New Hampshire History Blog

Isaac Appleton Homestead // 1756

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One of the oldest (if not the oldest) extant houses in Ipswich, New Hampshire is this Colonial home on Appleton Road, which gets its name from the first owner, Isaac Appleton. Deacon Isaac Appleton III (1731-1806) was one of the town’s original settlers who came to New Ipswich from Ipswich, Massachusetts. He held the office of town clerk and of selectman and was a deacon for thirty years. He responded to the call to arms from Concord to fight in the American Revolution. Deacon Isaac Appleton III was the father of Samuel Appleton, a wealthy Boston merchant; and Nathan Appleton, a merchant and politician in Boston and head of the famous Appleton Family which would influence Boston business and politics for generations. Samuel Appleton would fund and establish the Appleton Academy in New Ipswich, the second oldest in New Hampshire after Phillips Exeter Academy. The Isaac Appleton Homestead remains in a great state of preservation and sits just outside the town center.

Image from real estate listing.

Old New Ipswich Town Hall // 1817

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New Ipswich, New Hampshire, is a town that oozes New England charm! Winding back roads are lined with Colonial-era homes and buildings, lovingly maintained by stewards and neighbors to create the quintessential small town feeling. New Ipswich was granted in 1735 to 60 inhabitants of Ipswich, Massachusetts, where the name is derived, by colonial Governor Jonathan Belcher and the General Court of Massachusetts. European settlement began here in 1738, when Abijah Foster arrived to the area with his wife and infant daughter. At the center of town, a new Town Hall was built in 1817 as a combination town hall and private academy with funds provided by the town government and by the trustees of New Ipswich Academy. The building was constructed under the direction of Deacon Nathaniel Gould, using materials salvaged from a disused meetinghouse of 1770. The arched gable window is reputed to have been taken from the meeting house, as are twisted balusters on the gallery stairway inside. As completed in 1817, the building had a full second floor which provided the academy with a lecture room, a small library, and a laboratory, but that was taken over by 1869 when the Town renovated the building, removing a tower and belfry, and occupied the second floor spaces. The building is still owned by the town, and is used occasionally for civic functions, with town offices in a mundane, newer building a short distance away.

Lord Mansion // 1822

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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!

Effingham Academy // 1819

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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.

Old Effingham Meetinghouse // c.1800

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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.

Drake Store // c.1816

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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!

New England Masonic Charitable Institute // 1858

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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!

Dearborn-Keay House // c.1772

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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.

Stone Memorial Building // 1896

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Designed by New Hampshire architect William Butterfield in 1896, the Stone Memorial building in Central Weare is a significant example of a Neo-Classical style structure in a village setting. The building was constructed with money donated by Joseph Stone in honor of his father, Phineas J. Stone, who was born in Weare and moved to Charlestown, MA, later serving as its seventh Mayor. The building would “provide suitable room for a public town library” and a room for memorials to the Civil War soldiers who fought and died for the Union. When the town hall burned, offices there were relocated to this building. Eventually, the library and town offices left this small building, and it has since been home to the Weare Historical Society.

Dana King House // 1879

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Another stately Victorian-era house on Nashua’s Concord Street is this brick beauty, known as the Dana King House. The property was constructed in 1879 for Dana William King (1832-1912) who had quite a history. He was born in Alstead, New Hampshire where he lived until he was 19, moving to Boston to “make his fortune”. In 1852, he shipped aboard a whale boat in East Boston, and realized that whaling wasn’t for him. He was persuaded by his brother to move in with him in Detroit, where he worked as a grocery clerk before moving back to New Hampshire, settling in Nashua, where he did make his fortune. He began working at a local mill until the outbreak of the American Civil War, where he enlisted in the First Regiment of New Hampshire, eventually rising to the rank of Lt. Colonel. He was captured during the war and held in prison in Shreveport for over seven months, failing at least one prison escape. He was eventually included in a prisoner swap and returned to Nashua in 1865. Upon his return, King used his war stories to gather favor locally, and he was elected Register of the Hillsborough County of Deeds, a position he held for over 30 years. The King House is a great, and rare example of the Victorian Gothic style of architecture in Nashua, notable for its steeply pitched slate gable roof with octagonal corner tower serving as a belvedere or cupola.

