Managing a Mansion:

    After their father’s passing, Herbert and Charles acted as caretakers and rented the estate together until Herbert moved to Florida in 1923. In 1924 when the property went up for auction, it was described as “A Queen Anne House and Stable and five acres of land including a beautiful oak grove.  The house has 12 rooms, finely furnished, some of them in natural oak and cherry, hand polished, shellac finish.  Located on Main Street, two minutes walk from the Boston & Maine railroad station.”

    It was sold to Mrs. Lena Puhlojiek, AKA “Mary Moonshine.”  However, Charles Caswell continued to hold the mortgage on the property.  Mary had an arrangement with him whereby she would act as caretaker and oversee the rental property.  Perhaps that arrangement didn’t completely work as planned:  she deeded it back to him in Oct 1933.  But she continued to live in the mansion for several more years.

    The Face of Poverty

    Mary Moonshine herself was a legend in Newmarket history.  In 1949 she was the public face of poverty for the town when the Manchester Union ran its negative article about Newmarket’s failings. 

    She minded her own business.  But during her lifetime (and even after her death), kids going to and from school would talk in whispers and walk on the other side of the street when going past.  If this trip was made at night, they would run past, as there were no streetlights on Dump Road back then.  After her death, there would be freshly dug holes discovered in the morning around the house as the more adventuresome young men would look for treasure.  Nothing was ever found.  photo shows her at her shack at the old dump on “Dump Road” (today’s Beech Street Ext.).  She picked the dump and sold rags.  During Prohibition, it was said she sold the odd jug of moonshine, hence her name.  Because she was a former owner of the Caswell Mansion, it was rumored that she had hidden wealth buried about the property.  

    Something else has never been found.  Although the deed lists her name as E. Leonora Puhlopek, a search of Dover and Newmarket vital statistics and census records comes up empty.  E. Leonora Puhlopek, AKA  Mary Puchlopek, AKA Lena Puhlojiek, AKA Mary Pochopcheck, AKA Mary Moonshine certainly existed.  But she left no trace. 

    Rental Property

    Prior to Charles’s death in 1937, the land was managed by his estate and rented out to families.  Mary Moonshine continued on as part-time caretaker.  It was during this time that the family of John and Signe Bentley rented the home.  Their daughter Mary (Bentley) Dupre recalls the house in a memoir she dictated to her son.

    “Inside the front door was a large coat closet and either side of the entry were two small rooms each with a fireplace faced in tile. One of them had small squares about the size of caramel candies in chocolate and vanilla; the other fireplace had all caramel colored tiles.  The rooms were not much larger than the fireplaces were wide.  There were large circular radiators in these rather small rooms.  And there were no windows in the rooms, so when you shut the doors you were in total darkness. There were a lot of rooms in the house, and at least two were used as playrooms for the five children.

    The main stairway had a banister and the kids would slide down as their feet would knock loose decorative wooden pieces from the spindles.  There was colored cut glass squares in some of the windows.  In two of the smaller rooms there were decorative shelves that had the look of balconies.

    The kitchen had a built-in icebox with an exterior door where the iceman could load the ice without coming inside the house. The kitchen was very large with high ceilings, a pantry with glass fronted cabinets where she [Mary Bentley] would play with her dolls.  The kitchen had a separate butler’s pantry as well. 

    Prior to the Bentley family moving in, it had been empty during the winter and someone forgot to drain the radiators and the water tank in the kitchen. The tank froze and split open, so in the beginning of their residency the only heat was from the oil stove in the kitchen.  The fireplaces in the house were never lit. 

    “There were four wells or springs on the property.  One well was just outside the kitchen, as was the outhouse.  There was also a large barn with horse stalls.   Norma Neal Otash lived nearby and would come over and play in the barn with us kids.   For a few years Gypsies used to camp every summer in the grove out back and we were always warned to stay away from them lest we be taken away when the Gypsies moved on.

    The lot behind the school provided a convenient shortcut for children from New Village going to the high school.  We shared the home with Mary Pochopcheck (sp?)  She lived mostly upstairs but had access to the kitchen, and her rooms always smelled of cabbage.  Mary wore mostly dark clothing with long skirts.  My brother John remembers someone calling her “Mary Moonshine” in public and she threatened to cut out the offender’s tongue!   Mary Moonshine always used the side entrance on Packers Falls Road and never entered the house from the Main Street entrance.

    The Bentleys lived in the Caswell Mansion during the Hurricane of September 9th, 1938.  All the children gathered in Mary’s room which was a corner room facing Main Street.  They all watched as their father lashed several of the trees together to prevent them from falling on the house, and some of the Schanda family boys helped him.  Their mother was working at the mill that day, and work was let out early.  As she hurried home she witnessed “St. Elmo’s fire” dancing along the power and telephone wires along the street. 

    The last memory Mary Bentley had of her time living in the house was her brother John’s sixth birthday which would have been in August 1940, just before he would have gone off to school.  It was held among the trees behind the house, an area she always called “the Grove” after a story she had read.

