OCT-NOV-DEC 2015

Upcoming Events (To be announced)
You should be receiving a special mailing and emailing of the schedule for January and February Programs, early in 2016

President’s Report
We regret to inform you of the passing of our long-time and beloved Membership Secretary, Mary Kelleher. A few years ago, she was the well-deserved recipient of the Jack Sidebottom Award for Exceptional Service to the Stoughton Historical Society. Our condolences to her children and grand-children. We will miss her. The number of people, standing in line for 1-2 hours to pay their respects to “Shrimpy” and family at the Farley Funeral Home, speaks for itself. We appreciate that we were mentioned as one destination for donations in Mary’s memory and we have received many. Mary’s daughter Trish has volunteered to take Mary’s position as our Membership Secretary and we look forward to having her on board.

Our program on the Glover house, scheduled for Nov 8 was cancelled because of a special exhibit we now have at the Society, a much larger-than-life-sized statue of Abraham Lincoln, seated in the same pose as seen at the Lincoln Memorial. We have cleared out significant space to accommodate this impressive piece of statuary, which will be the subject of several programs in the first few months of the new year. There are so many things, which could be said about Abraham Lincoln, that finding the most appropriate has been a challenge.
We do have the “Sumner desk,” which was one of the double desks in the House of Representatives, when with Lincoln’s urging, the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, passed in the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, more than three months before Lincoln’s assassination. However it was not until December 6, 150 years ago this December, that a sufficient three-quarters of the states, (27 of the 36) had ratified the Amendment, and it officially became the law of the land. Joe DeVito and Richard Fitzpatrick have compiled considerable information on our Sumner desk, including the names of many of the representatives who sat in it during its time in the House: 1857 to 1873.
During the Civil War, Lincoln agonized over every Union defeat. The disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg, 153 years ago, this December, was one of the most lopsided defeats of the entire War; Union casualties numbered more than 13,000, while Confederate losses were approximately 4,500. Stoughton Pvt. Alfred Edward Waldo was present at the Battle of Fredericksburg. In a letter to his parents he wrote, “They shoved in brigade after brigade but they were mowed down by the hundreds. This battle took place just the other side of the city. They have it very strongly fortified and their grape shot makes sad work with our men. Gus (his best friend, Avery Augustus Capen, also from Stoughton) was killed. He lay up side of a board fence and a cannon ball came through the fence killing him and 2 others. It took his left leg right off up next to his body so it only hung by a piece of skin it was bound up but he lived but a few minutes. We did not drive the rebs an inch that day. The battle field had more dead and wounded than any that I have seen yet.” Lincoln’s response to this terrible defeat: "If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it."
We are putting together a collage of images from Lincoln’s life and death, including Civil War-related images and captions from Stoughton’s history, which will be displayed on a screen beside the exhibit with appropriate musical accompaniment and readings of the Gettysburg Address and parts of his First and Second Inaugural addresses.

In August, a Stoughton native and student of the organ at the Juillard School of Music, Alexander Pattavina visited the Society and asked to inspect our organs. He played two of them, including the portable organ, which had not been played, or even opened, in many years. It is an Estey Organ circa 1860-1870, known as the Wentworth Organ. It accompanied a group of choristers, who travelled the countryside in a covered wagon. It was bequeathed to the Society by Miss Minnie Goeres of Avon, who was a music teacher at Stoughton High School in the 1940’s.

On September 14, we celebrated our Harvest Dinner in the Wales French room at the Stoughton Library with the usual, good food, compliments of Bertucci’s and Joan Bryant with serving help from Debbie and Danielle Bryant. We saw pictures taken over the course of the last year, including scenes from the Grenadiers Program, our Installation Dinner, the 4th of July Parade, and the Pearl St Cemetery walk. Stoughton historian Willliam Capen was posthumously granted the Jack Sidebottom Award.

John Carabatsos has been making digital copies from the glass plates and other negatives of pictures owned by the Society and has been skillfully “cleaning them up” as needed. He has come up with some amazingly sharp images, some of which have appeared on The Stoughton Time Machine on Facebook. We have decided to use a couple of John’s restored images of Town Hall and a team of horses pulling a fire engine behind Town Hall for the historical sign, which the Historical Commission will be placing there next spring. Since there will also be signs at the Pearl St. Cemetery, the Railroad Station, the Universalist Church and on our lawn, we will schedule a walking tour to dedicate the signs, after they are installed.

