The and Now: Judge Eastman’s homestead, down by the riverside

Joel Eastman’s house remains virtually unchanged since it was built, upwards of two centuries ago. In 1860, publishers of a detailed map of Carroll County found his home the only one in Conway worthy of an illustration, and the primitive engraving shown here appeared on the upper right-hand corner of their wall map. During Eastman’s lifetime, his farm dominated one of Conway’s three major intersections, but today the world leaves it largely alone.

Eastman first saw the light of day in 1798 in Salisbury, N.H., where his cousin Daniel Webster was also born. Like Webster, Eastman read law in his teens and later attended Dartmouth, graduating in 1824. Two years later, he migrated to Conway and married Ruth Odell, whose father gave them a substantial farm between the Saco River and Walker’s Pond. The house stood where the main road from Fryeburg and Conway Center forked toward either Conway Corner or North Conway. Eastman enjoyed farming so much that he neglected his legal career, but by the beginning of the Civil War he had accumulated the most valuable estate in town. He also engaged in politics, which availed him a probate-court judgeship in 1856, and he held the position until he retired from the law altogether, in 1868.