Stoughton Historical Society Newsletter Online Edition
VOLUME XLIX NO. 3 APR-MAY-JUNE – 2020
Upcoming Events
Given what it happening with the Coronavirus, it is difficult to schedule our
next events. We will put out another Newsletter by August and let you know
where we are. We will use Facebook and email messages to communicate as
much as possible. I do know that we will have sunflower starts to be
distributed, however we can manage, around the second week in June. Given
our loyal, late, member, Evelyn Callanan’s love of sunflowers and so many
other growing things, we will add the proceeds from the sunflower sales to
her Memorial Fund. The grounds of the Society look beautiful because of the
work of Linda and Rick Woodward, who, in Evelyn’s footsteps, have planted
beautiful flowers, groomed the beds, and put out twenty flags to celebrate
Memorial Day!
Please pay your dues for 2020, if you have not yet done so.
President’s Report
The last ten historical signs, sponsored by the Historical Commission and financed by the Community Preservation Act have been completed and eight have been installed. Most of them are in locations, which could be combined with a walk with your children or grandchildren. There is considerable historical content on the signs, references to nearby ponds, roads, stone walls and sometimes, maps. There are three signs at Capen- Reynolds and the grounds are conducive to walking around the property. Near the end of Southworth Court, one may park on the left, near the sign and walk in to the pond and also head East along the dirt road, which takes one to the rear of the large Lipsky property, mentioned recently in the newsletter as the site of the War Gardens in 1918. After one enters the large field, one can continue walking East out toward Canton Street or South to the gravel extension of Simpson St. The signs at the right hand entrance to the Water Works and in McGarvey Park across from Swan’s Tavern are less amenable to extended walks, but both provide nice grounds on which one can take a short stroll and there are benches at McGarvey Park. The signs at Lessa Playground, and Mother Jones Corner on West St. are both at entrances to the extensive trails of the Bird St Conservation Area. The two signs at Glen Echo will not be installed until the landscaping and road work is completed, but the area is still open and remains a great place to take hikes out in nature. All of these places are obviously rich in history, but contain considerable natural beauty to be appreciated as well. As for the ten earlier signs, the ones on the causeway at Ames Pond and at the entrance to the swimming area have built-in recreational potential. On Mill St. one can walk into the woods and see the stone work where the factory stood, but care should be taken to avoid the poison ivy. The signs at Pearl St. Cemetery, Town Hall, the Universalist Church, and at the Lucius Clapp Memorial can be done in one simple walking tour along sidewalks, although there are major streets to cross. There are two signs near the Bird St. entrance to the Conservation Area, one at the entrance and another 100 yards in at the site of the original Bird farm house.
I urge you to get out and share Stoughton’s history and its natural beauty with your family!
Our celebrations of Stoughton’s 50th Earth Day during the week of April 18-25 were quashed by the Coronavirus outbreak. Kathleen Sylvester has posted a number of tributes and reminiscences on the Facebook page Stoughton Earth Day 2020. It turns out that having families housebound has encouraged more people to go out and walk in nature, and thereby appreciate the resources that the Town has acquired and preserved for them. Dan Mark has his program on Harris Pond ready to go, and we eagerly await the time when it can be presented. We have received a grant from the Cultural Council for Earth Day programs and publications and we will still endeavor to put that to good use.
Stoughton’s glacial boulders and stone walls.
Stoughton has several hundred miles of ancient stone walls still standing around us, and scores of glacial boulders, which predate the stone walls by thousands of years. I hope that you and your family can get outside to explore some of our old walls and boulders.
