Date: July 18, 2022
Time: 7 p.m.
Location:
Newmarket Town Hall
Main Street
Newmarket, NH
Fee: None. Donations greatly appreciated!
Veteran Jockey Henry Wajda, age 39, died of injuries sustained when he fell from his horse and was kicked in the chest at the start of the second race at Rockingham Park on July 28, 1973.
Henry was honored in 1960 by the New England Turf Writers Association for the life-saving aid he gave to a fellow jockey during a trackside fall. Henry was well known to racing enthusiasts throughout the New England Area, and set a world’s record at Rockingham on September 5, 1958, covering a mile and 60 yards in the time of 1:39.5 aboard the horse “Mark Anthony”. That record held for almost 13 years, broken in 1971.
His niece Cathy Zocchi and friends Karen Otash and Janine Landroche Eliot will tell his story and their attempts to have a memorial marker placed in town in his honor.
Date: August 15, 2022
Time: 7 p.m.
Location:
Newmarket Town Hall Auditorium
186 Main Street, Newmarket
Fee:
Mr. Fred Day has granted us access to the Frost Family letters, photographs and papers of his great-great grandfather, the late George W. Frost.
Mr. Frost (1824-1879) was the last of the Salem Mill Agents for the Newmarket Manufacturing Company.
He came with his bride Isabella Taylor on his honeymoon to visit his uncle, Mill Agent John Webster in 1849.
The visit ended with an employment proposition. George accepted and the couple moved into the Agent’s House and remained here for 30 years, he was Mill Agent from 1855-1879.
The program touches on Colonel Frost’s contributions to the NMCO., and his military achievements — his skyrocketing rise in rank from Private to Lt. Colonel.
Selections will be presented from the diaries and letters home from another of Newmarket’s Civil War veterans — Alanson Haines in his 1900 recollection of the Colonel in “A trip from Newmarket to New Orleans in 1862” of his deployment in December 1862” . This recollection was recently transcribed by our presenter Greg Crumb.
On display will be the family photographs, letters, diaries, and clippings of the colonel’s family. The program tells the stories of his children and step-sister who grew up in the Agent’s House and attended schools here. For three decades he and his wife were involved in the community, church, political and social affairs of the town and of Rye Beach, NH where they had a summer home at Little Boar’s Head.
The large orginal print of the Newmarket Manufacturing Company millyard was donated to the museum by Fred Day who found the piece among the possessions of his great-great grandfather. It is a composite of three photographs taken prior to 1879 and glued together with the overhead walkway manually attached.
Greg Crumb, serves on the Board of Directors of the New Market Historical Society. Greg has been transcribing some of the Civil War letters currently in our collection.
Date: September 19, 2022
Time: 7 p.m.
Location:
Newmarket Town Hall Auditorium
Fee:
Professors, authors and Newmarket residents Kimberly Alexander and Dane Morrison will discuss ‘doing history,’ taking the audience on an illustrated tour of their current book project focused on the town of Haverhill, New Hampshire in the Connecticut River valley during the founding era.
Dr. Alexander is the Director of Museum Studies in the History Department at UNH and a Board Member of the Historical Society. Her 2018 book ‘Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era’ received the Historic New England Honor Book Award (2019.)
Dr. Morrison is Professor of American History at Salem State University. His most recent publications True Yankees (2016) and Eastward of Good Hope (2021) both received Lyman Honor awards from NASOH.
Books will be available for purchase and signing. Join us for this fun and engaging event.