VOLUME XLXIII NO. 1 OCT-NOV-DEC 2023
Upcoming Events
November 11- Veterans Day Parade – 10:00AM Pearl St Cemetery to Town Hall to Faxon Park
December 9, Holiday Parade and Open House at the Historical Society 4:00-7:00
December 17- Christmas Program for Families at the Historical Society 1:00-3:00pm. Refreshments will be available. Santa Claus will be present as well and young people of all ages will have the opportunity to create Holiday decorations. More information on these activities will be forthcoming in emails and on our Facebook page.
January 11- Indigenous and African-American History tour in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day 6:00-8:00 pm, Lucius Clapp Memorial. We will have exhibits on many of Stoughton’s Native-Americans, African-Americans and their allies and present slide programs at 6:15 and 7:15.
January 13- Indigenous and African-American History tour in conjuction with Martin Luther King Day 2:00-4:00 pm, Lucius Clapp Memorial. We will have exhibits on many of Stoughton’s Native-Americans, African-Americans and their allies and present a slide program at 2:15 and 3:15.
President’s Report
We have had an active, rich, and productive Fall at the Society! It began with the production of the previous Newsletter. After I had gotten the contents ready with a combination of perspiration, inspiration, checking the Historical Society journal notes, other possible sources, writing, copying and pasting, Joan Bryant proof-read the copy, got the latest ad page updated, and I printed out a final copy. That copy was then reproduced by Minuteman Printing in Canton, giving us two hundred 10-sided copies, stapled in the upper left-hand corner. Dave Foley came in early on a Tuesday morning to print out the address labels, having been let in by Dan Mark, who is always there early. Soon thereafter, I appeared with the printed copies, after which, Dan Mark, Richard Fitzpatrick, Richard Pratt, Eva Harris, Stew Sterling and Steve Merrill, did almost all the folding, sealing, and stamping. (Often Ken Beauregard, Denise Peterson, Joanne Callanan, and Janet Clough are part of the folding, sealing, stamping crew, but not this time.) I put on the address labels, trying to adjust on the fly for the newest members, changed addresses, deaths, etc. By afternoon, I had around 120 copies ready to be taken to the post office. Somewhere in that process after the printing, but before the folding, I corrected by hand the name Hosea “Dunbar” to “Easton.”
Ed Meserve wrote our first Newsletter in February of 1970. It was a two-sided mimeographed copy, which has faded so badly over time that it is barely legible. Fortunately, it and most of our other past newsletters can be read on our website at stoughtonhistory.com. Here is how Ed Meserve concluded that first Newsletter: “NOTES from here and there . . . We have received a letter and some historical notes from Carl Smith (Past Pres. and present First Vice Pres.) in which he begins a series of articles dealing with the development of public transportation in the Stoughton area. Ye ol’ editor has read the first of the series with interest and will include Mr. Smith’s chronology in the next NEWSLETTER. We are all new at producing this little pub’n and, due to the fact that there were three meetings to report and one to announce, we are not too sure that we are going to contain all on one sheet. So far, Mr. Smith and our secretary, Mrs. Pistor have supplied the notes for this issue. Let’s hear from some others (just a note with some bit of local history will be sufficient…Did you know that we are members of the Bay State Historical League who would appreciate news for their bulleting published quarterly?… Because we are starting “from scratch” with this NEWSLETTER we can use all the help we can muster…We need notes of other Societies’ activities, historical notes, bits of family lore, reports of contacts made with other interested parties, what-have-you… We’ll stockpile whatever excess material we receive and will surely use it in future issues of the NEWSLETTER. And…ye ol’ ed. would like to have a name for this little pub’n: a name fitting our Society and our town.”
Many of you now get this Newsletter online, which is easier for all of us. I send that edition out, just before, or just after, the printed copies are ready to go out. Our AOL mail has reached its limit for the number of people that we can send it out to, so it goes in two batches. Each time I have to remember to send it to myself and BCC everyone else.
We had a successful Harvest Dinner at the Library at which Joe Mokrisky received the Jack Sidebottom Award for Exceptional Service to the Stoughton Historical Society for at least ten years. Joe’s Award was accompanied by these brief remarks: From what we can gather from our old newsletters, Joe Mokrisky joined the Board of Directors in 2002, a brash young pup trying to convince Frank Guertin that getting the 1928 Maxim fire truck would be a good idea. Having spent many of the following years as a Selectman, Joe has provided welcome support for the Society in so many ways. I believe he was instrumental in our getting our first large de-humidifier, finding a place for Abraham Lincoln after we could no long keep the large statue of Abe here, retrieving bricks from the old high school, when people said that it could not be done, driving the fire truck in many parades, and applying successfully for a significant amount of money from the CPC and Town Meeting to completely rebuild the fire truck. He has worked with Paul Giffune to keep our building in the condition that it is. He has contributed in many other ways, too numerous to mention here.