Lester Thurber House // 1895

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As Victorian styles of architecture fell out of vogue in the late 19th century, New England towns and cities alike, saw a revival of Colonial designs which dominated building styles throughout much of the next century. Early examples of Colonial Revival tend to blend Queen Anne (Victorian) and Colonial motifs under one roof, which makes for exuberant yet refined designs. The Lester Thurber House in Nashua, New Hampshire was built in 1895 and is an ornate example which preserves elements of the Queen Anne style in its asymmetry and high gables, but with Colonial pediment scrolls and classical columned porch. Lester Freeman Thurber (1858-1935) was born and raised in Vermont and was engaged in the political arena there, serving as private secretary to Gov. Roswell Farnham of Vermont, 1880-2. He moved to Nashua in 1882 and was BUSY! He served in both branches Nashua city government, was member for six years on the board of education, member N.H. House of Representatives, 1895, served on railroad committee; was a delegate to Republican National Convention, 1908, and was a member of many local fraternal organizations and clubs. The Thurber House has suffered from some deferred maintenance of sorts, but is a great local example of the transitional Queen Anne/Colonial Revival styles in Nashua.

Laton House Hotel // 1878

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A late example of Second Empire style architecture, the Laton House in Nashua, New Hampshire, is a 3 ½ -story brick hotel building with a slate-covered mansard roof pierced by regularly spaced dormers. The facade is dominated by a two-story porch with decorative railings and brackets. The hotel was developed between 1878-1881 when Railroad Squareserved as the central square in town. The hotel thrived, allowing visitors cheap rooms while doing business in the manufacturing hub of Nashua. Eventually, the hotel closed and was converted to housing. Today, it houses commercial space on the ground floor with low-income housing above.

Dr. Eugene F. McQuesten Residence // 1887

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Dr. Eugene Forrest McQuesten was born in Litchfield, NH, on October 11, 1843. He enrolled at local schools before graduating from theJefferson Medical College in 1866. He practiced medicine in Lynn, Massachusetts for two years before moving to Nashua, New Hampshire to run a medical office. He worked in Nashua for years, later being nominated President of the New Hampshire Medical Society. In 1886, he purchased a house lot on Nashua’s Concord Street and razed the existing dwelling, building this stunning brick residence a year later.

General George Stark House // 1856

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Inspired by suggestions from books by Andrew Jackson Downing, the Gen. George Stark House is one of the finest dwellings in the Italian villa style in New Hampshire. Located on a triangular plot just north of Downtown Nashua, the house was built in 1856 by a man who, though then only in his early thirties, was one of New Hampshire’s most experienced civil engineers and surveyors, and was the superintendent of the Nashua and Lowell Railroad. General George W. Stark (1823-1892) was born in Manchester, N.H., and as a young man worked on surveys of the canals and factories being built in the late 1830s in his native city. In 1836, during the first days of railroading in northern New England, Stark was employed with the engineers who laid out the route of the Nashua and Lowell Railroad. He climbed the ladder, eventually working as treasurer and assistant superintendent of theHudson River Railroad, subsequently rising to the position of superintendent. He later became superintendent of the Nashua and Lowell Railroad, whose route he had helped to plan, and in 1857, at about the time he saw the completion of his Italianate villa, he became managing agent of the Boston and Lowell line. In the same year, he was commissioned Brigadier General of the Third Brigade of New Hampshire Militia, giving him his title, General. The Stark House was occupied by General Stark and by members of his family until the property was acquired by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, about 1928. Today, it houses offices but retains a distinct residential character regardless.

Elijah Shaw House // 1889

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This Queen Anne Victorian residence sits at 85 Concord Street in Nashua, New Hampshire. Built in 1889-90 for Elijah Shaw, the house is one of a dozen or so well-preserved Victorian-era mansions along the prominent street. Elijah Morrill Shaw (1826-1903) was born in Kensington, NH and spent many of his early years working at woolen mills all over the Northeast until the outbreak of the American Civil War. Obeying his country’s call to arms, at the time of the Rebellion, he entered the army in 1861 and was later promoted to Captain in 1863. After the war, he continued working at mills all over the region until 1888 when he was hired by the Nashua Manufacturing Company. He built this house soon after his arrival and remained there until his death in 1903. The dwelling and rear carriage house are clad in shingles with the house built with a brick first floor.