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Local History

Newport Winter Carnival

Published in the Republican Champion February 8, 1917

The initial winter carnival of the Newport Outing Club commenced with a sleigh ride to Corbin park Thursday morning, where a thrilling deer drive was engaged in on snowshoes, after which a sumptuous dinner was served to nearly 100 guests at the Blue Mountain Forest Club house. By Caterer Childs.

There were about 150 people who made the trip to the park, and although the weather was stormy in the forenoon the temperature was just right for comfort, and everybody has the time of their lives, and were delighted with the day’s outing.

At 5:00 o’clock the “Three Men of Weight,” Ty L Barker, Fred Gamash, and Frances P. Murphy, who had charge of the carnival dance in the evening, paraded from the town hall around the little common to the iron bridge and return, to the music of the Newport Cadet Band. They were encased in artificial makeups to represent horses, and furnished amusement to the spectators with their graceful antics along the line of march.

The Opera House was filled to capacity. In the evening at the carnival dance Spaulding’s Orchestra of six pieces gave a short concert, which was followed by the grand march, in which 84 couples participated, all of whom wore paper caps of every kind and description, which were given as favors. After the march, the floor was thronged with the merry dancers, who could not keep from dancing, with such delightful music as was being played. Many favor dances were enjoyed, during which confetti and balloons were lavishly thrown about the hall, which was decorated with evergreen and ….

As there was no formal program for Friday afternoon the guests found enjoyment at the club house and or, the toboggan chute. In the afternoon, the junior snowshoes and ski races were held with the following results. 

75 yard ski dash, first, Ralph Jameson, second, Russell Newcomb, time, 19 4-5 seconds

100 yard ski dash, first, Everett Morrow, second, Shirley E. Pollard, time 23 2-5 seconds

50 yard snowshoe dash, first, Herman Hastings, second, Leo Hastings, time, 11 seconds

100 yard snowshoe race boys, first, Everett Morrow, second, Ralph Jameson, time 25, seconds, girls, first, Theresa Fifield, second, Eleanor Bartlett, time, 29 seconds

Obstacle race, first, Herman Hastings, second, James Haven

In the evening, the McElwain A. A. basketball team lost a hair-raising game to the Sullivan Machine Company’s team of Claremont, which had been strengthened for the occasion by the acquisition of some star players from the Windsor, VT team. The opera house was filled with rooters for both sides, a special train from Claremont having brought over 150 people . The first period ended with the McElwains in the lead, 17 to 10, in the second period the Claremont team forged ahead, 24 to 22, and at the end of the last period the score was tied at 33 each, necessitating an extra period of five minutes, during which time the latter team scored two baskets and one point on fouls, while the McElwains could get only two baskets, thus losing the game 38 to 37. All of the players were fast, and played to the limit. J.J. McGuigan refereed the game, which was followed by dancing, with music by Spaulding’s Orchestra. 

Saturday forenoon the fire put a damper on the events as scheduled, and they were postponed until afternoon, when the Dartmouth Independents defeated the New Hampshire State College Independents in a lively game of hockey on the skating rink on the common by the score of 5 to 2, thus winning a live deer for a prize, which was donated by Austin Corbin of New York City. An exhibition of skijoring was given on Main street, and the potkukelkka race was won by August Akkula, first, and Edward Lebto, second. After these events, a large crowd, despite the stinging cold weather, made their way to the Outing Club’s grounds to witness the closing events, which resulted as follows.

Ski jump, first, C.G. Paulson of New Hampshire State College, distance, 52 ft. 1 in., second John Carleton of Dartmouth College, distance, 50 ft. 7 in., longest jump, John Carleton, distance 55 ft. 6 in.

100 yard ski dash, first John Carleton, second, W.D. Hulburt, time, 16 4-5 seconds.

440 yard ski dash, first, Wilho Ma-i, second, Kusti Karanko, time, 30 minutes; prize, live deer from Corbin park.

Obstacle race, won by Leavitt Hurd. 

The officials were as follows: Referee, Sumner Emerson of Dartmouth College, starter, Stanley Llewellyn of Manchester, clerk of course, Silas C. Newell, judges at finish, L.H. Libby, Prof. J.A. Wiggin, George H. Beard; timers, W.H.S. Ellingwood, F.I. Chandler, Albert E. Rogers, announcers, Ty Barker, Clarence D. Vooney; judges of ski jump, John Kukkola, Kusti Karanko. 

