A Postcard from Canton

Came Over on the Mayflower

2022-03-04T10:57:00.005-05:00

Revere & Son Bell Returns Home

Joseph Warren Revere walked across the dusty path that lead from his house to the nearby bell foundry. A pair of drowsy eyed oxen waited hitched to a heavy oak cart. It was a delivery day and a new bell had been cast that would be sent to another faraway place. Revere took a personal interest in each of the bells as they were made. The words “Revere Boston” were cast along the upper part of the bell that left the foundry in Canton. Paul Revere had taught his son the importance of personally inspecting each and every bell that left the forge. Running his fingers across the family name, Revere then watched the wagon roll out the gates on a 700 mile trip to Cleveland, Ohio. That very same bell is about to return to Canton, tomorrow, after a 3,000 mile trip across America. Tomorrow – the bell comes home.

The Revere family had a long history with church bells. As a boy, Paul Revere signed a contract with Christ Church (the Old North Church) to serve as a bell ringer, even though he attended the New Brick Church of Boston. During the American Revolution, Revere took on the role of his lifetime and is widely hailed as a true founding patriot. After the war, Revere returned to his roots of metallurgy and began casting a number of useful items for the economic growth of the United States, bells among his line of products.

It all started in 1792, when Revere’s congregation of the New Brick Church sought to replace their bell that had cracked. Revere, with the a reputation for taking on impossible tasks, believed he could cast the large bell to replace the one that had been “injured.” The casting of the 912 pound bell was not entirely successful. The bell had visible imperfections and a poor tone quality. Revere persevered and through the iterative process of failures and successes, the bells became better and more refined. Working closely with Joseph Warren, the enterprise flourished and he proclaimed that "we know we can cast as good bells as can be cast in the world, both for goodness and for sound.”

Originally located in the North End, Revere’s foundry began by producing materials for shipbuilding, such as nails and fittings, before developing the ability to produce more recognizable items like bells and canons. On October 9, 1804, an unusual late-season storm yielded vast amounts of snow, rain, and powerful winds across the northeastern United States. Known as the Storm of October 1804, it was the first first hurricane in recorded history known to have produced snowfall. The devastation was widespread and included the foundry that was located along the waterfront in Boston. Revere and his son decided to move the entire operation to Canton where the copper rolling mill had been established in 1801. In November 1804, Joseph Warren set off for Europe in order to gain even more technical knowledge of both copper rolling and the production casting large bells.

Upon Paul Revere’s death in 1818, Joseph Warren took on the primary role in the casting of bells and through subsequent corporate name changes continued bell making until 1843. The name “Revere Boston” appeared on bells as early as 1822 through 1843 and the last bell entry in the Revere stockbooks was dated 1828, though bells made after 1824 did not carry a date on them. More than 969 bells were cast with the Revere name, and many were cast right here in Canton in a foundry building that was demolished after 1965.

In Cleveland, Ohio there is a landmark church called the Old Stone Church. The congregation was formed in September 1820. Officially known as The First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, it was founded at a time when Cleveland was a village of a few hundred people. The first church building was dedicated in 1834. Since it was made of gray sandstone, it became known as “The Stone Church”; as the sandstone darkened, it was later called “The Old Stone Church”. The bell that left Canton was likely the bell that hung in that steeple. A slightly larger structure was constructed in 1853 on the original church site as Cleveland began to grow rapidly. It was about that time that the First Congregational Church in Vermillion, Ohio formed a bell society whose object was to purchase a bell. The bell this society bought had hung in the belfry of the Old Stone Church in Cleveland.

From 1853 to 1954 the bell was in the hands of the Congregational Church. When the building was sold to the Baptist Church, the bell continued to peal on Sundays and special events. In the early 1980’s the church was sold and passed into private hands. The bell was bought by Jeannene and Robert Shanks. Amy Shanks Miller tells the story of the bell. “Mom told us that she was buying a bell, and we all thought she was kidding. But, the way mom saw it, the bell needed a home and for around $1,000 she made the purchase.” In 1958, Jeannene and Robert had relocated to Vermilion, Ohio when Robert took a new position with Ford Motor Co. Jeannene was a housewife and real estate agent in Vermillion. They remained in Ohio until Robert's retirement from Ford in 1983. The bell was purchased near the end of their residency in Ohio, which meant that when she and Robert moved to California, they would move the bell with the Mayflower Moving Company. “Mom would joke that the bell came over on the Mayflower!”

The bell sat in a storage locker for a time, and then between 1990 and 2008 it was at Jeannene’s house in Chino Hills, California. When Jeannene died, the bell moved less than a mile to Amy’s garage where it was rung ceremoniously on July 4^th. “About ten years ago I began to think about a home for the bell,” Amy explained, “a rancher from Texas offered us a lot of money and said that if it didn’t work out he could always melt it down for scrap salvage.” Amy was shocked, and began working to find a suitable home for the bell.

Carl S. Zimmerman is an industrial archeologist and noted campanologist – a person that studies bells. This author first worked with Zimmerman in 2008 when trying to save the Revere Rolling Mill and Joseph Warren Revere Barn. Zimmerman talks of bells – the headstock, the bearing blocks, the clapper, the cannon, retaining yoke and gudgeon. After seeing photos of the Revere bell he marveled, “it is the real deal, and that octagonal wrought iron from which the ball of the clapper hangs is quite interesting.” There is much more to learn about this bell, and we are just getting started. “Revere had the time, opportunity and interest and was one of the earliest men to cast bells in the United States.” Folklore suggests that a tiny bit of silver was the secret ingredient in perfecting the tone of Paul Revere’s bells.

Thirteen years had passed since first meeting Zimmerman and the Revere Heritage Site is a reality. Zimmerman was now helping Amy find a home for what she affectionally called her “younger sibling” – the Revere Bell. One of the first calls was to the Paul Revere House. There is a Revere Bell from 1804 on exhibit in the North End home of Revere in the museum courtyard. They referred Zimmerman to this author. In September 2021, this author began to talk and email extensively with Amy. Of great relief, Amy wrote, “I am interested in knowing the bell would have good purpose and care.”

Thus over the next several months we all worked to have the bell contributed to the Revere & Son Heritage Trust. On January 14, 2022 the bell was donated by Amy Shanks Miller and her brother, Robert Shanks as a gift from the legacy of their parents to the Paul Revere Museum of Discovery and Innovation. Only one problem remained – getting a 2000 pound bell, frame and cribbing home to Canton, Massachusetts.

Through the efforts of several individuals, several thousand dollars was raised to ship the bell back east to Canton. Alan Hines, a Heritage Trust Director, solicited friends and colleagues and raised the money needed to get the bell east. And, once again, Mayflower Moving Company loaded the bell onto a truck for the transcontinental trip to Canton. Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, the bell cast here in 1834 will arrive back with much fanfare. It will be the second Revere Bell in Canton, as the first hangs in the belfry of the First Parish Church and dates to 1824. To bring this bell home took almost seven months and much planning.

The bell will be in temporary storage while ideas are underway for a permanent public display. Plans are to show the bell at the Canton Heritage Day event on May 14^th. Cast at the hands of Joseph Warren Revere, this bell took a fascinating trip through history and five trips to come full circle. Welcome Home!

Time After Time

2021-09-30T10:43:00.003-04:00

Larry Chelmow in his shop on Chapman Street.

This story was written nine years ago. And, as time passed, my dear friend embraced aging with an ever burgeoning family. Grandchildren and great grandchildren blossomed and this kind man smiled. There is a poignancy in growing old and wise. A day before I learned of Larry’s passing last week, I dreamed of the two of us on a ladder in the local library as we changed out the movement of a clock. The next day, news of Larry’s death reached my email in-box. I was struck by this spiritual moment and our intersection in life.

Larry had a stroke and he was hanging a clock in his living room when he was stricken. The beauty of the passing is that he was doing what he loved most and following his passion until the end of his life. Betty and Larry had been married sixty years. It was a full and vivid life and one that was very connected to Canton.

December 15, 1968, Larry & Betty Chelmow had just turned the key on their new home in Canton. Proud owners of a house on Chapman Street, they had finished their walk-through and were heading back to Randolph, three children in tow, to pack up and move to Canton.

Their house, sits just north of the Chapman Street Bridge, a Federal-style house with beautiful Italianate details. As they left their new home, there were plenty of dreams for this young couple. The house in Canton was perfect - after all, the realty agent said so! Their new home boasted plenty of room to raise a family, a gracious side yard, and an antique barn set on one of Canton’s oldest streets.

Larry knows the exact time they turned the key on that door as they left their new house. Only five minutes later, at 5:15 pm a New Haven Railroad freight train derailed right behind the Chelmow’s home. Larry and Betty did not find out until the next morning when they pulled into their driveway only to find hundreds of gawking spectators watching the progress on the rail bed below. “There were all these people in our yard and on the bridge and smoke was rising up over our new home,” said Larry, “it was a real wreck.”

Inside the Chelmow home is a front-page aerial photograph, framed and under glass, that shows the mayhem that day forty-six years ago. The crash led to the longest shutdown of the Northeast Corridor line in the history of the railroad. The line was closed for six days, eleven hours and twenty-eight minutes - an eternity for a railroad. And, the loss to the company was tremendous – 77 cars were involved in the accident and 40 cars derailed. In fact, 30 of the 40 cars were literally wedged in the 35-foot cut right behind the Chelmow’s new property. Two weeks later the New Haven Railroad ceased to exist, becoming part of the Penn Central Railroad after almost eight years in bankruptcy proceedings.

The Chelmow’s introduction to Canton was indeed historic, and yet their house has always figured in the history of our town. One of the best surviving early farmhouses in the town, it was built in May 1826 for Marcus Clark, a farmer, on the site of an earlier 18^th century house that had been owned by Henry Morse.

It was most likely a modest house when Clark owned it, and during the construction of the Canton Viaduct, in 1834, it was rented to the then twenty-three year old Oliver Smith Chapman. The access to the new railroad was important to Chapman; he was a newly established railroad construction engineer. Building railroads in America was a young venture, and the new Boston & Providence rail line was one of the first new lines in the country.

O.S. Chapman, as he was known, was born in Belchertown and was a wheelwright, as was his father before him. At a young age Chapman had established a sawmill and became a relatively successful man. Chapman’s first work on a railroad may well have been in Canton, as he was involved in assisting with the work at the Viaduct. He may well have supervised the railroad cut behind the Chelmow’s house – his specialty was excavating “difficult passages of solid rock.” He, along with his cousin, William Smith Otis developed the steam shovel. Invented for work on the Western Railroad in 1837, Chapman and Otis became quite successful as a result of their machine. By 1858, Chapman had worked on building the Vermont Central Railroad and had a contract to fill in the Back Bay of Boston.

Money seemed to flow from everything Chapman did, and as he became wealthy, he became influential. Named a director of the Union Pacific and the Canada Southern Railroads, Chapman began buying large tracts of land in Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. In 1858, Chapman moved back to Canton and purchased the small house that he had rented more than two decades earlier. The Clark House became the Chapman House and major renovations ensued. A mid-19^th century home of a man with means allowed the house to become more Italianate in design. To the east a new wing emerged, new chimneys and fireplaces in the bedrooms were all part of the “modern” comforts of life in the 1850’s.

The property that Larry and Betty Chelmow purchased in 1966 was essentially two houses - the center core built in 1826 surrounded by the 1858 renovations. Subsequent owners left their mark on the house as well; with a 1919 upgrade adding Georgian Revival fireplace mantels and improvements to the “auto barn.”

The one thing that is most striking (pun intended) about the Chelmow house are the clocks. Well over 100 clocks are spread throughout the house. These days most people rely upon their microwave or iPhones for telling time. But, actual clocks that tick, have a pendulum, strike the hours, can be wound – are vestiges of the past. When you buy a clock today it has a battery, but at Larry Chelmow’s house each and every clock has to be wound by hand.

“I was always very fond of hardware, and was collecting guns in the mid 1960’s” explains Chelmow, “one day we stopped at a home in Randolph owned by Charlie Cyr – he had a sign on his lawn that advertised clocks.” Chelmow had stumbled upon a new hobby – that of collecting and repairing antique clocks. “We didn’t have a pot to pee in,” Chelmow wryly continues, “so I traded the guns for clocks, and with that trade Charlie took me to the cleaners – the guns were far more valuable than the small pile of clocks I received in trade.” The friendship between the two men grew and Chelmow learned plenty about clock making in those early days.

Today, in the basement of the house on Chapman Street, Larry Chelmow is working in a place where time stops- literally. The small, whitewashed room is cool in the summer and a single antique-style filament bulb illuminates his work area. Everything is tidy; hundreds of parts are filed in old library card-catalog draws, nearby a woodstove is ready for the winter chill. Each day that Chelmow spends down in his shop represents the preservation of time. This is the perfect house in which to repair clocks, and they seem to fit in perfectly throughout. Clocks from the early 19^th century sit next to modern tall case instruments all lovingly cared for. Museums send their clocks to Chelmow, and his precision is renowned. Chelmow is a trustee of the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation and is frequently bidding on eBay for all things horologic - um clock related.

The Hawes Clock

Today, Chelmow is working on an old clock that hangs in the Canton Historical Society. Attributed to William K. Hawes, the “Hawes Clock” has hung at the Society for many years. For a long time it was thought that Hawes himself built the clock, but today we learn this was not the case.

The sign on the store on Washington Street read “William K Hawes Watchmaker and Jeweler” specializing in “Watches, Silverware, and Optical Goods.” Inside the 800 square foot store Hawes sold watches and clocks. Described as an “upright and honorable man” which was essential to the trade in the late 19^th century. It is likely that the clock that Chelmow is working on today was Hawes’ regulator clock. The regulator was the tool by which a clockmaker or merchant would set all other clocks and watches by to insure accuracy over time. In this case the timepiece being repaired today was built most likely in Switzerland between 1870 and 1890. This clock is very well constructed and very precise and known for keeping excellent time. Hawes lived on Chapman Street, coincidently a few doors down from the very place his clock is being repaired today.

The “Hawes Clock” sits in a simple pine case and a small stepstool is required for weekly windings. One day, Ed Bolster, the then society president asked Jim Roache to wind the clock. Roache turned the winder and the heavy weight broke loose and fell through the bottom of the clock. And that is when time stopped – about twenty years ago. Life starts again for this clock in the hands of master clocksmith Chelmow.

In the tiny workshop Chelmow leans against a soapstone sink, Glen Miller plays softly in the background as he contemplates my question. “No, I have never built my own clock,” he says, “but it is on my bucket list – and it will be a simple, time-only clock in a shaker-style case, my dream clock is quite simple.” Chelmow lifts the mechanism of the Hawes Clock and observes that in fact that the porcelain dial is in superb condition and the clock most likely only needs a cleaning. When completed in a few weeks the Hawes Clock will be the most precise timekeeping instrument in Canton – at least as far as mechanical clocks go. The Hawes Clock will vary by only a few seconds a week, but most of us may want to continue to use the microwave.

Epilogue: Larry Chelmow passed away on Wednesday, September 29^th and is buried at the Canton Corner Cemetery. Canton has lost a wonderful man.

Hawes standing outside his shop on Washington Street

displaying a rare Grand Strasburg Clock, an oddity that he kept in his store.

A Telegram to 138 High Street

2021-06-04T08:39:00.005-04:00

Julius Hollander arrived in New York City on April 5, 1938. The trip from Rotterdam was uneventful, despite the fact that German U boats were frequently targeting both military and passenger ships making the crossing to United States extremely dangerous. Back in Amsterdam, Julius’ brother, Walter, was in a Jewish refugee camp and was awaiting departure to join his brother. The two men saw that escape from the Nazis was critical to their own survival and to their family.

By December 1939, Walter was discharged from the camp as he had procured a visa and a ticket to the United States. Both of the brothers had been well educated and had received a “thorough education in business.” They were from Aachen, Germany – on the Dutch and Belgium borders. In Aachen they had been respectable businessmen and had served on the boards of several charitable organizations. In America there was safety for these Jews, but also a reset. The work they would do here was much more menial and the pay was meager.

Walter wound up working as a laborer at the E.F. Dodge Company in Leominster for twenty-dollars a week. Julius did slightly better, arriving in Canton around 1940, he took a night job tending the furnaces at the Canton Japanning Company on Neponset Street. Julius was paid sixty cents an hour and would take home twenty-eight dollars a week. Both brothers found small rented rooms in their respective communities. The japanery made patent leather and was located where the small industrial park is today on Neponset Street, just as you leave Canton on the left.

In Canton, there was a small and influential Jewish community that worked to help each other against a rising backdrop of anti-immigration sentiments. The neighborhood on High and Tolman Streets w

138 High Street - today.

as home to the Myers, Sherr, Danovitch and Swardlick families. The Swardlicks were of Russian, Polish and Lithuanian descent and came to Canton before 1920. They had lived on Tolman Street and bought a small house at 138 High Street in 1921. In 1927, Max Swardlick had been crushed in an elevator accident at Plymouth Rubber, leaving his wife Mary with six children. One of the children, Sam would go on to become the president Republic Plumbing. In the late 1930’s Sam attended Northeastern University and Mary rented a room in the house. From 1941 through 1942, that was the house in which Julius typed letters that failed to change the course of history.

The singular goal for the forty-seven year old man was to save his family. The whole of his savings was intended to “buy” the freedom of his mother, sister and his two nieces. Julius’ brother in law, Otto, was increasingly fearful of staying in the Netherlands after having moved from Frankfurt, Germany to avoid the dark shift in politics and persecution of the Jewish people. By May 1940, the family became trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands.

In April 1941, Otto wrote to a friend, “Who can tell if there is still a chance to leave Europe by the time this letter is going to arrive.” At the same time, Julius was sitting in his room on High Street at a typewriter and working on behalf of his brother-in-law and the family. “I have information that transit visas for Cuba are available again,” he wrote, “I would appreciate it if you would assist me in obtaining a visa for Mr. Otto Frank as soon as possible.”

Julius and Walter were Anne Frank’s uncles and they feverishly worked to secure freedom and their very lives. As one historian writes, “The prospect of being able to bring their family to the United States lent purpose to their work.” Their accumulated savings was $2,900. In order to secure a U.S. visa, the Hollanders would have to prove that they could support five people on their laborer wages. This would prove to be impossible. At the same time, Otto Frank had a very influential friend in America that could help, and Walter Hollander was the key to the communications that ensued.

Otto Frank had been a roommate with Charley Straus, the heir to Macy’s. In 1907 Frank and Straus had met while Straus was on leave from Princeton and studying in Heidelberg. Over the years they stayed in touch and even vacationed together. Charley changed his name to Nathan Straus Jr. and as his fortunes rose, he became extremely influential and a friend to Franklin Roosevelt. Straus was the head of the U.S. Housing Authority, a New Deal Agency and very well connected. Frank confided in his friend, “You are the only person I know that I can ask: Would it be possible for you to give a deposit in my favor?”

On July 1, 1941 the immigration laws changed and Strauss wrote to Frank, “I am afraid, however, the news is not good news.” A new strategy emerged. Here in Canton, Julius Hollander would be key to helping the Frank family find a way out of Nazi occupied Holland. Julius writes to Strauss, “It would be impossible for me to obtain an immigration visa for this country without your assistance.”

The plan that had emerged was to procure a transit visa from Cuba at a steep cost of a visitor visa for $250, a boat ticket for the family at $550 and the bond of $2,500 per person to be refunded after they left Cuba. The entire family would have to leave for Cuba and apply for a visa to enter the United States. Strauss had pledged to arrange for a bank deposit of $2,000 per adult and the bonds necessary as well as the tickets need for passage. The money would amount to several thousand dollars to secure the life of the entire family.

On Thursday, November 27, 1941 a Western Union Telegram was received in the Canton telegraph office and sent to Julius Hollander on High Street, “If you and your brother start negotiations for Cuban visas… Mrs. Straus willing to make necessary deposits as indicated… for Otto Edith Margot Anna Frank. It’s up to you to start if interested.”

There must have be cautious happiness, which was shattered eleven days later when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 11th the United States entered the war and Julius Hollander’s application for Otto Frank’s Cuban visa was cancelled that same day. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased on August 4, 1944, the Frank Family went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Otto Frank, worked.

Otto Frank survived the horrors of Auschwitz and died in Switzerland in 1980. Edith, his wife, died of starvation at Auschwitz. Anne and Margot died of typhus within days of each other at Bergen-Belsen. In mid 2005 a research volunteer happened upon a file in a manilla folder at YIVO: The Institute for Jewish Research. The file was marked Otto Frank. Looking in the folder, she saw the daughters’ names and birth dates and realized that this was Anne Frank’s father. Within the files are the letters and correspondence from Canton. The letters revealed for the first time that Otto Frank tried desperately to get his family out of war torn Holland in 1941, fifteen months before they went into hiding.

There are three letters in the file that end the story. In June 1945, Julius appeals to the National Refugee Service’s Migration Department for assistance in contacting the Franks, having been mistakenly informed that the they were alive and living in Paris. A second letter comes to Julius in 1946. The National Refugee Service writes with information that Otto Frank is in Amsterdam, Edith is deceased, and the daughters are still missing. The final letter in February 1946 closes the tale, Julius informs the Refugee Service that he has found his brother-in-law in Amsterdam. Only Otto survived.

The connection to Canton is an indelible reminder of the genocide that attempted to eradicate an entire people from this world. The house on High Street is a significant historical place where the hope and tenacity of Julius Hollander was crushed by world events and where even the most powerful were unable to intervene. Anne Frank’s words resonate to this very day. “Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”

Julius Hollander's Immigration Papers

Julius Hollander's Draft Registration Card

Leonard Billings and the 35th U.S. Colored Troops

2021-02-22T15:59:00.004-05:00

By The Torch - The Story of Leonard Billings

Leonard Lorenzo Billings, born in Canton in 1843.
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

Leonard Lorenzo Billings awoke early on a crisp autumn day in 1860. The walk from his home to Canton Junction took less than twenty minutes. Boarding the train to Boston, Billings was at the age where he was awakened. At age seventeen, Billings’ soul had been stirred by the Party of Lincoln. That October day would set the trajectory for a lifetime of experiences that would culminate in Billings’ death at the ripe old age of 96. The event that began it all was called the Wide Awake Procession in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Billings carried a torch high above his head and stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other young men who were heeding the call from Abraham Lincoln.

