Politics and Profit: The Sinclair House in Bethlehem, 1840 – 1880

Part of the 2019 Grand Hotels Summer Speaker Series

Before the Grand Hotels defined the apogee of White Mountain Tourism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, small hotels for transients and boarding houses abounded in the region. The early development of the Sinclair House in Bethlehem is a fine example of how diverse political and economic activities that involved politicians and business magnates throughout New England could be the foundation for a vacation mecca.

Rebecca Weeks Sherrill More, Ph.D., holds an appointment as Visiting Scholar in the department of History at Brown University, Providence RI. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Brown University. She directed the Harriet W. Sheridan Center, Brown’s professional development center in pedagogy for faculty and graduate students until her retirement in 2010 and taught gender history as Adjunct Professor of History in the Division of Liberal Arts: HPSS, Rhode Island School of Design from 1995 until 2014. She continues to work with Honors students in the History department at Brown. She and her family are also part-time residents of Lancaster NH.

Dr. More’s publications include “The Settlement Maps of Early Lancaster New Hampshire: from Colonial Plantation to Republican Township” in Beyond the Notches: Stories of Place in New Hampshire’s North Country (2011) and various articles on New Hampshire history. She continues active research on the social, economic and cultural history of Early Modern England and New England, including the diary of an 18th c. Anglican clergyman. Her writing and lectures include colonial and 19th c. New Hampshire history, the White Mountain National Forest and the 1911 Weeks Act, which her great-grandfather, Congressman John Wingate Weeks, sponsored to further development of the Federal National Forest Reserves. From 2014 – 2018, she researched cultural landscapes in Northern New Hampshire as a Section 106 consultant on the Northern Pass LLC Transmission application. She also works on archival projects, including the archives of Reed & Barton Silversmiths, Taunton, MA.

Dr. More serves on the board of Weeks Medical Center (Lancaster NH); the board of trustees of the New Hampshire Historical Society; the Advisory Council of the Museum of the White Mountains at Plymouth State University; the Fine Arts Committee of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Outreach committee for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. Past service includes the President’s Council at Plymouth State University and the National Council at Strawbery Banke Museum (Portsmouth NH), among others.

This talk is presented with support from MWM membership.