JUL-AUG-SEPT – 2015

Upcoming Events

On Thursday, August 13, a day or two after this Newsletter goes to press, Stoughton author James Barber was scheduled to visit the Historical Society between 6:00 and 8:00 P. M. and drop off copies of his latest book, November Stories, a follow-up to his very popular, October Stories. We will have copies of the book on sale for $13 or can mail you a copy, if you send us a check for $17.

September 14 –6:00 P. M. Annual Harvest Dinner at the Wales French Room of the Stoughton Public Library. We will be beginning our 120th year and have a slide show of many of our events from the past year. If you wish to attend, please fill out the form at the end of the Newsletter.

October 4, 2:00 P. M. A Retrospective and Tribute to Dr Forrest Bird. 1921- 2015. We will share our memories of Forrest, including his childhood adventures in Stoughton, his visits to us over the years, and visits that have been made to his museum in Sand Point, Idaho.

November 8, 2:00 P. M. The Glover House, the Glover family, and its genealogy, written by Stoughton native Anna Glover in 1867. David Lambert and Dwight Mac Kerron will cover both the history and the recent salvaging of artifacts from the house, which was demolished on June 16, 2015. We will have many photographs to present in a slide show. David will be able to give a virtual tour of the house, using both pictures which he took and ones taken by professional documenter William Gould.

President’s Report

On August 3, we received word of the passing of Dr Forrest Bird at age 94. It is safe to say that Dr Bird, “Forrest” to many of us, achieved more for medicine than anyone else born in Stoughton. His Baby Bird respirator replaced the iron lung and is credited with saving many thousands of lives. Dr Bird was inducted into the Stoughton High School Hall-of-Fame for Academic Achievement more than ten years ago. He has been generous to the Historical Society with his contributions and his stories of growing up in Stoughton. Our program on October 4 will honor Forrest Bird as we share our memories and review the accomplishments of this very special person. We have a tape-recorded interview from his last visit and have photographs of both his father, WWI veteran Morton Bird and the many exhibits at his Museum in Sand Point, Idaho, including the plane that was the same model as the one on which his father Morton taught him to fly in his youth. We have flown our flag at half-staff and our sign-board reads, “Life is fate, time, and circumstance.” (One of his favorite sayings) Forrest Bird 1921-2015 RIP.” Very few people have made more out of the fate, time, and circumstances of their lives.

On May 24, Howard Hansen, David Lambert and I finally got decent weather and led a successful tour of the Pearl St. Cemetery. Thank you’s to John Kowalzyk and and George Dolinsky of STOYAC for getting us access to the Cemetery from the STOYAC Field side. It is interesting that two-thirds of the people who attended were not members of the Historical Society. We were fortunate to make some discoveries, which have added to our knowledge of the Cemetery and some of the people who are buried there.

Howard Hansen contributed considerable commentary, including the following: “Anna Morgain's Monument, the oldest headstone, is in the vault at the Stoughton Historical Society. The grave is in the Atherton Lot near Pearl Street. Anna Morgan was housekeeper to Jedediah Adams the first settled minister in the Third Precinct. The burial ground was a part of George Talbot's property. The first burial was in 1737 at the top of the mound near George Talbot's grave for the five children of Elizabeth (Stearns) and Edward Estey. Children were not "persons" i.e. adults over legal age.

The burial ground is approximately half-way between the Parsonage, built in 1747 and the Meetinghouse 1745. Usually, burial grounds for the Parishioners were built adjacent to the Meetinghouse, but the burial grounds, in this case, existed before the meetinghouse. Anna Morgain died shortly after the new meetinghouse and the parsonage were built. There already being a burial on the site, (the four Estey children in 1738), it would be appropriate to have the lady buried there. George Talbot then allowed this property be set aside for a burial ground for the Parish/precinct, hence the Talbot lot is in the center of the Pearl Street Cemetery.”

We re-discovered the list of the people for whom Revolutionary War soldier, long-time Stoughton blacksmith and carpenter James Capen (who is also buried there) made more than 85 coffins from 1798-1825. It includes the name of Elijah Tilden, Stoughton Revolutionary War soldier and brother of Ezra Tilden, whose Diary we have published. On March 17, 1819, James Capen charged the Town 3.00, “to making a coffin for Elijah Tilden.” Howard Hansen has identified Elijah as being buried in an un-marked grave at the back left of the cemetery. Apparently, by the time he died, he was a pauper and was buried in an unmarked grave, or one with such a flimsy head stone, that it has long since broken and disappeared. Howard has made certain that a flag has gotten placed in that area during each Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day reflagging of the Veterans’ graves.