We congratulate Joe and Maria on their recent marriage and Joe on his many tenures as selectman, surviving (most of the time) the rough seas of Stoughton town politics. Joe, we thank you for what you have done with and for us over the years, and look forward to many more.
-Dwight Mac Kerron, September 18, 2023
On October 22, Vice President David Lambert and Thomas Green, a descendant of the Neponset band of Massachusett who gathered at the Praying Town of Ponkapoag presented : “How the Massachusetts Indians at Ponkapoag “sold” their land and the early history of the families and the land of Punkapoag Plantation” to a full house at the Lucius Clapp Memorial. David began the meeting with a brief description of how to access all of Stoughton’s newspapers up to 1950 on the website of the Stoughton Public Library. This access has opened up some exciting materials for us, of which you will read more later. David began the main part of the program by showing us how to access the documents he would be showing us in one state archive or another. He showed us several documents relating to leases of land that were given for 200 and 300 years to a number of familiar English Stoughton names. Thomas Green gave another overview of the events above, including the fact that the Natives referred to themselves as Massachusett, whereas the names Neponset and Punkapoag were applied to them by the English, depending on where they were residing. Thomas also told of his ancestors, the Crowds, who lived on Indian Lane. We had many visitors from Sharon and Canton with us, including Hana Jenner, who took many pictures and some video of the event. Thank you, Hana!
On September 30, we had an exhibit at Stoughton Day, which was made possible by the preparations of Denise Peterson and the physical attendance of Dan Mark, Dave Foley, Joanne Callanan, David Lambert, Maureen Wahl, and Kathy Ryder. Among items on display was the large scrapbook compiled by John Fernandez.
After David Lambert had first informed us about the new newspaper search capabilities of the Library’s website, I searched for Martrick’s and Dunbar’s with some success, but Dave Foley hit a jackpot in his search for “Popes.” In January of 1900, the Stoughton Sentinel printed a complete copy of the speech that our President Newton Talbot had delivered to the Stoughton Historical Society in May of 1899. Talbot focused on the diary of Judge Benjamin Lynde as it related to the history of our area. Our secretary’s reports from 1899 note the content of Talbot’s presentation, but nowhere in our files could we find a copy of it. Benjamin Lynde, born 1666 attended Harvard College and also studied law in England for several years. In 1712, he was appointed a Judge of the Superior Court. On the resignation of Judge Sewall in 1728, he was made Chief Justice of the Province, which office he still held at the time of his death, in 1745.
His duties required that Lynde, who resided in Salem, would regularly hold court sessions as far away as Taunton, Bristol, and Worchester and it is in his recording of these travels that we learn of his purchase of land in Dorchester Swamp, 25 acres just north of a stream, which places it in the vicinity of the south Junction of the current Cedar and Sumner Streets.
Lynde makes the acquaintance of Stoughton’s Edward Est(e)y, who Talbot tells us, then lived on what is now Pearl St. Lynde pays Estey to oversee his Stoughton land, cutting and shipping cedar rails and shingles to Milton landing, from which the rails would be floated downstream to a schooner, which would take them to Salem. The entries are fascinating because they give specific accounts of cedar products being taken out along the road, which then was only a path, passing by the site of our Historical Society in the center of Town and down along the current Pearl and Pleasant Streets to Canton Corner, and thence to Milton landing, whose exact location, we have not yet identified. We know that the course of this path followed the line of the current Cedar St. and apparently continued to the southwest, most likely along the line of the current Atkinson Ave. to where it connected with a road or roads to Easton. As mentioned in previous newsletters, we have discovered part of the course of the old road from Stoughton to Easton via Morton St and then a line running through the current CW Welch Memorial lands, crossing the railroad bed, east of the Joseph Morse residence and west of the Marshall residence. We have found clear signs of that road, but have yet to find evidence of the road from Cedar Street, west, although there is what could be an ancient crossing at the site where Connie Sullivan’s dam created his cranberry bog, two centuries later.
