Hugh Jameson's New Hampshire Homestead

Hugh Jameson's old homestead is in Dunbarton Town[1], Merrimack County. New Hampshire, not quite one mile south of Dunbarton Centre on historic Stark Highway South (NH Route 13)[2] on the north east corner at the intersection with Flintlock Farm Road, a few miles northwest of Manchester and a few miles southwest of Concord. The physical address is 100 South Stark Highway, with a zip code of 03046, and global coordinates of : +43° 5' 16.08", -71° 37' 0.48" and GPS input as N 43 05.268, E 71 37.008.

By the late 1740's Hugh Jameson, a recent (1746) Scots-Irish emigrant, was living, along with his family, in Londonderry, within what was then the Royal Province of New Hampshire in colonial New England. He was amongst many others who had also immigrated from Ulster Ireland.[3] In 1748 Hugh Jameson was one of several original petitioners to what was known as the Masonian Proprietors,[4] owners of nearby mostly unoccupied lands, for the grant of a new Township,[1b] northwest of Londonderry in the area of Gorhamstown, then Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. This was done shortly after vast amounts of land in New Hampshire were purchased by the so called Masonian Proprietors from John Tufton Mason, ending an over century old drawn out controversy of rights and ownership. Soon afterwards these new owners began to grant townships often without fees, always without quit-rents,[5] and usually on very liberal terms, sometimes only insisting upon immediate improvements.[6] On December 17, 1748 their petition was approved and they were granted an area of land six miles square[6] located to the west of the Merrimack River and lying north and along the northern boundary of the existing Town[1] of Goffstown, New Hampshire. The name originally given to this new Township[1b] would be Stark's-town after Archibald Stark, one of the original and prominent petitioners and a landowner for this new Town,[1][7] who oddly enough never himself became a resident.

An official survey had been made of these new lands and a plan drawn up showing numbered lots in ranges. In 1749 the prospective new owners were numbered in order from one to eighty, and drew their lots. Hugh Jameson, whose number was “44,” drew all of lot 6 and the south half of lot 7, within the third range. Each lot contained one hundred acres, being 160 rods from east to west and 100 rods from north to south. Hugh Jameson’s property then amounted to one hundred and fifty acres.[7] This new Town[1] called Starkstown was then officially Chartered on March 2, 1752, with a regrant necessitated by changes and updates such as unforeseen existing land challenges, defaults and other details, most notably this document now listed the town as an area five miles square.[7][8]

The terms of this Grant were few. First, was that each "right" was with a cost of 30 pounds Sterling. Actual residence on each lot was required of the owner and his family by a certain date, the first group of 30 settlers before the end of May 1752 and others by schedule each year thereafter. An occupied dwelling of minimum dimensions and three acres of land fitted for tillage or mowing by the end of May[9] of the first year of occupancy and then so much more cleared land each year thereafter. There were several other stipulations and requirements most of which however, like roads and highways, had to do with more overall community needs.[10]

Hugh, with his children and what may have been by then his second wife Jane, moved to Starkstown sometime before May 1, 1753,[11] thereby fulfilling the terms of actual settlement on the land and as such he would have gained full ownership of the property. Hugh built his house on this property which then stayed in the family continuously until 1893. Starkstown was renamed Dunbarton, after a place located on the banks of the river Clyde, in Scotland where there stands the noted castle of Dunbarton, when it incorporated in 1765 and that part of New Hampshire was made part of a new County, Merrimack, in 1823. It was here that all the children were born of Hugh and his second wife, Jane McHenry. And here also that they and the surviving children of his first wife Christine Whitehead, were raised. More on Hugh Jameson here.

The original house as built in the early 1750's and at least at first may have been quite small, perhaps only about 16 by 16 foot, as was the minimum requirement at that time. We know for certain that by at least 1782 it was a four room house about 30 foot by 30 foot, with a central fireplace. There was a cellar under the structure and a "chamber" above.[12] The ridgepole was north to south and the main entrance from the west. Over the years several expansions and other changes have been made to the original house and property, including the addition of a second floor. The current large rambling farm house incorporates in part the original structure as the northwest corner of the house.[13] A floor plan of the current house from 1987 shows it being used as a study and an "L" shaped living room.[14] The original central fireplace is also still in use. There are now several buildings in what might be called the compound, including a shed and a barn.

There is also evidence of a building (now gone) off Stark Highway, south of the old Jameson homestead on the Jameson property thought to have been a shoe shop at one time. It may also have been where Alexander Jameson lived, at least during the latter part of the 1700's when he owned half of his father's property. It was later used as a nursery and to dry seed. It was eventually destroyed when it became dilapidated.[15] It should be noted that Hugh Jameson was known to be a shoemaker[16] and it is possible that this building was used by him or his children in that capacity.

