History in towns: Hancock, New Hampshire

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2002 by William Nathaniel Banks

On June 3, 1779, when the few inhabitants of the recently settled town of Hancock, New Hampshire, petitioned the state legislature for incorporation, they begged to "Inform your Honnours that the tract of land on which we Inhabit...is so good that it will make a very commodious town or Parish." (1) Some three months later, many of the same landowners petitioned the legislature for an abatement of taxes, avowing that

We...are very poor and Low in the world, our Lands are a great part of them. Low and Sunken, we have many Large ponds and some very mountainous and Rocky Land-which are not and nor Ever Can be improved. (2)

Whatever the truth of the contradictory assertions, the fact is that in less than half a century the citizenry of Hancock created one of the most seemly and elegant villages in New England.

The town was named for the affluent Bostonian John Hancock (1737-1793) who, as president of the Continental Congress, was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. Although Hancock owned more than eighteen hundred acres in the town that adopted his name, the historian William Willis Hayward wrote in his History of Hancock (1889) that "he never appears to have in the least interested himself in the town's welfare." (3)

Little is known about the first settler of Hancock, John Grimes, who built a cabin of hewn logs on Half Moon Pond in the summer of 1764. Growth was slow, and in 1776 there were not more than eight or ten families residing in Hancock. The early settlers faced many of the hardships of frontier life. They built rude cabins often without floors or windows and sometimes without chimneys. In the absence of roads they traveled on horseback or on foot. Wolves and bears were a menace to livestock. Soon after his arrival in Hancock in 1779 Joseph Symonds (1746-1820) managed to trap a large bear and found that its meat was an acceptable supplement to his family's meager fare.

For more than twenty years after Grimes arrived, there was no village proper, and the farms were scattered around the township. The farmers cleared the land, cultivated rye and flax, and raised cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry. The only surviving traces of log cabins built by the settlers are a few random cellar holes.

As the farmers prospered they built more substantial frame dwellings. Typical is the two-story, five-bay center-chimney house that Joseph Symonds's brother-in-law, John Cummings built for his family in 1784 (Pl. III). The only embellishments are the narrow sidelights flanking the front door and the small transom window above it.

In April 1780, at one of the first town meetings after the incorporation of Hancock, an article in the warrant read:

To see what method the town will take to find a center, and a place to Inter their Dead, and what work they will do on the Burring [burying] place. (4)

For the next five years at subsequent town meetings there was continual wrangling over what might be the most advantageous location for the common and meetinghouse. Finally, in January 1785, the town petitioned the legislature to appoint a committee of three disinterested parties from adjacent towns to determine the site, admitting that

We have been at pains and cost to find the Centor of our town in Order to build a House for Publick Worship, but Unfortunately it falls in a Bogg where it is not possible to build: and altho we have Meetings Called Reppitedly for that purpos: yet we Cannot all Agree where to move it to find the Ground that will be moste Suttable and Convenient. (5)

The committee appointed by the legislature submitted its report on May 3, 1785, recommending the plain at the south end of Norway Pond, and at a town meeting on the same day the voters accepted the recommendation. After the years of contention, the alacrity with which the town concurred can perhaps be explained by the offer made by James Hosley (1734-1809) to donate sufficient land for the common and meetinghouse on the very plain designated by the committee.

It was more than four years after the location was chosen that the meetinghouse was finally built. On September 16, 1789, fifty stalwarts, fortified by three barrels of New England mm and two barrels of beer, raised the plain, two-story, seven-bay structure. A year later the town extended an invitation to the Reverend Reed Paige, a Dartmouth graduate and a scholar, to serve as Hancock's first pastor. On May 7,1791, Paige wrote to accept with the proviso that "if the sallery should upon trial prove inadequate to an honorable support I trust you will make it equal." (6)

After repeated attempts to persuade the eponymous John Hancock to provide a lot for the new minister's house had failed, a disgruntled faction advocated changing the name of the town to York. But, as William Hayward pronounced in his address at the centennial celebration in 1889, "Their efforts in this direction, fortunately, were unsuccessful; and today the town bears the name it bore a century ago." (7) In March 1792 the town voted to permit Reverend Paige to build his Federal style parsonage (see Pl. II, right) at the east end of the village on a lot belonging to John Hancock. which the town eventually purchased from Hancock's heirs. The two-and-one half story, five-bay, clapboarded house has been considerably altered since its completion in 1794, and now has a mid-nineteenth-century recessed main entrance and a late nineteenth-century porch on the east end.