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Moultonborough NH

Fame, Fortune, Fire and Brimstone: The Legend of Jonathan Moulton

In 1763, Jonathan Moulton of Hampton, N.H., took his prize oxen north to Portsmouth, N.H. He decorated the impressive 1,400-pound animal with a flag across his horns. It was a gift for colonial Governor Benning Wentworth.

No, Moulton insisted, he could take no payment for the animal. It was a tribute. But he would, if the governor insisted, accept a grant of land. In addition to what is now Center Harbor and Moultonbough (named in Moulton’s honor), perhaps the governor would like to give him additional property. The governor assented and gave him the property now known as New Hampton.

Yet 20 years later, Moulton – a master at ingratiating himself with those in power – would have changed loyalties and led a brigade of soldiers in the Revolutionary War. First he guarded Hampton and later supported the Continental Army at the Battle of Saratoga.

Jonathan Moulton

Portrait of Robert Rogers

Moulton maintained his presence as a Hampton political leader from early youth to his death in 1787. Few men managed to straddle the politics of the age as well as Moulton. And few men were as reviled.

Born in 1726, Moulton came into life with little. He was indentured into labor to a cabinet maker as a child. But he soon showed a passion for business. And by adulthood, historians considered him the wealthiest man in Hampton.

Even his critics agreed he worked hard to get his start in life. New Hampshire Senator William Plumer noted in his diaries:

“By his unwearied attention in buying and selling small articles, he soon became an extensive dealer in English and West India goods. The property that he obtained from a valuable ship wrecked on Hampton Beach, gave him increased credit and business.”

The 1764 shipwreck was a considerable bone of contention. Moulton managed to seize most of the goods from the ship Saint George, which wrecked in Hampton, and used the sheriff to keep other would-be scavengers at bay.

Owner of mansions and slaves, Moulton had procured his business success at an early age. His political success stemmed from his military service in the French and Indian War, where he fought with the likes of legendary New Hampshire general Robert Rogers. He fought ruthlessly against the Indians and rose to the rank of colonel and later general. According to one story, he chased the last member of an Indian party he had routed on the frozen shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. Seeing the retreating Indian headed out onto the ice, Moulton loosed his dog on the man to finish him off.

Seeing Opportunities

During the wars he discovered the opportunities for land development in central New Hampshire. He sought and received extensive grants of land in the New Hampshire interior in thanks for his service to England in the wars.

In business, Moulton was a ruthless as he was in war.

Plumer wrote of him: “The instances of his fraud and deceit, injustice and oppression are numerous; he has reduced many families from affluence to beggary. For 20 years he has been a constant suitor in the courts of law, where he has often attempted to corrupt judges, bribe jurors, suborn witnesses, and seduce the counsel employed by his opponents. I have evidence of his conveying a right of land to a judge who was to decide the title to that and all the other lands that he claimed in that township. The fact was discovered, and the judge never decided the case. I know an instance of his making liberal promises to an influential juryman.”

Despite his questionable business practices, Moulton served as Hampton’s town moderator and representative to the legislature for many years. When President George Washington made his way to New Hampshire on his celebratory tour to thank his supporters, he stopped at Moulton’s home to pay his respects. But Moulton had already died.

Barnburner

Jonathan Moulton steamrolled most people he met in court. Not so with Jonathan Swett, his neighbor and fellow veteran from the French and Indian War. When Swett and Moulton tangled in court, Moulton won. But in following years Moulton’s barn would be burned down four times. Though he suspected his neighbor started the fires, Moulton could never make a case stick.

By the end of his life, Moulton complained that he could no longer get justice in the courts. Unable to sell his 80,000 acres of lane, he overextended himself and his debtors were driving him into poverty. His political allies wouldn’t help. And as Plumer pointed out, it may simply have been that he had cheated so many people he could no longer get a jury to side with him.

Plumer recalled that at the time of his death, Moulton was reviled:

“It was in the later marsh season. September 18, 1787, and the haymakers were working on the extensive salt marshes between Hampton village and the Merrimack River. My grandfather, who remembered it well, assured me that the news of Moulton’s death ran across the meadows as fast as a bird can fly, repeated from one gang of rakers to another. — “The old devil’s dead!” Perhaps his memory has suffered unjustly, but such was the fact.”