58,000 years ago the most recent glaciation began and 21,000 years ago it reached its furthest Southern extent, about as far South as Cape Cod, Long Island and Wisconsin in the Mid-West, which is why it is called the Wisconsin Glacier. Here in New England, we may refer to it as the “Cape Cod Glacier.” For a long period of time, the climate was cooler, for whatever reasons, and more snow would fall each winter than would melt in the summer; the snow piled up and piled up, and eventually the weight of the accumulated snow, compacted the mass to ice on the bottom and it expanded.. My son, Andrew, the Earth Science major, says to think of it as sand being poured and poured and poured on an area. But it was snow, not sand and the base was compacted into ice, which “flowed” in a south- southeasterly direction in Stoughton. The glacier, which was possibly a mile high in places, compressed the land, ground it down and moved many rocks as it made its way southward. All the land south of the Sharon-Stoughton-Easton highlands is now flat, and covered with glacial outwash. Cape Cod is almost all sand and its presence stands as a reminder of the end of the glacier, where all that sand was deposited. The glacier broke off and “moved” pieces of rock from further north, and deposited them here, a few as large as our biggest houses. Millions of smaller rocks were also deposited in our soil. So much of the earth’s water was frozen in the glaciers, that our dry land extended out many miles into the Atlantic Ocean.
10,000 years ago the ice had receded and the first grasslands, and then forests were growing back.
Vegetation migrated northward, and the hardiest plants thrived. Our topsoil is relatively thin, compared
to that of the mid-west, because all the organic material in our soils is only what has been deposited, since
the Cape Cod glacier.
Humans came back to New England as nomadic wanderers, first along the coast, or actually what is now the ocean, since miles of the ocean off shore was dry land. They hunted animals, including wooly mammoths and speared fish or caught them in weirs. Shellfish along the coast were a major source of food, and large shell middens (refuse piles) from that period testify to many centuries of their being harvested. Over time, these Native Americans began to grow crops, which limited their wandering. They grew corn, which came, relatively late, from the American Southwest and Mexico, beans, and squash. They used stone implements, regularly burned the forest for a variety of reasons, and often spent the growing season in one place, like Trout Brook Meadow in Stoughton and winter elsewhere, often closer to the ocean.
In the 1500’s and 1600, Europeans began to visit the New England coast. They traded with the Indians and brought guns, germs, and steel, including the flu and smallpox. Europeans had built up some resistance because of thousands of years of their own “Black Plagues,” which were often connected to their domesticated animals, especially pigs.
In 1620, the Pilgrims missed Virginia by 500 miles and settled in Plymouth, which was essentially unoccupied because the tribe of Indians which had lived there had died from “the flu.” In 1630, the Puritans founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, eventually centered in Boston. Over time, Mass Bay Colony expanded inland coming as far south as Stoughton. The Plymouth Colony expanded northward as far as Easton. The Town and County line between Easton (Bristol County) and Stoughton (Norfolk County) was the dividing line between Mass. Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony.
Europeans cleared the land and eventually built stone walls to mark their boundaries. Native Americans must have moved rocks on a small scale for their gardens, but they had no draft animals such as oxen and horses, which the English settlers used to move large rocks to the boundaries of their lots. If there were boulders too large to move in the middle of a pasture or garden, often rocks were piled onto the boulder or the walls were built to include the boulders or ledges. Grass could not grow where there was a rock, so every rock removed meant another few square inches or feet where a useful crop could be grown to feed themselves or their animals. The land had a seemingly limitless supply of stones in it , as it could be “cleared once, but the frost would push more stones to the surface, each year. As a result, the colonists had to spend most of their days, years, and lives, clearing land, building walls, growing crops and tending a few cows and pigs.
In Stoughton’s Conservation lands at Bird St. and Glen Echo, you will find miles of stone walls and in some cases, large individual rocks with stones still piled on them. These lands are a combination of stone ledges of bedrock, wetlands, and area of higher ground where settlers could grow their crops. The stoniest land was the last purchased, the last cleared and the first abandoned, which is one explanation for the lands that we have been able to preserve. Most of the best farm-land soon became the most populated and the first to have more houses and stores built on it, and often the first to have its stone walls removed.
Some of Stoughton’s rocks have been quarried/harvested; early on it was done on a small scale to provide the foundations for many of the early homes. Later, there were larger scale quarrying operations not far from Lessa Playground, from which the stones were harvested by Myron Gilbert to construct the Stoughton Train Station. Sometimes individual boulders were harvested, which explains some of the holes in the land, the deeper ones being filed with water most of the year. Some say that Stoughton is better for crowing rocks than for growing crops, which is only one reason that our local farms are becoming a thing of the past.
