Alfred Spalding of Merrimack and Nashua NH. He was the son of Silas and Betsy (Hills) Spaulding. (1806-1887)
Yes, you guessed it. Another photograph came into my possession–actually I bought it on Ebay–this time of Alfred Spalding. The Spalding family of southern New Hampshire area was particularly prolific, and so it is not always an easy task to sort them out. His story is not unusual for the place nor the time. Alfred Spalding was an average man who led an average life. This photograph was taken in the studio of E.W. Johnson in Nashua, NH.
Alfred Spalding was born in Merrimack, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire in 1806 into a farming family. Some of the earlier ancestors were sea-faring men, and so Alfred as a young man did the same, as did one of his sons. By 1850 he married and had turned to farming in his home town of Merrimack, New Hampshire. In 1860 he ran a boarding house in nearby Nashua, on the corner of Spring and Eldridge Streets. Perhaps when his wife died in 1871 he no longer had the heart for it, for he gave up the boarding house, and for several years lived at 76 Chestnut Street in Nashua NH. Continue reading
