The First Families of Squam
The familiar tribal names of New Hampshire including Cowasuck, Ossipee, and Pemigewasset come from subgroups of the Western Abenaki that first inhabited the Squam region about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. It was about then that the native peoples of the region were adapting to the environment and adopting to new and better methods of hunting, fishing, and food gathering. It wasn’t until the arrival of Europeans in the 1600s that the culture of Squam was dramatically influenced by change.
The indigenous Abenaki peoples of Squam had a distinct culture with well-defined social structures, strong family ties, and a complex social universe. As hunter-gatherers, they traveled among a series of sites around the lake settling in for a few weeks or several months depending on the seasons for hunting and fishing. These ancient New Hampshire natives hunted deer, moose, bear, and smaller game, and ate wild butternuts, acorns, hickory nuts, and berries. Beginning about 1,000 years ago, they began to cultivate crops that included corn, beans, and squash.
Remnants of their seasonal camps with populations in the thousands and going back hundreds of generations have been identified and so have the many trails the natives developed throughout New Hampshire. And given their use of canoes and snowshoes, long-distance travel was not too difficult. This complex and varied network of trails also served the early colonial settlers who followed them to well-located native sites that became the foundation of their own settlements.
But along with ongoing improvements to many ways of life, the Abenaki and most all other regional native populations were not immune to diseases brought by European settlers and were almost wiped out.
By the late 1800s the local communities were transitioning their economies from agricultural farms to accommodating the needs of a growing boom in tourism. First visitors coming to Asquam (as the lake was then known) often became so smitten with the area that several sought opportunities to purchase their own piece of paradise. Land surrounding Squam had become available and relatively inexpensive due to the many farms that had ceased to operate because the owners’ heirs, not wanting to continue farming, had moved south to pursue “real jobs” in the factories of Manchester to the south.
As a new population of home owners, summer-home people, and frequent visitors took over the land it became evident that existing local families and community resources would be needed to facilitate the transition and economic change from farming to supporting tourism. Large farm houses were converted to rooming houses (sometimes by only adding a sign), grand hotels competing with amenities were built in towns all around the lake, and new “founding” families typically built rustic cabins and houses called “camps” nestled amongst the trees on the shore, on islands, and on land above the lake that provided magnificent vistas. Grand second homes built by wealthy families from the city typically occupied large tracts of land above the lake, and all these properties required continuous property management mostly provided by the locals.
As families grew and generations swelled, the “love of place” grew with them, and collectively they strove to honor the tradition to keep Squam “as-is.” In 1904 they founded the Squam Lake Improvement Association (now the Squam Lakes Association) to aid in a conservation endeavor that has succeeded in accomplishing that goal for well over a hundred years.
Rockywold-Deephaven Camp
Rockywold-Deephaven Camp has had a significant impact in fostering the simple nature-loving atmosphere of Squam that still attracts generation after generation to make Squam an annual part of their lives and who often become part-time or full-time residents. The two camps now joined were founded in 1897 by Alice Bacon as Deephaven Camp and in 1902 by Mary Alice Armstrong as Rockywold.
These two women met while teaching at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, a school founded by Mary Armstrong’s husband General Samuel Armstrong that was dedicated to teaching newly freed slaves the skills needed for a productive life as freemen. Miss Bacon and Mrs. Armstrong ran their camps together until Miss Bacon’s death in 1918 when Mrs. Armstrong bought Camp Deephaven and began running both camps. She had two children with General Armstrong, a son Daniel, who went to Annapolis, and a daughter Margaret who married Arthur Howe in 1916 in a ceremony that was the first recorded marriage on Church Island.
Mrs. Armstrong continued to run both camps until the age of 85, and in 1949 she incorporated the camps to pass ownership to her children. From then until the age of ninety-four and her death in 1958, Margaret and her husband Arthur took over daily management of the camps. Margaret had first come to Rockywold-Deephaven when she was five years old and was at her mother’s side for much of her life. Whenever they were apart, daily correspondence always included camp matters. Both shared a strong sense of camp values and traditions of simplicity and a love of surroundings so that the transition between the two was absolutely seamless.