Roads/paths ca. 1718-1730 were few and far between. When Lynde approached Stoughton from the south along Bay Road, he needed to be guided by Sharon’s Benjamin Estey to Edward Estey’s on Pearl St., via Isaac Stearns house on the current West St. “1730. Came to Daggctts with Marke, a Quaker ; there lodged. . At Billings, parted, and I went the Dorchester Road, and on Billings Plain ^ met Benj. Esty, Edw? uncle, who guided me through his land, about a mile and a half, to Deacon Stearns ; thence by a boy’s direction, I went thro* the woods a mile and a half more directly to Edw. Esty’s, where I rested, dined and had ace* of my shingles to be brought to Milton Landing place by neighbor Talbot and the Sumners — about 30 or 40 M. shingles, about 15 of the best marked B. and the rest, being very good shipping shingles, for my son ; also rails, cedar |X)Sts and clapboards ; — all to be ready for Col. Thaxtcr’s sloops for Salem.”
As for the names of the Towns we mention, one must note that there was no Easton before 1725, no Stoughton before 1726, no Sharon/Stoughtonham before 1765, and no Canton before 1794. We must try to establish locations by the names of the people that Lynde visited such as Manlys, Keiths, and the Billings Tavern. We know from a later deed of Shepherd, who owned 100 acres in the Ash St. Cedar St. John Morton/Richard Fitzpatrick/Iron Mine (see the Map of the 25 Divisions) vicinity that his land bordered Judge Lynde’s parcel, which was to its west. Dorchester Brook is the main water course here, but there are smaller tributaries and considerable swamp where the flow of water is diffused. The course of the brook has been altered by such things as the railroad, the building of Plantation Park, and Atkinson Avenue/Sumner Gardens. During the upcoming year, we will meet students from the South School to explain the history of the land around them.
Judge Lynde was a wealthy man, who purchased a slave, the 12-year-old Scipio, not, we believe, the Scipio that Ralph Pope eventually freed and to whom he bequeathed his sawmill, which included Scip’s cellar” in almost this exact area. Lynde’s owning a slave now puts him on a list of ignominy, but his physical exploits of riding his horse into his seventies from Salem to Taunton to Worcester, puts him on a list of the bold and physically fit. History is a complicated business. According to his Diary, he treats Scipio well, but Lynde’s will does not mention either giving Scipio his freedom or bequeathing him to his heirs.
We continue to gather materials written by Howard Hansen to include in the expanded version of The Stoughton Sampler that we will publish before Christmas, using funds we received from the Stoughton Cultural Council. I also have a treasure trove of emails from Howard over more than a decade. Among them is this one from July of 2015, which relates directly to old roads and the Estey household mentioned above: “Prior to the building of the Stoughton Turnpike (1806-1810), there used to be a trail from Great Blew Hill running parallel to the toll road. David Mullen said he and his friends used to take walks through there when ATVs were popular. much of that trail has been buried from the Irish Cultural Center and the industrial park. From 1957-1960, the sandy hill where Dan Road, the Morse Shoe (now large men’s clothing) plant was hauled by M. DeMatteo and Sons fleet of yellow dump trucks to make the road bed for Route 24. You might find some dotted lines on the old topo maps of the 1950s. (Dave Foley has since found such roads clearly delineated on older topo maps.) That trail came out about Belcher’s Corner (Central & Pearl Sts.) Prior to 1859, Central Street from Washington Street went through what is now the Holy Seplechure Cemetery and ended where Ralph Mann Drive starts at Pearl Street. When David Lambert noted that the Estey home was on the west side of Pearl St. opposite the cemetery, you can get an idea of how far the Stearns property extended. Elizabeth Stearns was daughter of Isaac Stearns. The Estey homestead was just over the town line. (see Estey Way on current maps)
I remember going with my father to the Estey house, a 1700s salt box that was about 10 ft. below the road bed. If there was a place where time stopped, it was at the Estey house. Hens running around the yard, the smell of dry chicken manure on a summer day. A walk into the house where the old gray kitchen table must have had six layers of paint. If only I had known in the mid 70s that Mr. Gessner was to demolish that house, I’d have said something to the Canton Hist. Soc. But I really didn’t know them. I am certain that house must have had mountains of old historical papers in the attic. Arthur E. Estey was my father’s insurance agent. Thus, we can safely conclude that the 1.7 acres of the Pearl St. Cemetery was like a front lawn or field to George Talbot. The west side of Washington St. from Central St. to about Glen Street was wetlands before the Stoughton Turnpike was built. Hence, the way from GBH was diverted around the swamp to Pearl St.”
