Street Pageant

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

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

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.

Blood Work

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.

The first lab, just a bench and microscope located in closet-sized room by the cellar stairs, was formally dedicated with hymns, prayer, and a benediction on April 16, 1941. Although money had been raised, additional equipment was unavailable until after World War II. Dr. Clough Jr. analyzed samples and typed test reports until a part-time technician could be hired in 1942. 

Barbara Jane Baker (1920-1941)

By one reckoning from 1956, the third-year students had made annual donations totaling over $10,000—helping purchase equipment like EKG and BMR machines, a centrifuge, constant-temperature oven and water bath, binocular microscope, colorimeter, and a blood bank refrigerator. As the equipment grew, so did the need for work space, and the lab was relocated to a “slightly larger room” in 1955. In the move to the new County Road hospital building in 1958, the lab was allocated two rooms.

By 1972, the cumulative donations had reached $40,000. Contributions to the Baker Memorial Laboratory Fund continued through the 1970s, with Baker’s former classmates often answering the fundraising call to support "Colby's own charity." In 1980, the balance of the memorial fund was legally transferred from the college to the hospital.

So the next time you are waiting for your name to be called at the Drawing Station, peek through the lab’s window and think of the college students and alumnae that made it possible, starting with B.J. Baker. But when those vials appear with your name on them, you might also think of Dr. Blood.

Sources:

• New London Archives — Colby-Sawyer, New London Hospital, and newspaper collections.
• Granite Monthly, "New Hampshire Necrology", Dr. Robert A. Blood.

New London's China Trade

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.

James F. Hayes (1858-1948) constructed wooden shade frames in which the grow and tend the difficult plants at his farm on Pingree Road. Each fall he harvested roots, requested bids from dealers, and mailed his product to New York, for bundling and shipment to China. Preserved within the family's archives, James Hayes's earliest receipts are dated from 1897 and extend through the late 1940s, weathering all of the fluctuations in between. He generally sold about 8 pounds of low- to medium-grade, cultivated ginseng root, and he sometimes sold the fiber as well. Over a forty-year span, he reportedly grossed $9,000—enough to keep him in the business.

The James F. Hayes farm (c. 1930) — with shaded ginseng crop in right foreground.

If James Hayes were in the business today, he might receive $10/pound, while the wild Panax Quinquefolius commands $200 or more. (In the 1924 edition of Specialty Crops, cultivated ginseng was quoted at $3 to $14, depending on quality, and wild at $16.) With only 18 clusters of wild ginseng in New Hampshire, its poaching is prohibited by state law, which imposes a $1,000 civil fine for removing specimens of the threatened species. Most other northern states also ban or restrict the digging of ginseng root.


More about this historic plant:

• UNH Extension, Rare Plants - http://extension.unh.edu/forestry/Docs/r_ginsng.pdf
• USDA Plant Database - http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=PAQU
• USDA Daniel Boone Forest - http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/boone/resources/plants/ginseng.shtml

Lincoln Logs

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.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm (Kentucky) in 1809. As the centennial of this event approached, a group of citizens felt that his birthplace should be preserved for future generations. In fact, the cabin had been moved many times and was exhibited in 1897 at Nashville, Tennessee, where it was united with another from Kentucky—purportedly the cabin in which Jefferson Davis was born. Both cabins were later dismantled and shipped to New York. After an appearance at the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, their logs were stored in the basement of a Long Island mansion.

Formed in 1906, the Lincoln Farm Association purchased the Lincoln logs for $1,000 and the Sinking Spring Farm for $3,600. (This was the same year that President Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which offered protection for federally-owned sites.) The expensive part of the project was the grand Memorial Building, in which the reconstructed log cabin would be enshrined. Despite donations from over 100,000 people, financial concerns forced the building plans to be scaled down (along with the dimensions of the cabin), but still the cornerstone was not laid by President Roosevelt until 1909. The memorial was dedicated two years later by President Taft, whose signature is printed just above "Mark Twain" on the Lincoln Farm certificate.

Lottie Brown at Low Plain School (c. 1905)

Lottie Brown had just turned twelve years old when she received the certificate, issued to all who donated between 25 cents and $25 to the project. The tenth and youngest child, Lottie attended the Low Plain school at the foot of Seamans Road. Her father was Alston Brown (1847-1938), who joined New Hampshire's First Volunteer Cavalry at the age of 16. He lost his left arm during Wilson's raid on Nottoway Courthouse, Virginia, on June 23, 1864. Six days later he was captured near Stone Creek by Confederate forces and imprisoned for two months. Whether he contributed to the Lincoln Farm project in Lottie’s name, or whether she donated her own money, we cannot know, but we can imagine that the preservation of Lincoln’s memory would have appealed to her family, as it did to the families of so many northern veterans.


Sources:

• National Park Service chronology at www.nps.gov/abli/planyourvisit/sinkingspringfarm.htm
• Alston Brown profile at www.nh.ngb.army.mil/images/stories/History/1st_NH_Cav.pdf

Mapping Everytown

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.

New London Center (1858)

Henry F. Walling (1825-1888) produced around 150 maps, some on such a large scale that building footprints are represented (at a time before fire insurance maps made such views commonplace). A commercial endeavor, Walling’s maps were drawn and embellished in ways that might appeal to the broadest audience, and the fact that every property owner’s name appeared in print may have helped promote sales. While his success attracted competitors in larger markets down in Massachusetts and Connecticut, his wall maps of New Hampshire counties, with their inset engravings of landmarks and details of villages and town centers, were unrivaled.

Trained as a civil engineer, Walling apparently used a combination of earlier town maps, subcontracted surveys, and his own original field work. (On the Walden Pond portion of his Concord, MA, map, for example, he credited “surveys by H.D. Thoreau Civ. Engr.”) For practical reasons, Walling favored a compass and wheel odometer over the more traditional surveyor’s chain to plat town roads; his odometer was fast, accurate, and required just one man rather than a crew of three.

Walling also saw the artistry of his profession. In 1886, he concluded an address on topographical mapping with these remarks:

As the success of the portrait painter is measured by his skill in reproducing not only the more striking and familiar features of his subject, but a certain subtle, undefinable expression of individual character, so the topographer is a true artist who brings out upon his map not only the salient contours of the country, but the less apparent though real markings which reveal to experienced eyes the conflicts of the past between the great sculpturing forces of nature and the rugged resistances which have opposed them, the effective touches in either work of art being applied in the presence of the subject portrayed, with a true artistic sense of form and proportion.

Today you can find his large (5' x 5') 1858 map of New Hampshire’s Merrimack County at the Archives and displayed at several local businesses.


Sources:

• Buehler, Michael. “Henry F. Walling and the Mapping of New England’s Towns, 1849-1857” in The Portolan: Journal of the Washington Map Society, Spring 2008.
• Walling, Henry F. “Topographic Surveys of States” in the Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies, Vol. 5, 1886.