WEARE

A short history of Weare

It was granted to veterans of the Canadian wars in 1735 by Governor Jonathan Belcher, who named it "Beverly-Canada" after their hometown, Beverly, Massachusetts. But the charter was ruled invalid because of a prior claim by the Masonian proprietors, who granted 6 square miles (16 km2) as "Hale's Town" to Ichabod Robie in 1749. It was also known as "Robie's Town" or "Weare's Town" before being incorporated by Governor Benning Wentworth in 1764 as Weare, after Meshech Weare, who served as the town's first clerk and later went on to become New Hampshire's first governor.

In 1834, Moses Cartland founded Clinton Grove Academy, the first Quaker seminary in the state. A cousin of John Greenleaf Whittier, Cartland named the village where the school was located "Clinton Grove", in honor of DeWitt Clinton, chief sponsor of the Erie Canal. The original academy served as a private high school. The complex, which included a classroom building, boarding house, barn and sheds, burned in 1872. Classes were then held in the Quaker meetinghouse across the common until 1874, when a new building was completed. It would serve as the Weare school district from 1877 to 1938.

On September 21, 1938, following several days of heavy rain, the New England Hurricane of 1938 passed through the center of New England. The additional rains from the storm caused the Deering Reservoir dam to breach, releasing a wall of water that rushed down to the Weare Reservoir dam. Although the dam held, the flash flood broke through the land at the side of the dam, releasing millions of gallons of reservoir water. The flood washed away everything in its path, leaving parts of Weare devastated. Many active mills were destroyed in the disaster.

In response to the disaster and seasonal flooding, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the 2,000-foot-long (610 m) Everett Dam, as part of the Hopkinton-Everett Flood Control Project, which had been authorized by Congress to prevent a recurrence of the devastating floods. The overall project was completed in 1963 at a total cost of $21,400,000. The dam required the village of East Weare to be permanently abandoned, and formed Everett Lake.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Weare, New Hampshire, revision 1377166185 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.