Hudson: Historically Speaking

By Diane Chubb and Lynne Ober

Hudson has a history of remarkable characters and events, from
the young Piscataqua woman who ignited King Philip s War to a successful kitten rescue during the Great Ice Flood of 1936. Meet the distinguished patrons who shaped Hudson s legacy, such as settler Nathaniel Cross, who famously escaped Indian capture, and Dr. Alfred Hills and his wife Virginia, namesakes of the many Alvirne buildings. Relive the heyday of Benson s Animal Farm, subject of community-wide nostalgia since its closing in 1987. Authors Diane Chubb and Lynne Ober also unearth some of Hudson s darker moments, like the 1925 murder that some consider one of New Hampshire s most gruesome or the 1974 fire that engulfed Alvirne High School in a ball of flame. For residents and visitors alike, Hudson: Historically Speaking reveals this suburb s rich history of commerce, controversy, and culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Dec 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9781625843128

Diane Chubb

Lynne Ober is a member of the Hudson Historical Society, the Hudson School Board, the Hudson Old Home Days Committee, the Hudson VFW Post, and a Trustee of the Hudson Library. She is also an editor for Area News Group, which owns the Hudson-Litchfield News and two southern New Hampshire papers, and a New Hampshire State Representative. Lynne lives in Hudson. Diane Chubb is a Trustee of the nearby Pelham Public Library and a former reporter for the Pelham-Windham News. In her free time, she runs an active book club. Diane was an intellectual property attorney until her retirement in 2006. She holds degrees from Boston College and Franklin Pierce Law School. She lives in Pelham.

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Authors

INTRODUCTION

History is filled with factual stories about people—their struggles, their accomplishments, their failures and their successes. Hudson, New Hampshire, has its own history filled with its own stories. That history shows that Hudson has evolved with the times, embracing change and allowing for growth and development, all the while celebrating its ability to remain a small New England town.

The stories of Hudson are varied and many. While we were unable to tell all of Hudson’s many stories, we have brought a variety, starting with Hudson’s earliest times, working through murder and mayhem, the development of the town and the final battle to bring kindergarten to Hudson children. We believe the residents of Hudson embodied a New Hampshire spirit that was recognized and respected throughout the country.

CHAPTER 1

SETTLING ON THE MERRIMACK RIVER

The Pilgrims traveled from England and originally arrived in the area that became Massachusetts in 1620, establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. After surviving their first crucial winter, the colonists quickly began to spread throughout the New England area. They settled in Boston and then moved north into the areas of Gloucester, Salem and Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Following the original Indian trails, they made roads along the rivers and created villages, pushing farther north and west, seeking good hunting, fishing and farming grounds.

Land was acquired through grants from the king or purchased from the Indians. A large community formed within the Massachusetts Bay Colony along the Merrimack River and became known as Old Dunstable.

Old Dunstable was incorporated on October 16, 1673, and included what are now Dunstable, Tyngsboro, Pepperell and Townsend in Massachusetts and Hudson, Nashua, Hollis, portions of Pelham, Londonderry, Litchfield, Merrimack, Amherst, Milford and Brookline in New Hampshire.

The land along the Merrimack River, in what is now Hudson, was excellent for fishing and farming. The local Indians, who were from varying tribes, showed the colonists how to grow corn (which they called maize), melons and vegetables in the meadows that lined the river. Farther inland, the eastern part of town was hilly and rocky. Nevertheless, the settlers cleared the trees to create grazing areas, plant orchards and build their homes.

The outlined area shows the original Old Dunstable and includes what would become Hudson, Pelham, Londonderry, Litchfield, Merrimack, Amherst, Milford and Brookline.

The early settlers assumed that the Merrimack River ran east to west in a straight line. Thus, the earliest border between Massachusetts and New Hampshire was a line that ran three miles north of, and parallel to, the river, and extended from the sea to the west for one hundred miles in a straight line. When it was discovered that the river took a sharp bend to the north around Lowell, it created a border dispute between the states.