Some of the glacially deposited rocks are so large that it is difficult to tell whether or not they are an integral part of bedrock beneath. One of the largest such boulders I know of is at the end of Mary’s Way, which is off Pratts Court. To my eye, it originally was one huge rock, but one that the glacier moved, deposited there, and over time it has broken into more separate, but still large pieces “Goat’s Rock” at the Bird St. Conservation Area may be another such large deposit.
As some of you have heard more than once, my original interest in local history grew out of my fascination with the old walls and foundations in our woods and my desire to find who expended all that labor to build such a wall. Near the Roy Robinson Loop off Palisades circle there are clear examples of bedrock stone ledges, glacial boulders, some of which have been moved to sit on these ledges, and many stone walls, which run from the ledges, down into the wetlands and back up to higher ground on the other side. It seems that most of the stonewalls in his area were build by Timothy Gay or Jefferson Jones, whose farmhouses were almost a mile to the Northeast, at the current Gibbons and Roddy houses, but whose pasture and farm land extended down to the Easton line, and they built the walls to clear it and contain it.
We have received more copies of Jim Barber’s October Stories, as well as his new book, September Stories. We already had November Stories in stock. If you would like to read some entertaining stories from Barber’s Stoughton childhood to help you through these days of quarantine and social distancing, any of these books can be mailed to you. Send a check for $13 per book and $3 for postage (which should cover up to three books) to Stoughton Historical Society, Box 542, Stoughton MA 02072, and we will send them along.
Curator Richard Pratt and Archivist Richard Fitzpatrick have been inspired to find more information on Joseph M. Page and his family. We are blessed with these two volunteers, who care enough to go extra miles, following up on the materials we find, all triggered by the donation by Barbara Lacivita of several nondescript old tools from a home on Page St., less than a year ago. Upon reading the following with as much care as you can muster, you will see how each piece supplies information supplementing the other. The first focuses on the impressive accomplishments of Stoughton boy Joe Page, who Richard Fitzpatrick concludes is Stoughton’s Forrest Gump. The second piece reflects an immense amount of independent research by Richard Pratt, concerning many other Pages and how they left their mark in Stoughton.
In my own tribute to Page St., I explored the site if the old North Stoughton Railroad Station, which was situated at the Junction of Old Page Street and the Railroad tracks. The site is now 50 yards from the current Page St. Old Page St is still easily discernible because it was paved when it was abandoned, after the construction of Route 24. Nevertheless, I had difficulty locating a footprint that I could define with certainty as the specific site of the old station.
More on the Life of Joseph M. Page from Richard Fitzpatrick:
Dwight has managed to acquire from Barbara Lacivita, a complete copy of JMP’s reminiscences (65 pages). Joseph Milner Wightman Page, 1845-1938, was born in North Stoughton, MA May 20, 1845 the 5th and youngest child of: Elisha Page, 1814-1848 & Almira Ann Maria (Wightman) Page, 1808-1898. M. 31 Aug 1834, Stoughton, MA. Joseph was the grandson of William Page, 1793-1852 & Esther N. Spear, 1794-1850. M. 26 Apr 1812, Stoughton, Norfolk County, MA. Joseph was the great, grandson of Charles Page, 1750-1831 & Mary Wales, 1761-1806. M. 11 Sep 1778, Stoughton, MA Charles Page, fought in the Revolutionary war and is interred in Pearl St. Cemetery. Joseph’s great, great grandparents were Thomas Page 1720-1786 & Sarah Robbins, 1722-1805. M. 8 Sep 1741 Walpole, MA. And is interred in Terrace Hill Cemetery, Walpole, MA.
Joseph’s mother’s parents were James P. Wrightman and Martha (Stokes) Wrightman, who were born
in England. His mother had a brother Joseph Milner Wightman after whom Joe was named. Mr Wightman
was the seventeenth Mayor of Boston 1861-1863 and the first Democratic Mayor elected in the City
of Boston.
