While the storm was churning down south, and politicking-before-the-primary was happening in Salem, we escaped north to New Hampshire for the weekend, where I “shopped” for a vacation House and my husband decidedly did not. He humored me, however, and let me stop at every single house that caught my eye to take a photograph, probably because none of these houses was actually for sale. When I scrolled through these photographs last night I realized that each and every one of these houses was white, including the Quaker meetinghouse we found after crossing a covered bridge (about the only image that’s going to break up the non-palette below) and the Shaker meetinghouse we stopped at on our way home. We spent Saturday night at the Highland House in Tamworth, which was built in the 1790s by a Salem mariner, merchant and tanner named George Dodge (1750-1821), who was clearly trying to escape busy Salem too! He was lured back to the city by his father’s will in 1808: the elder Captain George Dodge left his son a considerable fortune of $282,000 plus the responsibility of running his various businesses in Salem. I’m not sure George Jr. made it back to New Hampshire for any extended length of time, and when he died in 1821 he left his “considerable” Tamworth properties to the First Congregational Society.

Highland House on a misty (frosty?) Sunday morning, and a few interior details…..below: its neighbors, and a bit further afield in the foothills of the White Mountains.

Charming Wonalancet Union Chapel below…Friends’ Meeting House in Sandwich and Shaker Meeting House at Canterbury Shaker Village, where we stopped on the way home. I do believe that I’ll be dreaming of this last hilltop house, with its eyebrow windows, until my dying day!

Filed under: Architecture, Nature, Travel Tagged: Architecture, great houses, New England, road trips, Shakers, Shopping, Tamworth