A history of Chesterfield,
since 1752
Postcards, papers and photographs of Chesterfield from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Granted in 1735 by Governor Jonathan Belcher of Massachusetts, this town was the site of Fort Number 1, first in the line of forts bordering the Connecticut River. After the border between Massachusetts and New Hampshire was fixed, the town was incorporated on February 11, 1752 by Governor Benning Wentworth as Chesterfield, named for Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield. The first settlers were Moses Smith and William Thomas, who, with their families, came up the Connecticut in canoes, in the fall of 1761. Their chief subsistence through the winter and spring of their first year in the wilderness consisted of salmon and shad, of which there was a great abundance in the river, and deer, which were numerous in the forests. The town contains some of the finest farmland in Cheshire County, yet once was also home to small manufacturing, notably spinning wheel parts and hand tools.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Chesterfield’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewSpafford [sic] Lake, looking nort…, 1885: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Chesterfield, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Spafford [sic] Lake, looking north from Prospect House (1885) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom the Library of Congress (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.