In Chap. 14 of his reminiscences Joseph M. Page writes: “A mile from my boyhood home was a lake of beautiful spring water, a half a mile wide and a mile long. As I grew up I was a constant visitor to the lake, and, by the time I was ten years old, I was called an expert swimmer.” (Since he grew up on Page Street, could this lake be anything other than Glen Echo?) By the time Joe was sixteen, the Civil War had started and without saying anything to his mother he enlisted in the 12th Massachusetts Infantry. His mother objected and using the influence of her brother then mayor of Boston he was discharged. At seventeen he enlisted again, this time in the 35th Massachusetts Regt. (the Regiment in which our diarist Edward Waldo served and eventually perished) with Fletcher Webster, son of Daniel Webster, being Colonel. His mother again secured his discharge. In the meantime his older brother had gone west to Greenville, IL to live with his uncle Dana White who was married to his mother’s sister. Joseph, soon decided to go west as well, and after six months or so working in St. Louis, MO, he enlisted again, this time in the 40th Missouri Infantry, Company F. He was soon ordered to northwest MO where they are chasing the guerillas, Jesse James, Price, and Mosby who were causing trouble.
After his discharge in August, 1865 in St. Louis, MO he went home. Then on June 6, 1866, not knowing anyone then living there he went to Jerseyville, IL, where he would spend the rest of his life, and hired himself out as a carpenter.
“In 1872 a Dr. Barry, who was then an Alderman of Jerseyville, came to the place I was working and told me I had been made Chief of Police by the Mayor. Asking why? He told me because I didn’t drink, and wasn’t afraid to stand up to people and speak my mind. There were at that time 32 saloons in Jerseyville. In 1885 he was appointed to Master in Chancery in the circuit court of IL. He was re-appointed to that position every two years for the rest of his life. He out-lived two of the circuit court judges in charge.
In 1887 he was elected Mayor of Jerseyville, at a time when the city had no City Hall, no public water supply and no electric lighting. He worked hard get the first artesian well for the city, raised $3,000 to have a City Hall constructed. and, since he was a carpenter, he supervised the construction. His was the first home to have electricity, after he had fought hard to have the town electrified. He was elected and served five terms as Mayor. In 1897 he and several other men secured a franchise to form a telephone company, promising residents a telephone service for $1.50/ month and businesses at $2.00/ month. He was named president of the company and held the position until his death in 1938.
He was appointed to the Illinois Highway Board and secured money from the state legislature for a bridge across the Illinois River, His request for $750.000 for the construction of the bridge was approved by unanimous vote, and named “Joe Page Bridge” in his honor. Joe Page was Stoughton’s own Forrest Gump”
Origin of Street Names – Page Street Part II by Richard Pratt
This is a continuation of our findings resulting from research into the Page family of Stoughton, with an emphasis on the direct ancestors of Joseph M. Page “Uncle Joe”, who was born in 1845, removed from Stoughton as a teenager and left his considerable mark on the state of Illinois. This research is separate from the information provided in Joseph’s 1937 autobiography THE REMINISCENCES OF UNCLE JOE PAGE, portions of which are also in this and the previous Newsletter.
In the last Newsletter we explored the origin of the Page family’s settlement in Stoughton following the 1778 marriage of Charles Page of Walpole to Mary Wales of Stoughton. Over the years, Charles Page was involved in numerous real estate transactions and is described in deeds as “yeoman” (a farmer who owns and works his own land). Records at the Norfolk County Registry of Deeds show that on March 13th, 1781 “in the fifth year of the Independence of the United States of America”, Charles Page, of Stoughton, yeoman, “remised released for a space of one year” 80 acres of land, “containing harding and reharding pasture” (harding grass is used for forage) in Stoughton unto Joseph Richards, Jr. of Stoughton, gentleman. A dwelling, barn & corn barn, specified livestock and farm equipment were also included. This land was on “a town way that leads to Bridgewater”. Ten days later Charles and Mary sold 8 acres of that land to Richards, containing the dwelling, barn & corn barn.