In early March, 1860, Lincoln spoke in Hartford, Connecticut with a message that opposed the spread of slavery. Five store clerks, who had started a Republican group called the Wide Awakes, decided to join a parade for Lincoln, who had delighted in the torchlight escort back to his hotel provided for him after his speech. Soon, the Lincoln campaign made plans to develop Wide Awakes throughout the country and to use them to spearhead large voter registration drives, knowing that new voters and young voters tend to embrace new and young parties. The men who marched in these torchlight rallies were described by The New York Times as "...young men of character and energy, earnest in their Republican convictions and enthusiastic in prosecuting the canvass on which we have entered.”

Billings, was transformed immediately by the spectacle and the message. Billings wanted to fight in the War of the Rebellion. Each time he tried to enroll in the Union Army, he was turned away. “I tried to enlist several times but was rejected on account of my age and size. Finally, the Captain of Company D, 11th Massachusetts Infantry, allowed me to sign up. As a private I drilled with a gun on Boston Common during moonlight nights. On May 9, the 11th Massachusetts regiment, along with the 12th went to Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, to perform Garrison duty. There we drilled before and after breakfast, and most of the day, and I learned to be a soldier.”

Billings was puffed up with pride, he was taking his part in the civil war with both conviction and steadfast optimism. Disappointment soon followed. On June 17th, 1861 Billings was sent home prior to being sworn in for three years of service. “I cannot take him,” explained the Captain, “he is too young.” With that, Billings was sent back to his home in Canton. Not to be put off, he became a local volunteer assisting the organization of 101 officers and men into Company H, 29th Massachusetts Volunteers. Billings was precise, ordered and efficient. By November he was mustered into service and was sent to Fortress Monroe to train for battle.

From his first days in service, Billings witnessed the horror of war up close and personal. “While at Fortress Munroe, there was an exhibition of the merits of the “Sawyer” gun, a new type of steel gun, of large size, throwing a 60 pound shell. One shot was fired, the shell passing over to the opposite shore about 5 miles away, but in the firing the large gun split in pieces, killing three men of our regiment by crushing them to death. For months I had waited to see the gun tried out, and, on this occasion, placed myself in the rear on a pile of dirt to observe direction in sight. When the gun went off, I rushed back some distance to my tent and fell on the tent floor without a word. Then I jumped up, ran back, and found one large piece of the gun weighing 300 or 400 pounds on the pile of dirt I had just left and another piece nearby buried in the ground.”

There is no doubt that these near-death experiences were a frequent occurrence in the days that Billings saw service. And, Billings was clearly involved in major conflicts as a witness to history.

By the time that Billings was in his nineties, he was the only living man in America that witnessed firsthand the clash between the Merrimack and the Monitor off of Newport News, Virginia. Billings wrote vividly of the event in a memoir penned in May 1932. “About noon of March 8, our company’s drummer boy on duty at General Mansfield’s headquarters saw a lot of dark smoke at Elizabeth River from the dreaded Merrimack coming out from Norfolk, and sounded the long roll beat, which the slope Cumberland and Frigate Congress took up offshore. At the same time, word came the General Magruder (confederate) was outside with 6000 men. Slowly the Merrimack steamed up near us, hardly paying any attention to anyone, passed the sloops, and turned and sent huge shells at us witnesses on the bluff and into the camp. She then headed for the Sloop Cumberland, which, along with the Congress and our guns on shore, were shooting at her. The Merrimack soon struck the sloop amidships, opening a huge hole through which the sloop filled with water and sank quickly. All the wounded and sick, nearly 150 of the crew, went to the bottom, a few swimming to land, whom we waded in and helped. Then the Merrimack drew off, shelling our camp.

Over the next two day, what Billings witnessed was the historically significant first battle between ironclad ships. Afterwards, one news article concluded that "naval architecture of the world, for all purposes of war, must be changed, and iron-plated steamers take the place of all the wooden constructions now in use." Billings recalled the battle the next day, “I asked the Captain if I could go over to the shore and was given permission. Shortly afterwards came the Merrimack. The Monitor, which lay at the wharf, moved out towards her, and then shots were exchanged as they got into position and found opportunity. 100 pound shots went over my head and landed in camp, every time the Merrimack came near our position. This was continued, both ships afraid of getting on the mud flats and both trying to force the other into that difficulty. Finally, the Merrimack withdrew to Elizabeth River on the way to Norfolk. These two days were a first real initiation in war. We were no longer recruits.”

Billings would later go on to be part of the Peninsula Campaign in 1861. This was a major Union operation launched in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862, and was the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. The operation, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, was an amphibious turning movement against the Confederate States Army in Northern Virginia, intended to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. As it turned out, General Robert E. Lee turned the subsequent Seven Day Battles into a humiliating Union defeat.

Billings was there, and was in retreat when “at the clearing in White Oak Swamp, we stopped for breakfast, but not for long, for soon the enemy came up and sent shell after shell exploding in our midst, severely cutting up the horses and mules, taking the Colonel’s arm off at the shoulder, and cutting others.”

August 1862 and into the fall, Billings found himself at Second Bull Run, Antietam and Fredericksburg. The descriptions that Billings shared are lurid. “Upon arrival, we found Jimmy Forbes, drummer boy for our company, with a wounded man. After placing the wounded man on the stretcher, he [Jimmy] stood up with his end and we started off. Just as he did so, a bullet struck him so near the jugular vein that he was turned around, dropped the stretcher, and caused the wounded man to roll off. Then Jimmy, a boy about 13 years old, was put on the stretcher and later taken to the hospital.”

Billings went on to join the Western Campaign and saw action in Mississippi, Vicksburg, Fort Sanders and Nashville, Tennessee. After three years and countless engagements with the enemy, Billings re-enlisted for another three years and received a bounty of $400.00 and a thirty day furlough. “In fact, we would’ve signed for 10 years in order to get out of this place. On the march my cowhide moccasins stuck in a hole and pulled off, leaving my bare feet on the ice and snow.” The long march, barefoot, to Knoxville took several days.

The trip back home was by steamer and by foot. “I proceeded through Louisville, Kentucky; Columbus, Ohio; and Albany, New York, to Boston.” Once home, Billings “procured an officer’s dress coat, with a pair of dark blue pants and a cap, shirts, and a number of things new and clean. Then I took a trip with my father on the train to Readville and walked 5 miles to Dedham Road in our old homestead where Hattie, Kate Manscroft, mother, and Uncle George lived.” A mere boy when he entered the war, the now twenty-one year old Billings was home. The stay would be short lived, Billings was about to become an officer in the 35th United States Regiment of Colored Troops. What was to come next would forever cement this man of honor squarely on the side of “liberty and justice for all.”

The 35th U.S. Colored Troop

The book is thick and heavy with a leather cover, gilded pages and a brass clasp. From a distance it is imposing, and up close it instantly bears the weight of history. Embossed on the cover in gold leaf reads “Officers Association, 35th Reg’t U.S. Colored Troops.” There is no doubt that this is a book that embodies our national history and opens a long lost door into a time and place of pain, suffering and eventual emancipation of 3.9 million slaves. The book is nearby on my desk as I write this story. History vibrates from the photographs inside. This is a glimpse into a military history that started with the Emancipation Proclamation.

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” But although it was presented chiefly as a military measure, the proclamation marked a crucial shift in Lincoln’s views on slavery. Emancipation would redefine the Civil War, turning it from a struggle to preserve the Union to one focused on ending slavery, and set a decisive course for how the nation would be reshaped after that historic conflict.

Upon hearing of the Proclamation, many slaves quickly escaped to Union lines as the Army units moved South. As the Union armies advanced through the Confederacy, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly approximately 3.9 million were freed by July 1865. Massachusetts was the first state to form Black regiments and send military the men as leaders to train former slaves to fight for the cause of freedom. Massachusetts’ Governor John A. Andrew called for men to lead experimental units who were, “young men of military experience, of firm anti-slavery principles, ambitious, superior to a vulgar contempt for color, and have faith in the capacity of colored men for military service.” This call perhaps produced more active abolitionists for the 54th and her sister regiment the 55th than any other regiment in the North. But, there is another regiment, the 35th that may not have received the same notoriety as the 55th and 54th, but is no less valiant and critical to the victory of the Union Army.

The 35th United States Colored Infantry was composed of African American enlisted men commanded by white officers and was authorized by the Bureau of Colored Troops which was created by the United States War Department on May 22, 1863. The Governor of Massachusetts, John Andrew, felt responsible for taking the lead in organizing black units. Andrew stated in the letter to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, "The truth is that unless we do it, in Massachusetts, it cannot be expected elsewhere. While, if we do it, others will ultimately, and indeed soon, follow."

In the same letter to Stanton, Andrew addressed the question of who would lead the brigade. It had to be a careful selection. The Governor believed that an officer chosen to lead black soldiers should support the idea of arming blacks or, in the best case, have abolitionist sentiments. In addition to these moral attributes, Andrew sought a colonel who had seen action in the war and proved his abilities. By late April he settled upon Colonel Edward A. Wild of the 35th Massachusetts. And, in turn, Wild looked to others for support when choosing officers to lead the new unit.

In the case of one individual, Leonard Lorenzo Billings of Canton, is revealed the political connections and the personal convictions that influenced Wild in his selection of officers. Billings had served as a corporal in the Twenty-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers and had seen combat. He was recommended to Wild by Edward W. Kinsley, a close friend of Governor Andrew who, in a letter of September 1863, included the governor's warm greeting and summarized the corporal Billings’ qualifications. "He is," wrote Kinsley, "Anti-Slavery. Temperance ultra--and a good soldier." Billings received a commission as a second lieutenant.

Billings would write, “upon arrival at Norfolk, I reported to General Wild, whom I found to be a fine man and an able general, as well as surgeon. Leaving him, I went to Fortress Monroe and was sworn in by general B.F. Butler, mustering officer, as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Volunteers. So began the second tour of duty of Billings who had seen the war at an early age and whose convictions carried him back against the wave rising to free fellow human beings.

The tide of the war had turned in the favor of the Union, and once again, Billings recalled firsthand the view from the southern lines. The recollections are searing. “going up broad river, we landed at Boyd’s Point, marching for three or four miles overland with four or five regiments in line of battle, intending to push the enemy and then charge. We pushed ahead all right and found the enemy. Firing a volley, we rushed at the rebels through the woods, field, and swamps, and away they went. Cannons opened up immediately, our force on the left had to fall back, and then we had to do the same. It was warm fighting for a time, our regiment losing 175 men killed, wounded, and missing, Colonel Beecher, Captain Whitney, Lieutenant Krebs, Lieutenant Stone and Lieutenant Ambler were either wounded or disappeared. The 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiment got it very severely. As for our regiment, after following back a distance and drawing the enemy out of the fort, we formed a line in an open field, along with a New York battery and a Captain Titus. While lying side-by-side with Captain Armstrong of our Company K, in front of the battery, a piece of wood and tin that held a canister together hit and scraped the captains head, after cutting his hat. After the battery had fired 55 charges, we were the first to rush the enemy, who broke and ran. It was now dark, and I was so wet with perspiration that I could wring the water out of my shirt.”

Lieutenant Colonel William N. Reed became the highest-ranking black line officer of the Union Army. Reed enlisted in 1863, served in the 35th USCT. Reed suffered a mortal gunshot wound at the Battle of Olustee Florida in February 1864, and died shortly after. (Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

Billings described in detail his life fighting side by side with former slaves, now as equals. On February 20, 1864, the 35th Regiment had taken part in the Battle of Olustee. It was the largest battle of the Civil War fought in Florida and involved more than 10,000 soldiers, including three regiments of US Colored Troops. When the five-hour fight was over, Confederate forces claimed victory, and Union soldiers retreated to Jacksonville, where some remained until the war ended 14 months later. Billings recalled, “the regiment lost two hundred and eighty men and thirteen officers killed and wounded.”

The end of the war finds Billings at Mount Pleasant, overlooking the bay and harbor of Charleston, South Caroline. He wrote of the end of the war in a matter of fact tone. “On April 14, came to us the news of Lee’s surrender, and everyone went wild. On April 19, we hear of the death of Lincoln, and, as everyone is much excited from the events of the last few days, Company K is order to re-enter the city to occupy the upper guard house, Captain Armstrong and I, with 75 of the company, being instructed to police one half of the city from the Citadel to the neck. On May 3, General Johnson surrendered his army, formally ending the war. Three days later, on May 6, the rebels in front of us surrender and come into the city, where our job becomes very busy, since martial law is proclaimed and everyone must have a pass after 10 o’clock at night.”

A detail from the broadside
that listed the entire regiment.

The legacy that Billings left behind is a window into the Civil War. The sixty-one page
recollection is neatly typed and written near the end of the soldier’s life. The book that contains the photos of the 45 officers of the 35th is exceedingly rare. And, in a large oaktag envelope are the two commissions that Billings received while in the 35th, along with citations from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And, perhaps rarest yet is the large broadside that lists the men that led and fought – black names along white names, forever enshrined in the company roster. At the end of his service, Billings was the provost marshal in South Carolina during the reconstruction period. In the days before Lincoln’s assassination, Billings stood among those who reviewed the troops, and Billings frequently referred to that most proud moment in his life.

Today, there are men and women in New Bern, North Carolina that have taken up the historical record of the 35th. For the last five years a resurgence of interest in the 35th Regiment has led to the creation of a reenactment unit, some members of which are direct descendants of the men that fought with Billings. New Bern was the seat of recruiting for the U.S. Colored Troops. It is a place that Billings would have known. The 35th represented some of the finest leaders along some of the finest fighters in the conflicts of the deep south and Florida.

Bernard George is a historian associated with today’s 35th Regiment. “The 35th did not have the media following that the Massachusetts 54th and 55th had. That said, they had a fine record.” And, George points out that in two cases there were black officers in the 35th. The company reverend and a very fine surgeon.

The book and all the material that Billings collected will be scanned and shared with the people of New Bern. Canton now has a new found cousin and history inexorably tied to the emancipation of the men and women from the dark chapter of slavery. We have Billings to thank for this glimpse of the record. And, Canton’s connection is a telling indicator of the strength and conviction of the men who hailed from here and died in faraway places under the banner of liberty.

Billings at age 95 in Sharon, Massachusetts

Billings’ final days were a whirlwind. In his 97th year, Billings decided to re-trace his Civil War service and started a 2000-mile motor trip south to visit the battlefields of his youth. Accompanied by his daughter, Billings died in Charleston, South Carolina on October 22, 1939. The old solider was brought back to his house in Sharon, Massachusetts. “Flags were at half-staff, and business halted while Sharon’s “grand old man” was born to his soldier grave in the Canton Corner Cemetery. Pallbearers from the local veterans post bore the flag draped casket to the line of march on Pleasant Street. School pupils, scouts and townsfolk stood by respectfully as the cortege passed. A volley was fired by the firing squad and taps who sounded by the post buglers.” Canton’s son was laid to rest with his father and at long last, the soldier came home.

Special thanks to the members of the 35th U.S. Colored Troops Reenactment Group and historian Bernard George.

Give Them Their Due

2020-07-06T13:23:00.002-04:00

Jane and Ann in the garden of their house in Canton, Mass.

The modest white house at 154 Dedham Street is most unassuming, yet it is one of our most important unmarked national historic sites owing to the family that moved there in the early 1900’s. And, while much has been written about Augustus Hinton, little has been written about his daughters and wife. Augustus (Gus) Hinton was the first African-American to hold the rank of professor at Harvard University in its 313-year history – and in fact that what Hinton is most widely known for is as the creator of the Hinton Test, the most effective tests leading to the diagnosis of syphilis. Wife Ada was director and vice president of the Home for Aged and Colored Women in Boston and headed up the Canton Community Club and the local Nursing Association. And, Jane Hinton, one of his daughter’s, is equally important to the development of microbiology and at the same time veterinary medicine. This was a power family.

Gus’ story has been shared before in this very column, but Ada - his wife, and his two children have always been behind the scenes in much of the telling of the history. Ada was born in Macon, Georgia in 1888. She had a fabulous education at a time when women of color were rarely afforded such opportunities. Attending Atlanta University, she graduated in 1901and then in 1906 received a master’s degree in mathematics from Chicago University. After her studies, Ada went on to become a teacher and a social worker.

Ada and Gus met in Oklahoma while she was teaching Latin and by 1909 they married and that same year moved to Boston and rented a small apartment at 52 Fenwood Road, Jamaica Plain. Later they lived at 1516 Cambridge Street in Cambridge near Harvard, and Gus took at least one trip to London in the spring of 1914. By 1916 they moved to Canton with their newborn daughter Ann. “We bought a nice big dining room table, and needed a house appropriate for a dining room.” And they hunted every town in a twenty-mile radius and landed in Canton. In 1919, Jane was born and the family prospered. The Hintons would spend the rest of their life - over forty five years in Canton.

Last year, a beautiful package arrived at the Historical Society postmarked from Burbank, California. Inside, there were five photographs and several transcripts of letters that give us a glimpse into the life of this prominent African American family living in Canton and raising their children. The archival material came from the great-niece of the artist and civil rights activist Edwin Augustus “Teddy” Harleston and his wife, photographer Elise Forrest Harleston of Charleston, South Carolina. The original letters are now in the collection at Emory University, but the donor was kind enough to share the transcripts and the original snapshots because of the Canton connections.

The Hintons and the Harlestons were great friends with a friendship that grew close over time. Ada had been friends with Teddy and the friendship carried them through the years. The letters are poignant, personal and reflective look at this prominent black family in Canton. Ada writes to Teddy in December 1919 from Dedham Street, “The Farrar family (the children next door) have moved so that Ann has no playmates but she is growing up and has adopted a whole tribe of imaginary children who seem to be just as much fun… her chief interest now is growing to be big enough to have a pony.” Ada continues to share great joy in sharing country living, “Gus was so pleased that you like our little home…We love it and are very happy here and we like to have our friends enjoy it also.”

And, friends did enjoy the hospitality here in Canton. Writing to his fiancé as she was shopping for her trousseau in New York City, Teddy Harleston describes the Hintons as “most likeable people with two children, living in the country on a little farm which she assists in working with pigs and all that. Plain, methodical living; no society connections; a dear and cozy little home in which they take much pride, doing much of the alterations themselves.” This is the same letter in which Teddy tells his bride to be that they have been invited to “honeymoon” in Canton. “They are not spry and beautiful young folks like you – they are slightly my seniors- her sisters took all the beauty, but they are absolutely sincere and we shall be at home, which is what we want.”

After the wedding, the Hintons met the Harlestons at the dock in Boston and personally escorted them to Canton. Most likely these are the photos from that trip that we now have in our local collection. The children are about the right age, and the newly planted trees in the yard are as a result of the labors written about the same time. Both of the Hinton girls attended Canton Public Schools and had great opportunities. In 1923, Gus bought eight year old Ann a Steinway piano, and little sister Jane was given “the most wonderful big doll with an elaborate trousseau.”

In 1927, W.E.B. Dubois wrote to Teddy and asked for a portrait of Hinton. “I have tried to get a photograph directly from him, but he has not had one taken for years and is very modest. I want to spread his name and fame… I hope you can help me.” That is a testament of both the stature and modesty of Gus Hinton, and a character element that ran throughout the Hinton family.

One of the letters suggests that the girls travelled to Europe, “the fact that Ann and Jane are going to France has made us so sentimental; so, sort of tense. I cannot bear them out of my sight etc.… and I am checking the days before the Fourth of July, when they sail from New York. Beyond that I simply cannot look except that I shall want to rest.” The year was 1925, Jane was six years old and Ann was ten years old, the mother writes, “we get such wonderfully encouraging letters from and about the children. They write in French altogether now.” This must have been a wonderful time in the lives of these small children from Canton.

The family was one of love and enrichment. And, the education paid off. It was Jane that took after her father. And, one can argue that Jane was equally the pioneer in the shadow of Gus. Jane Hinton was one of the first African-American women to become a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. But, prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, she was a laboratory technician at Harvard. While there, she worked on cultivating gonococcus, the causative agent of gonorrhea. The biological medium she devised is still saving lives today. The medium that bears her name, Mueller-Hinton agar is used in laboratories around the world to cultivate pathogenic microbes, determine treatment plans and prevent food borne illness.

In 1942, Jane travelled to Halifax, Nova Scotia with a medical team to help combat three epidemics that raged through the city. During World War II, she worked as a lab technician in Arizona. After the War, Jane studied veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, gaining her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree in 1949. She and Alfreda Johnson Webb, who graduated with a VMD from the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) that year, were the first African-American women veterinarians in the United States. Hinton and Webb were also the first African-American members of the Women's Veterinary Medicine Association. Returning to Canton Jane opened her practice as a small animal veterinarian and eventually became a federal government inspector in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was a remarkable career.

One observer of Jane’s life wrote that her “work has become central to basic microbiology and points to the importance of methodical, logical science. And she succeeded in this field in an age when her ability to pursue it to the utmost was severely limited. It is important that we celebrate her achievements so that we finally see the edifice of scientific knowledge being built by all of the peoples who contributed. So that when future generations of scientists are trained, they will know that whether they are brown or black, male, female or neither, they too, will be given their due.” For Canton, the Hinton Family lives on as nationally recognized scientists, doctors and through it all, our neighbors.

Flowers at a Grave

2020-07-06T13:19:00.000-04:00

The leaves crunch underfoot, just as they did exactly three hundred years ago in the same spot. There is a mossy bed that surrounds the head and footstone and the October light dapples through the leaves of beautiful poplar. Much has changed beyond the walls of this place, but the reelections on life and sanctity are part of a continuum that defines our small town. There is perhaps no more sacred a place to our history and memories than Canton Corner Cemetery. And, the starting point is the final resting place of Gilburt Indicott.

