Stoughton Historical Society Newsletter Online
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VOLUME XXXIX NO. 4 APR
– MAY – JUNE 2010
May
22
- Stoughton “Take a Hike” Day at the
Bird St. Conservation Area 10 A M.-2 P.M.
The Stoughton Historical Society will have a table set up with maps,
trail guides, commentaries on the Bird St. land and many of our other
publications available. At 11:15, Dwight
Mac Kerron will lead a 1 ½ mile walk featuring stone
walls, the Myron Gilbert quarries, and tree identification. There will also be
presentations on birds of prey, reptiles, biodiversity, and more. See ad in upcoming
Stoughton Pennysaver
for more information.
June
7 - 6:00 pm Election of Officers and Dinner at Foley’s
Backstreet Grille; see back of Newsletter to make your reservation and
select your meal. The Nominating
Committee has selected for the upcoming year:
President –Dwight Mac Kerron, Vice
President – David Lambert Treasurer
- Joan Bryant Secretary – Evelyn Callanan, Archivist - Richard Fitzpatrick, Curator –Brian Daley, Historian
– Howard Hansen, Membership – Mary Kelleher
Board
of Directors - Denise Peterson; Ruth
Fitzpatrick will finish out the term (2012) of Richard Fitzpatrick, who will
take over as Archivist. Other board members and the year their term will
expire: Joe Mokrisky
(2011), Joe De
Vito (2011) , Jeanne De Vito (2012).
June
12 -- Spring Yard Sale 9:00 A. M.-2:00 P. M. We need strong backs at 7:00 A. M. to help us
get out our merchandise. Please drop
off your donations at the Society during the day on Tuesdays or Thursday
evenings before 8:00 P. M.
President’s
Report - We are
sad to report the death of our beloved, recent Archivist John O. “Jack”
Sidebottom. We were privileged to work with Jack for almost
seven years; he was an upright man of
integrity, who would tackle whatever job needed to be done. So much of our building, the Lucius Clapp
Memorial, bears the fruits of Jack’s labor; whether they be things he built,
the items he repaired, or the materials that he recommended we purchase. He was a humble man; whenever he would give
the Archivist’s Report at our meetings, he would begin by saying, ”Well, we haven’t been doing much,”
but those of us who worked here, knew that he had been doing a lot. Jack was also an invaluable liaison between
the Historical Society and the First Universalist Church of which he was a
life-long member, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and President or
Chairman of many other important committees over the years. Jack was a well-respected member of the
community, sharing his eighty-plus years of knowledge and experience of our
Town’s history with anyone who sought such information. More
than $700 worth of donations have been given to the Historical Society in
Jack’s memory. Thank you to all who
contributed. Among the items we plan to
purchase are two large plaques; one will be titled “The Jack Sidebottom Award
for Service to the Stoughton Historical Society.” On it will be listed the names of members of
the Historical Society, other than the Presidents, who have served
meritoriously in some capacity for at least ten years. We plan to have at least seven names to add
by the Harvest Dinner and will appoint a committee to study the minutes and
newsletters of our organization since its inception and select more names. If
you have names, which you wish to recommend for consideration, please contact
us. A second plaque will display the
names of the Society’s Presidents, replacing the framed document, which
currently serves that purpose.
We have
experienced three successful presentations since the last Newsletter:
On
February 21, we had a
full house for the program on the Battle of Saratoga, which included a
video presentation of the Battle and the events surrounding it. Our own colonial re-enactor Sandy Spector,
discussed the varied roles of camp followers in both armies, including
fascinating stories of two women with the British in the Saratoga campaign;
Baroness Von Reidesel and Lady Jane Acland. Two Stoughton high school students, Sarah Nitensen and Kelly Hickey, were honored for their help in
editing and typing the Upham-Tilden manuscript onto a Word Document, which was
an essential step in the publication of the Ezra Tilden diaries.
