STOUGHTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY FOUNDED 1895

Volume II, Number - Combined 6, 7, 8 - [July - August -] September 1971

SPECIAL MEETING: On Monday, September 20 at 7:30 there will be a special meeting called by a vote of the Trustees. The purposes of the special meeting are threefold: to become re-acquainted after the summer's respite; to share whatever movies, slides, or other pictures taken on our May pilgrimage to Sandwich; and, most important, to vote on the feasibility of an increase in dues. The Trustees have taken under consideration (at their recent meeting) the dues increase question and feel that the matter, as suggested in your June NEWSLETTER be brought before the body of the Society for a vote in September. . There will be an opportunity to hear the pros and cons if the membership wishes a discussion... and some, form of secret ballot will be arranged so that your vote may remain private.

BIRTHDAY BAGS should be brought to the September meeting when they will be emptied into a common container. If you did not receive a bag earlier this summer, it is hoped that you have found some suitable container into which you have slipped a coin now and again. Whether your Birthday Bag now holds fifty cents or five dollars bring it along and add it to the "kitty."

WE HAVE RECEIVED from Hazel Drake a copy of an 1884 Town Report and a copy of the 1906 Chicataubut Club souvenir program.

INTERESTING PROGRAMS for the coming season are being sought. So far, the Trustees have come up with three evenings of intriguing entertainment and enlightenment. They still ask your cooperation in securing speakers (perhaps a friend has an interesting subject about which he or she will talk. . . illustrated programs are, as you well know, most desired). We are a friendly audience so how about YOU speaking to us about a favorite subject of general interest to Stoughtonians ?

A CONDENSED HISTORY of our American Flag was attached to the neck of the jar of a popular brand name coffee this summer. Did you see it?

A COMMITTEE has been formed to have the General Court designate the Bay Road a historical highway. At a meeting in Cobb's Tavern, Sharon, John Kent of Easton was named chairman; Clyde Holmes of Stoughton was appointed area chairman; and Chandler Jones, present owner of the Tavern, was appointed liaison member with the Massachusetts Historical Commission. All interested citizens are being asked to join the cause and help in any way possible to further the action begun last October.

A NATIVE SON has illustrated his third children's book. William Curtis Holdsworth has chosen a story his father had relished at the age of ten and shared with his son through the age of eighty. "Bugaboo Bill" uses a verse story first published in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1880. The latest book is dedicated to the illustrator's father, Robert Powell Holdsworth.

STOUGHTON'S LAST two room school closed its doors in June. Thus, the passing of another era in our own lifetime. 

CHARLES SUMNER whose desk we possess was an American lawyer and Senator who was born in Boston on January 6, 1811. He graduated Harvard College in 1830; and was a pupil of Judge Story in the law school of Cambridge and was admitted to the bar in 1834; practiced law in Boston, appointed reporter in the circuit court of the United States; passed about three years in visits to various countries in Europe (1837-1840); opposed the annexation of Texas to the U.S. in 1845; separated from Whig Party and joined Free Soilers (Ed. Note: Lucius Clapp was a Free Soiler also); elected Senator in 1850; opposed Fugitive Slave bill in 1854; on May 19-20, 1856, he made in the Senate an eloquent speech on the contest in Kansas and on the aggressions of slave power, some passages of his speech excited the anger of Preston S. Brooks, a Southern member of Congress, who on May 22, 1856, assaulted Mr. Sumner while he was sitting in the Senate chamber and beat him on the head with a cane until he became insensible; Mr. Sumner was so severely injured that he was disabled for public service for several years and sailed to Europe in March, 1857, for the benefit of his' health; was re-elected to the Senate in January, 1857, returned home in the Fall of that year, he was appointed chairman of committee on foreign relations in 1861, and in 1862 was again elected Senator for six years; after the Civil War he advocated the reconstruction of the seceded States; during the rebellion he was confidential advisor of President Lincoln; among his important services was the production of the Freedman's Bureau Bill (creating a division -of the War Dept. charged with aiding and protecting freed slaves); chairman of committee on foreign affairs from 1861-1870; he died in Washington, D.C., March 11, 18 74.

1909 IS BELIEVED to have been the climax of horse travel in the United States. In that year over 26 million horses and mules traveled 13 billion miles (500 per animal). 3,850 deaths involved horses or horse-drawn vehicles; or, slightly over 30 deaths per hundred million miles of horse travel. Records of the late 1950's show 7 deaths per hundred million auto miles traveled. Therefore, horse travel was more than four times as dangerous as travel by auto. (The "Good Old Days"???)

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