The Rich History of Webster Place

2005: The National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the Daniel Webster Homestead at Elms Farm one of the "11 Most Endangered Properties in the U.S." and started a campaign to save the farm.

The following chronology was derived from primary and secondary sources, including several articles in Granite Monthly magazine, annual reports and other publications of the New Hampshire Orphans' Home, various photographs (including a series of stereoscopic views published for the benefit of the home by W. G. C. Kimball in 1878), and various maps.

1740: John Brown, surveyor of what is now Boscawen, laid out the first road through this area.

1753: John Stark guided a party of road surveyors employed by the Proprietors of Stevenstown.

1785-86: Ebenezer Webster moved from the Webster birthplace in West Franklin, NH to the vicinity of Elm Farm, building a large two-story tavern on land he had purchased from Sarah Call for £165. This tavern stood a short distance north of Elm Farm, on the road leading north from Concord toward present-day Franklin.

1799: Ebenezer Webster exchanged his tavern stand with William Haddock for the middle house connected with the orphans' home, now a National Historic Landmark. In this home, Ebenezer Webster died in 1806. His farm is said to have encompassed 180 acres. It stood on the road leading north from Concord, encompassing the site where the northernmost fort on the Merrimack River had been erected in Stevenstown (later Salisbury) in 1746. This fort was commanded by Philip Call, who eventually obtained title to the surrounding land.

1806: Upon Ebenezer Webster's death, the Elm Farm property passed to Webster's sons Ezekiel and Daniel as tenants in common. His undivided half interest in the farm passed to his two daughters, whose guardian was Charles B. Haddock, Ezekiel's and Daniel's nephew.

1831: Daniel Webster purchased the other half interest in the farm from Haddock.

c. 1844: Webster reportedly added a wing to the western side of the old dwelling. This wing is shown in many photographs, but had been removed by the 1920s.

1847: Completion of the Northern Railroad permitted Daniel Webster to travel here from Boston in about three hours. Webster used the property as an experimental farm and vacation retreat. Many of his family, together with members of the pioneering Call family, are buried in the cemetery east of the house. Now enclosed within the grounds of Elm Farm, this burial ground originally stood beside the public highway extending north from Concord. In 1908, that road was bypassed by the present Daniel Webster Highway, which runs parallel to the Northern Railroad. The road south of the cemetery was discontinued as a highway in 1911.

1852: Daniel Webster died. Title to the property passed to Webster's son, Fletcher, who sold the farm, then containing 450 acres, to Rufus L. Tay in 1855.

1860: Tay added the two-story house to the eastern end of the old Haddock-Webster mansion.

1870: Charlotte Tay sold the property to John Morrison and Joseph Eastman for $12,500.

1871: The property was acquired by the New Hampshire Orphans' Home, for $10,000. At first, the connected wooden Webster and Tay houses, together with the Webster farm buildings to the west, constituted the full facilities of the orphanage. During the first two years of its operation, the institution accommodated sixty-two orphans in these buildings.

1873: The Orphans' Home constructed a new three-story brick building, costing $8,000, east of the Webster and Tay houses. This building was named the Mack Building in honor of the founder of the home, the Rev. Daniel A. Mack, a Methodist Episcopal minister and Civil War chaplain.

1895: A large brick nursery building was constructed south of the Mack building. The building initially housed a nursery of twelve children aged ten months to three years, a second nursery of twelve children between the ages of three and five years, and a kindergarten of thirty-six boys and girls.

1900: A bequest of Susan E. W. Creighton of Newmarket, N.H., provided $39,000 to the Orphans' Home. This income was used to construct four buildings: Creighton Hall, the primary school building, Kimball Chapel, and the heating plant/laundry. All these buildings were designed by architect James E. Randlett (1846-1909) of Concord. Creighton Hall, which remains largely unaltered except for the interior finish of its chambers, contained a first-story dining room and kitchen and dormitories for thirty-six older girls. South of the 1895 nursery building, and connected to it, was a primary school building having a classroom on the first story, chambers for four to five teachers on the second story, and sewing rooms in the basement. South of the school building and attached to it by a short passageway was the John Kimball Chapel, named for Hon. John Kimball, who served as the treasurer of the Orphans' Home from 1871 until his death in 1913. Kimball and his wife donated the settees and other original furnishings of the chapel. Beneath the chapel was a manual training room. The chapel was dedicated in June 1903. The heating plant, located east of the school and chapel, provided steam for two-pipe steam heating for all the buildings at the home. Attached to the steam plant was the institution's laundry building.

The nursery building, the primary school, and the Kimball Chapel all faced toward the west. Photographs show that the southern doorways of the Webster and Tay Houses, sheltered by a long porch, eventually became the principal entrances, with the original front doors, facing the highway to the north, becoming points of entry for the public. The reorientation of the entrances of the Webster and Tay Houses, together with the orientation of the facades of the nursery, school, and chapel, defined two sides of a rectangle lying south of the old Webster House. This became the principal playground of the Home. This area was used as an outdoor chapel by the Sisters of the Holy Cross.

