At the confluence of the mighty Merrimack and the meandering Nashua River, interspersed by the Pennichuck and Salmon Brooks, and just north of the point where the ancient north-to-south-running Merrimack River takes its dramatic northeastern bend, the land has been inhabited for some 8,000 to 10,000 years. Spanning from today’s Concord, New Hampshire, down to Lowell, Massachusetts, and eastward to the seacoast, the Pennacook people lived and prospered in this place for thousands of years.
First Settlers
In the 1640’s, colonizing English land speculators, soldiers, and eventually settlers, encountered the great Emperor, or "Bashaba", of the Pennacooks, Passaconaway and his son Wannalancit. From historical account, "In 1659, a grant of 400 acres, lying at the mouth of Salmon Brook, was made to John Whiting …The land which lay between Salmon Brook and the Merrimack River was called "The Neck", and for greater security the "house-lots" of the first settlers were laid out adjoining each other, and within The Neck."
Massachusetts Bay Colony Chartered
In 1673, the Township of Dunstable, Massachusetts Bay Colony was chartered. The colony comprised some 200 square miles of land reaching up to the Souhegan River in today’s Merrimack, New Hampshire down to Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, west to Hollis, New Hampshire, and east across the Merrimack River. It also included Hudson and Litchfield, New Hampshire. The settling families came from the areas eventually known as Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, Woburn, Billerica, and Chelmsford.
The Front of Danger
The time spanning from 1675 to 1725 were years of open warfare in the Dunstable, Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was referred to in documents from that period as "the front of danger". King Philip’s War, Queens Anne’s War and Prince William’s War were the harbingers of terrible massacres and constant bloodshed in this region; it was a time of building Garrison Houses (the so-called “Queen’s Garrison House” once stood on today’s Otterson Street), and settlers never ventured beyond the homestead door without bearing firearms. Some of Nashua’s legendary names, figures, and locations were born of this wartime era, including "The Harbour Pond" (today’s Main Street Marketplace), the Hannah Dustin Monument on Allds Street, the Hassell Family Massacre Monument on Almont Street, and perhaps the most famous, the name for the north bank of the Nashua River, "Indian Head", which resulted from an Abenaki warrior carving the likeness into a tree following a legendary 1724 battle. The seven Dunstable men who were killed in that battle are all buried at the Old South Burial Ground located on today’s Daniel Webster Highway south.
Dunstable
In 1746, the new Massachusetts-New Hampshire state line was incorporated, and interestingly, it ran east-to-west through the ancient township; therefore, there came to be a Dunstable, Massachusetts south of the line, and Dunstable, New Hampshire north of the line. The new town center of Dunstable, New Hampshire was established at the location of today’s Rivier University. Today, a monument stands there to mark the location of the colonial-era Meeting House.
First Bridge
In 1748, Thomas Shepherd was engaged by the township to build the first bridge over the Nashua River. It was at the site of today’s Main Street Bridge, and this eventually resulted in the laying out of today’s Main Street at the so-called "ancient ford-way", which was located close to the confluence of the Nashua and Merrimack Rivers. At that time, Allds Road (now Street) was the main road north along the Merrimack River.
Revolutionary War
The men and families of Dunstable, New Hampshire were present from the very first days of the Revolutionary War. When news of the Battle of Lexington reached Dunstable by the afternoon of April 19, 1775, many men rushed to arms and hurried to Concord, Massachusetts to participate in driving the English back to Boston. Within less than a week of the Lexington-Concord battles, a company of 66 men was organized at Cambridge, Massachusetts under Captain William Walker of Dunstable, New Hampshire. Nashua historian Charles Fox’s History of Nashua states, "The whole (male) population of the town at this time between the ages of 16 and 50 was only 128; so that nearly one-half the able-bodied inhabitants must have been in the army at the first call of liberty, a month before the Battle of Bunker Hill. From no other town in New Hampshire was there so large a number in the army…" Some of the soldier names included: Lovewell, Whitney, Blanchard, Lovejoy, Roby, Clogstone, Harris, Lund, Greeley, Butterfield, and Harwood.
Bunker Hill
It is a little-known fact that no less than half the men who fought on Bunker Hill the day of June 16, 1775 were New Hampshire minutemen. Many Dunstable, New Hampshire men were on Bunker Hill that day: William Harris, the young drummer boy, Paul Clogstone, who eventually died from his wounds, and most memorably, Colonel Ebenezer Bancroft, who was said to be the last man on Bunker Hill, as well as the one to kill English Major John Pitcairn, who had led the march on Lexington and Concord. Bancroft is buried at the Old South Burial Ground on Daniel Webster Highway south, as the Bancroft family homestead once stood at the site of today’s Pheasant Lane Mall.
