Tale of a Logo
Tale of a Logo
This blog post is about the North Hampton Historical Society's effort to create a logo. We have been around for nearly fifty years but have never had a logo. We thought we probably needed one for our website.
Several of us experienced a deja vu moment. Only two years ago, we were in the midst of the planning for the 275th anniversary celebration of the incorporation of North Hampton in 1742. Not again -- we really had to come up with a logo?
Of course, the one for the 275th, thanks to Cindy Burke, was immensely successful. Her stylized version of North Hampton's Town Hall, built in 1844, was such a hit that the Select Board actually spent money to have banners made and hung on utility poles in two of the historic areas of town, North Hill and the Town Hall / Depot "town center".
What to do? Centennial Hall, like the Town Hall, a National Register property in North Hampton, used the school bell in its logo. It appears as a signpost on the Atlantic Avenue side of the building across from the Town Common, as well as on letterhead and promotional materials.
Back to the North Hampton Historical Society's immediate problem -- what was a good logo that seems historical but not fuddy-duddy? Believe it or not, our first thought was the cemetery. North Hampton cemeteries have some great-looking iron gates. In the 1880s, a local blacksmith, Stephen B. Tarleton, received commissions to provide iron gates for the Center Cemetery and Little River Cemetery.
The latter was very convenient – he lived nearby on Maple Road (now 8 Maple Road) and likely passed by his handiwork daily; he now resides in that cemetery.
Please stop by one or all of the cemeteries for a walk and take a look at the gates. Perhaps the Town can try for a Mooseplate grant to restore these local gems.
Our next idea for a logo was Town Hall's Revere bell. Revere, as in Paul Revere. The selectmen ordered a bell from the Revere Foundry in 1816. Now that's a story.
In 1761, the Town built a new meeting house to replace its 1734 one. Any town that wanted some bragging rights built a larger meeting house - going from one to two stories and twice the size. North Hampton's second meeting house may have looked like the Sandown, NH one that still exists.
Built on what is now the Town Common, and slightly north of the original meeting house, the new building lacked one feature any prideful town wanted -- a tower with a bell to call townspeople to both civic and religious meetings, or raise the alarm of any event requiring residents' attention.
Why no bell? No one could agree about the location of the bell tower. Some wanted it on the east end of the building, others on the west. The religious or some other reason is lost to history. But people are people and they can argue about just about anything.
It took fifty-five years until 1816 before the voters at Town Meeting agreed upon the tower's location (east end) and the order for the bell was put in to the Paul Revere Foundry in Boston.
Everything copacetic, right? Well, there was the little matter of payment. Somehow the Town was slow in paying. In 1816 a Town Meeting included the question of how to pay for the bell. There is no letter from Paul Revere or anyone in the foundry in town records -- just legal attachments against Thomas Marston and John Dearborn, two of the selectmen, that seem to be about paying for the bell.
Anyway, someone paid, the bell was delivered and hung in the second meeting house until the separation of church and state, instituted by the Toleration Act of 1819, complicated matters.
In 1838 the Congregational Society decided to build a church and vacate the meeting house. Church members wanted the bell but the selectmen played hardball and the bell remained where it was on the second meeting house.
Then, in 1843, the Town voted to build a town house, now known as Town Hall. With the arrival of the Eastern Railroad in 1840, the commercial center of the town had moved farther east along Atlantic Avenue, across the not yet twenty-year old Lafayette Road to the vicinity of the railroad. The new building was constructed just west of the current Belle Shaw (Pathways) house on the south side of the road.
Timbers of both the first and second meeting houses were used in the new town meeting house, living up to the not so old adage, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." The bell moved to the new town house.
Each year someone was paid for bell ringing and bell repairs. In 1844 Town Meeting specified when the bell would be rung: Town meeting (and there were more than just an annual one back then), at dawn on the 4th of July, funerals, Sundays "at half past nine in the forenoon", and every day (Sunday excepted) at noon.
In 1885, the entire town house, now known as the Town Hall, was moved by oxen across Atlantic Avenue and nearer the railroad line. Why? Your guess is as good as mine but John Leavitt, the original builder of Town Hall, owned the land and sold it for $800 to the town.
In the twentieth century, the bell gained a companion atop Town Hall. Joseph O. Hobbs, nephew of John F. Hobbs, a local boy who made good in the horse-drawn trolley business and real estate in Boston and Somerville, gave the Town of North Hampton in 1920 a clock and clock tower that was installed above the bell tower. Perhaps his thinking was that a bell for providing time was old-fashioned and a clock made much more sense. He also planned ahead and left a trust fund for the maintenance of the clock.
It is a big deal for the Town of North Hampton to have a Revere bell. The Revere Bell Foundry existed between 1792 and 1823, and cast 398 bells. Only 134 of the bells are known to have survived to the present. Hence, it was a no brainer for the Historical Society to consider the Revere bell for our logo. The outcome of all this effort to create a logo? The web designer said, "Never mind."