    Other Owners

    In 1940 Robert Filion purchased the property.  He subdivided some of the land bordering the former Kent Stables on Beech Street Extension (Dump Rd).  His father Joseph Filion had previously bought and turned the stables into the newly formed Filion Lumber Company, this latest subdivision he added to extend the lumberyard out back along the tracks.

    He created a separate apartment out of the upstairs rooms and he hired mural and stain glass artists who were working at St. Mary Church at the time to do the stenciling found in some of the hallways and added stained glass in a few of the rooms in the downstairs living quarters.

    Mr. Filion resold a smaller portion of land which included on;y the house and stable (but not much else) in 1948 to Judge James B. Griffin and his wife Julia.   They lived in the house for ten years until the end of 1958.   Site No. 15 (Griffin Hardware) includes an extensive bio of Judge Griffin.  

    (photo: even the bathroom window had a stain glass frame)

    Other Stories about the Mansion

    • Newmarket historian Michael Provost’s recollection of Judge Griffin gives us a child’s-eye view of the Judge—and the Mansion:

    Years ago during a conversation at the Stone School Museum, the subject of Judge James Bartlett Griffin came up, and I mentioned how scared of him I was when I met him as a child.  Richard Gilbert told me that I was “too young” to remember him, and I had to beg to differ.  During first and second grade at Oyster River Elementary School, my school bus route ran down Packers Falls Road through Newmarket to drop off the Durham-side students on Newmarket Road.  At that time my grandmother, Anita Provost served as housekeeper and caretaker for Mrs. Griffin in the Caswell Mansion. Each day I would get off the bus and climb the hill to wait in the mansion for my Mom to get out of work at Sam Smith Shoe.  Although ill, Mrs. Griffin liked me, and each day I would bring her a cup of tea upstairs in the bedroom. 

    One day for some reason I got turned around and ended up going through the door onto the front balcony and the door locked behind me. So I screamed for a couple of minutes and suddenly the door opened and a huge tall man wanted to know what was going on. Being petrified that I was in trouble, all I could do was hold out my little tray with a cup of tea. He knelt down and calmed me enough to stop the crying; he then took my hand and led me back in to Mrs. Griffin’s room.  So yes, Richard, I am old enough to remember Judge Griffin very well, along with the very high ceilings, large staircase, plush carpeting, palms, and grand piano that I passed each day. 

    In a trick of fate, years later I was to find out that the very same piano was the subject of a lawsuit between Judge Griffin and my great grandfather Charles Provost, who ran the Interstate Express agency in town. It seems that he was accused of damaging the piano during delivery and had to pay $23 for repairs.

    A Burglary and an Arrest

    • After Judge Griffin died in January, 1959,  James Murphy, a “temporary resident” of Newmarket and the judge’s stepson burglarized the vacant home in November, and was arrested.  He was sentenced to jail on felony charges of burglary and stealing a pistol.   The Judge had been known during his judicial proceedings for concealing a pistol in his desk drawer.  If an unruly defendant started acting up, Judge Griffin would remove the pistol by the barrel and bang the handle like a gavel.  It was never disclosed if the pistol had been loaded, but that action usually brought decorum back into the courtroom.

    Keeping it in the Family

    • Over the years, the mansion’s furniture was auctioned off between owners.  In 1960 Frank Willey paid ten dollars for the vintage East Lake 1870s bedroom set.   It was handed down through the generations, and Frank’s great-granddaughter Linda Bentley-Hopey acquired it.   Linda’s father Joseph Bentley (one of Signe and John Bentley’s sons in the photo above) remembered the set from his childhood home—the mansion on the hill. 

    The Harvey Years

    • The estate of Judge Griffin sold the property in 1959 to Ethel P. Hill.  She managed the estate as a rental property until 1970 when the building was sold at public auction. Roger qnd Judy Harvey purchased the home and  lived in the house for almost 10  years. Roger recalls the high ceilings, the beautiful maghony woodwork throughout the house and remarked, “no wonder it took so long to build, the woodworking was remarkable, even down to the interior of the closets.”  With twelve rooms downstairs and an outside wrap around porch there was plenty of room for the kids to run around in,  as long as they stayed away from the stained glass windows, the original chandeliers and didn’t slide down the banister.  His parents Lionel and Greta Harvey moved into the upstairs apartment, and were always on the front lawn when the Memorial Day parade marched by. Left behind when the Harveys moved in were  Judge Griffin’s law books,  some fine, blue porcelin dinnerware,  and two sleighs left in the barn one with sleighbells still attached to the reins. 

    From a 2 Unit to a 5 Unit Apartment House

    • After the Harveys sold the building the property changed hands several times.   Eventually the old manison was transformed into four units in the main building: three one bedroom units and a three bedroom unit.  Even the old carriage house was turned into a spacious two bedroom apartment atop the two car garage.  The old Caswell Mansion House last sold in 2018 as a commerical rental property.