Haverhill

While Not Filmed Here, Haverhill Plays Prominently in AMC’s ‘NOS4A2’

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With the recent excitement about the Hulu TV series “Castle Rock” filming in Haverhill, it is easy to forget Haverhill is already appearing on television in the AMC series “NOS4A2.”

In the original Joe Hill novel NOS4A2 (2013), Victoria McQueen discovers she has the gift of “finding” things presumed lost by crossing the condemned old covered bridge over the Merrimack River. As the novel starts, Vic McQueen leaves the family house while her parents are fighting about a lost bracelet. She crosses the derelict Shorter Way Bridge and suddenly finds herself in Hampton Beach. Somehow, she has been transported 15 miles beyond the bridge to the sub shop where the bracelet was lost. Vic will discover this gift may also be a curse.

Haverhill

Reflecting on My 40 Years in Radio and Local News

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I am all the way back holding a spoon in this photograph taken for a readers’ cookbook shortly after I left WHAV and joined the Haverhill Gazette. Sports reporter Fred Burnham appears at left, front. Who else do you recognize? By Tim Coco
WHAV President and General Manager

Somehow, I never thought I’d be old enough to personally reflect on events that happened 40 years ago. In 1978, I joined the staff of WHAV the first time and, looking back, I marvel at just how much hasn’t changed as well as so much that has.

Haverhill Heritage Series

Lost & Found – The WHAV Call Letters

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WHAV’s call letters were embedded in the floor when the Silver Hill transmitter site was dedicated in 1947. By David Goudsward
Special to WHAV News

You know WHAV as your local FM station at 97.9, but those letters on radio have meant many things to different people over nearly 100 years. In fact, the letters haven’t always been associated with Haverhill and haven’t always even been on land. Delaware’s First Radio Station

The call letters WHAV first graced the airwaves Aug. 14, 1922.

Haverhill

For Halloween: Haverhill’s Horror Movie Heritage

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Mabel Albertson, born in Haverhill, appeared on “Bewitched” as Phyllis Stephens, Samantha’s headache prone mother-in-law. By Dave Goudsward
Special to WHAV News

If you look me up on IMDB, you’ll see I have a handful of television credits. Not listed (and rightfully so), is my sole movie appearance back in 1994 as an extra in the stadium for Florida spring training scenes of “Major League II.” Filmed in Harrisburg, Penn.’s minor league stadium. Instead of looking for me, I suggest looking for the one lonely palm tree the crew brought. Every time they moved the camera angle, they had to move the palm tree first – because it was supposed to be Florida!

Haverhill Heritage Series

Haverhill’s Cursed Son: Jonathan Buck

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A mysterious leg is indelibly stained on the face of the monument to Colonel Jonathan Buck of Haverhill. (Photograph from historical postcard.)

By David Goudsward
Special to Wavelengths

The image is well known – the image of a leg indelibly stained on the face of the monument to Colonel Jonathan Buck—a Haverhillite rejected by his hometown, but who found success founding a town in Maine. As with every good ghost yarn, there are various incarnations of the story. Some say it was a visual reminder of the curse levied by a local witch burned alive by the pitiless judge and founder of Buckstown, Maine. Others state Colonel Buck had a mistress, who once her beauty faded, was tossed aside for a younger paramour.

Haverhill Heritage Series

How Haverhill Was Really Founded

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Part one of a series, “A Town Named Haverhill”
Editor’s Note: Families can be complicated. The true story of the founding of Haverhill, Mass., is a testament to this fact with the founding minister’s father and brother-in-law being shown to be real estate schemers and his brother being a burglar expelled from Harvard. Much of the story of Haverhill’s founding has been steeped in fanciful folklore, but David Goudsward reveals the truth is much more colorful. The key date in the founding of Haverhill is 1639, a year before the first 12 settlers arrived at the banks of the Merrimack River near today’s Mill Street. The year 1639 is when John Ward arrived in Ipswich, joining his father, the Rev. Nathaniel Ward.

Haverhill Heritage Series

Whittier and the Rude Birthday Guest

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There’s always one. That party guest who—because of the free flow of liquor, poor upbringing or owing to some kind of personality defect—humiliates the host and ruins the party. It’s even more embarrassing when it’s an expensive, highbrow affair at a posh venue with a guest list that would be the envy even of the White House. Well, it happened to Haverhill’s favorite son, John Greenleaf Whittier on the occasion of the famous poet’s 70th birthday party Dec. 17, 1877, at Boston’s fashionable Hotel Brunswick on Boylston Street at the corner of Clarendon.

Haverhill Heritage Series

Henry Ford Buys a Piece of Whittierland During 1928 City Visit

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On Oct. 18, 1927, Whittier Birthplace received a visitor. This, by itself, was not a particularly momentous event—the Birthplace had been open to the public since 1893 after former Haverhill Mayor James H. Carleton purchased the house and land and presented it to the Haverhill Whittier Club. This visitor was different, for he was as much a household name as Whittier himself—automobile magnate Henry Ford. In 1927, Henry Ford had been active in historic preservation for over a decade, and was amassing a large collection of Americana.