I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
Letters
Region
Obituaries
Abstract Paintings & Tribal Masks Exhibition At New Hampshire Antique Co-Op
Now on view through May 31, 2020
Congregational Church Stays Connected
During the suspension of in-person activities in light of the Covid-19 situation, the Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC has a variety of ways for members and others to connect with church programs. This is especially important during April as Holy Week and Easter are on the horizon.
The most up-to-date information about church activities can be found on the church’s website (ccamherst.org) or by calling the church office at 673-3231. Sunday services are broadcast on FacebookLive and recorded for later on-line viewing. Services are followed by a Virtual Fellowship Hour. Links for these and other events can be found on the website.
The church’s Facebook page is another source of information, including updates and video messages from the pastors. Pastors Maureen Frescott and Kate Kennedy are available to provide pastoral care during this time, and the church welcomes community members to connect with this loving, serving, open and affirming community of faith.
Lorraine Alice Hamilton
AMHERST – Lorraine Alice Hamilton of Amherst, New Hampshire, Beach Haven, New Jersey and Rancho Mirage, California died June 14, 2020 from pancreatic cancer at her home in California. She was 73 years old and a participant in the trial of a new cancer drug at NYU Langone in New York City since April 2019. She hoped that results from the trial would improve care for other patients who develop this cancer. She was with her family when she died and was
Donald Richard Haaker
Donald Richard Haaker, 80, born June 2, 1940, son of Carl E Haaker and Jeanne LaRochelle Haaker of Fitchburg, MA, son, brother, father, grandfather, and great grandfather, peacefully passed away on Sunday, June 7, 2020 at Saint Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, MA.
Don, as he was affectionately referred to by friends, and Dad or Grandpa by family, was a proud veteran, avid fisherman, former business owner, collector of “As Seen On TV” gadgets, and
Historic Amherst
Notables buried here include:
• Rev. Jeremiah Barnard (1750-1835), whose stone is inscribed “the second minister of Amherst.” He resided on his farm at 61 Christian Hill Road until his parishioners built a single-story house for him at 11 Carriage Road where he spent his final 25 years.
• Sergeant Charles H. Phelps, killed at Gettysburg on 4 July 1863 at age 19 in the Civil War. His final resting place, across the street from his father’s house at 18 Foundry Street, is marked with a graceful white marble stone bearing a carved human figure and inscription “A Young Man but an Old Soldier.”
• Abolitionist Luther Melendy (d. 1883, age 90), who was a farmer on Chestnut Hill (now part of Air Force tracking station) but spent his final years since 1866 in the Village at 118 Boston Post Road; his tall monument is inscribed “The Slaves Friend and the colored Peoples benefactor.”
• Daniel Secomb (d. 1895, age 75), author of History of the Town of Amherst (1883).
• Lelia (Robinson) Sawtelle (d. 1891, age 41), pioneer woman journalist and lawyer, who was an 1881 graduate of Boston Univ. law school and first woman admitted to the bar in Massachusetts (1882), who practiced in Boston and Seattle as Miss Robinson and lately as Mrs. Robinson-Sawtelle. She had married at 39 the prior year a 45-year-old piano dealer whose summer home was the former tavern at 6 Mack Hill road.
• Harrison Eaton (d. 1899, age 82), a self-made man whose even-taller grave monument is an obelisk, who was owner of the formerly-adjacent iron stove foundry 1858-1873, a developer of the elegant Amherst Hotel (1868-’76), Amherst’s rep in the N.H. Legislature 1873-’74 & 1885, and served in the State Senate 1877-’78. Eaton built the house at
7 Carriage Road in 1846 which he owned until 1852; owned & occupied the Vose House at 91 Boston Post Road in the Village 1865-’68, and finally from 1868 owned & occupied the brick Samuel Bell House (now Country Mansions condos) at 135 Amherst Street, to which he added the distinctive mansard roof.
Chestnut Hill Cemetery: Family grouping of slate gravestones of (on left) John Harvill (1821), original owner of this land, & his wife Rebecah (died 1804); (in center) 3 children combined (who died in 1805 at age 9 months, 1809 at age 2; and 1816 at age 3) of Capt. Joseph Harvell, who sold the family graveyard in 1830 for a public neighborhood cemetery, & wife Agness; and (on right) another daughter of theirs (died 1824, age 2). All with variation of urn and willow motif typical of the early 19th century.
Chestnut Hill Cemetery: Handsome slate stones of Isaac Colby (1840), on left, and his wife Eunice Colby (1858), both featuring with new-style straight-edged tops along with urn & willow motifs that would soon go out of style.
