Granite State Communications
Granite State Communications is a telecommunications company based in Weare, New Hampshire providing telephone, internet, fiber, and television services to seven towns across the southern part of the state.
History
The company was founded in 1877 when the New Hampshire Legislature granted a charter to the Chester & Derry Telegraph Company, giving rights to construct a telegraph line between the towns of Chester and Derry.
Just a year earlier Alexander Graham Bell invented a new gadget, the telephone. While telephones were yet to be widely available, the people of Chester worked to have telegraph service brought to town.
The first aerial telegraph line was constructed from C.A. Wilcomb’s General Store on Chester Street, through offices in East Derry and Derry Village, terminating at the Boston & Maine Railroad office in Derry Depot. At the Derry Depot office telegraph messages were transferred to the Western Union telegraph lines. Locally, a line was also constructed to the residence of Nathan Goldsmith, with several other stations along the way.
In 1884 Cyrus F. Marston, a Chester resident, connected a (homemade) telephone to the telegraph circuit to receive the results of the election that elected Grover Cleveland president of the United States. By 1886 telephones had become more popular and the company had added telephone equipment in each of the established offices along with telegraph equipment and telephone lines had been extended to several outlying areas of Chester.
The first central office was located at Wilcomb’s General Store, and that consisted of a small manual switchboard. Mr. Wilcomb would answer an incoming telephone call and connect it manually to the party being called between waiting on customers in the store. In 1914 it was relocated to a building at the junction of routes 121 and 121A, adjacent to the old Glidden Tavern, and there it remained for 44 years. A new building was constructed at 7 Derry Road (Route 102) in 1957 to house new central office switching equipment.
In the years after World War II customers were demanding modern automatic telephone service. These demands required rural telephone companies to improve service or sell to a company with greater capital to make the improvements. The owners of the Weare Telephone Company, Wilder and Iola Tenney, were frustrated by these demands and offered the company for sale. The Weare Telephone Company had been organized in 1904 and was franchised to operate in the towns of Weare and Deering.
In 1958 the Triangle Telephone Company was acquired, a company that operated in Hillsboro Upper Village, Hillsboro Lower Village, Windsor and Washington. This company consisted of a magneto exchange operated out of the home of the owners, Mr. and Mrs. R.V. Hodgeman, in Hillsboro Upper Village.
In 2009 the company changed its name to Granite State Communications.