Most guests came to the camps summer after summer, and by the time Margaret had taken over, many families were on their second generation. Margaret Howe retired in 1960, and for the next ten years she continued to spend summers at Rockywold-Deephaven enjoying her time with family, employees, and friends. Margaret kept the position of president until 1964 when her son Harold took over the position. She died in 1971 at the age 80, and it was only then that someone outside the family, George Neilson, was hired to run the business. Margaret’s five children were the governing board until 1980.
The one word that is still consistently used to describe a vacation at RDC is “timelessness,” a special quality that has become rooted within Squam families as well as friends that were met there. They are all regenerated by Squam Lake’s restful calm and the natural beauty of fragrant pines, mountain summits, star-filled night skies, and the haunting call of loons. All are grateful for the unique experience of simplicity and peace they took with them, and many former campers who acquired land to build their own “camps” and along with successive generations they still consider Squam their spiritual home.
Mary Alice Armstrong helped create, manage, and nurture Rockywold-Deephaven Camps.
A letter from camper Dorothy G. Noyes to Mary Alice Armstrong expressed the effect that Mrs. Armstrong had on the lives of many of her guests.
Dear Mrs. Armstrong,
I suppose that everyone who leaves Rockywold carries away a different impression, and while my own impression is still fresh I want to tell you something of what Rockywold meant to me.
I went to New Hampshire seeking refreshment before another year of work and certainly the healthy life and surroundings brought me a real re-creation (in the literal meaning of the word) of body and mind. However, on looking back I find that I think of Rockywold, not primarily as a camp with a beautiful setting of pines and rocks — but rather, just as a church is more than a building and a site, so to me Rockywold is essentially a living community united by a common purpose.
What makes the difference is that you have built into it, through the years, your own high purposes and ideals. Your faith in human nature — your sympathy with other races and creeds — your enduring belief that all kinds of families and all ages can live together happily and graciously — all these things are expressed and proved day by day at Rockywold….To me Rockywold is a great spiritual accomplishment, an example of the “American way of life,” at its best.
Dorothy G Noyes
Reflections of Squam
MARY ALICE FORD ARMSTRONG
Background of Mrs. Armstrong Arthur Howe
The Power of Mrs. Armstrong Arthur Howe
Mrs. Armstrong and the Fire Peggy Howe
Return of the Generations Duke Kimball
Ice Harvesting at Rockywold-Deephaven Camps
Margie Howe Emmons
Mrs. Armstrong Sidney Lovett
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An extraordinary book that features over 60 compelling interviews with Squam locals and summer residents.
The Coolidge Family
Various stories of how they first became enamored with Squam are told by many families around the lake, and the Coolidge Family has a direct connection to Ernest Balch and Camp Chocorua. Harold Jefferson Coolidge was a camper at Camp Chocorua and ended up buying Camp Wonalancet and Long Island from Ellen and Edith Balch in 1892. Harold needed some financial support and asked his father who agreed. He decided to come north from Boston and check out his son’s judgment. He was so enamored of Squam he too bought property as did Harold’s four brothers.
Edith Balch, Ernest’s sister, married Clifford Gray Twombly, an Episcopal minister. After Camp Chocorua closed in 1889, the camp chapel continued providing church services to locals and summer residents in the summer months. This went on until 1903 when the Chocorua Chapel Association was formed. Edith and Clifford were two of the people who formed the Chocorua Chapel Association. Clifford was the primary minister at Church Island from 1903 until 1941. Ellen Balch (also sister to Ernest Balch) and her husband Oliver Whipple Huntington were also two of the eight people who formed the Chocorua Chapel Assn. in 1903. Huntington was the founder of a boys camp, Camp Cloyne, located on the southwest part of the lake.
During the twentieth century on Squam Lake the Webster’s Burleigh Farm dominated Holderness while the Coolidge families were the major landowners in Sandwich. Both were staunch conservationists dedicated to protecting and preserving the unspoiled landscape of Squam.
The Coolidge family began their association with Squam in1892 when Harold Jefferson Coolidge bought two islands on Squam, then his parents bought a farm on sandwich bay for use as a country retreat. With the purchase of Long Island came the legendary Camp Wonalanset, and for Harold Coolidge and the many visitors that came to visit the family settings on Squam the views were pure magic. Harold Coolidge later bought the hundred-acre Hoag Island, and by the early 1920s the Coolidge family holdings encompassed about 4000 acres.
