Tag:

Salisbury NH

Old Home Days: Frank Rollins, the New Hampshire Man Who Invented Them

June marks the start of Old Home Days season not just in New England, but throughout the United States, in Canada and Australia. The birth of the celebration can be traced to one man: Frank Rollins. He set in motion the first Old Home Days – 44 of them, all in New Hampshire – in 1899.

Canaan, N.H., decked out for Old Home Days.

Frank Rollins was born into a prominent political family in New Hampshire. His father, a railroad executive, had served in the New Hampshire Senate and then won election to the U.S. Senate. Frank also won election to the state Senate and then as governor in 1898. He also worked with John Wingate Weeks on writing the National Forest Act.

Rollins worried, as well, about the decline of the state’s rural communities because people began to move away.

They’dd begun to move a lot in 19^th century New England. Yankees went west, looking for better land and warmer climate, or they went to work for the mills in the cities. Newcomers from Europe also arrived seeking work. It was a big change from the settled population patterns of the previous centuries.

Frank Rollins

Farms were abandoned and rural towns started to look shabby. One New Hampshire farmer urged his neighbors not to move west: “Had you not better be content to keep and improve the old homestead, so near the school house where you can hear the church bell and where you can enjoy the association of good neighbors?”

Rollins, New Hampshire’s governor from 1899-1901, encouraged people to buy old farms, spruce them up and use them as summer homes. He encouraged town centers to get facelifts with new monuments and renovated municipal buildings.

Rollins had an interest in promoting investment: He and his father, Edward H. Rollins, had started a banking house. It then became one of the largest in the United States until the crash of 1929.

Old Home Days

In 1897, Rollins broached the idea of Old Home Week:

“I wish that in the ear of every son and daughter of New Hampshire, in the summer days, might be heard whispered the persuasive words: Come back, come back!” he wrote in 1897.

“Do you not hear the call? What has become of the old home where you were born?…Do you not remember it — the old farm back among the hills, with its rambling buildings, its well-sweep casting its long shadows, the row of stiff poplar trees, the lilacs and the willows?”

He founded an Old Home Week Association, and presided over the state’s first homecoming as governor.

In 1899, 44 New Hampshire towns held Old Home Week celebrations during the last week in August.

“They celebrated with bands and bonfires, parades and poetry, dances and dinners, and statesmen and speeches,” wrote Gary Crooker, in New Hampshire Old Home Celebrations.

Old Home Days in Newmarket, N.H.

The first Old Home Day in Concord on Aug. 31, 1899 ended with a 53-part fireworks show. Each part had a theme, such as No. 22 Design Portrait of Admiral Dewey, the hero of Manilla, No. 45 Starry Flags and No. 52, Aladdin Jeweled Trees.

Notable Days

At other notable celebrations:

Rollins came to Woodstock’s Old Home Day and 100th anniversary celebration in 1900. An 1812 cannon was fired from Sunset Hill.
Rollins also attended Mont Vernon’s Old Home Day in 1900, which featured a performance of the Tobasco Banjo, Mandolin and Guitar Club of Lowell, Mass.
In 1913, Fitzwilliam held an Old Home Day party in mid-August. The invitation included a poem about the ‘latch string,’ a term often used in Old Home celebrations. Putting the latch string out meant ‘welcome.’
Brookline celebrated Rural Free Delivery and Uncle Sam (who came from nearby Mason) in its 1921 Old Home Day celebration.
In 1933, Swanzey celebrated its bicentennial with a mile-long parade featuring 49 floats.
In 1936, Salisbury celebrated Old Home Day with a baseball game between the Sand Crabs and the Sand Fleas in a ‘Little World Series.’

Old Home Days Catches On

Maine and Vermont adopted Old Home days in 1901, and soon Massachusetts and Connecticut followed. By 1907, the custom spread to New York, Ohio, Alabama, Virginia, North Caroline, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and onto Nova Scotia, Ontario and Australia.

Bradford, Vt., readies for Old Home Days.

Old Oaken Bucket

Old Home Days included parades, church services, reunions, band concerts and poetry – lots of it. Come Home to Your Mother was typical, describing, “the pond where you skated, the lake where you fish’d and the great elm shadows, where you swung all you wished.”

Poets described the vanished farm, the ticking of the old clock, the flowers in the yard, the old oaken bucket, the fleecy clouds, the granite mountains and the omnipresent latchkey.

There was even an Old Home Week songbook. In 1906, one observer wrote, “In every New England town observing the festival the local poet has been burning the midnight oil so assiduously that it is no wonder the price of kerosene has been advanced a cent or so a gallon.”

After the world wars, Old Home Week celebrated the return of the men and women who fought. Then eventually Old Home Week season spread out from June until September.

This story was updated in 2022.

4 comments 795 views

When Daniel Webster Freed the Slaves

Daniel Webster was one of those politicians who embraced the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which allowed for the return of escaped slaves from free states back to the South. But in his personal life, Daniel Webster freed the slaves.

Webster, born in Salisbury, N.H., represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate. He became a symbol of the fence-sitting about slavery that infuriated abolitionists. Webster‘s compromise efforts to preserve the Union, the most prescient of them said, were futile as well as immoral.

Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster Freed the Slaves

In his personal life, Webster was more decisive on the issue of slavery. He employed a young woman in his Washington residence, Monica McCarty, as his cook. McCarty was a slave who was owned by Judge William Cranch, of Weymouth, Mass. Cranch, a cousin of Abigail Adams, served as chief judge of the federal court in Washington, D.C.

Webster told Cranch that McCarty was an excellent cook. Her duck, soft-shelled crabs, and other seafood dishes were celebrated throughout Washington society.

