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Quicktime (plugin required)Nearly a century before America came to embrace the city of Manchester in NH, eastern portions of what we know today as the Queen City fell within the borders of the town of Derryfield.
Derryfield was chartered on September 3, 1751 and if there is a historical footnote that most delights newcomers, it is when they learn that the community in which they reside traces its origins to a neighborhood tavern.
Yes, Derryfield's first town meeting was held on Mammoth Road in the tavern at Hall's Inn, whose proprietor - a Scotsman named John Hall - eventually lent his name to both a section of the city and the elementary school known as Hallsville. Try to imagine the scene inside Hall's Inn. That's what author L. Ashton Thorp did in his book called "Manchester of Yesterday."
"The Inn," he wrote, "with its great fireplaces and back logs, was a place of abundant good cheer, when, in the early autumn of 1751, the new town of Derryfield was organized, and no doubt toasted, in noggins of rum and mugs of flip, seasoned in the red-hot loggerhead before the blazing log fire in 'Hall's West Room.'"
Abundant good cheer?
Perhaps in the beginning. Before long, the English and Scotch-Irish settlers were at odds and another local historian, Grace Holbrook Blood, piques the imagination when she notes, "Brawls and fights appear to have been part of the picture."
Over time, the settlers made peace.
This becomes clear in the first town warrant of Derryfield. An article in that warrant employed some creative spelling in asking the voters - all men, incidentally - "to see if the town will reise money for preaiching and how much."
The preacher's teachings must have hit home, for the community of Derryfield would eventually spawn a host of villages with names like Bakersville, Goffe's Falls, Janesville, Towlesville and Youngsville.
Still, even after the city of Manchester took shape, Hallsville - and the tavern owner it honored - remained the heart and soul of Derryfield.