1901: An act of the New Hampshire legislature exempted the New Hampshire Orphans' Home from taxes. This was the only annual financial assistance the State of New Hampshire renders the New Hampshire Orphans' Home.

1902: The large framed barn, thought to date from 1799 and now standing on the west side of Route 3, was reconstructed, and another old building was remodeled as a poultry house located south of the barn.

1902: The Franklin Woman's Club presented the boulder and bronze tablet that face the former highway and identify the Webster House as Elms Farm. The home of Daniel Webster from 1800 -- when it was purchased by his father, Capt. Ebenezer Webster -- until his death in 1852.

1913: According to a Granite Monthly article of 1921, the original Mack Building of 1873 was "...a wooden structure faced with brick, which was used until 1913 when it was rebuilt with brick, and named in honor of the founder of the Home." Although this implies a replacement of the original Mack building, photographs seem to show that the original building remained unchanged on the exterior except for an altered dormer. The New Hampshire Annual Reports of 1914 further explain the changes made in 1913.

“During the year of 1913 the Mack building, some forty years old, and occupied exclusively by boys, was declared unsafe, and it was a question of immediate repairs or abandonment of the building. It was decided to repair the building, which has been done with great thoroughness. Iron beams and trusses were used, the roof rebuilt, giving excellent dormitories. New doors and windows, steel ceilings and walls, North Carolina pine finish, have made a practically new interior, and a commodious piazza has been added to the exterior.”

1915: The John Taylor Cottage, lying west of the Northern Railroad tracks, was remodeled as a home for fourteen older boys who were trained to care for the farm's horses, cows, pigs, and hens. The Taylor Cottage is said to have been occupied by Daniel Webster's last farm manager.

1921: The Bartlett Cottage, on the north side of the highway diagonally across from the Webster and Tay Houses, was furnished for the occupancy of some of the older girls, providing them with detached accommodations similar to those for older boys in the Taylor Cottage.

1923: The Nursery Building of 1873 burned on February 13. The nearby Mack Building, Creighton Hall, school building, and Kimball Chapel were saved from the fire.

1924: The Henry Memorial School, donated at a cost of $60,000 by a member of the Henry family of Lincoln, N.H., was opened. This school building provided for teaching through the eighth grade. Ninth-grade education was offered at the Franklin Junior High School, and grades ten through twelve were taught at Franklin High School. The Henry Memorial School was the first new building at the Orphans' Home to be constructed on the north side of the old highway, which had been re-routed to bypass the Orphans' Home in 1911, leaving the old road as a driveway to the Home and to the old cemetery to its east.

1925: The Daniel Webster Memorial Building was constructed at a cost of about $65,000 to replace the burned Nursery Building. The Webster Memorial Building stands east of the Henry Memorial School on the north side of the former highway. It was built to serve as a nursery, kindergarten, and infirmary, with a registered nurse in charge of the latter. The sun porch on its eastern end was an adjunct to the infirmary section of the building.

1943: The Burleigh Farm and farm cottage, immediately east of the Daniel Webster Memorial Building, was placed on the market. Soon thereafter, the Cogswell Benevolent Trust purchased the property and donated it to the New Hampshire Orphans' Home.

1947: The institution, newly re-named the Daniel Webster Home for Children, repaired the Burleigh Cottage as a residence for about twenty girls with the help of an additional $5,000 donation from the Cogswell Benevolent Trust.

1960: The New Hampshire Orphans' Home, renamed the Daniel Webster Home for Children sometime before 1947, became the property of the Sisters of the Holy Cross.

2000: The Sisters of the Holy Cross, faced with dwindling numbers and financial resources, placed the property on the market. The New Hampshire Department of Cultural Resources sponsored a charrette on the property to draw together potential users of the buildings and land, and to seek methods of protecting the property.

2004: Developer P. D. Associates executed a purchase and sales agreement on the property and proposed to build 130 manufactured homes in a clustered development near the river.

2005: The Franklin Zoning Board of Adjustment denied P. D. Associates' application, but local zoning ordinances still allowed the construction of up to 70 houses on larger lots.

2005 (June): The National Trust for Historic Preservation designated Elms Farm one of the Eleven Most Endangered Properties in the United States.

2005: Webster Farm Preservation Association was formed to attempt to purchase the property from P. D. Associates.

2005 (September): The New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program (LCHIP) pledged $750,000 -- half its biennial budget -- toward purchase of the property.

2005 (October): The United States Farm and Ranchland Protection Program pledged $500,000 toward protection of the land.

2005 (November): The Trust for Public Land purchased the property from P. D. Associates for $1.75 million, acting as temporary owner of the property. The Trust now must be reimbursed and freed to carry on its mission elsewhere.

2006 (February): Webster Farm Preservation Association held a charrette on the property to plan for possible uses of the buildings.

2006: Fundraising to reimburse the Trust for Public Land and fund the rehabilitation of the buildings began in earnest.

2007: Property was acquired by Alex Ray, Webster Place, Inc. Board Incorporated to establish Webster Place Recovery Center.

2008: Webster Place Recovery Center opens and is fully operational helping alcoholics and addicts get and stay sober with a new and unique approach: the Growing Into Recovery^TM program.