David Peterson has taken one of the wide chestnut attic floor-boards, retrieved from the Glover House before its demolition and created thirteen small wooden plaques, which, once inscribed, will serve as authentic mementoes of this Stoughton treasure, which has been lost.

On October 4, we had a program at the Society honoring the late Forrest Bird. The following includes some of the relevant history of the Bird family in Stoughton, and Forrest’s history in particular:
According to a letter Forrest Bird wrote us in 2007, Henry and Ethyl Bird had three sons: Alton (Ken Bird’s father) Morton (Forrest Bid’s father and Henry Jr., who moved to North Carolina in the late 1920’s.
Forrest Bird’s grand uncle was Henry’s Sr.’s brother, Jedediah Bird, who went with the 4th Mass. as a Ninety-Day Wonder at the very beginning of the Civil War and later served a nine-month term with the same Regiment, when they besieged Port Hudson, Louisiana in the summer of 1863. He is mentioned several times in Charles Eaton’s diary. We have several pictures of Jedediah Bird in his G.A.R regalia and also have on display his Lincoln Medal, which was made for the Ninety-Day Wonders with his name (spotted by the sharp-eyed David Lambert) inscribed upon it.
Years later, Jedediah Bird led a group of GAR men, who paraded down Stoughton’s Main Street in 1917 in support of our entrance into World War I, followed by his nephew Morton and other young men about to enlist. Morton Bird, Forrest’s “Daddy” as Forrest always referred to him, was the first to sign up as a volunteer for WWI in which he served as an airman “flying bombardment type aircraft behind German lines from French air bases.” On his return to Stoughton, he purchased the Waco airplane on which he taught Forrest to fly.
In a letter written to us many years ago, Ken Bird wrote: “In just that little portion of my boyhood Stoughton there were several WWI enlistees – my uncles Morton Bird and Harold Bird were Army Air Men. Morton was a pilot and Harold a master sergeant; both were in combat. Also Ralph Malcolm, son of George Malcolm was overseas and died of influenza on troop ship enroute home after the Armistice. I believe also Clement Murphy who lived with John Flynn’s family on Morton Street was an enlisted man (a VERY YOUNG ONE) toward the end of WWI and he remained in the Armed Forces through to WWII and I believe he became a full colonel (that is what I have been told) and was senior officer in Rome, Italy, when Rome was occupied by U. S. Army forces. Clement’s daughter became Lieut. Governor of Massachusetts during the 1980’s.”
Other excerpts from Forrest’s letters to us or from a later interview with Howard Hansen and me: “A number of us who went to kindergarten and then attended the Dry Pond School (a five grade schoolhouse) skipped the first and third grades and a few the fifth grade. After my Sophomore year I entered into a special accelerated military schooling.” Forrest recalled that he would walk or ski from the family home on West Street over past the quarries to catch the streetcar to Brockton for a course he was taking.
After his father purchased the Waco airplane: “He hangared his airplane during the 1930’s at the Attleboro airport. My father soloed me in this airplane on my fourteenth birthday, after I had been flying with him and his partner for a number of years.” “When I started flying the Waco airplane I used to land in a field on the Starosta Farm (previously Lucius Clapp’s and later Carl Libby’s) directly across the street from our West Street home.” Forrest landed the plane “when the wind was right” once in Billy White’s field and once on the field at the high school, and of course, successfully took off from both as well, “which did get attention.”

A few days after the program, we were shocked and saddened to learn of the death in a plane crash of Forrest’s widow, Pamela Riddle Bird. R.I.P. Pam and Forrest.

On October 22, we were pleased to host ten members of the Stoughton High School Class of 1969 and their spouses. This group, organized by Conrad Johanson, was actually holding a mini-reunion of the members of their class who had attended the Tolman School. At the conclusion of their visit with us, they were given a tour of the State Theater by John Stagnone.

On October 24, we were planning to pass out candy to young trick or treaters led around by police officers. Unfortunately, a last-minute change in plans led to the Lucius Clapp Memorial becoming considered “too far away” for the children to walk, and we ended up with considerable surplus candy, most of which, fortunately could be returned to the stores. A thank you to Brian Daley and the Felagos, the former having purchased the candy and the latter attending to help distribute it.

That same afternoon, the large Lincoln model arrived by truck and after many hours of yeoman’s work by Joe McStowe, Joe Mokrisky, Joanne Callanan, and others, Abraham Lincoln sat regally in the Jones Room, his head eleven feet above the floor. Joe Mokrisky had to remove the front doors in order to get the larger pieces of this model into the building.

