JULY-AUG-SEPT – 2009

Upcoming Events

September 14 – Harvest Dinner at the Wales French Room of the Stoughton Public Library.  6:00 P. M. Sign up form on last page of Newsletter.

September 20 --  Open House at Society featuring  our new exhibit on Stoughton’s Schools-

September-October  - Holiday Yard Sale 9 A.M.-2:00 P.M.(Date to be determined) at the Historical Society.  Please bring items you wish to donate to us during our normal business hours. . Items which have sold well in the past are jewelry, baking dishes, lamps, small tables and chairs, toys, recent books, and small rugs. No plastic ware, electronics, stuffed toys, or skis, please. We could use extra help for set-up at 7:00 that morning.

October18 Meeting – The Ezra Tilden Revolutionary War Diaries  Dwight Mac Kerron, Howard Hansen, and students Sara Nitensen, Kelly Hickey, and Dan Asulin will speak and give a computer-projector presentation on the Diaries and some of the work which went into their publication.

President’s Report

On May 30th, we had our most successful yard sale yet. We made over $1600 on items outside and almost $300 on maps, books, memorabilia, and memberships  sold inside the building. Denise Peterson put in her usual many hours of work preparing and pricing the items with help from the rest of us who carried in carloads of goods or helped with the pricing.. The Gibbons family, Ann Klim, and John

Boulanger  lent a much-needed hand in the early, heavy-lifting set-up hour, and then our intrepid retail crew took over: Brian Daley, Joe and Jeanne De Vito, Evelyn Callanan, Millie Foss,  Joan and Jacob Bryant, David Lambert, Maureen Gibbons, Donna Hodges, Linda Weiler, Paul Carter, Jack Sidebottom, Dwight Mac Kerron, David and Helen Sears, Richard and Ruth Fitzpatrick, Mary Kelliher, Sarah Dixon, Hank Herbowy, and Louise Dembrowsky.  Our number of items to sell was greatly increased by the unsold inventory we inherited from the Bryant sisters yard sale to support the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and many other items from Bryant and Gibbons households. We facilitated our clean-up operation by giving several carloads of left-over items to the Boy Scouts, who carried them away in preparation for their subsequent yard sale.  Many thanks to everyone who contributed items or labor.

On June 1st we had a full room for our Annual Meeting along with delicious meals  at the Backstreet Grill. A thank you to out-going Member of the Board of Directors, Jack Dembrowsky for his years of service.  We have always valued his knowledge both of the law and the town’s history, but his winter schedule takes him out of Stoughton for several months of the year. We owe another thank you to Joan Bryant for working out the details of the venue and menu at Back Street, after checking with a number of other restaurants.

In April and May, members of our Society attended various events including the Academic Hall-of-Fame at Stoughton High School, Earth Day at the Bird St. Conservation Area (at which four of our five signs on the history of the area have now been placed), the Old Stoughton Musical Society’s Spring Concert, and the VFW State Convention which honored John Gallivan as “2009 Teacher of the Year.”   We also were visited by scores of fourth grade students, parents, and teachers during the annual math scavenger hunt and hosted the Junior AP History class from Stoughton High School, along with their teacher Amy Scullane and Department Head John Gallivan, all of whom survived a sudden downpour during their walk to the Society from the high school.

This last meeting proved especially productive as it resulted in our picking up three bright and hard-working student volunteers for the summer.  Seniors Sarah Nitensen, Kelly Hickey, and Dan Asulin, have taken over the transcribing of the Ezra Tilden Revolutionary War Diary from the copy typed by Newton Talbot and/or his agents on Upham Brothers stationery sometime around 1900.  Howard Hansen and David Mullen are also working with an old copy of this document, which they are comparing to copies made of the original diary, before it was sold by Mr Goldman to the Morgan Museum in the 1990’s. It is now in the possession of the Lehrman Institute, but will, alas, be “in storage” until 2010.  It is becoming clear that the Talbot production of the document re-organized and collated a number of separate pages from the original journal, and in some cases they appear to have had access to pages of the journal, not found in our copies of the original. We will have some version(s) of the diary published, including a student’s version, before the Cultural Council grant expires in the Fall.

