ALL...ABOARD! A History of the Railroad in Hopkinton and Contoocook, New Hampshire - Clio

Entries on This Tour

Dedication

2. About the Driving Tour

3. ALL...ABOARD!: Tyler Station

As trains headed west from Concord, Tyler Station was the first stop in Hopkinton. It was a flag station, meaning that trains would stop only when a flag was displayed or when passengers were to be discharged. It was likely most often used to pick up agricultural products and lumber for transport elsewhere. Of interest is the station’s 471’ spur. It was likely built to accommodate lumber that would have come from Joseph Barnard’s property to supply building materials for the railroad and shipbuilding businesses.

4. ALL...ABOARD!: Home of Joseph Barnard

Joseph Barnard (1817-1899) was a lumberman with numerous wood lots (oak and pine) in the northeastern quadrant of Hopkinton at the time the railroad was coming to Hopkinton. One source says, “he became interested in the Boston and Maine Railroad and negotiated the deal whereby he furnished all the lumber for the railroad tracks when the railroad was put through from Concord to Warner.” He was also one of the original incorporators of the Contoocook Valley Railroad in 1849. Much of the family property went from Broad Cove Rd. north toward the town border with Webster. Barnard had lived most all his life in Hopkinton at the family homestead on Briar Hill Road. Besides the lumber industry (he would also provide lumber for ships used during the Civil War, including the USS Kearsarge), Barnard was a prominent dairyman and farmer, winning awards for Guernsey cattle and for fruit production. He was the third generation of Joseph Barnards in Hopkinton; his grandfather, also named Joseph Barnard (1737-1815), came from Amesbury, Massachusetts, in the 1760s. A descendant wrote about this ancestor, he “was somewhat assisted by slave labor, as is clearly shown by the copy of a deed now in the possession of Joseph Barnard (the grandson), it being a bill of sale, dated March 29, 1777, given him by Ruth Currier, of Kingston, NH, conveying unto him a negro man named Seeko. Mr. Barnard has likewise the indenture of a boy of 13, dated in 1769. This deed of sale proves conclusively that slavery once existed in the old Granite State, although the contrary has been persistently asserted by some high in authority.“ Seeko Barnard’s story – including service in the American Revolution – is explored in the Hopkinton Historical Society’s 2019 Putney Hill Cemetery Walk which constructs an inclusive multi-vocal narrative of Hopkinton past and present, and is a recent recipient of a national “Leadership in History” award from the American Association of State and Local History. Copies of the Cemetery Walk are available for purchase at the Society.

5. ALL...ABOARD!: Inns, Summer Homes, and Camps

Throughout the second half of the 19th century, New Hampshire’s farming towns lost population as its residents relocated to cities for better paying factory jobs or out West or South for easier farming opportunities. The contents of the abandoned homesteads were auctioned off, while the homes remained vacant and the fields unplowed. Many of these abandoned homes eventually collapsed into cellar holes, and brush reclaimed the fields. To encourage New Hampshire’s native born to return to their birthplace, New Hampshire Governor Frank Rollins in 1897 called upon the New Hampshire Board of Agriculture to coordinate a new event to be called Old Home Week. He had specific goals in mind: he wanted native born to return and buy the many abandoned farms in the state for summer homes, and he wanted them to donate money to spruce up the village commons, libraries, and meeting houses. Locally, beginning in the mid-1880s, the natural beauty of Hopkinton began to be recognized. Taverns became summer boarding houses, grand homes were bought as summer residences or leased to summer visitors, and farm houses took in borders for periods of days, weeks or months. In the mid-1900s, young people spent time at overnight camps in Hopkinton. The trains helped make the appealing lifestyle of the small town accessible to city dwellers.

6. ALL...ABOARD!: Contoocook Depot

The Contoocook Railroad Depot was completed in 1849 as the first substantial railroad passenger station west of Concord on the Concord & Claremont Railroad (which later became the Boston & Maine Railroad in 1887). The building is one of the best preserved of a small number of gable-roofed railroad stations surviving from the first decade of rail development in New Hampshire. The station exemplifies the pioneering period of rail development in the state and is one of the earliest and least altered depots of the 1850 period. Displaying the Greek Revival style, with modifications that proclaim its identity as a new building type, the depot is an important artifact in the history and evolution of railroad architecture in New Hampshire. At first, rail connections from Contoocook largely focused on Concord. Travelers going east from Contoocook were able to connect to the Concord Railroad, thereby gaining rail access to Manchester, Nashua, Lowell, and Boston; or to the Northern Railroad, providing access to all towns on the route from Concord to West Lebanon on the Connecticut River and to White River Junction, Vermont; or to the Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railroad, thereby gaining access to Woodsville on the Connecticut River and to Wells River, Vermont. Trains traveling northwesterly on the Concord and Claremont Railroad's tracks were limited at first by the tracks' termination in Bradford, which was reached in July 1850. Not until the Newbury Cut was completed in 1871 were trains at last able to travel to Newport and finally, in 1872, to make contact with the Connecticut River at Claremont. Similarly, the Contoocook Valley Railroad, which connected with the Concord and Claremont in Contoocook, was initially completed only as far south as Hillsborough Bridge where it would connect with other railroad lines.