Legends of Jonathan Moulton

Moulton died and was buried in an unmarked grave. But his legend was just getting started. In the years that followed three legends arose about him.

The first legend held that Moulton got his wealth by selling is soul to the devil. In the story, Moulton made a deal that the devil would fill a boot with gold for him each month that he lived. Moulton procured the largest boot in the state of New Hampshire for the purpose, and when that proved inadequate he cut the sole out of the boot and placed it on the floor over the top of a hole he bored into the room below, thereby tricking the devil into filling the room with gold.
Suspicious gossipers said that after his burial, someone opened his coffin and found no body. The devil took it and replaced it with gold coins.
The third and final legend held that Moulton was so cheap he stripped his first wife of her wedding ring upon her death from smallpox. He later gave it to his second bride. But one night the ghost of his first wife returned to his home to reclaim her ring from the new wife.

This last legend was immortalized by the writer John Greenleaf Whittier in The New Wife and The Old. For more about Jonathan Moulton, visit Hampton’s Lane Memorial Library’s page dedicated to his story. This story was updated in 2022.

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6 of the Oldest General Stores in New England

General stores had their heyday between 1820 and 1860, when income was rising and the population was growing. Like the Hope General Store, they generally stood at crossroads. They were informal, though some might say bare bones, with bare wood floors, a hodgepodge of goods along wooden shelves, a cat cuddled up by the stove, and smells of apples, cheese, coffee and tobacco.

General stores served as centers of town life, where regular customers exchanged gossip and opinions. The storekeeper often doubled as postmaster and provided a link to the outside world. He likely educated himself from the books and magazines he carried and from his buying trips to big cities. The townspeople generally respected him.

Dozens of the old general stores survive in New England. Visitors often comment they remind them of a Norman Rockwell painting, with a smell of apples and coffee.

General stores have experienced something of a revival. The Wall Street Journal called them ‘one part country store, one part concept shop’ with a personal take on merchandise and serving as an informal community center.

The exact age of a general store is often hard to determine. Records are sketchy and claims sometimes exaggerated. And one general store that dates to 1788 – Gray’s, in Little Compton, Rhode Island – has an uncertain status. It closed in 2012 when its owner died, but then reopened as an antiques shop.

If you know of any great old general stores in New England, please add it to our comment section.

Colebrook Store

The Colebrook Store

The Colebrook Store is the oldest continuously operating general store in Connecticut. Founded in 1812, it operated until 2007, when it closed down. In December 2014 it reopened under the new management of Jodi Marinelli.

The store is just a stone’s throw from Town Hall in the center of Colebrook, a town in Litchfield Country. It was owned by Martin and Solomon Rockwell, one of the founding families of Colebrook. Julius Rockwell became a judge and, in 1854, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. The Rockwells also built the Colebrook Inn, which houses town offices and the historical society.

The Colebrook Store changed hands several times. In July 2007, owner Lora Murphy put out a sign that said, ‘closed for vacation.’ She never reopened.

In 2003, the Colebrook Preservation Society bought the building for $85,000. Five years later, Marinelli signed a lease on the building and moved with her family into the second floor above the store. Today the store serves breakfast and lunch, and sells groceries, candy, baked goods and knick knacks.

It’s located at 559 Colebrook Road in Colebrook, Conn.

Hope General Store

At the Hope General Store you can get much of what you need and learn most of what’s going on in the small farming community of Hope, Maine.

The store sits at the crossroads at the center of town, just outside of Camden. There’s a blacksmith across the street and a carpenter next door. Built in 1832, it’s been a Grange hall, an antique store, and a post office.

The closing of the store in the late 1990s left a hole in the town, but a new owner brought it back to life as a year-round business. In 2014, another new owner put in new heating and cooling systems and a generator, but kept the small town magic of the store. An updated menu features sandwiches made with brie and caramelized onion, and the beverage selection runs from champagne to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Also for sale: the requisite penny candy, maple syrup, candles, and local honey.

The Hope General Store is at 449 Camden Rd., Hope, Maine.

