Rose Farm House, Bolton (1725)

In June of 1781, the army of the French general, the comte de Rochambeau, on its way to join George Washington and fight in the Battle of Yorktown, camped at what was later called Rose Farm in Bolton. Between June 21 and 25, 1781, four regiments of the French soldiers spent one night each at the camp, which was the fifth French army encampment of their journey from Newport, Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia. The farm was part of the land originally owned by the town’s first minister, Reverend Thomas White and at the time of the Revolutionary War, the property, called the Minister’s Farm, was owned by Reverend George Colton, who was Bolton’s minister from 1764 to 1817. The farm still has numerous stone walls, built by early settlers who initially cleared the land. Many of these walls were noted on a map made by Rochambeau’s engineer. The minister’s house, originally built in 1725 by Rev. White and where Rev. Colton entertained Rochambeau in 1781, has been significantly altered. Once believed to have been replaced by a new Greek Revival-style house, built around 1840 by Reverend James Ely, it is now thought that the core of the later house is the original colonial structure, much altered and added to in later years . The farm was owned by the Rose family in the twentieth century. It was saved from the building of an expressway in 1994 and in 2000, after a campaign to save the land from development, it was purchased by the town of Bolton and is now the Bolton Heritage Farm.

David Smith Post Office (1852)

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Rev. David Smith built a small post office building around 1852 which he operated next to his home on Maple Avenue in Durham. When he died in 1854, he was succeeded by his daughter, Catherine. When she married Henry L. Ellsworth in 1857, the building was moved to its current location on Main Street, across from the town green. In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the old post office housed a succession of stores, eventually becoming a residence. The building has been altered, with an addition on the east end, facing away from the street.

Finnish Hall (1924)

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In Finland, as elsewhere in Scandinavia, Halloween traditions that we are familiar with in America (costumes, trick-or-treating, jack o’-lanterns) have only recently begun to become more popular. Instead, Finn’s celebrate All Saints’ Day, on November 1, as a quiet celebration of those who have passed away. Why am I writing about Finland this Halloween? Because today’s building is the Finnish Hall in Canterbury. It was built in 1924 by the Finnish American Education Association as a social center for the Finnish community in Canterbury, which had one of the largest Finnish communities in the state (about a quarter of the town’s population were Finnish farmers). The building, which has been enlarged over the years, was renamed Sampo Hall when it was acquired in 1963 by a Finnish group known as the Sampo Club, named for the famous magical artifact from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In 1987, the Finnish American Heritage Society was formed to acquire and operate the building and has since constructed a new Heritage Center, with a library and research archives.