Story Archives of 'Milford'

In the two decades before the Civil War, Milford, New Hampshire’s Hutchinson Family Singers went from backwoods, church-trained musicians…to international superstars. Their harmonic music was cutting edge for its time borrowing from church hymns and minstrel songs, but they were even better known for leading and furthering the causes of their day from temperance to woman's suffrage to the growing abolitionist movement. A new biography tells the story of probably the biggest New Hampshire musical group that you've never heard of.

Guest

• Scott Gac, visiting professor of American Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and author of "Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Antebellum Reform"

Special thanks today to NHPR friend Martin Gross, who played the role of music producer, loaning us his Hutchinson Family Singers album...Thanks Martin!

Throughout New Hampshire's history, we've taken pride in our staunch abolitionist history. Men and women bringing our belief of "Live Free or Die" into the issue of slavery. But Harriet Wilson’s autobiographic novel "Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black" exposes a completely different side. Considered to be the first novel published by an African American woman, Wilson's book retells her story living as an indentured servant in pre-Civil War Milford, New Hampshire. During that time she endured harsh physical punishments, long hours of unrelenting chores, mean treatments and very little education. We’ll look at both sides of our abolitionist past through Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig on the next Granite State Stories. Laura's guests are JerriAnne Boggis, Project Director for the Harriet Wilson Project and Barbara White, Professor Emeritus of Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire and Historian and Research Director for the Harriet Wilson Project. Wilson's article "'Our Nig' and the She-Devil" was about the real life Heyward Family of Milford, New Hampshire from whom Wilson's fictional family was based on.

Like much of southern New Hampshire, the town of Milford is worried it might be growing too fast.

And the town's planning board is considering its options, including limiting development.

It's a short term solution, but town officials want some breathing room to figure out how to solve what they see as a long term problem.

NHPR Correspondent Avishay Artsy has more.

A bus route between Milford and Nashua has been helping some needy New Hampshire residents get to work for about two years.

Federal grants and local match funds have been paying for the route that transports people who live in Milford, Amherst and Merrimack, to their jobs in Nashua.

But local officials have pulled their funding because they say there aren�t enough people using the bus to justify its cost.

This week, transportation officials from Nashua held a public hearing in Milford to tell residents the bus won�t be coming to town anymore.

New Hampshire Public Radio�s Shannon Mullen has more.

Milford, NH won a national award today. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has awarded the Southern NH Town one of 5 Great American Main Street Awards. The competition was pretty stiff. Sixteen hundred towns acrss the country have Main Street Programs. Andrea Gallagher is the proud coordinator the Milford's program. She described the effort to NHPR's Mark Bevis.