Of the many real estate transactions that Charles Page was involved with, there is one that involves more than meets the eye at first glance. In 1812 Charles Page, along with Samuel Talbot, Roger Sumner, Philip Reynolds, Elijah Atherton, Peter Adams, Samuel Tolman, Samuel Wales, Elijah Monk, John Atherton and Samuel Osgood, purchased a certain lot of land “lying & being near to & behind the meeting house in Stoughton for the purpose of erecting a stable for horses & carriages”. The seller was a Mr. William Austin. The purchase price: $5.83. Although $5.83 certainly went a lot further in 1812 than it does today, Mr. Austin may well have been a charitable person who wanted to contribute to the parish and the town, because a lot situated in the center of town was undoubtedly worth much more than $5.83 in 1812. Was Mr. Austin not in a financial position to construct the stable? Well, further reading of the deed indicates that Mr. Austin expected to receive a benefit that was much more than the negligible amount of the selling price. It stated that, while the purchasers and their heirs would hold the premises for their use & behoof forever, Mr. Austin reserved “for my own use all the manure which shall be made in said stables”.
As stated in the last Newsletter, Charles Page’s 1st wife, Hannah Withington, whom he married in June 1775, died in January 1778, leaving a 2 yr. old daughter named Becka. His 2nd wife, Mary Wales, whom he married in 1778, died in September 1806. She gave birth to 12 children, including 6 girls & 6 boys. Charles married his 3rd wife, Elizabeth Henry of Canton, in 1809. They had no children. Charles Page died intestate in June 1831 at the age of 81. His widow, Elizabeth, was appointed administrator of the estate. Real estate included 145 acres of land in Stoughton & Quincy, with buildings thereon, and a pew at the First Parish in Stoughton. Each of the heirs was to receive one ninth of the proceeds from the sale. The real estate was valued at $3,300. Elizabeth’s detailed accounting of the sale of hundreds of items of personal property, including farm animals, totaled $627.34. The horse sold for $67.00. A map of Stoughton sold for 37 cents. Charles Page and Mary Wales Page are buried in Pearl Street Cemetery.
One of the heirs was the oldest son, Charles Page Jr., who was adjudged a lunatic by the court at 34 yrs. old in 1815. Charles Sr. was appointed his guardian. Shortly after the death of Charles Sr., a new guardian was appointed upon complaint by the Town that Charles Jr. was a spendthrift, “who does by excessive drinking, and idleness, so spend lessen, and waste his estate”, and therefore endangered and exposed the Town of Stoughton to a charge or expense for his maintenance. How times have changed. Charles Jr. died in 1841 and is buried in Pearl Street Cemetery.
William Page, the 4th son of Charles Sr., born in 1793, was “Uncle Joe” Page’s grandfather. He married Esther Spear in 1812 and they had 12 children, 7 boys and 5 girls. In 1819 he purchased 33 acres, with buildings thereon, from Joseph Goldthwait and was involved in many real estate transactions during his lifetime, including a number of sales of his property to their children. Esther also inherited property in Stoughton from her parents.
When you research old deeds, you’ll see that the property descriptions can be quite interesting. A deed dated April 4, 1846 from William & Esther to their 2nd son, William Jr., involves a property that had been legally partitioned 3 years earlier. The legally-partitioned property line ran through part of the barn and the center of the house, with a pile of stones and the stump of a large apple tree used in the boundary description. The front door and entry, the center cellar stairs, and the doorway and “through fare” of the barn were to be used as tenants in common with the owners of the other part of the premises. Could this be Stoughton’s first condominium? Also, this deed describes the property as being “on the westerly side of the road called Page street”. This is the earliest use of the name Page Street that I have seen in a deed.
Esther Page died in June 1850 and William Page Sr. died intestate in April 1852, having previously sold off all of their real estate, with much of it going to their children. William Jr. was appointed Administrator of the estate with 13 listed as next of kin, including a grandson, Joseph M. Page (our “Uncle Joe”). After the $66.12 in Administrator’s expenses were allowed, the net proceeds to be distributed to the 13 heirs was $48.71. William Page & Esther Spear Page are buried in Maplewood Cemetery in North Stoughton.
As Uncle Joe relates in his autobiography, his father Elisha M. Page, who was William & Esther’s 1st child, died of tuberculosis at the early age of 34. He predeceased his parents when he died in April 1848. In his remembrance, Uncle Joe states that his father was one of the first, if not the first, chain store man, with stores in 6 locations: Stoughton, Easton, Avon, Randolph, Brighton and Bridgewater, MA. He also states that he erected his own shoe-shop, 40 ft. square and 2 stories, in which he made shoes and boots. In many of the real estate transactions in which he was a party, he is referred to as a Boot Manufacturer, as in an 1844 deed of land to Elisha from his parents. This land was located on the easterly side of the road between his parent’s home and Elisha’s “manufacturing shop”.
