied Colby Academy's nearby Colgate Hall, which in 1912 replaced the ruins of an earlier building, burned in 1892.

Whipple Memorial Hall included a jail cell, selectmen's office, records archive, kitchen and dining area, performance stage and auditorium, and a moving picture projection booth in the gallery. It had electric lights and two wood furnaces for steam heat. Unanticipated later uses included municipal court offices and courtroom, a basketball arena, a civil defense and ham radio installation, a police station, and now a recreation department.

Despite all of those activities, the building remains intact in most respects. Two additions were made at the rear (in 1985 and 1999), but the front facade remains intact, even if its formal entrance is disused and overgrown. Above it all is the cupola, or properly "lantern" because of its large, arched windows. Last overhauled in 1957, the character-defining feature once again requires a preservation effort—repairing windows, replacing lost trim, and painting the exterior. The restoration of its original weathervane, last seen in photographs from the 1960s, might also be included in such a project.

We hope to list the building on the State Register of Historic Places for its significance as an example of Classical Revival architecture, for its reflection of the town's development during the 20th century, and for its association with the family of Dr. Solomon and Henrietta Whipple, whose accomplished boys left the state for greater opportunities but cherished their New Hampshire roots, even to their dying days.

View of Sargent Common and Bandstand from Whipple Memorial Hall

Poor Farm

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 town's first Poor Farm (or, properly, the Town Farm) was located on today's Shaker Street, near the Wilmot town line. It was later transferred to a farm County Road.