Volume XLIII No. 4
Upcoming Events
May 18 2:00 P. M. William Marvel, author of sixteen books and scores of articles on the Civil War will give a lecture and slide-show: “The Soldiers of ’62: Nine Month Men and Volunteers for the Long Haul.” Mr. Marvel will focus on two regiments with prominent Stoughton, Canton, Taunton, Easton, and Randolph connections: the Nine month 4th Mass. of our diary-writer Charles Eaton, Jedediah Bird, Ira Drake, and Randolph diary-writer, James Dargan; and the “for the long haul” 35th Mass. of Randolph Captain Horace Niles, our diary-writer Edward Waldo, Henry Monk, Augustus Avery Capen, and George, Edgar, and M. B. Hawes. Mr. Marvell will not focus specifically on these familiar names, which have become known to some of us through the Eaton and Waldo diaries, but on the respective roles of the two regiments in the war. On this day only, copies of the Waldo and Eaton Diaries will be on sale, $10 for both, which is cheaper than our usual members only prices.
June 9 - Annual Election of Officers and dinner at Backstreet Grille. If you wish to attend, please fill out the form at the end of the Newsletter.
The Nominating Committee of Mary Kelleher, Millie Foss, and Hank Herbowy have submitted the following nominations:
| President - Dwight Mac Kerron Secretary – Evelyn Callanan Corresponding Secretary – Jeanne DeVito Curator – Brian Daley Historian – Howard Hansen |
Vice President - David Lambert Treasurer – Joan Bryant Archivist – Richard Fitzpatrick Clothing Curator – Janet Clough |
Other currently serving members:
- Board of Directors – Chairperson Ruth Fitzpatrick, Denise Peterson, Maureen Gibbons, Joe Mokrisky, Lou Poillucci, Joan Bryant, and Dwight Mac Kerron
- Membership Committee – Mary Kelleher
President’s Report
At our meeting on March 16, we voted unanimously to change the by-laws as had been proposed. The new sentence which comprises Article II e : “Said organization is organized exclusively for charitable, religious, educational, and scientific purposes, including, for such purposes, the making of distributions to organizations that qualify as exempt organizations under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, or corresponding section of any future federal tax code.”
We then enjoyed author Michelle Couglin’s presentation on Mehetabel Chandler Coit and her diary and several members bought copies of her book.
On March 27, we had a visit from a Cub Scout doing a project on the Stoughton railroad station. He was accompanied by his father, Peter Murphy, who shared vivid descriptions of the Murphy Coal homestead, fires, storage areas, etc. We will put on our list of possible future tours: Murphy Coal, business and homestead.
Volunteers Matt Orell, Niko Yaitanes, and Briget Yaitanes have completed the first draft of the computer transcriptions of Newton Talbot’s copied version of the David Talbot Diary 1789-91, which is now being cross-checked against the images of the original diary. Matt has worked during the day on Tuesdays and Briget and Niko have come on Thursday evenings. Niko, in collaboration with Briget, wrote the following: “David Talbot led a slower pace life in which he worked hard, but on his own time. He walked from place to place, enjoyed attending church, and supported his family. Although his extensive physical work seems burdensome to our society today, it was one of the sole ways to earn money. His labor intensive work was part of the common, routine life of villagers. Today, the job types and daily routines differ greatly from each other. The number of jobs requiring intense physical labor has dramatically diminished from 1789. Their society was reliant on growing crops, such as flax. Nowadays, people rely on grocery stores to provide them with food. The crops no longer are specific to a certain growing time; fruits and vegetables of all kinds are imported from other countries.
In his diary, he recorded the labor he did each day (except Sundays), along with sermons from church every Sunday. Talbot almost never stated any emotional or personal information. Even when he got married, he said nothing else besides the fact that he got married. However, he indirectly showed whom he was close to from the number of times they were visited, as stated in the diary. David Talbot did not speak of how the public perceived him, but he seemed to have many connections to people in the town and several surrounding towns. Therefore, one may infer that the perception was generally positive. Talbot attended many funerals, which illustrates that he was an active member of his community.
David Talbot’s life was centered on work, community and God. His lifestyle seems simplistic to the modern American. However, if people today were stripped of all their luxuries and extra curriculars, we would be sure to find that the root of happiness for even modern Americans revolves around those three basic necessities. Talbot’s diary reasserts that materialistic items are not necessary to live a whole and satisfying life. Although our society and culture has advanced since 1789, our needs are basically the same. We go to work, support our friends and family, and look for hope in times of need.” -Niko and Briget Yaitanes
Here are some other interesting discoveries our team has made from a combination of the diary, David Lambert’s book of Stoughton Vitals, town records, and early maps. Niko Yaitanes determined that an S in the diagram before a particular entry meant snow and an /S\ meant snow and wind. Hence /R\ meant rain and wind. This brought to mind the 12-year-old Erastus Smith, whose diaries from the opposite end of Stoughton (Dry Pond) sixty years later, always begin with a notation of the wind direction. These diaries moved me to write a short piece for the Historical Society table at the library for Earth Day 2014, which included excerpts from both the Talbot and Smith diaries. We have copies now at the Society.