Davolls General Store

Davoll’s General Store

Davolls is at the mercantile center of the Russells Mills historic district in Dartmouth, Mass., down the road from the fire station. Its owners included a series of prominent Dartmouth families: Howland, Russell, Allen, Slocum, Tucker.

William Howland bought the building in 1792, and opened a general goods shop. In the latter half of the 19th century it was known as Slocum’s until the Davoll family bought it in the early 20th century. Wilfred and Virginia Morrison and their daughter Beverly bought it in 1974. Wilfred told the New Bedford Standard Times, “We stand around and solve all the problems of the world.”

The family sold the store in 2016 to Kim Arruda and Jim Chouinard. The couple then spent a year and a half renovating it. They found boat knees and a felt hat from the nineteenth century inside the walls of the old building. Today they sell penny candy, maple syrup, bread, jewelry and beach towels – among other things — from the freshly painted store right next to the Wild Honey Café.

Davoll’s is at 1228 Russell’s Mills Road, Dartmouth, Mass.

Old Country Store and Museum

The Old Country Store and Museum is on the far right

The Old Country Store and Museum in Moultonborough in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region may be the oldest general store in the country. The Holden family, which runs the historic store, has records dating to 1781. It has also been home to a library and the post office. Town Meetings used to be held at the store.

Town founder Jonathan Moulton was deeded the land on which the store stands for his service in the American Revolution. He sold it to Samuel Burnham, ‘with barn frame thereon,’ in 1777, who sold it in 1779 to a trader named George Freese. Records show Bradbury Richardson worked for Freese in exchange for goods in 1781. A map of New Hampshire printed in 1784 shows the store as the only building in that part of Moultonborough.

Today it’s a Lakes Region tourist attraction. A wooden Indian stands guard at the entrance to the store chockablock with merchandise: bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, bomber hats, t-shirts, shoes, candles, cookware, maple syrup and toys.

The Old Country Store and Museum is at 1011 Whittier Highway, Moultonborough, N.H.

Brown & Hopkins Country Store

“A Destination for Generations,” boasts the owner of the Brown & Hopkins Country Store. She is named neither Brown nor Hopkins, but Elizabeth Yuill, and she bought the store in 2004.

Located on Putnam Pike, which runs through the village of Chepachet in Glocester, R.I., the store is crammed with primitive country wares. It also features a penny candy display on a 24-foot pine checkout counter from the nineteenth century.

A Timothy Wilmarth built the wooden building, now painted green, as a home and a hattery. It became a general store in 1809 when Ira Evans bought it, and it’s been one without interruption ever since.

Mr. Brown and Mr. Hopkins (James and William) gave the store its present name when they bought it in 1921. For years they sold utilitarian items like brooms, long underwear, rifles and coffee.

Then in the 1970s, country decorating became the rage and the store went into the business with a vengeance. It still sells reproduction country furniture and accessories, as well as clothing, local foods, a grab-and-go café, and, of course, candles.

1179 Putnam Pike, Chepachet, R.I.

Dorset Union Store

Dorset Union Store

On the outside, the Dorset Union Store looks the same as it did in 1816, the year it opened. And it still has the same bell above the door that announces customers, the way it did two centuries ago.

The store presides over Dorset Green in the center of the town, which overlooks the Taconic Mountains. Not surprisingly, the Dorset Union store belongs to the Dorset Historic District, notable for its uniform white clapboard buildings. Some of the sidewalks are made of marble from the nearby quarries.

During a hiatus from 1955 to 2007, the store was called Peltiers, but new owners restored the original name. They also expanded the wine room and added a bakery and deli. You can buy fresh produce as well as Vermont products at the store, or grab a sandwich and eat outside at a picnic table on the green.

Dorset Union Store, 31 Church St., Dorset, Vt .

Photos: Colebrook Store By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/GCDOUGHERTY/connecticut/national_register/colebrook_center.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29560503;Davolls General Store By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimeadia.org/w/index.php?curid=9112639; Dorset Union Store and Brown & Hopkins Country Store courtesy Google Maps.

This story about general stores was updated in 2022.

