Sketch of Dunbarton, New Hampshire

Written in 1902 by a daughter of Dunbarton, this loving portrait captures a small New England town at the turn of the century, before the automobile and the telephone reshaped rural American life. Ella Mills walks her readers through the rolling hills and byways of this community perched in the hills of New Hampshire, lingering at Gorham Pond, the white-steepled church, and the one-room schoolhouses where generations learned their letters. She traces the town from its first settlers through the Revolutionary War and into the present day, pausing to honor the Rogers family and other founding names whose descendants still farm the same land. What emerges is not mere chronology but something warmer: a meditation on place, on what it means to belong to a particular ridge of hills and a particular meeting house, on the weight of memory. For readers who love New England, local history, or the quiet pleasure of stepping into another time, this book offers an intimate hour in the company of a place and a voice now more than a century gone.