Not our name, but our passion
If you are heading to Rollins State Park up Mount Kearsarge Road stop in downtown Franklin to see the glacial erratic used by the Abnaki Indians to grind grain.
The marker is in the town common area. You can park in town walk to the marker and across the street are some nice shops and restaurants.
Amos Tuck was elected to the Unite States House of Representative for New Hampshire’s 1st district in 1842. In Washington he served with a young lawyer from Illinois by the name of Abraham Lincoln.
Tuck over the next several years worked to unite several small anti-slavery parties into the nascent Republican Party. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1856 and 1860 and worked to get Lincoln nominated in 1860.
Due to Tuck’s influence Lincoln delivered the last of his four New Hampshire speeches in Exeter on March 3, 1860.
The town of Exeter, New Hampshire was the first capital of New Hampshire and at the Old Townhouse the first constitution was signed on January 5, 1776.
The state constitution was signed in the town house located near this site on January 5, 1776. The New Hampshire legislature met here during the revolutionary war until the townhouse was replaced in 1793 with a new structure.
The well known librarian and poet Sam Walter Foss was born in Candia in 1858. His best known poem is “The House by the Side of the Road.”
A poem perhaps meaning more here in 2018 than it ever did when it was first published.
The House by the Side of the Road
THERE are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths
Where highways never ran-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner’s seat
Nor hurl the cynic’s ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
I see from my house by the side of the road
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife,
But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.
Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish – so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
Sam Walter Foss
