VOLUME XXXVIII
Upcoming Events
November 10—Veteran’s Day Program at the O’Donnell Middle School 8:00am-Noon
November 15—Showing of parts I and II of the John Adams HBO Special at the Wales French Room of the Stoughton Public Library. Part I featuring the Boston Massacre and the ensuing trial will begin promptly at 1:15pm. After a brief intermission, Part II on the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence will begin at 2:45pm. The Friends of Prowse Farm have graciously permitted us to display the recently purchased sign from the Doty Tavern.
November 30Archeological and historical tours of the site of the White Factory on Mill Street, Stoughton’s first factory, (featured on this year’s Community Calendar) sponsored by the Stoughton Historical Commission. See the Calendar and our last Newsletter for more background information. One tour will be at 1pm, one tour at 2pm. Meet in the parking lot of STD MED at 75 Mill St. Rain/snow date December 7. To reserve a place on the tour, leave a message by phone at the Society or email us. State whether you will be coming to the 1 or 2 o’clock tour.
December 14 Holiday Parade 1 pm Open House at the Historical Society- Noon-3:00pm.
President’s Report
More than thirty of us shared an enjoyable Harvest Dinner on September 22 at the Library. Anita Brennan brought three beautiful paintings which her father had created on slate shingles left over from our roof repairs. They are now on display in the reading room at the Society. Joan Bryant put together a display on the Hurricane of 1938, which led to some sharing of memories from that storm; she was assisted by her daughter Debbie Spencer, and daughter-in-law Janice Bryant in serving the food from Bertucci’s; Jeanne DeVito and Evelyn Callanan ran the raffle, and its proceeds put us into the black for the evening.
Our yard sale on October 18th yielded more than $1200 thanks to the hard work of Denise Peterson, Maureen Gibbons, Donna Hodges, Joan Bryant, and Jeanne DeVito before the event, including carloads of donations from the Bryant and Gibbons families. Helping out on the day of the event, were the people previously named and Brian Daley, Jack Sidebottom, Hank Herbowy, Paul Carter, Carole Neville, David and Helen Sears, Dwight Mac Kerron, Evelyn Callanan, Mary Kelleher, David Lambert, Effie Noren, and various other members of the Gibbons and Bryant families. Millie Foss helped with the pricing of some of the items. A few weeks earlier, Joan Bryant had purchased mums which we planted beside the entrance sidewalk and I supplied some cornstalks from my garden to put on both sides of our sign. Carole and Brian Daley have now put arrangements of pine boughs and red winterberries in the large pots, a display that should stand up to the November weather, as the mums are fading. Joe DeVito has spent many hours working on the grounds. The Thursday after the yard sale, Hank Herbowy had the boiler room cleaned up and looking terrific with everything in its place…until we begin to fill it up again.
For the moment, the renovations at the Society are finished with the complete roof replaced, the walls and ceiling repaired and painted, some exterior woodwork painted, new shades installed on all the windows of the Jones room and curtains placed on the entry doors. The new shades proved very effective in darkening the room for David Lambert’s well-attended and fascinating presentation on the Ponkapoag Indians on October 19. David also gave the society a copy of his new book Vital Records of Stoughton, Mass., to 1850 and we have already put it to good use several times. Dave also brought us photocopies of documents indicating that Lemuel and Hezekiah Gay and Bethuel Drake Jr. received permission by the legislature to Incorporate the Stoughton Woolen and Cotton Factory in June of 1814, just a few month after Lemuel Gay and several others had received permission to incorporate the Gay Cotton Manufacturing Company. The nature of this new company is a mystery, as we have no other records of its existence and it is likely, since the document says that the incorporation was “for the purpose of building a factory and such other buildings in said Stoughton” that this factory was never built
As you may have read, the MBTA plans to do some repairs to the train station to upgrade the heating system and make the toilets functional. The fact that the station is now open from 6:15AM to 10:45AM provides a good opportunity for us to put some exhibits in there which tell people more about the history of the train station, including all the work of Alice Petruzzo, Dot Woodward and so many others to get the station declared an historic landmark and to spend hundreds of hours fixing it up. Anyone who is interested in working on such an exhibit and/or spending some time at the train station at least one morning a week should contact me.
We spent the last of the money from the “Stoughton Outdoors” grant from the Community Council to have five historical signs made up for the Bird St Conservation Area. Two of the signs will be on the long “12 Division Stone wall,” which runs intermittently from Bird St to Ames Pond, two will mark Myron Gilbert’s entrance gate and quarry, and one will be placed near the entrance to the new Roy Robinson Trail/Loop off Palisades Circle. Town Environmental Officer Jim Conlan is working to get us steel posts on which to mount the signs. Jack Dembrowsky invited Peter Ventresco and me to discuss Stoughton’s farms of the past on the Dick Murphy television program. Peter grew up on a farm on Bay Road and recalled many other farms in that area and along Canton and Central Streets. We are encouraging him to write down these recollections so that we can put them into a booklet. Paul Bishop also has many recollections of the farms along Sumner Street, some of which he worked on and still has the scars from a barbed wire accident to prove it. He remembers Connie Sullivan, but not “the great tree” in his bog. Connie did not take kindly to trespassers in his bog and was not popular with the youth of the neighborhood. Is there anyone else out there with memories of Stoughton’s farms?
