How Marcellus Eldredge Shaped Chatham: Eldredge Library Founder Set Foundation For Summer Resort

CHATHAM – For Chatham native Marcellus Eldredge, a Gilded Age era business tycoon and town benefactor who lived most of the year in Portsmouth, N.H., being a summer resident of Chatham was no impediment to his generosity to the town. 

 Eldredge's life and work was the subject of a wide-ranging presentation at the Eldredge Library last week by Library Director Amy Andreasson and Chatham Railroad Museum co-chair Gil Sparks. They showcased the man whose visionary generosity not only resulted in a town library and railroad but also in the hotel and travel infrastructure that helped to spark the transformation of Chatham from a sleepy maritime village to a popular summer resort.

 Born in 1838 to a Chatham seafaring family whose roots go back to the original settlers of the town, Marcellus Eldredge was the first son of Captain Hemen and Mary "Polly" Harding. After attending one of the local grammar schools he graduated from the Granville Academy, the forerunner of Chatham High School. 

 In 1852 Eldredge went to work at the family store in Portsmouth, and then to the family run Eldredge Brewing Company there. At the time the second largest brewery in New England, the brewery produced 70,000 barrels of beer a year at its height. 

 In 1862 he married his childhood sweetheart Mary Dill, the daughter of Chatham sea captain Sam Dill. The couple never had children. 

Marcellus took over the brewery when his father died, becoming president and treasurer of the newly-incorporated Eldredge Brewing Company in 1875. In addition to numerous philanthropic activities, Eldredge would serve two terms as a New Hampshire senator and also as the mayor of Portsmouth.

 With his strong roots in Chatham, Eldredge and his wife built their own summer “cottage” on Watch Hill, overlooking Chatham Harbor and the ocean. The home, later known as Sea View Terrace, was enlarged over the years to include gardens, a greenhouse, mill, entrance lodge and coach house with stables for the horses. Andreasson noted that "so welcome was Marcellus’ investment in developing his summer estate that it was exempted from local taxes for 20 years."

 Getting to Chatham from Portsmouth in the summer could be a challenge, especially if you hoped to travel by train. The Old Colony Railroad had service that ran from Boston to Provincetown but it bypassed Chatham, travelling though Brewster, resulting in a 7.1-mile stagecoach ride to get to the town. A spur had been discussed for decades. By 1885 Eldredge had had enough, according to Gil Sparks, co-director of the Chatham Railroad Museum. "Let's get it built!" he is reported to have said.

 With significant funding from Eldredge, the spur from Harwich to Chatham took "six months for the crew of about 150 Italian immigrants to complete, by hand," Sparks said. It covered the seven-mile stretch between Harwich and the new depot just off Main Street in downtown Chatham, where it still stands as the Chatham Railroad Museum on Depot Road. Rail service between Chatham and Harwich started on Nov. 22, 1887. "It was a 20-minute ride and cost 35 cents," Sparks said.

 Now that the town had rail service, more accommodations and better roads were needed for the growing number of visitors to get around. Among other properties, Eldredge was behind the 1891 creation of Hotel Chatham, a three-story, 76-room resort on the site of what is now Eastward Ho! Country Club. 

 In order to facilitate movement in the town, in 1893 Eldredge petitioned the town to create a "boulevard" between Main Street and Old Harbor Road. After offering to pay for a third of the construction himself (about $1,000), the project was approved by voters at a special town meeting. The boulevard was officially named Shore Road in 1937.

 With a growing population, the town's library, consisting of a small reading room over a shop containing a mere 515 books, was Eldredge's next project. By August the Boston Globe reported that he had purchased land for $1,000 to build a library downtown near the existing reading room. 

 A sketch of the proposed Italian Renaissance style library building was placed in the local post office window for people to approve or criticize. According to Andreasson, "no negative feedback was received."

 When the design came before the town's selectmen, the members were initially reluctant to approve it, Andreasson said, because "the proceeds were from alcohol." The objections didn't last long.

 It took one year and $40,000 to build the Eldredge Public Library, or in today's dollars, about $1.5 million. Completed in April 1897, the Globe reported that "both the library and building will be superior to anything of the kind in southern Massachusetts."

 The local newspaper, the Chatham Monitor, covered the concert and celebrations held on July 4 when the library was presented to the town. With furniture made to order, original stained glass windows and a donation of 2,000 volumes, the Eldredge Public Library was born.

 Eldredge continued his generous support of the town by funding extensive renovations in 1898 to the Methodist Church, including a new pipe organ. 

 A year after the library was completed, both Marcellus Eldredge and his wife died within hours of each other. She had been very ill with cancer; he passed away suddenly from pneumonia. He was 59; she was 57. 

 The loss was profound. The Monitor newspaper reported that “the whole community grieves as sincerely over its loss as do the immediate relatives over their bereavement.” All the Chatham schools closed for a day, and local shops closed from 3 to 4 p.m., at the time of the funeral in Boston. 

 The following Sunday, at a memorial service in Chatham’s Methodist Church, C. A. Freeman, chair of the board of selectman, said he was “voicing the sentiment of our people to say…of all the monuments which both Mr. Eldredge and his wife had erected, the greatest of all were those erected in the hearts of our people.”