ARTSCULTURE · HISTORICAL MARKER
Robert Frost in Allenstown / Buck Street Mills
Arts & Culture
9
In the summer of 1896, aspiring poet Robert Frost and his wife Elinor spent a belated honeymoon in a rented cottage near the Suncook River in Allenstown. Carl Burell, a high school friend and avid naturalist, was foreman at the Moulton box shop at Buck Street dam, and botany walks with Burell awakened Frost to the natural world, coloring his later writings. Frost recalled these walks in "The Quest of the Orchis" (1901), and Burell's 1896 injury in a mill accident inspired Frost's poem, "The Self-Seeker." At Buck Street, a bridge was built by the 1750s, and natural falls were dammed to power saw and grist mills before 1767. The 19th century brought a water-powered fulling mill for cleansing wool cloth by 1813, a bedstead shop by 1845, a spoke shop in the 1850s, and twine mills. By the 1890s, the dams powered Charles Fisher's axe handle factory and Reuben C. Moulton's box and trunk shop. Then known as East Pembroke, the area had a post office, store, blacksmith shop, houses, and workers' tenements.
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Allenstown, New Hampshire
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