When I mentioned to David Lambert that were looking for the grist mill at which David Talbot took a regular turn at working in the diary, he gave me a list of the mills which appeared on the 1794 map of Canton/Stoughton, a copy of which accompanies the Elijah Dunbar Diaries we recently published. From that map we see that a man, for and with whom Talbot records may days of work, Elijah Wentworth, had a mill located on the north side of the current Indian Lane, near its junction with York St. in Canton. Mary Beth McKinnon, who lives nearby, had previously mentioned reports of a mill in that area. A mill pond is clearly visible on the brook, which flows north from the wetlands at the northern end of York Pond/Glen Echo, but Mary Beth reports finding no traces of a mill works. This stream, York Brook on some maps, continues north until it combines with Pecunit Brook and flows into Reservoir Pond, and from thence westward across Canton and into the East Branch of the Neponset. During many months of his diary, David Talbot records the number of bushels of corn or rye he has ground at this mill. At other times, the mill is apparently out of commission and he takes cartloads of grain to Gay’s Grist Mill, which was on the current Mill St. the later site of the Gay Cotton Manufacturing Company.
We have discovered that David Talbot had been married previously to Mary Spears, yielding three children, none of whom are mentioned in the diary. David does mention visiting Dada Spears, which reveals to us that the “Dada” (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) in Dada Spears and Dada Capen is an affectionate term for father-in;law. Dada Capen is Hitty’s father Christopher Capen, and we are still trying to establish the identity of “Uncle Capen.” David and Hitty (Mehitable Capen, later referred to in the Diary as Mrs T) have two daughters, Gratis and Salome, both of whom are born during the period in which the diary is written, but oddly, there is no reference to the birth of Gratis. According to Huntoon, Mehitable’s sister Abigail defied her father and escaped from a locked bedroom to run off with an (allegedly Indian) Bancroft. Here is how he tells the story in the chapter “History of Ponkapoag Plantation,” one of the many Huntoon chapters David Lambert has provided on our website: “One of this family (Bancroft), bearing the name of its ancestor, George, fell in love with Abigail Capen, whose father, Christopher, had purchased land on Indian Lane. His house stood on the northerly side of Indian Lane, between the houses marked A. Tilden and D. Croud on the map of Canton published in 1855; his old well can be seen from the road. He forbade his daughter to have anything to say to Bancroft, and locked her up in her room; she made her escape in the night, joined her lover, and they were-married on the 28th of December, 1779.”
Despite the fact that this is a wonderful tale, our best current information via David Lambert tells us that George Bancroft was the son of a white Bancroft, but whose mother had married or lived with an Indian in her second marriage. The marriage of Abigail and George is published, some time before it takes place, making the story of her sneaking out to elope somewhat suspect. In any case, David Talbot often mentions pleasant interactions with “sister Abigail,” indicating that whatever difficulties may or may not have surrounded her marriage (her husband is never mentioned) Abigail is on good terms with Hitty and David.
Our study of the David Talbot diary continues to produce interesting facts about his life and the history of the land in the York section of Canton-Stoughton, much of which we plan to include in an expanded history of Glen Echo (York) Pond. Since there are also plenty of Capen family connections, some of this information might profitably be displayed at the Capen Reynolds Farm. At this time, consultants are exploring the possible uses for both the Town’s recent Glen Echo purchase and the town-owned Capen-Reynolds farm. David Talbot’s diary may have something to contribute to both.
Stoughton Public Library Director Pat Basler recently brought us a box of David Benjamin’s music. David and his wonderful voice contributed much to the Old Stoughton Musical Society for many, many years. We have passed on the music to the OSMS and together we will make the difficult judgment on what should be retained.