Oh, how I wish that we could continue our discussion with Howard of the Estey house, based on the information to which we have been re-connected via David Lambert, Dave Foley, the Newton Public Library, The Stoughton Sentinel, Newton Talbot, and Judge Lynde’s diary! I feel fulfilled to be part of this ongoing enterprise of re-connecting to and expanding our knowledge of Stoughton’s history.
As a follow-up to Howard’s description of the Estey house, Dave Foley and I located it on a 1953 Stoughton aerial map, which fortunately included a small section of Canton land, which included the Estey house. We located the house, barn, and several outbuildings, which stood between the two entrances that Estey Way now makes onto Pleasant St. Just above it is Wardwell Road, which connects Pleasant St. to Route 138, and on which Howard and I walked nearly a decade ago, since Howard believed that it was the route that Ezra Tilden would have taken to walk over from Indian Lane to the mile marker stone on Pleasant St., Howard surmised that they would have begun their march from that marker stone, because they needed to record their mileage as precisely as possible, since some of their payment depended on the number of miles marched. The Wardwell Road part of the route seemed clear, but the manner in which Ezra Tilden would have negotiated the wetlands between Route 138 and Indian Lane proved elusive to determine, but Dave Foley asserts that there is a clear passage way on high ground along Tracywood Road and Chief Lane. Among the Howard Hansen documents we have yet to publish are the Ezra Tilden diaries on the trip to Claverick, New York, which will include notes that Howard made in his summertime travels along that route.
I recalled from past conversations, that Richard Fitzpatrick remembered driving from Wardwell Road all the way through to Route 138 back in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. Richard agreed to accompany Stew Sterling and me on a walk from the current “end” of Wardwell Road east. We were surprised to discover that the first ¾ mile of the road has the remnants of asphalt paving. Richard then recalled that the Town of Canton considered making this route an official town way as a through road, which would facilitate fire trucks coming from Canton Center to the southern end of Canton on Rt 138 in less time than if they had to go out to Randolph St. He also recalled that the neighborhood objected to the potential through traffic and the presence of spotted salamanders in the nearby wetlands helped doom that project. The paved part of the road now ends in the soccer fields next to Windsor Woods., but there remains a winding and hilly dirt road which still runs out to Rt 138. Richard also shared the information that a small development of new homes being built near the end of Wardwell Road was taking place on land that had been bequeathed to the Methodist Church and subsequently sold. This was yet another pleasant experience of using historical information that has come back to us to trigger new research and some exploring. Dave Foley has determined that it is almost one mile exactly from the Isaac Stearns house site to the Esty site
Ken Beauregard made a pilgrimage to Chemung, NY, and gathered considerable information on the area, supplementing our previous knowledge that had come to us through former Principal of the Chemung Elementary School, Helen Hansen. Ken learned that Chemung is the name that the local Natives gave to the fossilized Mammoth tusks they would find in the river. They called it Chemung – The Place of the Big Horn. Hence, the river running through that area became the Chemung River. Ken also found the information in Sandee LeMasters compilation of The Drake Letters from Stoughton to Strongsville to be helpful. Ken also visited the prison for captured confederates at Elmira, New York.
Our study of the records of Stoughton Fish and Game, now C. W. Welch Memorial Fish and Game continues: The 4/30/56 records of SF&G show that 1,000 evergreen were planted, apparently by Roy Robinson and…? RR crossing was to be moved 300 feet to the north, 43 new wood duck boxes were put up, 500 balsam firs were planted. 350 did well. Intend to plant 1000 evergreens this year, 50 ash, 50 bittersweet. (Now, bittersweet has been identified as an invasive and is being eradicated, rather than planted.) Mr Totman spoke of the excessive speed of many cars coming under the railroad underpass underpass. (The underpass was probably still being used in November because Bill Totman is asking when the crossing will be done. 8/6/56. The dam has been repaired, to be hot-topped later. The State reclaimed Ames and Flyaway Ponds during July. 10/1/56. Charles Starkowsky reported that reclaimed Ponds, Ames, Flyaway, Harris are to have pickerel or bass stocked in them. Alberts will have pickerel and yellow perch. It may also be deepened. The State Conservation Dept has checked on right of way into Glen Echo.
For me, it was gratifying to find the records of the tree plantings as it has been clear to me for some time that the Bird St. Conservation Area has many balsam firs, that are generally not natural to this area. Many are still flourishing, and undoubtedly reproducing more from their voluminous yearly cone production. At some point in the next year we will have a program on the history of Stoughton Fish and Game/CW Welch Memorial F&G.