A great amount of credit is due to the executive committee of the Newport Outing Club, which has labored zealously and unceasingly to make the carnival a success. And it is hoped that it will be an annual event for years to come. 

The guests expressed themselves as highly pleased with their entertainment during the three days’ carnival and hoped to be present at the next one.

New Year’s Ideas by 1923

By Mary Graham Bonner

Originally published 1922 in the Western Union Newspaper

Republished in the Republican Champion (A Newport, NH newspaper) December 28th, 1922

“It has been a very joyous day,” said the New Year. “It has been my first day here and I must say I have greatly enjoyed it.

“Old Man Winter is not at all the chilling, cold creature I expected him to be. By no means. Of course it is true he is cold. But his spirit is a nice one. He has the kind of coldness about him that I like. It doesn’t make people feel unhappy, but it makes them feel like walking and doing things. It makes them feel energetic and glowing.

“It has been such a beautiful day, too. As for the people – they have been fine.

“They have gone about wishing each other a happy New Year and the greetings have been so pleasant and cheerful.

“Now I have a few new ideas. Perhaps they are not really new. But they are new to me. I’ve heard it said that there is really nothing so very new.

“Anyway, I’m getting to tell these ideas of mine.

“Whether they are new or not, I am hoping everyone will like them.

“Now today has been the first day of the year, as everyone knows. Everyone has wished everyone else such delightful wishes. That is no news.

“But my ideas are these. 

“Why not keep up this spirit all through the year? Of course I do not mean that everyone should wish everyone else a happy New Year every day of the year.

“That would be very foolish. 

“But I would like the same spirit to be about all the time. I would like it if everyone felt that they were wishing the best for everyone else at all times.

“It would be so nice if people could feel happy toward others all the time.

“For example it would be so nice not to have any jealousy about. It would be so not to have some envious of others.

“It would be wonderful if when one person heard that some friend had had good luck for it to make them happy too.

“That would make the very air full of happiness and cheer. I don’t mean that I think everyone should go about with a silly grin. That would be foolish and tiresome.

“My idea is for them to have their hearts smiling so that their words would be cheery and so that they would feel so much goodwill toward each other.

“I had a talk with the Old Year just before he went.

“He told me that the one thing which had made him really sad at times had been the senseless quarrels and ugly words and mean speeches which once in awhile he had heard.

“Such things he said had made him cry. And when a year cries there is sorrow in the air. 

“He told me that the reason, or at least one of the reasons, why everyone was so happy at Christmas time was because everyone felt happiness and wished friends happiness and merriment.

“And it is the Christmas spirit and the New Year spirit that I would like to see kept up all the year. 

“As I say, these may not be new ideas of mine, but they are ideas I feel very strongly.

“For example, I would like it if mothers and daddies were just the same all the year as they were at Christmas time, and if children were the same too, wanting to do for each other, saying kindly things.

“I would like it if grownups never hurt children’s feelings – those grownups who don’t understand children. I wish they would never say things to hurt the feelings of children.

“The New Year is young and knows that one can feel hurt when one is very young. 

“And I would like it if children never hurt the feelings of older people and never acted as though they felt they were old or tiresome.

“The Old Year told me something about that and the Old Year told me how the feelings of older people could be hurt.

“Yes, let’s wish everyone a happy New Year and happiness all through the year and let’s keep wishing it in our hearts all the time. When we think of mean or cross or impatient things to say let us say ‘Happy New Year’ to ourselves.”

Sarah Josepha Hale 1788-1879

Gentle Crusader: New Hampshire’s Sarah Josepha Hale

by Judith Freeman Clark

Throughout the 19th century, most Americans viewed proponents of equal opportunity for women as lunatics or anarchists bent on destroying polite society. In such a society women were generally tied to domestic responsibilities, and their educational and professional choices were severely limited by virtue of their gender. Happily, some, like New Hampshire’s Sarah Josepha (Buell) Hale, born in Newport in 1788, cherished the opinion that society would be improved, not damaged, by women’s contributions.

