Stephen Taylor explores how the arrival of electricity transformed rural life in NH, highlighting the social and civic changes it brought and drawing parallels to today’s challenges with broadband.
Imagine a New Hampshire town where some people enjoyed the benefits of electricity – lighting at the flick of a switch and reliable heating controlled by a thermostat – while others lived with smelly kerosene lamps and smoky box stoves. In New Hampshire, during the first half of the 20th century, residents of developed communities enjoyed the transformative benefits of electric power while those in the sparsely populated regions lived and worked in conditions little changed from the 19th century.
It took the coming of the New Deal's Rural Electrification Administration and a determined band of farmers to overcome opposition from the established private utilities to create the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative in 1939. Despite labor and material shortages during World War II, within a decade, power came to almost all of the previously unserved areas of the state. For thousands of households, this meant relief from the drudgery of the wood-fueled cookstove, the washboard and the kerosene lamp. Reliable electric power similarly brought new ways of life to farmers and artisans. This program will explore how these developments changed civic and social life in New Hampshire’s countryside, and touch the ways the disparity of broadband access in the state today echoes these earlier struggles.
About the Presenter:
Steve Taylor is a lifelong scholar of New Hampshire agriculture and rural life. He has been a daily newspaper reporter and editor, freelance writer, dairy farmer and for 25 years served as the state's commissioner of agriculture. He was the founding executive director of the Hampshire Humanities Council and in recent years has been an active participant in its Humanities to Go program.
This program is free and open to all. Please note that library parking is not guaranteed. Patrons who are able are encouraged to take advantage of Peterborough’s walkable downtown by parking in the Depot Square or Riverwalk lots.
Peterborough Town Library, located downtown at the corner of Main and Concord/Rt 202, has a large meeting room, study rooms, classroom, and a board room available to the public.
