Stoughton Historical Society Newsletter Online Edition
VOLUME XLVIII NO. 1 JULY-AUG-SEPT – 2018
Upcoming Events
September 13, 7:00 pm “King Phillip’s war, Daniel Gookin, and the Ponkapoag Indians” Sharon Historical Society 16 High St., Sharon, MA. This is not a Stoughton Historical society event, but President Dwight MacKerron will present a program of images and commentary on New England’s bloodiest war. Daniel Gookin was a friend of the Ponkapoag Indians and managed to get them off Deer Island to a compound on Brush Hill, where the living conditions were considerably better. Gookin believed that once “friendly” Indians like the Ponkapoags were permitted to join the side of the English, rapid progress was made to defeat Phillip. The speaking fee for this program will go directly to the Stoughton Historical Society.
September 17, 6:00 P. M. Harvest Dinner and Historical Slide Presentation at the Cedar Hill Grill – 1137 Park St. Please reserve your dinner by filling out the form at the end of the Newsletter. We will see computer projected images of the Society’s activities in the past year, as well as images relating to WWI, which was producing heavy American casualties 100 years ago, even as the War was nearing its end. In the summer of 1918, Stoughton had extensive War Gardens in several large fields, which are now filled with houses or stores, including those at the corner of Central and Washington Sts and Billy White’s field, diagonally across from Andy’s Market at the corner of Plain and Morton Sts. If you need transportation to and from the event, please let us know and we will try to match you up with other folks who will be attending.
October 14, 2:00 P. M. Fashion Show “Party Time” at the Lucius Clapp building, 6 Park St. We will be displaying on manikins and live models the apparel worn by men and women from the early dates in our collection. If you have a vintage outfit to wear, please come to our party in it. We’d love to have you be a colorful and educated audience.
President’s Report
On June 18, we held our Officer Installation Dinner at the Cedar Hill Grill. We presented the John Flynn Award to Zachary Mandosa for his work transcribing the diaries of William Holmes and Erastus Smith. Jahmare White received a second place award for his study of the Tilden and Waldo diaries and beginning a transcription of the Michael Sullivan WWI diary, which he is continuing.
Our Power Point presentation at the dinner, “Stoughton’s First Roads” included some of the following pieces of information: “There was no Sharon, Stoughton, or Canton in the 1600’s, just the Dorchester “New Grant.” The New Grant was a large, flat triangle, which stretched from the “Blew Hills” all the way to Rhode Island, bounded (roughly) on the north by the Neponset River and on the South (exactly) by the Old Colony line, which separated Mass Bay Colony from Plymouth Colony. This same county line now separates Stoughton and Sharon from Easton and runs through the center of Ames Pond.
Boundaries: The Colony Line, Angle Tree, and Wading River Agreement: In 1639, the “Old Colony Line” was established by the two committees’ survey teams (date fixed and recorded in 1644). The line as it approached Rhode Island was found to be off course, and at a large pine, “the angle tree,” the line was changed and directed up to the point in Rhode Island where it was supposed to intersect. That angle remains to this day. This line, which is still the boundary between Stoughton/Sharon and Easton, separated Plymouth Colony to the South from Massachusetts Bay Colony to the North and was later used in negotiations at Wading River between the Wampanoag and Massachusetts Indians to determine their own respective boundaries. They decided to use “the white man’s line.”
Which is Stoughton’s Oldest Road? Or which Indian Path became an English road first? Bay Road is the top contender, since it is likely that John’s Winthrop’s Boston in its communications with Taunton, founded in 1639, made this well-known Indian path a road before settlers in Dorchester came through what is now Milton and Canton to cut cedar trees in the Dorchester Swamp via Pleasant St in Canton and Pearl, Sumner, and Cedar Streets in Stoughton. A third contender is York St. in Canton and Page St. in Stoughton, formerly called Pigwacket Road. It runs close to the old Braintree line, which was surveyed by Roger Billings and others in 1670. If it were closer to the coast, it might have been a route from Boston-Dorchester in the Mass. Bay Colony to the Plymouth Colony of William Bradford and Myles Standish.
