Monadnock Moments

In April of 1887, Troy, New Hampshire suffered one of the worst fires in the town’s history.  At 3:00 o’clock on the morning of April 13, Edgar Dwight, the night watchman at the Troy Blanket Mills, noticed flames in the bark room of the Silsby Tannery.  The fire...

In the 1830s Cyrus Newhall opened a machine shop in the town of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Some twenty years later the firm became known as Newhall & Stebbins when Lorenzo Stebbins became part owner.  Shortly thereafter, in 1860, the company began to manufacture...

In 1890 an unusual business was founded in Keene that produced pottery from pieces of New Hampshire granite.  The firm, known as the Keene Granite, Terra Cotta and Tile Company, was organized by several well known Keene residents.  Joseph B. Beal, a well known...

We have all heard of the numerous attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, to shoot, or go through, Niagara Falls.  Closer to home, here in Cheshire County, however, the residents of North Walpole and Bellows Falls know of several people who have gone through the...

The town of Surry was once the scene of a substantial gold and silver mining operation.  Surry Mountain was long thought to be the site of rich ore deposits, but it was not until 1879 that a company was incorporated for the purpose of mining in the area. The Granite...

It was more than 110 years ago, in June of 1886, that the Thompson-Houston Electric Company was granted a license to erect poles and run wires for Keene’s first electric light system.  The first generator was located on Emerald Street and was supplying power for...

In the Spring of 1886 a tragic tale unfolded in the columns of Cheshire County’s newspapers. The tale concerned Charles S. Jennings, a thirty-year-old farmer from Walpole, New Hampshire. It seems that Jennings’ wife was in the process of seeking a divorce.  On March...

The Mount Huggins Hotel in the town of Swanzey was the dream of Miss Emma Knapp of Haverhill, Massachusetts.  Miss Knapp hired two Keene contractors to build the hotel in 1883.  It was located on a 75-acre lot on top of the 1,021 foot Mount Huggins in the northeast...

In 1876 George Street was laid out in the northern part of Keene, opening to development the area to the east of northern Washington Street.  New homes were soon built in this area.  This new road, however, created trouble for Woodland Cemetery. It seems that...

In April of 1886, the Keene Manufacturing Company began the manufacture of ice skates in the company plant at South Keene.  James A. Whelpley was the manager of the firm.  Two Keene men, Clement J. Woodward and William S. Hale were president and treasurer,...

During the 1880s Jones Wilder came to Rindge, New Hampshire, purchased 7,200 acres, and quickly built up one of the largest farmstead developments ever witnessed in New England. Wilder had made a fortune in New York as a partner in the Butterick Dress Pattern...

The Cheshire County Telephone Company was formed in Keene in September of 1881.  Six local men founded the corporation that had $1,000 in capital stock.  Francis Faulkner, Jonathan Sturtevant, William Prentiss, George Piper, Samuel Nims, and J. W. Peck were the...

John G. Lesure of Keene has been credited with having begun the first line of veterinary medicines in the country.  Lesure was born in Barnard, Vermont in the 1840s and began his work with horses as a blacksmith in Royalton.  He branched out into the livery business...

Benjamin and Charles Marsh were born in Chesterfield, New Hampshire: Benjamin in 1823 and Charles in 1829.  They were the sons of Reuben and Mary Marsh and the third generation of the family in Chesterfield.  During the 1840s the Marsh brothers headed for Boston to...

The era of the grand hotel in Cheshire County truly began with the Mountain House on Mt. Monadnock, later to be called the Half Way House. Mountain resorts were coming into vogue in the late 1850s when the “Keene Sentinel” suggested that such a hotel was needed on...

The Keene Business Directory of 1871-72 is a small, well designed, hard cover volume approximately 80 pages in length.  This was the second such directory prepared for Keene, appearing forty years after its predecessor, the directory of 1831.   This 1871 directory...

In 1875, one of the earliest automobiles in the United States was built in Hinsdale, New Hampshire.  George Long, the inventor of this auto, was a resident of Northfield, Massachusetts.  But a proper workshop was not available in that town, so Long came to New...

A baby boy was born to a farming family in Girard, Pennsylvania in October of 1833. His family moved to Swanzey, New Hampshire in 1847 when he was fourteen years old.  He attended school in Swanzey for three winter terms and worked with his father as a carpenter...