Post Office Square Circa 1900
Since the mid-nineteenth century, Meredith
Village has served as the town's civic, industrial, commercial
and residential center. The village is nestled on a narrow
neck of land bounded by lakes on either side, and its
streets are lined with nineteenth and early twentieth
century buildings. Stunning vistas of Lake Winnipesaukee
are afforded from many vantage points, and the tour includes
three landscaped, lakeshore parks.
The township of Meredith was granted in
1748, but unrest due to the ongoing French and Indian
Wars meant settlement was delayed for some twenty years.
However, by the late 1760s Meredith had its first residents.
Initially, the center of town activity was
farther south, at Meredith Parade, an open, upland area
where a meetinghouse, cemetery and schoolhouse were sited
along the Province Road. This early route was a main supply
route between the coast and northern inland New Hampshire
and passed through Meredith.
New England town histories are rife with
communities whose eighteenth century hilltop, agriculturally
based town centers were abandoned in favor of nineteenth
century valley villages oriented around industry serviced
by water power and the railroad. Meredith is no exception.
Though Meredith Parade was the original
town center, it was soon eclipsed in importance by Meredith
Center and the Weirs, both of which had water power for
small mills. During the nineteenth century two other manufacturing
centers dominated Meredith's industrial growth: Meredith
Village and Meredith Bridge. Meredith Village to the north
was the smaller of the two. Meredith Bridge, whose water power
surpassed that of the village, grew more rapidly and had
a number of factories devoted to hosiery manufacturing.
Meredith Village's beginnings stem from
the construction of a sawmill in 1795 and a grist mill
shortly thereafter along the outlet of Lake Waukewan into Lake Winnipesaukee. By 1800
a small village had taken shape, with a third (fulling)
mill, two stores and a handful of houses. The town built
a road in 1773 branching off the Province (now Parade)
Road running to the Moultonboro town line, now
Center Harbor village, part of which still serves as Main
Street. Meredith also profited from a seacoast road that
linked Dover to Alton Bay, where transport continued on
boats across the lake and thence into inland New Hampshire; one of
the boat landings was at Meredith Village.
Every town had its "squire" or
civic leader. Meredith's was Ebenezer Smith, who, as agent
for the original grantees, was one of the town's first
settlers along
Parade Road. He organized the settlement
into an incorporated township in 1768, led the town into involvement in the Revolutionary War, and represented
Meredith and surrounding communities in the provincial
and state governments.
In 1809 John Bond Swasey, a local resident
only twenty-seven years of age, made a substantial land
purchase that included a major portion of Meredith Village
and ultimately shaped its future. The seller was Daniel
Avery, who played a leading role in developing Meredith
Bridge and who had bought up much of Meredith Village
in the decade prior to Swasey's purchase.
In the years that followed, Swasey reconstructed
the Waukewan outlet into an abundant canal leading under
Main Street and over a forty-foot waterfall. Several new
and larger mills were built along the canal, including
a carding mill. In the early 1830s the carding mill was
renovated into a cotton mill under the auspices of the
locally controlled Meredith Village Cotton Factory Company.
An account of the village in 1822 mentions
five stores, a tannery, a cloth-dresser and manufacturer.
The first of the village's three historic churches, the
Baptist Church, was built in 1834 on Main Street. In 1839,
Seneca Ladd opened a carriage manufactory on Plymouth
Street; it prospered until it burned eleven years later.
Arrival of the Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroad
at Meredith Village in 1848 was a key factor in the community's
continued growth.
One of the more illustrious Meredith figures
of these years was Dudley Leavitt, best known for his
popular farmer's almanac. Leavitt left his mark also as
a schoolmaster, teaching the finer points of literature,
mathematics and the sciences to youngsters at his academy
located between Meredith Village and Center Harbor.
In 1854 the town of Meredith voted to relocate
its town hall from Parade Road to the village. A site
was selected at the southeast corner of Main and Lake
Streets and work begun. The following year, the partially
finished building collapsed during its first town meeting,
killing five and injuring dozens of others. The calamity
only furthered the already existing rift between Meredith
Bridge and Meredith Village, and a few months later, the
Bridge seceded and was incorporated as part of the new
town of Laconia. Meredith hastily rebuilt its town hall
on the same site, where it remained until 1877.
