For most of its colonial existence New Hampshire’s capitol was headquartered in Portsmouth, on the coast. In 1774 the rebellious Provincial Congress moved inland to Exeter, meeting in the Exeter Town House. In January 1776, New Hampshire became the first colony to set up an independent government and the first to establish a constitution, although Rhode Island was the first to declare independence from Britain. Eventually the makeshift capitol became permanent in Concord although it was not until 1808 that Concord was named the official seat of state government.
Concord, on the western banks of the serpentine meanderings of the Merrimack River, was settled in the 1720s and was incorporated in 1734 as Rumford. It was renamed Concord in 1765 by Governor Benning Wentworth, supposedly as a testament to the settlement of a contentious border dispute.
In 1803, the first turnpike in New Hampshire opened, linking the inland town of Concord with the seacoast’s Portsmouth, launching the town as the state’s transportation and trade center. In 1807 Concord was connected to Boston by way of canal and in a few decades it would flourish as a hub for the railroad industry. Furniture making and quarrying granite from Rattlesnake Hill north of town were also drove the local economy. And the manufacture of carriages and coaches brought the town widespread notoriety.
But for more than 200 years Concord has been a government town. Homegrown Franklin Pierce was sent to Washington as the country’s fourteenth President, giving New Hampshire the honor of being by far the smallest state to ever produce a United States President. Arkansas (Bill Clinton) and Iowa (Herbert Hoover) are the only other states outside the 20 most populous American states to send a favored son to the White House.
Our walking tour of Concord will begin in the heart of the Civic District at the very State House where Franklin Pierce served from 1829 until 1833, in America’s oldest state house in which the legislature still occupies its original chambers...
Some towns make you shake your head and wonder how they grew up where they did. Not so with Manchester. The 54-foot drop in the Merrimack River capable of generating 16,000 horsepower of energy pretty much guaranteed that there would be a settlement here one day. Before there was an Industrial Revolution the Pennacock Indians came here to fish for about 10,000 years. John Goffe put down stakes in 1722 and Goffe’s Town emerged on the west side of the river. On the east side a number of families arrived in the 1730s and started what became known as Derryfield.
The little village of Derryfield gained renown thanks to the exploits of John Stark, a gallant British officer during the French and Indian War and a decorated major general in George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Stark lived on modern day Elm Street where he died at the age of 93. When too sick to travel to meet his former comrades Stark posted a letter reminding the old freedom fighters to “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.” And New Hampshire had one of the country’s most quotable mottoes.
Derryfield was mostly a wilderness in Stark’s day. That began to change when Samuel Blodgett looked at the banks of the Merrimack River in 1793. He envisioned a canal around Amoskeag Falls that would create a navigational route on the Merrimack River all the way from Concord to Boston. Blodgett used lottery funding to raise $50,000 and completed his canal in 1807. The combination of water power from the falls and safe sailing was so powerful that Blodgett lobbied to have the town name changed to Manchester, after the world’s first great industrial city in England.
The Amoskeag Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company was quickly formed but the operation was mismanaged for years until a group of Boston financiers arrived and overhauled the operation. The world had never seen anything like what the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company built. With 64 mill buildings lining both sides of the Merrimack River for one-and-a-half miles it was the largest textile manufacturing operation on the planet. The workers liked to brag that every two months Amoskeag produced enough cloth to put a band around the world. They were being modest - the yards shipped 5,000,000 yards of cloth in an average week.
The same time Amoskeag built its first mills in 1838 the company assigned 19-year old Ezekiel Albert Straw the task of laying out a new industrial city. He did his job well and rose to manager of Amoskeag before vaulting into the governor’s office for two terms in the 1870s. By that time Amoskeag had added railroad locomotives to its product line. The last mill would be built in 1915; two decades later, on Christmas Eve 1935, Amoskeag would shut down forever due to shifting economic realities. Manchester remains the dominant manufacturing city of Northern New England today with over 200 diversified manufacturing firms rather than one gargantuan operator.
One thing we will not see in our walking tour is a McDonald’s since Maurice and Richard McDonald, who were born and raised in Manchester, decided to open their pioneering hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California. Nonetheless, our explorations of the Queen City will discover what has become of teenager Ezekiel Straw’s grand plan and we will begin at a spot where the town used to hold its fireman’s muster...
If you Google “Portsmouth” the Virginia town at the mouth of the Elizabeth River comes up first. But while both towns were named for the port in England, the colony of the Province of New Hampshire was actually founded (although he never actually made it this far south from his landing in Newfoundland) by the captain of the English port, John Mason. In fact, Portsmouth, New Hampshire was settled (1630) and fortified more than 100 years before its Virginia counterpart.
The natural harbor formed by the Piscataqua River has been compared to San Francisco for its advantages, save for a nasty current, and the early residents wasted no time in exploiting the location. Shipbuilding and trade made Portsmouth a favorite stop in Colonial times. And after America won its independence Portsmouth continued to be an important player in the young nation’s affairs. Portsmouth native John Langdon functioned as Acting President of the United States before giving the oath of office to George Washington. Portsmouth was generally considered the wealthiest city in New England and in the first census in 1790 it was the 14th most populous city in the country. Portsmouth would not drop out of the Top 20 until 1830.
The sea captains and merchants plowed their profits into their houses. As one observer noted, “The builders of Portsmouth had an eye for style. Tall, square, and many with hip roof, the mansions were the work of builders who were ever attentive to the molding of chimney caps, to the sweep and proportion of granite steps and coping, and to the detail of iron posts and hand-wrought designs on the railings. Topping many a house is the white-railed captain’s walk, from which the merchant could look into the bay and eagerly watch his ships slip home. Not so ornate as the houses of Salem, or so imposing as the Colonial mansions of Virginia, these dwellings show a delicacy of design that larger houses often lack.”
Fire was the enemy of these early American showplaces and Portsmouth suffered more than most. A 1781 blaze lay waste to important swaths of downtown. A Christmas night fire in 1802 completely destroyed entire blocks of Market Street and another in 1806 crippled Bow Street. Finally a conflagration in 1813 burned across 15 acres of the city and claimed nearly 300 structures. After that the New Hampshire legislature passed the Brick Act that forbade the erection of any wooden building higher than 12 feet, which displeased plenty of folks. Wood was cheaper than stone and brick and not everyone was rich. And the town was chock-full of skilled tradesmen who made their living shaping wood.
The result is two historic Portsmouths, one built of wood and the other built of brick. To launch our explorations of the “Old Town by the Sea” we will begin at the center of the downtown core in a sea of bricks before fanning out into the wood...