Research into Elisha’s business ventures reveals that they extended beyond eastern Massachusetts. A notice of the petition for Bankruptcy of Elisha M. Page of Stoughton, and of the late firms of Elisha Page & Company of Boston and New York, and of E. & C.G. Page at New York was published in Boston in January 1843. It’s likely that the financial “Panic of 1837”, which resulted in the major economic depression that lasted until the mid- 1840s, was responsible for the failure of the business ventures. The “E. & C.G. Page” represented the initials of Elisha and his brother, Cyrus G. Page. A notice of the dissolution of the Co-Partnership, by mutual consent and dated October 12, 1842, was published in the New York Herald. It stated that the business of the firm would be settled by C.G. Page.
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER
Partnership Dissolution Notice – 1842 Bankruptcy Notice – 1843
When is the last time you heard the phrase “sent up the river”? Some of our younger readers have probably never heard it. I think you need to be of a certain age to recognize the meaning. Unfortunately, it could have been applied to Cyrus G. Page. In August 1848, four months after the death of his brother, Elisha, a New York City court convicted him of “obtaining goods by false pretences”(as spelled) and sentenced him “to be imprisoned in the State Prison for two years”. The 1850 U.S. Census shows him residing in Ossining, NY, as of August 3rd, since 1848. After his release, he was pardoned on Nov. 12, 1852. Construction of “Sing Sing” prison in Ossining, 30 miles up the Hudson River from New York City, had been completed by October 1828.
Uncle Joe mentioned that his father, Elisha, was sick for 2 years before he died, which caused everything in the business to be neglected, and which left his widow, Almira Ann Maria (Wightman) Page, with no property whatsoever, but 5 children to raise. Yet, the 1850 U.S. Census, taken just 28 months after Elisha’s death, lists Almira heading a household with the 5 children, ages 5 – 13, and owning real estate worth $5,000!
Further investigation of various records reveals that Almira’s mother, Martha Wightman, was the one who rescued the home and the many parcels of land, estimated at 50+ acres, which Elisha & Almira had mortgaged while his health was failing. Martha purchased the mortgage on numerous properties held by a Mr. Littlefield of Boston and was the high bidder at a Sheriff’s sale to purchase the rights to redeem the judgments that were in favor of Elisha’s late business partners. On October 26, 1849 Martha Wightman of Boston “sometimes residing in Stoughton”, “in consideration of one dollar and of the love and affection I bear to towards my daughter Almira Ann Maria Page of Stoughton aforesaid widow”…all the lands, tenements and hereditaments in Stoughton which formerly belonged to Elisha Page late of said Stoughton. Martha later moved to Stoughton and lived with Almira. She died in 1881 at the age of 94.
Almira continued to live on the family farm on Page Street for many years and sold off various parcels of land
over the years, including parcels in 1853 which paid off two more mortgages. Some of the sold lots were part of a
12.4 acre development of lots between Page St. and Turnpike St. that was planned in 1853. The plan called for two
new private roads, which were never developed, though most of the sold lots were on either Page Street or Turnpike
Street. Almira moved to Boston late in life and was listed as residing on Dorchester Ave. in 1894. She died in
Boston on May 9, 1898, at the age of 89, and is buried with Elisha in Maplewood Cemetery.
Following the settlement of Charles and Mary Wales Page after the Revolutionary War, the
Page family in North Stoughton expanded its size and property holdings greatly during the first
half of the 19th century. U.S. Census data shows the number of Households headed with the surname Page and
the number of individuals in the household:
| Census | 1790 | 1800 | 1810 | 1820 | 1830 | 1840 | 1850 | 1860 | 1870 | 1880 | *1900 |
| Families | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| Individuals | 8 | 12 | 6 | 11 | 26 | 24 | 32 | 14 | 14 | 11 | 0 |
* Includes the census for Avon, which separated from Stoughton and was incorporated in 1888. By 1900, none of the children of Elisha and Almira Page were living in Stoughton or Avon. Joseph M. (Uncle Joe) Page and Elisha W. Page were living in Illinois, Annie M. Page (the child adopted by Almira who was mentioned in Uncle Joe’s book) was living in Dedham, and Elizabeth H. Page was an unmarried school teacher living in Boston. In the 1901 Town assessment, Miss E. H. Page was listed as the owner of a house, barn and 36 acres of land with a total valuation of $1,750. The annual tax was $35.00. Elizabeth, however, was still residing at the same Dorchester Ave. address as her late mother, Almira, when she died of pneumonia in March 1902. She also is buried in Maplewood Cemetery.
