Full title: History of the Town of Claremont, New Hampshire for a Period of One Hundred and Thirty Years, From 1764 to 1894
This book is the most comprehensive history of our city written so far. At the 1892 Claremont town meeting, John S. Walker, Ira Colby, and George L. Balcom voted as a committee to authorize the writing and publication of a history of Claremont. The three gentlemen then contracted Otis F. R. Waite to research and write up the history, to be presented in August of 1895.
The author of the history, Major Otis Frederick Read Waite, was a writer, editor, printer, justice of the peace, and public intellectual who held an extensive private library in Claremont. He died shortly after the History’s publication of kidney disease in October 1895. His obituary states that Claremonters did not think he would live to see the book published, but that he rallied through to see his work come to fruition. Waite is interred at Pleasant Street Cemetery in Claremont.
Some local historians argue that Waite’s declining health in the months leading up to his death had an impact on the accuracy of some parts of the book and caution readers to corroborate what they read with other sources.
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This version of the book includes some pages that are missing from other scans of the book available online. Additionally, this document is embedded with optical character recognition (OCR) technology, so the entire book is searchable.