We have received a grant from the Stoughton Cultural Council to assist in the financing of our Isaac Stearns float for the 4th of July Parade and programs related to the fact that 2016 will be the 300th Anniversary of Stoughton’s first Colonial settler, Isaac Stearns’s coming to Stoughton. There will be one program at which we will display the projects done by Stoughton Elementary School students on Isaac Stearns, his family, and his early days in Stoughton. Another event will involve the placement of a new historical sign at the site of Isaac Stearns’ first dwelling on West Street, between the soccer fields and Elm Street.
On November 23, Stoughton Town Meeting approved the use of CPC funds to purchase the Stoughton Railroad Station Depot Building and 30 attendant parking spaces for $250K and also approved CPC funds of $350,000 to rehabilitate the station. It is possible that future negotiations will further reduce the purchase price, but the larger challenge is in the repair and future use of this historic structure. Considerable time and effort was expended by Forrest Lindwall of the Stoughton Redevelopment Authority, John Morton, Chairman of the Community Preservation Committee, Chairman, and Joe Mokrisky, Chairman of the Board of Selectman. Their combined efforts were essential to the acquisition this building.
Past members of the Stoughton Historical Society and Commission have previously expended Herculean effort to restore the station: “An urban renewal plan for downtown Stoughton in the 1960’s called for the demolition of the railroad station. In response, the Stoughton Historical Society, and soon thereafter, the newly formed Stoughton Historical Commission conducted extensive research and made applications to State and Federal commissions, eventually leading to the Stoughton Railroad Station being recorded as an historic property with the Mass. Historical Commission (MHC), and on January 24, 1974, it was placed on the National Historic Register.
From 1974 to 1988 plans were made and grants acquired in order to restore the train station. In August of 1975 crews from CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) began work, but were put on hold by the MBTA until a lease agreement could be reached. In May of 1777, the Town Manager appointed a Committee to oversee the restoration efforts; it consisted of Alice Petruzzo-Chairman, Ann Petterson, Dorothy Woodward, Earl McMann, and Marilyn Huffman.
Over the next ten years, grants were acquired from the MHC and the Arts Lottery and some were matched by a warrant article at Town Meeting for $12,000. The building was systematically refurbished inside and out with the help of many more small grants, thousands of hours of volunteer and paid physical labor, and significant fund-raising by Stoughton Railroad Station Restoration Inc., which was formed in 1980. The group sponsored seven Flea Markets (three with auctions,) eight Model RR shows, six Christmas shows, four Open Houses, three Truck Shows, a Rock n’ Roll dance, a Fashion show, a Craft show, a Quilt Show, and a Coffee House.
On Saturday, October 1, 1988, the One Hundredth Birthday Celebration was held, which included an open house, a building rededication, and a reception. The last sentence of the Stoughton Railroad Station Restoration Inc. page in the 100th Anniversary booklet reads, “The Stoughton Railroad Station is a historic and architectural Victorian treasure and a lasting testimony to volunteer effort at its best.”
Unfortunately, some would say, tragically, in the twenty-five years, which have passed since that celebration, once again the railroad station has fallen into disrepair, slowly deteriorating as neither the MBTA nor the Town found the resources to maintain it properly. The MBTA asked for increasing amounts of money from the Town for the lease to cover expenses such as liability insurance in the parking lot, and after 1992, the lease was never renewed, although some Town-related activities such as the Food Pantry took place at the station until 2007” (Commentary written for the Community Calendar of 2012)

On December 1, we had a visit from Irene (Bacon) Cain and Alice (Bacon) Velten, ninety-three and ninety-six years old, respectively, accompanied by one of their daughters. They are the grand-daughters of Rev. Harvey Whitcomb, a retired minister from Milton Mills, N. H., who also worked as an architect and won an award for the design of a church in Sagamore, Mass. Rev. Whitcomb owned a farm at 1355 Central St., the property extending all the way to Station St. and on which he raised chickens and grew vegetables. The Bacon sisters had very pleasant memories of their summers in Stoughton and recalled that their grand-father served as an interim minister at the Methodist Church and other congregations in the area. Their uncle, John Thompson MacDonald, who lived 1171 Washington St., owned a Jenney station on Washington St, and his wife, Lucy (Bacon) MacDonald ran a nearby tea room, which was moved closer to the gas station and became a small grocery store that also served lunches. They recalled Aunt Lucy driving them out to Glen Echo in the touring car. After the death of their grandfather in 1944, the farm was sold, and their Grandmother and the MacDonalds purchased the house at 225 Plain St., which the Bacon girls continued to visit in ensuing years. They left us after the better part of an hour’s enjoyable and edifying conversation, setting off to see the old homesteads.

