Col. James Brackett Creighton (1789 - 1882)
Born at Exeter (NH); died at Newmarket (NH).
Businessman and state legislator.
Portrait by U.D. Tenney, 1876.
Presented to the State by the family, 1877.

Creighton (1789 - 1882) was born at Exeter (NH). His father, a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, died when Creighton was an infant, and his mother had to take in students as boarders in order to survive.

Creighton was apprenticed in the clothiers trade when he was fourteen years old (1803). He drove a wagon carrying carding machines to such textile factory towns as Boscawen and Lancaster (both NH), and when his apprenticeship concluded Creighton set up his own textile operation, at Wadley's Falls (NH). Two years later he bought land and a "mill privilege" at Epping Corner (NH), where he "dressed the web" - used engraved metal rollers to do rotary printing of patterns on completed cloth. [This method of adding patterns to textiles had been patented in England in 1783.]

In 1826 Creighton moved to Newmarket (NH), where new cotton mills were starting operations. Creighton and two partners built the Creighton Block, a 100' x 40' brick building of three floors. Creighton sold lumber from his first floor shop; the family lived above, and the third floor was rented to the public for events and meetings. The lumber business did well, and Creighton invested in a flat-bottomed barge to make deliveries up and down the Lamprey River.

In 1827 Creighton was named Postmaster for Newmarket. In 1830 he served as an aide to Governor Harvey; because of this he became known as "Colonel" Creighton. In 1840 he was chosen President of the State Senate. Then (before 1850) he retired to farming. His son Zebulon founded Newmarket National Bank (1855).

References: Sylvia Fitts Getchell, The Tide Turns on the Lamprey...A History of Newmarket, N.H. (1984); Nellie Palmer George, Old Newmarket, New Hampshire (1932).