On March 21, we joined with
the Canton and Sharon Historical Societies at Sharon’s building, for a
standing room-only look at the period of time when our three communities were
all a part of Old Stoughton. Canton’s Wally Gibbs brought over a display on
Colonel Gridley, which included some of
Gridley’s actual hair, but the real treasure was one of the
immense scrapbooks created by D. T. V. Huntoon, in
which were pasted hundreds of the original town documents from the early
1700’s. Fortunately
the paper in these folio-sized, leather bound scrapbooks has held up reasonably
well. Sharon’s David Nelson presented a
brief study of several of the entries in the 1762-1783 Account Books of
Benjamin Hewins, a Stoughtonham
merchant, focusing on entries charged to the Town for items bought for the
poor, and many examples of payment by the exchange of goods or services in the
Ichabod Clark account. The Clarks
purchased a variety of items from the Hewins’ store
and paid by weaving cotton, linen, and woolen cloth for Hewins. We provided the original tax lists from
1727, and a variety of projected images and posterboard
displays, including an outline of large triangle of Old Stoughton placed
over four spliced modern topo quadrangles.
More on “When We Were One Town,” later in the Newsletter.
On April 11, we had another full house for David Lambert’s presentation on George E. Belcher, his industries,
his ornithology, and the famous house, which he renovated and refurbished. David had gathered many wonderful images,
which he computer-projected onto our screen.
Our projector presentations are so much more effective, now that we can
adequately darken the room with the new shades.
We saw images beginning with a young Belcher, working for other
companies, blown-up
images from the Stoughton Center 1890 house and building map, excerpts from the
census, supplemental period pictures of the Civil War and the Titanic, images of specific patents on
the shoe lasts, and many photographs from inside and outside the home and factory, showing
the changes in both over the course of more than a century. Our audience provided edifying anecdotes and
questions. Norma Raymond, a former
Belcher employee contributed her memories and brought in several
artifacts. Howard Hansen recalled a
newspaper story in which a former Belcher employee traced the progress of a
maple block from the time it came into the factory to its eventual emergence as
a finished shoe last. When the factory
was later converted to elderly housing, several former employees lived in the
apartments, some of them very near the same area (somewhat changed, of course)
in which they had worked for many years. The program served as a compelling
introduction to our upcoming exhibits and programs on Stoughton’s industries.
Two days
earlier, on April 9, a contingent of more than ten members of the Historical
Society had attended the honoring of David
Lambert and Sarah Ann Lynch at the Academic Hall of Fame ceremonies at Stoughton High School. David shared that his coming to the
historical society as a child was an important shaping experiences in his
life. Special thank you’s
to our members Joanne Blomstrom and Ruth Fitzpatrick
for their important roles in the process.
For more details on the ceremony check http://www.wickedlocal.com/stoughton/news/x57951977/Lambert-Lynch-inducted-into-SHS-Hall-of-Fame?img=1
During March, I visited the Canton Historical Society to do
research for the “When We Were One Town” program and learned that they have a collection of WWI posters, even
larger than the one we share with the Stoughton Public Library. They have never exhibited theirs, but we look
forward to a simultaneous exhibition of both our posters at a future Veterans
Day celebration or the Centennial of World War I, which will be coming up in
the latter part of this decade.
On a Tuesday
late in March, we had a couple of interesting conversations at the Society
regarding the WWII era. Over lunch, Joe
DeVito talked about being at Bikini Atoll after the war, having been assigned
to move out the natives before the testing of the atomic bomb; they had been told
they could soon return, but have never been able to do so. Brian Daley had recently learned that the
water and coral at Bikini are now radiation-free, but the land is still
hot. Joe had become a carpenter’s mate and
remembered cutting a piece of oak from a barrel to fit into the coral-damaged
bottom of their boat, then using oakum, dipped in tar to make the patch
watertight, leading me to recall that Ezra Tilden had been assigned to gather
oakum at Fort Ticonderoga. In the
afternoon, Paul Bishop visited, inquiring if anyone know the location of Highland Park in Avon. Various opinions were expressed. But the
matter was settled when Richard Fitzpatrick checked Richard Hanna’s History of Avon and determined that
Highland Park was on West Main Street, which is the last right on Harrison Blvd
before Rt. 28. Paul also recalled that
there was a large hall on Page St (or Old Page?) at the Stoughton-Avon border
to which the returning WWII vets marched after some celebration at Highland
Park. Does anyone else remember this
building?
