Town of Dummer NH

Dummer is a town in Coos County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 304 at the 2010 census. Dummer is home to the Pontook Reservoir, popular with kayakers and birdwatchers. The town was granted on March 8, 1773 by Governor John Wentworth to a group of wealthy Portsmouth investors, including his father, Mark Hunking Wentworth, Nathaniel Haven and others. He named it after Massachusetts William Dummer, who successfully defended the eastern English provinces from the French and Indians in Dummer’s War. But the town remained unsettled until 1812, when William Leighton arrived from Farmington with his family. Dummer was incorporated by the General Court on December 19, 1848. Mountainous terrain and sterility of the soil prevented cultivation. But the region had forests, and the Upper Ammonoosuc River provided water power for mills. There were two sawmills operating by 1859, with a considerable trade in timber. Log drives on the Androscoggin River supplied the papermills downstream in Berlin. Pontook Dam, which created Pontook Reservoir, was reconstructed in the mid-1980s to generate hydroelectric power.