Visible signs of the Roger Billings line in 2018: All of the range lines in the Map of the 25 Divisions ca.1726 run parallel to the “Braintree Line.” These boundary lines, which are now roughly North 30 degrees west can be seen in various roads and property lines throughout Stoughton. Part of West St. and Park-Prospect Streets are along these old range lines. Consult the Map of the 25 Divisions, on sale at our Society for $15 to see all the 36 range lines, half a mile apart, which stretch from Braintree to the Rhode Island border.
Later in June we had visits from 4th grade students from the Dawe, Gibbons, and South Schools. We had on display a large (three tables worth) map of the Town, which shows each building, and the students enjoyed finding their houses and putting their initials beside them. It was gratifying to see the students from the respective schools gather in respective corners of the map where the three different schools are located. The students were very well-behaved and appreciative of what they saw. Kenneth Kalen, a teacher at the Gibbons School entertained us all by playing one of our pump organs. Each group of students were accompanied by a goodly number of teachers and parent-chaperones, and all were given copies of our most recent newsletter.
Our building was adorned in bunting for the 4th of July, and we were represented in the parade by Bob Benson’s woody wagon. Bob tells us that it is a 1925 Ford Model T Station Wagon. The wood body is original and was made by Martin & Parry of Boston. It has a 25 horsepower 4cylinder motor and has been a regular in Stoughton parades since 1964. In its 93 years it has traveled around New England including a couple of trips up Mount Wachusett. Back in the day, Lennie, “Skunk/Buffalo Bill” Whitten rode in this wagon for 4th of July parades. This year, Bob drove and Dave Lambert rode shotgun, to honor Howard Hansen, who rode in that spot last year. Linda Woodward and her grand-daughter Sophia carried our banner, accompanied by John Flynn Award winner Zachary Mandosa. Rick Woodward wheeled about on his high-wheel bike. We had more people visit the Society after the Parade than ever before, thanks in part to a mention on Facebook and the urging of parade commentator and master of ceremonies, Mark Snyder.
Bubble Day: This event, now in its fourth year, took place on our front lawn on August 21. We had an enthusiastic group of more than thirty children, parents, and grandparents out there, blowing huge or tiny bubbles or just observing. I was most impressed by a young lady, who had visited the Society during one of the elementary school visits, who brought along her grandparents, who were visiting from the Azores. She served as translator in their tour of the Society, and also blew some mean bubbles! Rick and Linda Woodward, Ruthie and Richard Fitzpatrick, and Janet Clough were instrumental in planning and bringing the supplies for “Bubble Day”
Snippets of Stoughton’s history uncovered or rediscovered in some of our summer interactions at the Society: In searching through the dusty files, I found past correspondence from one of our long-time members, Richard Gerrish, in which he passed along information on one of his ancestors, former West St farmer and shoe factory operative Jefferson Jones. His house and barn were located near the current Gibson way and on the property formerly owned by the Williams family. We have also determined that John Flynn’s reference to “Mother Jones corner” the 90 degree turn on West St. was derived from this Jones family. Many years ago, a member of the family from two generations earlier had recalled to Richard that the Jones family helped build a bridge across Ames Pond, before the current causeway was built but it was “further up West St.” That “bridge” would either be the extensions of land that run out at the south end of the former Edward McNamara farm or the even larger extensions, which cross the pond near the town well at the end of King St., west of the Charles McNamara farm land. That one looks much more like a roadway than the one further south. We are still searching for any documentation regarding Robert Porter’s building of the current causeway, the extension of West St. to Highland Street circa 1820.
