General Jonathan Moulton House 212 Lafayette Rd Hampton, NH

The famed Gen. Jonathan Moulton House. A true historical & architectural masterpiece, a cultural & structural icon. One of the last, preserved, privately owned pre-revolutionary war Mansions left in New England. This 2-story double house, constructed in 1769 features a hip roof & two end chimneys, a 5-bay façade, elaborate window caps, quoins, pilasters & pediments. A stunning & outwardly substantial exterior balanced equally to its beautiful & functional interior. Built w/the finest materials & enhanced w/the best period detailing & architecture of its time. Features; 12 fireplaces, 12/12 windows, gunite saltwater pool, English Garden, irrigation, 4 bay garage, pine & hardwood floors, raised paneled walls, extensive moldings, high ceilings, grand central staircase, period shutters, window seats, fluted pilasters & decorative spandrels. The comforts of old & new are blended seamlessly. A newer custom kitchen is a pleasure. Updated baths offer modern appeal. This 14 room, 6-bed, 3-bath home provides ample space. The home was relocated to its current spot in 1922. The basement is full & contains newer systems. This historical gem is sited on almost 3 ac. of landscaped, park-like grounds. Mature, majestic native trees abound. 

GENERAL JONATHAN MOULTON WAS A veteran of various colonial wars, including the Revolutionary War, and a very wealthy man in the seacoast town of Hampton. He’s also considered New Hampshire’ Faust as apparently, according to local legend, he sold his soul to the devil. The price? The devil would be required to fill up his boots with gold once a month.

Then Moulton started to get greedier. To trick the prince of darkness, he cut out the bottoms of his boots and fixed them to a hole in the floor of his house. In order for the devil to fulfill the terms of the bargain, he had to fill up the entire cellar with gold in order to fill up the boots. As we all know, Satan really gets in a twist after being tricked, so he burned down Moulton’s house.

All silly stories aside, General Moulton was a historical figure, and he was rich and influential (the nearby town of Moultonborough was named for him). In addition, his house actually did burn down in the mid-1770s. Moulton rebuilt his house, and it still stands to this day as a private residence.

 

Moulton died in 1787, but his burial location is unknown. However, locals have placed a cenotaph to him in Pine Grove Cemetery on Winnacunnet Road, near his house. The cenotaph is easy to find, as Pine Grove is small. It’s located to the far left of the entrance and is often decorated with an American Flag to honor Moulton’s service in the colonial army.

Adapted with Permission from The New England Grimpendium by J.W. Ocker

   

Hampton is a very strange, very haunted town, a place where fact and fiction tangle together like lobster traps in a hurricane. And judging from the content of the locally-produced literary efforts on file at the Historical Society, the people like it that way.

This fact v. fiction conundrum is no more evident than in the case of Mammon-worshiper General Jonathan Moulton (1726-1787) and his haunted mansion house. Nearly every writer who takes on the subject notices it, promises to do something about it, but sooner or later falls under the spell of the legend. That the famous house still exists, architecturally and historically significant as the only high-style Georgian in town, makes the stories about Moulton all the more intriguing.

 

The Yankee Faust

The owner of the house was a study in contradictions. A self-made man of humble beginnings, Moulton became a wealthy merchant, land speculator, and public figure. He was a noted Indian fighter and Revolutionary War figure, awarded the rank of brigadier general in the state militia. Through his political connections he obtained large tracts of land near Lake Winnipesaukee, which he named Moultonborough and New Hampton. By all accounts, Moulton was a hospitable, well-mannered gentleman, but it was said that he “uniformly and sedulously flattered the vices and follies of mankind,” and his name became a byword for deceitful dealing and financial tyranny. Through fraud and trickery he “reduced many families from affluence to beggary,” and to win in courts of law he corrupted judges, bribed jurors, and suborned witnesses. Despite his wrongdoing, he was (and is) a respected, albeit sometimes overlooked, figure in Hampton. Moulton’s egregious dealings provided the raw material for the fable of the Yankee Faust, in which he learns the consequences of greed when he sells his soul to the Devil for a bootful of gold coins. He employs the largest boot he can find, and when that doesn’t satisfy his lust for money, he cuts the sole from the boot to provide an endless flow of coins. When the Devil discovers that he has been cheated, he burns down Moulton’s house. Over the years Moulton lost a total of ten buildings to fire- six barns, two stores, a stable, and the house- besides one warehouse seriously singed by lightning. It seems that Old Nick didn’t give up his grudges so easily.

 

The ghost wife

In 1769, undeterred by this satanic comeuppance, Moulton built his second mansion to replace the one that burned. It was in this house that his wife Abigail succumbed to smallpox. In John Greenleaf Whittier’s supernatural tale “The New Wife and the Old,” greedy old Moulton gives the dead wife’s rings and bracelets to his new wife, provoking Abigail’s unhappy ghost to rise up and reclaim her baubles.