During the preparation for the meeting at the Sharon Historical Society,
I decided to check the west side of Bay
Road for more stone markers like the one we had found in the woods, marking
the wedge of land which remained Stoughton, while the rest became Sharon. I was excited when I found two more stone
markers with a S on them, but a former Town Engineer of Sharon, who was
attending the presentation, informed me that those may simply be relatively
modern boundary markers, marking the Sharon border which runs along Bay Road
all the way from Cobb’s Corner to the Easton line. I also found a stone slab, lying on its side
on a pile of rubble, a few yards from the road, which looked similar in shape
to the ancient Bay Road mile markers. I
need to return with a crow bar in order to be able to check the side against
the earth for any distinctive markings.
The Board of Directors decided that we should explore restoring the Mortimer Lamb pastel, “The Last of the
Snow,” which hung over the fireplace in the office for many years, and
determine the cost to repair the mold spots which had appeared on it. Howard Hansen agreed to deliver it to
Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, and they subsequently
estimated that it can be restored for $1500-1700. Fortunately, it may be possible to get
financial help from the Stoughton Public Library, which has a trust fund set up
to preserve its impressive collection of Mortimer Lamb paintings.
A number of people have visited the
society recently including two generations of a family doing research on their
ancestors, the Curtises and Littlefields;
(Moses Curtis moved to what is now Avon before 1727.) When David Lambert was assisting these
people, he fortuitously found in the dusty files a drawing from a photograph of
Alfred Waldo, the young man, who kept the detailed Civil War diary written
in pencil, which we published two years ago.
His picture can now grace the next edition.
We received a gracious thank-you note from Shirley Schofield of the Sharon Historical Society for our
presentation there. We also received a
packet of more than twenty letters
written during WWII by John Stiles and Ruth Burnham to Stiles’ cousin, Esther
Hussey of Ashland. Wilma Slaight recently gave a presentation of these letters to
the Ashland Historical Society, and we had sent her some Stiles information to
supplement her knowledge of the soldier who was writing these letters. In return, she graciously sent us copies of
all the letters, both on hard copy and scanned images on CD, complete with
abstracts and an overview of the collection.
Hank Herbowy is now reading the letters and
will be attempting to link some of the places mentioned with Stiles’ six
military albums of small pictures, most of which (unlike his Stoughton
pictures) have no captions.
In other activity at the Society:
Brian and Carol Daley placed the pansies in the flower urns in front of the
Society, and Joe DeVito transplanted more Blue Rug juniper bushes. Richard
Fitzpatrick purchased and installed a new holder for our “OPEN” flag; Hank Herbowy installed the new cable box for the
television. Joan Bryant’s daughters and
daughter-in-law (and their agents) donated and delivered five carloads of
leftovers from their Avon Walk for Breast Cancer yard sale; Joan Bryant, Denise
Peterson, and I helped deliver and unpack the goods and Denise has now begun
sorting and pricing items. Jeanne DeVito
and Mary Kelleher update the mailing list and record the dues which are sent in
each week; Jeanne writes thank you notes to people who make donations of money,
documents, or artifacts
Archivist’s Report – With the
transition from the late Jack Sidebottom to Bob Viola to Richard Fitzpatrick,
we had developed a back-log of items to be catalogued. Richard is persistently chipping away at the
pile of items on the Archivists’ desk. Tony Alfano
and Bob Viola continue their pursuit of the names of ALL Stoughton selectmen,
with Bob now checking the Town Records from the 1700’s. David Lambert has been taking digital
pictures of many of our photographs and documents and has stored them in files
on the computer. Shelly Obelsky, a new member and valuable addition to our work
crew, has installed the back-up hard drive for all our documents on the
computer, including our new Past Perfect 4.0 system, which has had the contents
of the Past Perfect 2.5 migrated to it.
Shelly is studying the 4.0 manual and beginning to make new entries from
the two boxes (of four) from the card catalogue which have not yet been
entered. Ruth Fitzpatrick has returned
to her work retrieving many of the John Stiles pictures from disintegrating
albums and placing them in
new, archivally approved albums with
appropriate captions.
