Growth and Change

 Growth and Change, 1790-1820

Since its first permanent settlement in the early eighteenth century, the upper Connecticut River Valley of New Hampshire had been a unique case in the development of New England society. Far removed from the urbanized regions of New England, this frontier society was initially formed by woodsmen, trappers, loggers, and farmers. The fertile floodplains of New England’s largest river lent themselves well to agricultural pursuits. Natural resources found in and around the Connecticut created ample opportunity for other trades to take shape. Despite its origin as a geographically isolated frontier society, by the early nineteenth century, the Connecticut River Valley had become the axis of a broader trade network which gave even the most remote towns of the region access to national and international goods.

The most extensive period of development of the western region of New Hampshire occurred during the formative years of the United States. By the late eighteenth century, the Connecticut River Valley of New Hampshire had become one of the most fertile and productive regions in northern New England. High demand for White Pine in the Atlantic shipbuilding industry and the establishment of a strong agricultural tradition sparked a period of great migration to the banks of the upper River Valley. Subsequent population growth created the need for an infrastructure which would support the rapidly changing region. [1] Transportation, communication, education, economy, and local government were established or improved to reflect the needs of the towns along the river. As more infrastructure developed, easing travel from cities and trade ports to new and open tracts of land, population in the River Valley continued to increase. Following the northern migration and promise of economic opportunity, tradesmen and artisans from Boston, Hartford, and New York began to settle there. Small villages such as Charlestown and Walpole became satellites of the bustling coastal cities of Exeter, Portsmouth, and Dover, New Hampshire. Some historians refer to such developments in these small but influential towns as “cosmopolitan,”[2] a term which implies both a relationship to, and a separation from, the urban centers of the Atlantic seaboard.

As populations grew in the northeast, settlements spread west of New Hampshire into Vermont and upstate New York. The western frontier of New England, which had for so long been defined by the Connecticut River, shifted even farther inland to west of the Hudson River. As a result, the demographics of towns along the Connecticut River began to change. No longer were western New Hampshire towns merely connected farmlands. No longer did River Valley landowners simply attend the same meetinghouse, outposts for White Pine contractors, or isolated mills and workshops as their neighbors out of convenience. These towns had evolved not into clusters of remote frontier settlements, but established communities with regional, national, and international connections.[3] Certainly they remained rural, but their agrarian roots which had been established for decades allowed them to retain a unique identity among New England communities.

Since earliest days of habitation, the Connecticut River had been the most effective and convenient way for people to travel. As the new American republic established itself during the last two decades of the eighteenth century, the newly founded States within the republic did the same. New Hampshire took advantage of the development on the western side of the state to incorporate federal and state-sanctioned improvements in transportation and communication. Maintained highways, federal mail delivery, and a variety of other advances took primary focus off the river and for the first time established a real land connection between the seacoast and inland communities of New Hampshire. Meanwhile, inter-state regulations continued work begun in the 1770s to improve transportation on the river itself.

Methods of travel along inland waterways were assessed for safety and practicality and evaluated for potential advances that could be made. In the last years of the eighteenth century, the upper Connecticut River became the focus of many such improvements.[4] Crossing the icy, rushing water was dangerous, even with an experienced ferryman as a guide. The river narrowed above Deerfield, Massachusetts, allowing a relatively simple answer for the problem of connecting the east and west banks. Beginning in the 1780s, bridges were commissioned by the New Hampshire General Court to safely carry people, animals and cargo over the Connecticut’s deep rapids. The General Court, as it had been called since its earliest establishment in the royal colonies, had acted through New Hampshire history as its largest governing body. After the American Revolution and subsequent reformation of state governments, the General Court became synonymous with the Legislative Branch of New Hampshire government. Similar to the process for land and ferry grants discussed in earlier chapters, the state General Court granted exclusive bridge privileges to those who petitioned.[5] Many of the bridges built between 1790 and 1820 were advertised as “toll bridges,” and as such required a small fee for use. The bridge built at Charlestown, New Hampshire in 1804 seemed to be a source of great pride for the engineer, as it was mentioned a number of times by Reverend Jeremy Belknap and in contemporary newspaper articles.[6] Bridges, whether they were built of wood or stone, were satisfyingly simple and permanent solutions for the people of the upper Connecticut River Valley.

