page_title: Rochester, New Hampshire
section_title: Growth through the 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Rochester, New Hampshire / History / Growth through the 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Cocheco River at Rochester, New Hampshire, USA.
context_page_description: Rochester is a city in Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 29,752, and in 2019 the estimated population was 31,526. The city includes the villages of East Rochester, Gonic, and North Rochester. Rochester is home to Skyhaven Airport.
context_section_description: Mail service was established in 1768 when a post rider traveled from Portsmouth through Berwick, Dover and Rochester bringing gazettes. In 1792 this improved when Joseph Paine would deliver and pick up mail once a week. When he arrived in town a horn would blow to inform the town of his presence. A regular post office was established on March 26, 1812, in the Barke Tavern. The first postmaster in Rochester was William Barker.
  The first large business was lumbering, although it would be overtaken by other industries as Rochester developed into a mill town with the Cochecho River to provide water power. In 1806, 6 tanneries were operating, along with a sawmill, fulling mill, and 2 gristmills. By the 1820s-1830s, the town had a cabinet maker and clockmaker. The Mechanics Company was established in 1834, producing woolen blankets which would win the premium quality award at the 1853 New York World's Fair. The Norway Plains Woolen Company manufactured blankets used by the Union Army in the Civil War, and in 1870 wove 1,600,000 yards (1,500,000 m) of textiles, but by century's end was out of business. Shoe manufacturing had surpassed textiles as Rochester's dominant industry by 1880.
  In 1854, the E.G. & E. Wallace Shoe Company was established, eventually becoming the city's largest employer, with over 700 workers in 1901. Its name changed to the Rochester Shoe Corporation in the 1920s. The Wallace brothers died in the 1890s, and other shoe factories opened, including Perkins, Linscott & Company (later the Linscott, Tyler, Wilson Company) off Wakefield Street and N. B. Thayer & Company, Inc., in East Rochester. In the early twentieth century, more people were employed in shoe manufacturing than in all other local industries combined. Rochester contributed to New Hampshire's position as the nation's third largest shoe-producing state. The Kessel Fire Brick Company was established in 1889, and at one time bricks for new buildings at Harvard University were made in Gonic. Carrying the freight were four railroads which once passed through Rochester, a major junction between Haverhill, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine. Agriculture continued to be important, and in 1875 the Rochester Fair was established. In 1891, Rochester was incorporated as a city.
  The first telephone was installed in 1885 in the K.C. Sanborn Drug Store, the phone was connected to the Dover Telephone Exchange. By the early 1900s there were 1200 local calls and 400 toll calls a day made from Rochester.
  In 1889 and 1900 Jonas Spaulding and his three sons Leon, Huntley, and Rolland, built a leatherboard mill at North Rochester. Jonas died before the mill became operational but his three sons ran it well in copartnership and expanded the company nationally and internationally. Leon Cummings Spaulding served as the J Spaulding and Sons Company president after his father's death.
  During the Great Depression, however, several industries left for cheaper operating conditions in the South or went bankrupt. But the affluent mill era left behind fine architecture, including the Rochester Public Library, a Carnegie Library designed by the Concord architects Randlett & Griffin.
caption: The Cocheco River provided power for the city's early factories and mills.
exif: {"Image Make": "EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY", "Image Model": "KODAK EASYSHARE Z915 DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image XResolution": "480", "Image YResolution": "480", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Paint.NET v3.5.10", "Image DateTime": "2012:09:22 10:21:44", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Rating": "0", "Image ExifOffset": "246", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/400", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:09:22 10:21:45", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:09:22 10:21:45", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "26/3", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "21/2", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "44", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3648", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2736", "EXIF RelatedSoundFile": "RelatedSound", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "41822", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "80", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "59", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "0"}