In May 1906, Elisha W. and Joseph M. Page of Illinois sold 5 parcels of land, including the property “known as the Page Estate” to Alice M. Hunt of Boston, wife of Bradford Hunt. The address of the property was 357 Page Street, which was the home from which the old tools had been recovered and recently donated to the Historical Society. Is it possible that one of those tools is listed among the hundreds of items detailed in the inventory of Charles’ estate?
By the 1900 census, it appears that there was no one living in Stoughton or Avon with the last name Page. Besides Uncle Joe and his brother, Elisha Wightman Page, who had both moved to Illinois, other grandchildren of the original Page settler had moved to California, Colorado, Kansas, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and other towns in Massachusetts. What does remain is the old road in North Stoughton and Avon named Page Street.
Archivists Report
Assisted Robert Rebello with research on Feb 11, most of what I found he already knew about.
Spent time cleaning out the new to us, Map drawers given to us by the Town Engineering Dept.
2/18 Brought the remaining maps from upstairs down and sorted and mended and started to arrange in and label the drawers. I have not yet finished. Some rearrangement with maps in the old/existing cabinet needs to take place.
2/25 Assisted with preparing the JANHFEBHMAR newsletter for mailing.
We received a 200th Anniversary Concert Poster for the Old Stoughton Musical Society, dated Nov. 7, 1986. Donated by Bonnie Molin. She also donated an old Balopticon postcard projector, which I reH wired before bringing it in.
Richard Pratt donated a Simon Chevrolet Ad circa 1962.
Dwight met with Katherine Carpenter of Raynham, to pick up a marriage certificate of Mr. & Mrs. Albert Whiting. Linda Weiler’s, Great, Grandparents
The last time I was in I spent most of time looking for George Belcher Family for an acquaintance of
Roger & Gail Hall.
Curator’s Report
We are continuing our project to examine our holdings of artifacts and log them into our inventory system. Acquisitions: In addition to old picture of the house at 304 Pearl Street, Michael Jakielaszek donated a number of old tools found at the property. -Richard Pratt
Clothing Curator’s Report
The Society has received from John Carle a set of shirt or collar studs. They have enamel top edges with brass tops. The set was made in Plainville MA . John also gave us three brass military buttons. Both of these items are a nice addition to our collection of period pieces. Some of my time at the Society has been spent in reviewing and updating the records for the Clothing Department. I have some of my paper records done, but I need to transfer this information to our computer. Hopefully I’ll be able to do this soon. -Janet Clough
Our condolences to the friends and family of our good and faithful member, Evelyn Callanan. We miss her! We have received donations in her memory from Rick and Linda Woodward, Susan Page, Robin Powers, Mary Shea, Carrie Sievers, Denise and David Peterson, Mitchell Elementary School Sunshine Fund, Cathleen and Richard Fitzgerald, Janet Clough, Eleanor Meserve, Barbara Bourgoine, Joe and Jeanne DeVito, Karen and Peter Banis, John Gunning, Carol and Derick Green, Brenda Plainte, Dennis Lyons, Dwight Mac Kerron and Joan Bryant.
In memory of Dolores Rodrigues: Carlos Vargas Insurance.
In Memory of Calvin Mac Kerron: Janet Clough, Dwight Mac Kerron and
Joan Bryant.
Membership
New members: Phil Doherty
Membership dues for 2020 are now past due. Thank you to those who have already sent them in. You might consider giving a membership as a present and/or becoming a Life member: $200 for an individual, or $300 for a family, including children up to age 21. This form may also be used for new memberships. Just mail it in!
Mail to:
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