Manchester, New Hampshire

“ Amory is a man with whom, more than with almost any one else, Manchester is closely identified, and to whose accurate foresight and comprehensive views a very large proportion of its beauty and success is due. To him, as the manager of the company which gave it its first impulses in life and has ever since assisted its growth, it owes in large measure its wide streets, its pleasant squares, and its beautiful cemetery. ”

“ These industries, which employ about 19,000 persons, represent a capital of nearly $20,000,000, and have an output valued at more than that amount.
The city is well laid out with fine, broad streets, and has a handsome United States Government building, county court-house, State industrial school, Roman Catholic cathedral, a public library of over 45,000 volumes, and several public parks, in all embracing about 155 acres ”

“ The non-Catholic press says that no man ever exercised so much influence in Manchester for forty years as Father MacDonald, and that he was the man whom Manchester could least afford to lose. The mayor and the city government attended his obsequies in a body, and the governor of New Hampshire wrote to express his regret that absence hindered his paying the last tribute of respect to a priest he so highly revered. ”

“ Forty years ago, when Manchester, now the metropolis of New Hampshire, was little more than a wasting waterfall and an unpeopled plain, a few young men who had the sagacity to see, the courage to grapple with, and the strength to control the possibilities of the location, made it their home. One of these was Moody Currier, who was then seeking for a spot in which a willing hand and a busy brain could carve out a successful career. ”

“ With much of the rush and recklessness of a newly grown community, there were then germs of that energy which has since made Manchester an eminently prosperous city. Young Pierce, not yet of age, worked as a journeyman at his trade, and by his unvarying courtesy and cheerful spirit was a favorite among his associates. He was an active member of the famous Stark Guards,—a military organization of which Hon. George W. Morrison and Walter French, Esq., were successively in command.
There is no more exhaustive test of a young man's stamina than life in a rapidly growing manufacturing village. ”

“ Benjamin F. Martin, who has been prominently identified with the paper-making industry of New England for many years, and is widely known as one of Manchester's wealthy and influential citizens, is the son of a Vermont farmer. His parents were Truman and Mary (Noyes) Martin, whose homestead was at Peacham, where they resided with their five sons and four daughters. Their son Benjamin Franklin was born July 21, 1813, and passed his youth at home, attending the short district schools, and filling the long vacations with farm work and the few recreations that were then open to farmers' boys. ”

“ The most extensive industry is cotton cloth manufacturing, the Amoskeag, Manchester, Amory, and Stark mills operating on a vast scale, and together employing over 13,000 hands. Manchester is noted for the production of fire engines and locomotives, and there are also paper and woolen mills, shoe factories, needle and knitting-machine factories, hosiery and underwear factories, carriage and wagon works, tanneries, and manufactories of cigars, brushes, beer, lumber products, furniture, etc. ”

“ John C. Ray owned a beautiful home in the west part of the town; he was superintendent of the State Industrial School in Manchester for about twenty-five years before his death in 1898.
The brothers, Captain Charles and William C. Stinson, were [15] wealthy farmers in the south part of the town; the former removed to Goffstown, and his farm is owned by Philander Lord. The house is probably one of the oldest in town. The last years of William C. Stinson were spent in Manchester. Harris E. Ryder was the first Master of Stark Grange which was organized in October, 1874. ”

“ The convention met just after the disastrous defeat of the party in Maine, and when it appeared that there was only a desperate chance for its nominee to be elected. It decided that if any [Pg 296] man could succeed he could, and a few days after he took the stump. Manchester, which was counted a doubtful city when the convention assembled, gave him more than eight hundred majority, and the rest of the district swelled this to fourteen hundred and eighty. ”

“ It flows southward through New Hampshire into Massachusetts, turning northeast to the ocean. The river passes near Salisbury, where Daniel Webster was born in 1782; then, seventy-five miles northwest of Boston, comes to Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, which has a fine Capitol building and quarries of excellent granite; and eighteen miles below, it reaches Manchester, the chief city of New Hampshire, having sixty thousand people and many large mills owned by wealthy corporations. ”

“ New Hampshire (377) , the second most northerly of the New England States (q. v.) , and from the beauty of its lake and mountain scenery called the “Switzerland of America,” lies N. and S. between Quebec province and Massachusetts, while the Atlantic washes part of its eastern borders; is more engaged in manufactures than in agriculture, and obtains valuable water-power and waterway from its rivers, the Piscataqua, Merrimac, and Connecticut; Manchester, on the Merrimac, is the largest city. ”

“ Locks were in use at Garvin's Falls, Hooksett, Manchester, Goffe's Falls, Nashua, and at other points. A passenger steamer plied in those days between Lowell and Nashua upon the river. Mr. Adams remained at home only until Monday. He was industriously inclined, and proceeded immediately to the Merrimack Mills in Lowell, the scene of his earlier labors, where he accepted the office of overseer. He remained with this company until he came to Manchester, in 1846. In December, 1841, John Clark, the agent of the Merrimack Mills at Lowell, proposed that Mr. Adams should enter the office as a clerk. ”

“ I was seeing visions, dreaming dreams, or more truly perhaps, I had impelled my spirit into the future and had left my body, umbrella-wise, hypothecated in the safe keeping of the library officials. For in this method I have many times visited Manchester several hundred years hence, and my difficulty has always been to find the Rylands Library, or even the Town Hall, so many noble buildings of even finer proportions stood among the lawns and gardens and fountains of the city. And I had rather see visions of a New Manchester than a New Jerusalem. ”