We have also made progress in our knowledge of the history of part of Highland Street, which appeared as early as the Map of the Twenty-Five Divisions ca. 1726 as a road or path from Bay Road to Easton, paralleling Trout Brook Meadow, which later became Ames Pond. I reposted a picture on our Facebook site of an old house that sat across from the current swimming area on Highland St. I believe that I received that picture from Paul Berry, a past curator of the Easton Historical Society. A number of people responded with their memories of a house at that location and also commented on when Highland St. was finally paved with the consensus being that before the mid 1960’s it was a dirt-gravel road that would occasionally be oiled by the town. However, many of the commenters remembered a house that looked different than the one in the picture. The site is important because it is the location of the Robert Vose home site. He was the third settler on Highland St. The Historical Society had the date too early as 1735, and that is what I put on the sign at the beach, but by then, I should have known from other documents that the Voses did not come until the 1760’s. Robert’s son Jeremiah Vose lived a lifetime there, and I believe that it was his wife, Mille Vose who lived to be close to 100 years and much later, had a special stone made for her at the Dry Pond Cemetery. Eventually, a Vose daughter married Seth Morton, who was a go-getter, “owned” the property for a few years, but also died young. The Voses had a lot of woodland, and they made houses for others, one of which now stands on the corner of Picker Lane and Canton St. in North Easton, and another which is in the core of the large Jonathan Battles/Robert Bellay house on Central St. A Battles married a Vose and got a house moved down there for them. To me, it would make more sense to build the house where it was going to sit, but the Voses were apparently into the modular home business, very early.
After I moved to Highland Street in 1977, my interest in this land was that it was one of my routes that it got me back into the woods to hunt, without going through a swamp to get there. Later, I learned of the history, both of the Voses, who came there early and the Deegs who owned the house during the life-time of my neighbor, Charles Shaw. An extended discussion on Facebook led some to recall that the house was owned by the Bensons and it looked like a different house. I found the 1953 aerial view of the site and determined that the house was located on the site of the earlier photo, but the outline of the house was different. Dave Foley then found a deed in which the Deeg widow sells the house and 16 acres to Olof and Martina Benson in 1942 for $1300. Apparently, the Bensons built a newer house, which lasted for several decades and is the one that people remember. The land with the cellar hole was eventually sold as one site, and much of the rest of the land became the development at Highland Rock Drive a couple decades ago.
In October, we received a visit from Selectperson Debrah Roberts, and her daughter Eryn Roberts. We showed them the materials that we had already put together for Juneteenth and agreed that we could expand them in order to have two open house/programs in the week before Martin Luther King Day, as described in the upcoming events. Certainly, much of the information that we learned from David Lambert and Thomas Green’s presentations to us will be part of our display and presentation
Around the Lucius Clapp Memorial – Dave Foley re-wired our router, so that one can be added upstairs, and the assembled downstairs crew helped install our new scanner, whose use we are still learning. Dan Mark has spent a lot of time updating our memberships lists. Rick and Linda Woodward have given our outdoor plants a more autumnal tone and placed many flags around the grounds for Veterans Day. The air conditioners have been removed and we now turn the heat on during the hours that we are there. Denise Peterson, Joanne Callanan, and Elizabeth Lieber have been assisting Janet Clough in the clothing curators office, helping supply some outfits for Stoughton Day. Debra Zabrowski has continued her work on the genealogies of Stoughton families, including the Campbells, Colleys, Cordners, Dunbars, Eastons, Freemans, Harrises, Hills, Jacobs, Jones, Joylian, Martrick, Talbo(o)t, and Watson families. She has made an interesting speculation that the Hosea Easton, who became a renowned banjoist in Australia, might be the son of Hosea and Louisa (Martrick) Easton, rather than the grandson. She has found a newspaper article of the arrest of Sampson and Hosea in Connecticut, at a time indicating that that Hosea had to be his brother, not his son. That said, I still believe that the banjoist Hosea was Sampson’s son, not his brother. Debra also found a newpaper interview with the banjoist Hosea, which accompanied a performance of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in which he played a lead role in Australia. In the interview he gave a lot of biographical details of his life, which as far as I can determine were essentially fiction. He described having escaped slavery in the South and serving in the Union army. We know that he was never a slave in the South, and I doubt that he served in the military, but it did make for a good interview.