Chestnut Hill Cemetery
Date(s): Began around 1800 as Harvell family graveyard in the northern-most part of their farm in the northern-most part of Amherst, right on the New Boston town line. This farm was created in 1762 by John Harvell (Jr., 1736-1821), husbandman (farmer), when he bought 45-acre Third Division Lot 113 from his father of
Litchfield (Hillsborough County deed 10:407) to be his homestead. It would remain in the Harvell family for five generations, passed son-to-son, until sold in 1941. According to lore, their first dwelling was a log cabin until the two-story house at 89 Chestnut Hill Road was built in 1812 by the second generation, Capt./Deacon Joseph Harvell (1774-1853) who had acquired the farm in 1803 in a life lease (promise to take care of his parents for the rest of their lives). In 1808 he sold a piece of his farm, at 97 Chestnut Hill Road, to School District 9 for their first schoolhouse (deed 117:5).
At Town Meeting of 1828, twelve men including Solomon Barron, Isaac Colby, Levi Dodge, Joseph Harvel, John Haseltine, Luther Melendy, and Nathaniel Melendy “were by vote of the town exempted from paying any part of the expense of the new grave-yard laid outwest of the vestry” (now called Meadowview). (Names lare isted in Secomb’s History, p. 441-442, without explanation.) Given that all these taxpayers lived in the northern part of town, the reason for the exemption was that their families were already utilizing the Harvell family graveyard.
In 1830, the Town of Amherst bought the existing graveyard on half an acre on Chestnut Hill, bounded on the west by the east side of the “road leading to Goffstown” and on the north by New Boston town line from Joseph Harvell of Amherst, “gentleman,” for $21, on condition that it forever be a burying ground for Amherst residents of the vicinity & residents of three particular New Boston farms (deed 166:134).
Earliest graves: Matriarch Rebecah Harvill [sic] died in 1804; she shares a stone with her husband John so it surely dates to his death year, 1821. Husband & wife were given equal treatment on their grave marker, which is a fairly large slate with a semicircular top with shoulders typical of early stones, with urn and
willow motif in vogue in early 19th century. Next to it, a much smaller slate stone in a similar style commemorates “3 children of Capt. Joseph Harvell & Mrs. Egnes [sic],” namely
Benjamin (d. 1816, age nearly 4 years); John (d. 1805, age 9 months); and Martha (d. 1809, age 2). Next to that stands another small slate stone of similar style for “Nancy J. dau of Capt. Joseph & Mrs. Agness Harvell” (d. 1824, age 2 yrs & 8 mos). (Happily, five other children grew to adulthood.) Next in line is stone of “Dea. JOSEPH HARVILL” (d. 1853, age 79) in a different material, marble, and different style, chunkier and rectangular.
Sad story: There is a genealogy-tablet for the Daggett family, one example of New Boston neighbors being allowed to use this graveyard, before and after it became public. Alice Daggett (1771-1852), widowed at age 41, had arrived in New Boston in 1824, buying a house on 50-acre farm which she occupied with the family of her son Carlos Daggett (1793-1871). In the course of a single month, March-April 1837, four young sons of Carlos died of “throat distemper,” ages 15, 9, nearly 6, and 3. Another son died in 1848 in Alabama where he is buried despite being listed on the same stone. In Feb. 1863, a 24-year-old son died at Newport News City, Virginia, serving as a private in Co. H of 10th N.H. Regiment. The following month, the last surviving son died at age 21 in New Boston. Carlos & wife Mary soon left town and sold out, moving in with their only surviving child, married daughter Susan in Weston, Mass. (The earliest and latest deceased family members listed on the family stone are not buried in Amherst, a cautionary note for genealogists.)
Old motif with new style: Isaac Colby (d. 1840, age 59), who owned & occupied 180-acre farm on Chestnut Hill Road, & wife Eunice (d. 1859, age 79) have handsome side-by-side gravestones – both slate with typical urn and willow motif of the era, but with then-modern straight/flat top edge and striking geographical border design, especially hers. Her stone is larger than his and signed by carver in lower right: N. Davis. (Her children must really have appreciated her!)
Cricket Corner
Well, now the residents of the southern part of town also wanted their own neighborhood graveyard.
Date: Curiously, in Nov. 1831 the Town “voted not to receive land proposed to be given for a burying ground by Maj. Joseph Fletcher... the offer [stipulating] that Fletcher and others should have liberty to build tombs therein and that it should be fenced at the expense of the town” (Secomb, p. 442). A year later Town