We are aware that Hanover town history begins with a royal charter in 1761, but we appreciate that the land before that was occupied for centuries by native tribes, collectively known as the Abenaki. They had a rich and impressive civilization, which once thrived throughout New England and Canada. Bands came together during the spring and summer at temporary villages near rivers and the seacoast for planting and fishing. Tragically, beginning at the end of the seventeenth century, they fell victim to diseases brought by European fishermen and settlers. It is estimated that by 1761, the Abenaki lost 90% of their population.
Hanover Timeline
1761 Governor Benning Wentworth, Royal Governor of New Hampshire grants a charter for 22,400 acres on the west side of the river to 68 proprietors living in Connecticut. They call their new township Hanover.
1765 Edmund Freeman III (son of one of the proprietors) and his family arrive as the first permanent settlers. They live in a log house half a mile from the river near the Lyme border.
1767 A number of settlers are now established in Hanover. The first meeting of “inhabitants” is held in town. (The proprietors continue to meet in Connecticut until 1769.)
1769 Eleazer Wheelock is granted a charter to open a college in New Hampshire. After a first recommendation from the trustees of “Dartmouth College” to build in Haverhill, Hanover is chosen as the location.
The first mill in Hanover is built on Mink Brook at the junction of Stevens Road and Etna Road.
1771 President Wheelock gathers the “Church of Christ at Dartmouth College.”
Plan for the village is laid out, probably by Jonathan Freeman. The proprietors reserve 400 acres within the township for the college.
Governor Wentworth attends the first Dartmouth Commencement. He makes the trip on the newly constructed “Dartmouth College Highway” which goes from his home in Wolfeborough to Hanover. (It is said he found the trip “annoying and roundabout.”)
1775 Prelude to Revolution. The town votes to lay in a “stock of powder, flints, and lead as soon as may be.” It also votes to adopt a boycott of British goods.
1775 The war begins. Hanover soldiers fight in battles in Canada, White Plains, Trenton and Princeton, Saratoga and Bennington among others.
1779 The first Hanover newspaper, The Dresden Mercury, is published.
1790 The town votes to establish public schools.
1791 The Baptist Church at Mill Village is established. (Mill Village is now Etna.)
All residents of Hanover are required to have a bucket of water inside by 9:00 PM in case of fire.
1795 The new building for the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College is dedicated on the northwest corner of the green. It will remain there for 142 years until destroyed by fire.
1796 The White River Falls Bridge is built. It is the second bridge over the Connecticut River in New Hampshire, and the first in the Hanover-Norwich location. It is a toll bridge, and not popular with many citizens. It collapsed in 1804, and for a few years travel is again dependent on a ferry. When finally rebuilt a few years later, this toll bridge lasts until 1854.
1797 Dartmouth Medical School is founded by Dr. Nathan Smith. It is the fourth medical school in the country.
1800 During the summer a contagion of “throat distemper” (diphtheria) strikes many children in Hanover and Mill Village. Few families survived without losing children.
Hanover shifts from pounds, shillings, and pence to the decimal system.
1805 Stagecoach service opens between Hanover and Boston.
1810 “Sheep Fever” takes hold with the arrival of Merino sheep. Much of the forests are cleared and burned for pastures. Stone fences crisscross the hillsides.
1812 The War of 1812 – 1815. Federalist Hanover opposes the war and takes little part.
1819 Daniel Webster argues the Dartmouth College Case.
1819 Hanover Town members chartered the Second Library Association of Hanover, gathering over 700 volumes. At first, it was kept in a member’s house but later resided in the hall over the store in Etna, where town meetings were held.
1824 Hanover Fire Engine Company #1 is established.
1829 Laura Bridgman is born in rural Mill Village (house still stands) in Hanover. She becomes deaf and blind after scarlet fever at the age of two. She is the first deaf/blind American child to gain significant education in the English language.
1836 The final stump is removed from the Green. The college agrees to “plow, level, seed, and handsomely fence the Green.” At the time, it is the custom for local animals to graze out of town during the day, and then be brought into town for the night and kept on the Green. This is unpopular with students who dislike the “unpleasantness under foot” on their fields.
1847 The railroad comes to Hanover-Norwich at the station across the river in the village of Lewiston.
1852 The town finally forbids cattle and hogs from running in the streets.
1854 The unpopular old toll bridge “mysteriously” burns, again leaving Hanover-Norwich traffic dependent on ferries.
1859 Finally, the first Ledyard Free Bridge is built between Norwich and Hanover. This covered bridge lasts until 1939. Commerce between the two towns picks up.
1866 The New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanical Arts is incorporated in Hanover in association with Dartmouth College. The college farm is located east of town with many acres of farmland. Rivalry grows between the two colleges.
