Then and Now: The commercial center and news hub of Sandwich Lower Corner

Arven Blanchard’s family brought him to Sandwich as a boy in the 1840s. As the youngest son, Arven remained with his aging parents even after he was married. On their farm he had been the one to do the butchering, and in the 1850s he set up shop in that capacity at Sandwich Lower Corner. With just over a half-million dollars in assessed valuation in 1854, Sandwich was a rich town for Carroll County — second only to Wolfeborough and well ahead of Conway. Arven prospered as a butcher, and he did nothing to deplete his finances when he married the only daughter of a neighboring landowner.

During and immediately after the Civil War, Arven opened a grocery store, which was then a bold venture for a relatively rural village, and he added dry goods to increase his patronage. Sandwich Lower Corner sat conveniently distant from Moultonborough Corner and from Center Sandwich, where his cousin operated a general store. That gave him the trade of those who wanted to save two miles of travel, and he gained another tremendous advantage when he snared the position of postmaster in 1872.