Editor of Godey’s Ladys Book from 1837 to 1877, Sarah believed women should seek a more respectable station in social life than merely that of a household drudge or a pretty trifler. Sarah was neither of these things. Her family believed education was important, and although she had no formal schooling, she was tutored by her brother Horatio, a Dartmouth College Student.

Sarah’s first job as a schoolteacher may have been inevitable, but her commitment to educating boys and girls was far from ordinary. Sarah taught reading, mathematics “ even Latin “ with indifference to the fact that her pedagogy was atypical. Unlike most teachers, she allowed each student to proceed at an individual pace instead of requiring group recitation. In addition to being applauded for her instructional methods she became well known for her poems. One became a children’s classic. Mary’s Lamb (better known as Mary Had a Little Lamb) has been memorized, sung, and recited by generations of Americans, but few know that the author was a self-educated village schoolmistress with a penchant for innovative teaching.

Sarah was courted by lawyer David Hale, whom she married in 1813, quitting her school post to do so. Despite the birth of four children, she studied in the evenings and diligently plugged away at her writing. In 1822, when David died of pneumonia, she had published essays, poems, and short stories, and had started a novel. Sarah (who gave birth to her fifth child days after David’s death) knew a teachers pay would be insufficient for her family’s needs, so she opened a millinery business in Newport with her sister-in-law. In the midst of increased business and domestic responsibilities, Sarah continued writing during her spare time.

Within a few years she had published a book of poems and was writing regularly for The American Monthly Magazine, The Minerva, The New York Mirror, The Spectator and the U.S. Literary Gazette. However, the tour de force of Sarah’s literary output was a novel, Northwood, published in 1827. Preceding Uncle Toms Cabin by more than two decades, it introduced a new American genre: novels about slavery. Praised by critics at home and abroad, Northwood became the passport to an editorial career to which Sarah dedicated the next 50 years.

Following Northwoods success Sarah Moved to Boston to become editor of the American Ladies Magazine. There she defined her journalistic mission “ to educated and enlighten readers, not merely entertain them. She did this by presenting, as she stated, whatever is calculated to illustrate and improve the female character. By the time her magazine emerged in 1836 with Louis Godey’s Ladys Book, Sarah had become well known as an editor of perception, discernment, and demanding literary standards.

Over the course of her career her position enabled her to become acquainted with many who devoted themselves to education in all of its forms. These notables included writer Oliver Wendell Holmes, Samuel Gridley Howe, a Harvard professor and founder of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and musician Lowell Mason, who published many of Sarah’s verses in his songbook the Juvenile Lyre, used in public schools throughout America. Sarah also became a good friend of Emma Willard, founder of a female seminary in Troy, New York.. Its goal – to educate young women as schoolteachers “ was dear to Sarah’s heart. Not only did she appeal in her magazine for donations to the school, but she sent both of her daughters there.

Among her charitable and philanthropic efforts during these Boston years, the Bunker Hill Monument was Sarah’s most ambitious. Learning in 1825 that group formed to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill had run out of money, Sarah asked each Ladys Book reader to send a dollar to help the cause. Male skeptics derided the idea that women could actually raise the needed funds, but Sarah shrugged off criticism. Ultimately, she joined the thousands who cheered the monuments dedication in 1843 a ceremony attended by President Tyler and made memorable by an oration delivered by another New Hampshire native, Daniel Webster. Eighteen years after placement of the original cornerstone, Sarah and her lady readers had ensured the projects completion.

While monitoring the Bunker Hill campaign, in 1833, Sarah also helped found the Seamen’s Aid Society. The first such organization of its kind, the Society was dedicated to improving economic conditions for men who spent their lives in the merchant marine, as well as to helping their families obtain financial and other assistance. Thanks to Sarah’s energy the Society grew into a multi-purpose institution that endures today.

When she left Boston in 1841 for Philadelphia, where the Ladys Book offices were located, she had thirteen years of managerial, editorial, and philanthropic experience. Yet her most productive years were ahead of her. From the early 1840s until her retirement in 1877, Sarah’s social conscience blossomed as her editorial influence expanded. Her commentary varied: she counseled on infant nutrition, recommended moderation in women’s dress (she tolerated the fashion plates for which the Ladys Book was famous, knowing that they promoted the magazine), and advocated equality for girls and women. Urging construction of playgrounds and advocating exercise for boys and girls, Sarah anticipated Progressive Era reforms by nearly six decades. As she praised female physicians, she ignored critics who said women were unsuited for the medical profession, criticizing those who warned that women doctors would cause economic ruin among their male counterparts. Not surprisingly, the Ladys Book warmly congratulated Elizabeth Blackwell in 1848 when she became the first American woman to earn a medical degree.

