History in towns: Haverhill Corner, New Hampshire

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2004 by William Nathaniel Banks

Dudley was hung in the jail yard on Court Street just east of the new courthouse that had been completed in 1846 (frontispiece). After the many years that the courts had met in the crowded quarters of the academy building, the county proposed to build a courthouse for its sole use, and the commodious building was erected at a cost of approximately forty-five hundred dollars on a lot provided by the trustees of the academy. An audacious amalgam of the full-blown Greek revival and Gothic styles, it is brick with a wooden portico and tower. A massive pediment with entablature is supported by four Roman Doric columns on granite bases. The entrance door and flanking windows are emphatically Gothic with pointed arches, the doorway framed in granite and the windows with granite sills and lintels. The hexagonal belfry contains six louvers with pointed arches and is crowned by an octagonal lantern and a copper dome. The recently restored structure, now called Alumni Hall, commands the north side of Court Street, a splendid symbol of the village's palmy years.

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Haverhill Corner's decline began when the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad bypassed the village and chose Woodsville as its northern terminus. The railroad was completed in 1853, and with the advent of rail travel the stagecoach lines, which had contributed substantially to the Corner's prosperity, fell into desuetude. The final blow to its status as a commercial and legal hub came in 1889 when, despite vigorous opposition from the village, the county resolved to move the court and county offices to Woodsville, which had become a thriving railroad center. The new courthouse was completed in 1890, and the 1891 March term of the superior court was held in Woodsville.

The Corner's taverns, once scenes of nocturnal merriment, are now private residences, and the shops, which attracted customers from all of northern New Hampshire (see Pl. XIV), either burned in the fires of 1848, 1902, and 1906 or closed for lack of patronage. Today residents and visitors alike cherish this placid village, an enchanted relic of a glamorous past.

I am grateful to John and Ruth Page without whose support and advice this article would not have been written.

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(1) Haverhill New Hampshire Intelligencer and Coos Advertiserl, January 29, 1823.

(2) New Hampshire Intelligencer, November 2, 1825.

(3) New Hampshire Intelligencer and Grafton and Coos Advertiser, March 3, 1824.

(4) New Hampshire Post and Grafton and Coos Advertiser, March 25, 1829.

(5) Quoted in William Frederick Whitcher, History of the Town of Haverhill, New Hampshire (Rumford Press, Concord, New Hampshire, 1919), p. 159.

(6) Coos, or Cohos, is an Indian word variously translated as "a place of tall pines," "wide valley," and "crooked river." If the last translation is accurate, it was perhaps descriptive of the oxbow curves of the Connecticut River.

(7) Quoted in John Quincy Bittinger, History of Haverhill, N.H. (Cohos Steam Press. Haverhill, New Hampshire, 1888), p. 37.