David Lambert is continuing the transcription of the James Capen records, which we purchased eight years ago and soon we will soon have them available either online or in a hard copy. He believes that in 1799, James Capen was working for B & A Capen, helping to construct the building which would become the Capen Tavern, which sat on the site of our building from 1799-1867. It is fulfilling to be able to come back to something like the James Capen account book, of which we could absorb only a relatively small amount of information, when we first got it, focusing mostly on the devices he created for the making of cyder. Later, we discovered that he had fixed a wagon wheel or two (paid for by Nathan Drake Jr.) for his son, Asa Drake, before Asa set out for (what became) Strongsville Ohio. Now, after having learned a fair amount more about the Popes and the Glovers because of research related to the loss of the Glover house, Howard Hansen's remarks on Elijah Tilden's grave, and our recent research on the Capen Tavern, the James Capen account book provides more and more meaning to us.

A previous owner of the Capen Account book, Ralph Mann Jr of Provincetown compiled a list of the coffins made by James Capen and came up with eighty five coffins, twelve of which were charged to the Town of Stoughton and one to the Town of Sharon. Mr Mann’s list, while very helpful, is not definitive. He missed the following charge for Thomas Glover Jr.’s coffin, which we picked up from our own transcription and he may well have missed others.

James Capen charged the heirs of Thomas Glover (Jr.) $3.50 for making his coffin in January of 1811. Thomas Glover’s stone at Pearl St. is beside the one of his wife, Rebekah (Pope) Glover. In 1752, Thomas Glover Jr. (after building the now-demolished house at 480 Sumner St, married Rebekah Pope, the daughter of his neighbor to the south, Dr Ralph Pope, whose name also appears on the Map of the Twenty Five Divisions as an original proprietor. Rebekah was born in Stoughton in 1730, a time when there was no church in what is now Stoughton Center and she was taken to the only church in the area (now Canton Corner,) where she was baptized by Rev. Joseph Morse. By 1752, Stoughton, by then, the Third Precinct, had its own church and the couple was married by Rev. Jedediah Adams and became members of the church, where all of their eleven children were baptized. In 1752, Thomas Glover’s name first appeared in the records of the Third Precinct, when he and Benjamin Bird agreed to give the Rev. Adams 10 cords of firewood, each. Children of Thomas and Rebekah born in Stoughton: Elizabeth – 1752, Rebekah – 1754, Hannah – 1756, Thomas – 1757, William – 1759, Rachel – 1761, Samuel – 1763, Ebenezer - 1765, Jerusha – 1766, Anna – 1768, Elijah -1770.

Samuel Glover, who married Eleanor Hawes, spent his entire life in Stoughton, whereas, the youngest son, Elijah, who inherited his father’s house, did not move back to Stoughton from Dorchester until after his father’s death in 1811. From that time on, there were at least two Glover households close to each other on what is now Sumner St. Elijah’s wife, Martha (Pope) died in childbirth two years after their return to Stoughton. James Capen charged Elijah Glover 3.00 for a coffin in July of 1813, Within two years, Elijah married Sarah Howe of Dorchester, who bore him seven more children, including Elijah’s third son, John Clough Glover, who (according to Anna Glover’s genealogy) built a house near the old homestead, and whose location we are trying to identify. Across the street, Samuel and Eleanor produced Jarvis, a Stoughton Grenadier, Eleanor, a long-time school-teacher, and Anna, who wrote the 600 page Glover genealogy, which was published in 1867. The day before our cemetery tour, David Lambert and I finally located Anna’s name on the Samuel Glover family tombstone; indeed, it was just beneath the surface on the stone, which had receded and slanted.

