Report On Relocation Site Yields Information

Dr. Neill DePaoli's extensive report on the archaeological excavation at the Colonel Paul Wentworth House relocation site has provided interesting material for fans of Rollinsford history. As DePaoli tracks the history of the property through the centuries one can see a pattern prevalent throughout much of New Hampshire's history. It is a story of the harvest of the forests and the using up of natural resources, the slow decline of maritime trade and agricultural wealth, the transformation of a rural village to an industrial town, and the movement towards a cash economy.

Our story begins, of course, with Colonel Paul Wentworth the entrepreneurial lumberman, farmer and sawmill owner of the early 18th century. He made a life for himself and his new bride, Abra, in what was then the outskirts of Dover, and the edge of New Hampshire's frontier. In his grand house above the Salmon Falls River, he had a picture of Solomon's Temples, books on ecclesiastical history, a long dutch gun, gold buttons, silver tankards and many other things listed in the probate inventory taken at his death in 1748.

Paul Wentworth was one of the wealthiest men in the region, his 120 acre homestead contained an orchard and fields planted, as it appears in his inventory, with barley, flax, and indian corn. He owned a good part of modern day Somersworth, more than 100 acres in Berwick, and 270 acres in Rochester where he likely harvested lumber. His extensive inventory reveals a large farming operation with horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and oxen as well as the names of those who worked the farm Sampson, Tom, Dinah and her baby, Wentworth's African slaves.

At his death in 1748 Paul Wentworth, without heirs of his own, passed the farmstead and much of his outlying properties and mill privileges on to his nephew, John, whom he and his wife had raised from the age of six. John Wentworth would eventually match his uncle in socio-economic status, establishing himself as a prominent lawyer and later as Chief Justice of New Hampshire's Superior Court. He was appointed by his cousin, Benning Wentworth. Although he seems to have managed extensive farming operations, by the time of his death in 1781, John Wentworth had reduced the size of the original farmstead to 48 acres, which he left to his son Andrew.

The many Wentworth generations of the 19th century continued to inherit less land and wealth as the property was divided among siblings, or sold off for development as farming became less and less lucrative. In 1924, James E Wentworth, the last Wentworth to work the farm, died at the age of 80. The farm that James had worked in his lifetime was a shadow of its early 18th century predecessor. Gone were the large hayfields, orchard and woodlots. James had to rent rooms to mill workers to help get by.

Photographs of the Wentworth house taken at in the 1920s show a once grand house that had fallen on tough times. Fortunately for our house, Mae Blodgett, the impassioned, history loving wife of Wentworth's nephew Frederick, came to the rescue. She purchased the house from her husband's cousin, Luella Ham, in 1927. Mae went to work avidly sprucing up the old place. She was soon able open it up in the summers as a historic house museum serving tea to visitors in the large barn. When the Depression hit, it became tougher going. Mae gave the house to her son, Fred, who had a good job in Boston, but didn't want to see the house sold out of the family. In 1936 he decided to move the house to Dover, Massachusetts where he could live in it, and that is where a new chapter in the house's fascinating story began.