In 1722, part of Old Dunstable broke off from Massachusetts, creating the colony of Nottingham. Hudson, New Hampshire, was part of this colony and was established as the separate town of Nottingham West in 1746. By 1830, a few name and boundary changes later, Hudson was established as it is today.

BREAKING AWAY FROM MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY

Politics in Massachusetts Bay Colony was confusing—rights granted to land remained an unresolved issue. Further, New Hampshire was never an official colony, as it had no colonial charter. Founded in 1623, New Hampshire is actually seven years older than Boston. But unlike the other New England colonies, New Hampshire was not settled for reasons of religious freedom. The coastal area was first settled by the English landed gentry for commercial purposes, to be used as a large land estate, similar to those in England. Gradually, land grants pushed west toward the Merrimack River. British ships were built in Portsmouth, and for eighty years, the British navy purchased all of its white pine masts from the colonies, the best of which came from New Hampshire.

Captain John Mason, an early settler and wealthy member of the English ruling class, was interested in the fishing along the coast. The king granted him land between the Merrimack and Piscataqua Rivers, and Mason named it New Hampshire. Hampshire means permanent dwelling place, as ham means home and scir is shire or country. Thus, New Hampshire was to be home in the colonies.

Mason expected to serve as lord of the manor. He provided for the people in his community and expected them to follow his rule.

Like many of the other first settlers of New Hampshire, Mason was a man of the Church of England. He relied on England for supplies, and unlike the Puritans, his community did not suffer from scarce resources. Together with his partner, Sir Fernando Georges, Mason settled the Portsmouth area and expanded west. When the partners split up in 1634, Georges took land in Maine, while Mason retained land in New Hampshire.

Mason died in 1635 and was returned to England to be buried at Westminster Abbey. Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony was happy to be rid of him—it did not like that he brought the hated institution of the Church of England to New England. After his death, Massachusetts Bay Colony ignored the grants to Georges and Mason, claiming everything three miles north of the source of the Merrimack River, which was basically all of New Hampshire and Maine.

New Hampshire’s coastal towns were incorporated into Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1641 as Puritan colonies, yet each retained its own town government. However, Massachusetts Bay Colony’s strict laws regarding dress and behavior were largely ignored.

John Mason’s heirs continued to press for their right to the land given to them in Mason’s original grants. In response, England declared New Hampshire a royal province in 1679. Massachusetts Bay Colony was once again stripped of its claim to the area, and the path was cleared for John Mason’s heirs to claim their inheritance.

In 1684, the English Court of Chancery revoked the 1628 charter of the governor and company of Massachusetts Bay. Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were placed under one colonial authority: provisional president Joseph Dudley.

Dudley’s successor, Sir Edmund Andros, declared that colonists did not own their own land and instituted exorbitant fees and taxes. New Hampshire had no assembly and no elected representatives. Town meetings were permitted only for the election of local officials.

Robert Mason, heir to John Mason, claimed the latter’s lands, which included the Old Dunstable area. The people of New Hampshire objected, saying that the land was theirs, having been purchased from the Indians. Unfortunately, the Indians did not understand the concept of private ownership and merely thought that they were giving rights to hunt, fish and farm the land. The purchases were ignored by Dudley and Andros.

The people of Boston seized Dudley and Andros and returned them to England as prisoners. Massachusetts Bay Colony resumed the rights granted under its original charter, and New Hampshire had no state government. By general agreement, control reverted back to town governments—a system that lasted from 1689 to 1690.

But as a result of a series of wars with the Indians that disrupted business, New Hampshire suffered financially. There was growing hatred of the Indians by families whose men were killed and whose women and children were dragged off for torture or slavery in Canada or France. No one wanted to come to the established towns, and the population failed to grow. In 1690, New Hampshire petitioned for readmission to Massachusetts Bay, as it needed military and financial support.

New Hampshire once again became an independent royal province. This status lasted eighty-three years, until New Hampshire declared independence from Britain with the rest of New England.