Janet Clough noticed an entry in our Past Perfect cataloguing software for a picture of a trolley car at Soule’s Pond in North Stoughton. We found the picture in the Elsie Simmons box of materials, one that had been catalogued many years ago, but one that none of our current crew had ever explored. The trolley tracks were fairly close to the pond, and there were other pictures of people skating on the pond in the winter. We could not find Soule’s Pond identified on any maps, but after studying the pictures, old topo maps, and a Google map, John Carabatsos concluded that it was part of a wetland complex, now essentially absorbed by the cloverleaf entrances and exits for Rt. 24 in North Stoughton. As it turns out, Ryan Powers has done some metal-detecting in that area. Many of us knew that someone had fashioned a complex of year-round shelters made out of tarps in one of the cloverleafs, but we had not realized that the core of the shelter consisted of the remnants of a home from an earlier period, from which a large hearth and chimney remain. Ryan has posted pictures of the remnants of that house on Facebook. We have not yet been able to connect a name with that house. Does anyone have any relevant information on this house, Elsie Simmons, or Soule Pond?
While inspecting the contents of some well-sealed heavy plastic tubes near the curator’s desk, we found three very well-preserved, beautiful, dark-blue with gold lettering flag/banners honoring the 200th Anniversary of the Town. It is amazing that the colors have remained so sharp after almost 100 years of storage. One of our visitors, on the 4th, James Marathas, when he saw our colorful old/new banner honoring the 200th Anniversary of the Town, returned to his nearby home and brought us back a fragment of a poster with a picture of a comely, but unidentified, female who may have been a featured performer in the celebration of the 200th. Most of the commentary on the poster is missing, which adds to the mystery.
Mr. Robert Manchester visited the Society seeking information on his ancestor Revolutionary War vet and Stoughton resident Ebenezer Wood. We found his house listed on our Newton Talbot Map of Stoughton’s Old Houses, which pre-dates the map put together for the Town’s 250th. According to Talbot’s information, Wood built his house in 1768. It was later the home of Frank Atherton at 646 Central Street. I showed Mr. Manchester the entry in Mass Soldiers and Sailor of the Revolutionary War and he also bought a copy of the Ezra Tilden diary, which includes Tilden’s summer at Fort Ticonderoga. Ebenezer Wood was not listed in any of the available records as having gone to Ticonderoga, but Mr Manchester believed that he had. He also owns a powder-horn, once owned by Ebenezer Wood, which he says that he will donate to the Society in the future.
At the end of August we had visitors from California, members of the Jordan family, trying to track down one ancestor, Solomon Jordan. He had been listed as serving in a Mass. company in the Revolutionary War, but spent most of his life in Maine. Maine was part of Massachusetts, until it became a state with all the complications caused by the Missouri Compromise, when Maine was admitted as a free state and Missouri came in as a slave state. We had no records of a Solomon Jordan in Stoughton, but he may have been related to Jonathan and other Jordans, who lived on Bay Road in the wedge of land on the west side of Bay Road that remained Stoughton until after the Civil War. After several hours of shared research, we directed the Jordans to the Dry Pond Cemetery, where two of their ancestors are buried. From there, they were planning to drive North to track down Solomon’s supposed residency in Gray, Maine. They were able to get commentary on that place from Janet Clough who has been there many times.
On the same day, we had a visit from Dr James Rothwell of Sharon, who was searching for a possible ancestor Benjamin Smith, who lived near Ponkapoag. If James can link him to Taunton Smiths, he will be able to qualify as a Mayflower descendant. James did not find Benjamin Smith, but did find two others that he believes are in the family, living very close to the aforementioned Jordans up on the same side of Bay Road during the same period. James joined our Society and spent subsequent hours going through our records of Ponkapoag Plantation and the Proprietors, which were copied by Past President Newton Talbot more than one hundred years ago. In this leather-bound, somewhat stained book with fading ink, one can get more specific information on the size of the lots in the Dorchester Purchase, later the Dorchester South Precinct, and later Old Stoughton, than is available on the Map of the Twenty-Five Divisions. The latter shows the number of Proprietors who own lots within a much larger section of a range, but will not give the number of acres in each of the individual lots, whereas the entries in the records Talbot copied do give specific lot sizes. James Rothwell is also related to Stoughton’s first minister Rev. Joseph Morse, who had an up-and-down history in his 20 plus years at the First Parish (now in Canton), almost all of which came before Stoughton became a Town, but was still a precinct of Dorchester and later an independent precinct. James discovered that Talbot’s copied document also contains many pages of the ministerial report, which Morse had submitted to the Town of Dorchester during his first years at the Church. Morse was eventually voted out of the ministry and replaced by the legendary Rev. Samuel Dunbar. Morse remained in the area and crossed swords several times with the new minister over why he was not still attending church and why he was not paying the ministerial tax. Rev. Morse had had earlier run-ins with Stoughton’s first resident, Isaac Stearns, who had challenged Morse over points of church doctrine. Daniel T.V. Huntoon wrote a long chapter on Joseph Morse, “The First Minister,” an excerpt of which can be found on our website. At least one historian has surmised that some of Rev. Morse’s troubles in the parish were caused by his close relationship with the Ponkapoag Indians, who considered him a friend and gave him 20 acres of land.
