02/22/2026
SANBORNTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY SNOW ROLLER PROJECT NEEDS VOTER SUPPORT AT TOWN MEETING
Sanbornton's March 11 Town Meeting will have a voting opportunity for the town to lease Sanbornton Historical Society a small patch of land by the fire pond with the life-safety buildings nearby. The SHS will then have the historic snow roller available for public viewing at no cost to the town. The SHS and volunteers will bear all costs to exhibit the snow roller in a sheltering shed with cement pad - a great representative piece of our town's history jsut in time for 250th Celebration of America. The SHS would appreciate voters staying to meeting's end to vote in support.
In 2004 Nancy Andrews Adams gave Sanbornton Historical Society "all there was to get," says member Ralph Sellars, "of an old snow roller: seat, the rolls, the whippletree, the rotted stub of a wooden poll." Nancy’s father, Henry Andrews, Jr., in the mid-to-late 1950s, had brought it from the former Town Shed, where it had deteriorated due to exposure, and parked it up at his family’s home on the Old Range Road. Henry built a three-sided shed around it where he restored parts of it.
Henry, a former historical society president, wished for it to belong to the historical society, but only if it could be stored / displayed in a covered structure. Thus it was delivered to Currier Building by Matt Swain's dump truck after David Adams and Matt worked on pulling together the remains, tenderly. Ralph and others restored it. Steve Ober blacksmithed a new tongue.
The mammoth equipment-piece once helped make our roads passable in winter -- for horse and sleigh use! Sanbornton Historical Society was deeded it. It should be out for public viewing. "Out" because all these years it's been in the dark back end of Currier Building where restoration happened.
SHS members Miriam Kent and weather reporter Don Kent, remembers Ralph, "were strong promoters of the snowroller project." She regularly viewed the progress and insisted the seat paint be baby-blue color, because, "that was the color of the one I watched as a child!" Nancy's father Henry painted the seat, designed to have the added weight of men besides the driver, sitting on it. It would be pulled by various horse teams from farms along the town roads. Ralph has snow roller photos taken in 1908 and 1919.
Ralph Sellars shares that on August 3, 2007, Gov. Lynch came to Sanbornton to christen the restored piece of equipment. Farmers Market out back of Currier Building was just underway. Tobey Shoemaker, at 10 years old, was awed by the snow roller when he and Charlie Burke set up the Farmers' Market and ventured into Currier for market set-up supplies.
A 1940 newspaper article, clipped by Millie Shaw, shared now by her son Andy Sanborn, reports that in 1918 Sanbornton had 3 snow rollers, in 1921 "4 snow rollers valued at $224." In 1923 Sanbornton had 5. All roads then were town roads! State roads, by designation, didn't start until after WW2. The snow rollers made traveling about do-able!
The goal is to the snow roller in 2026's Old Home Day parade on a flat-bed truck, then homed in its shed, for viewing. The SHS and all those involved would be grateful for voter support. Please email the SHS at [email protected] with any questions.
