A Beautiful Life in Berlin, New Hampshire

By Henry R. Lambert

At the time of the depression the president of United States Roosevelt did very good to help the people and keep the family healthy by having people working with WPA also to keep the young man off the streets by having civil concentration camp to help the families also.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 24, 2009
• ISBN: 9781449037697

Henry R. Lambert

Love sports played hockey and ski on the mountain of Washington and I did very good in Berlin New Hampshire.

Book preview

A BEAUTIFUL LIFE

IN BERLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE

By Henry R. Lambert

missing image file

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2009 Henry R. Lambert. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 11/23/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3769-7 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3770-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3771-0 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009910747

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7 

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 1

MY GRANDFATHER, REME Lambert, was born in Paris, France. As a young man, he tried to make a good living, but times were difficult and it was hard for him and his two younger brothers, Morris and Albert, who was a priest, to find work. He heard stories about going to the New World where jobs were easy to come by, so he talked with his brothers and parents, and the boys made their decision to leave France.

It was very hard to leave their father, mother and sister behind, but they felt there was no other choice but to go, so they traveled to Le Havre, boarded a small ship and waved goodbye to their family members. It took them about two weeks to cross the ocean to Canada.

Upon arrival in North America, they spoke to some of the Canadians and asked if there were any French-speaking people there. They were told that the French-speaking people lived mostly around Québec, so that’s where my grandfather and his two brothers decided was the best place for them to start a new life.

In Québec, Albert wanted to continue his service to God and decided work with the native Indian tribes to teach them about the Catholic religion. Morris decided that he would be better off farming. My grandfather found work as a teamster delivering goods to various stores in Québec. During this time, he met a young lady named Margaret, with whom he fell in love and married. Soon his family began to grow, and he and his wife began raising their children, Elizabeth, Whitey, Marguerite and Henry, who was on the way.

Because Reme had heard prospects were better in the United States than in Canada, and was concerned about supporting his growing family, he talked to Marguerite about moving there. At the time, my grandmother was pregnant with my father and told my grandfather it would be better for them to stay in Canada until the baby was born, to which he agreed. However, my grandmother died in childbirth, and my grandfather decided right away to go to the United States.

My father Henry, who was born on Jan. 1, 1899, was only two weeks old when the family arrived in Berlin, New Hampshire, a city amid the heavily forested White Mountains. Looming in the distance was Mt. Washington, the highest peak in the northeastern U.S. at an elevation of 6,288 feet. Reme had heard there was plenty of work in the lumber business and mills in the area.

missing image file

This is what Berlin, New Hampshire, looked like around 1900, when my grandfather and his young family arrived from Canada.

In Berlin, my grandfather applied for work at the city hall, and procured a teamster job working with horses and delivering goods to different stores. Horse-drawn delivery carts were common then and it was a good job. He eventually met and married a schoolteacher, and they had three children together, a daughter, Rose, and two sons, Maurice and Robert. Grandmother was a very kind lady and did a very nice job raising the children — her own as well as her stepchildren.

While my father was growing up, he attended school at St. Anne’s on Prospect Street right next to the Androscoggin River, which flowed down from Maine and ran through the city. To earn spending money, he would help various people around Berlin, chopping wood for the winter and doing all sorts of odd jobs.

During that time, the Brown family started a business alongside the Androscoggin making leather goods, paper goods and peanut oil, which were shipped all over the world. The company needed people to work in the woods to harvest lumber, which powered the factories. The lumber was hewn, then floated down the Androscoggin to conveyor belts, where it was moved from the river to large piles at the various outbuildings. There were also men working on the water to keep the wood moving down river for making paper goods. For this reason, Berlin was known as the Lumberjack City, and the river was the lifeblood of the city’s prosperous economy.

missing image file

The Androscoggin River, on which lumber was floated to the city’s mills and factories, served as the lifeblood of Berlin’s economy. Rising above the scene is Mt. Washington, which was capped with snow most of the year.

When my father walked to school every day, he had to cross the bridge over the Androscoggin because he lived on east side of Berlin. In the winter, there was a lot of snow and it got very cold. Sometimes the temperature dipped to 40°F below. The streets, mostly unpaved, would often be covered with almost five feet of snow, and tractors, called old Bessies, were used to keep the roads open. A reminder of winter’s heavy snowfall was ever present as it capped Mt. Washington almost the year ’round.

In those days, Berliners never worried about electricity because they had four dynamos on the river to produce electricity for the city and all the factories. In addition to the Brown Company, there was also the Burgess Mill, which produced sulfides fiber. At that time, it was the largest mill of its kinds in the world.

Berlin was a good place to live — beautiful and plenty of jobs — and people came from all over the world, seeking opportunity. There were Polish,