Claremont is the only city in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 12,949 at the 2020 census. Claremont is a core city of the Lebanon–Claremont micropolitan area, a bi-state, four-county region in the upper Connecticut River valley.

History

Pre-colonial native populations

The Upper Connecticut River Valley was home to the Pennacook and Western Abenaki (Sokoki) peoples, later merging with members of other Algonquin tribes displaced by the wars and famines which accompanied the European settling of the region. The Hunter Archeological Site, located near the bridge connecting Claremont with Ascutney, Vermont, is a significant prehistoric Native American site that includes seven levels of occupational evidence, including evidence of at least three longhouses. The oldest dates recorded from evidence gathered during excavations in 1967 were to 1300 CE.

Colonial settlement

thumb|right|Ashley's Ferry,

The city was named after Claremont, the country mansion of Thomas Pelham-Holles, Earl of Clare. On October 26, 1764, Spafford was deeded land from Col. Samuel Ashley, who was given a charter to establish a ferry across the Connecticut River in 1784, the location of which is still known as Ashley's Ferry landing. Spafford was also the first man to marry in Claremont, and his son, Elijah, was the first white child to be born in the town.

The Union Episcopal Church in West Claremont was built in 1773, and is the oldest surviving Episcopal church building in New Hampshire and the state's oldest surviving building built exclusively for religious purposes. The parish was organized in 1771 and chartered by the New Hampshire legislature in 1794 as Union Church Parish. Located across the street, Old St. Mary's Church, built in 1823 mostly in the Federal style, was the first Roman Catholic church in New Hampshire. It was discontinued in 1870 in favor of the new St. Mary's Church in the Lower Village District.

During the American Revolution, Claremont had a large number of Loyalists, who used a small wooded valley in West Claremont called the "Tory Hole" to hide from the Patriots. In 1777, when the New Hampshire Grants declared their own sovereignty as the Vermont Republic, Claremont was one of sixteen New Hampshire towns inclined to join them, and made multiple attempts to do so.

The water power harnessed from the Sugar River brought the town prosperity during the Industrial Revolution. Large brick factories were built along the stream, including the Sunapee Mills, Monadnock Mills, Claremont Machine Works, Home Mills, Sanford & Rossiter, and Claremont Manufacturing Company. Principal products were cotton and woolen textiles, lathes and planers, and paper.

The Monadnock Mills Co. and Sullivan Mills Co. were responsible for the two most prominent collections of manufacturing structures in the Lower Village District. Monadnock Mills' textile operations began with its founding in 1842, and lasted through 1932, shuttering operations following the decline of the textile industry in New England during the 1920s. By the 1920s, Sullivan Mills Co. had become New Hampshire's largest machining company, as well as Claremont's largest employer. Sullivan's Machinery division merged with Joy Mining Machinery in 1946, becoming Joy Manufacturing Co. Its founder, inventor Joseph Francis Joy, stayed on as general manager of the facility, which remained the dominant employer in Claremont through the 1970s, when manufacturing technology had advanced sufficiently to hamper sales and productivity. Parts of the campus suffered fires in 1979 and 1981, and the branch was closed in 1983 and sold in 1984.

Namesakes

The cities of Claremont, California; Claremont, Minnesota; and Claremont Township, Minnesota; were named for Claremont, New Hampshire.

Geography

thumb|US Post Office in Claremont

The city is in western Sullivan County and is bordered to the west by the Connecticut River, the boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which are land and are water, comprising 2.04% of the town. The Sugar River flows from east to west through the center of Claremont, descending in elevation through the downtown, and empties into the Connecticut. The highest point in the city is the summit of Green Mountain, at above sea level in the northeastern part of the city. Claremont lies fully within the Connecticut River watershed.

Adjacent municipalities

  • Cornish (north)
  • Newport (east)
  • Unity (southeast)
  • Charlestown (southwest)
  • Weathersfield, Vermont (west)

Demographics

2020 census

As of the 2020 census, Claremont had a population of 12,949. The median age was 42.2 years. 20.6% of residents were under the age of 18 and 18.5% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 98.3 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 96.4 males age 18 and over.

72.7% of residents lived in urban areas, while 27.3% lived in rural areas.

There were 5,490 households in Claremont, of which 26.9% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 39.1% were married-couple households, 21.3% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 27.9% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 32.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

There were 5,697 households, out of which 28.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.1% were headed by married couples living together, 13.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.2% were non-families. 30.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.8% were someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.31, and the average family size was 2.83.

Arts and culture

thumb|right|Broad Street Park in 1909

A commercial area centered on Washington Street is Claremont's primary commercial district. An Italian Renaissance-styled City Hall building, which houses the historic Claremont Opera House, was built in 1897 and designed by architect Charles A. Rich. City Hall faces Broad Street Park, a rotary-style town square. This square connects Washington Street, Broad Street, and Main Street, which branch into different portions of the city. Broad Street Park contains war monuments to World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and Freedom Garden Memorial dedicated to the victims and families of September 11. Included are two Civil War cannon and the centrally located Soldier's Monument, designed by Martin Milmore and dating to 1890. The park is also home to a historic bandstand, originally built in a Victorian style in 1890 which primarily serves as performance space for the Claremont American Band, a community band dating to about 1880. Parallel to Broad Street lies Pleasant Street, home to a downtown business district, which was the city's primary commercial zone until the development of the Washington Street district.