Another person with many pleasant memories of his childhood in Stoughton is Dr. Forrest Bird, who, accompanied by his wife, Pam, paid a visit to the Society on October 15th and 16th. He accepted a belated presentation of his Academic Hall of Fame Award with Joanne Blomstrom and Tony Sarno doing the honors and then agreed to be interviewed by Howard Hansen for a taped radio interview. Joe DeVito has since made another tape for the Society from when the program aired and it is available at the Historical Society. Joe Mokrisky took Forrest and Pam to see the fire truck and Forrest remembered polishing that truck in his youth. The following are just a few of the many other things Dr Bird recalled. When he saw Pete Jones house listed on his cousin Ken’s map of the Morton St-Plain St neighborhood of 1916, he remembered that Pete later moved to a cabin on Highland St, where he died. Pete taught him to trap and the young Forrest made hundreds of dollars trapping muskrats, fox, and mink in the cranberry bog at the northern end of Ames Pond, once surviving a fall through the ice because he was carrying the bamboo pole, which “his Daddy” had insisted that he take. His Daddy,” (as he always referred to him) Morton shot skeet with Billy White, and he remembered Billy White’s golf course off Plain Street, having landed his plane in it once. His Daddy took him up in his plane before Forrest was tall enough to see over the sides of the cockpit, and by age fourteen, he had his pilot’s license. His father had a machine shop behind the house where he learned to make and repair machine parts, a skill which would later help shape his life.
He would walk or ski through the woods from West Street past the quarries to catch the streetcar to Brockton for courses he was taking. He fondly remembered Frank Monk and his farm on West Street with its ice pond from which he still has an ice saw, mounted on the wall of his lodge in Idaho. At age 17, he flew someone else’s plane to Albany to get it away from the Hurricane of ’38. He took off with some difficulty into the increasing winds; although he had a chart, he hardly knew the route and acknowledged that he was very relieved when the Hudson River appeared beneath him. By the time he had borrowed some money and took the train back to Stoughton via New York City, the Hurricane had come and gone, causing great damage at their farm of 200 acres on West Street. Forrest eventually got paid $4000 for the job, money which he did not spend, but used as collateral on his first purchase of an airplane. Pam Bird told us about their Aviation Museum at Sand Point, Idaho, where senior aviators come and volunteer to serve as guides for the many visitors, including busloads of school children. Pam also mentioned that Forrest is working on his memoirs. He has kept a journal every day since he was a young man, and some day we hope to learn more of the Stoughton entries. Someone with as many memories as he has and a mind sharp enough to talk about them so clearly and vividly is a TREASURE. We have not yet even mentioned his inventions: the development of an improved breathing system for allied aviators in WWII, beginning with his adaptions to a demand regulator, with ideas taken from a captured German model. The new breathing system increased the altitude at which our men could fly by approximately 5,000 feet. His later development of the Baby Bird and its many follow-up respirators, has saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives, and has made him deservedly famous. Dr Bird defines life as “fate, time, and circumstance,” and a number of his stories supported that view. We enjoyed his visit immensely and look forward to some day visiting his Museum in Idaho.
The tapes submitted for this year’s Voice of Democracy Contest were judged by Joe and Jeanne DeVito, Jack Sidebottom, Millie Foss, and Brian Daley.
The winners were all juniors at the high school
- 1st Place-Michelle Brauneis
- 2nd Place – Kellie Carmichael
- 3rd Place – Rachel Rosen.
Congratulations to the winners and our thanks to the judges.
