1946 Welcome Home Celebration

Published on: by sgreen Category:Celebration

(Excerpt from the 1983 History of Boscawen, written by Ron Reed)

In 1946 the Old Home Week committee selected the theme of “Welcome Home Day” for the annual festivities. The program was designed to honor the returning veterans and servicemen who served their home town and country in World War II. As the days counted down, the town continued to prepare for the celebration. More than forty of the property owners agreed to pay the cost of having their homes and stores decorated with flags and bunting for the occasion, and with few exceptions, all of the properties fro the Town Hall to Jones’ Hill were decorated. A service flag, representing all the men and woman who entered the armed forces from Boscawen., was ordered by the committee. The flag, which was four by six foot with one gold bar bearing the figure 5 (the number of killed in the service) and one blue star bearing the figure 210 (the number enrolled in the service), was to be displayed during the days of the festivities.

The celebration began on Saturday, August 17th, at 2:30 o’clock with a baseball game held at the Church Park. The game between the veterans from upper and lower Boscawen. Lower Boscawen was victorious. At 6:00 o’clock, a “Welcome Home” dinner, given by Ezekiel Webster Grange, for 300 veterans and invited guests, was set up at the Town Hall. The tables and waitresses were patriotically decorated in red, white and blue. To close Saturday’s events there was a vaudeville show and a dance sponsored by the Muchido Hose Company which began at 8:00 o’clock. Manny Williams, a comedy star with magic, headed the vaudeville performance from Boston, followed by Ann Reid, a comedy star, and Marcel Kaye, a young girl singer and accordionist. Jimmy Wylie’s Orchestra from Manchester concluded the evening with some dancing music.

On Sunday, August 18th, at 10:30 o’clock, the celebration continued with a morning worship service attended by 250 at the Church Park. Rev. Roger P. Horton was the speaker at the service and music was supplied by the Congregational Church’s choir and Flossie Folsom, pianist. At noon, family groups gathered for a picnic lunch. A highlighted and colorful event was the parade at 1:30 o’clock. The Never’s Band lead the parade and Joseph Colby was the Marshall. Veterans from both World War I and World War II marched in full dress, the various children and and adult groups participated in the parade by riding on floats or marching and the selectmen, Howard Holmes, Clyde Fairbanks and Jesse Braley, rode in a cart pulled by oxen. At 2:30 o’clock, the Welcome Home events continued with Norris Cotton, GOP Congress nominee, who was the first speaker. A memorial service followed, in remembrance of the five men killed in the war., conducted by Rev. Asa Parker. Those five men who gave their lives were: Joseph G. Annan, Leo J. Cournoyer, Clinton R. Hollins, Robert R. McIntyer and Leonard W. Peirce. Later the Never’s Band performed, and Peirce Virgil Chaffin and Arthur Faneuf sand to the music played by Flossie Folsom. The final event of the celebration was a modern fire fighting equipment demonstration by the Torrent Engine Company. It was an Old Home Day to remember!

 

Standard Bearer – Fisherville N.H. – July 5, 1881

Published on: by sgreen Category:Uncategorized

In 1880 the Rev. J. H. Larry assumed the position of Principal of the Penacook Academy in Fisherville, N.H. and established the “School of Practice”. For the next three years the school published a semi-monthly newspaper called “Standard Bearer” which had a circulation of around 1,000 copies per printing. In 1883 the school closed and the newspaper was no longer published.

UntitledThe listing from the 1883 edition of Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory.

Published Fortnightly   –  By the “School of Practice”   –  FISHERVILLE, N. H.

“Here we unfurl our Standard, and enter the ranks of Virtue against Vice, Knowledge against Ignorance, Labor against Idleness, Truth against Skepticism.”

Click the image to read the complete July 15, 1881 edition.

Fisherville Standard Bearer 1881

 

 

 

 

 

Hannah Dustin Memorial Site Cleanup

Published on: by sgreen Category:Uncategorized

The Boscawen Historical Society would like to thank Student Conservation Association, AmeriCorps and the State of New Hampshire Division of Parks Recreation for the hard work that was put forth at the Hannah Dustin Memorial Site.

Click here to read the entire story.

