Mt. Moosilauke (1910) - Merrill's Mountain Home
". . . My maternal grandfather, Amos Little Merrill, owned and ran "Merrill's Mountain Home" a summer boarding house able to take 35 or 40 guests in June, July and August. Then all year 'round it was a large farm with huge gardens, many cows so that the summer boarders had fresh milk, cream and home-made butter - also horses which did both farm work (no tractors then!) and also served to entertain the guests on trips up the Carriage Road to the summit of Mt. Moosilauke.
The land was first owned by Samuel Merrill who deeded it to Nathaniel Merrill on November 5, 1831. Nathaniel married Judith Little,* the aunt of William Little, and built the farm house in 1834. An addition was built in 1865. Amos L. Merrill took over the Mountain Home in 1878 when his father Nathaniel died. He and his wife Mary Olin Merrill ran the hotel until 1910.
My father was A. Leroy Smith, then from West Topsham, Vermont, who grew up on his father's farm. He went to Warren in 1898 as a very young man to work in Fred Gleason's store. In time he heard about the twin daughters of Amos Merrill's and got a job working for Grandpa from 1901 to 1909. Raised on a Vermont farm Dad was skilled with farm animals and gardening and maple sugaring; and one of his jobs was driving a four horse team up the Carriage Road to the Summit House on Moosilauke, taking the summer guests in a three-seated wagon.
I loved to hear my father tell stories about some of those trips - especially when one of the guests asked him what was the purpose of the piles of rocks here and there along the road. His answer indicates what he thought of urban ignorance of mountain country and the demands of road building. He told her that those piles of rocks were necessary to keep the top of the mountain from blowing away in heavy windstorms.
In time he fell in love with Lena Olin Merrill, and married her there. She was a great outdoor girl and an expert photographer with a large "plate" camera. Did her own development and printing! There was no skiing in Mother's day, but my Mom took a sled to the Summit and slid down the Carriage Road with its hairpin turns! Her scrapbook had several items of the history and folklore of the Breezy Point area east of Warren, and of the Carriage Road to the summit of Moosilauke.
Both my older sister and I were born in Warren and lived at Merrill's Mountain Home until Dorothy was 7 and I was 5 years old. I lived there from my birth in 1904 until 1909. The pictures show well our beautiful inn with broad porch all across the front and with a row of maples, spaced to have hammocks between them.
There were beautiful mountain trails that guests loved to explore. And Grandpa made a great deal of maple syrup since he had hundreds of maples. Grandpa M. also collected the tolls for the carriage road "traffic" and when I was four or five years old I always walked down with him to the big Moosilauke Inn to pick up the mail. . . ."
From "Merrill's Mountain Home" by Marjorie S. Davis, pp. 190-197, The Moosilaukee Reader (Vol.1). ©1999.
