This summer the clatter of Model Ts, steam locomotives, and horse-drawn carriages could once again be heard in Harrisville. Listen to L.A. Dierker’s new composition Harrisville Soundscape, which was commissioned by Historic Harrisville for both the town’s sesquicentennial and the organization’s 50th anniversary.

To celebrate our 50th anniversary, Historic Harrisville is hosting a full day of events on Saturday, August 28, 2021. There will be tours, open studios, exhibits, speakers, a hike, a special book, a commemorative champagne toast, and more. All members of the community are invited to attend.

Sadly, it doesn't feel like we're quite ready to get 100+ of our friends and neighbors together in one room for our annual incorporators meeting. Instead, we are conducting our annual business remotely. Click here to learn more about our accomplishments in 2020 and, if you are an Historic Harrisville incorporator, to cast your vote for our 2021-2022 Board of Trustees.

Harrisville owes its existence to its water resources and the dams built to control the waterpower of its streams. A new online guide called the Dams of Harrisville, New Hampshire details the history of these 15 dams. Read it here.

2020 has been a challenging and memorable year. Though we had to cancel our annual meetings due to the pandemic, HHI has been busy! In this video Executive Director Erin Hammerstedt and Store Manager Sam Rule give us an update on all that they have accomplished in the second half of 2020.

In 1881 Charles Asa Blake, of Jaffrey, bought the Union Hotel at the western entrance to Harrisville village, which had been a place of lodging since the late 1860s. Blake reopened it as “Nubaunsit House.”

In the fall of 2010, Historic Harrisville marked the 40th anniversary of the closing of Cheshire Mills. I couldn’t make the meeting but I heard a lot of people who worked in the mill talked about their experiences there. Though I never worked in the mill, it was a big part of my life growing up in town.

Jeannie Eastman explores the architectural styles of Harrisville, from Georgian and Federalist to Gothic Revival and Victorian.

A few years ago, Historic Harrisville’s archives accepted an important gift of notable proportions: nearly 800 glass negatives—the entire collection—taken by Fred Milan Travis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Harrisville, New Hampshire is important because it is the only nineteenth century industrial community in New England which survives in anything like its original form. All the major components of the town are still intact and it appears today almost exactly as it did in the nineteenth century.

The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission awarded Historic Harrisville a $150,000 grant, through the Renewable Energy Fund Grant Program, in 2014. The grant was for the installation of three 350,000 BTU, wood pellet boilers in the Cheshire Mills Complex.

On June 4, 2013, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order allowing Historic Harrisville Inc. to redevelop the hydroelectric capability that powered Cheshire Mills for nearly 100 years. Winning approval was a 3-year-plus process.

In mid-December Historic Harrisville received good news on two fronts. First, it was awarded a grant by New Hampshire’s Land and Community Heritage Investment Program to rehabilitate the Trip Hammer Shop. Secondly, an application to the Public Utilities Commission renewable energy generation program won approval.

On Sunday, January 27, 2013, Rick Monahon and his wife, Duffy, were killed in a tragic automobile accident in Hillsborough, NH, as they were returning from a day of skiing at Mount Sunapee.

Repairs to the Eagle Hall Carriage House have generated a lot of interest and many questions as to why Historic Harrisville chose to undertake the extraordinary measures necessary to keep the original structure standing rather than take it down.