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6 Hollywood Stars Buried in New England

New England may be associated more with summer stock theatre than the silver screen, but it didn’t take much to find 6 Hollywood stars buried in 6 New England states.

Plenty of films have been shot in the region, many of them classics. That’s not why our stars were laid to rest here. Each had a profound attachment to the place. Some were born and raised here, others fell in love with the mountains or seashore.

Here, then, are 6 Hollywood stars buried in New England.

Katharine Hepburn

The Academy Award winning actress was born in Hartford, Conn., into a privileged and liberal family. Her mother, Katharine Houghton Hepburn, brought her daughter to women’s rights protests and demonstrations.

In 1928, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College, where she got interested in the theater. After graduation she struggled on stage, including a summer in Ivoryton, Conn., at the Ivoryton Playhouse. Her breakthrough role came in The Warrior’s Husband, which led to her first film, Bill of Divorcement, directed by George Cukor.

She appeared in 10 more Cukor films, including such classics as Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike. In the last two films, she starred with her secret lover of 26 years, Spencer Tracy.

She won an Oscar for Best Actress in Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond.

Hepburn always kept close ties to Connecticut, frequently visiting her family’s summer home in the Fenwick section of Old Saybrook. When the 1938 hurricane washed the house away, she dug the family silver out of the sand and rebuilt it. She used a set of building blocks from FAO Schwartz to design the new house.

In 1965 she narrated a documentary about pollution of the Connecticut River, called The Long Tidal River.

She spent her last years at the Fenwick home, taking a daily swim regardless of the weather. Hepburn died there in 2003 at the age of 96. She was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, designed by Jacob Weidenmann, who also designed Bushnell Park. A simple gravestone reads ‘Katharine Houghton Hepburn, 1907-2003.’

Plenty of other movie stars rest in peace in Connecticut, including Jason Robards, Jr., Art Carney, Mary Tyler Moore, Patricia Neal, Frederick March, Raymond Massey and Gilda Radner, to name a few.

Rudy Vallee

His parents named him Hubert Prior Vallee when he was born on July 28, 1901 in Island Pond, Vt. He kept the Vallee, but swapped out Hubert to become Rudy, the name of a popular saxophone player.

Rudy Vallee was raised in Westbrook, Maine, where his father worked as a pharmacist. After an aborted attempt to enlist in the Navy during World War I – he was sent home because he was only 15 – Vallee went on to college at the University of Maine and then transferred to Yale.

He signed a recording contract in 1928, and his career took him from a crooning teen idol in the 1920s to a character actor on a campy television series in the 1960s. Vallee launched his film career with Vagabond Lover in 1929.

He claimed to have slept with more than 145 women, and he married four of them. He was a tyrant to work with, starting fistfights with people he didn’t like. Few who worked for him could stand him, and he had few friendships in the entertainment business.

In 1961, he finally took his talents to Broadway. He conquered the Great White Way in the hit musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and he played Lord Marmaduke Ffogg in the show Batman.

A bit of Vallee always remained in Maine. Though he lived in California, he maintained a summer home at Kezar Lake. He also composed the University of Maine fight song, the Stein Song.

Rudy Vallee is buried in Saint Hyacinth Catholic Cemetery in Westbrook, Maine. His family had to replace his gravestone after someone stole it.

Gary Moore and Garry Merrill are also buried in Maine.

John Belushi

In 1974, John Belushi and Judith Jacklin, his high-school sweetheart from suburban Chicago, visited Martha’s Vineyard for the first time. Still in his early 20s, he had a part in National Lampoon’s off-Broadway revue Lemmings in New York. He and Judith drove up to New England for a vacation.

They fell in love with Martha’s Vineyard. One year after that first visit, he rocketed to fame on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. His wild comic characters included Bluto Blutarski, in Animal House, Blues Brother Joliet Jake Blues, Samurai Futaba, Pete, the counter guy at the Olympia Café (‘Cheezborger, Cheezborger’), Joe Cocker and the Killer Bee.

In the summers of 1977 and 1978, the Belushis rented houses on the Vineyard. Then they bought a house in Chilmark from former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. “This is where I like being me,” John Belushi once said.