The incidents mentioned above give a flavor of how our time at the Historical Society proves productive and fulfilling. They also demonstrate how the hard work put in by our earlier officers and scholars like Newton Talbot continue to contribute to what we know and what we have to share with others. Visitors come in with questions, but also often with their own pieces of information to contribute, and as we attempt to locate helpful information for them, we learn, or revisit meaningful parts of our history. It was a good summer for such visits at the Society.
This year’s Community Calendar will feature Historic pictures of Glen Echo and include commentary written by your President. Copies should be available by the time of our Harvest Dinner, and we will have them there. They will also be available at the Historical Society, the Library, and Town Hall.
Correction: the Stoughton WWI soldier killed in October, 1918, was Fred Larson not Roy Larson. Thank you to John Fernandes for catching that error.
The refurbished windows, doors, and new storms windows are almost completed at the Lucius Clapp Memorial. The very attractive dark-green new front doors have an automatic door opener. Alas. we are experiencing peeling paint in the ceilings in several spots, apparently the results of some leaks in the relatively new roof and gutter system or through the bricks, which definitely need to be repointed. Paul Giffune saw to it that all the lights in the Historical Society were replaced, which is especially noticeable in our meeting room, the Jones room, whose chandeliers now shine forth brightly. Rick and Linda Woodward have continued their yeoman’s service of tending the grounds outside the Lucius Clapp Memorial, even on some of this summer’s hottest and most humid days.
We are still in the process of redesigning our website at stoughtonhistory.com. The content will be the same, plus whatever additions we make in the next few months, but the format will have a completely new look. The Home page will have a picture of the Lucius Clapp Memorial with its new sandstone-colored trim and new green front doors, both of which, according to those who studied the early photographs and the layered paint samples, replicate how the building looked when it was built. It will take more time and effort to import the content on our old page into the new one.
We now have in our possession the digital copy of movies of two parades in Stoughton in the 1950’s and/or 1960’s. The money to convert them came from a Community Council Grant, which will also contribute towards a program that we will create from these movies and possibly other Stoughton parades. There are many boy scouts, girl scouts, and young men carrying rifles in these parades. Someone recently posted on Facebook several images involving Girl Scouts who were at Camp Waluhiyo, which was built about the time of the parades near CW Welch pond in what is now the Bird St. Conservation Area. It is likely that Camp Waluhiyo deserves its own program, but we may be able to use some of the parade images in such a program. Please let us know if you have pictures, documents, or just memories of the days when the Girl Scouts would go to the camp on the weekends for overnight stays.
New addresses and monetary tributes: We received a call from old friend and Historical Society Life Member Wayne Legge. He is recently widowed and gave us a new address where to send the newsletters. It will also work for any of you who would like to get in touch: 1009 Old Country Club Rd. NW, Roanoke, VA 24017.