Our Board of Directors, chaired by Joe Mokrisky, consists of Denise Peterson, Joanne Callanan, Lou Poillucci, Dan Mark, Rick Woodward, Ruthie Fitzpatrick, Joan Bryant, and Dwight Mac Kerron. Earlier in the year, we approved the motion to increase our dues for the first time in more than twenty years. The new rates for 2024 will be Individual $20/year, Family $30/year, Lifetime Individual $250, Lifetime Family $350.
Archivists Report
Judith Daly, Stoughton High, Class of 1958, donated a reunion book.
Stew Sterling, brought us up-to-date, by filing a large number of Obit cards.
Ongoing thanks to Bonnie Molin, for her research efforts in locating and printing of same.
Janet Clough and I, completed cataloging and filing of the remaining items donated by the Congregational Church. Our entire record for the Congregational Church (Cat. No. # 101.00) has been re-typed and can now be found on five contiguous pages. (In place of the former 6-7 hand written ones.) Then, in connection with this file, Dave Lambert brought in a large, architectural print of the proposed new building from 1956. Rich Pratt and I, each spent an hour more, assisting Elizabeth Gill, with research on 1692 Central St. We eventually found that the house was moved to that location c. 1831 or before from a lot at 325 School St. And was owned at that time by one Josiah Stoddard. Rich found several old deeds on-line. While I helped her search through old “Poll Tax” books.
Dwight, drove to Sharon to pick up items from Liz Glover, who donated a small trunck, several old bottles, and a packet of Civil War era letters. Many of them were written by G. A. R. Commander George Pratt to his old colleague John Edwards, who served with him in North Carolina in the 43rd Mass Regiment.
Joanne Nickerson of Brockton, MA has donated some street Directories as follows: A City of Brockton, City Guide dated C. 1960-1961 Includes a Street Map of Brockton. Brockton St./Railroad/Street Railway Directory, dated C. 1918. Brockton Street Directory including surrounding towns dated C. 1953.Stoughton Street Directory, including a map, dated 1959.
I have spent most of my time during the last month, at Dwight’s request, going through several boxes of records from Howard Hansen, looking for publishable material. -Richard Fitzpatrick
Curator’s Report
Ken Beauregard, with the assistance of Stew Sterling, continues to take on the long-term project to identify, and more completely record, the location and particular attributes of the individual artifacts which have been donated to the Society over the years, as well as the process of recording and filing the new acquisitions. New Acquisitions: From Kenneth Gay: a Commemorative Bicentennial Calendar Plate, with plastic Serving Tray, a Commemorative Tile and 2 Commemorative Plates of the First Methodist Church; from Richard Pratt: a Commemorative Plate of the First Parish Universalist Church; from Joseph McStowe: a Stoughton High School Ceramic Stein and a Panda Teddy Bear with “I Love Stoughton” printed on the shirt.
A few months ago, I began the process of examining our collection of photograph albums and individual photos for the purpose of building a database of identified individuals. So far, the database primarily consists of photographs of Stoughton residents taken in the late 1800s. The albums were usually put together by the females of a household. While many of the photos in an album, of course, show close and extended family members, many include fellow students, teachers, neighbors, church members, and prominent people in the community. Not surprisingly, it’s often the case that a non-family member is more clearly identified than a close family member. (Hey, we all know that’s mom or dad, don’t we? No need to write their names under the pictures. Well, 140 years later, we’re not so sure!) If we’re lucky, there may be a picture of that unidentified individual in another album, with an identification.
So far, 9 family albums and a box of individuals photos have been indexed, with 475 individuals entered in the database and another 100+ not yet identified, and a LOT more to review and add to the database. When an individual is identified, the person is researched and the data entered for the individual includes: Album Name with page; Year of Birth & Death; Place of Birth & Death; First, Middle, Maiden and Last Name; What was written on the page or back of the photo; the type of photo (Daguerreotype, Ambrotype, Tintype, Carte de Visite, Cabinet Card, mounted photo, etc.); the Photographer’s Name (with known dates of operation at the location that is printed on the photo); and Additional Comments about what I’ve discovered about the subject(s) in the photo, such as how they are related to others in the album or where they lived. There are a number of photos of people from “Stoughton Families” who had moved to, or were born, elsewhere in Massachusetts or out of state.
We are grateful to everyone who donated these artifacts and to Ken and Stew for their valuable assistance in reviewing our artifacts and documents and expanding the databases. -Richard Pratt Memberships
New members: Jasmine Tanguay – Lifetime- Gloria Herbowy