He died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles in 1982 at the age of 33 and buried in Abel’s Hill Cemetery on the Vineyard. He wanted a Viking funeral, but his mother wouldn’t allow it.

His gravestone reads, “I may be gone, but Rock and Roll lives on.” After his fans trashed the gravesite, Judith had his body be moved to an unmarked grave some distance from the tombstone.

Also buried in Massachusetts: Thelma Todd and Anne Revere.

Claude Rains

Claude Rains, one of the great character actors of Hollywood’s golden age, was laid to rest next to the last of his six wives, Rosemary Clark Schrode.

They are buried in Red Hill Cemetery in Moultonborough, a small town on the north shore of Lake Winnipesaukee.

He was born in London, England, in 1889, the son of a stage actor. He first appeared on stage at age 11, and continued his acting career in New York in 1913.

Eventually he made his way to Hollywood. He was nominated four times for an Academy Award, but never won. Rains played the title role in The Invisible Man, the corrupt police chief in Casablanca, a spy in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. He failed his screen test, though, for Katharine Hepburn’s first film, Bill of Divorcement.

Claude Rains spent his last years in a country house in Sandwich, N.H., a big white place with columns in front. He was introduced to the area when he and his fourth wife brought their daughter to summer camp in New Hampshire.

Rains already had a house in Pennsylvania, but after regular visits to friends at Squam Lake he bought the Sandwich house in 1963. Rosemary died soon after. Rains died of an an abdominal hemorrhage in Laconia on 30 May 1967, aged 77. He designed his own tombstone in Red Hill Cemetery in Moultonborough. It reads, “”All things once are things forever, Soul, once living, lives forever.”

Also buried in New Hampshire: Tammy Grimes.

Anthony Quinn

Quinn in Attila

Anthony Quinn was born in 1915 in Mexico and grew up in East Los Angeles. He fathered 13 children and starred in 100 feature films, including the Bedouin leader in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 and the title role in the 1964 film Zorba the Greek.

Quinn won two Oscars, one for his performance the 1952 film Viva Zapata! and another for the 1956 drama Lust for Life. He was nominated for two more, Wild is the Wind and Alex Zorbas.

Quinn fathered 13 children and lived around the world, but spent his last years in Bristol, R.I. He bought a 10-acre compound on Poppasquash Neck with views of Narragansett and Mt. Hope Bays. He and his family lived on the estate from 1995 until 2001.

Quinn explained in an interview with Larry King why he moved to Rhode Island: “I went up there because — in New York, it was very difficult for me to live, and New York is a very competitive town, and I got tired of competition.”

He died in 2001 of throat cancer. His funeral service was held at the First Baptist Church in America in Providence. His widow asked the Town of Bristol for permission to bury him on his property. Her wish was granted.

Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky in 1921 in Pennsylvania coal country north of Johnstown. He was the 11^th of 15 children in a family of Lithuanian coal miners.

Bronson followed his family into the mines until World War II, when he enlisted in the Army Air Force. He served as a tail gunner on B-29 bombers in the Pacific, flying 25 missions, and getting wounded in action.

After the war, Bronson went to art school on the GI Bill in Philadelphia. He decided he wanted to act after working as a set designer, and moved to Pasadena, Calif. He appeared in bit parts as a tough guy, gangster or Indian, until his breakthrough film, The Magnificent Seven.

Bronson then appeared in The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen, next to Elvis Presley in Kid Galahad and in television roles. He made his most famous film, Death Wish, in 1974.

Charles Bronson starred in 14 films with his second wife, Jill Ireland, who died of breast cancer in 1990. They had seven children, who traveled with them to film locations. The family also vacationed at their colonial farmhouse in West Windsor, Vt., called Zuleika Farm. Ireland raised horses there and trained them for their daughter, Zuleika.

Bronson then married Kim Weeks, and stayed married from 1998 to his death from Alzheimer’s and pneumonia in 2003. He is buried in Brownsville Cemetery in West Windsor.

Engraved on his tombstone is the poem Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye.

Photos: Katharine Hepburn gravestone, By Bunkosquad – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16637740; John Belushi, By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43755377. This story was updated in 2023. Brownsville Cemetery (Charles Bronson superimposed) By Djmaschek – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80171222.

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