In 1807, a license was issued to Daniel Jameson (son of Hugh) to keep a tavern "at his dwelling."[17] It is thought that the town's Selectmen had asked the family to open a tavern in hopes they could drive a nearby "undesirable" tavern out of business.[18] It, one of four such establishments located on the main road running through Dunbarton, became a very popular tavern in those early days.[17]

Stark Highway is a north/south road which ran right through Hugh Jameson's property. It was on this road, now officially designated as a New Hampshire Cultural and Scenic Byway (and included in the NSBP),[19] that Hugh chose to build his house. It connected the town of Goffstown on the south and Manchester after that, to the town centre of Dunbarton on the north and Concord after that. It would have been a busy and important artery for this area during the time Hugh Jameson lived here.

The old Jameson homestead has been many things since it's beginnings in the early 1750's, including a fruit farm, with strawberries, peach, apple and other fruit trees. In 1782 the original Jameson homestead property was divided and given to the two oldest sons, Daniel and Alexander, in return for them providing for their parents Hugh and Jane in their old age.[20] About 1800, Alexander Jameson sold out his interest in the property to his brother Daniel, when he and his family moved first to Vermont and then later to western New York state. Records show that portions of the original property, particularly in the southeastern area, were sold off in the early 1800's.[21] Flintlock Farm, as it has been known for most of the twentieth century, has changed hands several times since the Jamesons last lived there about 1893. Jeremiah Paige Jameson was the last Jameson to own and live on the property. He was a farmer who won many prizes at fairs and had a nursery in the old house south of this one. After his death in 1892, the place was sold to Moody Jones in June 1893. It was next owned by George H. Ryder and eventually his widow, Grace (they kept summer boarders) who sold to Robert and Charlotte Payne. It was also owned by Wayne and Helen Kimmerlin.[22] The original property was kept pretty much intact until 1985 when most of it, along with a few other smaller land parcels, was converted into a housing development generally known as Flintlock Farms, with access off of Stark Highway South on Flintlock Farms Road. Zoning in most of Dunbarton Town[1] is for 5 acre plots, so each house in this new development is on a fairly large lot and the entire area remains fairly heavily wooded.[23] The original heart of the property, which incorporated Hugh's 1750's structure, on Stark Highway, along with about eleven adjoining acres was immediately sold separately and kept apart from the newdevelopment. After that (about 2005) the property was further divided into two parcels with the buildings, including the house now on a 6.89 acre plot. The property fell on bad times during the financial crisis of 2008. The bank foreclosed and the property was abandoned in 2009. By late in 2010 the old Jameson homestead was in shambles. Although much of the original part of the house was still structurally sound, the parts that were added on were literally crumbling. The house and the barn had been badly vandalized and the lot was all overgrown with weeds, tall grass, unkempt trees and shrubs, etc. An effort by several Jameson family descendants around the country were able to find the bank that owned the property and get it secured and placed with a realtor so it could be sold. The property was bought in the early spring of 2011 and the new owners renovated the barn as a place to live. The entire old house was dismantled in 2012, although a few of the original timbers and planking were saved from the structure and used in the construction of a garden shed still on the property. Additional materials from the old house have found their way elsewhere, as well. A sign in the retail store at the King Arthur Flour Company, in Norwich, Vermont, is made from wood salvaged from the old house, more about that here.

The new owners donated the oldest parts of the structure to the Dunbarton Historical Society whose members were on hand during the deconstruction and found the original section, as the house was carefully peeled apart, layer by layer. They collected and hauled everything away with the intent of reconstructing it in it's original 1753 state and including it as part of an historic area in town, set aside as a kind of "old village." This area, just north of the town center, already houses an old blacksmith shop, a cobblers shed and the old school house. This project is planned out over a three year period and will hopefully be completed by the fall of 2015. The foundation has already been laid. More information, photos and progress reports can be found on the Dunbarton Historical Society's Facebook page here.

It may be of interest to some that the old Jameson Homestead was somewhat immortalized in Kenneth Roberts' 1937 book "Northwest Passage," later made into a movie. In this well researched and historically accurate fictional novel, a rag tag army known as Rogers Rangers, comes down from Maine, along Black Brook road (a trail back then) from Manchester, and spends a night at Flintlock Tavern, which had a sign out front that said "No more rum for 54 mls." The novel may have adjusted dates to have the Tavern suit the men heading for Fort No. 4 and then north to Canada where they carried out the St. Francis Massacre and barely survived the hike back after that series of incursions. The real Robert Rogers, who is a main character in the book, had actually lived in Dunbarton at one time.[24]

Excerpts from Maynard Hugh Jameson's 1993 book,[14] with photographs, on the Jameson Dunbarton Homestead are here .