Our Town: Bowled Over by Bow

In the winter, motorists passing the community center on Logging Hill Road in Bow spot families, bundled up in bulky jackets, colorful mittens and wool hats, whizzing down the dedicated town sledding hill.    

This same scene transforms in summer months when weekly concerts attract upward of 200 community members — music lovers of all ages who post up in lawn chairs around the town’s iconic octagonal gazebo at the bottom of the field for an evening of family entertainment.

Community involvement, it seems, isn’t hard to come by in Bow. 

Library Director Kaitlyn Camidge stands outside the Baker Free Library between the newly donated lion statues, which replaced original cast lions Leona and Leo. Leona is displayed at the town’s municipal building.

According to longtime resident Gerry Carrier, this is the appeal of living in this bedroom community south of Concord. Carrier is a vital member of the Bow Rotary Club, one of the town’s many notable volunteer-based organizations, having served as the club’s president on two occasions. 

“Many people who join Rotary want to give back to the community,” said Carrier, who moved to town with his wife and two children in 1977. “They’ve been here for a while, their kids have grown up and they get support from organizations in the town. They want to stay here, and they want to give back a little bit.”

With a population nearing just 8,500, Bow is a small town in the Merrimack Valley, its landscape characterized by rolling hills, bubbling brooks, woodland trails and pastoral barns. Many residents travel to nearby Concord for shopping and other services, but value the peaceful living away from the hubbub in addition to the tight-knit community feel.    

An important gathering place, the Baker Free Library has played a central role in the town’s cultural life for more than a century. 

“I always describe it as the kitchen,” said Kaitlyn Camidge during a tour of the library one bright summer day. Camidge has served as the library’s director since 2024. “Everybody pops in because they need something. It’s where people end up, and they just end up standing around and talking and catching up.”

Aside from offering the usual print resources, digital media and library services, Baker Free hosts a variety of programming, from story time and summer reading programs for young children to craft clubs and board game nights for adults. According to the town’s annual report, the library hosted nearly 200 programs with more than 4,300 participants in 2024. 

“You see kids when they’re first being introduced to the social world, and then we watch them grow up,” Camidge said as she pointed to an exhibit promoting works of art by local preschool-age children, bright watercolor scenes decorating the walls of a reading room. “And then we have our retired communities. You see everybody, and I just think that’s beautiful.” 

The Baker Free Library sits on South Street in the Bow Mills village area, not far from where I-93 and I-89 converge. Not long after the town was incorporated in 1727, settlers harnessed the power of the Merrimack and Turkey rivers and opened several mill sites in that location, hence the name Bow Mills. These sites have long since been replaced by modern conveniences — a gas station, a hotel and a popular Chinese food restaurant, Chen Yang Li — but the elegant, neoclassical design of the library stands as a relic of the town’s past.

The Baker Free Library features works by local artists. This summer, the library exhibited scenes painted by 3- and 4-year-old community members.

“I really think the library is wonderful,” said Tom Ives, who takes his grandson to Baker Free every Wednesday for the craft program. “I always thought that if you can have a vibrant library and a place for people to congregate, it makes a big difference.” Tom, who belongs to both the Rotary Club and the Bow Men’s Club, served as a library trustee for 16 years. 

Longtime residents of Bow, Tom and his older brother Bob Ives operate local businesses, New Hampshire Bindery and Bow Plumbing and Heating, respectively, both originally owned and operated by their late father, Wilfred. Their mother, Connie Ives, first moved to Bow in 1935 at the age of 3. 

From Connie’s current residence in Loudon, a welcoming log cabin off the main road, the three share stories of their family’s ties to the town. 

“We’re community-minded,” Bob said. “We support the SPCA, all the athletic teams in town. We open and close all the baseball fields for Bow and Concord for free. It’s a community thing to me.” 

“We were brought up like that,” added Tom. “If you’re able to give back, you’re not obligated to do it, but you should do it. My dad used to do all kinds of little things.” 

At one point, Wilfred purchased the one-room school house in the historic town center. “He didn’t want to see it torn down so he bought it,” Connie said. “He wanted to keep it there because his mother went to school there.” (The school house is now owned by the town of Bow.)

Connie, Tom and Bob Ives pose for a family portrait at their mother’s current residence in Loudon. Tom and Bob remain residents of Bow.

The conversation naturally turns to memories of simpler times: Connie swimming in nearby brooks with her mother and sister, and Tom and Bob bombing down empty dirt roads on single-speed bicycles with their friends. 

“There were no cars!” said Bob. “They go by in the morning to work and they’d come back by at 5 in the evening.” 