Wanting to extend the naturalist “flavor” of Squam they had introduced, the Coolidge families began building rustic wood camps on their properties for the steadily growing number of visitors. Building was so brisk, the Coolidge’s maintained a private sawmill on Squaw Cove to produce their own lumber.
In charge of “authentic” design for many of these “camps” (that could be the size of actual houses and indeed were) was the Boston architect Joseph Randolph Coolidge. But, rather than all looking the same, the architect created a remarkable range of styles and moods for his clients. Yet despite their many differences, early Squam camps shared a certain look and inherent quirkiness that was the essence of delight. It was not unusual for a rock to protrude through the floor (that was easier than removing it) or a tree left to grow through a dock (that was easier than cutting it down).
J.R. Coolidge’s focus on architecture strongly reflected the families’ dedication to nature and conservation. Unwritten rules dictated an unobtrusive siting always screened by trees and shrubs to blend into the setting so as to be barely visible from the water. And the building materials had to be discreet using dark color schemes and rough-cut stone, bark-clad logs, twiggy railings and other ‘natural’ details. And a quiet presence deliberately helped. Thrift and ingenuity were also part of the building lexicon. One of his innovative designs included a hinged lift-up wall that could be incorporated into lakeside and island dwellings to let the “outside” inside. Recycling was traditional, and moving buildings often across the ice was a typical means of adding to or subtracting from a camp.
The Webster Family
In the early1880s, the Webster family patriarch, Frank G. Webster, a successful Boston banker, came to stay at the Asquam House on Shepard Hill and was mesmerized by the beauty of the Squam Watershed. To him, the Lake in central New Hampshire was a quiet place where he could get away from the “fancy life” to enjoy unspoiled nature and fish in a pristine lake with an abundance of fish.
An elderly retired army captain, William Rice Carnes, who lived on a tiny island in what is now known as Carnes Cove, was also an avid fisherman who in 1881 invited Frank with his two boys Edwin and Laurence to spend the night at Carnes Island. It was a memorable experience for the lads aged ten and fourteen. A former aide-de-camp for Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War, Carnes was known for tossing logs at suitors who came calling on his daughters and for filling his rowboat with earth and rocks to enlarge the size of his island. There are photographs of Carnes cleaning fish on a boulder behind the cabin wearing a silk top hat.
The island camp of William R. Carnes was frequently visited by Frank G. Webster I and his two boys and later purchased by the Webster family in 1893.
As Edwin and Laurence were growing up, Frank would bring them to the lake every summer where the family stayed in the rustic Carnes island camp. When Carnes died, Webster acquired the island, tore down the original cabin and replaced it with the Camp Carnes which remains in use today. The first guests recorded their visits in the summer and fall of 1894. From that point on, Frank, Edwin, and Laurence all bought additional land at the north-west end of the lake. F. G. Webster expanded his land up the hill and in 1895 built a homestead where he raised his two sons surrounded by the experience of pure nature – the mountains, lake, animals, birds, flowers, and even the changes in weather.
From the very beginning, the overwhelming goal of F. G. Webster and the heritage of all generations to follow has been the protection and preservation of Squam lakes. Spurred on by the environmental movement of the early 1900s, his son Laurence, also an avid conservationist, succeeded in influencing others to follow his lead and enhanced the family commitment to conservation of the Squam Watershed when in 1904, he and others formed the Squam Lakes Improvement Association that became the Squam Lakes Association (SLA) in 1947. As president of the association from 1928 to 1945, Laurence successfully spearheaded conservation of the lake through the depression era and World War II.
Edwin grew up to start a successful worldwide engineering business that allowed him to return to Squam in 1911 and build Burleigh Farm. The industrial revolution offered traditional farmers better opportunities and higher wages elsewhere, and because the lake then had not yet been used for recreation, the vacant land they abandoned was available quite inexpensively. Following the advise of his father, Laurence, known as L.J. and other wealthy first families began buying up all the surrounding farmland available that amounted to thousands of acres. Asked why he needed so much land, L.J. supposedly replied, “I never tire of paradise.”
