Tag: Great Falls of the Contoocook

Carkin’s Mill

April 29th, 2024

On this 1858 map of Bennington, we see the house of ‘J. Carkin’ [just above the B] and
‘Carkin’s Powder Mills’ [just above the E]. Note that there is no Powder Mill Pond at this time.

Bennington became a community because of its factories. Most began as ‘cottage industries’ and one of the oldest was John Carkin’s gunpowder mill. Carkin was originally from Lyndeborough, but moved to the banks of the Contoocook in 1823, when he was 31 years old. Initially, his house was on the Greenfield side of the river, and that was where he made his gun-powder — at home. We do not know where Carkin learned his trade, but he was rather successful at it.

The making of gunpowder involved several steps. First, you needed charcoal, made from the controlled burning of hardwood trees. The charcoal was crushed, then combined with sulphur and saltpeter. The mixture had to be kept moist, otherwise it might explode. It was rolled into cakes and then permitted to dry. The dried cakes were pulverized and sifted into sizes suitable for various guns: from hunting rifles to cannons.

To move this dangerous manufacture out of his house, Carkin dammed the Contoocook River south of the town, creating the Powder Mill Dam. When Bennington was incorporated, the section of Greenfield that contained the powder mill became part of the new town. By 1850, Carkin’s business was thriving, employing him and his son Willard, also Thomas West and Lucas Griswold, all described a “powder manufacturers” . The mill contained crushing rollers which were powered by the river, but that made the job no less dangerous. Some workers were killed by fires or explosions — such as Carkin’s brother Aaron — or killed by the machines themselves. The only reason to work there was the exceptionally high pay and the extremely short hours. I have been told that the company provided gunpowder for Union troops in the Civil War.

In 1866, Willard Carkin sold the mill, the dam, and the land to George W. Burns, who continued to operate the mill. Willard still worked there. His father died at age 91 in 1883, and the mill closed a few years later. Nothing remains of Carkin’s mill or his house. Perhaps they are under the water of the Powder Mill Pond, formed by expanding the dam in the early 1900s.

The next installment of the Bennington NH Historical Society Blog will be posted on May 27, 2024. If you click the Subscribe button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month – for free.
Electric Lights

May 29th, 2023

When did electricity come to your town? Perhaps in 1936, when the US government passed the Rural Electrification Act, which brought up-to-date electricity to many far-flung locations. In 1882, Appleton, Wisconsin saw the first hydroelectrically-powered home, demonstrating the potential of local energy generation. Did you know that Bennington, New Hampshire was a pioneer in electric street lights?

Water had always powered the town’s factories, but that changed in the late 1800s. The water rights to the river bank were formally purchased sometime in the 1870s by the Goodell Company. [The Goodell company was run from Antrim and owned mills in Bennington as well. Goodell was acquired by Chicago Cutlery in 1983.] In the late 1880s, Bennington and neighboring Antrim began a collaboration with Goodell to develop electricity for the towns. A power house was built at the third dam, wooden without and containing the latest of generators inside.

To string the wires, the first poles for electric wires were put up in the center of town, then going down Antrim Road [now called Mill Road] toward Antrim. What an excitement that must have caused! How modern the townspeople must have felt, to know that they were among the first towns in New Hampshire to have electric street lights! Looking at an old photo of the Village Center, we see wooden plank sidewalks, a horse and wagon, and electrical poles. Even the roof of the town Band Stand was used as an attachment for wires. In those days, poles and wires were not something to photo-shop out of your picture — they were an important part of the scene, showing how forward-thinking the town was.

This was not electricity for home consumption. Houses and farms were illuminated by kerosene lamps and lanterns. Many people at the turn of the 20th century feared electricity and would not have wanted it in their homes, preferring the softer glow of the lamp flame. Many of us still use those when the power goes out.

In the 1920s, Goodell’s river rights were sold to the Monadnock Paper Mill and a newer power house was built: the Monadnock Power Station, 1923, followed by the Pierce Power Station. From that point, and up to the 1950s, hydroelectric power provided the majority of the energy needs for the Paper Mill. Electrical power for the town was taken over by Public Service of New Hampshire, now Eversource.
Great Falls of the Contoocook

March 6th, 2023

A view from a 1905 postcard showing one of the dams on the Great Falls of Bennington. In the foreground, is Pierce Dam, the 3rd of the falls. Just under the iron bridge in the center, you can see water splashing over Monadnock Dam, the 2nd of the falls.

Over a distance of 1.2 miles, in the center of Bennington, New Hampshire, the water level of the Contoocook River drops seventy feet. The glacier that retreated around 10000 years ago formed the terraced landscape over which the river flows. That source of power at the “Great Falls of the Contoocook” is what induced Joseph Putnam in 1782 to purchase land on the east side of the river for the construction of a grist mill [a mill for grinding grain into flour]. At that time, there was no town called Bennington in the state — the land was in the town of Hancock. In the 1700s, the energy of falling water was the principle source of power for machinery. Settlers in the Americas were always looking to live where there was water tumbling down the smallest incline. At the Great Falls, there was not a single ‘falls’ like Niagara, but a series of four locations where the water went down hill, falling 10-12 feet at each site. This series of rapids falls over the remains a glacial moraine, which was breached by a tremendous flow of water at the end of the last Ice Age.

To harness the power, dams had to be built. For the purpose of discussion, I have numbered the dams 1 through 4, to show their position on the river, not the order in which they were built. Dam 1, the Powder Mill Dam, is the farthest South, which is upstream of the town. In 1823, the Dam was built at the North end of Powder Mill Pond, creating that large body of water. Dam 3, called the Pierce Dam, is the oldest, built by Putnam. Joseph Putnam’s dam was downtown, across the road from his house. [on the Google Map that is shown in the link, the dam is just above the words ‘common place’] Just upstream from that is Dam 2, known as Monadnock Dam. High Gate Dam, #4, is down-stream, across from Alberto’s Restaurant, near the Monadnock Paper Mill. None of these spillways looks terribly dramatic, but together they store a lot of potential energy which powered many big and little mills around the town in the 1800s and early 1900s. Since 1932, there has been a hydroelectric plant at Pierce Dam. Falling water is still a source of energy.

The next post will be on March 27, 2023.