Years Loaded with Recollections

Lord's History of the Town of Hanover

Dartmouth men in the past have been accused of neglecting their own traditions, of being too vitally interested in apresent and working-day world to pay much attention tothe details of the history of the generations that have gonebefore them. And yet the men of the generation precedingour own have left us a compilation of all the details necessary to a complete understanding of the present institution.The first of these books, Chase's "History of Hanover andDartmouth College," has been available for many years, andis now issued in a new edition. The second book of theDartmouth Trilogy carries the history of the College from1812 to the present,—a book designed by Chase and -finished by Professor John King Lord. The third book hasjust been issued; it is the History of the Town of Hanover, from 1812 to the present, written by Professor Lord andedited by Professor Fairbanks of the department of FineArts. Professor E. J. Bartlett who needs no introductionto any Dartmouth man has been prevailed upon to saysomething about this book. The editors have taken thisarticle out of the book review section and are presenting ithere because of its great interest to all Dartmouth men.

IF Professor Lord had left no other record than this History, he would be held in grateful remembrance by all past, present or future residents of Hanover who take pleasure in knowledge of the place in which they live. But, complete in itself, it is the third in the series,—Chase's History of Hanover and Dartmouth College edited by Lord, and his own History of DartmouthCollege completing Chase's plan.

It would make a lazy man gasp and grow pale only to think of the labor of gathering such an array of facts from the past, even if he could conjecture how it was done. Here (with unimportant omissions) is an illustration:

"The lot at the southwest corner of Main and Wheelock streets, where the Casque and Gauntlet House now stands, originally comprising two acres, sixteen rods on Main street and twenty rods westward, was granted by the College for an inn to Captain Aaron Storrs who came

A History of the Town of Hanover, N. H., by John King Lord. $17 pp., price $3.50 post paid. Published by the Town of Hanover. For sale by the Bursar of Dartmouth College.

here from Lebanon, N. H., in 1771. Here he built in that year the first two-story house on the plain, except that of Professor Woodward which was raised on the same day and afterwards burned. The house stood flush with Main street and four feet inside the line on the north. In 1782 Ebenezer Brewster set up an inn across the way and Storrs turned his attention to the river ferry which he leased of the College in 1783. Except a narrow strip at the south end, two yards wide and previously sold, Storrs transferred this land and house after 1787 to Samuel Parkman of Boston by whom it was conveyed in 1793 to Rufus Graves. He built next south of the corner a large two-story building with a hip roof in which he opened a store, the second story containing a large hall. About 1823 Alden built the brick house (now the Casque and Gauntlet House) immediately in the rear of the Old Storrs house, and when it was done moved his furniture out of the back door of the old house into the front door of the new, and then moved the former to the place where it now stands on Wheelock street remodeled to the home of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, the oldest house in the village." (The next in age is the Wheelock house, now the Howe Library.)

The facts are interesting, but the quotation is to show the thoroughness of the method.

There are twenty-one chapters. Some of them, perhaps, will be read only by those who have special reason for interest or who consult them for their countless data. The Village at the College is good reading, and if there are twenty dates or so on a page all the better for accuracy in the lists of past and present householders and of successive owners of stores and hotels. And Etna and the Center, both settled earlier, deserve respect for their age even if Hanover Plain has far outgrown them. The various churches, at the Center, at the College, Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist and Catholic, will naturally attract their own; and it is well to remember that the Church at the Center was established in 1766, five years before Wheelock's Congregational Church at the College. The Physicians of Hanover have always been notable for skill or character or both, and Professor Lord has collected many incidents in their lives. When the writer made Hanover his home in 1879 the house of Dr. Crane who came with Wheelock stood on the lot now vacant north of the recent addition to the inn, and students on its second-story piazza used to warble late at night, "Good by, my lover, good by," "Old Dog Tray," and other songs of the period. Dr. Laban Gates' house, now on South Main street, stood on the present site of Wilson Hall. Dr. Gates was a sportive wag with a wooden leg, and once bet with a stranger that he had the greater endurance, to be tested by trying which could hold a leg in boiling water the longer. He won. Dr. Dixi Crosby lived in the Crosby House and had nearly done with practice. But his lancing a "frog felon" in our baseball hand will be a memory forever. Of course Nathan Smith, "Doctor Ben" and the physicians that many of us remember with affection have their places in this chapter.

In the chapter on Early Courts we observe that tramps were known as "transient persons," and if they misbehaved were liable to "ten stripes upon the naked body at the usual whipping post. From the twelve pages given to Lawyers, some of whom, like Judge Perley, were famous, I can notice only that charming, able, peppery and most eccentric person, W. H. Duncan, who died in 1883, and the treasurer and historian of the College, Frederic Chase. The chapter on Militia and MilitaryService gives an entertaining account of the students' enjoyment of militia duties, and appends a list of those entering the military service of the United States in the wars 1861-1865 and 1917-1918.

In Schools, in addition to town schools there is much information concerning private schools which the author says were mostly for girls, thus adding evidence for the inquiry, "which is the hunting sex?" Fire Protection tells the story from days of practically no protection down to the present efficient service, with a melancholy list of fires from 1779. The same chapter also explains our special organization as a Village Precinct with our elected commissioners. And many publications are listed in Newspapers and Printers.

The chapter on Societies includes Freemasonry, Odd Fellows, the Grange, Stockbridge Association and the Woman's Club. The golf organization is treated in an earlier chapter. The last chapter is given to that beautiful historic spot, The Burying Ground, in which lie seven of the ten deceased presidents of the College and more than forty of the faculty.

There is an appendix with notes on Slavery in Hanover and an account of Hanover Roads with map. There are eight full page illustrations and an excellent index of 19 pages in which persons, places and institutions are abundantly included.

The book is edited by Dr. Arthur Fairbanks; and Father Sliney, Professor J. W. Goldthwaite and Mr. Halsey C. Edgerton have made special contributions.

THE GREEN, EAST SIDE: ABOUT 1800

DARTMOUTH HOTEL: 1870

THE GREEN, NORTH SIDE: ABOUT 1870