dcr
Deceased Member
Registered: February 2004
Posts: 1,317
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This pond is tucked into the northern side of the Moose Mts, in Brookfield. It is called Mountain Lake, but it is only about 12 acres big. It was one of the very first places settled in Brookfield, in the mid-1760's. A group of folks from the seacoast settlements got a charter and came, either on foot or horseback, the 40 or so miles to the Brookfield site - fortunately for them Governor John Wentworth had recently had his road (Governor's Rd) built from Portsmouth, through this absolute wilderness, to Smith's Pond (site of his new vacation mansion), now Lake Wentworth. One man, Tobias (Bear) Hanson, chose this site as his farm site, which probably put him quite a distance away from his nearest neighbor. Bear(perhaps he was very successful at hunting them) left his mark on the landscape - not only was the lakeside mountain named for him, but the brook which comes out of the pond and flows eventually into the Branch River and then on to the Atlantic, was named Hanson Brook. That is about as much immortality as any person could reasonably hope for.
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