On December 12, the evening of the Parade of Lights, we had an Open House with refreshments provided by Ruthie and Liz Fitzpatrick.

On December 15, we received a call from a woman, who wished to buy a copy of the photo she had seen at Town Spa: our wonderful 1920’s photo of the Ahrens Fox and and Pope Hartford fire engines with a number of firemen, taken in front of our building, then the Public Library. As luck would have it, Charlie Wade and his wife appeared that same morning to donate materials to us, and Charlie began his own commentary on the Ahrens Fox. I asked him to write it down for us:
“The Ahrens-Fox fire truck was originally slated to be shipped to Japan, which is why it had right-hand drive. While being loaded on a railroad car, it fell off and was damaged. Another engine from the factory was loaded and sent to Japan. The original engine was repaired and sold to Stoughton. The pump mounted in front of the engine is called a “Tandem Duplex” pump with four pump cylinders that would pump on the up stroke and down stroke, (like 8 regular pump cylinders.) When pumping at a high rate the front of the engine would bounce up and down. There was not a fire truck in the area that had the pumping capacity of Stoughton’s Ahrens Fox.
The Stoughton Fire Dept. was called to Fall River when a large rubber plant caught fire. Deputy Chief Smith and Lt. Charles Wade Sr. stayed in Fall River pumping water on the fire for three days.” - Charles L. Wade

Archivist’s Report - New Acquisitions:
-Four nicely framed historical prints of local buildings (commissioned by the Randolph Savings Bank): Swan’s Tavern, Lucius Clapp Memorial, Mary Baker Eddy House, and the Stoughton Railroad Station from Kimberly Sheehy.
We all took part in the moving of the furniture to make way for the Abraham Lincoln model and putting up the Christmas wreaths and tree. Ruthie Fitzpatrick continued to help catalogue materials. Jo Obelsky has made entries into our Past Perfect Program and is transcribing and editing the Diary of Erastus Smith. –Richard Fitzpatrick
Curator’s Report New Acquisitions – a volunteer fireman’s muster badge from July 3, 1908, donated by George Smith. The muster was in Stoughton, apparently as part of Old Home Week. This particular badge was for a representative from the Arlington, MA fire department. -Brian Daley
Clothing Curator’s Report: We have moved our manikins attired in Stoughton Grenadiers-related garb to the Piece Room in order to clear space for the Abraham Lincoln exhibit. We also patched the fireman’s muster medal-ribbon, mentioned in the Curator’s Report above. -Janet Clough
Contributions
Chris Peduto gave donations in memory of Teresa Camara and Mary Kelleher. Other memorial donations for Mary Kelleher came from Evelyn Callanan, Joe and Jeanne DeVito, Catherine McCann, Louise Widberg, Vasco and Dolores Rodrigues, Anne Calcaterra, Murphy Coal, Maria Jardin, Michael Sheehan, Ellin Smith, C. Carolina Howland, Dwight Mac Kerron, Richard and Ruth Fitzpatrick, and Thomas and Kathryn Kelleher Jane DeVito made a donation in honor of her father, Joe Devito’s 89th birthday. Joe and Jeanne DeVito made a donation in honor of Dwight Mac Kerron’s 70th birthday. Patricia and David Carter made a donation in memory of Adeline Carter. Correction: Bonnie Jean Molin made a contribution for the Glover House documentation. She was misidentified as Betty Jean in the last newsletter.
Membership
New members: James Ready, Elaine and Peter Leahy, Andrew Mac Kerron/Nellie Labant, and Charles Walsh.

Membership dues for 2016 are now due. Consider giving a membership as a Holiday present and/or becoming a Life member: $200 for an individual, or $300 for a family, including children up to age 21.
Stoughton Historical Society, Box 542, Stoughton, MA 02072
Name Street
Town/city State Zip
Email address Individual______15.00 Family______25.00
Lifetime-individual_____$200 Lifetime-family________$300
Stoughton Historical Society
Box 542
Stoughton, MA 02072