Newport
History
Newport,
New Hampshire was chartered on October 6, 1761
when Colonial Governor Benning Wentworth
granted
sixty
townships
on the western side of the Connecticut River
and eighteen
townships on the eastern side, including Newport.
In the summer of 1765 six young men arrived from
Killingworth,
Connecticut and cleared six acres of land each.
By 1769 fifteen families had settled along the
Sugar
River. They
built their first log cabins and, later, more substantial
homes on the table land near our present Golf Course
and
along Pine Street.
Settlers
continued to come and fine houses were built, mills
were started, roads were laid out, and schools established.
The Baptist Church, founded in 1779, first built
a church
in North Newport, then the present one on The Common
in 1821. The Congregational Society built the present
brick
church in 1822. Methodists appeared here about
1830, dedicating their new church building in 1851.
The
professionals appeared: James Corbin, the first physician
and surgeon, about 1790; Caleb Ellis, the
first lawyer,
about 1800; Cyrus Barton founded the Argus & Spectator
in 1823; the first post office was established in 1810.
Newport became the County Seat. The fine old Court
House in Court Square was built in 1826; the Eagle
Block in
1826. The present beautiful Common was bought by the
town in
1821 and the trend of building moved from the original
settlements on the Unity Road to the present town center.
The
town was growing and prospering when, suddenly, the
smoldering argument between North and South
burst into
flame at Fort Sumter, April 11, 1861. Two hundred
and forty Newporters enlisted and about thirty
men were lost. After
the Civil War, expansion and building resumed,
notably the Town Hall and Court House in 1872.
In 1873, Dexter
Richards built the town's largest business
building, the Richards Block.
The
railroad had worked it's way up to Bradford but got
no further for a number of years, apparently
awed by the
shoulder of Mt. Sunapee. When the town subscribed
$75,000 and Newbury Cut opened a pass through
the high ridge, the
railroad made it to Newport in 1871.
Newport's
most famous native, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of
Godey's Lady's Book for fifty
years,
in an era when
woman's place was in the home, was writing
novels, doing innumerable things of lasting
public service
to the nation
and finding time to dash off the best known
poem in the English language…Mary Had A Little Lamb
Industrious
efforts were bringing money into town as banks began
to appear. Dexter Richards,
one
of the town's most
generous benefactors, gave the Richards
Free Library in 1888 and the Richards High School
building in
1896. The
textile industry brought new jobs; woolen
mills were built.
Austin
Corbin, famous railroad president and native of Newport,
had returned here
in the
1890's and
built Corbin
Park, a 22,000 acre game preserve, now
the Blue Mountain Game Preserve. In 1911,
Newport
'blew
the lid off
for the biggest celebration in it's history',
it's Sesqui-Centennial,
complete with a circus and all the fixings.
World
War I found Captain (now Major) Samuel H. Edes leading
Company M to battle
as
he had also
for the
Mexican Border
troubles. We sent about 230 men and
lost 8. Again, in World War II, Major Edes
led the
boys from
here. In that war
we sent forth about 650 men and lost
30.
The
famous Newport Winter Carnival began in 1916 and
continues to this
day. The
Newport
Airport, Parlin Field, one of
the first in the state, opened
in 1929 and was taken over by the town in 1939.
After
World
War
ll, a resurgence
of
building occurred largely due to
a bequest in the will of George B. Wheeler, another
of our
most
generous philanthropists,
in the form of a gymnasium and
a
hospital. The county built the new Records Building
in 1949
in Court Square.
The
Newport Shoe Manufacturing Corporation, Sportwelt
Shoe Company and Federal
Machine Tool Corporation
arrived in
the 1950's bringing more jobs.
In 1960, our first radio station, WCNL,
began
broadcasting fine
music and good
programs from it’s site on Belknap Avenue.
In
1961 Newport celebrated it's Bicentennial on August
14 - 20.
Raymond Holden
wrote 'The Last
Fire-Haunted
Spark' for the Two Hundredth
Anniversary of the Town of Newport,
New Hampshire 1761 – 1961.
