MarlowHistoricalSociety.org

[Loisanne Foster]

What’s in a Name?

More than anything, history is in a name. When we name something, we may look at what we are naming as fresh and new and choose a fresh new name. The chances are, though, that something about this new pet or person or place will remind us of something in the past or we want to perperuate a name dear to us. The chances are that we will choose a name from our own history. Place names often take on the names of the occupants, so that practice too leaves a trace in history.

Marlow has a number of places named after early settlers. Gustin Pond is named after Samuel Gustin, one of our few original proprietors from Lyme, Connecticut who actually lived here, the man who saved Marlow by riding in January to Portsmouth, then the capital, to deliver a petition for extension of the town charter to Governor Benning Wentworth. Stone Pond is not named, as I had originally assumed, for the granite ledges at water’s edge. It is named for an early resident, Phineas Stone who lived beside it and whose grave can be found in our Village Cemetery. Surely Fox Hill was home to resident foxes of the furry kind, but it is named for the family of Perley Fox of the Marlow Tin Shop, inventor and producer of the Granite State Evaporator widely used throughout New England in maple sugar production. You can see a model in MHS Museum. Giffin Hill is named after John Giffin who lived at the base of Mack Hill. John descended from a Scotch-Irish settler, Patrick Giffin who arrived here with his family in 1793 from Deering, N. H. Mack Hill is so called because of Solomon Mack and his extended family. Solomon was our first settler from Lyme, Connecticut, here even before the 1761 charter. We know he is the grandfather of Joseph Smith, LDS founder. In Gilsum where he moved, we find Mack Road.

One intriguing aspect of Marlow names is that they echo names from Lyme, Connecticut, origin of our earliest settlers. We find the Mack name used several times in Lyme as we do the Marlow family names Beckwith and Huntley. Here we have Huntley Mountain. Lyme has a Grassy Hill and Grassy Hill District. Could Marlow’s Grassy Brook echo that place name? Lyme also has reedy Duck River. Could Marlow’s Duck Hole be an echo?