The haunted house

Back in ’62, before all the trouble started, Moulton bought the old Tuck tavern house from bankrupt innkeeper Gershom Griffith to use as his store. The tavern was situated on a triangular plot of land between the country road (Lafayette Road), Drakeside Road, and the road we now know as Park Avenue. It was here that he built fancy mansion number one, “contiguous with two stores.” After the house and the stores burned, the second house- the one that stands today- was built close by. After Moulton’s death, and the delivery of his soul to Hell, the house became haunted by his own unhappy ghost. It was said that Portsmouth lawyer Oliver Whipple, who bought the mansion from Moulton’s estate, had to fetch a minister to exorcise the restless spirit and plank it up in the cellar.

In 1802 Whipple sold the mansion to James Leavitt, for whom it was home, tavern, post office, and boarding house for Hampton Academy students.

“There was one walled off part of the cellar into which we dared not go at night,” Susan, one of Leavitt’s daughters, had said. “It had something to do with General Moulton’s death. When we were seated by the fire, telling stories of ghosts and witches, we heard footfalls on the stairs, the rustle of silk dresses, and doors slamming when there was no wind.”

No one knows why, but Leavitt moved the house to a new foundation some hundred yards or so to the west side of the country road. The house had escaped the haunted cellar, but the otherworldly mystique remained, inspiring Whittier in 1843 to pen the ghostly tale of Mrs. Moulton’s disappearing jewelry.

Also in 1843, carpenter Jabez Towle bought the mansion from Leavitt’s estate. He continued to keep the boarding house. By 1870 his widow Elizabeth had taken in her divorced daughter Elizabeth Towle Mace and her three children, and was renting part of the house to a sea captain and his family.

Widow Towle died in 1873, leaving the house to her children. Mrs. Mace eventually became the sole owner, but could not afford the upkeep. The mansion fell into disrepair. It was in this era that it became known as “The Haunted House,” and would remain so for the next half century.

Moulton house, c. 1900 watercolor by Caroline Cutler. Hampton Historical Society.

HISTORIC HAUNTED HAMPTON

Old legends never die, they just improve real estate values. This 19th century home has long been the focus of ghostly rumors thanks to the witty pen of poet JG Whittier. HIs ballads helped ensure an endless fascination with the life of wealthy Gen. Moulton. Following are some photos from an early Seacoast tourist brochure, but the house is not open to the public.

ATTENTION ALL WIDOWERS: Before marrying your second wife, make sure your first is not hiding under the bed. General Jonathan Moulton learned that lesson the hard way. Pretty spooky stuff. Sure, it's just a legend. But the people of Hampton have long had their fun with General Moulton, whom they said, should never have made a deal with the devil.

Although poet Whittier never mentions General Jonathan Moulton by name, he is clearly at the center of this ghostly poem. The wealthy Revolutionary leader was at the center of many Hampton, NH legends. Whittier heard the story as a boy in one of his many visits to Hampton from his home in Haverhill, MA nearby. During Whittier’s era, the old Moulton Mansion in Hampton was called "the haunted house" and was not restored until after after the poet died. Today the home with the ghostly bedroom is privately owned.

Locals, jealous of Moulton’s wealth and angered by his officious manner seem to have held a grudge. Legend says that Moulton offended public taste by marrying Sarah Emery, 36, too soon after the death of his first wife Abigail, who died of smallpox leaving 10 living children. Moulton reportedly presented Sarah with his dead wife’s jewelry, leading to the story of her ghostly return on their wedding night. Whittier implies that Moulton, then 50, was older still and that Sarah was a young maid. No authentication of the ghostly story exists, and Sarah went on to bear four children before the wealthy general died in 1787. – JDR

 

THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD
By John Greenleaf Whittier

Dark the halls, and cold the feast,
Gone the bridesmaids, gone the priest.
All is over, all is done,
Twain of yesterday are one!
Blooming girl and manhood gray,
Autumn in the arms of May

Hushed within and hushed without,
Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout:
Dies the bonfire on the hill;
All is dark and all is still,
Save the starlight, save the breeze
Moaning through the graveyard trees;
And the great sea-waves below,
Pulse of the midnight beating slow.

From the brief dream of a bride
She hath wakened, at his side.
With half-uttered shriek and start-
Feels she not his beating heart?
And the pressure of his arm,
And his breathing near and warm?

Lightly from the bridal bed
Springs that fair disheveled head,
And a feeling, new, intense,
Half of shame, half innocence,
Maiden fear and wonder speaks
Through her lips and changing cheeks.

From the oaken mantel glowing,
Faintest light the lamp is throwing
On the mirror's antique mould,
High-backed chair, and wainscot old,
And, through faded curtains stealing,
His dark sleeping face revealing.