Click here to learn more about the Student Conservation Association

Click here to learn more about AmeriCorp

Click here to learn more about the New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation

 

The Boscawen Stamp

Published on: by sgreen Category:Stamp Collecting

Worcester Webster, a cousin of Daniel Webster, served as postmaster in Boscawen from February 5, 1841 to January 15, 1852. In 1846 he created a “Provisional” postage stamp that was attached to an envelope addressed to Miss Achsah French, a 14 year old relative of Webster’s who lived in Concord. The stamp was dull blue ink, hand-stamped on a thin piece of yellowish handmade paper, with an adhesive to affix it to the envelope. Provisional stamps predate or take the place of the first official US stamps which were issued in 1847, as Congress set the postal rates, but had not yet printed stamps.

Since that day 168 years ago, this small envelope has found its way in to some very important stamp collections and has become known one of the rarest stamps in existence. It entered into a private collection for the first time in Washington DC in 1865. For twenty years it was in the possession of H.H. Lowrie who had received it from the the chief clerk of the general post office of Washington, DC. It was sold in 1894 and then again in 1912 to a French count who paid $5000 at auction and took it home to France. In 1922 the stamp returned home to America when a collector in Utica, New York purchased it for $11,000. The stamp has changed hands a number of times since then: in 1933, 1937, 1964, and most recently in 1989. In the 1989 sale it was purchased by an overseas buyer for $166,000.

In June 2010 the Boscawen Historical Society received a letter from a George Masnick of Hamilton, Montana, who wished to donate an unpublished manuscript from the 1930’s that he had in his possession titled, “Boscawen 1846: a Settlement, a Sailor, and a Stamp”. Mr. Masnick was at one time a teacher at Harvard University; one day while in Brookline, Massachusetts he found a collection of stamp books in the trash. He had given the collection to his brother, who was a stamp collector, and when he died it was returned to George.

The manuscript:  Boscawen 1846: a Settlement, a Sailor, and a Stamp

Weir Family Farm

Published on: by sgreen Category:People of Boscawen, Uncategorized

In March 1969, Mr. Elmer Carl Anderson, husband of Isabel Weir, compiled this brief history of the Weir family’s arrival in Boscawen.

Their story begins in 1854 when James Weir and his sister Olivia purchased a little over 31 acres of land in the area off present day Weir Road, off from Queen Street. By 1903 the farm had grown to nearly 200 acres and was a successful wholesale, and later retail, milk producer. The farm itself was self sufficient in many respects with it’s own blacksmith shop, portable sawmill and ice-house.

In 1938 the Weir farm came to an end. John Weir, who was born in 1866, was finding it difficult to run the farm due to a lack of help, his own ill health and shrinking finances. His health finally forced him to move from the farm and live with his sister-in-law Myrtie Weir. He eventually deeded the farm to the Town of Boscawen and spent his final years in a nursing home.

Please click on the link below to read the full story in PDF format.

Weir Family Farm

Moses Gerrish Farmer

Published on: by sgreen Category:People of Boscawen
Moses Farmerby Steven Green

Born February 9, 1820 to Colonel John and Sally (Gerrish) Farmer in Boscawen, New Hampshire, Moses Gerrish Farmer was an inventor and pioneer in the field of electricity.

He attended Phillips Academy, Andover MA in the autumn of 1837 and later Dartmouth College in 1840. He was soon teaching at the Academy at Eliot, Maine, where he met and married Hannah Tobey Shapleigh, one of his students. They had one daughter, Sarah Jane Farmer.

In 1847, Farmer moved his family to Framingham, Massachusetts for a short time. While there he constructed and exhibited an “Electro-Magnetic Engine & Railroad” that could carry two passengers on a track a foot and a half wide. In December of that year he accepted a position as wire examiner of the electric telegraph line between Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts. He learned telegraphy and in July 1848 was appointed operator in the Salem, Massachusetts office. Farmer later took charge of the telegraph between Boston and Newburyport, Massachusetts.

In 1852, he and his partner William F. Channing patented the first electric fire alarm system, and installed it in Boston that same year.

