Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), the seventh of nine children, spent a happy childhood in attractive surroundings of gardens and trees. The stately home has spacious rooms with vividly painted walls and exquisite stenciling. The house has a grand ballroom and a parlor decorated with imported French wallpaper-symbols of the elegance of the age.

The Heritage Museum is Hillsborough's refurbished Fire House. 2012 will bring Quilts, Samplers, Furniture & Textiles of New Hampshire and 150 Years of the Lower Village Chapel. Our ongoing displays include the original Hillsborough Grange Hall Theater Curtains and the MPM Photo Collection

A treasure trove of searchable historic images. The Manahan-Phelps-McCulloch Collection is a collection of more than 250,000 images from a photographic studio in continuous operation in Hillsborough from the early 1860's. The studio originally opened under the ownership of Solon Newman, and has changed ownership many times over the years. Starting in 1899, William H. Manahan Jr. ran the studio for 54 years until Cyrus Phelps took over in 1953. In 2002, Donald McCulloch and Catherine Phelps McCulloch, the final proprietors, donated the collection to the Hillsborough Historical Society. The society has been preserving and documenting the collection ever since.

An action packed 2 day, 4 location event in Scenic & Historic Hillsborough, NH Did Ben Franklin fly that kite? ASK HIM! Try your hand at panning for real gold, help throw a pot on the potter's wheel or weave an authentic Native American ash basket, be a student in a real 1800’s schoolhouse, cast your own pewter spoon, press some cider and more... Immerse yourself while the cannons roar, a Cavalry charges down a field, you watch a battle in the woods, and falcons fly for prey. Meet Benjamin Franklin, our guest from Philadelphia. These are just some of the exciting and interesting things to do on 4 action-packed sites all for one modest ticket price over two exciting days. Come experience what living in America was like 100-200 years ago at the 4th Annual Living History Event! Come join us, you'll be glad you did.

Once home to more than a dozen stone arch masonry bridges, Hillsborough now has five of these gems, four of which are used everyday to support auto, bike and foot traffic. These bridges are registered as historic structures by the Historic American Building Survey, part of the National Park Service. Most recently they have been recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, the second in New Hampshire, after the Cog Railway. Stone arch bridges were a solution to the weakness of timber bridges and were especially suited for withstanding frequent flooding in the steeply sloping New Hampshire streams and rivers. Historical records reflect the repeated destruction and rebuilding of many of the earlier wooden bridges, leading townspeople to seek more rugged and enduring forms of construction. At the time, lime mortar did not have sufficient strength to withstand the arch stresses, often failed to harden in the interior arch walls, and did not set in water. By a more careful cutting and fitting of stones, it was possible to make stronger stonework than could be made with use of the conventional lime mortar of the period; hence the development of the technique of known as “dry masonry.”