Remembering Haverhill: Stories from the Merrimack Valley

Author

PREFACE

The world in which we live has not been around for very long. It came to be the way it is after the most recent ice age, which took place around ten thousand years ago. The hills, valleys and the general terrain that we now see remained when the ice retreated. Man first came to live in this area as he followed animals along the edges of the ice, but our forefathers did not settle in North America until 1620.

Haverhill, Massachusetts, was founded in 1640. There were no roads, but there were rivers to travel on, and these waterways provided power for the mills needed to maintain a settlement. It was a new and strange land that was actually inhabited by others when our country’s founders moved into this part of the world. This was a period known as colonization, with France to our north and Spain to the south and west.

At the outset, we were at the mercy of France and England, both of which fought their European wars in their western colonies. Settlers living in the early community of Haverhill were living where Indians and the French could attack them at any time. Many of the settlers died or were taken prisoner to New France. Some were ransomed, but others chose to stay with the French.

In this book, I have collected twenty-five short articles that will take you back to this beginning and through the few hundred years that our community has been around. Haverhill was a plantation at first, and the early settlers worked hard just to survive. Over the years, the plantation grew into a community that became known as the Queen Slipper City, as most of the city’s residents worked in shoe shops. This trade ultimately disappeared during my lifetime.

Haverhill residents enjoyed good times and experienced bad times as well. My tales will bring some of these events to you. As I wrote, I realized how yesterday’s stories have had an impact on my life. I realized how a short life, such as my own, has witnessed so many things that no longer exist today. They are now part of our historical past and should be mentioned so that they will never be forgotten.

I started working on my family genealogy in 1990 and began doing research for Graig Laing (deceased) at the Haverhill Public Library, Special Collections. Gerry Molina (deceased), editor of the Haverhill Gazette, got me started as a writer in 1998, and I have published more than two hundred stories since then. Both of these men aided me as I learned about history, and with the assistance of others, I eventually wrote this book.

My son, Charles F. Turner, provided computer support, and my grandson, Joseph W. Gemmell, introduced me to Flaredrive. Drew Laughlan, of Haverhill Public Library, Special Collections, aided in scanning my images, and Kurt Seastrand, my brother-in-law, helped me with the manuscript transmission. I also thank my wife, Evie, who had to sit through fifty years of storytelling.

In the end, I leave my town to those who will live here in the future. Ours is an interesting story of a plantation that grew into a city and all of the problems associated with such growth. I hope that these articles will provide a history that can be enjoyed by those who read them.

THE LITTLE RIVER

The Little River flows through the center of Haverhill, drawing little or no notice from passersby. It isn’t much as rivers go, especially when one considers the great rivers of the world, but it played a major role in the settlement and development of Haverhill in its early days.

Thousands of years ago, a retreating ice cap deposited a large number of low hills where we now live. They are known as drumlins and do not exceed four hundred feet in elevation. About twenty of these drumlins form a bowl-shaped piece of terrain that begins in Kingston, New Hampshire, and ends near the shores of the Merrimack River. The Little River flows south through this area, collecting waters from many small tributaries on its way to join the Great River, our Merrimack River.

A tribe of Pennacook Indians found the river pleasant enough to set up a village at a spot near where Winter Street now crosses over it. Only a few survivors of the tribe remained when English settlers appeared in 1640. In 1642, two of the tribe’s leaders signed a deed that transferred ownership of their land, Pentucket, to the settlers. The sale price was three pounds, ten shillings.

The small river is of primary importance in the original deed, for it is used as the reference point that established Pentucket’s boundaries. Measured from ye little river, the limits were set at eight miles west, six miles east and six miles north—a rather substantial piece of real estate for the price.

In the beginning, the early settlers remained closer to the area near Mill Street, where they set up five mills on a stream that flowed south from Plug Pond to the Merrimack River. If you think that the Little River is somewhat obscure, I challenge you to find anything that remains of the Mill Street stream. The Little River was known as the West River during those early years.

In 1651, as the local population began to exceed the limited capability of the existing mills, permission was granted to build a sawmill on the West River. The village also needed the sawmill to provide material for the growth with which it was faced. The Little River then came to be known as the Saw Mill River.

In addition to the power it supplied, the waters of the Little River were alive with migrating fish as they worked their way to spawning grounds located farther upstream, even as far north as Great Pond, which is now called Kenoza Lake. Wears were set in the stream to capture alewife, in particular, along with salmon and shad. The villagers used some of this bounty for themselves and created a fishing industry that lasted into the 1800s.

A number of other mills were erected along the banks of the Saw Mill Rill River during the late 1600s and throughout the 1700s. There was a corn grinding mill, a gristmill and a fulling mill, all of which used the river as a source of power. In 1804, Ezekiel Hale Sr. built a cotton mill and began a textile industry. This industry was the forerunner of a manufacturing tradition that raised Haverhill to international status.

Hale saw the river as an important, if not vital, element to the growth of his business and the prosperity of the town. He built a scrabble dam as a means of controlling the river’s flow and improving its reliability as a power source. By 1832, Hale had a sawmill, grain mill and a flannel factory operating at the dam.

The Little River provided power for the Stephen’s Mill, located on Winter Street in Haverhill. Young boys are shown playing on its ice-covered surface.

In 1835, a major fire destroyed Hale’s flannel mill, which he had constructed from wood. He replaced it with a red brick structure that continues to stand beside the waterfall on Winter Street. If you look closely at its south side, the overshot wheel raceway is still visible.

Hale spent much of his life working to ensure a constant source of water for his mills. He also spent considerable amounts of money improving the backwaters of Hale’s River, as it came to be known. He even petitioned the village to permit the installation of a flume at Great Pond to regulate its release of waters during dry periods. During 1855, Hale held an auction and sold his business to Captain Nathaniel Stevens, a textile manufacturer located in Andover’s North Parish. The Stevens family continued to own and operate the mill well into the 1900s.

The advent of steam and electric power resulted in a diminishing interest in Little River. No longer was it needed to run the small cluster of mills at the waterfall. It became a conveyer of sewage and animal waste from a slaughterhouse located upstream, in Rosemont. Because the Little River is a tidal stream up to the waterfall, this presented a problem as effluents backed up in the river twice a day during high tide.

Material lodged in the nooks and crannies along the river’s bottom and was very objectionable at times. Studies were conducted about how to cure the problem, and attempts even included using high-powered hoses to wash the odor away at low tides. The Little River was finally enclosed in a concrete tunnel that carried it beneath Washington Square to where it discharged into the Merrimack River.

Through the years, some residents used the Little River for recreational purposes. Some fished its waters, which were home to released trout, hornpout, pickerel, perch and other species. Others bathed in the river or found relief from the heat of summer in its cool depths. Many enjoyed ice-skating on its frozen surfaces during the winter months. These activities continued up to recent times, and many who are living today can still recall the good times they enjoyed on the Little River.

The Little River was not only important to the growth of Haverhill, but it also had an impact on many lives by virtue of its existence. Because the river was a reliable source of power that resulted in the establishment of manufacturing facilities, many workers moved to Haverhill to find employment there. Such was the case for my English ancestor, Charles Turner, who was born in West Yorkshire in 1828.

In their North Andover mill, the Stevens family employed Turner in the manufacturing of textiles. He came to