William Cranch

When Cranch offered to sell McCarty to Webster, he recoiled at the idea of ever owning another person. He did, however, agree to purchase her freedom for a total of $600.

Webster and McCarty agreed she would repay Webster the cost from her earnings. However, the soft-hearted Webster most likely never collected. When he died, McCarty had $2,000 in an account established for her, but Webster never asked her to repay him.

McCarty was just one of several slaves that Webster personally liberated. He paid to free Henry Pleasants, who Webster employed as a servant. Pleasants and Webster’s son Edward went on to become fast friends for life. And in another case, Webster helped Ann Bean, his housekeeper, free her husband. Bean was free, but her husband was not.

Paul Jennings

When Bean was close to having set aside the $1,500 needed, Webster agreed to supplement whatever she had saved in order to win his freedom.

Paul Jennings

And in another case, he discreetly loaned Paul Jennings $120 so he could buy his freedom from former first lady Dolley Madison. Webster had known Jennings from his days when he was the personal servant of President Madison in the White House.

Jennings would go on to assist in the escape of 77 slaves to the north aboard the ship Pearl, according to the book, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons. And he would write his own memoir, A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison.

Webster famously struggled with money throughout his life. Little wonder with him throwing it around the way he did.

This story was updated in 2022.

0 comment 799 views

Ezekiel Straw, The Good Boss of the Amoskeag Millyard

Ezekiel Straw was an unusual mill agent – unusual in a good way. He led the growth of the Amoskeag Millyard and gave Manchester, N.H., the look it still has today. His workers even seemed to like him.

Straw had begun working for the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company when it was a small, but prosperous, textile maker. During his lifetime he developed Amoskeag into a manufacturing powerhouse and Manchester into a city. He influenced the design of the city’s broad avenues and squares, its workers’ row houses and parks. A contemporary called him, “the ablest man in New Hampshire.”

As mill agent, Straw practiced a benevolent paternalism that won him loyalty and respect. When he retired in 1879, William Amory, company treasurer, paid him a tribute accepted by the directors:

[H]is sanguine, sunny temperament and hopeful nature…inspired confidence and infused a healthful spirit of encouragement amongst all of his subordinates.

Ezekiel Straw

He was born on Dec. 30, 1819, in Salisbury, N.H. Straw’s family moved to Lowell, Mass., when he was a young boy, as his father went to work for the Appleton Manufacturing Co. After studying mathematics at Phillips Andover Academy, Ezekiel Straw got a temporary job as a substitute for an ill civil engineer in the fledgling Amoskeag Manufacturing Co.

It was the summer of 1838, the year Manchester was founded. Straw was 18 years old. Not only would the job become permanent, but Ezekiel, his son and grandson would become much-admired agents, or general managers, of the Amoskeag mills. Amoskeag had only six mill agents during its entire history.

In the early days, the New England mill owners cared about the well-being of their work force, young men and women from the farms of New Hampshire and Vermont. So did Straw, their employee.

“He set the pattern for corporate paternalism,” wrote Tamara K. Hareven in her book Amoskeag. He laid out lots and streets for the new mill city. Straw placed Elm Street, Manchester’s main thoroughfare, above the mills and away from their noise and racket.

Straw also helped build Manchester’s dams and canals along the Merrimack River. He established the New Hampshire Fire Insurance Co. and the Unitarian Society. Straw’s leadership sent Amoskeag on a trajectory toward becoming the largest cotton textile manufacturer in the world.

The Amoskeag Millyard in Manchester, N.H.

Crediting Others

He was named agent of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Co. in 1851 at the age of 32. He won credit for the company’s enormous success. Straw generously credited others.

When the Civil War broke out, most of Manchester’s textile mills shut down because of the lack of cotton. Ezekiel Straw kept the Machine Shop running so at least some of the employees had money coming in. He replaced mechanics who went to war with older workers who wouldn’t be called up.

After the war he traveled to England and Scotland to figure out the machinery and methods to make gingham fabric, which Amoskeag introduced to the United States. Previously, Amoskeag made coarse cloth like denim and flannel, but Straw wanted to produce a more profitable textile. He was aided by expert Scottish dyer masters and weavers, who he brought to Manchester.

By the turn of the century, gingham was the Amoskeag’s biggest selling product, providing employment for thousands of people. The company had recruited weavers and dyers in Scotland with fliers bragging about the “Wonderful conditions at Amoskeag.” A drawing showed a man coming out of the millyard carrying a wallet full of money.

Straw would later say that bringing James Reid from Glasgow to oversee dye operations was the reason for Amoskeag’s success in producing gingham.

Gov. Ezekiel Straw

Ezekiel Straw would run for state representative as a Republican in 1859 and then go on to become a two-term governor of New Hampshire. He was considered a first citizen of Manchester and even left his mark on the Seacoast. In 1872, he built the first summer house on an outcropping of land north of Rye Beach known as Lock Point, according to Cow Hampshire. Straw held a “Great Clambake” in honor of his sister-in-law in September 1871, and it was called ‘Straw’s Point’ forever afterward.

Employees liked to tell stories about Ezekiel Straw, and this one was a favorite: During the 1860 presidential campaign, Straw gave Abraham Lincoln a tour of an Amoskeag mill.

He then introduced the candidate to the workers. One of the mill workers hesitated to shake his hand, saying it was dirty from his work. “Young man,” said Lincoln, ““the “the hand of honest toil is never too grimy for Abe Lincoln to grasp.”

This story last updated in 2021.

Images: Gingham By Kent Wang – Flickr: Kent Wang pocket square, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7312843.

7 comments 785 views