Pat Basler, Teresa Tapper, and Director of Recreation John Denison have been moving forces in the creation the storybook boxes on the trail between the Bradley Lessa Playground on West Street and the Myron Gilbert quarries. It is a great place to take your children or grandchildren. There is the wonderful playground in an idyllic setting, with heifers often grazing nearby. At the trailhead, there is a kiosk, which tells the story of the creation of the boxes. The easy walking trail, now improved with wood chips, passes a vernal pool with the story boxes, each containing two pages of a continuing children’s story placed about ten yards apart. The Historical Society had previously placed two signs, one 100 yards in, when one passes through the stone posts into the Myron Gilbert land and another one at the quarries. Recently, we added tree identification information, which now fills four of the story boxes at the end. If you walk out that far, you will find bark and leaf identification and other commentary on white, red, and black oak, yellow and black birch, red maple, sassafrass, white pine and tupelo. More commentary may be added in the future. This land is part of the Libby Purchase, which was added to the Bird St. Conservation area more than a decade ago.
Phyllis Batchelder, a former President of our Society, spent much of her life nearby, first at the Lucius Clapp farm, which her father, Carl Libby owned when she was growing up and later in the house of one of her grandchildren, a few doors down. After Phyllis’s death, the property was sold to Ralph Polillio, who has passed along to us some documents, mostly old booklets relating to Stoughton history which he rescued from the dumpster. Among the documents was the small brown book, which Newton Talbot had printed after the Dedication of the Isaac Stearns marker in 1899. It was the first time I had held that book in some time, as what I have seen recently is the transcribed re-creation of it on our website and printed copies of that re-creation, which we have available for sale at the Society. As I told Ralph, after thanking him for thinking of us, we will be doing much more with all things relating to Isaac Stearns in 2016, celebrating the 300th anniversary of his settling in Stoughton.
We had planned a tour of the Pearl St. Cemetery to be led by David Lambert for April 27, but problematical weather forecasts, not to mention heavy machinery parked in front of the cemetery, led us to cancel both that walk and its rain date, the following Sunday. We will reschedule for a Sunday in June or July. Our files on the cemetery reveal how much work has already been contributed by earlier generations of the Stoughton Historical Society to record all the graves and make notations about the shape and inscriptions of many of the stones. In our current generation, Howard Hansen and David Lambert have made considerable contributions. David has images of all the grave stones in his files and we are considering a publication on the cemetery, which would include many of these images and much of the history. It is possible that we will have two publications, a shorter booklet with a few images and a few pages of history, and a larger, complete version of all the images and even more history, if we can determine that there is a market for such a compilation.
The Historical Commission will be placing one of our historic signs at the site and will be considering the possibility of recommending that some money from the Community Preservation Act be used for restoration and preservation of this historic cemetery, Stoughton’s oldest. At some point in the last twenty years, the Town voted to set aside $15,000 for the cemetery, but sufficient time may have passed so that said monies are no longer available. We have received recently updated guidelines from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management: Historic Cemeteries Preservation Initiative, but there will still be difficult decisions involving the appropriate level of restoration and expense. Restoring and in some cases, replacing the tombstones can be prohibitively expensive.
In any case, it was gratifying to see that a youth group from the First Universalist Church had done considerable cleaning and flower-planting around the grave of Stoughton’s first minister, Rev. Jedediah Adams. Adams served from 1746-1792, and the young Elijah Dunbar boarded at his house when he was teaching a six-week grammar school in the Third Parish (the current Stoughton) in 1762. Technically, Jedediah Adams was not the first minister as one Thomas Jones served on a trial basis for three months before him. Howard Hansen has noted that the Pearl St Cemetery is approximately half way between the church in the center and Rev. Adams large house, which stood across from the high school. An image of this house has been displayed lately on the Facebook page “The Stoughton Time Machine,” which is managed by David Lambert and John Carabatsos.
An increasing number of older people are joining Facebook where they can view the old pictures or discuss the old times. Other relevant Facebook sites are our own “The Stoughton Historical Society,” ‘You know your from Stoughton When…” “You know you grew up in Stoughton if you remember:,” and a recent one added by Robbie Swan, “Stoughton – Historic Photos and Postcards.” Of course, by far the most educational site on Stoughton on the internet is stoughtonhistory.com founded by David Lambert and later transferred to the Stoughton Historical Society where David remains its/our webmaster. I am always discovering material on our site that I had not realized was there, and often turn to it for background facts, the Rev. Jedediah Adams above being the most recent example.
In other recent developments at the Historical Society, Richard Fitzpatrick has expanded our storage section for framed paintings and documents, which now include the Mortimer Lamb paintings mentioned in his report. Joe and Jeanne DeVito’s daughter Carol Green and her husband Derrick recently visited the Forrest Bird Aviation Museum and Invention Center in Sand Point, Idaho, where they were graciously hosted by Dr Bird. They returned with some wonderful pictures, including one of the airplanes in the museum of the same model (and only a few serial numbers away) that his father, Morton Bird, a WWI veteran, owned and taught Forrest to fly on back in Stoughton in the years between WWI and WWII. Carol Green downloaded the pictures for us and Joe and Jeanne had them printed. They are now on display in one of our new cabinets in the front of the Jones Room, and by the time you see them, we hope to have added some Morton and Forrest Bird pictures from our own files.