Items received:
A scrapbook of portraits of Talbots, Capens,
Gays, Frenches Porters, Holbrooks, Lambs and other
familiar names plus many unidentified portraits circa 1900 from James Husson-Cote of Provincetown; a map of North Stoughton from
Sandy Barber, a large box of letters, receipts etc.1900-1920 of Stoughton
selectman, water commissioner and insurance agent George Wentworth; a copy of
the History of the Old Stoughton Musical Society, donated by Eugene Flynn of
Sharon; a new copy of a reprint of A
History of the Twelfth Massachusetts Volunteers (Webster Regiment) by
Benjamin Cook and James Beal from Ken Albin of Baton
Rouge, LA.; a Bible from the Lamb family
from Norma Raymond; a photograph and
commentary on WWII Vet Andrew Thomas from his son, Larry Thomas; a packet of
documents on the JW Woods company, including a number of copies of the company
newsletter, “The Shuttle” from Lou Hurley in Georgia; town reports (1894, 1924)
a 200th Anniversary program (1926) and a Stoughton Cook Book (1889)
from Mary Malcolm of Brockton; a box of documents relating to wetlands and
sewage issues in Stoughton circa 1960-1970 from the family of Edmund Atkinson.
Curator’s Report -Since
the last newsletter, we have received six items from different people:
1. A wooden object, believed to be a form used
to repair boots, possibly a primitive show last, found in the old Atherton home
on Central St., donated by Allan Rowbotham. It is vaguely in the shape of a plow hook,
but the wood is too soft for it to have served that function. 2.
Several metal name-tags for the Gill Machine Co. of Stoughton. (We
failed to record the names of this donors; if you know who gave the metal tags,
please let us know.) 3. A Perfection Water Cooler given to us by Pat
Byron and family. Pat said it belonged
to his father who took it to local ball games years ago. Perfection was
purchased by Atwood L. Boggs, who moved the company from Haverhill,
Massachusetts to Boston and in 1912 established the plant in Stoughton. The
output of the plant was shipped all over the world. Their product was of the
highest standards for coolers.
4. A brick, given by David
Lambert, from the old Gas & Light Works that was on Rose St. It was
built in the late 1880’s and was torn down just this past March. 5. A
gavel given to the Stoughton Grange in 1901 at the IOOF fair from Norma Raymond.
6. A Vulcan plastic last made for the
Belcher Co. from Norma Raymond
Brian
Daley – Curator
Clothing Curator
Janet Clough has begun to consolidate some of our many military uniforms
into the last available clothing box.
Soon, decisions will have to be made regarding our over-supply of
certain uniforms, beyond our capacity to preserve and store them.
The following is a summary of some of the recent research
for the presentation in Sharon and the beginning of a longer piece on the
topic:
When We
were One
In 1726 Stoughton was
incorporated, as one town with one church (at Canton Corner), and therefore one
Precinct. Despite the fact that the
Dorchester South Precinct had extended all the way to Attleboro, the town
records at this time appear to pertain only to freeholders who lived within the
bounds of the current Canton, Sharon, Foxborough,
Stoughton, and Avon, ALL of which were named Stoughton.
The 1727 tax
records reveal that there were two districts; a northern one, comprised
primarily of the current Canton, with 165 households, whose taxes were
collected by Constable John Shepherd and a southern district of 107 households,
with taxes collected by Constable Ebenezer Healy/Hooley. A few Stoughton names do appear on the northern
list, including Moses Curtis, who was the sole settler in the SOUTHEAST corner
of the Town, now Avon. Pigwacket Road (now Page St.) apparently connected Curtis
to the more distant northern section of town more efficiently than any
east-west road connected him to the closer southwestern settlers, an issue
which would explain Avon’s subsequent and long-standing attempts to separate
from Stoughton. Further research may
reveal that we need to change our map of people who lived in the current
Stoughton in 1726. The tax records show
that Hezekiah Gay and Zachariah Lyon were paying taxes in the southern half in
1727, whereas our map indicates that they did not come until 1734. It also would be interesting to determine
which of the households listed in the southern half lived as far west as the
current Foxboro.