The loss of Meredith Bridge meant the loss
of a major portion of the town's economic base, as well
as of prime agricultural land. Meredith Village at that
time included a saw mill, a grist mill, several blacksmith
shops, two tanneries, a carpenter's shop, a tin shop and
a cooper's shop. Seneca Ladd opened a piano and melodeon
business at the corner of Highland and Main Streets, in
a building that later housed the Meredith Village Savings
Bank and the post office and, currently, the Historical
Society Museum. Another half-dozen stores, three churches
(including two that were moved from elsewhere in town),
a cemetery, a school and approximately 80 houses rounded
out the village. Dr. George Sanborn practiced medicine
from his house at the corner of Main and Water Streets.
The railroad tracks and depot were situated at the south
end of the village. Lang Street (then Winnipesaukee Street)
provided a shorter route between the depot and the shore,
and Dover Street led to the steamboat landing. Plymouth
Street was newly developed with houses erected primarily
by Joseph Ela beginning in 1846. Water and High Streets had houses on either side of the canal.
In 1859 a group of local businessmen formed
the Meredith Mechanic Association to promote and develop
the village's manufacturing potential. It purchased the
water privileges along the Waukewan Canal, considered
among the best water power sources in the state, and soon
owned three factory buildings, three shops, one store
and three houses along the south side of Dover Street. In
1873 a town vote exempted new manufacturers from property
taxes for ten years if their capital exceeded $5,000.
One of the Association's first tenants was
Seneca Ladd's piano manufactory. In 1866 the dark brothers
established a lumber mill at the foot of Dover Street,
where they made box shook and building materials utilizing
power regulated by the Association. But it was Samuel
Hodgson's hosiery mill, which the Association brought
to town in 1876, that had the greatest impact on the village.
An Englishman, Hodgson first went to Lowell
upon his arrival in the United States in 1866. He soon
moved north ward to Lakeport (part of Laconia), where
he was involved in dyeing and manufacturing hosiery. While
there he teamed up with mechanic William Abel to develop
and patent an automatic machine for knitting stockings.
Hodgson foresaw the vast potential of both the machine
and the Mechanic Association's property and, in 1876,
brought his new equipment to the Association mill at Meredith
Village. There he rented the Association's main mill in
the center of the village. He soon built a larger mill
that tripled his work space and, by 1885, employed over
150 workers.
Meredith in the 1880s was a prosperous mill
town. In addition to Hodgson's hosier mill and dark's
lumber mill, there was the Meredith Shook and Lumber Company,
with its sixty workers at a lakefront site near the foot
of Mill Street; the J.A. Lang & Company, makers of
piano cases, doors, windows and other building supplies;
and Jaziel Robinson's organ factory. Churches, a hotel,
new town hall, bank, library, local newspaper and various
stores attracted people from not only outlying Meredith,
but the surrounding region. Both the railroad and steamboat
brought people from farther afield. New streets sprang
up, lined with dwellings to house the many workers in
Hodgson's and the other mills.
Beyond the confines of the village, Meredith
was a prosperous agricultural town. Its hillside farms
and lake views were prized, and some of the state's most
successful stock breeders raised their herds here. The
forward thinking of the community's farmers was reflected
in its grange activities; one former grange headquarters,
now a Masonic hall, still stands on Main Street in the
village. The Wadleigh plow, noted for its lightness and
its swivel blade, numbered among the village's products.
In late 1889 Hodgson's mill burned to the
ground. With the loss of its principal tenant, the Mechanic
Association's strength weakened, and its property was
put for auction. It was eventually purchased and outfitted
into a linen mill that specialized in toweling made from
imported flax. The mill operated until the 1980s.
Today, the restored mill complex houses
a fine hotel and specialty shops set amidst the waterfall
of Swasey's canal.
Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing
throughout the 20th century, Meredith, like other Lake
Winnipesaukee towns, became a popular summer resort destination.
Visitors arrived first by train and later by automobile.
Two primary routes to the White Mountains intersected
in the village, encouraging downtown Meredith to develop
into a regional trading center, a function it continues
to serve today, with its handsome wooden storefronts.
After the state relocated the highways around the village
to follow the lake shore, lake frontage was set aside
to the town, opening up former industrial land to the
public for strolling and picnics.