What’s In A Name: New Boston and

from The Municipal January 2022

Top 10: Best cities for coffee lovers

New Boston and New London, N.H.

By BETH ANNE BRINK-COX | The Municipal

Have you wondered where towns get their names? What was the inspiration, and was it always called by the name you know now?

The New Boston, N.H.’s, old fire house can be viewed by visitors today. (Photo by Doug Kerr via Flickr; https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/) People gather on a frozen pond to ice skate and play hockey in New London, N.H. (James Kirkikis/Shutterstock.com)

New Boston

New Boston, N.H. was founded in 1741 and named for Boston, Mass. But at one time, New Boston had been part of Massachusetts, granted by an unused charter that lapsed. When new borders were drawn up, New Boston became part of New Hampshire. The new town had several name changes: Lanestown, Simpsontown, Piscataqua and even Cambridge, Canada, before it was incorporated as New Boston on Feb. 18, 1763. The earliest settlers were not Bostonians, but Scots-Irish.

In its early years, New Boston had more mills than almost any other place in New Hampshire, manufacturing everything from axes to picture frames. By 1830, however, big changes occurred, with residents off to fight the Civil War. Since many trees had been cut by then, farming became the new big business. But New Hampshire isn’t called the Granite State for nothing, and many left in search of better farmland.

With the advent of WWII, Joe English Pond was used as a kind of backstop for bombing target practice. The first test bombs fell in 1941 and continued until 1956. Even today, signs are posted warning of explosives in the pond.

Roger Babson was well-known in New Boston: he predicted the stock market crash and counted Thomas Edison and Clarence Birdseye among his friends. But it was a family tragedy — the drowning of his sister and grandson — that made him believe if gravity could be harnessed, they might have been saved. So in 1948, he founded the Gravity Research Foundation.

Best known, though, is Molly Stark. Molly is an 800-pound cannon that is one of the world’s pieces of artillery still in use. For more than 100 years, Molly went missing periodically, because Manchester, Goffstown and Dunbarton all wanted it. Molly was hidden so she couldn’t be seized and melted down until 1938 when New Boston was made her official custodian. Every Fourth of July since then, she is paraded through town and fired three times.

New London

New London, incorporated in 1779, also has a history of former names: Heidelberg, Alexandria Addition, among them. The northern half eventually merged with Kearsarge Gore to become Wilmot, N.H. It boasts a small liberal arts college, Colby-Sawyer, as well as Lake Sunapee with both cold and warm water fisheries.

The New London Historical society is committed to preserving and presenting the city’s history, beginning in 1954. You can enjoy a taste of the past by touring a sleigh and carriage museum, and there is also an entire village to see things as they were in the 19th century. There is a farmhouse with an attached English-style barn, herb gardens and carriage sheds, blacksmith shop, schoolhouse and privy. There are businesses of the day to see, as well: a country store, viol making and carriage-paint shops. Because every city needs them, you can tour the fire house, hearse house, meeting house and transportation building. There are year-round activities that can be enjoyed no matter the time of year.

It would be impossible to walk through either of these historic towns and not think of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” of simpler times and very close families and neighbors who all knew each other. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play has been performed many times at the New London Playhouse, in Boston, and has graced the stage of the New London Barn Playhouse, as well. It’s enough to make this writer want to pull up stakes and live there, or at least have a long, long stay at the New London Inn, established in 1792.

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