We thank Derrick and Carol Green for a very generous contribution they made to the Society in March. We also thank Rob Germain for donating a used laptop computer.
On Sunday afternoon, May 4, we received three van/truck loads of leftover yard sale goods, which came from the Bryant children’s annual yard sale in Sharon to support cancer research. Helping transport by car and/or carry the items into our basement were Shaun Spencer, Danielle Bryant, Janice Bryant, and Andrew Mac Kerron.
Our own yard sale will be at a yet-to-be-determined date in the Fall. Items can be dropped off during our normal hours. We will have the Harvest Dinner at the Library in September, and our tentative date for our program on the Stoughton Grenadiers is October 19.
Correction.
In the last newsletter I misstated the officers of the Old Stoughton Musical Society. Betty Maraglia remains the President of the Society. Renee LeBlanc is Musical Director and John LeBlanc is Vice-President.
Archivist’s Report
Eight jewelry display cases, two glass towers, and four glass-front hutches, all in fine condition were donated to the Society by Dewey Dykeman of Dykeman Electric Company of 21 Wyman St. The cases all came from the former Wyman Jewelry Store, which closed twelve or so years ago. The Society also received two other display cases from the Canton Historical Society. This writer along with Brian, Denise, Dwight Evelyn, Joe, Jeanne, Karen, Linda and Ruthie spent most of the winter work days, December through March (plus several other days) cleaning and rehabilitating the new cabinets, while removing and rearranging our older cabinets. Three of our old glass cabinets were donated to and picked up by the Sharon Historical Society.
Evelyn Callanan donated some advertising cards. One of note was of the Medical Pharmacy, which closed this past winter. We have provided copies of several items relating to the history of the St James Roman Catholic Parish in Stoughton. We need to create separate folders for items on either St James or Our Lady of the Rosary Parishes. Lawrence Thomas donated a number of different items: Stoughton Chronicles from 1955-56, issues of the Stoughton Pennysaver, many old telephone books, school personnel from the 1950’s, Immaculate Conception Dedication bulletins, etc.
I have also been working on cataloging a number of older items. Ruthie has been re-filing/cataloging items from both school and business displays. We received a (very heavy) general ledger, Town of Stoughton 1911 -1920 from David Lambert and added another shelf to Cabinet 84 to make space for it. David also delivered a large collection of record books, scrapbooks, and two boxes of news clippings that had been compiled by the late Robert Parsons. Karen Dropps has created files for the retirement pension forms of Stoughton’s soldiers in the Civil War and is now working on organizing the clippings from the Parsons’ boxes in preparation to extending the scrap books.
Linda Peterson of Pembroke, Mass. donated two Mortimer Lamb paintings: one oil on canvas of Swan Tavern. The other, oil on board, is titled “Old Capen Homestead.” But includes a view of the Swan Tavern. She also donated a framed photo of the Stoughton High School Class of 1924, Robert Germain donated a book on exercise and training c. 1894. - Richard Fitzpatrick
Curators Report Acquisitions
Gasoline-pump shaped salt and pepper shakers, which advertise Bob Russell’s Esso Service Center, formerly on Park St. from eBay; one pair of Corcoran’s black paratrooper boots donated by David Cabral; one jar of Packard Jiffo White Shoe polish (manufactured in Stoughton) from eBay. Stoughton Police badge, Comm. of Mass. from eBay;.one Chasbert ripper fabric cutter (made in Stoughton) from eBay; Stoughon High School Class of 1939 pin from Michael Sheehan
-Brian Daley
Clothing Curators Report
Pam Poillucci has donated a large bag full of fabrics and clothing items. Most of these have been given over to our supply for our yard sale in the fall. We have kept two hand crocheted pieces. One is a drawstring bag, very nicely done. The second is a lady’s U shaped detachable collar. Both have been recorded in our system and placed in our storage boxes for use as displays at some time in the future. Time has been spent working on the repairs needed on the items mentioned in our last Newsletter. Small progress has been made, but it will take a good amount of time to complete these projects.
We have displayed in one of our new cabinets lady’s hats from the 1940’s and 50’s. Many of us remember wearing hats similar to these, and they have brought back some happy memories. We can still use help in this department of our Society. There are a variety of tasks that should be tackled. We look forward to having any of you join us.
-Janet Clough
Membership
New Members – Karen and Michael Paterson, John Souza
New Life Members - Rick and Linda Woodward, and Nancy Davis