The first hotel on this lot opened around the year 1818 and was replaced by the larger Farmers' Hotel around 1830. In 1840, Farmers' Hotel was owned by the partnership of Josiah Hadley and Eben Clark. The pair were also the proprietors of the first three-story retail store in town, which was located opposite their hotel on the northwest corner of Pleasant and Porter Streets.
Hadley served in the army, rose to the rank of brigadier general in 1844, and commanded troops at Fort Constitution in Newcastle during the Civil War. He later served as a state representative in Concord and as a proprietor of the Portsmouth Athenaeum.
By 1902, when C. S. Gurney published Portsmouth . . . Historic and Picturesque, all that remained of the old Farmers’ Hotel was the c.1857 ambrotype he published (below) and a grassy lot to the right of the Custom House where the building once stood.
Today, a 1927 addition to the original granite U.S. Custom House is located where the old Farmers' Hotel used to stand. The building is currently occupied by the 5 Thai Bistro.
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