Sometimes a simple idea can transform the lives of so many people. A little talent and a fair amount of determination can span decades.
There was a gentleman named Porter Blanchard living here in our town just over two hundred years ago. Porter had an idea and he was very skilled with both his thoughts and his hands. He possessed the hands of a craftsman and a talent to work with wood in particular. As a young man, Blanchard would manufacture cabinets for people in the greater Concord area. He established a very good following and his customers provided full time employment for the many people that worked in his shop.
Blanchard was born in 1788 in Amherst and began making cabinets in the year 1809 when he was just 21 years old. As the years passed and he became even further established here in Concord, he employed many people eventually bringing his two sons into the business. Both Charles and George Blanchard were also very skilled cabinet makers and spent their lives in the family business too.
Blanchard worked very hard in his early years making quality cabinets. As he spent time in the Concord homes of his day, he noticed people going about their daily chores within their homes and on their farms. Sometimes he would engage the people and soon found himself speaking to the woman of the house about the difficult tasks they faced. Certainly, one of the most difficult jobs for our ancestors was the churning of butter. This delicacy was easily produced on the local farms, but the task was labor intensive and involved hours of manual labor.
He kept thinking about this each time he built a new cabinet and soon found himself at his desk sketching with his quill on parchment. With a series of gears and iron fittings he could make this labor-intensive job of making butter a lot easier for the woman of the house. With a great deal of thought he designed and built a nontraditional churn where butter could be churned with less effort. Instead of a round wooden container with a broom handle top requiring constant motion, he built a square box with an opening to add ingredients and an iron crank to provide motion when turned, somewhat of a crank that was turned easily while providing the motion needed to churn butter.
The Blanchard Churns remained horizontal with square ends and four tapered legs. There was a removable domed cover with a conical metal spout in the center.
It was soon that he, his shop employees and his sons were kept busy building his butter churns fulltime. He stopped producing cabinets and dedicated his years to the production of the Blanchard Churns right here in Concord. Thousands and thousands of churns were constructed and shipped worldwide by Blanchard and his sons. As the years passed, he continued to listen to his customers and constantly modified his churns to attract new customers. He would upgrade a churn and assign a new model number each time. He was known for painting his square butter churns yellow and labeling them with a black number to designate the particular model. One of the last shops in Concord where the butter churns were produced was at the rear of the brick building at the Stickney Block near Main Street. Many churns were shipped from the Concord shop, producing churns in our little town from 1818 until the year 1888.
Porter Blanchard passed away at 83 years old, in 1871. He was said to be a caring man that provided employment for many at his churn factory in Concord.
In addition to his caring nature, he was a true patriot and very proud of his country. It was during the Civil War years that the young men in Concord enlisted in the New Hampshire Regiments where they soon found themselves on the field of battle. Blanchard and his family wanted to do something for the young men and woman that served their country during the Civil War. At an advanced age, he starting to produce military drums that were of superior quality. Blanchard and his sons saw many young soldiers depart for the war with bass and tenor drums, ebony drum sticks and fifes that he manufactured. As the young men marched into battle on the fields of glory during the Civil War it was the beat of the drums from Concord that they did hear. Courage from an old man down on Main Street that held his country in very high esteem.