Hancock - Old Home Day  Old Home Day: The Origin     Library of Congress Bicentennial Local Legacy entry "Old Home Day"   Howard Mansfield, well-known author and creator of cultural memory books wrote the manuscript that accompanied our entry. The following are excerpts:   "I wish that in the ear of every son and daughter of New Hampshire, in the summer days, might be heard whispered the persuasive words: "Come back, come back!" Frank Rollins wrote in 1897. "Do you not hear the call? What has become of the old home where you were born? Do you not remember it -- the old farm back among the hills, with its rambling buildings, its well sweep casting its long shadows, the row of stiff poplar trees, the lilacs and the willows?"   Frank Rollins invented Old Home Week. He rallied others to his idea, founded an Old Home Week Association, and as Governor of New Hampshire presided over the state's first homecoming in 1899. Hancock had held large family reunions and town picnics since 1879, but this was new. The state issued its invitation across the nation to its sons and daughters toiling in the cities, in the fields of the Midwest, and the mining camps of Montana.   Governor Rollins wanted to rescue his state. Throughout the 19th century New Hampshire's farming towns had been losing population. New England's talent and money were being drained away to build up the rest of the country. The state government was in debt, as were three-quarters of the towns.   Rollins had specific goals in mind: he wanted native born to return and buy the many abandoned farms in the state for summer homes. He wanted them to donate money to spruce up the village common, to support the library and the meetinghouse. And he wanted the towns themselves to awaken from what he saw as a moral slumber.   He succeeded. Old Home Week received national notice. The farms were purchased; donations were made. Old Home Week spread throughout New England and to towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and parts of Canada.   Hancock responded to the governor's call joining the first statewide celebration in 1899 with the "Hancock Town Picnic and Old Home Week Gathering." The program included an address: "On the attractions of the town as a summer home, or permanent residence."   The town took the program of civic uplift to heart. "Let us believe in New Hampshire, and in Hancock as one of her towns of historic dignity and power," said the 1910 Old Home Week program. " Let pessimism be transformed to optimism and New Hampshire will assume an honorable place in the progress of our country; and in her advance let Hancock have a place of honor."   "No local industry has flourished in the same degree as the manufacturing of Old Home Week verse," said one observer in 1906. "In every New England town observing the festival the local poet has been burning the midnight oil so assiduously that it is no wonder the price of kerosene has been advanced a cent or so a gallon."   Love Maria Whitcomb Willis editor of Tiffany's Monthly, was born in Hancock, had moved to Glenora, NY, but sent her poems home to be read at ceremonies. The 1924 program presented this verse:     Oh, home of my childhood! Thy mountains are watching In grandeur protective the valleys below; The scent of thy pine woods comes back to me often, And strength from thy hills when the north wind doth blow. It was there that I wandered in freedom contented! By murmuring streamlets and woodlands so fair And saw the sun's glow on the grand Temple mountains Or sought from Monadnock a hope, or a prayer. Excerpted with permission of the author   To access the Library of Congress Local Legacies page "Hancock Old Home Days", please click here.     Return to Homepage - Write to the HHS Hancock Historical Society, Hancock, N.H., copyright 2003