Rose and John Carpenter amid their famous poinsettias  — for 63 years Ye Olde Yankee Greenhouse had a plant for every season.

                                                                                                                           

                                 

John Carpenter met Rose and her family during WW II while stationed outside Birmingham, England. He used to joke that because of the severe rationing at that time in England, he won over the family when he jumped a fence with a carton of eggs and a box of chocolates.   After he was deployed to France, he and Rose continued a long-distance letter exchange which resulted at the close of the war with a wedding in England in March 1946.

It wasn’t until Memorial Day 1946 when Rose arrived in New York City on board the ship John Ericsson.

(family photo: of John and Rose on her first day in America)

I once asked Rose what her first impression of America was like.  She mentioned it took time to get used to the sound of the trains which was ran through the town.  They resembled  the “chug-chug¬chug” of German bombers that flew overhead in the English skies during the war. But that would lessen with time.  Her other remembrance was of her first Christmas Eve and being picked up by May Gordon in her old car to go to midnight services. “I loved May, and she loved a good time.  She was a wild piano player, and she could sing and she could drink.  I didn’t think we would make it to the church alive, I told John, We’re Walking Home!”

In 1946 John’s father Jesse Carpenter gave him a parcel of land on South Main Street which was approximately half of the 200 acres that had been in the family since 1899 When John’s grandfather Edwin Carpenter purchased the property from John Smart (Wentworth Cheswill’s grandson).

Here they built their first house, their first greenhouse, and a workshed as a spot for Rose to work her green thumb.

In 1953 the couple quit their other jobs and committed to turning a hobby into a real business and it became their livelihood.

Beatrice Merrill who at the time lived in the old John Smart house on Packer’s Falls Road recalls helping out when John and Rose built their first wooden tomato and floral planters from the scraps of wood in Jesse’s old lumber yard shed behind Bea’s house.  

 

Over the ensuing years the family business became an integral part of everybody’s family.

You went to Rose and her staff for birthday, Valentine, anniversary gifts; for wedding and funeral arrangements; for prom corsages and boutonnieres; Mother’s Day and Memorial Day; for summer gardening and fall mums, and for the always expected Easter Lilly and Christmas Poinsettia.  She knew her plants and instructed on how to care for them.  And when the boys would cross the street and order a prom corsage she would say “How nice, and the color of the dress?”    — Dah, umm…you never made that mistake again.   

(Photo: First Greenhouse built in 1950 by John Carpenter and the start of a family business that lasted 63 years.)

 

Their older son Rob worked in the greenhouse throughout high school, but he didn’t want to stay in town. He went on to college for food service management, and hotel administration. But in 1976, while Rob Carpenter was in his final year of college, his father bought another greenhouse in Dover and convinced him to take charge of that business.  That lasted for ten years until his father sold the Dover greenhouse and Robbie took over management of Carpenter’s Olde English Greenhouse and Florist.

Over the years, many town teenagers would work a few hours in one of the greenhouses when school got out.  Rob recalls hiring hundreds of kids over the years.    When asked about his own brother and sister Johnny & Deborah, he would shrug and say — Oh, well, they were here, but not really.

(family photos of Johnny Carpenter – Blanket Boy, 1950, and Debby as a high schooler sitting on her cousin Christine’s front yard waiting for the Memorial Day Parade)

 


 

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Over the years the Carpenters rewrapped the batons at Newmarket High School’s graduation and never charged for it.  The family was very generous on Memorial Day with major discounts to the Veterans’ organizations and the Town Veteran’s Memorial Trust for flowers in the Urn at Riverside, and the  bandstand.

 (family photo: taken 1979, Rob Carpenter with Pam (Cotton) and Dwane Walker inside one of the greenhouses)

John Carpenter passed away in 2008 at age 88.  His son Johnny tells me Rose is 101 years old and doing fine, relaxing since her final retirement in 2013 after working the counter at age 93, as the business sold its last plant.

She will be 102 in October, and we wish her well.

A special thank you to Dr. John Carpenter (still known in town as Johnny Carpenter) for use of his family photos.  

— (written 2021 by John Carmichael, New Market Historical Society)

For 63 years — No Memorial Day went by without a visit to Ye Olde English Greenhouse

All Published


Stone School Museum

The Stone School Museum, built in 1841, as a two-room schoolhouse, and now home to the New Market Historical Society, is located high upon Zion’s Hill on Granite Street.  Hours of operation are in our program of events and are on our web page and Facebook.  If you need further information, please call 603-659-3289 and leave a message or via email at newmarketnh.historicalsociety@gmail.com. Your inquiry will be returned as soon as possible.


Newmarket (Images of America) 

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