A number of mill buildings dot the Lower Village District in the city's center, along the Sugar River, and several attempts have been made at historic preservation of some of them. To the north end of the town lies the Valley Regional Hospital, an out-patient resource of the popular Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center of Lebanon.right|thumb|Moody Park

On the southern artery out of Claremont, Route 12, stood Highland View, the summer home of Claremont native William Henry Harrison Moody (1842–1925), who made his fortunes as a businessman and shoe manufacturer in the Boston area, but kept a residence in his hometown until his death. The large William H. H. Moody estate was known for its horses and its five large barns (the last of which burned in 2004 from a lightning strike), which once hosted several hundred imported horses on over . Its Victorian farmhouse stands at the top of Arch Road. In March 1916, a portion of the estate was donated by Moody to the city of Claremont for a city park, the entrance of which is on Maple Avenue; facilities include tennis. A lone access road leads through a coniferous forest to the top of a hill, maintained as a large field by the city, with a large, open-air stone structure suitable for picnics. The park has several miles of interconnected walking trailways; several of these trails terminate at the Boston and Maine Railroad.

In 2021, The Ko'asek (Co'wasuck)Traditional Band of the Sovereign Abenaki Nation, a group claiming descent of the original indigenous population in the region, acquired and was gifted several parcels of local land for use in cultural ceremonies, nature preserves and education along with growing herbs and plants. In 2024 the group claims 554 members and now owns 26.37 acres in Claremont.

  • Claremont Municipal Airport
  • Sugar River Rail Trail
  • Twin State Speedway

Historic sites

  • Claremont Opera House
  • David Dexter House
  • Hunter Archeological Site
  • Lower Village Historic District
  • Monadnock Mills Historic District
  • Union Episcopal Church
  • William Rossiter House

Education

Claremont is part of New Hampshire's School Administrative Unit 6, or SAU 6. Stevens High School is the city's only public high school, and is located on Broad Street, just a few blocks from City Hall. Claremont Middle School, the city's only public middle school, is located just down the street to the south.

Claremont is home to three elementary schools: Maple Avenue School, Bluff Elementary and Disnard Elementary. Also located in town are the New England Classical Academy, a private, Catholic school, and the Claremont Christian Academy, a private, parochial school offering education through 12th grade.

Three elementary schools—North Street School, Way Elementary and the West Claremont Schoolhouse—were shut down, Way becoming home to several luxury apartments and North Street turned into offices. The city's residents' opportunities for higher education include a branch of Granite State College, River Valley Community College, and the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center.

Infrastructure

thumb|Central Fire Station

Transportation

The only city within Sullivan County, Claremont is home to Claremont Municipal Airport. By highway, it is located south of Interstate 89 in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and east of Interstate 91 in Weathersfield, Vermont. It is served by state routes 11, 12, 12A 103, and 120. Routes 11 and 103 travel east as a concurrency to Newport, with Route 11 continuing east to New London and Franklin, while Route 103 turns southeast to Bradford and Warner. Routes 11 and 12 lead south as a concurrency to Charlestown. West from downtown, Route 12 leads into Vermont, then turns north to Windsor. Route 120 leads north from downtown through Cornish and Meriden to Lebanon. Route 12A bypasses downtown Claremont to the west, leading south to Charlestown and north to West Lebanon.

Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides daily service aboard its Vermonter between Washington, D.C., and St. Albans, Vermont. The closest Greyhound bus stops are in Bellows Falls and White River Junction, Vermont. Local weekday peak direction commuter bus service between Springfield, Vermont, and Hanover, New Hampshire, is operated by the Current from the Interstate 91 Exit 8 Park and Ride in Ascutney, Vermont.

Notable people

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  • Doug Berry (born 1948), football coach
  • Edmund Burke (1809–1882), U.S. congressman from Vermont
  • Derastus Clapp (1792–1881), detective
  • Barbara Cochran (born 1951), Olympic gold medalist ski racer
  • Caleb Ellis (1767–1816), U.S. congressman
  • Harriet Farley (1812–1907), writer, abolitionist
  • Jule Murat Hannaford (1850–1934), railway president
  • Benjamin Tyler Henry (1821–1898), gunsmith, manufacturer; inventor of the Henry rifle
  • Jeffrey R. Howard (born 1955), judge
  • Jonathan Hatch Hubbard (1768–1849), U.S. congressman from Vermont
  • Dorothy Loudon (1925–2003), actress
  • Jennifer Militello, poet
  • Thomas Mitchell (1816–1894), Iowa politician
  • Hosea Washington Parker (1833–1922), U.S. congressman
  • Orrin W. Robinson (1834–1907), politician, businessman
  • Kaleb Tarczewski (born 1993), basketball player
  • George B. Upham (1768–1848), U.S. congressman
  • William J. Wilgus (1865–1949), designer of New York City's Grand Central Terminal

Wrightsville, the fictional small-town setting in New England of many Ellery Queen novels and short stories, was based on Claremont. Ellery Queen was the pen name of cousins Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971). Betty Miller, a Claremont native, had married Manfred B. Lee in 1927. According to the Queen Spaceports website, the Claremont Eagle newspaper provided front-page coverage (on July 10, 1959) of a talk Manfred Lee gave, in which he revealed that Wrightsville was indeed based on Claremont.

Claremont was the filming location, though not the setting, of the 2006 movie Live Free or Die, co-written and co-directed by Gregg Kavet and Andy Robin and starring Aaron Stanford, Paul Schneider, Michael Rapaport, Judah Friedlander, Kevin Dunn, and Zooey Deschanel. Set in fictional Rutland, New Hampshire, it is a picaresque comedy-drama about a small-town would-be crime legend. The name of the movie is derived from the motto of the Granite State.

The Topstone Mill, formerly a shoe factory and now housing a restaurant, was featured in season 8, episode 20 of Ghost Hunters, airing October 24, 2012, titled "Fear Factory".

See also

  • New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 41: First Roman Catholic Church
  • New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 57: Union Church
  • New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 188: Historic Handshake

References

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  • New Hampshire Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau Profile