Denise Noeby Denise Noe
First published in December/January, 2004-2005, Volume 1, Issue 6, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
Borden Buffs tend to be extremely familiar with Fall River, Massachusetts as the hometown of the Borden family and the place where the murders occurred. There is a sense in which the Borden mystery put Fall River on the map of the popular mind and has kept it there.
Perhaps it is time we got acquainted with the lovely little town in which Emma Borden spent the last years of her life: Newmarket, New Hampshire.
Len Rebello wrote in Lizzie Borden: Past and Present that Emma moved to Newmarket in 1923 and resided there until her death in 1927. The never-married, never-employed Emma, who had spent most of her life with her similarly situated sister, found a roommate in Annie Connor, a non-working spinster whose life pattern was akin to that of Emma and Lizzie.
In Lizzie, Frank Spiering, who has apparently written more on Emma’s life in Newmarket than any other author, stated that Emma spent the remainder of her life in the same shy, retiring manner that had always characterized it. He wrote that the home she moved into was on “Main Street, near the railroad tracks leading through the center of town” and described it as “a large, white, two-story house.” Annie Connor lived on the first floor while Emma took “over the second floor front bedroom facing the street.” In that more rural era, the women “kept their two Jersey cows” in the barn in back of the house and hired a neighborhood teenager to regularly milk the cows. That youngster, 13-year-old Royce Carpenter, “would carry the warm milk from the barn into the kitchen. There his job was to churn the milk to get the butterfat out.” He often saw Emma, white-haired and elderly but still quite alert, sitting in a rocking chair and, as Spiering tells it, “dressed in the pale-colored shifts which were fashionable at the time.” Spiering records another neighbor, Ione Kent as recalling that “Emma was addicted to cubes of sugar, which she sucked on continually.”
Why did Emma choose to live in Newmarket? Spiering wrote that, “By railroad, the tiny town of Newmarket, New Hampshire, was one hundred and twenty-nine miles from Fall River. . . .The population was little more than a thousand and it was far enough removed from the seaside resort of Hampton Beach or the main thoroughfares to Boston and Portsmouth to preclude travelers from passing through. It was quietly withdrawn, hidden away amid green rolling farms that had been cultivated by English settlers in the 1600s.”
In short, it was the sort of town that would attract someone who was averse to publicity but had for years found herself unwillingly at the center of it.
There might have been more to the attraction as well since Newmarket, New Hampshire both was, and is, a quaint and pleasant small town. As so many towns do, Newmarket grew up along a river. The online Seacoast Town Listing states, “The Lamprey River, winding through the town, plays a special yet changing role in the town’s life. Formerly serving as a major water transportation link connecting the inland regions with Portsmouth harbor and the Atlantic ocean, the Lamprey is now appreciated as a significant recreational asset to the region with its opportunities for fishing, boating and access to the Greater Bay tidal basin area.” Early Newmarket was a mill town, its primary mills changing over the years from sawmills to textile mills.
Richard Alperin is the current president of the Newmarket Historical Society. The construction worker became intrigued by the history of his town in 2000 when he bought an old home and learned about the background of its property. An article entitled “Legacy of Newmarket” in the Portsmouth Herald by Rachel Grace Toussaint said that Alperin discovered that three different houses had stood on the property. The first had been owned by one of Newmarket’s founding fathers—an African American named Wentworth Cheswell. Like so many people, Alperin thought of 18th Century blacks in this country as slaves and was fascinated to learn that Cheswell had been a man of wealth and influence.
“Legacy of Newmarket” stated: “Through his digging, Alperin learned Cheswell lived from 1747 until 1817 and owned the home during the Revolutionary War.” Cheswell’s grandfather had been a black slave but his father, Hopestill Cheswell, was “a well-known builder of his time.” Like many free African Americans of the time, Wentworth Cheswell was of mixed ancestry, one quarter of which was black.
Wentworth Cheswell was not raised in deprivation but educated in a private school. He was a teacher in Newmarket and, in 1768, was elected Town Constable. He went on to a distinguished career as a public servant. The article quotes Alperin as saying, “Between 1768 and 1817, every single year he served the town in some capacity, except for one year. He was a selectman, an auditor, an assessor, a scrivener, and a justice of the peace.” He also served in an important capacity during the Revolutionary War when he was on the Committee of Safety and brought messages from Newmarket to Exeter and back again. There is a PBS website that attributes to Cheswell a Paul Revere-like midnight ride from Boston to Newmarket warning of the British on their way. However, whether or not this actually occurred has not been documented. Alperin is attempting to persuade New Hampshire to erect a state historical marker at Cheswell’s grave and would like to have something about this ride etched into it if it can be verified. “I have not been able to find proof,” he says.