The gravestone still reads “Indicott” but the name came down through history as Endicott. And the family tree in America begins right here in this cemetery. The gravestone states that Endicott died on October 18, 1716, age 58. A later descendent from Canton named George Munroe Endicott conducted extensive research and found that “Gilbert Endicott son of John, born October 22, 1648.” It has been accepted that this reference in the parish records of Marldon, Devonshire, England would make our man out to have been 67 years old instead of the 58 on his gravestone. And, who doesn't want to be thought of as ten years younger – even in pre-colonial Dorchester.

Interestingly, even if Endicott was 58 years old when he died, he packed a terrific amount of activity in his life, which ended here in Stoughton and what is now Canton. In 1676, Endicott was serving as a soldier in King Phillip’s War under Captain John Jacob of Hingham. It was bloody and vicious campaign. In Medfield – less than twelve miles away, “the Indians had burnt about forty houses, near half the town, and killed and wounded about twenty people.” Military patrols guarded the towns between Milton to the Plymouth Colony, and Endicott was likely a foot soldier in this war.

In 1677, Endicott received a grant of land in Wells, Maine. The condition of the grant was such that “he should build a house within one year, and should not desert the place unless he leaves an occupant upon it.” The small rural community on the seacoast was begun by the enterprise of Edmund Littlefield in 1641. Many of the people who came to Wells and took grants of land, did not continue long enough to fulfill the conditions attached to them, but moved to other places within a few years of their arrival. Endicott, however, seemed to thrive. In 1681 he received a second grant on the eastern side of Branch River and also purchased fifty acres of land from Major William Phillips.

The property that Endicott had bought from Phillips was upland on a little river at Cape Porpus. He erected a small sawmill and prospered enough to sell the property in 1683. Endicott married Hannah Gooch (spelled Gowge) in 1686. And they were still in Wells in 1691 when he purchased 30 acres of land in York, Maine. There is also a record of him being in Dorchester for a time in 1690.

Yet, living in Maine was quite difficult for these were hostile and dangerous times for the Endicotts and their neighbors. In June of 1691, the Abenaki Tribe attacked the village of Wells and the residents had successfully taken shelter and fought off the attackers in a garrison house. Things really went from bad to worse when on January 24 1692, the morning after Candlemas Day, the town of York, Maine was burned to the ground by a band of 150 Abenaki Indians. The warrior Indians began systematically breaking into every home, killing the inhabitants inside, and then setting fire to the house. At some point, the killing stopped, and, as one observer wrote, “it would seem as if the savages themselves grew weary of the bloodshed.” With the exception of four garrison houses where some managed to take shelter, all of the 18 or 19 houses on the north side of the York River were burned. Between 40 and 48 people were killed in the massacre, with an estimated 100 others taken captive and forced to march with their captors to Quebec. Indian hostilities continued even after the horrific attack in nearby York, Maine and many families started an exodus from the region.

By 1696, after almost twenty years in rural Maine, the Endicotts moved to Reading, Massachusetts. It was there that James Endicott was born and where Hannah was baptized. Many of the early settlers in Maine had left and came to Massachusetts for safety. Interestingly, several of Gilbert Endicott’s neighbors from York, Maine escaped after the Candlemas Day Massacre and settled in what is now Canton and Stoughton. Our local historian, Huntoon, wrote “It is a touching incident in our local history that the emigrants driven from the place of their first settlement in the Province of Maine, should have named the new place of their residence “York” and that this name should have been applied to a part of our town from that time to the present.”

It is also ironic that when Gilbert Endicott came to Ponkapoag in the “wilds of Dorchester,” that he should again engage closely with the Indians. In 1700, Endicott built a house here and had a second child named Sarah who was baptized in the church in Milton. A lease from the Ponkapoag Praying Indians is dated February 27, 1704-5. In exchange for a yearly payment of “£4 in pepper-corn” Endicott received an illegal lease that would supposedly run for two hundred years. Endicott also owned land in what is now Sharon and was bounded by Massapoag Brook.

In Canton, he settled at what is now the intersection of Chapman and Washington Streets and kept an unlicensed tavern. In 1702 he was obliged to appear before the court for permission to continue his enterprise – which was allowed. Yet he had many simultaneous occupations.

It would appear from all the real estate transactions that Endicott was fairly prosperous. In 1708 he purchased a half-acre of land in Orange (now Washington Street) in Boston. Quite the enterprising man, he built a dwelling house “of 30 foot long 20 wide & 22 studd with a flatt roof on his land scituate at ye South end of Boston.” This too was to become an inn, but Endicott found it difficult to license and so he ended that venture in 1711.

Gilbert Endicott died in 1716, and was buried in a new burying ground to the rear of where the new meetinghouse was being built. Today at Canton Corner, this gravesite is the most ancient of the early settlers. On this past Tuesday night, three hundred year to the day of his death, this author – accompanied by a handful of residents walked quietly through the leaves to the grave. Kneeling in the damp grass, we took a moment to reflect. In the flickering light from colonial-era lanterns we paid homage to the legacy and memory of Gilbert Endicott. It was an emotional and touching scene as we left flowers at the grave – perhaps for the first time in hundreds of years. Rest in peace Gilburt Indicott 1648 – 1716.

Merit Not Race

2015-12-15T19:54:00.001-05:00

William A. Hinton
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

In all honesty, Canton does not have a rich history that includes stories about African-Americans. There are dark elements of stories that trace the ownership of slaves to Isaac Royal – for whom Royal Street is named at the foot of the Blue Hill. In fact, while there were blacks living in that part of Stoughton that is now Canton, many of them had married into the Ponkapoag Indian Tribe and their stories have mostly been lost to time.

Yet, Canton does celebrate the career and home of William Augustus “Gus” Hinton, the first African-American to hold the rank of professor at Harvard University in its 313-year history. Yet, what Gus Hinton is widely known for is the Hinton Test, one that became the most effective tests leading to the diagnosis of syphilis.

Born in 1883 in Chicago, Illinois, Hinton was the son of Augustus Hinton and Maria Clark, emancipated slaves from North Carolina. Little is known of Hinton’s parents. What we do know is after slavery, Augustus Hinton was freed following the Civil War and became a farmer and railroad porter. It is possible that the Hinton surname came from being a slave on one of the Hinton Plantations. The largest landowner in the early days of Wake County (then Johnston County), North Carolina was the Hinton family. One of their early grants was a 136-acre parcel located on the west bank of the Neuse River. This was followed shortly with multiple grants, which eventually led to their having some 22,000 acres, extending to Clayton. Hundreds of slaves all took the name Hinton as a result of being the property of the Hinton Family.

The historical records indicate that the Hinton family treated their slaves very well and had a small school building erected for their education. Yet, when you read the slave narratives conducted by the Federal Writer’s Project in 1938, education did not seem to be a part of the backstory. Robert Hinton, an emancipated slave, when interviewed about education said, "De white folks, ole missus, teached us de catechism, but dey didn't want you to learn to read and write. I can read and write now; learned since de surrender.” As for Augustus and Maria Hinton they knew that for their son to be successful in America, he would need an education.

Shortly after William Hinton was born, the family moved to Kansas City, Kansas and they determined to give him the education they likely had not enjoyed. Hinton attended public schools and a private Catholic school and worked as a newsboy. Through perseverance, young Gus Hinton would propel himself into the upper echelons of medicine and earn a place in history and science.

Hinton’s career choice was medicine, sparked by a high school biology teacher. Graduating from high school as the youngest in its history at age 16, Hinton went on to attend the University of Kansas in 1900. Within two years he was forced to drop out, unable to pay the tuition. Taking a leave he was able to earn enough money to return, yet the program of studies changed such that instead he transferred to Harvard College in Cambridge on a scholarship. A recurring theme in Hinton’s education was the fact that he would be forced repeatedly to leave school to finance his education, returning each and every time to move forward. For three years after his graduation, Hinton worked teaching biology, chemistry and physics in colleges in Tennessee and Oklahoma. It was in Langston, Oklahoma that Hinton met fellow teacher, Ada Hawes, who was teaching Latin at the Agricultural and Mechanical College. In 1909, Ada and Gus married, and that same year, they moved to Boston and rented a small apartment at 52 Fenwood Road, Jamaica Plain.

Although several years had passed since Hinton had done his pre-medical studies, he was able to enter Harvard Medical School and skip the second year, thus graduating in three years. Remarkably, and also in character, Hinton won the Edward Wigglesworth Scholarship – recommended by the administrative board to a “needy and deserving student.” At the same time, Hinton refused to accept the Lewis and Harriet Hayden Scholarship for “colored” students. Hinton stated that he wanted to be rewarded on his merit, not compensated because of his race. Graduating with cum laude in 1912, Hinton initially desired to become a surgeon, yet hospitals in Boston denied blacks the opportunity to intern with patients.

After Hinton’s graduation, Dr. Richard C. Cabot, a close friend and eminent physician, remarked that “but for Hinton’s courage, determination, and perseverance, his contributions to humanity might have been lost.” A former student of Cabot’s, Hinton had worked in the Harvard Laboratories that would become the backdrop of his groundbreaking research. “He was determined to succeed without benefit of internship which is considered essential for every doctor,” observed Cabot.

By 1915, Hinton moved his family to a modest house at 154 Dedham Street in Canton. It is likely that fellow classmate, Henry Lyman told Hinton of the four-acre parcel just a few miles from his own home on Elm Street. Lyman was a research chemist at Harvard, and by many accounts a close personal friend of the Hinton’s. Lyman was married into the Cabot family and kept homes on Commonwealth Avenue as well. The connection between Hinton and Lyman certainly shows the respect that the medical community of scholars held for this remarkable man.

The house in Canton was sold as an accessory to the land. The owner had told the Hinton’s that “the house isn’t worth anything, what you are getting is the land.” Yet, it was that house that Hinton turned into a home. Dr. Hinton loved both gardening and furniture making. A friend of Hinton said that “the pool was always filled with lilies of all colors, there was a tennis court, a rose garden, and an orchard and grape vines on the hill with every kind of fruit tree that grows in this part of the country.” His barbecues were legendary, and he worked to cut paths into the woods, lining the borders with irises and ladyslippers. “He loved the unusual and the beautiful.”

In 1919, Hinton received an appointment as instructor in preventative medicine and Hygiene at Harvard Medical School, commencing a more than three-decade teaching association at Harvard. In 1931, he started a school that would train women to become laboratory technicians. At the same time, Hinton was overseeing the expansion of state laboratory facilities and expanded ten facilities to more than a hundred in order to meet state regulations for marital blood tests. From 1946 -1949, Hinton worked as a consultant at the Massachusetts Hospital School here in Canton.

What Hinton was best known for, however, was his groundbreaking medical research in the field of sexually transmitted diseases, in particular, syphilis. During the period between 1930 and 1943, the rate of syphilis climbed by over 150%, and the treatment was a long series of painful injections or oral doses of mercury, bismuth and arsenic. As early as the mid 1920’s, Hinton insisted that treatment “not be guided by the persistence of positive tests, but by the physician’s diagnosis, since many patients react positively long after the disease has become inactive.” Hinton had come to recognize the problem of false positive tests, and set out to develop a more definitive test for syphilis.

False positive tests resulted in painful treatment, dangerous prognoses and the stigma of a shameful venereal disease. By 1927, Hinton published the finding of a test that would become the widely known Hinton Test. Ten years later; the Hinton Test was the most sensitive and accurate test for syphilis ever created. False positives were almost eliminated, and as a result Hinton’s test became the gold standard. More importantly, in 1935 Hinton wrote the seminal text Syphilis and Its Treatment, devoting extensive sections to patient care. He made it clear that such diseases were “a by-product of poverty and ignorance and poor living conditions.” Race was not a factor in the spread of venereal diseases.

In fact, Hinton worked his whole life to ensure that race was not a factor in his work. So much so that he generally felt that widespread knowledge of the fact that he was black would delay the acceptance of his test. Robert C. Hayden, a biographer that wrote extensively on Hinton explains that “he was very realistic, and felt if his work got out there and they found out that he was black, his science would be devalued. In fact, some southern states stopped using the Hinton Test when they learned of his race.” Hinton turned down the NAACP's 1938 Spingarn Medal award because he wanted his work to stand on its own merit. "Race should never get mixed up in the struggle for human welfare," he would later comment.

On February 10, 1941, Hinton left his home in Canton and was involved in accident on icy roads on Morton Street in Mattapan. His car skidded and a second car driving 15 mph crashed into him and caused such injury that Hinton’s leg was amputated above the knee. The next 18 years were filled with pain and acute diabetes, yet Hinton worked tirelessly at Harvard. In 1949, one year before academic retirement, Hinton was made Clinical Professor of Bacteriology, the first black to be named to a professorial rank in Harvard’s history.

Hinton died at his home here in Canton on August 8, 1959 and was celebrated at First Parish Church at Canton Corner. In his will he left $75,000 to be put into a special scholarship for Harvard graduate students. The fund, a memorial to his parents, “who although born into slavery and without formal education, nevertheless recognized and practiced not only the highest ideals of their personal conduct, but also the true democratic principle of equal opportunity for all, without regard to racial or religious origins or to political status.” Hinton named the fund the Dwight D. Eisenhower Scholarship Fund in honor of the president whom he had felt made great strides in providing equal opportunity employment during his administration. President Eisenhower wrote, “I could not recall having been given a personal distinction that had touched me more deeply.”

In 2008, Governor Deval Patrick dedicated the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Laboratory Institute in honor of Dr. William A. Hinton.

Special thanks to members of the Hinton family and to Robert C. Hayden, Jr. historian, author, and educator.

Dear children,

2014-11-13T07:52:00.000-05:00

The Advice of Jonathan Keny Jr. to his
children was published soon after
the Ensign’s death in 1756.

The imagery that stirs the loudest in the Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War is that of the letter from Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah. In his now-famous letter to his wife, Ballou endeavored to express the emotions he was feeling: worry, fear, guilt, sadness and, most importantly, the pull between his love for her and his sense of duty to the country. And that letter, now famous, is simply one in thousands upon thousands of letters home from our men and women in the military that express love, fear and the emotions tied to war.

Letters home have always served as a reminder of the costs associated with great sacrifice. In fact, many of these letters became wartime propaganda, held up as an example of the glory of service to one’s country. In the effort to promote the Second World War, thousands of posters were created to “sell messages.” Federal agencies printed a downpour of brightly colored posters. Labor unions and factory owners printed up their own versions aimed at turning defense workers into “production soldiers.” At the end of the day it is emotion that moves the spirit to action. And, while we may think propaganda is a modern invention, it is in fact an ancient art. If the letter home from Sullivan Ballou stands out, it is because the emotions are real, deep, and intensely personal.

More than 100 years earlier the French and Indian War was the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War. The war, fought between the colonies of British America and New France, with both sides supported by military units from their parent countries of Great Britain and France, as well as Native allies. As the war began, the French North American colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 compared to 2 million in the English North American colonies. The outnumbered French particularly depended on the Indians. Long in conflict, the two nations declared war on each other in 1756, escalating the war from a regional affair into an international conflict. This was the war that saw the expulsions of the Acadians from the Annapolis Basin in Nova Scotia and redrew the boundaries of two nations.

To bolster troops brought from England, the Crown turned to the colonists as support for the war efforts. As early as 1744, Governor William Shirley devised a plan to take Louisburg. Several local militiamen were pressed into service for the King. Throughout the war, many Stoughton men took part in hostilities and we have many examples of how the war changed the lives right here in our own community. Guiding by example, the Reverend Samuel Dunbar, was a staunch supporter of the Crown. Dunbar was of the highest moral character and most esteemed by the entire community, so when the King of England placed the call of duty in 1755, Dunbar, as chaplain, accompanied Richard Gridley and Paul Revere (then 21) to fight against the French at Crown Point.

Crown Point was a critical and strategic battleground for the war between the two nations. During the 17th Century, both France and Great Britain laid claim to the Champlain Valley: the French by virtue of the voyages of Verrazano, Cartier, and Champlain; the British based on those of the Cabots in 1497 and 1498. It would be Crown Point that would be the final soil on which thirteen men from Stoughton would fall in service to the Crown.

William Johnson was placed in command of a force of 3,500 Provincial troops from New England, New York, and New Jersey, for the expedition against Fort St. Frédéric. While the Provincial troops prevailed, they did not press their advantage.

In response, the French began construction in October 1755 of Carillon (later named Fort Ticonderoga) to serve as a buffer between the British position at Lake George and Fort St. Frédéric. During this period of the conflict, more than thirty young men from what was then Stoughton – but largely now Canton – fought in the war.

Col. Samuel Miller, whose military district embraced the town of Stoughton, says that in 1755 the town had three hundred and twenty enlisted soldiers; that the stock of ammunition consisted only of four half-barrels of powder, and lead and flints accordingly, which was but half of what the town should possess. The selectmen accordingly ordered a tax of £40 to be assessed to make good the deficiency.

The story of some of the Stoughton men who enlisted in his Majesty's service in the expedition to Crown Point is wrought with sickness, death and difficult journeys home. Elijah Esty, Nathaniel Clark, Thomas Billings, John Wadsworth, William Patten, James Bailey, Michael Woodcock, and James, son of Joseph Everett, were all taken sick in camp at Lake George. Some of them remained for weeks in the hospital at Albany, but for each of them a horse was purchased by their friends, and some one from Stoughton went out and brought them home. Joseph Tucker, a minor, was brought home by his brother Uriah. John Redman took a wagon to go from Lake George to Albany; and for some reason the driver put him out of the vehicle in the wilderness, where, he affirms, he must have perished had not Sargent Ralph Houghton, of Milton, happened to pass that way, who took pity on him, hired another wagon to carry him to Albany, and also lent him money to buy such things as were necessary. Daniel Talbot and his seventeen-year-old son Amaziah both engaged in the Crown Point expedition. The son was taken sick at Half Moon, and the father hired a horse to bring them home; the son died en-route, and the father returned home alone.

Yet, it is the letter that we now have in our ancient Stoughton document tome that has stood the test of time. Few know of its existence and merely a handful of historians have spent any time with this letter. It was written in that part of Stoughton that is now Canton. So strong were the words, that it was published as a broadside, likely by the English colonial government as a way to build support for the campaign against the French. The letter was written by Jonathan Keny just before the young man left for Albany, New York for Crown Point. Historical accounts of the young ensign paint a picture of a devoted family man and member of the Church of England who grew up in the early 1700’s in what is now Ponkapoag. Around 1750, Keny (also spelled as Kenney) married Sarah Redman, the daughter of Robert Redman, one of the earliest settlers in this area.

In the dark of an early spring night, Keny paced the floors of his small house near Potash Meadows and Aunt Katy’s Brook. Holding his two small children - his boy, Jonathan just barely two years old, and his daughter, Cloe, age four. Keny’s wife had died two years earlier, perhaps after the birthing of their son. And so, Keny knew that departing for war meant that he might never look upon their sweet faces again.

The letter, written on April 16, 1756 under seal, is religious, poignant, and heart wrenching when you consider that Keny would die within months of the writing. “Dear children, Since God by his all-wise providence, about sixteen months ago, remove your kind and tender mother from you by death, and as I am called by Providence to go into service of my King and country, and not knowing whether ever I shall return to you again, I charge and beseech you to mind the One Thing needful, to remember your Creator in the days of your youth, to love one another, to mind religion while you are young, to be constant in secret prayer, for God loves to hear young children come to him, and though you have no father or mother he will be better to you than the most affectionate parents can possibly be… I charge you to beware of bad company… to be obedient, and often read your books…when you come to a sick bed, and a dying hour, to look back on a life well spent.”

The letter is quite long, and ends with the premonition of Keny’s death “My dear children, I hope better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, and I charge and advise you once more to observe this council and advice; and though you may never see me again in this world, I entreat you to prepare to meet me in heaven where I hope to rest after this frail life is ended.” Keny died in a hospital at Albany within nine months of writing the letter. Delivered to his small children, the letter contained a gold ring that he had placed on his wife’s finger six years earlier.

The children were placed in the care of their grandparents, Robert and Mary Redman, who raised them as their own. In 1757, Robert Redman executed a will in which he provided for his grandchildren, leaving 6 pounds 13 shillings and 4 pence to Jonathan and 4 pounds and a good cow to Cloe when she arrived at the age of twenty-one. The letter was published soon after his death and one of only two known copies survive in the collection of the Canton Historical Society.

Infantryman Returns Home

2014-10-30T08:04:00.000-04:00

Canton’s Infantryman at the turn of the 20^th
century with a group of Canton High School girls.

As is so often the case, soldiers that return home from war are often broken. We see the veterans who have sacrificed for our great nation, but sometimes what we fail to see are the scars hidden deep inside. And, if there could be a metaphor for all this, it is the soldier that is about to return home to Canton next week.

This soldier, Infantryman, has stood guard for over one hundred years. You may have seen him during his lonely vigil, looking down over Washington Street – or standing guard at the end of a dusty hallway. Yet, his is a history that will come full circle in just a matter of days. This is the story of the Civil War Monument and one man who has a pretty ambitious bucket list.

On the second floor of the William’s Estate is the office of the Veteran’s Agent, Tony Andreotti. The office is littered with flags, files, and plaques. Sitting behind his desk, one day last year, Melissa Araujo walked into his office. Melissa is the daughter of a Canton man that had been killed in action in Vietnam. Andreotti had been recognizing various fallen heroes at their graveside for the past several years, and a few years ago attention was turned to Rudolph Araujo who had died almost forty-four years ago.

