Baker-Blair Bison Traditional Cache
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A nice easy camoed bison tube. It is NOT on cemetary property. Please do not disturb the rock walls. IT IS NOT IN THE ROCKS!!!!
Parking is available at the listed coordinates or just as you get off the highway on Bog Road.
I always enjoy caches that take me to historic places. I lived just down the road for 10 years and never ventured back here until recently. There was a lot of research done about this area while they were planning for the new White Mountain National Forest Headquarters. Here is a bit of that history:
The first recorded transaction in the Grafton County Registry of Deeds for lot No. 3 was in 1780, when William Baker sold it to his brother, Benjamin Baker. Benjamin Baker died in 1790 and his children inherited the property. Daniel Baker bought his sisters’ shares in the property in 1805 and sold the 100-acre lot in 1810 to Peter Blair.
In 1826 Peter Blair sold 50 acres of lot No. 3 to Joseph Weld. The 50 acres, located “on the westerly side of the main road leading from Plymouth to Thornton”, included the “old Barn”. Listed as an exception is “the burying ground on the lot being one half acre”. The “main road” referenced is most likely the road that eventually ecame Route 3. In 1829, three years after his father, Peter, sold it, Joseph C. Blair purchased the property from Samuel Holmes, who had purchased it from Joseph Weld’s estate that same year. He frequently mortgaged portions of his property, where he ran a boarding house and farm. Joseph C. Blair, Sr. died in 1864, leaving a 304-acre “home farm” to his children.
It appears to have remained as a farm until 1969 when it was sold to the Palazzi Corporation, except for 2.5 acres of the eastern portion of the property sold to the State of New Hampshire for the construction of Interstate 93 in 1961. Maps from the I-93 construction projects provide supporting evidence that the historic building cluster, including the Blair Hotel and homestead, was located along the old corridor of Route 3.
The cemetery is located in a wooded area adjacent to the southeastern border of the property, surrounded on three sides by the WMNF parcel. It is accessed by a dirt road that borders the WMNF property as an extension of Bog Road, and is bounded by a dry stone wall. The dates on the legible gravestones range from 1803 to 1846.
The gravestones in the Bog Road Cemetery include members of the two earliest families known to have owned the property, as well as associated families in the surrounding community. Daniel Baker probably lived on the property from 1780, when his father purchased it, until 1810, when he sold it to Peter Blair. His six children, who died between 1803 and 1816, also probably lived on the property. The family plot of the Blair family includes Hannah Blair, wife of Peter Blair, and possibly several of their children.
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