The Mystery of North Hampton's Milestone Marker

The Mystery of North Hampton’s Milestone Marker

The UNH Civil Engineering senior project in collaboration with the New Hampshire Department of Transportation suggests several redesign possibilities for the Routes 151 and 111 intersection.  You know the location where there is a flashing red traffic light and now a stop sign with small white flashing lights along its edges.   

The students are aware of its historic location – the Town Common, Centennial Hall, and the UCC Church are all right there.  One of the other historic resources in the vicinity is the stone milepost on Post Road across from the Common.  It is marked N20 / P10 meaning Newburyport 20 miles and Portsmouth 10 miles.  A plaque was added stating “Milestone Marker Old Post Road Erected 1774 by Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin Gift from Martha Fuller Halsey 1972.”

If the milepost dates from the eighteenth century, it would have been near the Leavitt Tavern where stagecoaches, carrying mail as well as passengers, stopped.  Mileage meant something for the postal service back then.  The cost of mail was determined by the miles travelled, and was paid by the recipient, not the sender. 

Where does Benjamin Franklin fit in?  Among his many accomplishments in colonial America, Franklin was one of two Deputy Postmasters of the Colonies. He served from 1753 until 1774.  After being fired by the British government, he was named Postmaster General by the Continental Congress in 1775. 

Supposedly in the summer of 1753, Franklin set out on the Boston Post Road in Connecticut, riding in a carriage with a homemade odometer attached to the wheel. Every mile a stake was driven into the ground. A crew followed behind, setting stone markers.

Franklin did oversee the improvement of roads in colonial America but any actual involvement in mileposts, especially as he was in England for all but six of those years, is now not considered likely.  In fact, the editor of the Benjamin Franklin Papers stated that  “Not one document in this very substantial mass of contemporary documents has been found to contain so much as a single reference to roadside milestones, erected by Franklin or by any other persons.”  

Current thinking in the past decade is that the milestones had little to do with postal operations, being mostly embellishments set up in towns to aid passersby. Post riders knew their routes, and were well aware of the mileages between different points.  Still, there are mysteries surrounding the milestones including North Hampton’s.  If it wasn’t Franklin, who did put them up and when?  Did the Town erect it or is it possible that the tavern-owner might have done so? 

Cynthia Swank