We also observed the grave stone of Lemuel Bird and noted the following: In 1746, one Benjamin Bird was rebuked by the Dorchester Congregation for issues involving both behavior and doctrine. Bird and his son Samuel had formally challenged Pastor Danforth...and lost. “An Old Map of Stoughton in 1775,” created by Newton Talbot, lists a Benjamin Bird building a house on (what will become) Morton St in 1749. Our research has revealed that this is a son of the Dorchester Benjamin Bird. Ironically, (or do such things just run in families?) this Benjamin Bird had a son, Lemuel Bird, a Stoughton Minute Man, who settled at the farm site now within the Bird St Conservation Area. Many years after Independence, the seventy-year-old Lemuel Bird would be in the middle of the great religious schism, which divided almost every New England town. Bird was expelled from the Congregational Church, because he had been heard espousing, and refused to deny, a belief in “universal salvation.” However, a majority of the other church-goers soon objected, dismissed the minister, Ebenzer Gay, who had banished Mr Bird, and voted to become Unitarian, and soon after, Universalist. Hence, the Universalist Church in the center of town.

We also observed the gravestone of the Waldo family, William, Mary, and their son, Edward Alfred, who died in the Civil War and whose body rests in Arlington National Cemetery. Janet Clough, whose son, Russ has visited Waldo’s grave in Washington DC several times with middle school students, helped clear the Waldo gravestone, so that it is no longer obscured by bushes. Considerably more work is needed to clear out various parts of the cemetery and Ed White has volunteered to help. Anyone else interested?

On the day of the event, Vice President David Lambert was taken ill, but he got off his sick bed to give us 30 plus minutes of good commentary, before he had to retreat in the face of his affliction. For our hand-out we added a copy of “Etched in Stone,” which Howard Hansen had crated for our Newsletter several decades ago. It relates many important details on the Rev. Jedidiah Adams, George Talbot, Lt. Robert Capen, Jabez Talbot, and the graves of many of the Revolutionary War soldiers, including those of Black soldiers, Ebenezer and Moses Hayden. We also included a newspaper article from 1936 detailing the work that Mrs Luella Southworth had done with and for the Pearl St. Cemetery for thirty one years. It was an honor for me to be part of the tour with Howard and David, the two individuals in Stoughton who have done, by far, the most to preserve and document the Pearl St Cemetery. Hank Herbowy took many pictures and we will share some of them with those who attend the Harvest Dinner. A Memorial booklet of this tour of the Cemetery will follow.

On June 8, we had our Installation of Officers at Foley’s Backstreet Grill and enjoyed an evening of good food and socializing. Dave Peterson agreed to take a look at our Glover chestnut boards and has a plan for how we can turn some of them into historical mementoes, a few of which, we hope to have ready by our program on the Glovers and their house in the Fall. I have since put together a display, which contains artifacts from the house, including a length of wide chestnut board. I have also added considerable supplementary material on the demise of the American Chestnut, which was once a major forest tree. It turns out that “the Great Tree” in Connie Sullivan’s bog, which I had incorrectly assumed was an oak, was an American Chestnut. and we have found more pictures of that tree, as it was chronicled over the years.

Later in June we were visited in different weeks by classes of third-graders on their math scavenger hunts. We had at least sixty students and another fifteen teachers and parents from the West School, the Dawe School, and the South School, respectively, making for over two hundred folks who came through our doors. The students were well-chaperoned and well-behaved, and we gave all the adults copies of our Newsletter. Our welcoming crew consisted of Joe and Jeanne Devito, Brian Daley, Janet Clough, Chris Lott and Karen Dropps. Howard Hansen helped us out on one day.

In June, we received a call from the Gilder Lehrmann Institute of American History, in the City of New York, which now owns the original Ezra Tilden manuscripts for the Ticonderoga and Saratoga campaigns, the ones which we have already transcribed and published from our copies. This summer, they have interns transcribing the diary from the original and wanted a copy of ours, against which they could check their transcriptions. We worked out an arrangement in which we sent them one copy of the published diary in exchange for unlimited access to their website, which contains many valuable resources.

On June 27, Joe Mokrisky with our fire truck, Brian Daley, David Lambert and I represented the Historical Society at Stoughton Day at the High School athletic fields. The event was very well-attended and we received quite a few “donations,” once David Lambert suggested that we put the donation jar on the Fire Truck, which saw more than fifty parents have their children pose on the fire truck for a picture. David’s daughter Hannah Lambert also joined the Society, becoming our youngest member.