Alperin has found ample proof that Cheswell was a fascinating character of great accomplishment. His research into the remarkable Wentworth Cheswell got him hooked on history: “I’ve learned that the people of today need to realize that there’s a yesterday we come from, and a tomorrow we’re all going to.”
The “people of today” in Newmarket number approximately 7,000. Newmarket’s official online homepage boasts of a traditional feel to it with “white church steeples” and “old mill buildings.” It also lauds its location that is close to important educational institutions and places of recreation. The University of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Technical College are just minutes away from the town by vehicle. Newmarket has a 9-hole golf course, an athletic club, and sporting groups. Perhaps its greatest offering to the sporting crowd is its nearby beaches and waterways. The homepage proudly writes: “Newmarket, from its own town landings, offers boaters hours of voyaging through pristine navigable waterways leading to the Atlantic Ocean. From summer sailing, power boating, canoeing, and kayaking, to winter ice skating and cross-country skiing, as well as year-round fishing of every kind, Newmarket’s clean and protected fresh and salt waters are truly the Seacoast area’s prized jewel.”
Newmarket should not be described as a “sleepy” small town since it has been the birthplace of important companies including Timberland, Vitronics, Newmarket Software and Bavarian Autosport. The town’s official homepage website brags that New Hampshire and Newmarket have a “progressive, low tax rate structure” that attracts entrepreneurs. High tech industry and other modern businesses have long ago replaced the textile mills. The top three employers in 21st Century Newmarket, New Hampshire are Cabletron Systems (a computer networking firm), Shaw’s supermarkets and Liberty Mutual Insurance.
The town also attracts people from all around with its unique festivities. In mid-August it puts on an “Old Home” weekend celebration with a street fair featuring barbecue and an ice cream smorgasbord. The highlight of this festival is a dramatic firefighters’ muster sponsored by the New England States Veteran Firemen’s League.
Another Newmarket special event is geared specifically to children. It is the Newmarket Fishing Derby at which kids ages 2 to 14 gather at a stocked pond and try for the biggest fish.
People come to Newmarket for a wide variety of reasons. One of them is to research the last years of Emma Borden’s life. When this writer contacted a woman known for her considerable knowledge of her town’s history, the woman showed annoyance in being asked about Emma. Like those who do not share the interest in America’s preeminent murder mystery that fuels readership of The Hatchet, she is tired of talking about it. However, she did acknowledge that the house Emma resided in still stands. It probably also has the improvements Emma made to it when she moved in. According to Spiering, she had an upstairs bathroom and steam heating installed and “paid for the construction of a second stairway down the back of the house to the kitchen.
“The stairway was hidden by a closet door, beside which was a narrow auxiliary pantry where a large axe was kept for chopping wood.
“On the wall next to the pantry was an extremely unusual lighting panel, which would instantly illuminate the entire downstairs.” Spiering continued in a footnote, “Through the courtesy of the present owner of the house I saw both the hidden stairway and the light panel which Emma installed. With a single movement, the panel lights the foyer, parlor, living room, hallways, kitchen, dining room, porch and front of the house.”
The Borden mystery will probably last forever. Somehow it seems fitting that so many of the abodes associated with its principals—the house where the murders were committed, Maplecroft, and Emma’s final home in Newmarket—are still up and in working order.
Works Cited
Rebello, Leonard. Lizzie Borden: Past and Present. Al-Zach Press, 1999.
Spiering, Frank, Lizzie: The Story of Lizzie Borden. NY: Random House, 1984.
Toussaint, Rachel Grace. “Portsmouth Herald Local News: Legacy of Newmarket founding father revealed.” Seacoastonline, 22 Dec. 2002. 26 Nov. 2004 <http://www.seacoastonline.com/2002news/12222002/news/4276.htm>.
“Newmarket, New Hampshire County Profile – an ideal place to work and live.” Town of Newmarket, NH, 1998. 26 Nov. 2004 <http://www.newmarket-nh.com/set1.htm>.
“Seacoast Town Listing – Newmarket, New Hampshire.” Seacostonline, 2004. 26 Nov. 2004 <http://www.seacoastonline.com/living/newmarket.htm>.