1872 Gas lights come to town.
1880 First sewers are constructed.
1885 Precinct Government adopted by Hanover.
1887 Fire at the back of the Dartmouth Hotel destroys the hotel and 7 other buildings on Main Street known as the Tontine Block. During the rebuilding, brick replaces wood.
1893 Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital is dedicated. The Mary Hitchcock School of Nursing also opens. Both are funded by Hiram Hitchcock as a memorial to his wife. The hospital serves the Upper Valley’s residents, and is a teaching hospital for Dartmouth Medical School students. The Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital Training School for Nurses, educates nurses for 87 years until its closing in 1980.
The New Hampshire College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts leaves Hanover, moves to Durham and becomes the University of New Hampshire.
The Hanover Water Works is incorporated: a joint project of Dartmouth College and the water precinct.
1895 Dr. Gilman Frost makes the first medical x-ray in the United States in Reed Hall. It is of a broken arm in a local boy.
The Hanover Gazette, a weekly newspaper, begins publishing. It publishes every year until 1967.
1898 The Town of Hanover voted to accept the gift of $100 of books made available by the 1891 NH Legislature’s Library Act and established a public library according to the provisions of the library law with the name of Hanover Town Library.
1899 The Hanover Town Library opened in Hayes’ Hall with a collection of about 400 books donated by the state, the Etna Debating Club’s donation of their collection, and a donation of books by Edward Payton Storrs, owner of the Dartmouth bookstore.
1900 Howe Library opens on West Wheelock Street in the former home of Eleazar Wheelock.
1900 Pine Park is purchased by an association of Hanover citizens to save the land from being bought by a Maine matchstick company. (Pine Park Association is established in 1905.)
Money is raised by subscription to build a low earth dam to fill the marsh near Pine Park. Beavers remove the first dam, but the following year it is rebuilt with steel, resulting in Occom Pond.
A nine hole golf course is laid out and opened on the Hilton Hill and surrounding acres. (A second nine holes is added in 1920.)
1901 The telephone comes to Hanover for 21 subscribers.
1903 Dartmouth College becomes alarmed about water-borne typhoid fever in New York and purchases the entire watershed to protect water quality. By 1912, all structures (including the poor farm) are removed, and Dartmouth begins to plant trees on former farm acres.
1903 The Town voted an appropriation of $2,600, of which $2,100 was to be used for building a library, and a $500 permanent fund, the income to be used for the support of the library.
1904 Fire destroys Dartmouth Hall, which dated from 1784. In 24 hours the money to replace it is raised by Dartmouth Alumni, who choose to rebuild it as it had looked before. They followed the new practice of replacing older wooden buildings with brick.
1905 Again, the Town voted an appropriation of $2,600, of which $2,100 was to be used for building a library, and a $500 permanent fund, the income to be used for the support of the library.
1905 The Town of Hanover approved plans for a new one-room library, 25-by-33 feet, with ceiling, vestibule and door of varnished hazelwood and a vault. Robert Fletcher, Dartmouth Thayer professor and library trustee, drew up the blueprint. A fireproof vault was added by special town vote. Fine-cut granite steps and a portico were donated by Mr. Henry C. Whipple in memory of the late John W. Dodge. Total cost of the building was a little over $2,800.
1909 Dartmouth Outdoor Club is founded. It eventually becomes the Dartmouth Outing Club. It is the oldest and largest collegiate outing club in America. It includes students and non-students.
1910 The first Dartmouth Winter Carnival is held due to the efforts of John Ledyard, a student at Dartmouth at the time. He was known for hollowing his own canoe and paddling it to the sea.
1919 The Clark School, a preparatory school for boys, is founded by Dr. Clifford Park and Dr. Frank Morgan.
1922 Hanover Improvement Association is incorporated. It opens Hanover’s first and only movie theater.
1922 The ski jump at the Vale of Tempe opens. (It is demolished in 1993, a victim of insurance costs.)
1925 A new Hanover Elementary School opens on Lebanon Street.
1927 The Hitchcock Clinic, a multi-specialty clinic patterned after the Mayo Clinic, opens.
Hanover Precinct and Village School Districts are consolidated into one district.
1930 New Post Office opens at the corner of Lebanon and Main Streets. Few original houses in the center of town remain as they had been fifty years before.
1931 The original Church of Christ at Dartmouth burns to the ground in a spectacular fire. When reconstructed, it is on College Street. The former location becomes the home of Baker Library.
1934 Jose Clemente Orozco paints “The Epic of American Culture” murals in the Baker Library.
1935 Storrs Pond Recreational Area opens.
The old covered Ledyard Bridge is replaced by a new steel and concrete bridge. (It lasts until 1997.)