In 1855, he discovered the means for duplex and quadruplex telegraph, i.e. sending more than one message over the line at the same time. He successfully demonstrated this between New York and Philadelphia in 1856.

In 1858, he installed a form of incandescent lighting in one of the rooms in his home in Salem, Massachusetts, illuminating it for a number of months. This was some twenty years before Thomas Edison’s success.

In 1872 Farmer was appointed to the office of electrician at the United States Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island. For the next nine years he helped advance torpedo warfare until his health forced him to resign. He acted as consulting electrician for the United States Electric Light Company of New York for several years before retiring with his family to their summer home at Eliot, Maine where he established a public library.

His wife, Hannah Tobey Shapleigh Farmer, was an outspoken suffragette who operated the Rosemary Cottage, a rural retreat for urban unwed mothers and their children. The Farmers’ home was a way station on the Underground Railroad that helped slaves escape the South.

Moses Gerrish Farmer died at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago on May 25th, while he was preparing an exhibit of his inventions.

The following describes an article written for the Dartmouth Alumni magazine by one of his classmates at Dartmouth, Ralph S. Bartlett.

The current issue of the Dartmouth magazine contains an article written by Ralph S. Bartlett of the Class of 1889, the secretary of that class. The article is entitled “An Early Dartmouth Inventor”, and begins like this: “Sixty-five years ago this June a letter was received in Hanover by the 1889-class secretary a few days before commencement. This letter was written by Moses Gerrish Farmer, a native of Boscawen, N.H., a member of the class of 1844 at Dartmouth, who in retirement was then living in Eliot, Maine, in which town your secretary was born.”

After mentioning Mr. Farmer’s brief spells of office work and school-teaching Mr. Bartlett goes on to say: “It was not long however before his brains and hands were busy with mechanical and electrical appliances. His active life brought him in contact with some of the best minds in the country. His own intellectual powers were stimulated by conversations and discussions with Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph. He firmly believed it possible for a car to be equipped with electrical power sufficient to operate for the transportation of people. Finally success came. The invention was brought to completion, and on July 26, 1847 the first electrically-operated car was exhibited and operated in Dover, N.H.”

Other paragraphs state: “Farmer invented a fire alarm system, later used in Boston.” “Some of the products of invention in general use today are the results of inventions originally made by him, and later developed to their present state of perfection”. “This inventor lived in several places, but his longest stay in any one place was at the Torpedo Station in Newport R.I. He was busily engaged in experimental work and developing his many discoveries and inventions in the chemical and electrical laboratories erected under his direction.”

The article closes thus: On July 26th 1897, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers held its annual meeting at Greenacre-on-the-Piscataqua in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of exhibiting and running of the first electrically-operated car., invented by Moses Gerrish Farmer in Dover N.H. A distinguished group of electrical engineers and scientist attending the meeting; including the late Charles Proteus Steinmetz, famous consulting engineer of the General Electric Company. Upon exhibition at this meeting was the original electrically-operated car, brought there specially for this meeting from the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC, where it was deposited many years ago for permanent preservation.”

Further reading:


“Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences” Vol. 29 1894

Foote, Brown & Co.

Published on: by sgreen Category:Business

Foote, Brown & Co

 by Steve Green

One of the most successful businesses in the village of Penacook, it was built in 1855 by brothers, H.H. and J.S. Brown. The store was located on the spot the Davis and Towle building now sits. Through the years it had a number of proprietors, one of the first was a gentleman named Greenough McQuesten. He was also a Deacon at the Congregational Church up until the time he took a position with the Concord Railroad. 

Then there was Deacon William H. Allen, who ran a successful business up until 1862 when Deacon David Putnam took over the business. He took a partner named Moses H. Bean and together ran the store under the name Putnam and Bean.  In 1865 Mr. Putnam took a new partner, Lyman K. Hall, they ran the store under the name Putnam and Hall until 1870 when Mr. Hall took a new partner, Charles T. Foote.

In 1875 Lyman Hall left the business and David A. Brown, brother to the builders, joined Charles T. Foote in the business. It ran under the name Brown and Foote until David sold his interest in the store to his nephew Stewart I. Brown in 1886. At that time the store was renamed Foote, Brown and Co. as it appears in the photo.