Progress Reports

The Brookline History Committee (BHC) was formed in May 2003, for the sole purpose of updating the existing text “History of Brookline New Hampshire” by Edward E. Parker, dated 1914.

In 2004 the history committee met four times. The meetings began by continuing with the gathering of resources and finalizing the table of contents, and ended with concentrations of efforts towards specific research subjects. A new meeting schedule of every other month on the second Thursday of the month at 7:00 PM has been established.

The History Committee Chairman Laura Murphy stepped down and new chairman Lynne Abt was elected. Current members of the committee are Lynne Abt, Ellen Winters, Clarence Farwell, Marsha Farwell, Nancy Howard, and high school student Benjamin Sacks. We are thankful for the guest attendance of Donald Barnaby.

The committee is continuing to gather and sort through the information available of the past 100 years. Several committee members have chosen a research assignment and are starting to write up their efforts. We are currently concentrating on the history of the schools, veterans and several large celebrations in town. The committee has also determined there are only a small number of copies of the Parker book left and are investigating a possible reprinting of this book.

Publicity has been emphasized with poor results. Articles have been published in the Hollis High School newspaper and also in the Hollis Brookline Journal. The BHC web site has continued to be updated and an appeal for more members has been made on the town web site. The web site has been turned over to the town web committee for updates. The lack of feedback from town residents is bothersome but BHC will continue to publicize and enlist the help of townspeople to work on this historical accounting of our town’s history. If you have any stories, photos, interesting facts about the last 100 years of life in Brookline, please contact a committee member and share with us this information. The more data we can gather, the more complete and interesting this book will be.

Progress is slow, but there is still progress and the existing members are committed to working on the completion of the historical accounting of Brookline’s town history of the last 100 years.

Please reference the BHC information on www.brookline.nh.us\History Committee page to see a schedule of meetings, review of minutes, current table of contents and in general to stay in tune with what the committee is working on.

You can contact us at HistoryCommittee@brookline.nh.us or send a letter to town hall.

Sincerely,

Lynne Abt

Chairman, BHC