These stories of the “Women of Harrisville” were collected for an exhibit in the Harrisville General Store in honor of Women’s History Month in March, 2025. Additional stories were added for a presentation at the April, 2025 Annual Meeting of Historic Harrisville Inc.

In 1881 Charles Asa Blake, of Jaffrey, bought the Union Hotel at the western entrance to Harrisville village, which had been a place of lodging since the late 1860s. Blake reopened it as “Nubaunsit House.”

In the fall of 2010, Historic Harrisville marked the 40th anniversary of the closing of Cheshire Mills. I couldn’t make the meeting but I heard a lot of people who worked in the mill talked about their experiences there. Though I never worked in the mill, it was a big part of my life growing up in town.

Jeannie Eastman explores the architectural styles of Harrisville, from Georgian and Federalist to Gothic Revival and Victorian.

A few years ago, Historic Harrisville’s archives accepted an important gift of notable proportions: nearly 800 glass negatives—the entire collection—taken by Fred Milan Travis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Harrisville, New Hampshire is important because it is the only nineteenth century industrial community in New England which survives in anything like its original form. All the major components of the town are still intact and it appears today almost exactly as it did in the nineteenth century.

On June 4, 2013, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order allowing Historic Harrisville Inc. to redevelop the hydroelectric capability that powered Cheshire Mills for nearly 100 years. Winning approval was a 3-year-plus process.