Published in The Yale Literary Magazine in November 1861, Howard Kingsbury’s “A Summer Experience” offers a vivid, first-hand account of the Yale Glee Club’s time in New Hampshire’s White Mountains at the height of the region’s 19th-century tourism era. Kingsbury writes of their stay at the Profile House, then one of the most celebrated grand hotels in the mountains, and of excursions into the surrounding landscape, including a visit to John Merrill at the Pool at the Flume. Blending personal reflection with careful observation, the essay captures the rhythms of travel, hospitality, and natural wonder that defined the New England experience for generations of summer visitors—and provides a rare glimpse of places and people that shaped the history of our region.

In the early 1900s, a small factory in Lincoln, New Hampshire briefly transformed local forests into millions of wooden clothespins. This article explores the little-known history of the Dodge Clothespin Factory, its ties to J. E. Henry & Sons and the Dodge Clothespin Company of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, and how a short-lived industry left a lasting imprint on the landscape—where the Nordic Inn stands today.

In her 1959 LIFE magazine article “Life in Washington,” Rachel Adams—wife of Lincoln native and former New Hampshire governor Sherman Adams—offered a rare, personal glimpse into the rhythms of political life from the perspective of a woman who carried the White Mountains with her into the nation’s capital. Writing at the height of her husband’s influence in the Eisenhower administration, she wove reflections on Washington’s social landscape with the steady values of her New England upbringing, shaped by the mill town of Lincoln and the rugged quiet of the Upper Pemigewasset Valley. Her piece is more than a Washington diary; it is a reminder that our region’s stories travel—sometimes all the way to the White House—carried by the people who call this place home.

For more than seven decades, Malvina Govoni Frank fed a valley, one bowl of spaghetti at a time. Beginning at the age of thirteen, working beside her mother, Clementina, in a North Woodstock kitchen, Malvina learned a craft that would become both her livelihood and legacy. What started as homemade spaghetti delivered by horse and wagon to mill girls and neighbors grew into a beloved family restaurant that served thousands each summer, drawing locals, hotel guests, and even governors to its tables. Through hard work, long nights, and generations of change, the family stitched Old World traditions into daily life, proving that food can be both sustenance and story — and that a simple recipe, faithfully kept, can bind a community together for nearly a century.

Arriving in Lincoln in 1920 by chance and staying by choice, Oran Wilfred Hudson became far more than the town barber—he became part of its daily rhythm. Trained in Boston and known for his skill with everything from Feather Cuts to Flattops, Oran cut hair for mill workers, ministers, summer visitors, and future political figures, all while presiding over a shop that doubled as Lincoln’s unofficial town hall. With prices measured in cents and stories traded freely, his chair was a place where paper was “made” as fast as at the mill, where no comic books were allowed, and where neighbors gathered to talk life, work, and the town they shared. “English Feathers, Please, No Clippers!” captures a vanished era of small-town craftsmanship, personality, and community—seen through the eyes of a man who liked people and never forgot their stories.

By Jim Hamilton (Spring 1992, The Resuscitator) NOTE: If you’d like to start at the beginning, head on over to Bearding the Old Man—Part One Collecting information about the 1955 bearding of the Old Man of the Mountains led us to David “Stretch” Hays, trailmaster of the AMC trail crew that summer who had mentioned […]

Stepping through the front door of Priscilla Cox’s home in Woodstock was like crossing a threshold into two centuries of Upper Pemigewasset Valley history. Built circa 1800 and expanded over generations, the house first sheltered Thomas and Margaret Pinkham when they arrived in 1806, later becoming the Russell family’s farm—complete with flax fields, a sawmill, and ironwork forged in Franconia. It even served as a station on the Underground Railroad, with a hidden space beneath the attic floorboards where freedom seekers found refuge. The Burney and Cox families followed, each adding new stories: marriages linking Quebec to Woodstock, a son lost at the Battle of the Bulge, summers filled with cousins and farm chores, and a cast of unforgettable hired hands whose tales Priscilla treasured. Except for a brief wartime relocation, Priscilla lived her entire life within those walls.

In 1900, Rev. John E. Johnson published “The Boa Constrictor of the White Mountains”—a fiery exposé warning that the New Hampshire Land Company posed an existential threat to the region’s forests, farms, and mills. Calling the corporation “a boa constrictor” determined “to depopulate and deforest” vast tracts of the White Mountains, Johnson argued that unchecked land speculation and aggressive timbering would destroy not only the natural landscape but also the agricultural and manufacturing backbone of New Hampshire. His impassioned writing, first delivered as a pamphlet in North Woodstock on July 4, 1900, helped fuel the growing public outcry that would ultimately lead to national forest protection in the Northeast—and, eventually, the passage of the Weeks Act.

In the Summer ’88 issue of North Country Times, “Roger Harrington Personifies Lincoln’s Blending of Old and New” captures the remarkable transformation of Lincoln’s mill complex into the Millfront Marketplace—and the unique role of Roger Harrington in preserving its past. As Lincoln Mill Associates redeveloped the dormant paper mills into shops, arts spaces, and community amenities, Harrington—born and raised in Lincoln and a mill worker since 1957—became the bridge between eras. His deep knowledge of the mill’s equipment, traditions, and culture guided the repurposing of historic tools, machinery, and even railroad artifacts into functional and decorative features throughout the Marketplace. The article paints Harrington not only as a longtime steward of the old Franconia Paper Company, but also as the living historian ensuring that Lincoln’s industrial heritage remains visible and meaningful amid the town’s modern revitalization.

Tucked along a bend of the Pemigewasset River, Woodstock, New Hampshire is a town that has been rewritten more than once—first as Fairfield, then as Peeling, and finally as the mountain village we know today. Its story is one of reinvention shaped by stubborn granite, fast water, and the long reach of the logging era that once swept through the White Mountains. From the early settlers who tried to coax a living from thin hillside soils, to the rivermen guiding vast log drives down to Lowell, to the boardinghouses and grand hotels that welcomed summer travelers off the Boston & Maine trains, Woodstock grew in fits and starts, pulling itself down from the hilltop and toward the river that ultimately defined it. In the shadow of Mount Cilley, where cellar holes of old Peeling sleep beneath second-growth trees, you can still trace the outlines of a town that has lived many lives—and continues to negotiate its place between wilderness and the world beyond it.