This historic one-room schoolhouse can be found in Chocorua Village in the town of Tamworth, New Hampshire, and is a rare Stick style example of its type. The one-room schoolhouse was built around 1880 for the village and was one about 19 district schoolhouses in the town of Tamworth, all servicing remote villages for area children. The school eventually closed when consolidated schools took over in the 20th century, and this charming Victorian schoolhouse has since been converted to a private residence with rear wings added.
The village of South Tamworth, New Hampshire grew during the 19th century. In 1824, a Methodist Episcopal Society organized, and constructed the South Tamworth United Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832. Lumber mills, homes, a store and blacksmith shop were built and the small hamlet thrived. Also at this time, the local Women’s Christian Temperance Union was active in South Tamworth, and reported that they were, “holding the fort, and trying to keep the boys from drinking cider.” In 1894, 30 South Tamworth residents banded together to establish the Union Hall Association, to “promote the causes of Temperance, Religion, Education and Music among ourselves, our associates and successors, and for the general good of the public.” This structure, Union Hall, was built around the time of the association’s founding in 1894 and is a vernacular example of a New England community building. Since its construction, the South Tamworth Union Hall has served as a vital community space hosting dances, community meetings, and local events. By the late 20th century, the building began to show its age and with little use, the hall was threatened with demolition. A band of area residents fundraised and oversaw a restoration of the building in the 1980s with the Union Hall Association continuing to rent the building to local organizations and for private functions, preserving the important role the structure has played in the history of the local community.
The modern history of Tamworth, New Hampshire began in 1766 with the granting of a charter from King George III of England to the town in the name of Benning Wentworth, Colonial Governor of New Hampshire. Settlers ventured slowly north into the towering forests with Native paths bisecting giant swaths of otherwise untouched rugged terrain. Colonial settlers burned and chopped the great trees, built the first homesteads, and planted the first crops to establish a town. The hardy people of Tamworth, persevered through the smallpox epidemic of 1813; the “cold years” and famines of 1815, ’16, and ’17; the “siege of the wolves” on Great Hill in Tamworth in 1820. As soon as the first farms were established, saw, shingle, and turning mills proliferated in every part of town, along with new houses, churches, and schools were built close to them. By the early 20th century, the town became a sort of summer colony where wealthy city-dwellers traveled here for the cool summer breezes and to get away from the stress and pollution of urban centers. The Methodist Church in Tamworth was originally organized in 1824 and less than a decade later, in 1832, its first house of worship was constructed. This building, a vernacular meeting house, was largely rebuilt by 1862, where the structure is said to have been raised and enlarged with the belfry and stained glass windows added at that time.
Isaac Lord (1772-1838) was born in Maine, but would spend much of his time transforming the small town of Effingham, New Hampshire. Isaac married the love of his life, Susanna Leavitt in Exeter in 1793 and the couple moved to Effingham, living and working in a tavern he built. Isaac prospered as an innkeeper, merchant, farmer, and entrepreneur, becoming Effingham’s wealthiest citizen, making the village he owned buildings to be called Lord’s Hill in his name. From 1818 to 1822, Isaac and Susanna lived in Portland, but he was ridiculed for “having money but no culture”. Growing tired of the city, he decided to return to Effingham. Mrs. Lord found the village too quiet and longed for the social life to be had in Portland, Maine. To convince his wife to remain with him, Isaac promised her a mansion that rivaled the homes in wealthy seaports like Portland and Portsmouth and began working on his mansion in Effingham in 1822. After years, the massive estate was completed, but Susanna remained in Portland. A heartbroken Isaac moved into the large mansion and continued business until his death in 1838. The Isaac Lord House consists of a three-story main block with a grand cupola on its roof and a three story ell to its rear. Stables and a carriage house are also on the lot today. I would do anything to see the inside of this beauty!
The small town of Effingham, New Hampshire, is the home to the state’s first Normal School. This building was originally constructed in 1819 as a vernacular, Federal period academy for the youth in the rural town of Effingham on land formerly owned by wealthy resident Isaac Lord. A normal school for the training of teachers was established on the school building’s second floor in 1830 with James W. Bradbury, a Bowdoin College graduate, to head it. Bradbury, later a United States Senator, took the position only on condition that it should be for the instruction and training of teachers, a novel idea at the time. The school, like many small academy buildings of the period, eventually closed. The building is now managed by the Effingham Historical Society.