Listless lies the strong man there,
Silver-streaked his careless hair;
Lips of love have left no trace
On that hard and haughty face;
And that forehead's knitted thought
Love's soft hand hath not unwrought.

"Yet," she sighs, "he loves me well,
More than these calm lips will tell.
Stooping to my lowly state,
He hath made me rich and great,
And I bless him, though he be
Hard and stern to all save me!"

While she speaketh, falls the light
O'er her fingers small and white;
Gold and gem, and costly ring
Back the timid lustre fling,-
Love's selectest gifts, and rare,
His proud hand had fastened there.

Gratefully she marks the glow
From those tapering lines of snow;
Fondly o'er the sleeper bending,
His black hair with golden blending,
In her soft and light caress,
Cheek and lip together press.

Ha !-that start of horror ! why
That wild stare and wilder cry,
Full of terror, full of pain ?
Is there madness in her brain ?
Hark ! that gasping, hoarse and low,
"Spare me,-spare me,-let me go !"

God have mercy !-icy cold
Spectral hands her own enfold,
Drawing silently from them
Love's fiar gifts of gold and gem.
"Waken ! save me !" still as death
At her side he slumbereth.

Ring and bracelet all are gone,
And that ice-cold hand withdrawn;
But she hears a murmur low,
Full of sweetness, full of woe,
Half a sigh and half a moan :
"Fear not ! give the dead her own !"

Ah !-the dead wife's voice she knows !
That cold hand whose pressure froze,
Once in warmest life had borne
Gem and band her own hath worn.
"Wake thee ! wake thee !" Lo, his eyes
Open with a dull surprise.

In his arms the strong man folds her,
Closer to his breast he holds her;
Trembling limbs his own are meeting,
And he feels her heart's quick beating :
"Nay, my dearest, why this fear?"
"Hush !" she saith, "the dead is here !"

"Nay, a dream,- an idle dream."
But before the lamp's pale gleam
Tremblingly her hand she raises.
There no more the diamond blazes,
Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,-
"Ah !" she sighs, "her hand was cold !"

Broken words of cheer he saith,
But his dark lip quivereth,
And as o'er the past he thinketh,
From his young wife's arms he shrinketh;
Can those soft arms round him lie,
Underneath his dead wife's eye?

She her fair young head can rest
Soothed and childlike on his breast,
And in trustful innocence
Draw new strength and courage thence;
He, the proud man, feels within
But the cowardice of sin!

She can murmur in her thought
Simple prayers her mother taught,
And His blessed angels call,
Whose great love is over all ;
He, alone, in prayerless pride,
Meets the dark Past at her side!

One, who living shrank with dread
From his look, or word, or tread,
Unto whom here early grave
Was as freedom to the slave,
Moves him at this midnight hour,
With the dead's unconscious power!

Ah, the dead, the unforgot!
From their solemn homes of thought,
Where the cypress shadows blend
Darkly over foe and friend,
Or in love or sad rebuke,
Back upon the living look.

And the tenderest ones and weakest,
Who their wrongs have borne the meekest,
Lifting from those dark, still places,
Sweet and sad-remembered faces,
O'er the guilty hearts behind
An unwitting triumph find.

Privately owned since the turn of the 20th century, this 1770s house was among the most grand in Revolutionary Era Hampton, NH. Self-made, a wealthy merchant, mill owner and land speculator, Moulton was granted rights to over 80,000 acres in the NH Lakes Region that was then frontier. The town of Moultonborough bears his name today. Despite his success as a businessman, soldier and father of 15 children, Moulton is best known for the legends and ghost stories that surround his name. This and the two following pictures were taken in the 1930s as part of a brochure promoting tourism in Seacoast, New Hampshire.

According to legend, Gen. Moulton sold his soul to the devil who, in return, filled his boots with gold each month as they hung in the fireplace. When Moulton tricked the devil by cutting out the soles of his boots to receive more gold, Satan burned his mansion to the ground in 1769. This is the second Moulton mansion built nearby, but owners claim at least portions of the original fireplace survived and were used to rebuild this house the following year. The legend seems to express discontent among some locals who apparently resented his extreme wealth in the old puritan town of Hampton. Moulton was descended from the original 1638-era settlers.

Before it was restored around 1900, Hampton, NH residents knew the Moulton home as "The Haunted House." After Moulton's death in 1787, slaves in the house reported seeing ghosts. The Whipple family, then owners, actually performed an exorcism that was a popular local event. Before its renovation the house was at one time occupied by up to 40 Italian railroad workers. Legend says the railroad tracks that passed the house cover the unmarked graves of Jonathan Moulton and his first wife Abigail, although the graves have never been found.

Moulton house sketch by Cornelia Schoolcraft, 1938. Hampton Historical Society.