At the simple ceremony, at St. Mary’s Cemetery on Washington Street, the family gathered to pay tribute to a husband, father and citizen of Canton. As Andreotti looked down at the headstone he shook his head, “this was a small, government issued stone that seemed so insignificant- certainly given the sacrifice that Rudolph had made to his country.” And, as far as sacrifices go, Araujo gave the ultimate one – his life. In a far away place, near Binh Duong, South Vietnam, an explosive device killed the 29 year-old army mechanic just four days before Christmas. In an instant, a wife and a daughter’s holidays were forever changed. In that winter of 1969, the Town of Canton mourned the loss of one of its own.

And, reflecting upon that modest stone, it was apparent to Andreotti that something had to change. “The original stone was so insignificant that you could not find it. I think perhaps the family might not have had the means for a larger stone. So, we are correcting this now.” And, by correcting it, Andreotti means that he will make the insignificant, now significant. It has always been the mission of this Veteran’s Agent to make us see what has been lost to time. This past Sunday on a crisp autumn morning, family and friends and townspeople gathered at the grave of Rudolph Ernest Araujo. The air hung heavy, and leaves crunched underfoot. In this sacred place, Andreotti helped us remember the sacrifice of this amazing hero. What was there was trivial, what is now there today is proper.

What has been done makes us stand up, take notice, and remember. And still, another soldier is about to return and as a result of significant funding by the people of Canton, we will give our tribute to the fallen Civil War soldiers from Canton. By now, everyone knows the story of the statue that had stood at Memorial Hall. One night, hoodlums from a neighboring town – in response to local rivalries – hitched a rope around the statue and tied the other end to the bumper of a car and in an instant destroyed a monument to the War of the Rebellion.

Andreotti was reminded that Community Preservation money could help restore the statue, the repair of which had been on his “bucket list” for quite some time. “I conceived of the project in 2000 – a year into my new job as agent. I asked Buddy Fallon to get a quote for restoration, and as budgets have always been tight it was impossible to undertake.” Explains Andreotti, “Jeremy Comeau gave me the hint … we were at Starbucks one day and he tipped me off. And I went after the money and fortunately the town was receptive.”

Canton’s Civil War Monument has a name – known simply as Infantryman, the statue is painted, cast-zinc, and manufactured by the J.W. Fiske Company in the early 1890’s. Weighing in at 400 pounds and measuring almost seven feet high, this statue has several “brothers” throughout the country. This same statue can be found in Iola, Kansas at the town cemetery, in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, and more importantly one on Martha’s Vineyard at Oak Bluffs.

It is important to note that these statues were made of soft metal called zinc. The costs of production of zinc as opposed to bronze are lower due to its low melting temperature and yet when cast it mimics bronze. At the time, zinc was referred to as “white bronze” and was marketed as alternative to actual bronze. In the late 1800’s it was very common for garden sculptures and memorials to be cast in zinc, examples of such can be found in the old part of Canton Corner Cemetery. For a town like Canton, and even though donated by the wealthy philanthropist Elijah Morse, the choice of zinc over more expensive sculptures meant the ability to order a statue from a catalog for quick delivery.

When Infantryman arrived in 1890, he was placed inside Memorial Hall and used as a drinking fountain. Water would pour forth from the lions’ heads in the pedestal into small cast iron bowls. Quite a controversy erupted when a town resident reportedly walked off with the ladles, causing a brouhaha, “scores of people have gone to the fountain for a cool refreshing drink, only to find the dippers gone. The officers should keep a strict watch and if possible, catch the rascal,” the local paper reported.

Then, in 1894, the town decided to relocate the memorial statue and drinking fountain to the front lawn of Memorial Hall where he stood until attacked by vandals. A wonderful conservation effort by Canton resident, Ernie Ciccotelli pieced Infantryman back together, but he could not be moved outside. Relegated to a back hallway, Andreotti moved restoration off of his bucket list and onto active duty.

What has happened next is nothing short of a miracle in preservation. Part art and part science, the statue has been in Maryland for the past forty days in the care of very talented conservationists. As the sculpture was unwrapped, the conditions were noted and paint removed. Plenty of items had been lost including the end of the bayonet, the thumb, the interior of the cape, a section of gun strap, and sections of the plinth and strap on the cap brim.

A rare glimpse inside Infantryman,
where a new stainless
steel skeleton takes shape.

Overseeing the project is Mark Rabinowitz, the Executive Vice President of Conservation Solutions, Inc. the firm that is handling this project. “The best goal for public art is to serve the public need it was intended for.” Notes Rabinowitz, observing that the very essence of this statue is more than a memorial; it is “art.” Of the use of zinc, Rabinowitz puts forward the idea that “it is an interesting form of sculpture whereby the ideals which public art embody – nobility and memorial – were available to localities for a lower cost, leading to the best democratization of the values of public art.”

David Espinosa and Bob Donahue
solder the cape, which
conceals the interior armature.

And, when you think of Infantryman as art, he takes on additional meaning.A new stainless steel armature has been fabricated and has become the skeleton inside the figure. As for the missing items, it is here that the “brothers” have been called into action. In the Hurricane of 1938 Infantryman of the Oak Bluffs Soldiers and Sailors Memorial was toppled and severely damaged. In 2002 Conservation Solutions’ conservators fully restored the work to its original condition. So good was the work that the project received an award for excellence from Smithsonian Institute. Today, the same molds that were used for Oak Bluffs (and originally cast from the North Kingston, RI Infantryman) have come full circle to become castings for the scabbard and bayonet missing from our monument. In the case of Oak Bluffs, an actual 1859 Springfield bayonet was used to create a wood model and ultimately the zinc cast replacement. The same model was used again with permission of Oak Bluffs to bring our soldier back to condition.

Over several emails, Tony Andreotti has received updates for the past several weeks. The head, oddly detached, lies on a table and gets close attention and repair. The loose ammo pack becomes soldered to the body. Small losses have been filled with synthetic materials. And within the past few days Infantryman has been reassembled and coated with a system of acid etching primers and acrylics designed to mimic the bronze patina. Bronze powder filled paint has been followed by a coat of darker brown paint and rubbed back to age the statue. And finally, a coat of wax seals the system.

Within days, Infantryman will return to Canton, still a broken soldier – with wounds well covered, yet well cared for by a loving community and a caring Veteran’s Agent. This is why Andreotti ordered a new gravestone for a fallen Vietnam War veteran, and why he initiated the restoration of the Civil War Memorial – to make us remember the sacrifice of our soldiers. When asked if he fears that vandals may attack again, Andreotti merely shrugs and says, “I do not think so,” but in true military fashion he adds, “and if they do, we will put it back up again.”

A Lithic Journey

2014-10-16T08:22:00.000-04:00

A large Normanskill-type stone spear or
knife point from the Late Archaic period
in the collection of the Canton Historical Society.

As Joe Bagley speaks, his passion for archeology flows. Standing in front of an overflowing room, Bagley looks the part of an archeologist, rugged boots, tough pants, and a boyish smile. The audience hangs on his every word. This is the Friends of the Blue Hills’ 35^th Anniversary Meeting, and the City of Boston Archeologist reveals the amazing history that is beneath our feet. In a word, his talk is about stewardship.

The Blue Hills Reservation is such an amazing place. As someone who has hiked hundreds of miles within its borders, I can never fail to marvel at this historical place in our own backyards. And, this is the perfect time of year to get out and walk on the same trails that man walked on more than 8000 years ago.

The Blue Hills were so named by early European explorers who, while sailing along the coastline, noticed the bluish hue on the slopes when viewed from a distance. The blue comes from the rocks that formed the geology of the hills 600 million years ago. It may be hard to believe but this site was formed as a result of a large volcano that has been worn down over these millions of years to be the site we know today. And the blue hue of the rock tells a story that extends back almost ten thousand years ago when Native Americans created a bustling community on this land.

City of Boston, Archeologist,
Joseph Bagley conducting field research.

In his minds eye Bagley, like many of the archeologists who have come before him, can see the camps, the workshops, the quarry sites and the hunting grounds of a great people who were the first stewards of the land along the Neponset Valley. “Many of the trails we walk today are the exact same trails that have been used for thousands of years,” explains Bagley.

Today the trails are used for recreation, but thousands of years ago these were the paths used to commute between quarries to workshops and then onto hunting grounds. The rocks that crunch underfoot tell the story of not only geology of the Blue Hills but also the archeology. It is in the rocks that we start to see why this was the center of industry for early man.

Bagley tells of one “aha” moment. “There was a site that I had read about just south of Granite Links Golf Course, and while still a student with some time on my hands I took an afternoon treat and hiked to look for this area. Based on what I had read, I was not prepared for the scale, I mean you are looking for something and then you discover it is so large you are actually standing in it.” Bagley says that the personal discovery “was mind blowing.” What he stumbled upon on the western side of the Blue Hill Reservation was the debris of a major prehistoric quarry.

Bagley was off the trail and climbing up the hill, expecting to see rocky outcrops – but instead there were terraces and the back was stone. “I was looking for the rock outcrop, and then I realized there were flakes everywhere. The rock was being dug from the un-weathered rock, which would make for stronger tools. The natives were taking the cobble out of the ground to create the rough shapes leaving behind mounds in the millions of waste products.” At the top of the hill is an old weathered cellar hole of a farmhouse, and the foundation was made up of the byproducts of stone tool making. Essentially the colonial farmer was unknowingly recycling - using waste from thousands of years ago.

What Bagley and other archeologists know is that the Blue Hills Reservation is a treasure worth studying and protecting to understand the tools used by earliest man. While the geology of the Blue Hills was studied as early as 1900, it took almost four decades later for archeologists to delve into the area. In the late 1930’s Harvard’s Peabody Museum began to turn it's attention toward the Blue Hills. Radiocarbon dating was just getting into the science and the archeology team knew that many of the lithic – or stone tool – artifacts were made from stone only found in the Blue Hill range. The Lithic stage was the earliest period of human occupation in the Americas, occurring during the Late Pleistocene period, to a time before 8,000 B.C. The process of flint knapping yields lots of debris. The term knapped is synonymous with "chipped" or "struck.” Throughout the Blue Hills you can find evidence of flaking, pecking, pounding, grinding, drilling, and incising rock in such a way that this area becomes a significant historical resource.

Allan Lowry

Canton is a hotbed of early archeological artifacts, and in the collection of the local historical society there are artifacts that include such things such as mortars also known as metates, pestles, grinding slabs, hammerstones, spear points and scrapers. For many people who claim to hunt for arrowheads, they are more likely to find spear points and knives as the bow and arrow was only developed about 1000 years ago. The tools that have been found are much older.

And we have had local archeologists who have revealed our unique past. Allan Lowry, a much beloved Canton resident found much of what has been discovered beneath some of the most important sites in our town. Allan passed away a number of years ago, but Allan’s wife Elaine recalls how he started. “As a young couple we were raking leaves in the yard and I found a stone that looked like a hammer,” explains Lowry, “ I guess from that point on he was hooked. Each Sunday I would drop him off at a dig site and then I would go to church, he wasn't a church goer.” For Allan Lowry his religion was found deep in the ground and extended back over thousands of years.

This unchanged view across Ponkapoag Pond
is quite close to a Native site used for
perhaps 5000 years an autumn hunting camp.

Lowry was responsible, in part, for excavating the Green Hill Site, now a protected location and part of the National Register of Historic Places. Highway construction once threatened this place, but today it is now part of the Blue Hills Reservation. The middle and late archaic site is located on the Milton Canton line and encompasses part of the Metropolitan District Commission’s purchase of 78.44 acres of Augustus Hemenway’s estate in 1940.

In 1883 Augustus Hemenway purchased several acres of the site from a family of horse fanciers whose stables then graced the neighborhood. By about 1900 Hemenway had purchased the remainder of the site and upon it situated this "South Farm.” A site report from 1980 writes, “The gentle slopes around the site’s kame hill, which had been used for occasional tillage prior to 1883, reverted back to grazing land. The Hemenway cow pasture was situated just east of the hill. On the site, partridge and quail were hunted. On the hill itself, virtually treeless until about 40 years ago, strawberries could be picked in season amid scraggly undergrowth, which discouraged all but the most intrepid. Quite possibly the hill has been little disturbed by human activity since prehistoric times. In any case the present mixed pine hardwood cover resembles the hill’s prehistoric appearance.” In the spring of 1966 more than 200 stone tools were found prior to local highway construction. The site was excavated in two periods, 1966-1972 and then again in 1972-1976. The conclusion made through the amateur archeology was that this was a site likely used as an autumn campsite, offering easy access to the felsite quarries of the Blue Hills, and provided a manufacturing site for tools.

Bagley knows the importance of the Blue Hills Reservation and his voice wavers with emotion as describes the place as “a mecca of stone production.” Wampatuck Hill, just north of the reservoir, in particular is 353 feet of Rhyolite and largely a source for the raw materials of tool making. Yet another site near Ponkapoag Pond near the golf course yielded evidence of almost 5000 years of use by people of the early and middle late archaic periods. Taken in it’s totality, the Blue Hills Reservation in one fashion or another represents a human timespan starting at the Paleo-Indian Period, through the Archaic, Early and Middle Woodland Periods, and of course the Contact and Colonial Periods. We are talking 16,000 years of man’s use of the natural resources along the Neponset River.

Can we still learn from the Blue Hills? The answer according to Bagley is a definitive “yes.” During the Middle Woodland Period (1000 - 3000 years ago) – trade routes exploded and goods moved from and between places as far away as Pennsylvania and Coxsackie, New York. We know this, because we have found tools made of stone that only came from these places. And then at 1000 years ago all trade stopped. The tools that are found from this period only come from Lynn or Saugus or the Blue Hills. For Bagley, there will always be questions, and fortunately we have the Blue Hill Reservation protecting the answers. As Bagley puts it, “this place is right, this place is good, our human instincts relate to these sites.” For more than 35 years the Friends of the Blue Hills have protected the paths and trails that have been travelled by ancient man. Next time you hike, take a look down and travel back to an ancient time and place.

Due North

2014-10-02T08:39:00.000-04:00

Historians love maps. I love maps. In my dining room is an old map that according to my wife I paid entirely too much for. It is tiled “L’Isle De Terre-Neuve L’Acadie” published in 1780 and drawn by Rigobert Bonne. This French map includes much of Atlantic Canada and all of New England extending southerly to Philadelphia. It is my own little treasure of history showing colonial settlements, forts and Indian tribes. Then there is the map that my wife framed to which I claim, “she paid entirely too much for,” a huge map has she framed as a gift. It is the historic odyssey of the Acadian People of Nova Scotia. Taken together, these maps tell a story of my Acadian heritage.

Maps help us define our history, politics, boundaries and stories. In the course of writing these stories I have come to know so many wonderful connections between local history and geography. And, if you know where to look, the intersection between historic maps and the present day is evident all around us. Maps have helped me locate a long lost cave, ancient roads that no longer exists to the public, and even the spot of buried cellar holes. For this local historian, maps are key to unlocking details of the past and are the connection between the land today and yesteryear.

Our earliest map of the area is the “Map of the Twelve Divisions” which dates to 1698. In 1647, when the natives granted land to the “settlers” the territory was known as the “New Grant.” This was the undivided land extending from the Blue Hills to the Plymouth Line and contained 40,000 acres of land. The upland was laid out into divisions, by parallel lines running from north to south and became known simply as the “Twelve Divisions.” All of the swamps and lowland was excluded as unusable. Towns that exist today did not exist at the time of this map.

A trip to the boundary marker in 1921.

A second map was drawn around 1713 that became known as the “Twenty-five Divisions.” The lines on this map run parallel from Braintree through the present town of Stoughton along to the Rhode Island border. This is the map that Dwight MacKerron, the president of the Stoughton Historical Society uses the most. “Certain landmarks still exist from that map from over 300 years ago,” says MacKerron. West Street from Plain Street to McNamara’s Corner is a good example. The street is a straight line that exactly matches up with and parallel with the range lines from the ancient map.

Today, MacKerron uses maps to establish links between some of Stoughton’s oldest properties, including the 1750 Glover House, and their locations today. Since Canton was once Stoughton, the maps that survive today in the local historical society are of great interest to MacKerron. Many a Sunday is passed poring over hand-drawn documents that purport to show the boundaries of the Ponkapoag Plantation. MacKerron has located four known boundaries at corners on the ground. In the woods, tramping over stone walls, MacKerron uses maps and modern GPS to define the old boundaries that have been lost to time. Still, more boundary markers may be out there. Just last week the author found a reference to another stone boundary maker that is located “just off Turnpike Street, South of Muddy Pond and East side of the street.” Historic maps and Mackerron’s dedication will help us find this boundary if it still exists.

There are ghosts on the ground that connect us to maps. Take for instance the top of the Great Blue Hill. If you know where to find it, there is a small copper seal embedded in a rocky outcropping. In addition, there are a few drill holes to be found. These are relics of surveys done at the beginning of the 19^th century. The earliest being that of Simeon Borden. Borden was an inventor, engineer and self-taught mathematician from Fall River and was named assistant to the head of the Trigonometical Survey of Massachusetts mandated by the state legislature in 1830. By 1834, the director had resigned and Borden took over. The survey of Massachusetts was finished in 1838 and presented to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1841. This was the first statewide survey done in the United States. And, some of the survey points can still be found in the Blue Hill Reservation.

In 1932 a coastal and geodetic survey described the location of the original bolt. “At the highest point of Great Blue Hill, in the Southwestern part of the town of Milton, and within a few feet of the Canton line. A road leads to the summit, from a point near the junction of Blue Hill and Canton Avenues, and a car may be driven to the top, by permission of the police of the Blue Hills Reservation, in which the hill is situated. On the floor of the Blue Hill Observatory there is a triangular brass plate, inscribed as follows--about 2.2 feet below this x was the copper bolt set about 1834 by Simeon Borden for the Massachusetts Trigonometrical Survey in latitude 42 deg 12 min 44 sec n. Longitude 71 deg 6 min 53 sec and 635.05 feet above mean tide.”

Yet, this small plate may not accurate. A short history of the observatory written in 1887 by Abbott Lawrence Rotch, the founder of the weather station, reports that, “although careful search was made under the ruins of the [original] lookout for the copper bolt, set by Simeon Borden, about 1832, it was not found. Its position was, however, known to be 26.25 feet n 15 deg 37 min E of the bolt fixed by the coast survey in 1844, which is in plain view, and a brass plate on the lower floor of the tower now marks the site of the Borden Bolt.

Unfortunately, the plate is incorrect. The latitude of the Borden station shows that it was “South” of the Coastal Survey Station, rather than “North.” Engineers in 1932 supposed, “the direction given is reversed.” It is most likely that the original copper bolt is located under the flagpole that sits at the summit. That said, there are a few reference marks that can be found with a sharp eye. A trip to the top of Blue Hill is worth the effort and finding the drill hole that dates back to the 1830’s is a real treat.

As Canton begins a month of studying and discussing maps through the One Town, One Book event, we will get a chance to learn much about maps and history. The book, The Map Thief, by Michael Blanding is described as “the story of an infamous crime, a revered map dealer with an unsavory secret, and the ruthless subculture that consumed him.” Against the backdrop of the book, the community will come to love maps through a series of public programs.

And, perhaps the coolest maps under discussion are not quite maps at all. There is a series of “Birdseye Views” that were drawn in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. A hybrid between a map and a poster, these views are spectacular in detail and accuracy. Jim Roache, a curator at the Canton Historical Society has a passion for the 1918 view of Canton. Drawn from a perspective looking north from Gridley Hill (a secret spot that still exists). The view presents in exquisite detail most every factory and home that can be seen across the entire town. It is both a map and piece of art.

We all have our favorite maps. MacKerron spends so much time with the “Twenty-five Divisions,” as it is “the intersection between the land we see around us today and the original land of our history.” For Roache, the 1855 Walling map is his go-to map. “After the railroad came through town we experienced an enormous growth spurt,” says Roache. “The Walling map shows all the new housing and industrial development in great detail and helps me identify locations that still exist today.”

Finally, my personal favorites are the small hand-drawn maps that had been used for Historical Society walks in the late 1800’s. They are printed on blue paper and were distributed to the participants as they trekked from old to new across the modern roads of the time. One is reproduced here for your enjoyment, and perhaps to study as an overlay to our present day.

Fast Day Map

Round and Round the Mulberry Bush

2014-04-05T09:42:00.000-04:00

The Seavey, Foster & Bowman
Eureka Silk Mill circa 1878.

A blog on the Internet extolls the virtues of hidden fishing spots around Massachusetts. One entry in particular cites the Silk Mill Pond as a covert spot in Canton that might be of interest to anglers. The source writes of the secluded pond, “It gets pretty deep in the middle so if you want to use a deep running crank bait or let a swim bait sink a little deeper, you should be able to pull out a few. Most of my success has come from working the lily pads against the eastern shore along Old Shepard St. The weeds are pretty thick tho so you'll have a tough time getting ur bait down to the fish. Instead, fishing the edges of the lily pads will allow you to get the bait to their level and within their range.”

It would seem that bass masters are seeking out the same spot that Virgil and Vernon Messinger sought out, but for very different reasons. The Messinger Brothers built an empire along Silk Mill Pond. Take a drive down Old Shepard Street to see the pond - the mills have long since disappeared. For almost a century the Silk Mill complex was a driving force in our industrial history.

Textile manufacturing in Canton began with James Beaumont’s mill on Walpole Street, built in 1801. It was Beaumont’s belief that he produced the first piece of cotton cloth in America. The claim, however, was not quite true, as it seems cotton cloth was being produced in a small factory in New York as early as 1794. Yet, Beaumont’s empire was likely the first large-scale production of the cloth and made a fortune for the enterprising youth.

So, it is no surprise that when you look at Canton’s industrial history you will observe amazing progress in both manufacturing and invention of machines that support the cotton, wool, netting and silk industries. Imagine Canton in the early 1800’s –Paul Revere is making copper, Leonard and Kinsley are manufacturing iron, the very parts of the machines needed to support textile mills. And, while Canton did not have quite the waterpower of other more famous manufactories, it certainly had enough to support the invention needed for amazing growth.

One of the oldest glass ambrotypes
taken in Canton is this circa.
1863 view of the first Silk Mill.

