Our ancestors acquired water quite simply. A trip down to the river or pond with a wooden bucket was sufficient to provide the household with water for the evening. As an essential need to live, the communities were located near water supplies when they were originally incorporated. Hence, we find our state capitol located along the Merrimack River here in Concord.
The river provided the needed water as well as a means for transportation and nourishment, with an abundant supply of salmon during the colonial period. Processed and dried, it was a good source when coupled with local game and produce raised on the farms.
Our community adapted the water supply as the growing population demanded. The streams ran somewhat wild about the community with one common flow of water down the side of our present-day Washington Street. The water was natural and existing and flowed across North Main Street into the Merrimack River back in the 1800s and people used the flowing water in their households as needed. As travelers frequented the roads more often, the Washington Street water was routed into a pipe and buried below the surface of the road. It exists to this day below the streets we walk.
There was another early source of water in the north end of Concord in the form of a natural spring, hence the name Spring Street. As fires became more of a concern, the need to build cisterns to store water for the horse drawn fire department pumpers occurred multiple times around Concord. We pass over those long-abandoned cisterns to this day.
As the local sources faced drought, contamination and competition, our founders decided it was important to find a source of water that would be bountiful, clean and ever-flowing. In the 1850s, an aqueduct association formed in our community. Every effort was made to meet the increasing demand for clean water. In December 1859, the Concord City Council reported the population was supplied in somewhat of a fragmented way. Some people in Concord were drinking water from wells and, in another section, the citizens were drinking water supplied by the aqueduct companies.
There were two aqueduct companies operating in Concord during the mid-1800s: the Torrent Aqueduct Company and another system owned by Nathaniel White. These two aqueduct companies provided water to about 600 families in Concord along with some businesses and public buildings. In 1870, the city made the decision to address the water supply in the most compact portion because it was both unsanitary and insufficient to meet the demands. City council appointed a 17-member committee to secure a supply of clean water that would be available to all the citizens for many years.
The source that the committee agreed upon was Long Pond, and the city established the Concord Water Works to manage the water supply in 1872. City council intended to completely manage the entire water supply and purchased both the Torrent Aqueduct Association and the water rights of White for $20,000.
In 1963, White paid another visit to Concord and rekindled some old history. Excavation was proceeding for a natural gas line to supply the new Bishop Brady High School. As the earth was turned, the construction foreman raised his hand to halt the excavation. Pieces of unrecorded and unknown pipe were being excavated alongside Auburn Street and there was concern that lines previously existing and still in service were being disrupted.
The city engineer was called in to investigate and Auburn Street residents were consulted. The 1963 water main was on the opposite side of the street and the lines that were discovered were not known to exist. A local historian, inquisitive and intrigued by the uncovered pipes, was consulted. He did some digging of his own and found the answer to the mysterious pipe.
The pipe ran for 500 feet and was three-inch cast iron. Certainly, very old and not recorded. The historian explained the pipes were laid in 1863 by the Nathaniel White Aqueduct Company and ran from a reservoir on Little Pond Road to the residents of the city.
Long buried and forgotten, the century-old cast iron pipes alongside Auburn Street once again saw the light of day. And the long silent name Nathaniel White was spoken many times that day, much like it was when he walked the streets of Concord long ago.