President Pierce House Site, New Hampshire

Franklin Pierce, who would become the 14^th president of the USA, and his wife lived in a house here, at 52 South Main Street, starting around 1849. Though there is relocated historic home in town called the Pierce Manse, 52 Main Street was their principal residence in Concord. They were living there when he heard about his election to the presidency, in 1852, and where he returned to live, after his presidency. These were not happy times, though. Shortly after his election to the presidency, his family was in a train accident in Amherst, New Hampshire, and their 11 year old son was killed in a gruesome way, witnessed by both parents. This was even more tragic, as he was their last surviving child—their other two boys had died a few years earlier. His wife Jane never recovered, and didn’t even join her husband on his inaugural trip to Washington. He returned to this house in Concord after a controversial presidency that linked him with the pro-slavery south. They traveled to Europe for a while, until Jane died in 1863, and he sank further into alcohol. He died in the house in 1869 at the age of 64, of cirrhosis of the liver. In 1981, the house, recently recognized officially as a historic site, mysteriously caught fire and burned to the ground. Now only the steps remain, and the empty house site, which is now a parking lot for the mortuary next door. Franklin Pierce, the only president from New Hampshire, is buried in the Old North Cemetery in Concord.