A map of 1831 lists the industries within the town’s boundaries, “2 furnaces for casting canons, bells, and etc., 2 rolling mills & 1 turning mill, 1 large wool factory, capable of manufacturing 600,000 yards per year, 3 cotton factories, 1 thread factory, one satinett factory, 1 wick yarn factory, 1 cutlery factory, 1 candlestick factory & one for farmer’s utensils; 2 steel furnaces, 4 forges, 3 grist mills, 1 saw mill, and 4 machine shops.” The size of the town, coupled with access to the railroad and proximity to Boston allowed Canton to become the hub of innovation in the early 19^th century.

When you consider all that is needed to support a successful venture, both today and two hundred years ago, it would seem that we were at the forefront of so many things. To our credit we boasted strong public schools, great thinkers and doers, and inspiration everywhere. It is against this backdrop that in April 1836 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts offered a bounty for the purpose of encouraging the manufacture of silk.

The period between 1825-1844 found so many individuals seeking discovery. In Congress, committee after committee was raised to support the silk industry in America. Locally, Governor Levi Lincoln’s focus was on economic development and was intimately aware of how to promote the textile industry as he himself was connected to the cotton enterprises in Worcester at the time. It was Governor Lincoln who helped fuel the silk industry by offering a bounty of “ten cents a pound for cocoons and a dollar a pound for raw silk.” The first year that the bounty was offered, merely $85 was paid out, signaling warning signs for the silk industry in Massachusetts.

Not heeding the fact that both the trees and the caterpillars could not thrive here, a great business emerged selling mulberry trees. Subsequently, an enormous frenzy called “Morus Multicaulis Mania” swept New England. “Grave doctors of medicine and doctors of divinity, men learned in the law, agriculturalists, mechanics, and merchants, and women as well as men, seemed to be infected with a strange frenzy in regard to this mulberry tree.”

Jonathan Cobb was born in Sharon, and was raised in his father’s tavern on the town line between Canton. Attending Milton Academy and later Harvard, Cobb became associated with the law office of James Dunbar and came to know many Canton businessmen. By 1831, Cobb had moved to Dedham and became engaged in the manufacture of silk thread. An early pioneer and advocate for the fledgling silk industry, Governor Levi tapped Cobb to prepare the everyday manual on the subject.

Janice Fronko, a textile historian explains that “the people who had money to invest, lost a fortune, and Cobb lost over $50,000. These investors came to learn that the silk worms and trees had to come from other places.” The bombyx mori – the domesticated silkworm, was bred successfully in China and Japan. “As soon as the experiment in New England died out, the wealthy left standing turned to a new business plan to import the raw silk. Once here, the silk was turned into thread, dyed and turned out onto spools,” says Fronko.

Things spiraled out of hand, when prices for the mulberry trees that once cost $3.00 per hundred rose to cost as much as $500.00 per hundred. Times were rife with speculation and a great panic ensued leading, of course to financial disaster by 1837. The raising and producing of silk in America soon fell to the true entrepreneurs, and in walked the Virgil J. Messinger of Canton.

A Collection of Embroidery Silks

Messinger opened his first silk factory in 1839. Shortly after opening the enterprise, he moved to Needham and made “sewings, gimps and fringes” with Lemuel Cobb (Jonathan’s brother.) By 1844 he returned and along with his brother, Vernon, erected a newer factory at what was called the Lower Silk Mill Pond. An exhibit in 1847 at Faneuil Hall extolled the amazing new sewing silk “nearly equal to the best imported.” The new modern factory was opened under the name “Messinger & Brother” and would become an empire known throughout the country.

In 1842 the quantity of silk manufactured in Massachusetts was 5,264 pounds, by 1845 Canton sent out 5,200 pounds – by far some of the largest output in the state. To solve the supply problems, the Messingers imported the silk skeins from China and pulled them into thread and dyed the resulting product.

Over the succeeding years the company grew and the mill grew from a modest wooden structure to a fine granite building designed on a grand scale. The business was sold in 1863 to Charles Foster and J.W.C. Seavey, who himself had been with the Messingers since 1853. By 1881, the firm became known as the Eureka Silk Manufacturing Company. Within a year the factory was aglow with the new invention of electricity.

The evolution of Eureka was phenomenal, owing in large part to the patent of the Singer Vibrating Shuttle sewing machine. This lockstitcher was far better than any of the previous machines and millions of the machines, perhaps the world's first really practical sewing machine for domestic use, were produced well into the early 1900s.

As sales of the machine rose, so too did the fortunes of Eureka Silk. Yet, at the same time competition began to overtake the region and the rise of the business was offset with a precipitous decline.

In 1894, over 475 workers, mostly women were employed by Eureka in three large mills. On March 13, 1894 “practically the entire number of girls and young men left their work abruptly at about 7:30 Tuesday morning.” The spoolers and winders of the lower mill marched en masse to the upper mill and gathered more supporters. The two groups marched and eventually more than 375 workers went out on strike. Wages had been cut by ten cents a day and hours had been reduced as “hard times” led to insufficient paychecks.

The papers wrote that “the streets were crowded with a lively and brilliant throng” as a mass meeting was held at Oddfellow’s Hall. Newspaper reporters tried to report of the union meetings, but the “smiling and insistent reporter was as smiling and insistently excluded.” To all in town the front-page story was bolstered by the fact that things were quite “orderly and quiet except for the unusual number of bright dresses on the street and the silent spindles of two out of the three mills. The mill owners threatened to shutter the mills down, and the girls threatened to go to Brockton for better wages. The state Board of Arbitration intervened and advised the workers to return. The wages had been as high as $6.08 for 58 hours of work, yet the economy of the silk business could no longer meet such generous terms.

In the end, the workers returned to their shuttles without any raise in wages and the mills resumed operation. Mill Number 1 ended production in 1903 and was destroyed by fire the following year. In 1906 Eureka Silk relocated to Connecticut and ceased all operations in Canton.

Burr Lane: A Dog With A Bone - Part II

2014-04-04T09:07:00.000-04:00

The Tippet Pipe Found in 1969.
(Copyright 2014 President & Fellows of Harvard College
969-37-50122 and 975-34-10/52976)

The dog was covered in spring mud, after the rains he was always coming home filthy with sticks and old roots. This day was different, as he bounded into the house he had a large ball of some sort, as his owner bent over to retrieve the mess from the dog’s mouth he was shocked to discover that it was a human skull.

This was 1968, and when Police Chief Daniel Keleher arrived, he knew it would be impossible to locate the rest of the body given the provenance of the dog’s mouth. Placing the skull on the seat of his cruiser, Keleher took it to the old Police Station on Revere Street and put in on the top shelve of the closet in his office. There it sat next to another skull that had been discovered behind the Canton Corner Cemetery. It seems that Keleher had more than a few skeletons in his closet. A year later, Keleher put two and two together and realized the archeologists at the Peabody Museum who had arrived at Burr Lane might want to see the skull that the dog had unearthed a year earlier.

It took a few days to get the necessary permissions from Mrs. Eli Withington, but after some brief negotiations the Peabody archeologist, Dena Dincauze, began her work. What the neighborhood children had uncovered was the Burr Lane Burying Ground. Children had begun the work, but the scientists needed to figure out the boundaries and secure the remains from exposure and deterioration.

Skulls, mandibles, rib cages, hands and feet… all were eroding out of the side of the sandpit. All of the graves were oriented in an east-west fashion with the head laying to the east. The hands were in the pelvic cavity with the right hand above the left except the right thumb below the left hand. On the left ankle was a copper or brass straight pin, which preserved a small portion of a shroud of course linen. In the soil, careful excavation revealed coffin nails in the dirt closely fitting the body. Portions of thick pine planking preserved sections of the coffins.

A woman’s grave was excavated and one of the neighborhood boys found a dotted slipware cup that dated to the 18^th century. More graves were excavated through the course of the weeks ahead. The site became a classroom for the Harvard students who ultimately excavated the complete remains of two individuals and parts of six others. At the same time, the kids were also digging, and the scene must have been surreal.

Key to dating the site was the small pipe that Stephen Turley had found along with the slipware cup. Likely the graves of Jonathan George and Simon George were the earliest, placing the site’s date of first use at 1738. The Harvard archeological team uncovered a rough footstone in place above one grave, but all other stones seemed to have been lost over time.

A Sketch of the Archeological Work in 1998

With Burr Lane to the north, this area is defined by typical fieldstone walls and a meandering cartpath - part of an ancient Indian trail known as the Quantum Path, the Southerly portion connecting to Burr Lane. Historically there was once an orchard, Indian dwellings, and possibly a small meetinghouse.

The land lay untouched until 1998, when Peter Stockus, the landowner submitted plans to the Canton Planning Board for a small residential subdivision on the site. This author reminded Stockus that his new subdivision was the site of the Burr Lane Burying Ground and as such a new archeological investigation might be in order. Always a gentleman and a good citizen of Canton, Stockus hired Joyce Clements to perform an archeological assessment.

Stockus sat atop a Caterpillar excavator and slowly stripped the soil from the area as Clemenst carefully watched. On the last day of the work, at 4:00 pm on Friday, March 20^th a femur was exposed on the western part of the property. The archeologist got to her knees and carefully began brushing away the sand. A second bone appeared and smaller bones were exposed. The following Monday the real work began. This time, history would be preserved in place. By March 30^th all was secure and 18^th century was tucked back into the ground.

The Peabody Museum is an imposing brick building just outside Harvard Yard. To see the artifacts related to Burr Lane requires permission from the Massachuset-Ponkapoag Tribal Council. Once inside, the security is fairly strict and you are ushered into a basement viewing room. A staff person rolls a cart on which sits a large wooden tray. Latex gloved hands, and one by one the grave goods are handled. A small plastic bag contains a tiny fragment of a burial shroud cloth. Roughly woven this was once wrapped around the body in a coffin and fastened with a small copper pin. There are not many items that were taken from Burr Lane – a small handled cup, a fragment of pottery, a lead shot, and twenty coffin nails.

The most amazing item, however, is the small pipe broken into two pieces. The pipe is stained inside from the tobacco that once flowed through the stem. There is a small set of maker’s initials and a cartouche on the side of the bowl. This pipe was made by R. Tippet. The Tippet family was probably the most important pipemakers in the late 17^th through early 18^th centuries. Three generations all hailed from Bristol, England and this pipe was made sometime between the years 1660 - 1722.

Jeanne MacLeod was ten years old, and vividly recalls the small pipe in her hands. “The one thing I remember – the pipe, we were playing with it for days. One kid dropped it and it broke the stem and we all were quite upset since we knew it was an ancient artifact.” Today, Jeanne lives in Hilton Head, SC. “Talking about this today, more than forty-five years ago, the memory of the day comes flooding back.”

All in all, the Peabody has 18 items that were recovered from Burr Lane. There are two full human skeletons and perhaps parts of six to ten others plus six artifacts. The remains are stored respectfully in another location, yet one day they may find their way back to their original resting place.

So while there are human remains of our ancestors safely tucked away on shelves in Cambridge, here in Canton the Burr Lane Burying Ground is largely intact, thanks to Peter Stockus and the advocacy of the local and state historical commissions as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The work done in 1998 yields evidence of fourteen additional “features” or grave shafts. Preliminary reports at the time estimated a total of thirteen individuals interred in graves. In some cases the graves had been disturbed, and in others they were wholly intact. Also, a skull had been found on the topsoil as well as fragments of coffins and nails. Some of the heads were situated with their head to the west and others to the east.

Clements worked carefully to recover the boundaries of the cemetery. One of the conclusions made was that the graves exposed during the work in 1998 suggested two family groups within the burials. This makes sense historically since Huntoon’s History of Canton tells us that four members of Simon George’s family are buried here and four members of Jacob Wilbor’s family are here. Who else is buried here, we may never know. Huntoon tells us that there are Indians, blacks, and children. Forensic evidence suggests that in addition to Native Americans, there are also African American traits found in the early skeletal remains. Jacob Wilbor may be Native or black American: his wife Mary Wills Wilbor was the daughter of Nuff Wills ‘a negro’. Also, we do not know definitively where Seymour Burr is buried. There are several children buried at Burr Lane and the archeology confirms this as well. MacLeod also remembers the skeleton of a dog, and that may tie into the reference of Simon George’s dog following him into the afterlife.

Today, the Burying Ground is part of the Withington Circle Subdivision and is protected under a permanent preservation restriction through the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The graves that have been preserved on-site are contained within a 2,792 square foot easement on Lot 5. Access to the cemetery is preserved through a ten-foot wide path that runs along the property line. There is no sign, and the property is private so there is no trespassing allowed. We do know that no dogs or children will ever disturb this site again. And, there is room reserved for the reburial of the remains in the custody of the Peabody Museum if ever they are released for internment. Peter Stockus was awarded the Massachusetts Preservation Award in 1999.

Special thanks to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, Jeremy Comeau, Canton Planning Board, and Gill Solomon, President of the Massachuset-Ponkapoag Tribal Council.

Burr Lane: Skull & Bones - Part I

2014-04-03T09:07:00.000-04:00

An Ancient Map Showing the Burying Ground

Running through the woods on Sunday afternoon in September 1969 were two boys from Sawyer Avenue here in Canton. The crisp early fall day was a welcomed break from the rains that had preceded the week. As the sun cut through the tree-lined paper road known as Burr Lane, the boys took a detour through the old abandoned gravel pit. That was the day that history was unearthed and souls that had been at rest for over 200 years would be disturbed to this very day.

Burr Lane is a small road, more of a dirt driveway off Pleasant Street. You might miss it if you did not know it was there. The name is one of those “place names,” meaning it was named for a person who once lived in that place. In this case, it is named for Seymour Burr. It is an ancient part of Canton and has always been associated with the Ponkapoag Indians.

To tell the full story, let’s step back even further. The Praying Indians at Ponkapoag originally owned the land that the boys were playing on that day. The name most closely associated with that part of the village was Simon George. And on that very spot where the boys stood was once a beautiful apple orchard owned by George. In the early colonial days, the Indians were largely forbidden from owning apple trees, and George was the first native to plant an orchard. More particularly, he was the first that was allowed to keep and maintain his apple trees.

The issue in the earliest days of Canton’s history was one of control over the native population. The boundaries of the Ponkapoag Plantation were purposefully cut off from the Neponset River to deprive the Indians of the transportation resource. And since the Indians were very fond of cider, they planted orchards all throughout their land. When the tribe began leasing their land to the English settlers they specifically excepted the orchards from the leases. In 1786 Robert Redman fenced in his orchard of 16 acres and “threatened the Indians with death if they dared to take an apple” from the very trees they had planted. To make matters worse for the natives, Redman also forbade them from gathering cranberries for their own support. It was, however, the cider that was the hardest to bear.

Huntoon’s History of Canton records the great hardship over the loss: “The apples are now coming on, and we set great store by our apples, and hope to have some, not only to eat, but to make cyder.” While many orchards were off limits, Simon George’s orchard was allowed to stay. The seven to 10 acres on Pleasant Street was not only his land, but also his livelihood. In 1732 the Indian commissioners allowed “him and his squaw the liberty to improve, for their own personal benefit, as much of the land that was that year devoted to John Wentworth and William Sherman. On this land lived George and his four children along with his “squaw,” Abigail.

There is an ancient death record that dates to 1739 that tells us that Simon George died in full belief that he was “admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog should bear him company.” He was buried behind his house in a small graveyard, and his wife and children soon followed him in the afterlife. The land then passed to Jacob Wilbor, who was also buried in the cemetery, and his wife remarried after his death and married Seymour Burr — hence Burr Lane.

Seymour Burr was either born in Africa or here in the colonies. There is conflicting information regarding his birth. Some citations list him as born in Connecticut, possibly of mixed-race parentage; others claim he was born in Guinea, Africa, captured at age 7, and was possibly of royal birth. His enlistment documents list his age as both 20 and 28, which places his birth in either 1754 or 1762. Owned by the brother of Colonel Aaron Burr, who was also named Seymour, he was known only as Seymour until he escaped and used the surname Burr to enlist in the British Army in the early days of the American Revolution. The British had made promises guaranteeing the personal freedom of any black slave who enlisted or escaped to fight against the Continental Army. Burr was quickly captured and forcibly returned to his owner.

Burr, fearing that Seymour would escape again, offered him a different deal: If Seymour would pay his owner the enlistment bounty given to him by the British and serve instead in the Continental Army, he would be given his freedom at the end of his military service. On April 5, 1781, Seymour enlisted in the Connecticut Seventh Regiment, led by Colonel John Brooks. He fought at Bunker Hill and Fort Catskill and suffered through the long winter at Valley Forge.

After his service, Burr was given his promised freedom. In 1805 he married the widow Mary Wilbor, who was one of the Ponkapoag tribe. In marrying her, Burr inherited all of the land that was once Simon George’s, including the burying ground. Burr died February 17, 1837, and was either buried in that small plot behind the house or in an unmarked grave at Canton Corner. Mary Burr died at the age of 101 in 1852 after receiving a yearly pension of $50 since 1838. On her gravestone at Canton Corner reads, “Like the leaves in November, so sure to decay, Have the Indian tribes all passed away.”

Over the course of time the land changed hands many times, and by the early 1900s the property was owned by Eli Withington. It was a wood lot and a gravel pit and Withington was by all accounts a curmudgeon in the classic sense. Carol Shaw Munson recalls her grandfather in a recent conversation: “He was a crabby old guy and very gruff and had a temper … he ended up divorcing his first wife and married Winifred Stone after she lost her first husband. Winifred’s daughter married into the Stockus family and the land changed hands.”

Munson was wistful as she remembers what her grandfather was like. “I met him when I was 11 years old,” she said, “and after the buildup by my mother about his character, I was scared to death.” In time, Munson came to find Withington as a gentle soul and would see him every week after church on Sunday.

And so, over 130 years later, 12-year-old Stephen Turley and Mark Nannery find themselves playing

A Press Clipping
from 1969

on the land of Simon George and Seymour Burr and Eli Withington. And it was in Withington’s gravel pit that they began sliding down the steep sandy walls. As boys are prone to do, they examined every root and rock as they happily played. At some point Turley picked up a small clay pipe, a relic from history, and then the chase was on. What else was coming out of the ground that day?

The pipe was only the first part of the story, the key that unlocked the secrets of the burying ground. Taking the pipe home, Stephen told his father, Francis Turley — then principal of the Dean S. Luce School — about a jawbone and leg bones sticking out from the exposed gravel bank. Turley now lives in North Carolina and only vaguely recalls the day he found the pipe. “I saw this little pipe, carved out of bone or ivory … and then I noticed bones,” explained Turley. “My dad knew it was older … he called the experts at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.” To this day, Turley remembers holding the pipe and bones. At some point, while passing it among his friends, the pipe broke and eventually he gave it to the folks at the Peabody.

In 1969 Canton was a tight knit community, and word among the children in the neighborhood spread quickly. Within 24 hours dozens of kids descended upon their very own backyard archeological site. While the archeologists in Cambridge were mobilizing, the children were digging, and what they were unearthing was amazing and macabre.

By September 17, likely four days after the original discovery, Dina Dincauze arrived on the site. Dincauze led the expedition to Burr Lane and was the lead archeologist. “The children had removed parts of two skeletons,” she recalled, “and members of the Massachusetts Archeological Society had already examined one part of a body in place.” That was where the Peabody archeologists began their investigation.

As dozens of neighborhood children and their parents looked on, the dig began, and piece by piece the remains of Simon George and his family began a long journey into science and history.

And for those who were surprised to find these graves, it was not a secret to our ancestors. Huntoon had written about the cemetery and it even appears on an early map. All the signs were there and this archeological site should have been protected, but what happened next will really shock you.

The Last Picture Show

2014-02-13T07:53:00.000-05:00

Best Actors from the CHS 1982
Graduating Class got on their names of the marquee.

Marion Nay sits in the kitchen of the house she grew up in on Tolman Street. Her eyes sparkle as she brings out several spiral notebooks that she has kept for over thirty years. Along with the notebooks are dozens of scrapbook three-ring binders that Marion has lovingly kept throughout her life. There is history in this kitchen, and a spunky determination to tell a story.

The way Marion tells it, an advertisement appeared in the local paper searching for someone to help out at a new movie theatre in downtown Canton. It was around 1978 and she applied for the job. “I was hired on the spot,” explains Marion, “it was exciting to be a part of it all.” This was the new Oriental Theatre, the wonderful and magical brainchild of Fred McLennan.

McLennan is a curious guy. Quite literally, this man is a walking, talking, encyclopedia of Boston theatre history. A phone call with McLennan can last hours and range from radio, theatrical and political history. It was McLennan who opened and ran many of the movie houses in the greater Boston area. “For more than forty years I have been in the movie business,” says McLennan; “I ran the Showcase Cinemas is Dedham, and Revere, as well as being the archivist at what is now the Wang Center.” There is pride in his voice as he commands a vital part of New England’s love affair with the experience of movies.

And, if it were not for a pipe organ, there would not have been an Oriental Theatre in Canton or a job for Marion Nay. “In the early 80’s I took a motorcycle trip that ranged from Nova Scotia across the United States with a mission of visiting pizza shops that had installed Wurlitzer organs.” The mighty Wurlitzer figures heavily in this story. It seems that organs had a second life after movie houses, being installed in pizza joints to entertain diners for about the twenty-minutes it took to eat a pizza. McLennan explained that it was all about entertainment.

It was a small church in Saulnierville, Nova Scotia (coincidently the same town that this author’s family hails from) that McLennan found the original church organ that once played in the Dedham Community Theatre. McLennan bought it with plans to open up his very own pizza palace at the Dedham Mall. “At the time the Flatley Company was developing the mall and thought it might fit better at the Tri-Town Mall at Cobb Corner,” says McLennan. A trip to Canton was in order, and surveying the businesses at Cobb Corner, McLennan knew he could not compete with Goodies Deli. A pizza joint would not work.

