Edward Hamlin Clough built Clough park in 1925. In 1924, Clough had purchased the 240 feet of lake frontage directly opposite the “Old Homestead” where he had been born. The shoreline was irregular, rough, and neglected. At that time, the Hawkins Brook wetland extended all the way to the lake, and Main Street crossed the wetland outlet by bridge before heading to Center Harbor. East of the bridge, Main Street has been renamed, and is now the start of the Whittier Highway, Route 25.

At one end of Clough’s lake frontage stood the locally prized, “Old Oak” landmark. Clough cleaned out the decayed wood from the interior of the great hollow within the tree’s trunk, filling it in with cement. He built a seawall around two sides of the tree, covered its exposed roots, and graded around the adjoining corner. The effort extended the life of the glorious old tree for decades. After it died, a new oak was planted in its place in 1992.

The Old Oak

The Old Oak predated Clough Park. Below are several old postcards showing the Old Oak.

The Old Oak in 1931. Photo from Clough’s book.

The Shook and Lumber Company sawmill was located on Swasey Point. In 1946, the Roman Catholic Diocese bought the property and built the St. Charles church on the site. In 2003, Rusty McLear acquired the property, tore down the church, and built Church Landing, a luxury hotel.

The Unique Stones

In 1927, a number of stones gathered over the decades by Seneca Ladd* were donated by Ladd’s daughter, Fannie, to be placed in Clough’s wall that ran the 240′ length of shorefront along the base of Meredith Bay. The stones were embedded in an upright position into the retaining wall. The stones were a variety of geological rarities, including pieces of meteorite, a chunk of the Greek Parthenon, a shoe-shaped rock from an Indian grave, and coral from the shore of Havana Harbor where the battleship Maine was sunk. The wall also included stones donated by famous people including Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Edward Clough, in his 1931 book, “The Story of Clough Park”, claimed the stones were from “23 states, three territories, the District of Columbia, and 15 foreign countries.” Clough provided a brief description of each and every one of the stones, as well as the circumference and height of each stone. There were 269 stones, separated into 15 sections, listed on the last 7 pages of his book.

One of the 15 sections of Clough’s guide to the unique stones, “On Indian Elevation”, provide the details as to the six stones that accompanied the Captain Jack Indian statue on his elevated base jutting from the Clough Park seawall. The base is seen below in this early 1960s color photo, sans the statue. The large black triangular stone was 21″ high by 19″ round. It was “veined”, and “showed where worn in the glacial period.” It was donated by Frank M. Frissell, and came from somewhere around Lake Winnipesaukee. The stone was pictured on the back cover of Clough’s book. The white stone was 14″ high by 19″ round and came from the Veasey Farm in Meredith. The tall red stone came from No. Attleboro, MA, and was donated by F.B. Honywill of Boston.

In 1964, the seawall was eroding and came under study of the town, but nothing was done. As the stones came loose, a few were given to the Meredith Historical Society. The rest were unaccounted for. Someone may have made off with a fortune. One of the stones was described by Clough as a “…75lb, black pitted meteor from Mt. Cube, Oxford, N.H. Seen fall by Geo. M. Williams of Warren, N.H.”. At 75lbs, an ordinary, stony chondrite meteorite would be worth $17,000-$170,000 today; a metallic, iron meteorite $34,000 to $340,000; and a crystalline pallasite, $680,000 to $3.4 million or more.

*Seneca Ladd was one of early Meredith’s most important business persons. His various businesses included carriage manufacturing, piano manufacturing, water power, and the founding of Meredith Village Savings Bank (MVSB), which still exists today. The MVSB recently erected the Seneca Ladd building right next to its home office on Route 25.

The Four Statues

Besides the unique stones and the Old Oak, the other prominent feature of Clough Park were its four, cigar store Indian statues from Manchester, NH – in particular, its Captain Jack statue, which was a duplicate of the statue atop Weirs Beach’s Endicott Rock monument. It is not known what happened to the Meredith Captain Jack statue. It was probably removed in the early 1950s. 

Clough called his Captain Jack statue “Hiawatha“. He writes, “Going to the east side of the arch, we find the valued figure of an Indian adorned with the feathered headdress and other characteristic habiliments of the Indian. For many years, this figure stood at the entrance of Hubbard’s cigar store, near the foot of Hanover street in Manchester.”