The Upcoming Year: Stoughton in the 1700’s Ruth and Richard Fitzpatrick have set up an informative display using the authentic Continental Money and State script, presented to us in 1909 by Loring Puffer. An accompanying page of text from Ezra Tilden’s journal at Ticonderoga complains that he had to exchange all his Massachusetts and New York bills for Continental money. Tilden soon becomes deathly ill and prays for help from God to recover. Another display shows pages from the almanac-journals kept by Harvard graduate, schoolteacher-farmer-singing-master Elijah Dunbar in 1762-3. He was the son of Samuel Dunbar, the minister who gave a fiery patriotic prayer to kick off the Suffolk Resolves meeting at Doty Tavern. These pages contain many terse entries of interest, including a record of the rhythm of the agricultural seasons: from cutting rails for fence posts to harvesting flax, to harvesting and husking corn. He also describes a terrible drought in 1762, singing sessions at many places including Doty’s Tavern, Isaac Fenno being killed in the raising of the church steeple, the death of Ponkapoag Indian patriarch Samuel Mohoo, Dunbar’s own marriage and the birth of his first daughter. In later years, Dunbar became a church deacon, town treasurer and record-keeper, and served in the military briefly. Huntoon devotes many pages to both Dunbars, possibly because he lived in the same parsonage in which Elijah spent his youth. Archivist Jack Sidebottom found a 1766 town document concerning a Mary Dunbar of Boston, a single woman, “bigg with child” who was staying at the house of Stoughton resident Nathaniel Liscomb. Come see our display and find out the rest of the story. We have applied for a Cultural Council Grant for the study of this period, including the possible publication of the Ezra Tilden Diaries. We will collaborate with the Stoughton schools at all levels and with drama groups in the schools or community who could do re-enactments, skits, or full-length plays on any of the topics. We encourage our members to make suggestions for programs and displays and take part in the creation of same.
Major John Shepherd-Early Stoughton-The Ponkapoag Indians: In the last Newsletter we discussed Robert Spurr, a guardian of the Ponkapoag Indians in the mid-1700’s, a man who apparently tried, but failed to protect the Indian’s ownership of the land. Huntoon describes how he had been preceded by a Major John Shepherd, who, sometime before 1726 built the tavern which was purchased by Col Thomas Doty in the 1760’s, whose sign will be on display December 15th at the Library. Shepherd had been elected by the townspeople to the Great and General Court and served as guardian of the Indians. However a Committee from the Court found that he had permitted his friends to cut wood on Indian land and that for five years his accounts had been held in “chalks and memory.” The Court expelled him in June 1753, but he was re-elected by the residents of Stoughton for another term, leading the General Court to expel him again, this time permanently, in November of 1754. “In his latter years he became poor: and in the ninety second year of his age, at the house of his son-in-law Samuel Tucker, at York, on the 30th of August, 1781, he passed away, unknown to the generations among whom he had moved.—a stranger in his own land.” (Huntoon, p316)
“The Blacks” – One part of Stoughton history which deserves much more research is the presence of African-Americans in the 1700’s. A tax booklet entitled, “Silvermoney Tax Single & Original Rate, No. 2, Septr 20th 1780” has a separate listing at the end for “The Blacks.” It includes the names of six males, three of whom appear to own real estate; Samson Dunbar, Thomas Mitchel, and Elias Sewall. Berry Miller owed only the personal tax, while Winsor Jonases’ .51 for the personal tax is crossed out, but he and Pompey Wallis owed 5 Pounds for an as-yet undetermined tax. I have also included a page of the Original Rate Tax rolls for 1778 in which some comparisons for can be made between the taxes being paid by the whites at the end of the list, including Zebulon Waters (uncle of Deborah Samson), and the and the blacks, Mitchel, Dunbar, and Miller. (See illustrations) Further study is needed to follow these individuals through the previous and subsequent years and to understand the tax system more clearly. Notice that all amounts are listed in pounds-L, shillings-S, and pence-D.
Archivists Report
We have spent considerable time working on the documents from the 1700’s and 1800’s. Tony Alfano had logged many more of our previously unlisted items from this period as a second step in incorporating them into our catalogues we have sorted through many sales of land and related deeds.We cleaned up after the painters and plasterers and reassembled the exhibits. We have found information for interested parties on the James Lehan Ford Dealership and Garage, the George Belcher Family, Civil War Vet and GAR member George Barlow as well as assisting in the judging the tapes of this years Voice of Democracy presentations from Stoughton High School students. We have received more pictures and postcards from the Maraglia family and purchased a business letter with an impressive image of the Stoughton Rubber Company on the letterhead.
– Jack Sidebottom
The 1941 80th Anniversary Edition of the Stoughton News-Sentinel. With the lead article “Interesting Facts from Stoughton’s History” is still on display in the Reading Room The next time you vist the Society, be sure to come and take a look
–Dwight Mac Kerron
Curator’s Report
Among the new items we have received and catalogued are a medal from Judith and Elaine Dahlgren, one man band instruments from an as yet unidentified source, a Rebekah Lodge # 97 ribbon and a Town of Stoughton Medal for the 200th Anniversary from Wayne Legge. I also acquired a package of replica Revolutionary War coins to supplement our 1700’s exhibit.
-- Brian Daley
Clothing Curators
Helen Sears has been helping out before she leaves for Florida. Joan O’Hare is working on an exhibit which includes an Atherton bonnet from the late 1700’s.
Welcome to New Members: Peter Sciore, Caryl Kalmowitz, Kathleen and Les Sylvester, Ann Donovan