Sarah’s determination may be credited to her early education and the challenges she faced upon her husbands death, or she may have been naturally assertive at a time when the majority of American women remained silent at home. But unlike some of her contemporaries “notably Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Amelia Bloomer” feminists who sought dissolution of gender stereotypes and demanded full equal rights for women, Sarah remained a moderate. Promoting opportunities for women, she nevertheless valued their traditional roles. Her chief concern was that all women use common sense, and that each be given an education that would foster constructive use of her intelligence.

In 1855, she canvassed readers for money to preserve George Washington’s former home. Her campaign to make Mt. Vernon a nation shrine wore the veneer of sentimental patriotism common at the time, but Sarah believed that commemorating the first president was important. She hoped it would offer a symbol around which the nation might rally as it struggled with sectional disputes. In 1860 the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association purchased the Virginia property “ an accomplishment Sarah duly reported in the Ladys Book as a happy harbinger of faith.

But her most cherished victory was neither preservation of a building nor publication of a best-seller. Starting in 1846, Sarah had appealed to each president, asking him to announce an annual Thanksgiving observance. Abraham Lincolns decision to do so may have been motivated more by the notion that such a holiday presented a unifying device for a divided nation than by any conviction that Americans needed a day off. Whatever the reason, in 1863 Sarah’s efforts were rewarded by Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation (although it would be 1941 before Congress declared it a federal holiday).

While Sarah Josepha Hale cannot be placed in the same category as 19th century feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Susan B. Anthony, she nevertheless played a central role in promoting equality for women. Through the pages of Godey’s Ladys Book, which at its peak reached 150,000 subscribers, Sarah’s influence probably affected many more women than did the strident proselytizing of feminist reformers. Having faced the multiple demands of marriage and motherhood, she understood what subscribers wanted to find in the pages of the Ladys Book, and, continuing her life-long crusade to prove that women could accomplish whatever they attempted, she provided it.

A May Message From the Archivist

When you think of an archive, what comes to mind? Do you usually picture a physical place with old and rare materials? While this is absolutely correct, modern technology has allowed for archives and preservation to be moved online and into digital archives.

Richards Free Library has a wonderful local history room that functions as our in-person archive, but I’m also developing our digital archives. There are many benefits to digitization and digital archives, and I hope that adding more materials to ours will serve as a benefit to our community.

Some of the exciting things about digital archives include easier access for homebound patrons and folks from out of town who are looking for Newport History. Digitizing also acts as preservation – physical materials deteriorate even with the best care, and are always at risk for loss or damage. Having a digital archive doesn’t mean the physical one goes away – it’s simply an additional way to access the materials!

So, what goes into digitizing?
While it can seem like a daunting process, all you really need is a scanner and a place to store the files.  Some of the quickest materials to digitize are photographs, as they are single items and don’t require scanning multiple pages. However, with photographs you often have to be more aware of the resolution and color quality of your scanner than with text-based documents. Right now, RFL is still benefitting from the generous loan of a scanner from the New Hampshire State Library, and I am working my way through digitizing pictures from Newport’s past. The second part of digitizing is about resource description. Wherever your materials are ending up, they need to be easy to find. A description makes this possible. Photographs can be harder to describe than a document, especially if the photo has no description written on the back. Using things like subject headings and descriptive tags can help make photographs findable. We have some wonderful pictures of Newport’s past that I’m excited to share with our community! Stay tuned for updates on those projects.

We’re in the process of applying for a grant toget a scanner that RFL could have permanently, which would be a great asset to the archives. Digitizing is often slow and steady work, but permanent access to a scanner would allow for continuous additions to our digital archives.

As always, don’t be afraid to reach out to me if you have questions, a research request, or want to chat about Newport History!

Take care,
Juls
jsundberg@newport.lib.nh.us

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