Cow Hampshire

Canobie Lake is a beautiful sheet of water, situated partly in Windham and partly in Salem, New Hampshire, and within the limits of the original Scots-Irish settlement of Londonderry, New Hampshire.  Before the incorporation of Salem, the lake was earliest

known as “Haverhill Pond” and “Haverhill Bound Pond.”  By 1715 (as noted in various records) it began to be called Policy Pond.”

Local legends says it was named after a Mr. Poliss, or Polliss, who owned land bordering on it in colonial days By a second account it was named after a local chief of the Native People [Indians] whose surname was Polis. Both of these accounts are purely speculative. Perhaps the second one inadvertently refers to the fact that Henry David Thoreau mentions a Penobscot Indian, Joe Polis, in his book “The Maine Woods.” That Joe Polis would have lived too late in history to have this pond named after him, and his ancestors probably lived in Maine. Continue reading →