Story Archives of 'Milford'

This week, New Hampshire loses its distinction as the only state in the country without public kindergarten in all of its school districts. Until this fall, parents in ten school districts in the southern part of the state depended instead on private kindergarten or daycare.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton visited one public school that opened its doors to five year olds for the first time.

Public Service of New Hampshire has had to call in more than 500 crew members – most from out of state- to help restore power.
That means the utility must find crews hot meals and a warm place to stay.
As New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton reports, Hampshire Hills, a Sports and Fitness Club in Milford, opened its doors to hundreds of workers.

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.