The construction of the highways changed all of that, and with the increase in commuter and tourist traffic alike, many GPS systems reroute motorists across backroads, including Bow Bog Road in Bow, where the Ives family grew up, making it more difficult for residents to move swiftly through town. 

Similarly, the noise of daily traffic on route 3-A is hard to ignore from the home of David and Eva Lindquist. “This house was here before the road,” David explained. “I would say sometime when the vehicles came along, they wanted to straighten out the road, and they moved the road over here.” 

Lindquist’s grandfather moved to Bow from Manchester in 1902 as a 2-year-old. The family owned a farm on Valley Road — where I-89 ends now — growing and harvesting strawberries. “He was known as the strawberry king,” David said.

This farmhouse, the home of David and Eva Lindquist, was built in 1783.

When the highways were built in the mid-’50s, David’s family was forced to move, so they purchased their current residence in 1959. The white farmhouse they bought — built in 1783 — sat on a 100-acre lot, known as a King’s grant, a contract of sorts that transferred ownership from the Crown to private citizens. Today, 44 acres of the original lot remain, spanning both sides of 3A.

David has five siblings, two still living in close proximity. His sister’s house sits kitty-cornered to David’s, his brother lives across the street and his son lives down the road in a house they built when David got out of the service in 1977, all on the original 100 acres. His daughter also lives a few miles down the road.

David didn’t have to travel far from home to find the love of his life, either. “We met in the sixth grade,” David shared when asked about his 57-year marriage to Eva. 

“I usually just walked up myself when I came up to visit for the day,” Eva said. “My mother was strict, so I had to be home and have supper ready back in those days.” 

David and Eva met back in the 1960s, the same decade that Merrimack Station, the coal-fired electric plant, was built. Moving to Bow was appealing at this time as Public Service, now known as Eversource, paid a significant percentage of the tax base. For this reason, housing developments inevitably popped up, and eventually the town
was in need of a high school, which opened in 1997.

State Rep. Eleana Colby stands in front of the Bow Municipal Building on Grandview Road.

State Rep. Eleana Colby moved to Bow in 2003 for the school system, which has consistently ranked as one of the best public institutions in the state. “I did not have children at the time, but I knew it was a place that I wanted to raise them.” 

“The other thing is, what is the feedback?” she continued. “Are people’s children treated as individuals? Are people’s children respected? Is there opportunity for them to grow? What kind of programs are available? I found that all here.” 

Colby’s career serving her community began by coaching, volunteering for a variety of events, and serving on the PTO. 

“You meet and you learn more about the needs of the community,” she said. “The more awareness you have, those needs get bigger, and so I eventually ran for board selectman.”

Colby said that the most rewarding experience during her time serving as selectman was assisting in the effort to erect flag poles at the gazebo, a way to permanently honor the military servicemen and women of the community. 

“It’s something that can unify a community, no matter what is going on. We can all kind of be grounded and reminded. There are still those pieces that we can collectively get behind.”

Except for college and his time serving in the military, Eric Anderson has lived in Bow his entire life. In fact, he lives in the same house both his parents and grandparents lived in and his family history dates back
five generations. 

The current chair of the Bow Heritage Commission, Anderson knows better than most how much the town has changed. With old photographs recently uncovered, the commission is working to document these changes in a project titled, “Then and Now,” pairing photos of older locations with photos taken at those same locales today. 

In one photo, a woman poses at the Noyes Ferry Crossing of the Merrimack River, located near the former intersection of River Road with Johnson Road. This crossing no longer exists. Another black-and-white photo depicts the Bow Brick Yard of the later 1800s and early 1900s, where today one will find a lot of parked cars owned by the Grappone Automotive Group. One captures the location of the Bow Volunteer Fire Department in 1945, the volunteers posing stoically, some sporting woolen flat caps of the era, on South Street where the highway overpass crosses today.

This one-room schoolhouse, built in 1894, is located in the Historic Bow Center, along with the 1847 Bow Town Hall and the 1832 Bow Baptist Church.

In the lower level of the town’s municipal building, Anderson points to photographs and artifacts on display, noting their significance and source. Two antique saws — one for ripping posts and beams and another for cutting trees — were recently donated by resident John Urdi. One of the original cast lions from the Baker Free Library, worn and crumbling, sits on a plinth. Anderson explains that they were recently replaced with new statues, another donation from the community. 

Aside from his extensive knowledge of the town’s history, Anderson’s impressive resume speaks to his indispensable role in the community. He served as town selectman for 30 years, a library trustee for three terms, and state legislator for 14 years, among other roles. 

“I’ll tell you my favorite thing,” he said. “It’s the opportunity to volunteer, to be involved. I’m not sure what I would do if I weren’t volunteering. Cutting grass, I guess.”