1810-1819

1810

Reports of grave robberies became widespread soon after the Medical School was established in Hanover. Lebanon passed a law in 1810 imposing a fine of $2000, a “publick whipping” of up to 39 lashes or two years imprisonment for the crime.

Itinerant Methodist preachers came in 1810-1812 to the Hardy neighborhood, then called “The Village,” and held “classes” in the schoolhouse. Lebanon’s first baptism by immersion took place in a brook on Hardy Hill, witnessed by a large number of people.

1811

Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, was born in Sharon, Vt. in 1805 and moved with his family to West Lebanon in 1811, where they lived on South Main St. until 1813. He founded the Mormon Church in 1830 at Fayette, N.Y. after translating The Book of Mormon. (I-2)

Lebanon Post Office first opened in 1811. East Lebanon Post Office started in 1831, was changed to Mascoma Post Office in 1910 and discontinued in 1955. West Lebanon Post Office came in 1838.

1812

Twenty-eight Lebanon men joined the militia organized to guard against possible attack by the British from Canada during the War of 1812. Although New England shipping was seriously affected by the war, no land campaign reached the Lebanon region.

Julia Hardy Lovejoy – diarist, newspaper correspondent, abolitionist, minister’s wife, pioneer – was born on Hardy Hill in 1812. She moved west in 1855 where her sixth child was the first Caucasian child born in Manhattan, Kansas (city of 27,000 in 1972). (A-2)

1817

The Lebanon Militia, formed in 1817, was the beginning of a local military organization which has existed intermittently to the present time. Prior to 1850, military duty was compulsory. The Third Regiment, N. H. National Guard, was organized here in 1878.