The narrowing of the Connecticut River which proved beneficial to bridge construction had the opposite effect on the actual navigation of vessels up or downstream. Tight waterways were difficult to negotiate, as they often hid obstacles and varying depths of water. The Connecticut was particularly treacherous, as its narrows were known to drop in elevation, creating steep, rocky falls along the way. For a long period, the upper Connecticut River was under consideration for the installation of locks and inland canals. Locks would allow vessels to overcome the change in elevation, and would regulate the width and depth of narrows along the river. Canals would establish a network of interconnected bodies of water across northern New England, allowing faster, safer, and more direct transportation than navigation of its natural waterways. An article written for the Boston Commercial Gazette expresses one New Englander’s thoughts about the proposed projects:

“As it is in contemplation to remove the obstructions and make improvements in the navigations of the Connecticut River, so that the produce of the upper part of Newhampshire & the State of Vermont may be brought to market by that conveyance; it has been suggested that opening a passage from Buzzard’s bay to Barnstable bay would greatly facilitate the conveying that produce to Boston, where it is well known that grain and pork will find a better market than at Newyork. When these commodities have descended Connecticut River to its mouth, the difference between carrying them to Newyork and bringing them to Boston, by the proposed canal, will be so trifling that a prospect of a quicker sale and higher price at Boston will invariably determine the owners to come this way.”[7]

Beside concerns of practicality and safety of the locks, the author of the article seems most interested in promoting the further opening of the Atlantic market to inland goods. The proposed structural improvements of waterways in New Hampshire never took place. However, improvement of the river remained a priority as the General Courts of New England continued to grow and expand.

In the midst of the American Revolution, Abner Sanger wrote in his journal “I conceit that I hear great guns at Boston but it proves to be thunder.”[8] This short entry speaks to an image perhaps carried by many River Valley inhabitants that Boston, and the seacoast in general, was much closer in their minds than it proved to be geographically. If this perceived proximity to urban centers existed during years in which overland roads were nearly inaccessible, the feeling of closeness only grew as internal improvements were made to transportation and communication. The State appointed highway supervisors in each New Hampshire town. Road maintenance improved as a result, making travel easier for longer distances. Because the roads along the Connecticut River were narrow, steep, and “clayey,” a greater network of highways allowed travelers to bypass the most dangerous of these throughways. [9]

Increased movement of people, animals, raw materials, fine and manufactured goods, and communication between communities helped to enforce the need for constant upkeep of the inland roads. In 1792, eleven years after the establishment of the relatively local mail service by John Balch of Ashuelot, mail delivery in the Connecticut River Valley had been replaced by the creation of the United States General Post-Office.[10] The creation of a centralized means of communication signified a new era of contact between rural and urban regions of New England. However, there were many difficulties instituting such a large-scale operation. Although it was an improvement over the single post-rider system, delivery of the mail was still relatively localized. Therefore it was not always delivered in a timely or predictable manner. In 1796, the General Post-Office improved upon its delivery system in northern New England when a “mail stage” was established, allowing the transportation of mail from Hanover, New Hampshire, to Hartford, Connecticut. The Hanover to Hartford Mail Stage ran predictably—a loop every three days.[11] Standardization of communication and transportation across New Hampshire and New England made way for many other developments in the upper Connecticut River Valley, both physically and culturally.

Between 1790 and 1800, the population of the western region of New Hampshire increased two hundred percent.[12] As the population of the upper Connecticut River Valley grew and diversified, so did the structure of towns and communities. Of this change historian David Jaffee writes, “New England town settlement entered a new stage during the 1790s. Such communities as Walpole [NH] and Windsor [VT] coalesced at the town center, with stores and shops, merchants, artisans and professionals…Walpole was transformed by the commercial and cultural revolution that swept through the rural northern United States after the Revolution.”[13] The towns which had been established merely as places for farmers and woodsmen to congregate had made a transition from remote and rustic villages to “a region with a cluster of cosmopolitan towns.”[14] The Connecticut River Valley was quickly becoming the heart of culture in inland northern New England.

Agrarianism continued to dominate the region, despite the market revolution taking place in other parts of the northern United States. David Jaffee defines the market revolution of this period as “a constellation of incremental changes occurring at different rates in different communities rather than a single cataclysmic event, but it entered into every facet of life.”[15] Building on the rural desire for fine and imported goods that had emerged in the years after the American Revolution, the turn of the century brought the material delicacies of a well-established society in the upper River Valley.  Development of infrastructure and evolution of industry in the upper Connecticut River Valley and the United States as a whole hardly changed the economic system of the region. Bartering was still a fully acceptable way to procure goods, regardless of the decorative or practical nature of the item.

