Twists and Turns of Meredith History

 

The first people in today's Meredith were nomadic caribou hunters who camped on the treeless tundra. They were followed by others who lived in the forest and paddled the waters in innovative birch-bark canoes. Diseases introduced by Europeans devastated Native American settlements, but French-British warfare kept new settlers away. Surveyors entered this wartime no-man's land to lay out the town and the first adventurous settlers arrived after 1763. In the new town, roads and taverns were built, mills appeared and the mail came on horseback once every two weeks.

 

 

In following years Meredith had land speculators, hardy farmers, famous artists, industrialists and mill workers, traders, tourists, summer campers, an almanac-writer and a hermit. There were taxes on cider - but not on houses, and sheep briefly outnumbered people. Meredith women emerged to work in the mills, to teach in the one-room schools, to hold property, and eventually - to vote. Contending railroads launched competing steamboats on Lake Winnipesaukee, and some boats were official U.S. post offices. Summer hotels and this country's first children's camps appeared. Bands played music for militia musters and temperance rallies. A livery stable made way for a library. Villages grew from water power and to serve the needs of farmers, but then the town split in two and farms were abandoned. Old Home Week and a winter carnival helped to heal the wounds.

 

 

Meredith Chronicles tells this story of historical twists and turns by looking at how people responded, and how the people themselves made changes.