In June, in response to a generous donation to the Society from John Morton and in order to help support the Capen-Reynolds plant and yard sale, I put together a ten-page booklet of excerpts from Frank Reynolds’ book, Through the Years to Seventy, in which he describes his first several years of farming at “Pleasant Pines Farm,” beginning in 1908, soon after he graduated from Harvard.  The booklet includes the ledger of expenses and income for each year, a diagram of where various crops, berry buses, and orchards were placed on the property, and reports of how each crop fared in a given year and the location to which  it was rotated in the following year. Frank soon picked up the milk route of a farmer who had just retired, purchased another milking cow, and a wagon and delivered milk in the wagon, which, I believe, is still preserved in the Capen-Reynolds barn. His sister Bertha, after suffering failing health in her first teaching job in Atlanta, returned home to begin a poultry and egg business.  I gave a number of copies of the booklet to The Friends of Capen-Reynolds to sell at their plant and yard sale, and later added six more pages to the booklet, which now covers the years 1905-1915 and is available at the Historical Society: $2.00 for members, $3.00 for non-members. Add a dollar and we will mail a copy to you or anyone you designate. I hope that we can re-establish a fruitful and mutually beneficial working relationship with the Friends of Capen-Reynolds.

Several months ago we received an email from Sandee Lemasters who lives in Chatham, Ohio, a small town west of Medina.  Sandee is a descendant of Asa Drake, son of Stoughton’s Nathan Drake Jr. Asa emigrated to the Western Reserve of Ohio (what is now Strongsville) in 1821.  After we exchanged many emails, Sandee joined the Society and purchased a number of items via the mail. In the second week in July, she and her husband Tom visited Stoughton at which time she generously presented us with a copy of her transcriptions of the letters sent by Drakes in Stoughton and Pompey, New York to Asa Drake in Ohio.  As her introduction explains, these letters have been preserved by the family for almost 200 years. According to Sandee’s research, Asa Drake may have taught school in Stoughton before he headed west and taught school in Pompey, New York where other Drakes had emigrated. In Pompey, he fell in love with one Charlotte Dean, walked to Strongsville, Ohio, where some members of the Stoughton Southworth family had already settled.  Asa put in a claim for land and returned to Stoughton, where his father Nathan Jr helped outfit him with supplies and an ox-drawn wagon. Then, at age twenty two, Asa headed west again, stopping to marry Charlotte Dean in Pompey, after which both headed to Ohio with all their belongings in the wagon. The ox-yoke from that trip is still preserved at the Strongsville Historical Society. The letters are fascinating for what they reveal of Stoughton and Ohio life from 1821-1860.  For many of the early years, the Stoughton Drakes were addressing part of their letters to their son/brother’s wife Charlotte,, a woman they had never met.

Some of you may recall that our Newsletter a few years ago (after we had received some copies of the letters from Sandee’s cousin, Bill Drake,)  mentioned that Stoughton’s Nathan Drake Jr, while in his late sixties, eventually visited his son in Strongsville, traveling alone via stage coach, canal boat, and on foot, but finally getting to meet his daughter-in-law and see his grandchildren. Joe and Jeanne DeVito provided the Historical Society in Strongsvillle (where their daughter lives) with copies of these letters, which they professed not to know about and now Sandee has taken the process many steps further along with her research in Ohio, in Pompey, and here in Stoughton, Easton, and Sharon.  In conjunction with Sandee, we hope to publish these letters.

