Then & Now: The Russell Cottage: Century of summer trade

During the first three decades of their marriage, Willard and Sarah Russell dragged their many children all around the lower Merrimack River Valley in search of more prosperous surroundings. Growing up in Middleton, Mass., Willard had learned the shoemaking trade, and his sons all followed him into it.

As shoe factories began forcing skilled cobblers out of their shops, Willard opened a store in the textile town of Lawrence. He took in boarders for extra cash, but when the Panic of 1857 trickled down to the cotton mills, he moved his family to the village of Kearsarge. Bad debts may have driven him out of Lawrence, because his youngest son — who was still a minor — bought the family’s first Kearsarge property late in 1859.