The location of the Effingham meetinghouse in New Hampshire was a controversial question in the 1790’s, with the villages of Lord’s Hill and Drake’s Corner both vying for the town’s most important public building. After several votes and repeals of votes, the Town’s voters in 1798, chose a committee of hopefully disinterested men from other towns and instructed them to settle on the location. The committee recommended Lord’s Hill, and in June, the Town voted to accept that location. The contract for the meetinghouse was awarded to Isaac Lord, a local landowner and operator of a tavern and store, who promptly erected the building the same year. In its original form, the building had the traditional meetinghouse plan, with its main entry in the long southeast side and a belfry at the northeast end. In 1845, the meetinghouse, by then the property of the Congregational Church, was thoroughly remodeled in the Greek Revival style, what we see preserved today.
Isaac Lord (1772-1838), the namesake of Lord’s Hill, came to Effingham, New Hampshire by 1791. An enterprising man, he was the most important figure in the village’s early history and in its architectural development. By 1792, Lord opened Effingham’s first store on the Hill, and soon thereafter began building a house that also served as the local tavern, this Federal style structure. As Lord prospered as a merchant and innkeeper, he enlarged the Tavern with a large ell connecting the main block to the 3-story barn. The fine Federal tavern was embellished with a vestibule and a triple window. The high quality of the Tavern foretold the character and scale of Isaac Lord’s later buildings nearby. The Tavern stayed in the extended family until 1903. Throughout the 20th century, the property was used as an inn and restaurant, including a stint as a dance hall. By the 21st century, though, deferred maintenance and successive attempts to fix the building ended in mortgage sales, foreclosure, and most recently, a tax deed, the the Town of Effingham recently acquired the property with the aim to restore the significant building. It was sold to a private owner in May 2024 and awaits its future. The Lord’s Tavern was listed in the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance’s ‘Seven to Save’, to advocate for its preservation and funding.
The Drake Store is a vernacular, early 19th century commercial building located in the center of Effingham, New Hampshire. According to local sources, the building was erected around 1816 by Weare Drake, an original settler of the town at age 78, and his 23-year-old grandson, Thomas Parsons Drake. The store sold provisions and was home to a post office, when Thomas Drake served as the town’s postmaster. Within a few years, the store fell into disuse and the building was fitted up as an academy known as the Carroll Literary Institute. Due to insufficient enrollment, in the 1850’s, it was again occupied as a store by Alexander Mellen Drake (hence the sign) and changed hands several times before being purchased by Grange No. 313 in 1913, operating as a grange hall for local farmers. The building was given by the Grange to the Town in 1994 and purchased from the Town for $1 by the Preservation Society in 2002. The Preservation Society has been restoring the building through capital campaigns and grants and the old store shines once again!
The New England Masonic Charitable Institute building is located in Center Effingham, New Hampshire, and is among the rural town’s most impressive structures. The structure was built in 1858 by the Charter Oak Lodge No. 58 of Free and Accepted Masons as a school to educate orphans of Masonic members, but they also admitted local students. It is the only known school building purposely constructed by Masons in the United States. Classes were conducted from 1861 to roughly 1882 with students boarding with local families. The impressive Italianate style building is dominated by a six-story bell tower supporting an octagonal cupola, and exhibits many architectural details including the corner quoins, paired eave brackets, and dentilled cornice. Charter Oak Lodge No. 58 sold the building to the Town of Effingham in 1891 for one dollar but retained rights to the second floor temple room in perpetuity. The walls and ceilings of the Lodge’s temple space are covered with trompe l’oeil murals attributed to Massachusetts painter Philip A. Butler. Images of classic sculptures, architectural details and Masonic symbols, including the All-Seeing Eye, are incorporated into the paintings. Heavily water-damaged in the late 1980s, they have since been restored. The building remains occupied by the Effingham Public Library, what a library building for a town of just 1,700 residents!
The town of Effingham, New Hampshire, was settled by members of the Leavitt family of Hampton, New Hampshire, led by Captain John Leavitt. From them the settlement first took the name “Leavitt’s Town”. In 1749, the land here was officially granted by Governor Benning Wentworth, and he renamed it “Effingham” for the Howard family, who were Earls of Effingham in England and who were related to the Wentworths by marriage. The town was incorporated in 1778, six years after this house was built. This is the Dearborn-Keay House, a 1772 Colonial home in Effingham, built by Benjamin Dearborn, who was an early settler of the area from Hampton, New Hampshire. The homestead was enlarged by his nephew Asahel Dearborn in the early 1790s, giving the home its present appearance. After later ownership in the Dearborn Family, the property was purchased by Cyrus Keay, who would die in the home in 1894. The property remained in the ownership of the Keay family for many years more.
Buildings of New England 