To demonstrate how histories mesh in fascinating ways, consider one of the documents we recently received from the Canton Historical Society.   In this 1809 letter from the Stoughton Selectman to the Canton selectmen, the former request that the latter remove “Mehetable, the wife of Thomas Everdon, Sally Freeman, and Amelia, children of said Thos Everdon” which had been dropped off by an unknown man at the home of

Nathan Drake of Stoughton and are staying on his premises. “ the above said Thos Everdon we considered an inhabitant of Canton: and the family above said is now troublesome and chargeable to the Town of Stoughton…N. B. We wish you to remove them from Mr. Drakes as soon as possible as Miss Drake is sick and it is very ill-convenient for them to keep them.”  This Nathan Drake is most likely Asa’s father. Little Asa would be ten years old at the time and had a grandfather, father, and brother, all named Nathan, the last two of which are sometimes called Jr, or the second, but sometimes not, and all were deacons in their respective churches of at least two different denominations. One of them dammed up Ames Pond in 1764 and served in the Revolutionary War, one of them invested in the Gay Cotton Manufacturing Company  in 1813, and one of them was taken advantage of by the Everdon family. Nathan Drake Jr., the middle Nathan, and the man who visited Asa in Ohio is buried in the small cemetery on Central St, next to Polillio’s Nursery, which I visited for the first time with the Lemasters in July.

With the help of the Town Engineering Office, which greatly enlarged three of our old maps, I have tried to recreate semi-colored maps of Stoughton as it would have looked in 1726 with twelve families and a few roads and again in 1749 with more than seventy families and many more roads.  Our previous version of these two maps put the houses on a template of a map from 1831, which showed such things as Ames Pond, which did not, in fact exist as shown until 1825. Ames Pond had to be changed back to Trout Brook. Other elements had to be added such as the School Farm; Dorchester, Bear, Three, and Iron Mine Swamps; Trout Brook, Jordan’s and Iron Mine meadows, all of which appear on the Maps of the Twelve and Twenty Five Divisions  Also added are early roads or paths such as Pigwacket Road, roughly the current Page St, which connected to the Old Beaten Path in what is now Avon and the paths and ways that are now Pearl-Park-Sumner Streets, and Highland St. These new maps are on display at the society, but are still a work in progress. A future challenge will be to tackle the 1794 map, which has also been enlarged. We are in the process of assembling two recently-purchased swing-out map/poster display units, which will permit us to consolidate, yet have available for display, many of our maps as well as some photographs on posterboard from previous programs and themes..

Thank you’s  to Joe and Jeanne DeVito, who have purchased a new, slightly larger-capacity refrigerator for the Society.  Our old refrigerator could no longer hold all the lunches of our expanding number of volunteers. On many Tuesdays, we now have fifteen or more people present to do what has to be done.  In 2008 we had more than 2700 volunteer hours, up 200 from the year before, and with the number of people who have been appearing lately, we may get to 3000 in 2009.

Current Display  Our display on the Stoughton schools begins with a 1745 document written by John Hixson and sixth other residents of the Second Precinct (eventually Sharon) “to ye selectmen of ye Town of Stoughton” that they have hired Elizabeth Capen and Demaris Bird as teachers and asks that their salaries be paid from the school money…”of which as yet we have received no part.”  These women were the first females known to have taught school in Old Stoughton. We have the small document written by John Withington asserting that he kept school from Feb 3 to April 5. 1755 and billing the Town 1 pound 13 shillings and 10 pence. Elijah Dunbar’s journals of 1762-3 describe his keeping school in several places. A letter written in 1815 from one R Talbot to schoolmaster Avery Briggs, informs the reader that the bearer is returning Briggs’ stick, but condemns Briggs for whipping a boy for no cause.  One wonders if there is a dramatic story we don’t know explaining how the schoolmaster’s stick came to be in Talbot’s possession. There is a photo of the third and fourth grades at the Clapp School in 1899-1900. In the picture we see Sidney Fay Blake and Doris Holmes, who will one day marry and pursue careers in science. Also in the picture is Reuben Willis, who becomes Stoughton’s permanent scoutmaster for many years, plays the organ in local churches, and gives music lessons to sores, if not hundreds of Stoughton students.   The Pierce room is now filled with photographs of students, student-athletes, members of the bands, cheerleaders, majorettes. Their class rooms, their schools, and their graduating classes from the early 1800’s up to the 50th Anniversary celebration of the South Elementary School this year.  Come visit us and possibly find your own class pictures, or those of your parents or grand-parents

Sometime this fall, we hope to visit the Commonwealth Museum at the Mass. State Archives, which features an exhibit of rare, original documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. A side trip to the JFK Museum, which is nearby, might also be in order. If you are interested in the trip, (we have been going on weekday mornings, usually on Wednesdays) please let us know.