Laurence strived to make Burleigh farm work, and by the mid1930’s he was joined by his son, Frank G. Webster II, who operated the farm as a livelihood through WW ll. Burleigh Farm became a successful working dairy farm through 1963 with a prize herd of Guernsey milk cows that supplied their milk delivery route, 2,400 chickens that produced Burleigh farm eggs each day, beef products, vegetables, and a sugar house for producing maple syrup.
Today, Burleigh farm has replaced dairy products with a commendable maple syrup produced by modern maple sugaring methods. Ribbons from prize-winning barnyard stock decorate the homestead.
Laurence’s wife Alice May was also a conservation leader as well as a self-taught expert on hummingbirds who frequently gave lectures at garden clubs about conserving wild flowers. She also created the first hand-blown glass hummingbird feeder. In 1932 May Webster used her saved stipends to start the Lost River Nature Camp that combined classroom study with field trips about birds and their habitats. During the1950s, National Geographic magazine featured photos of May and her hummers with Harold Edgerton (Papa Flash) stop-action photos of hummingbird wings.
Webster family tree beginning with F.G. Webster I
Celebrating Community
In addition to their dairy farm and sugaring operation for maple syrup, the beauty of Burleigh farm and its surrounds drew generations of Websters and their extended families back to Squam for annual family get-togethers. For all generations, the farm was a peaceful and quiet place for mingling with nature, having fun together, being with family, and being reminded of F.G. Webster II’s values, “It’s not what you have, it’s what you are,” and “It’s not how you look, it’s how you behave.” Coming back to Squam was often mentioned as being “contagious” and the natural beauty of the land and lake further strengthened their commitments to conservation.
The one place on the lake where you could not always expect peace and quiet was the Webster boathouse built in 1910 with its long and steep roof slide. Walking down the hill from the farm you could hear laughter and cheers getting louder as the young as well as the young at heart navigated the long slide into the lake, as spontaneously chosen teams played water sports, and up to fourteen participants in the long “war” canoe battled swimmers, or Edwin Webster churned up the water in his speedboat that was powered by an aircraft engine. The boathouse was a place for fun and it was OK to be loud.
Frank G. Webster II had a special affinity for water skiing and insisted that everyone, family or visitor, learn how to do it. In 1963, his son Peter Webster and nephew Tim Fisher accepted the challenge and ultimately mastered water skiing on bare feet. And the fun continued in the winter with ice skating, snow sledding and skiing, snowshoe walks by moonlight, toboggan runs, and the annual all-welcome holiday square dance.
Residents in the Squam region as well as visitors to Squam are invited to add their stories of first coming to Squam and experiencing the Lake’s many attributes.
Frank G. Webster ll aquaplaning, standing on a chair in1917. He also did 360’s standing on a chair
Reflections of Squam
The Coming of the Metcalfs Daphne Mowatt
The Danes Bring Families Nancy Kelly
Six Generations of Pratts Frank Pratt
The Piper Family Sidney Lovett, Jeff Cripps
Restoration Margie Emmons
The Place We Loved Best Daphne Mowatt
Winter fun Sally Webster
The Lake in Winter C.C. Yeager
Our World as One with the Lake Peter Webster
The Happiest of Times Edie Eddy
Home Base Edie Eddy
Losing a Truck Norm Lyford - Taxes - C,C. Yeager
Fire and the Rebuilding of the Ice House
Norm Lyford, Jeff Cripps
The Ring Edie Eddy
A Squam Experience Woodie Laverack
When the Ice Goes Out Barbara Currier
The Slades Roger Merriman
Frank Francesco Indentured Servant Peter Francesco
Stephen Sabine’s Honeymoon Woodie Laverack
Emigrating for Work Scott King
The 1938 Hurricane Gordon Potter
Ice Harvesting Season Norm Lyford
Everybody Had an Ice House Johnny Welch
Cutting Ice in Carnes Cove Gordon Potter
The History of the Mail Boat Tink Taylor
The Mail Boat Comes to Long Island Nat Coolidge
The Importance of the Mail Boat Jon Bourne
The Event of the Day Nancy Grady
The Missing Newspaper Bill and Jake Dunnell
Red Hill Charlie Hanson
The Wreck Will Twombly and Edie Eddy
The Field Test
Will Twombly, David Plant, and Prudie Van Winkle
Order "Voices of Squam"
An extraordinary book that features over 60 compelling interviews with Squam locals and summer residents.