Driving up Washington Street, McLennan spied the marquee of the once proud Strand Theatre. Canton’s movie house was shuttered and dilapidated. The Blizzard of ’78 had destroyed the roof and quite literally, mushrooms were growing on the carpets. Where others saw destruction, McLennan saw the future home of his mighty Wurlitzer organ.

The ghost of a theatre in 1978 was once a expansive social and entertainment fixture. Originally known as the Orpheum and built in 1918, this would later become the Strand and it’s relevance rose and fell with Hollywood business models. After silent movies fell away, the theater was turned into a roller-skating rink and a miniature golf course. Boxing matches, minstrel shows and local parties all used the Orpheum space. With the rise of “talkies” the place reopened with the 1956 hit “Anything Goes” starring Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman. The Strand, complete with Technicolor, was a hit. There are many kitchens that still boast beautiful Depression glass and flow-blue china – courtesy of “dish night” at the Strand. Over time, and with the rise of television, the local movie-house gave way to the megaplex where you had a choice of films. Canton’s small 600-seat theatre closed.

McLennan saw opportunity and made a deal with the landlady who owned the cleaners next door. “I approached Mrs. Peterson and shared my idea to reopen up the theatre.” By the sound of it, she scratched her head, and soon acquiesced. “I was going to call it the Last Picture Show, and run newsreels, cartoons, and have a Saturday matinee… candy on the cheap and a buck for the popcorn. I brought in Justin Freed as my booker.” Choosing the right movies was critical, and associating with Freed was key. Freed is a lion in Boston movie history. He started working as programmer and manager for the Kenmore Square Cinema in 1965. He was co-programmer at the Orson Welles Cinema, in Cambridge, from 1969 to 1972. Then he bought the Park Square Cinema, in 1972, and the Kenmore two years later. It was Freed who brought the midnight movie to Boston and began scheduling what would become such revival-house standbys as “Bringing Up Baby’’ and the Astaire-Rogers pictures.

McLennan also decided that key to the new Canton theatre would be the experience. Setting out to emulate the atmospheric theatres of the early 20^th century, a collection of movie-house memorabilia was pressed into service. Painted ceilings, murals, stars, clouds, and even the moon, and of course the mighty Wurlitzer.

The Canton Oriental Theatre that opened in 1978 with 300 seats was billed as “a non-cinema,” suggesting an alternative to big multi-screen conglomerate theatres. McLennan had purchased many of the features of the original Oriental Theatre in Mattapan. The seats came from the Egyptian in Brighton and the projectors came from the Seville in East Boston. This was a totally recycled museum of theatre. McLennan painted the ceiling cobalt blue, installed stars, cranked up a “magic cloude” machine, and opened the week before Christmas with Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Twelve people came to see the show.

Meanwhile, McLennan had a management style that was laser focused, and perhaps brusque to say the least. The philosophy: “make it an experience, make it clean, make it entertaining, and the patrons will keep coming back. People feel quality.”

And it would seem key to McLennan’s venture was Marion Nay who gave execution to McLennan’s vision. Today, she has kept every scrap of paper from her work at the Oriental. In the days before email, the boss wrote out his edicts on paper towels – literally, dozens of paper towels directed the day-to-day operation. The notes are to the point, Marion…”see if you can replace the seat bottom on the seat with the paper towel on it (center section 7^th row down) there should be a new red leather spare around.” Marion looks wistfully back on her time at the Theatre, “I got very involved, starting right away, buying cleaning supplies at Chandler’s Hardware - a new mop, Lestoil and Comet. Everything was washed and cleaned everyday.” It could not have been the money, by estimating the pay stubs, which she still has; the pay was less than $4.00 an hour. Nay also was in charge of buying the “real” butter for the fresh popped Iowa Popcorn. “We went up to the C&M Market and would buy 20 pounds of butter every week or so.” Apparently the popcorn was so good that many Canton families stopped by on Monday Night Football games just to pick up the hot buttery goodness to serve at home. At $1.00 a bag, it was a deal.

For a while the movie theatre was huge hit, with lines stretching down the block. And of course there are some great stories, like the night during a showing of “Love at First Bite” and some joker brought a bat in. McLennan found the bat hanging from the ceiling the next morning. And of course during a Cheech & Chong film someone was smoking pot. McLennan stopped the guy and said, “You cant smoke in here,” to which the man responded, “what do you mean this is Up In Smoke!”

The Oriental Theatre closed in 1983. McLennan knows how it ended. “The last summer we were running, the federal government took away the film credits and production was cut in half. Dedham, Norwood, Foxboro, all got out. Cable television came into Canton … the landlady, Mrs. Peterson, passed away. There was the hostage crisis in Iran, and a bit of a depression fell across the country.” Marion was sad the day she was told the movies would end, but a new part of her life was about to begin.

For the past several years, Marion has been her husband Peter’s caregiver. Peter was diagnosed with MS when he was 47 in 1987 he was forced to retire. Today he is totally incapacitated and is cared by his wife in the home she grew up in. In a wheelchair, Peter remembers how coincidently he worked in the Dedham Theatre as a young man, and how his mother worked there for over twenty-five years. Photos from the binders spill out, and the Nay children’s faces beam behind the candy counter. Jimmy, Peter, and Carl all worked under the watchful eyes of their mother at the Oriental.

“On Golden Pond” is the one film that remains Marion’s favorite film of all time. Roger Ebert wrote of the movie, I could believe in its major characters and their relationships, and in the things they felt for one another . . . watching the movie, I felt I was witnessing something rare and valuable." And, sitting with Marion and Peter’s kitchen, I understood what sparked Ebert’s comments; love, aging and commitment. It all becomes clear - against a backdrop of community, family, and the old-fashioned picture show.

Clang Clang Clang

2014-01-16T09:06:00.000-05:00

The Blue Hill Street Railway, No. 65
at Mattapan Square on August 15, 1903.

Canton sounds different - historically speaking. For one thing, the sound of factory whistles, or a neighbor’s cow, or even the clinking sound of the milkman’s bottles. So much of our daily lives have changed over the course of our town’s history. We cannot quite place a date or time when most sounds ended, except for one. The sound of the trolley bells that once clanged through Canton Center were silenced forever during a snowstorm on February 5^th an 6^th1920.

The photographs are an anomaly, when we see the Blue Hill Street Trolley cars frozen in time, we cannot but help to ask the question – is this really Canton? It all started in 1899 and the trolley line lived for twenty-one years. Promoted, constructed and owned by Stone & Webster, the Blue Hill started during the height of the trolley era in New England. The fifteen-mile line connected Boston with the suburban towns of Milton, Canton, Stoughton, Sharon and Norwood. In particular it served the fledgling Blue Hills Reservation and was a critical link for businesses and factories along the route.

Two Unidentified Conductors in the early 1900's

What made this trolley different than most, and likely led to it’s downfall, was the fact that this system was built from the suburban towns into the city as opposed to being built as an extension from existing city lines. As a result, the system was plagued with equipment, operations, and financial problems from the start. The Blue Hills Street Railway was never profitable, and near the end of its life, it was the financial ruin for some investors.

It was originally to be named the Stoughton, Canton and Boston Street Railway and was the work of Charles A. Stone and Edwin S. Webster. Stone met his lifelong friend and partner, Webster, while they were studying electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These two men graduated in 1888 and left an indelible mark on electrical engineering, still visible today.

Electricity was an exciting new field and cities and towns were building local utilities to meet the large-scale demand of this new innovation. In 1889, Stone and Webster’s parents provided seed money to form a consulting firm, the Massachusetts Electrical Engineering Company, whose first client was a paper mill in Maine in need of a hydroelectric plant for its power. Public utilities became the niche specialty for the firm, and they began managing power stations in 1895, financing them in 1902 through an in-house securities department, and constructing them throughout the firm's history. By 1912, the firm had 600 consultants housed in an 8-story building, yet Stone and Webster retained adjoining desks and jointly signed their firm’s letters.

In Canton, Stone and Webster had little difficulty finding investors in the project. Several notable and wealthy citizens signed on. The initial incorporators were a “who’s who” of Canton’s upper echelon. Names like Forbes, Huntoon, Chapman, French, Sprague, Everett, Endicott and Rogers brought the capital needed to build this ambitious system. The route was originally proposed as, “commencing at the terminus of the Brockton Street Railway Company in the town of Stoughton… extending through the towns of Sharon, Canton and Milton…to the line separating Milton from Boston… and the town of Hyde Park. Its length will be fifteen miles.”

Within a few months nine miles of track were completed making it possible to get from Stoughton Center along to Cobb Corner – via Central Street, and then up Washington Street to Ponkapoag where Connor’s Wayside Furniture is today. Over time rails were laid down Sherman Street to connect to Canton Junction. Eventually trolleys would run over the Spaulding Street Bridge and down through Jackson Street to Neponset Street and terminate at the bridge over the Neponset River into Norwood.

The building of tracks was only part of the equation. If you drive down Bolivar Street, just after the Town Barn in the distance you can see what many locals refer to as the Chicken Factory. The moniker was earned in 1935 when Furman - Meyers, Inc. began operation of a poultry dressing and packing plant. But, before it was destined to handle chickens, this was a state-of-the-art power station running coal-fired turbines for the Blue Hill Railway. Another power vestige is the Kessler Machine Works at the Canton Viaduct, originally a power sub-station. And, the small pizza place across from Canton Junction was once a waiting room for the trolley system – relocated to Sherman Street at some point in its history.

A Frequent Winter Image

In the earliest of days the line was operated in three parts due to the fact that it crossed railroad tracks along the way and the railroad declined to allow crossings. This meant that passengers would board the trolley at Stoughton Square, and have to get off two more times and board another waiting trolley just to get to Ponkapoag. Eventually the Massachusetts Railroad Commission allowed the crossings and by September 1901 most of the system was built. The complete connection though to Mattapan was competed in the summer of 1903.

The trolley never made money for the investors. In fact, it hemorrhaged money consistently throughout the operation. In 1903 the company turned a profit of $84.67 and it likely never was able to pay any dividends to shareholders. Most of the ridership occurred between Memorial Day and Labor Day when thousands would flock from Boston to the Blue Hill Reservation. The local population of Canton at the time was under 5000 citizens, and most did not travel between the towns served by the trolley system.

Not only did the trolley line lose money, it was also at times a dangerous ride. John Carroll lives on Pleasant Street and his father; also John Carroll was a conductor on the Blue Hill Street Railway. “My dad used to tell stories of how he would fly down the hills in Milton neat the fire station.” Under their own power, the twenty-eight foot cars would gather quite a lot of speed unless checked by the breaking systems. Derailments were common and descendants of Faustina Estey Shaw Jennison still recall her remarking how she was on that streetcar the day it tipped over by Canton Corner Cemetery. “She said she thought she was going to wind up early at the cemetery in that accident,” she would exclaim to her family.

The worst accident, however, occurred at 9:00 pm on October 10, 1904. A Mattapan bound trolley was unable to stop due to wet leaves on the rails, slamming head on into a car heading towards Ponkapaog Hill. The motorman, Frank Smith, was killed and found dead, “tightly wedged between the vestibules of the two cars.” The thirty year-old trainman left five children. James Duggan, an employee of the railway, had his left leg crushed in the accident and amputated above the ankle. In the darkness of the wreckage the motorman, Ed Sheehan, “managed to crawl over” to Dugan. “What is the matter Jim?” Dugan said his legs were crushed and he was afraid he was bleeding to death. Sheehan tied the leg with a handkerchief and then fainted beside his comrade whose life he saved. The seven passengers from Mattapan were badly shaken up, and the lawsuit that ensued cost the trolley company dearly.

In order to build ridership, the company began raffling off small pets to encourage children and their parents to ride. Rabbits, white rats, and “well bred pigeons” were distributed. One resident remarked, “his home was being turned into a fully equipped menagerie.” The local paper observed, “there are so many pretty animals not needed in the High Street neighborhood, it might be suggested that they be rounded up and tagged for delivery at Blue Hill.” And, while ridership was built up, the finances never worked out.

The End of the BHSR - February 6, 1920

The winter of 1919-1920 spelled the death knell for the system. The company was placed into receivership, and the residents of Canton voted to appropriate $1500 at the special town meeting in the hopes of saving the company. Mother Nature was not as accommodating. A series of snowstorms forced the system to its knees. The steam generator at the power station failed and on February 5^th an intense nor’easter dumped 17.3 inches of snow on Canton. The local paper described the storm. “Two trains stalled from Thursday night until Saturday morning, one hundred and fifty passengers dependent on Red Cross and citizens for food and shelter. Bread supply exhausted within an hour of each baking. Blue Hill St. Ry. out of coal in midst of storm and may have to wait until line is opened up by thaw.”

The situation was dire; snowdrifts totally covered the trolley cars. “They are still up there, with the snow drifted up to the car roof… under the feet of pedestrians and horses the car line path packed into a solid mass of ice.” The paper went on to consider that “it is presumed that the line will have to be dug out before service could be given, and the lowest estimate of the cost is $2000. In the present state of the road’s finances…it looks as if the management will have to wait for the next thaw to clear the line.”

The cars stayed right where they froze on that February day. Several months later they were returned to the carhouse and never ran again. Mothballed until a massive fire at Cobb Corner in 1921 destroyed the entire rolling stock and the line became totally abandoned. In time the tracks along Washington Street were torn up and scrapped. There are a few rails rumored to be in a driveway on Sherman Street. There are scrapbooks with tickets, and John Carroll still has his father’s motorman’s badge from a uniform cap.

Pretty much all we have now are the photographs that show this amazingly wonderful yet failed experiment in regional transportation. As the snow falls, it is hard to imagine the frozen trolleys on the hill in Ponkapoag. And, of course we will never hear the sound of the bell ringing along our main street as we head into history.

Casey Places His Bet

2013-03-17T11:31:00.000-04:00

Brooks Block the scene of a superbly executed
State Police daytime raid on Casey’s.

Thomas E. Casey was an entrepreneur and knew he needed adequate space for a new venture in Canton that would change the ordinary lives of the everyday man. Walking up Washington Street on a late July afternoon in 1938, Casey a bright 32 year-old upstanding citizen of Canton saw just such an opportunity.

Born in 1906, Casey was a newspaperman of sorts. Working for the Canton Journal, and subsequently the Norwood Messenger and Boston Record. These were jobs, yet Casey wanted a career and during the depression a quest for “easy money” would take Casey down.

At the intersection of Bolivar and Washington Streets stood the massive and imposing Brooks Block, originally built around 1856, the building was the cornerstone of the community. Over the years the corner landmark was home to the post office, the telephone exchange, a string of drugstores, the police department and several fraternal and social organizations. In 1887, the upper stories of the building were renovated and the Odd Fellows Hall occupied the third floor. In 1905, another grander renovation was completed transforming the stunning reception hall.

A majestic space by all accounts, Odd Fellows Hall was large enough to host weddings and huge parties. Shows, musicals, and all sorts of entertainment were the order of the day. And on one occasion George Polley, “The Human Fly” wowed hundreds of onlookers as he nimbly scaled the façade without the aid of ropes or harness. It was a magnificent stunt worthy of the building. And, yet, by the summer of 1938 Brooks Block was showing its age and the Canton Lodge of Masons was moving out of their spacious third floor space to a new home. A sign went up “space for rent.”

And that is when Casey saw the prospects of his business venture brighten considerably. Over the next two month, Casey planned to build one of the finest establishments ever seen outside of Boston. His “parlor” would occupy the entire third floor. Casey knew he would do well. There were plenty of customers that worked in the radius of our small suburban town. And, while times were indeed tough in 1938, the Work Progress Administration (W.P.A.) was busy with all sorts of local projects right here in Canton.

The W.P.A. was the most ambitious New Deal Agency that had been created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Employing millions of unemployed, the main thrust was to carry out construction projects. In 1935, when the Canton Post Office was built, a New Deal project included the painting of the mural celebrating Paul Revere’s Copper Industry in Canton. And, over the course of nine years, Canton received many additional benefits that added badly needed pay to suffering families’ wallets.

In Canton, the W.P.A. projects included bridges, dams, sewer lines and sidewalks constructed by local laborers from all across town. The hot argument surging through town in 1938 was whether to accept federal aid to build a new High School on the land known as the French Estate on Washington Street. The town meeting that year voted against the question, but in true Canton fashion it took nine years to settle the question and new High School was built in 1947.

All the men that were building the new bridges and sidewalks across town had money and it seemed to Casey that he could give them a place to spend it. In the central room, Casey installed three 20-foot long tables with benches so the patrons would be comfortable. After all, they would be spending considerable time in his establishment. On the third floor of Brooks Block, Casey built glassed in teller windows. A state-of-the-art amplification system was installed, along with special staging and an elevated illuminated board. To complete his operation, Casey installed dozens of phone lines, not all that difficult considering that the building was once home to New England Telephone.

The scene of the crime; on the third floor of the
Odd Fellows Hall sixty-five men
gathered to gamble their depression era paychecks.

What Casey had built over the course of several weeks was one of the most “well-equipped horserace betting establishments” in this section of eastern Massachusetts. Unfortunately for Casey, it was also highly illegal. Illegalities aside, it made no matter to the patrons, however, who flocked to the new scheme in droves.

These patrons were largely the working classes from all the surrounding towns including Boston. Word of Casey’s pari-mutuel betting parlor spread like wildfire and it was extremely successful. It was a very well run operation. In the center of the room sat the men who were placing bets on several of the horse races of the day. On a giant board illuminated by floodlights, were posted the names of the horses running in the afternoon races across the country. The exact odds as those at the tracks were posted on board around the room. And, the battery of telephones was used to take and place bets as well as receive results almost instantaneously.

Throughout the day, the results were announced to the crowd and time stamped bets at the teller windows “prevented the operators from being defrauded.” It was perfect in every way, and well received by the men digging sewers for the W.P.A. In 1938, it turns out the biggest celebrity in America was a horse named Seabiscuit. The story was classic; a horse that rose to greatness with the assistance of a “a half-blind prizefighter and failing jockey, a mute mustang breaker, and a bicycle repairman-turned-overnight millionaire racehorse owner. Against the dreary backdrop of the waning depression, the W.P.A. workers found inspiration in this amazing animal. It is no wonder that Casey had hit upon success from these men’s hopes.

Unfortunately, a byproduct of gambling is losing and the wives of those government workers were not amused by their husband’s diversions. Reportedly, a wife of one of the losing gamblers dimed out Casey to the Massachusetts State Police in Framingham. A newspaper reported the cause of the complaints came “from the wives of W.P.A. workers and other men of low income, who declared that their husbands were losing their pay the bookie office.” Poor Casey had barely been in operation a week or two when a raid was planned.

On September 15^th “in the heart of Canton’s business district” the state police gathered outside the entrances to Brooks Block. Word in a small town travels fast, and soon “hundreds of townspeople gathered in Canton Square and along Washington Street to watch the long arm of the law fall upon Casey. Unfortunately for the wives who complained so vociferously, the “raid was timed to coincide with the running of the fifth and sixth races at the various tracks, when the largest number of betters would be wagering their money.” The plan was to capture as many patrons as possible and send a clear message to gamblers.

As the troopers of the flying squadron waited for the signal, they were armed with “sledgehammers, axes, and jimmies. At about five o’clock, perhaps as the fifth race at Pimlico began, more than sixty-five men were awaiting the outcome of the race. As the horses entered the first turn, the doors to the third-floor room splintered open, chaos ensued and the unlucky men were huddled into the corner of the grand betting parlor.

For the gamblers the outcome that day was bleak. “Residents of not only Canton but Brockton, Stoughton, Boston, Norwood, Milton, Braintree, Foxboro and Walpole were among those trapped.” Casey was arrested on the charge of maintaining and promoting the enterprise. Immediately after notifying the sixty-five men of their arrest, Lieutenant John McLaughlin of the State Police informed them that they could only leave the place upon posting a $25 bail – a sum equal to $402 today. That princely sum was reduced to $10 as a result of the scofflaws’ inability to pay.

Albert A. Ward, the Canton bail commissioner set up a table in the room and one by one the men had to positively identify themselves and post bail. Owing to the fact that many of them were unable to post bail, Casey himself posted bail for many of them. As soon as the last man was out of the room, the State Police took axes to every piece of equipment in the room destroying Casey’s illicit dream. Arraignments were held in Stoughton and Casey was fined $520 (almost $10,000 in today’s economy) and the cases against the 65 others were dismissed.

Much to the embarrassment of the wives and families of the gamblers, every one of their names were printed in the paper the next day. Familiar Canton names such as Podgurski, McSorley, Sykes, Shea, Pocaro, and Sims were among the roll call of men playing the ponies that fateful afternoon.

As for Casey, soon thereafter he entered into business with his father involving a different vice, that of maintaining a liquor parlor, and all quite legal this time around. A resident of 315 Walpole Street, his house is still standing. Casey became a special police officer, operated a taxi business and by the time he died in 1958, at age 53, a well rehabilitated upstanding man of the community. In 1943, an epic fire tore through Brooks Block destroying the magnificent building. Seabiscuit was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and lost to Lord of the Rings.

A Memorial To Freedom

2013-03-17T11:25:00.000-04:00

Memorial Hall in 1879
as it appeared just after completion.
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society.)

When it was built, it was the largest public structure in Canton. A grand memorial to the men of the Civil War, we named it Memorial Hall. All across America the soldiers who fought in the War Between the States were beginning to pass away, and for the great masses of men who fought, there was a certain need to mark the great sacrifices that were made to keep the nation as one.

The war ended in 1865, and within two years the soldiers from Canton began gathering annually in encampments to provide a social structure to the shared experience that brought them together during those hostile years. General Charles Devens Jr. of Boston formed the Grand Army of the Republic in Massachusetts, or GAR. The purpose was to “preserve those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers and sailors who have stood together in many battles, sieges engagements and marches.”

