Frye Village Stories: the John Dove family (part 4)
A Shawsheen Village 100 Story
Before Shawsheen Village Frye Village Stories: the John Dove family
We're continuing Frye Village Stories with the homes of John Smith, Peter Smith, and John Dove.
In 1847, John Dove built a home at 276 North Main Street. It is the only one of the three Smith & Dove founders’ homes that remains today. The home stayed in the Dove family until it was sold to Ellen Ayer Wood and William Wood.
John Dove purchased the property in 1845, not far from the Smith, Dove, & Company mill site in Frye Village. Perched on top of a hill, the view from the house was of the winding Shawsheen River, farms, pastures, and the mill. There he and his wife Helen McLaggan Dove raised their six children: Isabelle, George W.W., Ellen Christina, Marcy, Laura, and Clara.
ACHC #1977.217.55, view of 276 North Main Street (now Arden) from the street, looking north
Dove’s grand Gothic Revival house was likely designed by Boston architect Theodore Voelkers, who designed other buildings in Andover. The mansion was built by Jacob Chickering, a well-known local builder and carpenter.
Dove continued to enlarge his estate and land holdings, purchasing meadows and other land. Over the years, Dove expanded the house and barns. To support his love of gardening, next to the greenhouses, he had a gardener’s cottage built and hired a resident gardener. Dove had a windmill moved to the Shawsheen River and used it to pump water from the river up the hill to their home and gardens.
ACHC #1911.0118.1, John Dove (right) with his business partners Peter and John Smith
Dove was by all accounts a quiet man. In a remembrance published along with his obituary in November 1876, he was described this way, “In one sense, Mr. Dove has not been a conspicuous man. His life was a quiet one. He loved not publicity. He was not ambitious that his name should be often in the mouths of his fellow-men.” His cheerful nature “came from a never exhausted spring of kindliness.” Rarely were his words quoted in the local newspapers.
John Dove was a generous man, the story is told that at least twice he gave away this coat to a needy man. He and his partners funded a school in their hometown of Bechin, Scotland. He was a founder of the Free Christian Church, after leaving West Parish Church over the issue of slavery. Dove supported local and state temperance and missionary societies, “and to those societies which furnish...education to the Freedmen of the South.”
The three partners donated funds to create Memorial Hall Library. Dove gave generously to Andover Theological Seminary and the Chicago Theological Seminary. So deep was his commitment to education that the Town of Andover named the John Dove School for him in 1894.
ACHC #1992.1365.1, John Dove School
ACHC #1987.598.491, John Dove School
ACHC #1987.598.1317, John Dove School
ACHC #1987598.1314, John Dove School
John Dove had a keen scientific mind. He was a taxidermist and worked with birds and animals. He conducted his own experiments with electricity with a machine that he built himself. He owned a “galvnanic” battery, microscope, and other scientific instruments.
He was interested in water power and was fascinated by geology. He kept a collection of minerals and had a “striated boulder” moved to his yard. In the last week of his life, November 1876, John Dove was reported to have “detailed at great length to his children a method by which he thought brass might be hardened.”
Coming up, Smith & Dove founder Peter Smith's home. And we’ll share the story of Dove and Smith families’ ardent support of the abolitionism and anti-slavery movements before moving on to other Frye Village Stories.