Cynthia Walsh gave a donation to honor Howard Hansen’s many years of service to the Town of Stoughton and to the Stoughton Historical Society. Howard has moved closer to home and can be visited or receive mail at Life Care Center of West Bridgewater, 765 West Center Street, Rm # 120, West Bridgewater, MA. 02379. I know that he would greatly appreciate a visit or a card. Chris Peduto made a donation in honor of Norma Sidebottom.
Michael and Mary DeVito made a donation in honor of Joe and Jeanne DeVito’s 65th wedding anniversary!
Archivist’s Report – We received several boxes of documents, pictures, and booklets from the files of the Stoughton Redevelopment Authority via Lou Gitto. There were three boxes of old records from the Stoughton Urban Renewal Authority (ca.1965). When finally sorted, catalogued and filed they now fit neatly into two storage boxes. These files are the result of several studies that were made during the middle Nineteen-sixties and cover a large number of structures in and about the town square. In many cases there are duplicate studies made by different engineering organizations. Most of the studies contain front and side view photographs of the properties and may also contain rudimentary floor plans. Lists of the contents of both file boxes have been developed and a copy placed in the top of each box. The list indicates if the individual studies include a picture. John Carabatsos, is in the process of scanning the photographs.
We acquired more than a half-dozen enlargements of historical pictures of the Freeman St. Fire Station from Chief Michael Laracy. We had lent our small originals to the Fire Dept for one of their celebrations, and they returned the favor by letting us hold the blown-up, posterboard size copies, which they had produced from them.
We received some very nice items from the estate of Norma A. Sullivan, brought in by her sister Joan Sullivan. Norma was a member of the Stoughton High School Class of 1958 and a life member of the Stoughton Historical Society. In addition to Class of 1958 material there were a couple of college essays on early Stoughton, including an invaluable essay on Stoughton in the Revolutionary War and several other collections. This material has been sorted, but not fully catalogued.
We received some Stoughton High School Class of 1940 Pictures, Yearbook, and Re-union material from Katherine Ceruti of Norridgewood , ME.
Don Interrante donated several old newspapers, some from the 1920’s with a series of articles on the growth of radio during that period.
A 1967 wallet size calendar, advertising Crevola’s Men s Store, was donated by Constance Di Russo.
I helped remove parts of the toy display, and repaired the window shade in the Pierce Room front window, which had been in inoperative condition after the window work. I also received and restocked a large order of supplies and assisted with Revolutionary War period research on the Jordan Family. Ruthie Fitzpatrick has helped to catalogue materials, and is in the process of cleaning cases and changing displays in both the Pierce and Clapp rooms with the help of Janet, Evelyn and Brian. – – Richard Fitzpatrick
Curator’s Report
Acquisitions: A scale used for weighing vegetables in the Radvilas market in front of 128 Morton St. The town inpector’s seal on the back is dated 1940, from Diane Radvilas. Betty Maraglia gave us a piccolo. She had seen a picture of her grandfather and others playing them for St. Mary’s in 1917. We could not find the book with the picture, but John Carabatsos remembered having posted it in the Stoughton Time Machine and found it -Brian Daley
Clothing Curator’s Report
The footware in our collection have all been beautifully polished and shined by a small group of volunteers. Linda Woodward shared the task with three of her grandchildren: Sophia, Emelyn and Nathan. The crew worked on two Tuesdays. We were pleased to have these eager and enthusiastic young people with us, and it has been a long time since our shoes have looked so good.
Donations to our collection recently have included several felt sports emblems from Stoughton High School teams. Also donated is a very old child-size shoe, which has a very different construction and support foundation. This was donated by Richard Fitzpatrick. From Joan Sullivan: a small Massachusetts State Flag with gold fringe which was given to Vincent Sullivan by Eleanor Roosevelt at the time that she was in Stoughton campaigning for F.D.R -Janet Clough
Membership
New members: John Faye, Forrest and Janice Lindwall, Sharon Fradkin, John and Kathy Sidebottom, Andrew Mac Kerron, Richard and Cathleen Fitzgerald, Sophia Woodward, Kerima Lewis, Diane Radvilas, Dr. James Rothwell.