In Windham, Election Day is Tuesday, June 10, in 2014, followed by the annual Town Meeting on Saturday, June 14. Both events are held at the high school. Prior to Windham becoming a town in 1762, meetings about the governing of New Marblehead Plantation, as it was called, were held by the Proprietors in Massachusetts.
New Marblehead Plantation was incorporated on June 12, 1762, as Windham, named for Wymondham in Norfolk, England. The first town meeting in Windham was on July 5, 1762, and it was held in the fort.
In 1744, the fort had been built on a hill in the southern part of town near the early center of settlement to offer protection during King George’s War. A 50-foot-square blockhouse constructed of 12-inch-thick hewn hemlock had an overhanging second story with firing ports and two swivel guns in watch posts on diagonal corners. The blockhouse was surrounded by a stockade wall of 12-inch-diameter log posts 16 feet long. The single gate through the stockade wall was covered by a 4.2-inch (11 cm) bore 9-pounder cannon. Windham’s 9-pounder cannon and one swivel gun from the stockade blockhouse were loaned to Portland in 1775. Portland had refused to surrender these guns to Captain Henry Mowat as he demanded before he burned Portland; and they were placed aboard the privateer Reprieve in 1776.[6]
At the first meeting, town officers elected included Thomas Chute, Clerk; Caleb Graffam, Thomas Mayberry and John Farrow, Selectmen and Abraham Anderson, Treasurer. Other residents filled the jobs of field drivers, fence viewers, tithing men, a constable and sealer of weights and measures.
No school officials were elected until 1815.
Town meetings were held in the fort until 1788. From 1789 to 1796 the meetings were held in the schoolhouse at what is now Newhall. In 1797, the men of Windham met at the Congregational Church located at the corner of Webb and Chute Roads. It was the largest building in town and here the annual meeting was held until 1811 when the Friends meeting house became the site and remained where town meetings were held until the new town house was built in 1833. This building was also used as the high school until 1910 when a new building was constructed.
Today, the original town house is the Windham Historical Society and the 1910 high school has been town hall for many years and after many changes.
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