At the 4th of July Parade the Society was well-represented by a fine Glen Echo float, built by Rick and Linda Woodward, Joanne Callanan, Joe McStowe, Sammantha St. Clair, and Denise Peterson. Joe Mokrisky drove the fire truck with Joe DeVito on board. Dave Chambers drove the Elite Fitness truck towing the float with Dave Peterson in shotgun. Howard Hansen was on the float, representing Elisha Capen Monk, developer of Glen Echo and founder of the Stoughton Historical Society in 1895. Rick and Linda Woodward carried our banner. It was a very nice parade!

For our Harvest Dinner on September 14, we are researching past members of the Historical Society who would be deserving, posthumously, of the Jack Sidebottom Award for Exceptional Service to the Society. William Capen, who did hundreds of hours of research on the old houses of Stoughton and contributed many other things to our files is at the top of our list. G. Lester Gay, who served as secretary of the Society from 1923 to at least 1945 is also on the short list. Of course, to complicate matters, the Historical Society did not seem to be meeting at all regularly during several of those years. Around the Lucius Clapp Memorial As mentioned in the last Newsletter, Town facilities Manager Paul Giffune has arranged that Sheldon Richardson, a custodian at Town Hall and a fill-in at other facilities, come to our building once or a week for several hours and help with much needed cleaning and maintenance. Sheldon has undertaken the painting of our rest rooms, which will upgrade both of them. Joe Devito and Paul Giffune are pursuing an estimate of the costs of repairing and upgrading all our windows, which definitely show a lot of wear and tear. Eventually their investigation will lead to an application for CPA funds for the repairs. The work will be complicated by the fact that our building, like the railroad station, is on the National Historic Register and preservation guidelines must be followed.

During the first half of the summer we benefited from the presence of intern Christopher Lott, a Stoughton resident and student of history at UMASS Amherst. Christopher began the transcription of an Erastus Smith Diary, written in 1853-5. I had transcribed earlier and later versions of Erastus Smith’s diaries, but Christopher was able to transcribe approximately 50 pages from the year in which Erastus was a student at the Pierce Academy in Middleboro. When Erastus returns home after one term at the academy, he is struck with an affliction, which he calls neuralgia, which causes so much lameness in his muscles, that he is essentially unable to do any physical labor for most of the next year. After a number of setbacks, his condition gradually improves, and goes on to do considerable physical labor in his life. Erastus lives into his mid-nineties. Fortunately for Christopher Lott, but unfortunately for us, he acquired paying job at the Amherst campus for the remainder of the summer, but we appreciate the work he did for us and hope to complete his transcription, soon. The following is a brief except of the diary from 1854 when he has started to recover: March 17th Sat: It is now eleven days since I have written in my journal but I can recall all of the incidents that concern me during this time. There have been four deaths in this and adjourning towns all persons over 70 years of age. Viz Mr Elijah Glover Mr Jeremiah Rose. Mr Dependence French & Miss Hannah Holmes. Death is a subject which concerns us all. It is a scene through which we must pass sooner or later. If we were to live to the age of Methusela we must die, but to him that is prepared it is a joyful event, but to him that is not, nothing can be more solemn. (In this entry he begins to write "Private Journal" at the top of each page and continues this practice for the rest of the journal. Ed.) The all absorbing topic of the neighborhood is the supposed intention of marriage of Mr Pierce. (Col. Jesse Pierce, who at this time would be in his late seventies, lived on Highland Street and was the father of Henry Lillie Pierce and Edward Lillie Pierce. This passage describes the marriage of a Mr Pierce, which is of terrific interest in the neighborhood, but the identity of this particular Mr. Pierce is not yet clear. Ed.) I will not write about it now but reserve it until the time. I have cut about 25 cords of wood and sold about $7.00 worth of axe handles. I have done various smaller jobs which have kept my time pretty well occupied. I now intend to put up a turning lathe in the shop & hope it will become useful to me March 18th Sabbath Eve I have been reading today in Exodus of God's dealing with the Israelites, of his forbearance toward them through their murmurings & rebellions. Of the plagues which he brought upon Pharaoh for retaining them in bondage of their miraculous escape and the total overthrow of Pharaoh and all his hosts. The Book of Genesis comprises a period of 2269 years and Exodus only 145 years. The more I read the Bible, the better I love it. it is truly the Book of Books. Friday Morning Mar 23 I have worked in the woods all the week and at night feel too fatigued to write much. Father went to Boston yesterday with a load of hoops. He expected a storm time but this morning is the pleasantest of the season but rather cool. Just two years ago this morning Mr Drake committed suicide. Mother says it was very much such a morning as this. I have forgotten as I ws at Middleboro at the time & did not hear of it until several days after.

