The Witch of New Hampton – New Hampshire

Date:	10-14-2023
Location:	New Hampton, NH
Total Time:	1 hr
Parking:	5+ cars

Out last stop of the day was New Hampton to see if we could find the cellar hole and grave site of “Granny Hicks” AKA the Witch of New Hampton.

We made our way south from Ashland, NH where we had just explored the Devils Den in the Homestead Forest. We arrived at the New Hampton Village and followed the directions to the “Granny Hicks” cellar hole. We were starting to loose a little daylight at this point but from what we read this was a pretty quick stop.

The cellar hole was easy to find and not much of a hike to get to. In fact, it was only about 20 feet from where we parked. We took a few pictures and walked around the foundation.

The cellar hole is right off a tributary of the Pemigewasset River. From what I’ve read in the Haunted Hikes of New Hampshire book by Marianne O’Conner and some other online articles I found. It appears that “Granny Hicks” dug this cellar and built her cottage on top of it herself. I thought it was cool that this “witch” built something that has lasted 250 years. I guess people were built tougher back then.

From the look of the foundation the cottage was not very large but man it was built in a great location by the water and a short distance from the village.

From here we read the rest of the description and headed out toward the Cemetery in the New Hampton Village. When we arrived at the village, we saw a bunch of old gravestones on the side of a hill and we figured that this must be the spot.

Well, we were right and wrong with our assumption. These first graves we came upon had no sign of Granny but this was the right cemetery. We branched out into the rest of the cemetery to look for her grave.

This is not a small cemetery but not huge either. After a while of searching, we finally found the grave. It was in a family plot along with her son and other family members.

Granny sounded like an interesting character. The most interesting thing about Granny was how people started to refer to her as a witch. Legend has it, one night 5 masked young men came to her cottage and destroyed it trying to rid their town of her. She begged them to stop but they burned it to the ground. While they destroyed the house she stood on a stump and called out each of their names and told them how they would die. And apparently, they all came true.

The Granny Hicks was born Esther Rollins in the mid 1700’s. She married John Prescott in 1774 and had one child, named John. Esther’s husband was called to war in 1775 and was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. Esther then remarried in 1776 to a John Hyde from Lee. I guess she had a thing for John’s. There is a great article from the Weirs Times that talks more about the family linage.

This is important because on her gravestone we were wondering about her name. Her stone is marked as Esther P. Wife of John Hyde. Next to her stone was John Prescott. But that John died in 1826. So we knew it was not her husband and that It was her son next to him is his wife.