We sadly note the very recent passing of one of our members, Anita Brennan.  We have the now bittersweet memory of her and David bringing to last year’s Harvest Supper the three roof slates on which her father had painted the Train Station, the Town Hall, and the White Mill.  Those slates are now displayed in the Reading Room. Our condolences to her husband, David, her children, her parents, and the many people in this town who loved and admired her. R.I.P. Anita.

Archivists Report

Joe DeVito and Jack Sidebottom have located many pictures and documents for the Stoughton Schools exhibit.  We have added two more boxes to our card catalogue so that we now have room to accommodate the fifty new cards on old deeds which had been newly catalogued by Richard Fitzpatrick.  After finishing their cataloguing of the books in the Reading Room, Ruth Fitzpatrick and Millie Foss have also completed the reconstruction of a WWI scrapbook by transferring all the pictures into a new volume with acid free, hinged pages, each with its own polyester sleeve.  Ruth is now writing an update of the last fifty years of education in our town to supplement John Flynn’s “ A History of Education: Stoughton, Massachusetts.” Ruth requests donations of 1942 and 1949 Stoughton High School Yearbooks and Town Reports from 1997-2001, 2004, 2006, and 2007. Tony Alfano has been sorting the newspaper collection donated by the Chestnutt family and a number of historical magazines which had been stored in drawers in the Clapp room. Tony and Bob Viola are sorting items from the Stoughton Railroad Station files. A group of us fashioned from salvaged wood the counters  which are now displaying artifacts at the base of the recently purchased cloth dividers in the Pierce Room, and Richard Fitzpatrick made a beautiful stand to display the twenty-three miniature flags donated to us by Janet Clough. Richard has also been busy creating captions for scores of pictures and documents in the schools exhibit. Recent gifts: Cheryl Stoyle emailed us some digital images of paintings done by Mortimer Lamb of the Stoyle Farm on Sumner St and a photograph taken of workers inside the Stoyle carriage shop at the same location, circa 1910. Mary Reese gave us laminated posters from the South School’s Fiftieth Anniversary celebration which describe each decade of the school’s history (now on display,)  Photographs of soldiers at Camp Gordon in WW I from Betty Maraglia; Masonic pictures, documents, certificates and records from the Stoughton’s Women’s Club from 1995-2002, old town reports and maps, a 1936 Semaphore and many other items from the estate of David and Edith Benjamin

--Jack Sidebottom

Curator’s Report

Donations: a steel army helmet from the Korean War and  two army insignia buttons from WWI from Betty Maraglia. The artists model of the altar at Immaculate Conception Church from James Sheehan , a number of items from the estate of the late David M. Benjamin including a mason’s apron and a Masonic sword belonging to Henry Trollop, --Brian Daley

Clothing Curators

In early July Meredith Benjamin Hatch and Barbara Benjamin Barrett graciously donated their grandmother’s (Winifred Rose Trollope) and her sister’s (Edith Rose) outfits dating from 1900-1935  Included, we found a dark, red, woolen bathing suit (1910) that was believed to belong to their grandfather, Henry Trollope. Dresses belonging to the ladies included a white satin (1920) evening dress and a white lace (1900-1920) evening or a very dressy afternoon, a blue satin (1900) beautifully made (custom) and a two-piece blue lace (1935) and two lovely dressy, blue blouses (1900-1920.  In among the dresses was found two bone and silk fans dating back to 1920. We also accepted a 1960 blue chiffon evening dress belonging to Edith Trollope Benjamin, which she had worn as a chaperone to a high school prom. Edit was very much involved in Stoughton’s society for many years

–Joan O’Hare

Welcome to New members: Warren West, Virginia Mc Grath, Stephen and Martha Waters, Jean Mor, Barbara Gusciora, Peter Boudrou, Ruth Riske, Marc Gerome, Jacki Gavin, Tom and Sandee Lemasters, Stephen Howe, and life members Ardis Johnston, Wayne Legge and Peter Green