CREATION OF NOTTINGHAM WEST

In the early 1700s, taxes were extreme, as the colonies needed the funds to pay the costs of the Indian wars. As a result, many towns were poor.

From 1693 to 1733, the residents of Nottingham West voted to not send a representative to the General Assembly because they could not afford to pay the expenses for one. Generally, representatives did not receive any compensation, other than for their expenses. The residents believed that if some topic required the town’s input, a special agent would be sent by the General Assembly at its cost.

The first meetinghouse on the east side of the Merrimack was located near the current Musquash Conservation Area, near the border of Tyngsborough, Massachusetts.

The towns that would become part of New Hampshire began to break away from Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1722, Governor Shute signed charters creating Londonderry, Chester, Barrington, Nottingham and Rochester. Governor Dummer succeeded Shute and appointed John Wentworth as head of the New Hampshire government.

In colonial times, all important events, from public worship to local government, occurred at the meetinghouse. All of the early meetinghouses were built on the west side of the Merrimack River, and at that time, there was no convenient bridge. In 1731, the settlers on the east side of the river petitioned to be a separate town, stating that they labored under great difficulties on their attendance on public worship. Nottingham was created on January 4, 1733, when the petition was granted. A new meetinghouse was built in the Hudson area by the Tyngsborough border on the east side of the Merrimack River.

The boundary dispute between New Hampshire and Massachusetts was finally resolved in 1741. A new meetinghouse was built in Nottingham at what is now Blodgett Cemetery, at the junction of Pelham and Lowell Roads.

The Nottingham name caused confusion, however, because a Nottingham already existed in New Hampshire. Therefore, on July 5, 1746, the General Court changed the name to Nottingham West. For the most part, the boundary of the town remained about the same, except that the southeast part of Nottingham became part of Pelham.

The town was known as Nottingham West until 1830. Because of continued confusion with the Nottingham to the north, the voters petitioned to have the town renamed. Governor Matthew Harvey, once the president of the New Hampshire Historical Society and a student of state history, chose the name Hudson. The name memorialized the fact that the town was located where the Merrimack River was thought to flow east from the Hudson River for its full length—which historically was intended as the original boundary between New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

THE LONDONDERRY CLAIM

The final boundary for Nottingham West was resolved in 1778, when the town annexed about forty-six hundred acres of Londonderry. Known as the Londonderry Claim, the area included Barretts Hill and Robinson Pond in the northwest area of town.

Londonderry had been settled by a large group of Scotch-Irish. As Presbyterians (a strict sect of Puritans), they were persecuted by the English and left Scotland to settle in Northern Ireland. Even after England allowed religious freedom, the Scotch-Irish protested taxes supporting the English Church. Eventually, they left for the New World, initially settling in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

In 1719, Massachusetts sold an area of twenty square miles to Reverend James MacGregor, a Scotch-Irish clergyman. He and fifty-six Scotch-Irish families moved to Nutfield, the name given to the area. The town name was soon changed to Londonderry in memory of their former home in Ireland.

The immigrants brought the Irish potato and their flax spinning wheel to the colonies. Potatoes soon became a staple in New England, and the linen industry was introduced. The Scotch-Irish took flax grown in New Hampshire and used it to make superior-quality linens. The small group thrived, spreading farther north into Manchester and later founding the large Amoskeag Mills Company.

The Scotch-Irish later learned that Massachusetts Bay had no rights to the land it had granted to them. Londonderry claimed the land as part of the charter from New Hampshire, but Nottingham and Litchfield claimed it under the 1673 charter of Dunstable from Massachusetts. Londonderry applied to the New Hampshire assembly, and in June 1722, it was incorporated as a town. A meetinghouse was built and the town grew quickly.

A large majority of inhabitants of the area absorbed by Londonderry were formerly of Dunstable, Nottingham or Litchfield. The Nottingham residents living in the Robinson Pond area were unhappy with the results of the boundary dispute because of the location of the meetinghouse and the requirement to pay taxes to both Nottingham and Londonderry.

The Londonderry meetinghouse was