Across the nation more than 8600 community-based GAR Posts were formed; there were more than two hundred posts across Massachusetts alone. In Canton, the soldiers formed GAR Post 94, known as the Revere Post in commemoration of the loss of the two nephews of Paul Revere who hailed from Canton and died on the battlefield. Membership in the GAR was limited to those men (and a few women) who served in the Union Army, Navy, Marine Corps or Revenue Cutter Service during the Civil War. As such, the GAR was destined to eventually cease existence, which it did in 1956 when Albert Woolson, the last veteran of the war died at age 106.

Canton had an extremely strong connection with the Civil War and the Revere Post was an influential part of community decision-making. Building a memorial to the memory of the lost men from Canton began in 1878; thirteen years after peace had been restored. A committee of five men were selected and instructed to take a deed of land donated by the wealthy local philanthropist, Elijah Morse, and erect a building thereon to be called Memorial Hall. The committee started work immediately, selecting the architect, Stephen C. Earle of Boston.

Earle was a fairly well accomplished architect who specialized academic, cultural and commercial buildings, churches – 23 in Worcester alone, as well as firehouses, private homes, and apartment buildings. Earle was a veteran of the Civil War having served as a medical corpsman in the Union Army. After the war, Earle traveled through Europe to essentially gather the visual cues that would become hallmarks of his work back in America.

Earle was heavily influenced by Gothic, French Second Empire, Neoclassical and Romanesque styles. In fact, the critics of the day described Canton’s Memorial Hall as “Modern Gothic.” There are Lombardic and French styling elements throughout the façade of our great building. Wherever possible local materials were used, but predominantly the building is made of red brick trimmed with Longmeadow freestone, (the same stone as that of the Trinity Church at Copley Square) and contrasted with bands of black brick laid in black mortar. There is even a hidden carving of a wise old owl above the portico.

The building is massive in scale, made even more impressive when you consider it was built in the late 19^th century for a town with a population of approximately 4000 people. The six front stairs alone are twenty feet long and made of hammered Concord granite. Covering 6500 square feet, its extreme height is eighty feet above the finished grade. The interior space when it was built was equally impressive, the second floor was twenty-six feet from the floor to the ceiling.

To look at Memorial Hall in Canton, imagine a great church, for in essence that is the historic form that the building takes. The building forms a cross with a center aisle that originally divided the entire structure. The altar, if you will, was a large stage that extended the entire back of the Hall. The front of the building projects out extending as if a tower could rise to a belfry high above the building. When it was built large gothic trimmed chimneys occupied the four corners of the structure. Look closely beyond the first bay of windows at each corner and you can see the vestiges of the chimneys as slight bump outs in the exterior walls.

Originally the building was intended as a community center where all manner of entertainment and meetings would be held. On the first floor as you entered to your right was a small ticket booth that sold admission to minstrel shows, concerts, basketball games, dances, and exhibitions. The first floor was dedicated to public offices, with the Town Clerk, Selectmen and Treasurer on the right and the Public Library on the left side of the building.

The centerpiece of the first floor is of course the memorial tablets, a gift of Elijah A. Morse. It is likely that this was a very special gift for Morse, as he had enlisted in the Union Army and was part of the 4^th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers and had served under General Butler in Virginia and under General Banks in Louisiana. At the time that Memorial Hall was built, Morse was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and extremely wealthy as a result of his business interests.

The Memorial Tablets in honor
of Canton’s fallen Civil War heroes.
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society.)

The left hand tablet bears the names of those killed in battle, with the date and place where they were killed. The eleven names ordered by the date they were killed are etched into the cream-colored marble. The names on the right side tablet are those men that died in the service of disease or wounds and not directly in battle. These nineteen names and the places they died, evoke the distant places where these men died in horrendous pain so far from home. All of the names are etched in light-veined Italian marble.

Stepping back from the tablets and truly taking in the memorial in its entirety is critical to the message. At the top, over the door is the inscription “Erected to commemorate the patriotism of the soldiers of Canton who fell in defense of the Union in the War of the Rebellion.” And, just below is the motto, “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.” This motto was taken from a line in a Roman lyrical poem by Horace in which citizens are encouraged to develop martial prowess to terrify enemies of the Republic. Ironically, this same motto is inscribed at the Confederate cemetery at Manassas National Battlefield Park.

The memorial was designed by Earle, but carved and built by John Evans of Boston. Evans was a well-known carver and his works are in the Washington Cathedral, Trinity Church in Boston and the landmark Church of St. John the Divine in New York City.

Evans used delicately mottled marble, brought from the Echaillon quarries at Grenoble, France. The source for the marble in France was the same as that of the Arc de Triomphe and considered one of the finest sources of limestone in Europe. Four columns support the canopy and are made of highly polished Red Lisbon marble, and dark Tennessee marble make up the plinths at the base. Look closely and you will see the arms of the Union in the medallion of the canopy and arms of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts between branches of laurel and olive. Foliage and rosettes complete the artwork.

Upon completion, Memorial Hall was constructed and dedicated at a cost of $30,961. On October 30, 1879 hundreds showed up to listen to the speeches of the Governor, the Secretary of State, as well as local politicians from around the county. From that point forward, Memorial Hall was dedicated to the people of Canton.

The grand hall on the second floor
could accommodate over one thousand guests.
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society.)

At almost 135 years old we haven taken great care of this building, for it unlikely that public funding or support could ever be garnered to build such a building again. Today, the building no longer holds a social use; purely governmental in every respect. The music and dancing is merely an echo of the past as the interior is transformed into something far removed from its original use.

The basement once held a firing range for the Canton Police Department. At the far right of the enormous space was a lead lined sand filled room where patrolmen would regularly practice firing their weapons underneath unsuspecting taxpayers filing their yearly payments. Large vaults to heavy for the Southern pine floors lined the spaces shared with immense boilers. Today, modern office space takes up most of the at grade floor. The third floor too has changed, and the hall, which unbelievably held one thousand and fifty people comfortably, is now home to the Selectmen and various other town boards. Dressing rooms that were used by vaudeville actors are long gone, replaced by generous meeting spaces.

In the end, let’s not lose sight of what Memorial Hall was meant to be – that place where we could remember these men that died for their nation. The names engraved in the finest marble should be forever in our hearts. And, we are assured that our men of Canton died in a just and righteous cause. Lincoln’s words echo here, “From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

A Place To Call Home

2013-03-17T11:17:00.001-04:00

The Harrison House on
Chapman Street as it looks today.

Anyone who lives in an old house can tell you that there are stories in every corner of that home. We are simply caretakers of old homes – owning them within a long line of homeowners both in the past and the future.

For a family that really never had their own home, the Harrisons would spend years dreaming of the perfect home. Fosdick Beach Harrison came from a long and prestigious line of Harrisons that dated back to Thomas Harrison a settler of Branford, Connecticut from 1645. The men in the family had a history of being in the clergy, and when Fosdick Harrison was born in 1862 he would be destined to follow.

Born in Bethlehem, Connecticut, Harrison Attended preparatory school at the Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Mass, and later attended nearby Amherst College. His early life was spent in the pursuit of knowledge. At Amherst, Harrison distinguished himself and excelled in sports and religious studies. Fellow classmates remarked “that he took a vigorous part in the scrimmages.” One story tells of a broken leg caused by a frivolous jump “out of the chapel window.” Completing his educational pursuits at Yale Divinity School, he was ordained a Congregational minister in 1894.

The life of a young minister is built around service. And, during Harrison’s life he would move dozens of times. In 1904, marrying Estelle Potter of Worcester, Massachusetts they began to build a family. Potter, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer and prominent politician was well established in the community. The life that she embarked on with Fosdick would be without any roots or place to truly call home. In fact, their first child (also named Fosdick) was born in Brantford, Ontario while his father was serving a ministry there.

The family would grow, but always in another town in Connecticut or Massachusetts. Places like Palmer, East Bridgewater, Townsend, Somers, Southington, Woodstock, and New Haven were part of a long line of places the Harrisons lived over the years. Finally in 1935, at age 73, completing a stint in nearby Dover, Mass., Fosdick Harrison decided to settle down in Canton. Along with his wife and four children, the Harrisons would build an ideal place to call home.

The story goes that Estelle had inherited some money and with that small purse they could find a site for a dream home. Caroline Harrison, one of the daughters was a newspaper editor and writer, and she shared the story with American Home Magazine in 1937. “We felt a tragic insecurity in moving from one parish to the another, no home of our own, no improvements we might make lasting,” writes young Caroline. And so in the spring of 1935 they found an old barn at 145 Chapman Street into which they would pour their dreams.

Photo from American Home Magazine,
1937, featuring an interior
view of the Harrison House.

The barn sat in a meadow on the Southerly side of the road and was a rambling building that included the small addition of an ell that folklore suggests was the schoolroom that Henry David Thoreau taught in when he was in Canton in 1835 – 1836. The story is that the Sumner family acquired portions of the old schoolhouse and added the room onto the barn out of nostalgia. Measuring 58’ by 38’ feet the building had seen better days. Built in 1862, it was equipped with “ample horse stalls, carriage rooms, and a hay loft.”

The barn had something that only the Harrisons could see – a future as their new home. Massive grey oak beams from trees that grew in Canton several hundred years ago made for strong bones. The patina of age was a found object, and the Harrisons began work on July 4, 1935.

Estelle asked her brother for assistance and Lincoln Potter travelled up from Chevy Chase, Maryland to supervise the project. Potter had a head for these things and quickly established a plan that called for the complete dismantling of the barn and transforming the parts into a stunning new home. On the existing foundation of the barn, Potter – along with the entire Harrison family completely dismantled the building and rebuilt it entirely. Serving as architect, contractor, and builder, Potter would recycle the old building to be reborn as a spacious country manse.

Liz and George Parker are fixtures in Canton, but moving to Canton in 1979 from the upper west side of New York City was more than a shock to their system. George had taken a position in Boston with Merideth & Grew and a family member suggested he look at a house at 203 Chapman Street. The world between New York City and Canton could not have been more foreign, but soon, Canton would be their true home. “We loved that first house, but it abutted seven neighbors,” explained Parker. The names of the abutters flow fast from Parker’s tongue, “Lesieur, Nolan, Coady, Ladow, and Seaman, all connected to our lot– it was a funny little property.” The Parkers decided they might move. In 1991, Liz and George were walking their dog through their neighborhood on Chapman Street and they saw the ghost of the Harrison house.

As Liz explains it, the old Harrison House was “a little creepy.” After the last Harrison moved out, the property – all 14 acres of it went to a developer who eventually declared bankruptcy and the abandoned house became owned by Workingman’s Bank. The slate roof had leaks and the house had been quite damaged. The ivy was growing into the house. The Parker’s envisioned its greatness. Within months the wreck was theirs and they began the process of bringing it back to life. Unknowingly, the Parkers had purchased a most amazing home.

In the weeks and months that followed that July 4^th in 1936, the first owners, the Harrisons recycled that old barn and built an amazingly comfortable modern building that was years ahead of its time. Almost all of the building was recycled. Every harness peg, manger rail, post and beam – all reused in the Harrison’s first true home. The interior hardware was fashioned from old tools that once hung in the barn. A clevis from a plow and sections of a harrow become hinges and handles. The bricks for the exterior came from an old car barn, every door had been hanging somewhere else in some other home that was demolished but salvaged by the Harrisons.

The centerpiece of the house was the hearth. As Caroline writes, “for a family twenty-two years without a hearth fire, this huge fireplace is a constant delight. Uncle Lincoln found in New Hampshire an old chimney from a house built before 1776, and he faced the fireplace with its bricks. He built the fireplace and chimney himself, making a shelf for a coffee pot, and an oven fed from underneath in which roast beef and baked beans have been successfully cooked. The barn’s trap door is the source of the handle on the oven’s lid, and a wagon supplied the hinges on the slanted tobacco cupboard cut in the paneling above the mantel.”

That fireplace is where the Harrison’s would gather every New Years Eve and build a roaring blaze, the next morning the hot embers would be swept into a small firebox heating an oven where the First Day stew would be heated. A tradition that meant so much to a family that had never had a real home.

There were many joys in the home of the retired minister. Soon after completion, in 1937, the elder retired minister officiated at the marriage of his son, Fosdick, who became a prominent Boston real-estate attorney. Moving out of the new house, the young attorney started his family in the adjacent farmhouse that abuts the homestead. Fosdick P. Harrison would serve Canton as an auxiliary firefighter during World War II.

The clergyman would only enjoy his home for four years, four months and eighteen days. On February 29, 1940 Reverend Fosdick Harrison died in the house that he loved so much and was buried back in Connecticut. Less than four months later his grandchild was born with a congenital heart defect and was buried with him in June.

Estelle died four years later in 1945 leaving her children to grow up in the house that they had built. As each child moved on, the lines began to fade and time took its toll. If Liz and George Parker had failed to see the history in the crumbling plaster and the vine covered bedrooms it was likely that the story would have ended in a teardown.

Take heart though, for folks that have a passion for old homes can hear the history and the stories in the walls. Passed to the next generation the Harrison House is an amazing gift for future homeowners. Liz loves this house, there was that one defining glorious day, when she awoke early and the sun blazed into the living room and the color from the autumn maple leaves cast a brilliant blaze of gold across the oak floors that once were walked upon by Henry David Thoreau himself, and it took her breath away. Now this is a home.

When asked whether she ever thinks of leaving the house, Liz gets a bit misty during her answer, “sometimes we wonder, neither of us want to leave this house… as long as we have our health and our faculties we stay. But in the end we are just caretakers.” And, they have taken good care of the Harrison House.

Hatfield's Colors

2013-03-17T11:05:00.001-04:00

The impressionist artist, Joseph Hatfield
in his Canton studio on Beaumont Street in 1895.

The colors were beautiful, and the descriptions evoked romantic painting in sunlit galleries. Carmine, Alizaran Crimson, Rose Madder, Aureolin Yellow, Ox-Gall, and Smalt. In a small factory off of Beaumont Street some of the world’s best modern paints were developed and perfected by Joseph Henry Hatfield.

J.H. Hatfield was a prolific and extremely talented artist that travelled the world, yet called Canton his home. Born near Kingston, Ontario in 1863, Hatfield was one of America’s most prolific and well-known artists in the nineteenth century. Like many young artists of the time, he would find his influences in France. Studying at the Academie Julian in Paris in 1889-1890, Hatfield would hone his skills by working under Benjamin Constant, Henri Doucet, and Jules Lefebvre.

Hatfield returned to America in 1892, joining a growing group of expatriates who introduced Impressionism to a receptive audience at the turn of the last century. Hatfield was in the company of such artists as Whistle, Hassam, Sargent and Cassatt. In his early work he explored landscapes, figures and plein-air style. And his work at the Paris Salon of 1891 was critical to his success as an artist.

The Paris Salons were annual exhibitions of contemporary art, which were in essence a setting for the serious exploration of modern themes and imagery focused upon artists, critics, patrons and dealers. Through the acceptance at the Salons, an American artist would gain renown and an impact upon the art-world.

As Hatfield himself described it, he was not very successful at first. “I was completely discouraged. I said to myself, you old fool, you can’t paint anymore than a cow, you ought to give it up.” Packing away his sketch material, Hatfield decided to become a farmer. A few days into his malaise, he saw a “wonderful great cloud in the sky.” Hatfield exclaimed, “I’ve got to paint that cloud,” and ran to his studio to gather brushes and paint. In a sunlit meadow in an idyllic part of Canton, Hatfield labored for two hours in a state of frenzy, and through the afternoon he completed his work. Arriving home, he covered the painting and only returned to look at it the next day. As he told the story, “I went in trembling and turned it around where I could see it.” Hatfield had once again convinced himself he could paint.

The story illustrates the passion and the questions that coursed through the artist. A sensitive soul who “was responsive to the beauty down to his fingertips.” A writer described Hatfield as someone that “loved nature, not in her grand and cosmic aspects, but in her quiet moments of joy. He loved little pools of water in the woods where light flickers down through the leaves and throws patterns upon the lily pads.”

If you want to see the full embodiment of Hatfield’s work, a trip to the Canton Public Library is in order. There are two paintings that demonstrate the yin and yang - the shadow and light of Hatfield’s artistry – and they hang in the Augustus Hemenway Reading Room here in Canton. First and foremost, Hatfield was known as a painter of figures. In the late nineteen hundreds at a single exhibition of the Art Club of Boston, Hatfield exhibited one hundred and forty canvases, primarily of children. The painting at the Canton Public Library hanging over the fireplace is not a child, but instead a very elderly man by the name of Captain Thomas Conroy, of Easton, Mass. Painted around 1892, the 35-by-45 inch portrait looks across the room at another Hatfield painting. Tucked in the right-hand corner is “Fowl Meadow” and it is a gloriously somber snow scene that captures the winter light in an extraordinary way. It was said in his obituary, “he painted landscapes because he had to, because of the inner urge to capture one of nature’s moods and express it.”

Hatfield moved to Canton prior to 1895 and was likely inspired by the beauty of this rural landscape. “Fowl Meadow” certainly gives us insight into his passion for the place he called home. And collectors were just as passionate for his work; in fact there were at one time dozens of Hatfield paintings hanging inside Canton homes. Eugene Williams who lived on Pleasant Street had more than twelve “Hatfields” in his house. The Williams family, connected by marriage to the Draper family was quite close to Hatfield. And the paintings the two families collected were pure Canton; Pecunit Brook, Cemetery Pond, and Blue Hill from “Wetherbee”.

Helping Mama by Joseph Hatfield.
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society.)

It was, however, his portraits of children that were his hallmark. “He loved little children as he loved nature for their unconscious beauty, for their changing enthusiasms, for their responsiveness emotionally to their environment, whether of people or place.” There is a wonderful painting that was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1894 that captures Hatfield’s love of children. The oil on canvas shows a little girl standing in an art studio painting her own stick figure drawing on top of a study of birches. It turns out, the little girl was Hatfield’s daughter Doris, and indeed the incident happened as drawn in the portrait. “Sprawled across the freshly painted canvas, in brown ochre, was one of those nondescript line drawings that children call men, and with a cheerful helping, expression on her face the child was ruining the work.”

Hatfield quietly picked up a sketchpad, “and drew the mischievous little girl, with her quaint little knot and bright smiling face.” Hatfield was well into his drawing “when the little culprit became aware that she was the subject,” turning toward her father “with child-like confidence of approval she smiled and said: Helping Papa!” And so a masterwork was created. Helping Papa would eventually be owned by the Ricker Family of Poland Springs, Maine – the founders of Poland Spring Water.

In 1892, Hatfield produced a series of drawings to illustrate Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Victorian American tale of a woman undergoing a “rest cure” for depression entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Between 1891 and 1893, Hatfield was a prolific artist supplying illustrations to the New England Magazine, the first publisher of Gillman’s story of mental derangement. It turns out that illustrating for magazines was extremely lucrative, and Hatfield would join the ranks of artists like Winslow Homer and dabble in commercially illustrating magazine articles while building a career in art.

In 1903, Hatfield ceased painting as a result of becoming increasingly aware that his early work was turning dark with age. The problem was that the pigments in the paints were failing, and he feared that most of the contemporary art would be forever lost to imperfect paints. Hatfield turned his attention to chemistry and began to grind his own colors. The experiment began with twenty-five cents of the finest yellow dry pigment obtainable. The Hatfield formula called for the purest of oils and fine marble grinding stones. At the time, pure dry colors were only made in Europe, and Hatfield turned to England, France and Germany to procure pigments for his paints that would create a “palette of pure permanent colors.”

In the basement of his house in Canton, Hatfield began producing the finest artists colors in America. Within a few years he contracted to build a 45-foot building behind his house near the Canton Junction. At the height of his business he largely gave up his love of painting and devoted the last twenty years of his life to the manufacture of pure colors. It is said that chemists questioned his claims of purity, but analysis in laboratories here and in Europe proved that Hatfield’s paints were 100% pure and would stand the test of time.

Joseph Hatfield at Third Cliff,
Scituate, Mass. 1918 (Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society.)

Giving up his art, for science was reportedly quite difficult for this man. He “withdrew from the world, his name heard less and less in art circles,” only his closest friends realizing “the extent and value of his service to his contemporaries.” So, whether you have seen Hatfield’s paintings or not, it is likely that you have seen his paint. In museums all over the world hang paintings by famous artists that used Hatfield’s paint to insure the freshness of their original work.

Hatfield’s obituary ran in the Canton paper in January 1928, at the age of sixty-five, Joseph H. Hatfield died here at his home. “Those who knew Mr. Hatfield intimately, knew also the depth of his spiritual nature, his tremendous interest in metaphysical problems, his eager search for the ideal philosophy of life. In his fine art of loving came a fine art of living which is an art more difficult than the life of a painter.”

A long trip for Hank Williams' coat

2011-08-10T07:37:00.001-04:00

From a glass plate negative. The Neponset Mills in Canton.
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sits on the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio. My wife and I stopped in while driving to Chicago when we needed a halfway point to rest. The hall of fame is a shrine to rock in all its forms — from jazz to punk and all genres in between. We received our tickets and began our tour through the labyrinth of exhibits.

Within two minutes, we found ourselves in front of a case of items that recognized the contributions of Hiram King Williams — “Hank” — the American singer-songwriter who is considered one of the most important country music artists of all time. In the case were his hat, his boots and a coat he wore. The coat caught my eye — hanging on the hook you could plainly see the label, and it read “designed by Monarch — Neponset Emberglo.” Turning to my wife, I explained that no matter how far we travel, Canton is never far away. In true wife fashion, she rolled her eyes and moved on. I lingered on and thought how far that coat had traveled.

The Emberglo coat was crème colored and a heavy wool dyed with a western pattern, and according to the description was made in 1950. Emberglo was a trademark of the Neponset Woolen Mills, located on Walpole Street. The label had the word Neponset neatly stitched. Hank Williams’ coat started in the hands of factory workers from Canton. The coat tells a rich story that reaches beyond Hank Williams and into American history and the age of our industrial revolution.