Transportation
The 18th century agrarian township of Dunstable, New Hampshire’s only viable transportation link to the rest of the country was the Great Boston Road, which is now today’s Main Street, Daniel Webster Highway, and old Route 3A running through Chelmsford, Billerica, Woburn, etc. Nashua’s and southern New Hampshire’s cultural, economic, social, and political foundation has from the very beginning been siphoned through and connected with Boston. Settled and then developed along a north-south orientation, and serving as the "gateway" for economic and cultural transmission between Boston and Concord, NH along the majestic Merrimack River Valley, Nashua never looked eastward to Portsmouth, NH for its growth or orientation, and there was no great road connecting Nashua and Portsmouth.
Stopping Point
Today’s Nashua served as the mid-way stopping point for the stage coaches running between Boston and Amherst, New Hampshire (which was the “shire-town”, or county seat, of Hillsborough County at that time). In 1800, the population of Dunstable, New Hampshire was about 750, and the main business was the keeping of taverns for the teamsters traveling the Great Boston Road. At this time, there were three village centers in Dunstable: The Centre Village (today’s Rivier College), The Harbour Village (at Salmon Brook), and Indian Head Village (today’s Library Hill). The taverns included Pollard’s at the town "Centre", Tyler’s Tavern at "Indian Head", and Monroe’s Tavern at the "Harbour", along with about four others along the Great Road (Main Street). There were some small independently run mills on Salmon Brook and the Nashua River for sawing timber, carding wool and tanning hides, as well as many small family farms and orchards.
Middlesex Canal
The dredging of the Middlesex Canal in 1802 profoundly changed the relatively isolated Township of Dunstable, New Hampshire. The Middlesex Canal was a transportation route of 26 miles in length. It connected Boston’s Charlestown Harbor with the Merrimack River at Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Where once the transportation of raw materials such as timber, bricks, lime, granite, wool, and farm produce from New Hampshire and Vermont proved too costly and unpredictable to engage in, now the canal provided the infrastructure, predictability, and affordability to open the township up to unlimited commerce with Boston and the entire world. The canal boats were large affairs, some measuring 75-80 feet long, and were able to carry many tons of raw goods out of New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as deliver consumer merchandise and manufactured goods up from Boston into New Hampshire and Vermont.
Village Name
In 1848, Charles Fox wrote, "In the spring of 1803 a canal boat was built in the village, by Robert Fletcher Esq ... and was looked upon as a wonder. It was the first ever built in this vicinity for regular transportation of goods … It was launched on the 4th of July…The boat was christened "The Nashua" with much parade, and the village which had until then been called "Indian Head" received the name of Nashua Village. That may be considered the birth-day of Nashua." It was also on that day, July 4, 1803, that the "Father of Nashua", born in Andover, Massachusetts, graduate of Harvard University, Dunstable, New Hampshire’s first lawyer, and all of 26 years of age, Daniel Abbot Esq., emerged as the iconic leader of the new and progressive commercial-mercantile community called "Nashua Village".
Cotton
In 1821, the experimental cotton textile manufacturing township of Lowell, Massachusetts was planned and launched just 10 miles downriver on the Merrimack. Boston’s growing economy, the Middlesex Canal, the mighty Pawtucket Falls, and the desire to attain economic independence from England by advancing domestic manufacturers resulted in the establishment of the American Industrial Revolution.
Industrial City
Daniel Abbot, the Greeley brothers, Jesse Bowers, Timothy Tyler, and other Dunstable, New Hampshire commercial and government leaders witnessed and contemplated the founding of the city of Lowell just down the river. Between 1803 and 1823, they had prospered for some 20 years by the commercial-mercantile activity from the Middlesex Canal and other advances. "Nashua Village" at Dunstable, New Hampshire also had the advantage of the Middlesex Canal and the Great Boston Road. The materials to build massive cotton textile mills such as brick and timber were close at hand, the relatively flat land plain between Salmon Brook and the Nashua River were ideal for a new town; the labor pool from the surrounding farms of New Hampshire and Vermont were bustling, and most importantly and absolutely necessary, "Nashua Village" had the natural wonder and massive power source of Mine Falls. Ultimately, they hired John Lund to survey the land. As quietly as possible, they acquired massive tracts of land between Mine Falls and the Great Boston Road down to the mouth of the Nashua River, and in 1823, the Nashua Manufacturing Company was chartered.
