Pelham N.H. Granite and Its Destinations

by Gene White

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In Pelham, NH’s eastern corner bordering Salem. N.H., Dracut and Methuen, Mass., lie several abandoned granite quarries whose stone was used in construction not just for Pelham projects, but for a dam, locks, canals, buildings and walls within nine miles or so of where it was harvested.

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Though within its boundaries, Pelham has many surface ledges and pit quarries, the focus of this article is on the pit & deep quarries and ledges found in its east end.

Think of Old Gage Hill Road and Ledge Road area.

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Primarily Pelham’s granite is a salt and pepper grey white in appearance.

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Early settlers in Pelham, incorporated in 1746, used crude methods to extract granite from boulders or surface ledge, for use in the construction of foundations and steps. Black powder to blast, fire & ice and sledge hammer to shape, were all employed to prepare the granite for use. Often these methods left the granite with an irregular shape and a good deal of waste.

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As tools and techniques became available in the last quarter of the 18th and early 19th centuries, hand drilling the granite and splitting it with forged iron wedges (plug&feather) and cape chisels enabled the stone cutters to craft the granite into a more uniform shape, with less waste.

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Up until the 1840’s extraction of and finishing granite in Pelham was mostly for building projects in the town itself. A small amount of Pelham granite may have been used in some buildings and projects within Methuen. Several stone arch bridges in Pelham, such as the Abbott Bridge, were constructed with its native cut granite.

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That all changed with the plan of creating a mill city 9 miles or so southeast of Pelham.

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Lawrence, Mass., physically created in 1845 with the purchase of lands from Methuen and Andover, Mass., by investors known as the Boston Associates. They in turn engaged the Essex Company to create a mill town along the banks of the Merrimack River. The new mill town could only emerge by using the Merrimack River as a source of power. And to make the power to run mill machinery, a dam and its canals needed to be constructed.

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Charles Storrow, an engineer and agent of the Essex Company, purchased land that contained a granite quarry in Pelham, N.H. in July of 1845. This quarry and several nearby would be the main source of granite stone for the Essex Company’s dam, locks, canals and some of its mill building’s construction.

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Though some of the material used in constructing the dam came from the dam site itself, South Lawrence supplied the rubble stone. It was Pelham N.H.’s granite from its east end quarries that supplied the stone cut by Pelhamites for what became the Great Stone Dam. The project started in 1845 & completed in 1848.

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Three years start to finish for $250,000.00, or about $10 million today. Fastened with hydraulic cement the GSD was the “largest structure of its type worldwide.”

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The only steam power used in the construction were the pumps to remove water from the coffer dams in the Merrimack River bed. Derricks and pulleys were used to move the granite around the quarries and the dam site itself with the aid of ox and horse.

 

Otherwise all the granite drilling, splitting and finishing were performed by hand in Pelham or at the Lawrence dam site.

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The north and south canals, guard locks as well as the steps and foundations of several mill buildings were also made of Pelham granite. Lintels and thresholds for the Essex Company’s Machine Shop built in 1847, extensively used Pelham’s granite.

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Imagine for a moment the labor involved in hand digging the canal with pick ax and shovel. Blasting ledges with black powder. Leveling high spots, filling in low spots, moving dirt and rock, and then assembling rubble rock and granite block into a dam and its canals. All performed by hand with horse, oxen, wagon, black powder, derricks and pulleys.

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As Lawrence grew from town to city (1853) many structures public and private continued to employ Pelham’s granite in their construction. St. Mary's Church and the Lawrence Jail, for example.

Methuen also used Pelham’s granite in some of its public and private buildings such as the First Congregational Church & Philips Chapel and its old town hall.

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More than likely, cobblestones, pavers, and curbstones were also fabricated in Pelham for use in both localities.

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Expansion of railroads just after the Civil War decreased the need for Pelham’s granite. Landlocked with no navigable waterway, its granite could only be transported by wagon drawn by a team of horses or oxen.

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The onset of rail allowed granite to be transported at a much cheaper cost over a greater distance.

During this time, cut granite from Pelham’s quarries were still being used in Lawrence’s and Methuen’s building projects, but not at the scale of the GSD construction era.

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There was one last large-scale need for Pelham’s granite.

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