Chichester Historical Society
Garvin Hill and Fife
Roads
By Walter Sanborn
In traveling up Horse Corner Road the next road after the
Short Falls Road is the Garvin Hill Road which is on the left and is at
the highest point on Horse Corner Road at about 800 feet elevation.
Garvin Hill Road was built in the early 1800’s to reach the farm of
Jessie Garvin who built a large farm on top of Garvin Hill. This was a
dead end road ending at the farm. The farm had a large barn and the
house was built of brick hauled from Portsmouth by ox team. In the
late 1800’s Jessie Garvin’s son Jeremiah Garvin, inherited the farm and
added a two story annex to the house and made it into a hotel.
I have written a more complete story on Garvin Hill which is
included in the book on Chichester Articles. In reminiscing on the
previous article there is one story I didn’t include which should be
recorded here. In the 1920’s the last member on the Garvin family sold
the property. Between 1920 and 1940 the property was owned by several
owners and was vandalized as no one lived there. Many people used the
property for parties and stole the contents.
One night someone was trespassing on the property and looked in a
window and saw a body laying on the floor and notified the police.
Several police and the sheriff responded to investigate the body. Well,
the body turned out to be a manikin someone had dressed and left there.
Crime solved.
Several hundred feet from the Horse Corner Road on the Garvin Hill
Road on the right can be seen a double stone wall which was a road
leading to what was known as the Fife farm. There is no record of
this road on record or is not shown on any map. In the 1970 the
Historical Society was on a search for the Indian Plausawa’s Camp and we
came across the remains of the old Fife farm and the stone foundation
still remains.
There are three photographs taken from this farm about 1900 and the land
is cleared so that Horse Corner Road is visible to the Staniels Road
showing all the homes on Horse Corner Road to the west. One photo looks
northwest toward Mt. Belknap and the other photo looks toward the Towle
and Main Road.
By the way, we didn’t find Plausawa’s camp but with a better guide
several years later we did find Plausawa campground.