Compiled by Russell Bastedo
State Curator
1998

Rolland H. Spaulding (1915-1917). Born Townsend Harbor (MA); Rochester (NH) manufacturer. In state politics from 1905.

The brother of future New Hampshire governor Huntley Spaulding (1927/9), Rolland Spaulding (1873-1942) graduated from Phillips Academy (Andover, MA) in 1893 and went into the family fiberboard manufacturing business. In 1905 he attracted political notice as an early proponent in the New Hampshire business community of "progressive Republicanism". Spaulding joined such other New Hampshire followers of Theodore Roosevelt's reforms as the popular author Winston Churchill, an unsuccessful candidate for the 1906 Republican gubernatorial nomination, and the Cheshire County Republicans' favorite for a U.S. Senate seat, George B. Leighton. (Leighton was denied his hopes as well.)

By 1912 the "progressives" had won in New Hampshire's Republican Party, with Teddy Roosevelt's calls for reform finding substantial voter support. Spaulding was a delegate to the 1912 Republican National Convention, and in 1914 he was nominated for governor by the New Hampshire Republican Party. Although he treated the campaign as a lark, Spaulding won easily over Democrat millowner A. W. Noone. Governor Spaulding pushed for a uniform accounting system for all state agencies and he worked to improve the management of state institutions with the hope that state taxes could be reduced. He worked to streamline municipalities' accounting systems and he supported development of a long-range plan for the improvement of state highways. This led to reforms of the State Highway department.

Spaulding declined a second term and returned to his expanding family business. In 1917 he served as vice-president of the New Hampshire Defense League, but otherwise concerned himself with a number of business interests.

Location: State House, Second Floor
Portrait by Edmund C. Tarbell, 1917; Presented by Governor Spaulding