Manufacturing Company
The Nashua Manufacturing Co. immediately hired Asher Benjamin of Boston, recognized as one of the founding "Fathers of American Architecture", to plan, design and build the new manufacturing township of Nashua Village. Benjamin planned out the urban grid street system (seemingly the first in New Hampshire), the location of the massive textile factories, the laborers boarding houses, the mercantile lots, the 1825 Olive Street Church (sadly gone), the 1826 Unitarian Church (a national treasure) and the Old Brick Schoolhouse on West Pearl Street; thus here was New Hampshire’s first large planned manufacturing township.
Factory Production
On February 2, 1828, the Nashua Gazette reported, "There are few villages that have increased more rapidly than Nashua Village, since the establishment of the factories in this place. The Nashua Manufacturing Co. first dug a canal of three miles in length between Mine Falls…to this village. They also commenced building a machine shop…and a cotton factory of 4 stories…which contains 120 power looms…consumes 600 bales of cotton daily and produces 1,900 yards of cotton cloth daily…and employs 190 men and girls. The following year they commenced to build a second factory (between both buildings) they will contain 9,556 spindles and will weave daily 8,000 yards of cotton…(They) have also built 48 houses or tenements…there are now about 20 stores and 2 taverns…2 churches have been built. It is impossible to examine the factories in this place when in operation, and not view with astonishment the silence, order, and decorum which so universally prevails…It has been objected to Manufacturing Establishments, that vice and immorality are more apt to prevail there…we can bear ample testimony to the correctness of the morals of its inhabitants…The number of inhabitants in this village four years since was about 100, there are now about 1200."
Port-Township
Between 1823 and 1836, Nashua Village at Dunstable, New Hampshire was a "port-township", as it was the canal boats that brought the raw cotton and mercantile goods up from Boston Harbor and transported the finished textile goods back down the Merrimack River and Middlesex Canal. The steamboat "Herald" plied the waters between Lowell and Nashua in those early days.
Railroad
In 1836, Nashua Village once again demonstrated its revolutionary character with the establishment of New Hampshire’s first railroad, The Nashua and Lowell Railroad. Upon completion in 1838, the first locomotive engine ever seen in New Hampshire was in Union Square, Nashua Village in October of that year. It was described by eyewitnesses as "a super-natural wonder". Union Square was enthusiastically renamed Railroad Square. December of 1836 also marked the point that the ancient Township of Dunstable, New Hampshire was left to history forever, and the new industrial culture was firmly advanced by officially adopting the community name as the "Town of Nashua, New Hampshire".
Business Diversity
What came to distinguish Nashua from places such as Lowell (1821), Manchester (1839), Lawrence (1845), and other emerging industrial towns was Nashua’s diversity of industries and manufacturers. No doubt, "cotton was king" in Nashua, but by the 1840’s, machine shops, iron foundries, railroad shops, manufacturers of locks, bobbins and shuttles, edge-tools, sash and door cutting machines, and paper-printing and cutting machines were concentrating on Water Street, East Hollis Street, and the Railroad yards.
Two Townships
In 1842, resulting from feelings of insult and impropriety during the selecting of the location of the proposed new Town House or Town Hall, the Town of Nashua, New Hampshire divided into two separate townships. The residents north of the Nashua River were enraged over the site selected on the south side of the river. They hired Franklin Pierce (future U.S. President) to legally represent them, and in late 1842, the New Hampshire legislature approved the chartering of the new town on the north side of the Nashua River, Nashville, New Hampshire. After 11 years of hard-feelings, economic and political damage, and loss of regional community standing, the two towns came together, resolved their differences and adopted a city charter form of government, thus introducing the City of Nashua, New Hampshire to the world in 1853.
New Hampshire As It Is
In Edward Charlton’s 1856 book, "New Hampshire As It Is", he describes the City of Nashua: "For variety and perfection of mechanical skill, she yields the palm to none of her sisterhood of the Granite State cities. Cotton manufacturing, though important, owes less (to) her than the combined benefits of other manufactures. Artificers in wood and iron, in cards, paper, leather; builders of ponderous or curious machines, makers of edge tools, locks, and shuttles; forge-men, foundry-men, and artisans of every degree and multifarious callings, together swell the sum of her benefits until the cup of her prosperity runs over."
Second Largest City
Eventually, it was, as it is today, Nashua’s superior central location and proximity to many New England destinations that made the city the second largest in the State of New Hampshire. By 1878, six major railroad lines interconnected at Nashua. From Nashua, manufacturers could ship freight and product anywhere in the world affordably and easily. It was the great economic and industrial expansion that followed the American Civil War that propelled Nashua forward to new heights.