7. ALL...ABOARD!: Contoocook Village

The coming of the railroad reinforced Contoocook Village as the business hub for Hopkinton. By the 1880s, there were numerous stores doing thriving business, including the Curtice & Co. department store; the W.S. Rand dry goods store; a boots and shoes establishment; Miss Julia Johnson's ladies' hats and small wares shop; the Dexter Ladd store selling hardware, stoves and plumbing fixtures; the F.H. Reed drug and stationary store; Reddy's Meat Market; and Marshall's general store. In addition, there were two doctors' offices, a barber shop, a photographer's studio, the justice of peace, and the town clerk's office. There were also a number of mills utilizing the available water power of the Contoocook River, including a grist mill; a lumber and saw mill making wooden box parts; and a manufacturer of oak handles. The largest mill was located where the Cedar Street municipal parking lot is today, next to 44 Cedar St. In 1899 a three-story wooden mill was built by Henry C. and Walter Scott Davis to make machines which turned out paperboard boxes.

8. ALL...ABOARD!: Stevens Rail Trail

The Stevens Rail Trail is a former railroad bed now used as a multi-purpose trail. It starts on the north side of Spring Street near Krzyzaniak Lane and continues for approximately two miles, ending at Kearsarge Avenue near Interstate 89 Exit 7 and the entrance to Knoxland Equipment. In 2019 this trail was improved in cooperation with Friends of the Concord-Lake Sunapee Rail Trail. Besides the Stevens Rail Trail, Hopkinton has several other portions of the Rail Trail, including the Rollins Property and Mast Yard State Forest. All are managed as a joint project of the Hopkinton Conservation Commission and the Hopkinton Open Space Committee.

9. ALL..ABOARD!: West Hopkinton Station

In 1849, having departed from the train station in Contoocookville (as the village was then called) heading west, the first stop on the new Contoocook Valley Railroad was West Hopkinton. This line, having been built with the lumber provided by Hopkinton’s own citizen, Joseph Barnard, followed much of the Contoocook River. From the passenger car a rider could see farms, and fields, woods and homes. The river was an integral feature for the residents of the community. It was the Contoocook River which provided the energy to power the saw mills, grist mills and other industrial mills which could also be seen along the railroad. At a bend in the river, near the western border of the Town of Hopkinton, a small station was built to provide access to the railroad for passengers and freight. The West Hopkinton station was positioned on the north side of the river, just at the junction of the Rowell Bridge which provided access to the opposite side of the river where many of the mills were built. West of the station, on the river, a dam had been built to better harness the water power for industries. Continuing west, the railroad passed into the next town, Henniker, stopping, then continuing on, making its final stop at Hillsborough Bridge. It was at Hillsborough passengers and freight would soon be able to make connections to Peterborough and beyond. The return trains, those heading east to Contoocookville, allowed passengers and freight a connection to the, also new, Concord and Claremont Rail Road providing access to markets well beyond the confines of Hopkinton, or even Merrimack County.

10. Conclusion...and Questions

This Tour is a Walking Tour.

ALL...ABOARD! A History of the Railroad in Hopkinton and Contoocook, New Hampshire

Created by Heather Mitchell on May 28th 2020, 9:44:11 pm.

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Description

There are many ways to approach the social history of the railroad – how it expanded markets for farmers, increased tourism, expanded mobility for rural communities, and its affect on mills and factories along the Contoocook River. However, too often when people think of the railroad today, it is a romanticized version of its history. People reminisce about “simpler times” and quote from Thornton Wilder’s 'Our Town': “If you hold your breath you can hear the train from the station all the way to Contoocook.” This sentimentalized version sometimes ignores aspects of the railroad – the immigrant laborers, those displaced from their homes along the river, and the townspeople and other investors who purchased bonds that paid for the railroad – which we have tried to include in this driving tour. We hope you enjoy this driving tour, that you learn something you didn’t know before, and perhaps gain a different perspective. Thank you for joining us! Note: Please be respectful of private property. If you are driving, pull off the road completely and do not block driveways or roads. If you get out of your car, make sure you are on public land or have the owner’s permission to be on it. We suggest the tour be done during daylight hours. Sponsored in part by a grant from New Hampshire Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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