Old Kelley Tavern:
Home to Asian Trade

From December of 1804 to December 22, 1840 the house served as the town's first post

office, with Col. Kelley serving as New Hampton's first postmaster until his death in 1825. The mail was received and distributed from his house on Sinclair Hill Road, a section of the first main road across town and on the stage route between Ashland and Sanbornton. The post office was moved to Smith's village, the center of today's New Hampton, in 1840 (see The Postal History of New Hampshire, Smith, Chester, Kay, John L.)

Old Kelley Tavern, c. 1860

After Colonel Kelley's death in 1825, his homestead passed into other hands and can be found on old maps identified as belonging to Magoon and later to Wallace. It is currently owned by Ron and Lyn O'Callaghan who purchased it from Richard and Gladys Sanderson.

Old Kelley Tavern today. The long pieces of granite
topping the retaining wall are fence posts

That the house was a tavern has been asserted only by tradition, there being no documentary evidence available because the town records burned many years ago. Informal digging in an area roughly 200 square feet in the back and along one side of the house revealed much evidence of tavern activity in the form of thousands of artifacts. We have discovered a tax receipt signed by William B. Kelley and a few letters which passed through the house in it's post office incarnation that bear the same handwriting as on the tax receipt.

Detail of an engraving depicting an incident of the battle of Phillippi in which Benjamin F. Kelley distinguished himself.

Above: A tax receipt bearing William B. Kelley's name. We believe that a secretary signed it, probably one of his daughters.

Right: Two letters that passed through Old Kelley Tavern during its incarnation as a post office. Both are dated after William B. Kelley's death, ( however the postmaster's manuscript postmark in the upper left corners of the envelopes is in strikingly similar handwriting to that on the tax receipt)

Partially reconstructed ovoid jug dug by the side of the house is typical, commercial tavern ware. The impressed mark "Charlestown" is near the neck. This probably indicates Charlestown, Massachusetts, which was known for its manufacture of stoneware pottery.

Partially reconstructed stoneware bean pot, dug at the rear of the house.

A 1798 Liberty large cent found with the help of a metal detector in the cellar of Old Kelley Tavern. A letter "K" has been punched into the coin. This was probably a security measure. However, some taverns circulated marked money, allowing some discount on goods and services if purchased with coins bearing their mark. We apologize for the blurred image.

Ron O'Callaghan excavating the rear of Old Kelley Tavern

In the Fall of 1990, the town removed a beaver dam from a pond across the road from Old Kelley Tavern. The resulting rush of water scoured a foot or so of earth away from the banks of a small brook revealing two sets of eight pilings on either side of the brook. They are pictured here. In the lower left corner of the picture are a few rocks of many strewn about the area that probably filled cribs, which were part of a bridge. All of this indicates to us that the original roadway may have been located forty feet east of the present road. That would line it up exactly with where we believe a large barn stood. It likely had doors at either end so that stage coaches from Ashland could be driven in the north end, serviced, horses changed, then driven out the south end and up the hill to Sanbornton.