Dean Shalhoup

From the moment 13-year-old Marion Hendrick gazed up at Tilton Academy’s landmark ivy-covered clock tower, she knew the co-ed prep school 50-something miles north of her Nashua home would see a lot more of her over the next four years.

Today’s essay is the final installment in what turned out to be a six-part series that followed the motoring adventures of George and Nellie Hendrick and their only child, Marion, by all accounts a spirited, fairly audacious – not to mention privileged – young woman who grew up in Nashua’s North End at the turn of the 20th century.

Fast-forward to the mid 1950s, when then-Nashua Telegraph columnist and editor Fred Dobens began receiving letters from a then 60-something Marion Hendrick Ray, who lived with her husband, G. Everett Ray, over in the Kingston area after decades of owning and operating greenhouses here in Nashua.

Evidently enamored, and understandably so, with Marion’s mastery of the written word, Fred decided to run some of Marion’s letters as guest columns, giving his readers the opportunity to turn back the clock a half-century and envision, through Marion’s words, what it was like to be a pioneer in the fledgling world of motorcar travel in the spring and summer of 1903.

Today’s series finale picks up as the Hendricks arrive at Tilton Academy, now called Tilton School, the fifth and final boarding prep school Marion “inspected” in order to choose the one in which she would enroll for her four years of secondary education.

She wrote that her mother had sent a letter to the school requesting a catalog, but when the principal, George Plimpton, saw the letter, he contacted the Hendricks and invited them to the school’s upcoming commencement.

Undaunted by the fact that even if nothing went wrong, such as George’s fairly fragile, single-cylinder Packard breaking down as it was prone to do on occasion, the Hendricks gratefully accepted, knowing full well it meant a dusty, bouncy, coccyx-bruising, five-hour drive at 10-20 mph tops over cow paths, wagon trails and rutted, barely navigable terrain.

To Marion, at least, the family’s arrival to great fanfare made the 10-hour round trip well worth it. She describes the celebrity treatment they received.

“A crowd of young folks gathered around us and Principal Plimpton came beaming down the steps. He was expecting us.

“The next three hours are a blurred memory of meeting teachers, meeting girls, gazing at good-looking boys in the offing, inspecting available rooms, a luncheon we didn’t need, a personally conducted tour all over the place, and a final choice of a room looking out over the valley of the Winnepesaukee at the great blue bulk of Kearsarge (mountain) against the Western sky.

“Around 3 p.m. Dad looked at Mother and me and said, ‘if you want to get home before dark, we’d better start.’

“So, with a chorus of goodbyes from new-found friends, we drove down through town, and I felt I just couldn’t wait for school to take up in September, I loved the place so much.

“The journey back to the Gate City was a repetition of our coasting, rolling and chugging progress, as the road pitched downgrade, twisted and turned on level and mounted hills in a series of bumps over water bars. It took stamina to travel by motor in 1903.

“We turned into Stark Street just as the sunset was making bright the sky behind the reservoir. Dad reckoned the distance was about 60 miles each way … it took us about five hours each way, including stops to stretch and have something cool to drink.

“Remember – there was no top (on the car), no windshield … the only lights were kerosene carriage lamps. And the dust was unbelievable. That was the reason coverall dusters and big veils to tie on shade hats were a must.”

The weather had been unusually dry that spring, Marion noted: “That explains why I saw the New Hampshire landscape from the trap seat that June day, through rolling, swirling and billowing clouds of dust following us.”

Marion was just shy of 80 when she died in 1968 at her then-Kensington home.

Fred Dobens wrapped up one of Marion’s guest columns praising her and her family as “hardy pioneers of the road,” whose exploits contributed to “the pleasure and comfort of the automobile as we know it today.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com

Dean Shalhoup