Franklin Pierce Homestead | |
Nearest city | Hillsborough, New Hampshire |
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Coordinates | 43°6′59″N71°57′2″W / 43.11639°N 71.95056°W |
Area | 13 acres (5.3 ha) |
Built | 1804 |
Website | Franklin Pierce Homestead State Historic Site |
NRHP reference No. | 66000027 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 [1] |
Designated NHL | July 4, 1961 [2] |
The Franklin Pierce Homestead is a historic house museum and state park located in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. It was the childhood home of the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce.
The house is located on the east side of Washington Road (New Hampshire Route 31), about 100 yards north of its intersection with New Hampshire Route 9, on a 13-acre (5.3 ha) property in the Lower Village area of Hillsborough. It is a two-story hip-roofed wood frame structure whose main block was built in 1804. There are two entries, one on the west (street-facing) facade and one on the south facade. Both are topped by five-light transom windows, and flanked by pilasters which support an entablature and triangular pediment. A two-story wing was added to the rear of the house, probably later in the 19th century. Attached to this wing are a small wellhouse, and a single-story shed connecting the house to a gable-roofed barn. [3]
The interior of the main block has four rooms in the first floor, organized around a central hall and stairs. The parlor is to the left, and the dining room to the right. The kitchen is behind the dining room, and the master bedroom is behind the parlor. On the second floor, the front of the house is taken up by a full-width ballroom, while the back has two bedrooms, each with a dressing room. All of the rooms of the main block were originally decorated with stenciling, some of which has survived. The wing contains a kitchen and laundry below, and bedrooms (presumably for servants) above. [3] Later owners moved a barn to adjoin the house, removed the front yard fence, and added a porch, which was removed by 1929. [4]
The home was built in 1804 by the future president's father, Benjamin Pierce, who had served during the American Revolution and would later become governor of New Hampshire. Benjamin Pierce bought 200 acres (81 ha) in the Lower Village area of Hillsborough after the new state turnpike opened nearby. In addition to the home, he also built a tavern here. [4] After Benjamin Pierce's death in 1839, the property was transferred to his son-in-law John McNeil Jr., a general during the War of 1812. [4] McNeil had married Pierce's daughter Elizabeth, whose house next door was built in 1807 and is today known as the Elizabeth Pierce House, an antique shop. [5]
The home is one of Franklin Pierce's probable places of birth, the other now lying beneath the nearby impoundment of Franklin Pierce Lake. Pierce lived at the homestead until 1834 when he married, with the exception of a seven-year span spent away for school, college, and law study. [3] He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1824, as the young Pierce and his friends were supporting Andrew Jackson for President, and returned to the family home in Hillsborough to study law. He moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the Spring of 1825 to work in the law office of Levi Woodbury. [6] In March 1828, Pierce returned to Hillsborough and made his first formal political appearance to assist his father's campaign for governor at a town meeting. [7] He returned to the family homestead in 1834 when he married Jane Appleton. Jane was never comfortable in Hillsborough, and the Pierces moved to Concord, New Hampshire, while Franklin was then serving in the state legislature, where they lived in a rented house while he established a new law partnership. [8]
On August 19, 1852, the town hosted a mass meeting and rally for Pierce's presidential campaign which drew an estimated 25,000 people with speeches and food. [9] At the end of his single term, Pierce returned temporarily to the family homestead in June 1857. [10]
The home remained in the Pierce family until 1925, when it was donated to the state of New Hampshire. It underwent restoration and renovation in the 1940s and the 1960s. [3] The home has been designated a state park and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961. [2] [3] The barn has been converted to a welcome center with displays and artifacts. The home is operated by the New Hampshire Bureau of Historic Sites. [9]
Jane Means Pierce was the wife of Franklin Pierce and the first lady of the United States from 1853 to 1857. She married Franklin Pierce, then a congressman, in 1834 despite her family's misgivings. She refused to live in Washington, D.C., and in 1842, she convinced her husband to retire from politics. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination without her knowledge in 1852 and was elected president later that year. Their only surviving son, Benjamin, was killed in a train accident before Franklin's inauguration, sending Jane into a deep depression that afflicted her for the rest of her life. Pierce was a reclusive first lady, spending the first two years of her husband's presidency mourning her son. Her duties at this time were often fulfilled by Abby Kent-Means. After Franklin's presidency, they traveled abroad for two years before settling in Massachusetts. She died of tuberculosis in 1863.
Hillsborough, frequently spelled Hillsboro, is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,939 at the 2020 census. The town is home to Fox State Forest and part of Low State Forest.
Benjamin Pierce was an American politician who twice served as the governor of New Hampshire from 1827 to 1828 and from 1829 to 1830. Pierce fought during the American Revolutionary War before becoming a Democratic-Republican Party politician. He was the father of Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States.
The University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law is a public law school in Concord, New Hampshire, United States, associated with the University of New Hampshire. It is the only law school in the state and was founded in 1973 by Robert H. Rines and Frank DiPietro. The school is particularly well known for its Intellectual Property Law program.
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David Lawrence Morril was an American politician, attorney, physician and minister. He served as a U.S. Senator for New Hampshire from 1817 to 1823, and was the tenth governor of New Hampshire, serving from 1824 until 1827.
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The presidency of Franklin Pierce began on March 4, 1853, when Franklin Pierce was sworn in, and ended on March 4, 1857. Pierce, a Democrat from New Hampshire, took office as the 14th United States president after routing Whig Party nominee Winfield Scott in the 1852 presidential election. Seen by fellow Democrats as pleasant and accommodating to all the party's factions, Pierce, then a little-known politician, won the presidential nomination on the 49th ballot of the 1852 Democratic National Convention. His hopes for reelection ended after losing the Democratic nomination at the 1856 Democratic National Convention, and was succeeded by Democrat James Buchanan.
Franklin Pierce was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. A northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity, he alienated anti-slavery groups by signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. Conflict between North and South continued after Pierce's presidency, and, after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the Southern states seceded, resulting in the American Civil War.
Pierce House may refer to:
The Merrimack Valley is a bi-state region along the Merrimack River in the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The Merrimack is one of the larger waterways in New England and has helped to define the livelihood and culture of those living along it for millennia.
Louis E. Davis was an American architect who designed homes and public buildings in Honolulu, Hawaii. During the 1920s, he was involved in laying out the new King Street campus of President William McKinley High School and designing its buildings in a Spanish Colonial Revival style. He employed a similar style in designing the 1931 Honolulu Police Station on Merchant Street, which harmonized well with that of the new city hall, Honolulu Hale. Both the old McKinley campus quadrangle and the Merchant Street Historic District are on the National Register of Historic Places.
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The Concord Historic District encompasses the least altered portion of the historic heart of Concord, New Hampshire. The 25-acre (10 ha) district, located just north of the modern commercial and civic heart of the city, includes the city's oldest surviving house, the site of its first religious meetinghouse, and the Pierce Manse, a historic house museum that was home to President Franklin Pierce during his rise to national prominence. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The Franklin Pierce House was a historic house at 52 South Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire, United States. Built in 1852, it was a significant local example of Second Empire architecture, and was one of two surviving Concord homes of President Franklin Pierce at the time of its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Pierce died in the house in 1869. It was destroyed by fire on September 17, 1981.
William M. Butterfield (1860–1932) was an American architect from New Hampshire.