BAY VIEW ROAD · DOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Back River Farm
Historically known as Samuel Emerson Farm.
A working landscape, a historic farmstead, and the setting for NESO’s farm experiences. Back River Farm connects the land, the Bellamy River and the people who have tended this place across generations.
National Register of Historic Places · June 22, 1984
Plan a visit to the farm
TWO NAMES. ONE HISTORIC PLACE.
The farm behind
our story.
The National Park Service nomination identifies Samuel Emerson Farm as the historic name and Back River Farm as the preferred common name. Both refer to the farmstead on Bay View Road in Dover, New Hampshire.
The Bellamy River is also known historically as the Back River. The farm’s fields, buildings and tidal setting belong to the history of saltwater farming in this part of Dover.
The 1984 nomination describes the property as the surviving eighteenth-century farmstead in Dover’s Back River District that retains its original land and agricultural buildings together. That documented connection between place and farming is central to the story we share here.
Read the original historic nominationA FEW MOMENTS IN A LONG STORY
From the Emersons
to the present.
- 1696
An Emerson family beginning.
Samuel Emerson acquired a 30-acre tract. The original nomination traces the family’s agricultural connection to this land to that purchase.
- c. 1750
The farmhouse takes shape.
Architectural evidence places the surviving farmhouse in the mid-eighteenth century. The nomination associates its joinery with Samuel Emerson’s grandson, also named Samuel.
- 1876
Five generations of Emersons.
The Emerson family’s tenure ran from 1696 to 1876, when the farm passed out of the family.
- 1929
A later preservation chapter.
Later owners purchased the property in 1929. The nomination records restoration work and alterations made during the 1930s.
- 1984
National Register recognition.
Back River Farm was entered in the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1984, under reference number 84003236.
THE CRAFT IN THE FARMHOUSE
A place shaped
by working hands.
The historic farmhouse is a two-story, timber-frame building with a central chimney and a rear leanto. Its surviving woodwork brings together early building traditions and eighteenth-century joinery, including feather-edged sheathing and a rare paneled door.
The agricultural record is just as revealing. The nomination describes flax, barley, sheep and other farm production, with chalk entries on attic beams recording work from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
These details make the farm more than a date on a timeline. They connect its buildings to the daily work of a coastal agricultural landscape.
THE WORK CONTINUES
A modern chapter
at an old farm.
NESO’s oyster farming, private raw bars and land-based farm experiences belong to the farm’s present-day story. The Emerson history reaches back to 1696; our oyster company and the experiences we offer today are a later chapter.
Come for the oysters, and take a little time to appreciate the place around them. Farm visits and private tastings are by advance reservation. Please contact us to confirm the experience, access and directions before your visit.
Back River Farm99 Bay View Road · Dover, NH 03820
The documented record.
Explore the original records and further reading behind this history.
Meet the people behind NESO