1936 The Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society is founded on Main Street with 30 members.
1938 The great hurricane levelled trees all around Hanover.
1940 Olympic Trials for the slalom were held at Oak Hill.
1944 The old Nugget Theater explodes and burns to the ground. Eventually a new one is built on its present location and opens in 1951.
1948 Ford Sayre Memorial Ski Council is formed.
1952 The Valley News, founded by Allan Butler, begins to publish an afternoon daily newspaper. In the 1970’s it becomes a morning paper.
1953 The Clark School moves to Canaan and becomes the Cardigan Mountain School. Many of the buildings and playing fields are bought by Dartmouth College.
1956 The Dartmouth Skiway opens with a poma lift.
1959 Rail service to Hanover and Norwich ends. Seven years later the town of Lewiston is almost completely destroyed to make way for exit 13 of Interstate 91.
Town adopts zoning and planning ordinances.
1961 The Hanover Conservancy is founded: the oldest private, nonprofit land trust in New Hampshire.
The Hanover Historical Society is founded.
1962 First traffic light comes to Hanover at the corner of Wheelock and Main Street. (The Inn corner)
The Hopkins Center for Performing Arts opens in Hanover.
1963 The first bi-state school district in the United States is formed between Hanover and Norwich. President Kennedy signs the bill establishing a 7 – 12 district named Dresden School District. It is the last bill that he will sign. It is governed by citizens from Norwich and Hanover.
The town of Hanover and the Village Precinct of Hanover merge into a single entity. The town has one governing body: a five member Board of Selectmen.
1965 Hanover and Etna fire departments consolidated.
1969 Unrest about the war in Vietnam reaches Hanover as Dartmouth students take over and occupy Parkhurst Hall in May.
1970 The new elementary school, out of town on Reservoir Road, replaces the school on Lebanon Street. It is named for long time teacher and principal Bernice A. Ray.
1972 Coeducation comes to Dartmouth.
The Hanover Fire Department relocates from the center of town to a new station on Lyme Road. (The Police Department will move to the same location in 1987.)
1973 Hanover residents vote to assume responsibility for the operating budget of the Howe Library. A new library is built on town property on South Street.
After a spirited and very long discussion at town meeting, Hanover passes a leash law for the in-town area.
1974 Thompson Arena is built, originally as an arena for both ice hockey and basketball. It is said a floor can be put down over the ice in time for basketball to be played a few hours after hockey.
1976 Hanover begins a shuttle serice from Thompson Arena parking lot to town locations. It is financed by the parking fund, the town and the hospital.
1978 The Upper Valley Hostel opens its door on Sargent Street. Its mission is to offer low cost housing to patients and families receiving treatmentat in area hospitals. In three years, a permanent house is bought on South Street, and in 2016 it is renamed Maynard House in honor of Mary Maynard Hitchcock.
1979 Marilyn “Willy” Black, Ray School teacher and town volunteer on many committees, wins “USA Teacher of the Year” and visits Jimmy Carter in Washington.
1984 Advance Transit becomes an independent New Hampshire non-profit corporation which offers free transportation services to the Upper Valley communities. It is funded by grants, and contributions from towns and the hospital. (In 1991, when the new hospital opened, it merges with Hanover Shuttle. )
1985 The original David’s House opens in town. It is a hostel for parents of children treated at the Hitchcock Hospital. In 1994 a new, larger David’s house is built near the new hospital.
Showing opposition to apartheid, Dartmouth student erect shanties on the Green. After four months, students associated with The Dartmouth Review remove the shanties. They are arrested and eventually suspended from school.
1988 Dartmouth demolishes Davis Rink. Campion Rink opens, built by the Hanover Improvement Society. It is the home of high schiool hockey teams from both Hanover and Lebanon.
1991 Dartmouth Medical School and the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital open a new facility on land in Lebanon. A part of the original hospital remains as office space for the medical school, but the main part of the old hospital is imploded in 1995.
The retirement community, Kendal at Hanover, opens on Lyme Road.
1993 Community Access TV begins broadcasting from Hanover High School. (CATV)
2001 Although originally proposed in 1995, after a long construction period, a new Ledyard Bridge opens amidst much controversy over the decorative “bridge balls.”
The selectmen establish the Hanover Affordable Housing Commission.
2003 The Richard Black Community Center opens.
2005 Hanover High school is renovated and a new Richmond Middle School opens on Lyme Road. It is made possible by a complicated land swap including the town, gown, and school district.
2019 The newly renovated and expanded Hood Museum opens to the public after three years of construction.
2020 The COVID-19 pandemic comes to Hanover.