New Boston Historical Society
New Boston, New Hampshire
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The Red Mill in 1954

Behind the Door: 14 Mill Street
"Parker Mill: Living on the Piscataquog"
by Gail Parker (June 2024)

On a bright fall day in 1960, Randy Parker was driving from Nashua to his family home in Claremont, taking the scenic route. North of Milford, Route 13 crosses the Piscataquog River where he spotted an old red mill building with a giant "For Sale" sign on its upstream side. It was love at first sight. The building would need electricity, plumbing, floors, windows, interior design, paint, furniture, wife, and children... all of which arrived starting in 1963.

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The mill when Randy and Gail Parker bought it in 1961

The original long 25-acre lot from the cemetery to the river was laid out when New Boston center was moving down from its first location on top of Meetinghouse Hill. Dr. Luke Lincoln purchased the steep property in 1803 and had William B. Dodge build a grist mill with a dam on the flat-bottom land. The short road from the town bridge to the new mill was extended as a driveway over to the hillside where a large house was built for the miller. Other houses along the hillside were constructed in the late 1800s, when Mill Street became today's horseshoe shape.

Lincoln sold the property listed as "corn mill and dam" to William Dodge from Massachusetts. Immediately, water-rights battles arose between the grist-mill faction and the owners of two mills across the dam, both involved in cloth weaving and dyeing. Through the 1800s, various owners processed corn and wheat into flour and the grist mill had many names. As Wallace's Grain-Mill it "waxed old," according to one town history.

Coming to the rescue was New Boston's imaginative entrepreneur, J.R. Whipple, owner of three Boston hotels and local farms that supplied quantities of milk, meat, and produce. To transport these fresh products, Whipple constructed the New Boston Railroad along the Piscataquog River to Goffstown. The train made a daily round trip to Boston for 30 years.

While restoring the grist mill, Whipple built an impressive stone retaining wall to enlarge the mill pond and provide flood protection for the center of town. A 12-inch pipe was laid under Mill Street to supply water to the Whipple Creamery and to town fire hydrants installed after the Fire of 1887. The mill and its outbuildings were not affected by the fire.

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Paul Saltmarsh (right) and a helper in the 1950s

In the first half of the 1900s, the mill had a number of owners and operators, who may be visited in the New Boston cemetery. During World War II, the Merrimack Farmer Feed and Grain Company painted its sign on the barn across the street and operated a hardware/feed/grain store in what is now the garage. Some of the other downstream buildings served as a horseshoe stable, coal yard, Marshall's Grocery Store, Railway Express Office, Meat Market, John King's plumbing warehouse, New England Telephone garage, Abigail's Bakery, Neighborhood Café, and now, the Northeast Café.

French "buhr" millstones are installed in the mill kitchen; an 8-foot by 4-foot flour sifter rests in the attic. Red-pine beams frame and support the 10-foot-high ceiling that emphasizes the downstairs open space. Instead of an outside water wheel, milling operations utilized water turbines; their iron parts are rusting in the basement. Questions are often asked about water in the basement and floods…there is always water in the basement, necessary for mill operations. Ruth Saltmarsh, longtime resident on Mill Street, told about the hurricane of 1938 when water inundated the town center, but "The floor of the mill was dry."

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After the Flood of 1936 — before the Hurricane of 1938

In the 2007 Patriot's Day Flood, the water was thigh deep on Mill Street and knee deep in the laundry room. When the family finally entered the basement, they found that the water had risen to 1/4 of an inch from the floorboards, but "The floor of the mill was dry."

The 200-year-old wooden dam washed out in October 1996, spreading debris downriver.

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Gail and Randy Parker in 2018 — photo by their son Matt

The Parker family has lived in and enjoyed the mill for 61 years. The three children made the most of New Boston activities: swimming, canoeing, ice skating, fishing, biking, tending geese, walking to school, home-made rafting, skateboarding, camping, rescuing and rebuilding old engines, bike-jumping into the pond. Apart from gas-powered vehicles, Mill Street looks and feels pretty much the same now as it did 150 years ago.

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