Diversity in the Community
Between 1865 and 1900, the great waves of immigrant people from across the entire globe came to work and settle their families in Nashua. African American families had been a part of the community since colonial days; the people of Ireland began arriving in the late 1830’s, and further in great numbers after 1846; French-Canadian families arrived from Quebec after the American Civil War, and eventually became the largest "ethnic group" in the city. Young men from Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Armenia, Romania and Russia began arriving in the late 1880’s, and their families followed in the 1890’s. The Jewish neighborhood, as well as the first Synagogue building (1899) erected in New Hampshire, were located at Cross and Lock Streets on French Hill. The Irish community, led by the legendary Father John O’Donnell, built the 1856 Church of the Immaculate Conception on Temple Street; this was Nashua’s and one of the first Roman Catholic Churches built in New Hampshire. Nashua’s first French Canadian Roman Catholic Church was the 1873 Louis de Gonzague on West Hollis Street, and the 1913 Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin on Ash Street was Nashua’s first Greek Church.
Way of Life Change
Both World Wars proved to keep the great textile mills, machine shops, foundries, and railroads going strong. However, a way of life and industry was changing forever in the Merrimack River Valley: by the 1930’s, the massive Merrimack Manufacturing Co. in Lowell Massachusetts, and the Amoskeag Mills in Manchester, New Hampshire, were coming to their demise. The great New England textile industry was heading south both financially and literally. America’s southern states were building new textile mills, had few if any labor unions, had cotton in state (why transport it up north?), had cheaper access to coal, improved railroad facilities, new cities, and good ports to export from. The New England textile empire collapsed and would never come back.
Acquisition
The Nashua Manufacturing Company, though substantially resilient and still profitable, was finally acquired by Textron, Inc. of Rhode Island, and in September of 1947, it was liquidated. Some 2,000 Nashuans, of a total population of 25,000, were permanently out of work, and the city that was created to manufacture textiles had to adapt and reinvent itself or slowly decay into blight and community disintegration.
City Reborn
From this seemingly catastrophic event, a new city of innovation, advancement, and modernity was born. The now legendary men of the Nashua New Hampshire Foundation, organizing their efforts out of love of their city and home, collectively purchased the millions of square feet of empty textile mill buildings and set about attracting new, diverse, and progressive industries to the "Gate City". Companies such as Nashua Plastics, Bagshaw Co., Sprague Electric, Doehla Greeting Cards, Edgecomb Steel, and most noteworthy, Sanders, Inc., came to locate themselves in the city. The old Nashua Gummed and Coated Paper Company reinvented itself as Nashua Corporation with new and advanced products. Instead of slowly dying from the loss of the textile mills, the loss brought about the nationally recognized rebirth of the City of Nashua.
Growth
With the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System (the F.E Everett Turnpike) in 1956, the rise of automobile-oriented suburban development patterns, the abundance of open developable land around the historic urban core, and the affordability of new residential housing, Nashua’s population began to rise rapidly throughout the 1960’s and 70’s.
Retail Developments
As more families came to reside in Nashua and Southern New Hampshire, large retail developments followed in their wake. Daniel Webster Highway South and Amherst Street (Route 101A) were still country roads in the late 1960’s, but with the openings of the Nashua Mall in 1970 and the Pheasant Lane Mall in 1986, and shopping plazas along Amherst Street, Nashua became an economic powerhouse as a regional tax-free retail shopping destination.
Cultural History
Those of indigenous-Pennacook, English, Scotch-Irish, and African ancestry have been part of this community since colonial days. Our first Irish and Roman-Catholic residents arrived in the late 1830’s, followed by the French-Canadian people of Quebec Province in the late 1860’s, then the great wave between 1885-1925 of the Jewish, Greek, Polish, Lithuanian, Armenian, Romanian, Lebanese, Albanian, Italian, Chinese, and others to the great manufacturing and railroad city on the Merrimack River. And from the 1950’s onward to today, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Dominican, Brazilian, El Salvadorian, Indian, Pakistani, Russian, Cambodian, Vietnamese and countless others have made Nashua their hometown.
Diversity - industrially, commercially, socially, ethnically, or culturally - is the fundamental strength of our city, and this heritage will continue for many generations to come. Ethnic festivals, celebrations, ceremonies, events, exhibitions, and expressions abound in Nashua.
A Promising Future
Today, the City of Nashua has a population of approximately 90,000; its 36 square miles of land are close to full "build-out", and it has prospered in the 21st century with more promise and potential than at any time in its long and distinguished history. Nashua’s legacy as a community of innovation, advancement, experimentation, invention, enterprise, diversity, culture, tradition, and youth stands as strong as our granite, as powerful as our rivers, and as eternal as our land. Truly, the "Gate City" will continue to move forward and make history.
