Historical Chronology of Newport, N.H
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HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY OF NEWPORT, N.H. ---------- You may simply scroll through the pages for the fun of it, if you like, poking along to see what emerges, or to satisfy your general interest in history. But if you seek some particular date to see what happened then, or if you want to know when the town acquired the Common, or when the Newport House burned or when the Newport Opera House Association was formed, or what a factory worker earned in 1910, then use the Search or Find function of your software. Explanation: History is not bunk, despite Henry Ford's belief that it is. Nor is it -- at least not always -- events agreed upon by the victors, as some cynics have said. Ambrose Bierce in his Devil's Dictionary calls it "an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools." Little wonder that he disappeared without trace and was never found. History is understanding the past, attempting to apply it to the present, and hoping that such understanding will keep us from repeating the errors -- and sometimes the disasters -- of the past as we work to shape the future. The chronology below is not history. The American historian Daniel Boorstin calls history The Cautionary Science and quotes William James: "A large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep." The historian Will Durant says: "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river." This chronology hardly ignores the banks of the historical river. Although even historians are not in precise agreement about a definition of their trade, they generally agree that history is based upon events (James' particulars), that it involves interpretations of those events, and that it often places them in perspective with other events happening simultaneously or previously to the events recorded. For example, the Sugar River Canal, proposed in 1816 to connect Lake Sunapee with the Connecticut River (see 1817 below) was doomed before one shovelful of earth was turned because, 3,000 miles away, English engineers were experimenting with steam locomotives; railroads were to replace canals all over the world. 2 In the 18th century, textile mills flourished in New England and languished in southern states because New England had soft water as well as water power for processing cloth; the South for the most part did not. The invention of water-softening processes, as well as political, cultural and economic changes reversed that concentration of manufacturing, and the livelihood of many Newporters slid to the South with the textile mills. In fact, the American textile industry itself was made possible only because American industrial spies memorized the workings of English textile machinery and brought those secrets to America. There is a lot of because in history. But there is no because in what is listed below. Only particulars, events. Some day someone else will add the becauses, and then we will have a history. Who we were helps to tell us who we are. ---- The sources vary. They include Wheeler's History of Newport, Parmalee's history of Newport in the 1886 History of Cheshire and Sullivan Counties, Pillsbury’s New Hampshire, A History, Edes' Tales from the History of Newport, Newport's Bicentennial Booklet, the original Proprietors' Records on microfilm at the town clerk's office, the Granite State Monthly, the 1870 Newport Business Directory, the Scrapbooks of the Newport Historical Society, which are coded in the entries as NHS, the Argus- Champion and its predecessors (where they exist) -- The Argus, The New Hampshire Argus, The New Hampshire Argus and Spectator, The New Hampshire Spectator, The Argus and Spectator, and The Republican Champion. Many entries have come from the fine work that Ella Reney did for years in her weekly Argus-Champion column As We Were, and later by Roger Small. A good reference for understanding what the early settlers faced and how is A Long Deep Furrow -- Three Centuries of Farming in New England by Howard S. Russell, 1982, University Press of New England. When Andler is listed as a source, this refers to an article by Kenneth Andler titled "Newport, N.H. 1761-1961" and published in the Bicentennial Booklet. The Newport Business Directory of 1870 has been a good source and is useful to discover the names and addresses of the town’s merchants in that year. Alonzo Fogg's description of Newport in his 1874 Statistics and Gazetteer of New Hampshire, as well as the description of Newport in the 1839 New England Gazetteer (5th edition) by John Hayward are included in their entirety in this chronology. Two especially useful sources exist only in one place, to our knowledge. That place is the Andler Room of the Richards Free Library in Newport. Among the other 3 treasures housed there are two volumes of notes, photos, photo copies, short essays on history, and excerpts from other writers, both compiled by Richard D. Parker in 1995. They are “A Study of Newport’s Waterpowered Mills,” and “Taverns of Newport, NH.” The larger of the two (150 pp.) – on waterpowered mills – traces the industrial growth of Newport with maps, deeds, and summnaries of the starts and ends of the town’s sawmills, scythe shops, tanneries, and woolen and cotton mills, as well as a history of textile making in America. It is an invaluable source for historians. So are the 21 pp of “Taverns of Newport, NH.” The decennial reports of workers' annual earnings, length of work week, and cost of some commodities are taken from Historical Statistics of the United States - Colonial Times to 1957, Bureau of the Census. You will probably notice that references to many places (i.e. near the Phenix Hotel, the Lewis Block, the Lafayette House, the Newport House, the Tontine) are not helpful unless you have previous knowledge of those places. In some instances we have clarified the location of some of these no-longer-existing landmarks, but many more need modern explanation of where those buildings once stood. We welcome help in this matter. Clarifications left at the Richards Free Library desk will be added to this chronology. Andrew L. Andrews labored heavily in the first undivided (to use the parlance of land deeds) one-quarter or so of this chronology, and I am indebted to him for this help. But any errors are mine alone, and alone I will answer for them. -- Evan Hill A note about Sidebars: Scattered throughout the next 195 pages or so are about two dozen interruptions I have labelled “Sidebars” and which add some color and perhaps perspective to the events into which they have been inserted. I hope they are helpful, and sometimes amusing. Here’s where they are: -- EH – 11 Oct. 2007 The year: 1808 -- Female Teachers 1820 -- Use of Forks at Table 1827 -- Parsimonious We 1835 -- Violence Against Blacks 30 Miles North in Canaan 1855 – Temperance 1861 – Health of American Men in Civil War Times 1872 – Railroad 1873 – Divorce 1883 – The English on Americans 1890 – Longevity of Americans 1900 – Life Expectancy 1900 – Newport Foreign-Born 1900-1990 1907 – Frugal Water Users 4 1910 – Life Expectancy 1920 – Life Expectancy 1920 – This Was the Year We Left the Farm 1930 – Life Expectancy 1940 – Life Expectancy 1950 – This Was the Year We Began to Have More Females than Males, but not by much. 1950 -- Lost Words and Phrases 1950 – Life Expectancy 1960 -- -- ditto— 1970 -- -- ditto – 1978 -- Newport 30 Years Ago 1980 -- Life Expectancy 1990-- -- ditto -- 1990 – Education of Newporters 2000 – Decennial Census of 2000 2000 – Life Expectancy The Chronology: 1724 -- English settlers found Brattleboro (then called Ft. Dummer), Vermont, about 55 miles west and south along the Sugar and the Connecticut Rivers from what in 1766 was settled as Newport. The first settlers followed the Connecticut. -- Websters New World Encyclopedia 1992, p. 163 1747 -- To understand why towns along the Connecticut River were settled so late, we must remember how difficult it was to travel west on foot from the coastal settlements. The rivers of the region, which give easier access to inland town sites, flow north and south rather than from east to west. But the French and Indian War was the main reason for late settlement. Here, paraphrased, is what the History of the United States of America, printed in Keene, N.H., in 1821, says about that war. -- Actually there were many French and Indian Wars because the wars in America were linked to the wars of England and France during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The ultimate aim in North America was the domination of the eastern part of the continent. France held Canada, and by right of discovery, the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The French and Indian War about which New Hampshire was most concerned began about 1750 when King George II granted 600,000 acres of land on and near the Ohio River (which drains into the Mississippi) to a group of London merchants and noblemen. This disturbed the French Governor in Canada who feared that Canadian fur trade would be destroyed and all communication cut off between Canada and Louisiana (then French Territory). The French laid claim, says the History, "on the eastern side of the Ohio, extended to the Alleghany moutains.