The WPA Guide to New Hampshire by Federal Writers' Project

Author:Federal Writers' Project [Project, Federal Writers’]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781595342270
Publisher: Trinity University Press

Sec. b. CONCORD to PLYMOUTH, 57.9 m.

US 3 follows N. Main St. in the northern part of Concord, uniting with US 4 for 9.6 miles.

At 1.8 m. is (L) the New Hampshire State Prison, a group of brick buildings including a three-story cellhouse and the warden’s home, surrounded by a high brick wall. Industrial activities of the inmates include the manufacture of concrete culverts for use on State roads and registration plates for automobiles. Much of the State printing is also done here.

Behind the prison on Rattlesnake Hill are the Concord Granite Quarries, the first of which, the John Swenson Granite Company, furnished $1,300,000 worth of material for the Congressional Library in Washington.

The highway passes through broad meadows of the Merrimack, hemmed in by the Loudon and Canterbury Hills.

PENACOOK (alt. 336), 6.2 m., including Ward 1 of Concord and a part of Boscawen Township, is a little manufacturing village at the confluence of the Contoocook and Merrimack Rivers. The small square with a nucleus of a tiny park surrounded by brick and frame buildings, is blocked in by hotels and stores. The Washington House (R) has been an active hostelry for more than 100 years.

In the old days Penacook was strongly garrisoned against the Indians and was the scene of the skirmishes between them and the whites.

The water-power of the two rivers gave Penacook an early industrial development which has been maintained to some extent. Woolen mills, built in 1847, are still in operation, as is a woodworking shop started in 1837. More recent industries include an electrical instrument shop, begun in 1904, and the New England Briar Pipe Company, makers of ‘Kay-woodie’ pipes, who maintain here a branch of their main plant in New Jersey.

In 1873, the town produced goods with a value of $1,412,000, including 4,386,000 yards of cotton print cloth. The later decline of the cotton industry in this town is evidenced by a vacant mill (R) at the bridge over the Contoocook. This sturdy structure was one of the few New Hampshire mills to be built of native granite.

To the right of the village at the point where the Contoocook empties into the Merrimack River is the Stratton Flour Mill, one of the few in New England; it stands on the site of a sawmill built in 1789 and of a later gristmill of Isaac and Jeremiah Chandler. A flour mill was erected on the site in 1858 by John H. Pearson and Company, and it was later taken over by the present owners. Thirty-five operatives are employed in day and night shifts, and can grind 5000 bushels of corn daily in the corn mill and produce several hundred barrels of flour in the flour mill.

Right from the village on a tiny island in the Merrimack River stands the Hannah Dustin Monument, erected where that pioneer arose in the night, scalped her Indian captors and then guided a small band of fellow captives safely home to Haverhill, Massachusetts. Cotton Mather’s description of her feat in his ‘Magnalia’ is vivid.

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