In the 1730’s,
areas of Old Stoughton were annexed to Dedham and Walpole. In a document given to the Sharon Historical
Society in the early Twentieth Century, Stoughton Historian Loring Puffer,
quotes another Stoughton historian Newton Talbot as having estimated the
following populations of the current town areas in 1739: Canton 415; Stoughton (and Avon) 525; Sharon
(and Foxboro?) 415. We do not know what
data our esteemed President Talbot drew upon for his figures, but whatever the
respective populations, Sharon-Foxboro petitioned to become a separate
precinct, and their petition was accepted by the General Court in 1740. Soon thereafter they had their minister Rev.
Curtis and church in place. Stoughton’s
petition to become the Third Precinct was accepted in 1743 and “we” had our
Church built and the Rev. Jedediah Adams in place by
1744. In May of 1745, a letter signed
by six men in the Second Precinct informed the Town fathers that they had hired
two female school teachers to instruct the children in reading and
writing. They request money to pay these
teachers and remind the town that they have not yet received any money from the
proposition which had passed to raise money for the schools. Such issues may have contributed to what
occurred twenty years later.
In 1765, the
Second Precinct petitioned to become the “District”
of Stoughtonham.
Once their petition was accepted, they chose their own selectmen, and
collected their own taxes, but had to share ONE representative to the General
Court with the Town of Stoughton.
Districts were somewhat more than a Precinct, but somewhat less than a
Town. The Third Precinct, the current Stoughton,
then became the Second Precinct of the Town of Stoughton. Responsibilities for the poor had to be
divided up between the new District and its mother town. A certain part of the receipts from the sale
of the School Farm had to be sent to Stoughtonham,
after first going to Stoughton. As we have written
previously, the Bay Road boundary between the Second and Third Precincts was
adjusted so that the wedge of land on the west side of the road in the Dry Pond
area would remain in Stoughton.
Ironically, it remained the Second Precinct, although everything else
shifted about it.
In a Feb. 28,
1766 document, pasted by Huntoon into one of his
scrapbooks, we learn of the conclusions reached by a Committee of three
Stoughton men; Hezekiah Gay, Nathaniel May, and Joseph Billings, and three men
from Stoughtonham; Thomas Randall, Daniel Richards,
and Job Swift. Their charge was to
determine “the futer maintenance of the Poor that
were Released by the Town at the time when the District was set off.” Apparently, Stoughton had stopped paying for
all of the people subsequently named.
The following poor became the responsibilities of Stoughton: “Nathaniel
Somers & his wife and three of their Children (viz)
John Abigail & Patience; Edward Pitcher and his Wife the Widow Abigail
Jordan; (who may have lived in the westerly wedge at Dry Pond), the Widow
Abigail Clap & the Widow Mary Horton…and be no further charge to said
District of Stoughtonham. And that Stephen Holland & his Wife &
their three youngest Children the Widow Rouse & Bethiah
Hubbard be Supported by said District; and be no further charge…etc.” Three other people are named as being in the
process of having guardians appointed for them by the Selectmen; Silvanus
Wentworth, Sarah Somner & Deliverance Somner, and should any of them “come to be chargeable that
Said charge be borne by Said Town & District in proportion.”
Stoughton also
agreed to pay to Stoughtonham “the Sum of Eight
Pounds three pounds and eight pence thereof to pay for schooling in Said
District the last year and the other four pounds Nineteen Shillings & four
pence to pay a part of the Charge of Supporting the Districts part of the Poor
in time past.” It was a final
settlement but “nothing is to be understood or intended by this report to Cut Short
or Deprive the Said District of their proportionable
part of the yearly Wrents or Incomes of the School
farm nor of Said Districts part of ye yearly interest of ye school money or
bonds the Effects of the Sale of the School Lands all which is to remain good
to Said District as before.” (to be continued)
Welcome to New members: Heather McKinley, Sheldon Obelsky,
and Richard
Pratt