“Minnehaha” stood on a stone plinth across the street from the park. Clough writes, “With hand shading his eyes, who is Hiawatha looking at across the street? Minnehaha, of course. There she stands, and apparently unconscious (after the manner of a maiden) that her lover is peering at her. For a period of years this figure was an attraction at the entrance of a cigar store on Elm Street, near the foot of Bridge Street, in Manchester.”

On the lawn bordering the driveway of Clough’s home was “Pocahontas“. Said Clough, “Another dusky maiden is dressed and adorned as befitting her rank. This Indian princess was formerly the outside attraction of the original cigar store of ‘Sullivans 7-20-4 Cigar’, at 724 Elm Street in Manchester.”

Clough leaves the best for last. “Looking across the bay at the right, one sees a small island, upon which stands the lifesize figure of an Indian chieftain, posed in an aggressive attitude with bow and arrow in hand. ‘Chief Chocorua‘ for many years was a conspicuous feature on the bank of the Merrimack river at Manchester.”

See below for more info about the Captain Jack and Chief Chocorua statues. The Minnehaha and Pocahontas statues were located on Clough’s private property, not at the civic park, so they were probably sold off soon after Clough passed away.

Indian statue photos from Clough’s book, “The Story of Clough Park”

Hiawatha (Captain Jack)

Chocorua (Indian Chief) and Indian Island

The Captain Jack statue was not the only Indian statue in Clough Park. Just a few feet away in Meredith Bay, another statue was placed on what became known as “Indian Island”. The island had been given to Meredith in 1924. The statue was donated by Edward Clough, and it was flanked by two giant iron anchors donated by Mount Washington Captain Sidney Baker. Until 1870, the anchors had been in use on the steamer Chocorua. The anchors provided inspiration for the name of the statue, Chief Chocorua, and the island’s formal name, Little Chocorua. One anchor weighed 656 lbs, and the other 443 lbs, according to Clough.

Several postcards, below, show the Chief Chocorua statue, but the statue cannot be seen in detail. The statue was said to have resembled the Chief Squantum statue in Tilton (see photo below), which has recently been restored, and is on display on the corner of Main Street and Park Street in Vest Pocket Park. The Chief Squantum statue is actually a cigar store Indian made of zinc alloy by the William Demuth Company of New York City. The Chief Chocorua was the same model cigar store Indian as well. The model was called the “Indian Chief”.

The Chief Chocorua statue met an untimely demise. Damaged by a shotgun blast after being used for target practice, the statue met its final fate after being struck by a snowmobile. Moved off the island and taken to the old town garage, the statue proved to be irreparably damaged and its remains were reportedly buried.

In the early 2000s, an effort to replace the statue was successful. The Indian Island Restoration Committee raised $58,000 to fund the creation of the bronze, and another $5,000 to restore the badly eroded island. Glenn Hines of Houlton, Maine and his wife, Diane, crafted the imposing 11,000-pound eight-foot tall replica. The replacement was a more historically accurate depiction of a Native American. The aggressive stance of the statue’s predecessor was softened, and the sculpture was enlarged to allow it to be more easily seen by passing boaters.

Marine contractor Dean Mason repaired the island and installed the statue. The island, with its crumbling stone wall, was eroding into the lake, held together by old cribwork beams from a past building. A 2,700 pound granite boulder served as the statue’s base. Stainless steel pins attached Chocorua to the boulder. Dean Mason was a personal friend of this website’s webmaster. Sadly, Dean passed away in 2016.

The Meredith Sculpture Walk’s first sculpture was placed in 2013 at the Courtyard, on Main Street.  The Walk has grown over the years to include multiple works along Main Street, on the grounds of the Mill Falls complex, the Meredith Public Library, the Baptist Church, and in the Hesky and Scenic lakeside parks. There is a limit of 32 sculptures, with most rotated on a yearly basis. The most popular sculptures remain for one additional year of public display before they term out and are replaced.

Minnehaha (Indian Maiden)

The third of the four statues.

Pocahontas (Indian Squaw)

Pocahontas was perhaps the least valuable of the four Indian statues at Clough Park. While the three other statues (Captain Jack, Indian Chief and Indian Maiden) were all popular zinc statues from the Demuth catalog, Pocahontas was an “Indian Squaw”, wooden statue carved in the workshop of Thomas V. Brooks in Chicago. An illustration of the style can be found in the 1879 catalog issued by Metzler, Rothschild, & Co. Since wooden statues were hand carved, they could be easily customized to the whims of the customer; hence, there was more variation in the final product.

Scenic Park