We have just received word that volunteer Karen Dropps, who has done so much good work with the Adam Capen Jr. diaries and the Capen files in general is relocating from Willow St. in Stoughton to Colorado, and is pregnant, to boot! We wish her and her husband well. Karen has made valuable contributions to the Society in her several years with us and we will miss her.

-Dwight Mac Kerron

Archivist’s Report

New Acquisitions: I donated an Army training manual. (c. WW II) How to Speak French. Charles Wade donated the following items:

Photo of Boy Scouts at “Onset Island”. Ruben Willis, Troop 57, (c. 1920). Photo of Belcher Last Co. employees, Stoughton High class of 1923. Stanley F. Wade’s, Amateur Radio License c. 1986. News clippings: Stoughton’s John C. Stiles. The Patriot Ledger, Nov. 10 1971. Great Boston Fire of 1872. The Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 1972.

Alaska Earthquake. Life Magazine, Apr. 10 1964. A Historical Record Booklet on the 1938 Hurricane. A John Stiles Scrapbook of pictures, given to Charlie by John Stiles in 1987. I acquired a used, five-drawer file cabinet for the society. Free from an anonymous donor. Karen Dropps, has continued to work on re-organizing the William Capen file. New volunteer Jo Obelsky, has been teaching herself how to use our Past Perfect Software and is now sorting and preparing for storage our duplicate copies of old Town Reports. Ruthie Fitzpatrick, has been re-filing various documents and has done some entries on Past Perfect as well. Evelyn Callanan faithfully adds to our obituary files each week.

I searched for information on C.A.P.P. Playground, now also known as Halloran Park, for the upcoming Community Calendar. From the annual Town Report of 1989, I found the following comment under the Stoughton Recreation Department by Director John Denison. “In the fall, a remarkable community effort took place. A playground known as C.A.P.P. (Children’s Adventure Play-space Project) voluntarily funded and built, demonstrated an incredible sense of caring and commitment by hundreds of volunteers. Located behind the Jones School on town park land, this new series of structures made of wood and tires creates a play space that meets the needs of toddlers thru young teens.”

–Richard Fitzpatrick

Curators Report Acquisitions

AFrench-English dictionary used by soldiers in WW II from Richard Fitzpatrick; Stoughton Fire Department equipment: two fire helmets, one fire extinguisher, two speaking trumpets, four FD badges from Laureen Jasmine. I lowered the flag to half-staff honoring the American Marines killed while doing their duty and later in honor of Dr. Forrest Bird, the renowned scientist and flier, who invented the Baby Bird respirator, which replaced the iron lung. -Brian Daley

Clothing Curators Report

We have changed the hats in one of the display cases to give the men a chance to show off their fashion consciousness. The ladies hats have been stored away in a more convenient way so they will be easier to access. In their place we have displayed men’s head ware from the Grenadier days to the early 1900’s to World War I to World War II to the 1950 ‘s and 60’s. Take a look and see if some of these are styles you wore. We have received a T-Shirt donated by Harold Churchill that is decorated front and back with many of Stoughton landmark buildings. This was produced in 1979—so you see, we are interested in items that are not very old but are of interest to the people of Stoughton now and will continue to be in the future. If you have questions as to the appropriateness of an item for donation to the Society, ask us. If we feel it is something we cannot use because of condition or that we already have other items similar, we will let you know. We appreciate your thinking of our collections but we also have to take into consideration our limited space. Thank you for any help you can give us in making our collections interesting and educational. -Janet Clough

Contributions In memory of James E. Sullivan: Chris Peduto.

Membership New members

State Senator Brian A Joyce, Polillio’s Garden Center, Hannah Lambert, Annette Cohen, Susan Blatt and Noresh Shah. (Susan and Noresh live on Highland St. in the William Smith the 2nd/Col. Jesse Pierce house.)