As western New Hampshire became more developed, farms matured and began to produce a larger surplus of goods. Historian Christopher Clark states that this was not the result of a new form of economy in the region “but an extension of subsistence-surplus production.”[16] The people of the River Valley continued to ship their produce downriver to Boston, New York, and Hartford. In exchange for barley, flax, rye, sheep, pigs, and lumber, they were still able to obtain the imported goods that had been essential to their rural subsistence for decades.[17] The larger surplus of trade goods ushered in by the nineteenth century allowed New Hampshirites to reach even farther across trade networks to obtain non-essential and luxury items. This duality of refined goods and agrarian living was what made the culture of the upper Connecticut River Valley a remarkable part of New England.

Regional and national improvements in transportation and communication allowed rural craftsmen to more efficiently advertise their goods in urban areas and vice versa. When an order was filled, the item could be transported from the manufacturer to the customer with relative ease. By the turn of the century, beautifully made products from western New Hampshire craftspeople had joined the steady stream of natural materials, agricultural produce, and surplus homespun goods that were being brought to market. Formally trained artisans based in Boston, New York, Hartford, and Springfield, recognized the valuable resources of the upper Connecticut River Valley. Many traveled upriver to join the emerging culture of local craftspeople and artists, bringing with them the ability to handcraft fine goods without having to wait for the shipment of materials. Painters, cabinetmakers, clockmakers, cloth makers and globe makers established shops in the towns along the Connecticut and began to contribute to the material wealth and culture of western New Hampshire.[18]

The influx of artisans and merchants to the River Valley at the turn of the century had brought with them new, urban living standards and a taste for the decorative arts. Fine manufactured goods from New England cities, and imported goods from England, France, the West Indies, and Asia became more common than ever before. One advertisement written by a Keene merchant asserts that “a generous price will be given in English and West-India Goods” for anyone wishing to barter.[19] Christopher Clark writes that by the year 1800, an estimated twenty-five percent of goods in use in rural regions of New England were crafted “outside their localities.”[20] International goods, such as silk, muslin, chintz, ribbon, bonnets, chocolate, fine wines, parasols, sugar, gloves, and fringed shawls were advertised by nearly every merchant as items of style, not necessity.

As life in the Connecticut River Valley progressed into the early nineteenth century, it became a society that seemed to lead a double life. Still a rural society based on the exchange of agricultural surplus, the River Valley people continued to subsist in much the same way that they had always done. But as New England communities began to invest in new infrastructure and economy toward the end of the eighteenth century, many rural families began to specialize in producing one craft or commodity for market to maximize their income. According to some economic historians this new way of goods production was a predecessor to the heavy industrialization that dominated the New England economy in the nineteenth century.[21]

This streamlining of production did in some cases result in semi-industrial ventures in New England, such as the manufacture of fine linen by the Irish community of Londonderry, New Hampshire, or the processing of iron in Kent, Connecticut.[22] However, industrial development seems to have grown strongest along the lower Connecticut River in western Massachusetts. In the upper Connecticut River Valley, production of a single commodity more frequently appeared to have taken the form of a craft or an art. A great example of this is seen in the Dunlap family of New Hampshire. Samuel Dunlap and his apprentices crafted high chests and sideboards in a manner distinctive of northern New England craftsmen. Many of the pieces produced by Dunlap and his apprentices were used throughout New England by a diverse population.[23] Thus self-taught craftsmen and artisans began to emerge along the upper Connecticut River, producing goods for both a uniquely local audience and a more diverse market.

Southern and eastern portions of New England industrialized with waterpower-generated mills and urban workforces, but the upper Connecticut River Valley society remained centered around agriculture and local handicraft. By the early years of the nineteenth century, the merchants and artisans of the upper Connecticut River Valley had merged into a new social class. This class was no wealthier than that of the farmers and agrarian laborers of the River Valley, but it was innately different. While farmers’ wealth could be measured in land holdings, yearly produce, livestock, and “homespun” goods, merchants and artisans showed their wealth in a material sense. The merchant class did not possess the land or resources to subsist the same way as woodsmen and farming families. Their shops were located in the small town centers for the convenience of rural patrons. As they had been late settlers in the area, their landholdings were limited to the plots which had not been claimed by farmers and their sons. This restricted them to small, in-town properties.[24] Merchants and artisans could measure their wealth in the stock of goods in their shops, the coins and banknotes in their purses, and the non-essentials and luxury items in their homes. But differences in material wealth had little to do with the life and culture of the Connecticut River Valley people. Both townspeople and homesteaders relied on the products of farm life to get through the winter.