“ The town is an important industrial centre, and has the great Cheney silk mills, paper mills, cotton and woolen mills, and manufactories of electrical appliances, needles, and tinware. There are public libraries in the villages of Manchester and South Manchester. ”

“ Rochdale, whose beautiful river is forced to toil not for cotton only, but for flannels and fustians and friezes; bustling Oldham; Ashton-under-Lyme, with its whirr of more than three million spindles; Staley Bridge on the Tame; Stockport in Cheshire; Salford, which practically makes one town with Manchester; and Manchester itself—all stand on a deep coal-field. The miners may be seen, of a Sunday afternoon, lounging at the street corners, or engaged in their favourite sport of flying carrier pigeons, as if the element of air had a peculiar attraction for these human gnomes. ”

“ It seemed to him that “a place more destitute of all interesting objects than Manchester it would not be easy to conceive. In size and population it is the second city in the kingdom, containing about fourscore thousand inhabitants. Imagine this multitude crowded together in narrow streets, the houses all built of brick and blackened with smoke; frequent buildings among them as large as convents, without their antiquity, without their beauty, without their holiness; where you hear from within the everlasting din of machinery ”

“ Manchester has no Building Act, and hence, with the exception of certain central streets, over which the Police Act gives the Commissioners power, each proprietor builds as he pleases. New cottages, with or without cellars, huddled together row behind row, may be seen springing up in many parts, but especially in the township of Manchester, where the land is higher in price than the land for cottage sites in other townships is. ”

“ Yet, rightly understood, Manchester is as great a human exploit as Athens.
The inhabitants, indeed, are not so impressed with their idiosyncrasy as the countrymen of Pericles and Phidias. They do not fully comprehend the position which they occupy. It is the philosopher alone who can conceive the grandeur of Manchester, and the immensity of its future. There are yet great truths to tell, if we had either the courage to announce or the temper to receive them. ”

“ For nearly twenty years he was a hard-working journalist, but he never lost his love of scholarship, and he was a scholar without pedantry. In his old-world house in Nelson Street, the site of which is now, I think, covered by the Infirmary buildings, he loved to greet newcomers and cheer them on their path with good-humoured, sane and helpful thoughts. He knew the best of Manchester, for he, too, loved to explore on foot or a wheel the moors and lanes and woodlands which lie within such tempting adjacence to the city. ”

“ If at that time a plan for the growth of the city had been laid down, preserving some of the beautiful valleys along the water courses as permanent open spaces, providing for main radial roads leading out in different directions and allotting definite areas for manufacturing purposes, what a different place Manchester might now have been! Even the fine, straight Deansgate which figures on the old plan has not been carried forward, and anyone wanting to travel further in that direction must dodge about round corners and up side streets before he can again reach anything like a through road. ”

“ It is only in the suburbs that gardens are possible; the air is laden with black dust, and the rivers, in spite of all efforts, are in the central part of the city mere dirty ditches. It is impossible to describe Manchester in general terms, for within the city boundaries the conditions vary from the most squalid of slums to suburban and almost rural beauty. ”

“ It is, alas, true that a vast area in Manchester has been ruined by the want of any proper co-operation in development, by the selfish and short-sighted overcrowding of dwellings upon some areas of land and the waste of others. But we must not think that it is too late now to move; that is not so: Manchester is still growing rapidly. There is around it much country which would lend itself to more successful development. It is evident from what has already been accomplished that your surveyor will be able to secure many roads leading out of Manchester in different directions. ”

“ With the provision of new buildings, spacious class-rooms and admirable laboratories, designed by an artist who has left the impress of his genius upon some of the most noteworthy architectural features of the city, Manchester now realized that it possessed a temple of learning of which it might well be proud. ”

“ MANCHESTER, England.—Manchester is the chief industrial town of England, and the great metropolis of the manufacturers of cotton, silk, worsted, chemicals and machinery. Most of the streets of the older parts of the city are narrow, but those in the new parts are wide and attractive. The above picture represents Piccadilly Street, which is one of the principal thoroughfares. This avenue is bordered by magnificent shops, and always crowded with pedestrians, omnibuses and other vehicles. The statue in the centre is that of the Duke of Wellington. ”

“ For this I can prophesy—​it is information, not a tip—​that if there is to be a Manchester at all some hundreds of years hence it will be a city without smoke, its people will be healthy and handsome, its Pharisees will be fewer, and all will breathe pure air and walk clean streets, and when a citizen’s day’s work is done he will be found angling for a trout in the church pool with a better chance of success than he would have to-day. ”

“ It is interesting, with an interest almost pathetic, to journey on to Manchester and to notice how the urban undertone of the road grows to be the dominant note: how the wayside fringe of bricks and mortar widens and the meadows give place first to brickfields and finally to grey streets. You pass from place to place and think them all one: from Hazel Grove to Heaviley, and thence to Stockport, Heaton Norris, Heaton Chapel, Levenshulme, Grindley Marsh, Longsight, and Ardwick Green, finally coming into Manchester by the infernal din of the thronging traffic at London Road railway station. ”

“ MANCHESTER, a township of Hartford county, Connecticut, U.S.A., about 9 m. E. of Hartford. Pop. (1890) , 8222; (1900) , 10,601, of whom 3771 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,641. Manchester is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway and by electric line connecting with Hartford, Rockville and Stafford Springs. The township covers an area of about 28 sq. m., and includes the villages of Manchester, South Manchester, Buckland, Manchester Green and Highland Park. The Hockanum River provides a good water power, and Manchester has various manufactures. ”