Browse Items (34 total)

  • Collection: Bethel: A Historic Town images

Constitution and Records of the Female Cent Society of Bethel, West Parish

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One of the most important elements of town life in early Bethel was the church, and before 1820 Congregationalism remained the dominant religion, despite inroads made by the local Baptists and Methodists. The "Female Cent Society" of the West Parish…

Middle Intervale Meetinghouse

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Bethel's oldest surviving religious structure, the Middle Intervale Meetinghouse was begun in 1816 and extensively remodeled in 1857. Once the site of early Bethel town meetings, as well as Methodist and Baptist church services, the building has…

Second Gould Academy building classroom

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This late nineteenth century image provides a glimpse of the interior of Gould Academy's 1881 building. Spacious and well lighted, the school's classrooms (and attic gymnasium) nevertheless contained wooden support columns that students and faculty…

Second Gould Academy building

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Students and teachers gather in front of the second Gould Academy building about 1890. Three such structures have occupied this same Church Street lot, including today's Hanscom Hall, a striking Colonial Revival edifice that opened in 1934.

Flat Road schoolhouse

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Modest, one-room district schoolhouses were at one time valuable centers of learning throughout small New England towns like Bethel. These forerunners of today's modern educational facilities provided a solid education under often less-than-ideal…

Reverend Daniel Gould Portrait

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A graduate of Harvard, and perhaps the most learned man of Bethel in his day, the Reverend Daniel Gould was "of a rather worldly disposition, bringing the first chaise to Bethel, and wearing cocked hat, silk gown, and knee breeches around the town.…

Engraving of Bethel mountain scenery

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The town of Bethel is surrounded by some of northern New England's most dramatic mountain scenery, as evidenced by this engraving from the Guide Book of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, published in 1853. Such artistic renderings greatly…

Honest Corner

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The commercial heart of nineteenth century Bethel was "Honest Corner," at the junction of Broad, Church, and Main streets in Bethel Hill village. Several structures shown in this circa 1885 photograph are still standing today.

Late 1760s Bethel lot and range plan

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Arranged in a grid-like pattern, this "lot and range" plan of the late 1760s clearly shows the narrow forty-acre parcels of fertile "intervale" land near the Androscoggin River, which were much sought-after by Bethel's early settlers. Of this plan,…