In the early 1790s Walpole became the first community in the western part of the state to acquire a printing press. Previous to the installation of the printing press in Walpole local, national, and international news was printed in the New-Hampshire Mercury of Dover, the New-Hampshire Gazette of Portsmouth, and the Boston Gazette of Massachusetts. None of these publications were delivered to the Connecticut Valley on a consistent and timely basis, thus the majority of information about current events was brought by merchants or travelers.[25] The possibilities that the printing press offered—such as the ability to print local news as it happened or the publication of advertisements—revolutionized the way that River Valley people communicated. Local newspapers made their way from one town to the next, connecting communities and building a sense of regional identity among River Valley people.

The turn of the century transition from agricultural hamlet to sophisticated town is reflected in the title of Isaiah Thomas and David Carlisle, and later Joseph Dennie’s The New Hampshire Journal and Farmers’ Museum, a publication which received great acclaim as “one of the most famous literary-bohemian clubs of the time.”[26] The Farmers’ Museum printed local and national news as well as interest pieces, letters, and philosophical essays for the enrichment of River Valley society. Other publications based in towns along the upper Connecticut River Valley soon followed; the New Hampshire Gazette, renamed The Keene Sentinel, in 1799, eventually became one of the longest-running newspapers in the country. Some historians credit the establishment of a local print culture with much of the rapid expansion of the upper Connecticut River Valley after 1800. This could very well be, as printed word represented much more than just a medium for information and entertainment.

Literature became more common in the upper Connecticut River Valley as a result of the Walpole printing press, as did the institutionalization of literary academies. In 1769, Dartmouth College was established in Hanover, New Hampshire, and became the first school on the western side of New Hampshire. Two decades later, the tradition of institutionalized education continued when Charlestown resident Lemuel Hedge established a Literary Academy in 1791. The drive behind its founding must have been strong and the resources plentiful to offer such an establishment outside of an urban area. Young people’s academies were more likely to be in Boston, Dover, Springfield, New York, or Hartford. This rurally located school was unusual in more than just this; the academy acted not only as a boarding school for young men from all across the State, but as a public school for Charlestown residents.[27] That the school served pupils in both a private and public context spoke to the evolution of education in rural areas. Dartmouth College had been established earlier in the century for the original purpose of educating and anglicizing the Native American population of the region. However, as communities developed, culture grew, and educational resources became more readily available, schools adjusted their systems and structures to match.[28]

Though it remained a mere pinpoint on the map of the anglicized world, the Connecticut River Valley of New Hampshire continued to grow and prosper throughout the nineteenth century. As the United States expanded its territory, improved its infrastructure, revolutionized its economy, and gained a national identity, western New Hampshire solidified its own regional identity. The upper Connecticut River Valley was a place of fertility and production in both a physical and intellectual sense. The “cosmopolitanism” which came to describe it resulted from the cultivation of regional, national, and international goods and ideas which had been planted there. The distinctive forms of literature, art, education, infrastructure, and trade which emerged along the freshets of the Connecticut allowed local and non-local cultures to come together in one place and society. Despite its far-reaching networks of trade and communication and the culture which developed as a result, the upper Connecticut River Valley remained true to its original identity as a community deeply connected to the land.

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[1] Roberts, ‘Pines, Profits, and Popular Politics,’ 96.

[2] Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods.

[3] Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods.

[4] Belknap, The History of New Hampshire Vol II.

[5] Nathaniel Parker, ‘State of New Hampshire’ (Amherst, 14 June 1794).

[6] Belknap, The History of New Hampshire Vol II, 59-60.

[7] ‘Barnstable and Buzzard’s Bay Canal,’ Medley (New Bedford, Massachusetts, February 1797).

[8] Sanger, Very Poor and of a Lo Make, 57.

[9] Belknap, The History of New Hampshire Vol II, 59-60.

[10] ‘General Post-Office,’ Vermont Journal (Windsor, Vermont, 15 May 1792).

[11] Reuben Sikes, Calvin Munn, and Samuel Dickenson, ‘Hartford and Hanover Mail Stage: On the West side of the Connecticut River’ (March 1796).

[12] Roth, The Democratic Dilemma, 16.

[13] Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods, 124-125.

[14] Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods, 106.

[15] Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods, 56.

[16] Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 84.

[17] Belknap, The History of New Hampshire Vol II, 153.

[18] Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods, 62-106.

[19] The New Hampshire Recorder (21 August 1787).

[20] Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism, 28.

[21] Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism.

[22] Sanger, Very Poor and of a Lo Make, 215.

[23] New Hampshire Historical Society Collections (Concord, NH: March 2012).

[24] Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods, 56.

[25] Sanger, Very Poor and of a Lo Make.

[26] Roberts, Historic Towns of the Connecticut River Valley, 429.

[27] Belknap, The History of New Hampshire Vol II.

[28] Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods, 68-73.