The mill on Walpole Street is gone, but only recently. One of the most important mills in America, this site was first developed in 1801. When you stand here, you are on the original site of the second cotton factory in the colonies, the first being the 1799 Samuel Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Today, a modern condominium complex, built by local developer John Marini, sits on this historic site.

The establishment of the cotton mill in Canton was due to the enterprise of a 22-year-old James Beaumont, a young man who had come from England to America in the spring of 1800. No stranger to manufacturing, Beaumont was born in Denby, a parish between Huddersfield and Sheffield, two important manufacturing towns in Yorkshire, England. Growing up on estates that produced wool and being part of a rather well-off family, Beaumont’s eye was on America. In 1799, Beaumont received a letter from two friends who had left England and settled in Lebanon, New Hampshire. The letter told of the opportunities that could be prospected in this new country. Beaumont sent a return letter with a draft of a spinning machine, which helped his friends begin their business in Lebanon. Soon thereafter, Beaumont decided he “got a hankering to go there and see what they were about.”

To leave England with secrets of manufacturing was risky, and if caught, Beaumont would face the full wrath of the English government. In order to avoid detection, he bought casks of hardware and cutlery along with bolts of cloth, and at the custom house in Liverpool he explained that he was simply a farmer’s son going to America on a trading trip.

Beaumont sailed to America on a trip that would take 56 days and would forever change textile manufacturing in the fledgling country. Landing in Salem, he visited a few factories, and by the winter of 1800 he had settled in Boston. An English acquaintance by the curious name of “Slimsey” (a nickname for sure) informed Beaumont that there was a fine mill-privilege in Canton, on which its two owners wished to set up a cotton factory, and that they were willing to erect a dam and the mill “if they could find somebody who would put in about $400, to pay for the machinery.”

Beaumont visited Canton, where he was so pleased with the mill-privilege that he agreed to furnish the machinery; his partners, Lemuel Bailey and Abel Fisher, would erect a substantial dam and a building for a factory. The construction of the dam and factory progressed during the year of 1801, and the machines were running by 1802. The first work of the factory was the manufacture of wickyarn for candle-makers. Soon thereafter, the mill began to make yarn for warp and filling for domestic fabrics. The first piece of cloth made was for sheeting. Beaumont said of it: “This, in 1802, was the first piece of cotton cloth ever made in America from mule-yarn, either all or in part produced.” Beaumont was mistaken: Cotton cloth had been made in 1794 in a factory in New York, but Beaumont’s mill was nonetheless producing fine cloth that sold for 50 cents a yard.

James Beaumont's House on Neponset Street
(now demolished). Circa 1900. (Courtesy of the
Canton Historical Society)

Beaumont did very well in this venture, and by 1823 at age 45, he retired from manufacturing and became a gentleman farmer. For a time he had a small mill in what was known as the British Block, not far from his original factory. His innovations continued, and he produced some of the first satin products in America. In 1808 he had erected the second brick house in Canton, the first being the Endicott House on Washington Street. In this handsome house Beaumont spent time with his family and friends and lived an entire life in his adopted home. Beaumont died in Canton in 1868 at age 90 and is buried alongside his wife, Abigail (Gookin), and his children at the Canton Corner Cemetery.

On February 18, 1823, the factory on Walpole Street was sold to Joseph W. Revere for $3,500. Within a year, Revere sold the mill to Darius Blake Holbrook, Charles Parker, and Dexter and William Hill, of Boston, for $120,000. These gentlemen, along with others, organized the Boston & Canton Manufacturing Company. The area quickly built up around the massive stone factory and included boarding houses, a school and even medical facilities. In three years the area prospered, and great growth led to the construction of a dirt road across the Fowl Meadows to support shipments to Boston. Quite literally, Canton burst forward under the growth of the mills along this section of town. Unfortunately, the business failed in 1827 and the mill would be vacant for four years.

On April 22, 1831, the Boston & Canton Manufacturing Company conveyed the mill to the Neponset Company. The new officers were well-known philanthropists and politicians from Boston. The certificate of which was recorded July 22, 1832, showing that the capital stock was $200,000, and that the officers were Harrison Gray Otis, president, Caleb Loring, Samuel Fales, and Robert G. Shaw, directors, and John S. Wright, clerk and treasurer.

Worth noting is the fact that this was the same Harrison Gray Otis, the prominent Boston businessman, lawyer and politician and arguably the most important member of the Federalist Party. Otis’ venture also failed, and by 1837 the site was again abandoned. Over the next 66 years many factories operated on this site, including a bleachery in the early 1880s, and by 1903 it was again making cotton and wool products for caskets and other uses under the name Neponset Woolen Mills.

The Neponset Woolen Mills survived into the mid 1950s, and this is where the Emberglo Jacket comes in. Some of the finest wool was manufactured and dyed in Canton in both the Neponset Mill and at Draper Mills. The trademark Emberglo figured prominently in advertisements and in store displays. Rich thick plaids were used for sportsman’s outerwear. The logo proudly proclaimed that the products were “loomed by Neponset craftsmen” since 1824 and featured the signature mill tower and the Canton Viaduct in the background.

A postcard view of the Neponset Woolen Mills

As the textile industry died in Canton, the site became the home of Emerson & Cuming, where they manufactured flotation devices for oilrigs. The early use of dyes and then the subsequent use and storage of advanced polymers on this property allowed the site to become heavily polluted. Eventually, the Emerson & Cuming site earned the dubious distinction of becoming one of Canton’s five hazardous waste “Superfund” sites.

In 2005 the original historic factory was demolished, and the site was remediated to deal with the chemical pollution. To pay tribute to the thousands of men and women who worked on this site for over 200 years, the Canton Historical Commission asked the developer to salvage some of the original stone and to build a replica of the bell tower. The original tower and bell was likely built during the 1800s, and around the turn of the 20^th century it had been rebuilt. Used to mark the passing of the workday, the bell was likely melted down when the tower became unsafe and was removed around 1930.

The new complex, known as River Village on Walpole Street at Neponset, is one of our town’s newest architectural landmarks. The focus is an impressive tower and stone lobby that serve as the grand entrance. But, honestly, what could match the original grandeur of the factory that once stood “stone-faced” on this property. And every time I hear an old Hank Williams song and slip on my wool coat on an autumn afternoon, I will think about Emberglo and the history of the Neponset Woolen Mill.

Our river runs through the meadows

2011-07-23T07:29:00.000-04:00

The Neponset River as it winds through
the Fowl Meadows circa 1890. (Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

At the edge of my property is a small stream, the Pequit Brook, and its source is the Reservoir Pond past Pequitside Farm. Living on a brook is an amenity that allows for plenty of opportunities to observe wildlife and the marking of seasons. Over time we have come to know the animals that inhabit our small corner of Canton. We have watched muskrats, ancient snapping turtles, the great blue heron, red-tailed hawks, numerous rabbits, fox, and all manner of mallards. The jewelweed and grass is abundant and the meadows are filled with red-winged blackbirds come fall. The winter gives way to woodpeckers and more flocks of waterfowl, even an occasional fisher cat and coyote. So abundant is the wildlife that at times we feel as though we live in a suburban wildlife preserve.

The Pequit Brook winds down through Sherman Street and eventually finds it way to the East Branch of the Neponset River. And the Neponset in turn finds its way to the Massachusetts Bay. Nobel laureate Hermann Hesse wrote: “How he loved this river, how it enchanted him, how grateful he was to it! In his heart he heard the newly awakened voice speak, and it said to him: Love this river, stay by it, learn from it. It seemed to him that whoever understood this river and its secrets, would understand much more, many secret, all secrets.”

So, what secrets does the Neponset River hold for us? To begin with, the name itself is somewhat of a secret. Of course it is an Indian name, and when the famous Algonquin scholar G. Hammond Trumbull was asked, he vainly endeavored to learn the significance of this name. “That word in all its forms of Naponset — Aponset, or Neponset defies analysis.” Many have surmised it means “river that flows through meadows.” This would be a fair description, since it travels through nearly seven miles of beautiful grassy meadows — the Fowl Meadows, in fact. So attractive to the early settlers were these grasses that the seeds were harvested and exported to Europe to produce the same luxurious grasses there.

Overall, the Neponset River travels more than 29 miles, starting at Gillette Stadium and ending near the gas tanks along the Southeast Expressway. The historical significance reaches back more than 10,000 years. Imagine the scene as Paleolithic man camps near the river right here in what would become Canton. Archeologists, both amateur and professional, have recovered over 2,600 Clovis spear points as well as mastodon tusks and caribou bones. The site, called Wamsutta, has been studied for more than 20 years. What were once the shores of a Pleistocene Lake seems to have been an important workshop of sorts where tools were made and wildlife harvested.

The recorded history of the Neponset starts around 1619, when Native Americans would use the river as a route to trade furs, largely muskrat and beaver. The wildlife was amazing. An apt description of what the Neponset River must have been like is found in a quote in a book written by Edward Johnson in 1628, entitled Wonder Working Providence: “The cod-fish, holybut and bass, do sport the rivers in, and alewives with their crowding sholes in every creek do swim.” The alewives in particular caused major legal battles in colonial Massachusetts, and the early records record heated arguments between mill owners who would dam and control the river and the fishermen whose livelihood was constantly in jeopardy as industry advanced. The argument to restore the fish and breach the dams still continues today.

The industrial growth as a result of this power source is nothing short of amazing. The second dam in the new world was constructed by Israel Stoughton, who was given permission to build a grist mill in what was known as Dorchester Plantation in 1634. What came next was a series of “firsts.” In 1640 shipbuilding began at what was known as Gulliver’s Creek (yes, there is a connection to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels). Soon sawmills, a snuff mill, powder mills, tanneries, slitting mills, and fulling mills began to rise near the banks of the Neponset.

Several of the most famous mills in America were started along the Neponset. In 1728, the first paper mill was erected. In 1765, Dr. James Baker founded a chocolate mill in Milton, which would become the world-famous Baker’s Chocolate Company. Closer to home, the Canton River, which fed the east branch of the Neponset, was home to James Beaumont’s Neponset Mills, where arguably the first piece of cotton cloth in America was made in 1802. In 1801, Paul Revere made his home here in Canton and erected his copper rolling mill (another first in the nation) along the tributary branch of the Neponset.

To get the best view of the Neponset River in Canton, take a drive down Dedham Street, and as you pass the old Cumberland Farm Complex take a left onto the property owned by George and Nancy Bates. The Bates still own a small portion, but the largest is now owned by the Trustees of Reservations (TTOR). When you come here you are visiting Signal Hill. This is perhaps an oft-overlooked location from where you can “overlook” the Neponset Valley. The hike is easy and the views are entirely rewarding. The boundary line between Canton and Norwood follows the center of the river.

In 2002, George and Nancy Bates sold the development rights of 135 acres of upland and swamp to the then MDC. Signal Hill is the result of a 111-acre gift given to TTOR in 2005 by the Bates. While it is called Signal Hill because it once held signals to assist in the navigation of planes to the Norwood Airport, it might have been more historically named.

Historically speaking, this area was generally known as Taunt’s Farm. At one time there were two prominent hills here, each about 120 feet high. Turtle Hill (now known as Signal Hill) and Pillion Hill, which was removed for fill used in Boston’s Back Bay. What is left, the single hill, affords an easily accessible view of Boston. The first settlers here were John and Hepsibah Taunt. Likely settled in 1758, this land was rich with nutrients and made the perfect home for this private in the Stoughton Militia. Three generations of Taunts would live on this land until around 1844. Eventually Elisha White would buy the property, and by the 1930s the land would become part of the land acquisition program for the Canton Airport.

Dredging of the Neponset River in Canton, 1913.
(Photo by I. Chester Horton, courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

The river we see today is not the same river that was used by the prehistoric or colonial people. In 1911, the legislature was pressed to act by allowing the dredging and straightening of the river. The Fowl Meadows had become “foul.” The stench and disease (most notably malaria) was dreadful. The legislature ordered the river to be repaired of these nuisances. The dredging operation began in 1913 and would widen and deepen the river. The refuse from the muck was merely deposited on the banks, and by 1923 complaints abounded from the landowners whose once fertile fields would now no longer drain properly. The straightening also bypassed the “horseshoe” curve in the river, which abutted Horseshoe Swamp. Even today the boundary line with Norwood follows the old course of the river and Horseshoe Meadow remains in Canton.

Dredging of the Neponset River in Canton, 1913.
(Photo by I. Chester Horton, courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

In the 1960s the river was once again polluted and described as a “noxious mess.” A canoe trip in August 1966 from Canton was described in the Patriot Ledger as follows: “The moment we set our canoes into the putrid, murky water on Neponset Street we were overwhelmed by the noxious odor caused by the industrial waste dumped into the river by the various firms along its banks. Globs of sludge floated past us in the water.” So polluted was the trip that day, the canoes were forced to turn back — great globs of paper and raw sewage made the trip unbearable. This was a turning point for the Neponset. Once again the legislature took up the reclaiming of the Neponset River. In 1974, a bond bill was filed to begin the process of creating improvements to the damaged waterway.

Construction of the bridge over the
Neponset River to Norwood, April 1915.
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

At the lead of the conservation efforts was the Neponset Conservation Association. Founded in 1965, their mission continues today as the Neponset River Watershed Association. With over 700 members, hundreds of volunteers and a staff of three full-time and four part-time employees, this is the future of the Neponset River. For over 45 years this group has been responsible for raising the public awareness of our great river. The advocacy continues — just last week the legislature’s Environment Committee held a hearing on the Sustainable Water Resources Act. This act will hopefully set the process by which the Department of Environmental Protection, with the cooperation of the Department of Fish and Game, will set the definition for the amount of water that makes rivers sustainable.

In 2008 a member of the Massachusett-Ponkapoag Tribal Council testified at a public meeting organized to discuss the future of the Neponset River. I leave you with his sage words: “The Neponset people, and there were Neponset people, were forced to leave the Neponset River because those persons who came later decided there was a better use for the Neponset River than our use, which contributed to the well-being of our universe and yours for centuries. Now I’m going to speak for the elders — I’m going to speak for the finned, the furred, the winged, and the ancestors, mine and yours. These are the voices you are not listening to. Put the river back the way it was. Allow the herring to come back and sing their song.”

To visit Signal Hill, take Dedham Street and immediately after crossing I-95 and railroad bridges, take a left on University Road. Proceed through the office park. Parking is on the right just before the last building, also on the right. Free and open year-round, sunrise to sunset. Allow a minimum of one hour.

Dottie Shaw Takes Wing

2011-06-19T13:38:00.000-04:00

Dorothy Shaw’s formal portrait
in full pilot regalia, circa 1940s
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

Childhood should be a time of innocence, of youthful diversions and a time when you begin to see the world as your own and find a place within. You do, however, grow up fast when a family depends upon you to bring them together, even if you are just a child.

Dorothy Shaw grew up on Everett Street, that small street at the intersection where Chapman and Spaulding streets meet. “Dottie,” as she was affectionately known, was born in 1910 and was surrounded by a loving family that included a sister and two brothers. The house, still standing, had a magical turret and is one of the prettiest houses facing Chapman Street. Dottie’s father was a well-respected builder and her mother filled the house with love and affection.

Fannie Shaw, Dottie’s mother, was born in 1878, and her parents died shortly after she was born. Adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Cushman, the girl thrived at the Crane School and was married at age 19 to Walter Shaw in 1897.

Dottie’s catapult from childhood into adulthood happened when she was 13 years old. Her mother had been seriously ill from the time Dottie was 10 years old. The illness was quite bad, and for three years Fannie Shaw endured several strokes and convulsions, leading to diminished eyesight and poor speech. At 1 a.m. on February 23, 1923, Fannie Shaw died, leaving the family in the care of her only daughter. It would be an understatement to suggest that this was difficult. Taking care of her brothers and father became a full-time job, and in addition to her schoolwork, there was always a mountain of chores to be attended to across the day and late into the night.

Taking care of siblings Walter Jr., Howard and Florence was only part of her job; balancing school was the other. Dottie excelled in all her subjects. As part of the Canton High School graduating class of 1926, Dottie graduated at the top of the class and was not only the class president but the valedictorian as well. In short, this was an extremely smart young woman.

As it turns out, there were several smart women around town in those years. Dorothy Spear would go on to attend Bates College in Maine, while Kay Draper attended Wheaton. Not to be outdone, Dr. Rubin’s wife, Sophie, went to Radcliffe, and so many of her friends began life after Canton in wonderful and far-flung places. In writing her introduction to the Echo Yearbook, Dottie noted: “Years ago, there might have been excuse for students not going to college, but in this era of opportunities there is no one who cannot go to a higher institution … there are many ways for poor students to earn tuition.” Dottie wanted to desperately go to college, yet it was not to be. Keeping the family together was her focus, and soon she found a job in the local Boston Edison office in Canton Center where she was always a smiling face well known to many of Canton’s residents.

An aerial view of Chapman Street with the
Canton Airport in the background.
Photo taken by Dottie Shaw in 1933. (Courtesy of Jane Boland)

It would be the skies that would capture Dottie’s dreams. Everett Street is at the top of the Neponset Valley, and photographs from the turn of the last century show a broad expanse across which one could see straight to Norwood. By the early 1930s, the Canton Airport was in full throttle, and Dottie could see and hear the “airships” taxiing and lifting into the sky and roaring over her house. The idea of flying was one that captured many young hearts in those days, and Dottie’s was not excepted.

Perhaps it was Amelia Earhart who made an impression on 18-year-old Dottie Shaw. On June 17, 1928, it was Earhart who set off from Trepassey Harbor in Newfoundland and 21 hours later landed at Burry Port, Wales. The headlines were fantastic, and while three women had previously died attempting a transatlantic crossing, it was Earhart who was greeted by ticker tape and President Calvin Coolidge. Whoever it was who influenced her, Dottie Shaw was indeed influenced to take to the skies. While other young women were off in college, Dottie decided that one thing she could do to set herself apart would be to fly. To fly – to soar – to glide – to dream. Saving a small portion of her $16 paycheck each week, Dottie was able to scrape enough together to begin flying lessons at the Canton Airport. Walking to the airport, less than a mile from her house, was a weekly ritual. And if she was lucky, she could grab a ride from friends — including Ralph Beasley or his son Ralph Jr. These were heady days in aviation. Takeoffs were easy; it was the landings that would prove tricky. In August 1932 a flight permit was issued to the intrepid D.B. Shaw. One of the early masters of aviation took on Dottie Shaw as a student. G. Bancroft Hall, or “Banny” as he was known, would teach Dottie how to fly.

G. Bancroft Hall was a fixture in early New England flying, and by all accounts he favored Dottie with his vast knowledge of piloting. In 1929, Hall was a partner in the Wachusett Airways Company in Fitchburg and at the same time the chief pilot at Canton-based Wiggins Airways. In an old, dog-eared scrapbook, Dottie writes of Banny — “God’s gift to women students.” Taking to the skies for women became pretty extraordinary in the early 1930s, and yet there were several notable examples, largely from well-to-do families.

The “gang” hanging out at the
Canton Airport in 1933 (Courtesy of Jane Boland)

Flying was as much about the freedom of being in the skies as it was the camaraderie of the fellowship, and Dottie loved the people and the stories that were part of this sport. At the municipal airport in Canton there was a close-knit group of friends, and Dottie was certainly included. The “Gang” was Chin Jung, Ralph Beasley and his son, Ralph Jr., Dick Chase, Sumner Fischer, Charles “Scottie” Scott, Appellino “Red” Janeskus — from Stoughton, Uno Frederickson and several other “guys.” Dottie was the only woman flying in the group. Even in her canvas coveralls and grease-smudged nose, Dottie was a beautiful woman with a ready smile and a winning personality.

On Thursday, June 8, 1933, Dottie climbed into the single cockpit Spartan C2-60 monoplane, the “Trusty 902.” At 5’4” and 100 pounds soaking wet, the blonde, blue-eyed kid slid behind the controls. This would be her first solo flight, and she was probably quite nervous. Inscribed in the front of her scrapbook is an old saying: There are “old” pilots and there are “bold” pilots, but there are no “old, bold” pilots.

At 23, Dottie Shaw was certainly not old, but as for being bold, this is up for interpretation. It was a beautiful summer evening; a slight breeze kicked up the smell of sweet grass from the nearby hayfields. The runway was dusty as she taxied out and made the turn for her takeoff. At exactly 7:11 p.m., Canton’s first female pilot took flight from the soft grass meadow at the airport at the edge of the Fowl Meadows. Aloft above her beloved town, it was a magical evening. The small engine could get her up to a top speed of 93 mph and she must have reveled in the private view of Canton. Pulse quickened as she maneuvered on her own without Banny to gently guide her. After six hours of training spread over the course of a year, this was her moment, her dream of flying realized.

Dorothy Shaw, Canton’s first aviatrix,
posing in front of her “solo” ship in 1933
at the Canton Airport (Courtesy of Jane Boland)

On the ground a welcome committee was sure to be waiting. Perhaps her fellow students had stopped by, and certainly her instructor. At the head of the pack may have been Joe Garside. Joe came from a wealthy family in Hyde Park that had made a small fortune developing a special paint for canvas-covered planes. In 1927, he piloted his mother across the English Channel from Paris to London — Joe was only 13 at the time.

As far as formal instruction, Joe learned to fly in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a year later we find him soaring around the nation’s capital and the Washington Monument. The 14 year old soloed in 1928 at Hoover Field in Washington, D.C. (now the site of the Pentagon). Joe had tried to persuade the chief of the Department of Commerce (now the FAA) to waive the 16-year-old age requirement for private pilots. At the time, Joe Garside was the youngest pilot to solo in the world. The flight was a success; the waiver was not. Despite not having a pilot’s license, Joe flew extensively and by age 16 became a full-fledged pilot, owning several air-ships.

At 19, Joe Garside, very well known in early flying circles, became the manager of Wiggins Airways in Canton. Close to his home in Milton, Joe was an early pioneer of commercial aviation and attended MIT, studying aeronautical engineering. Of the 40 students who came for lessons, Dottie stood out. Spending more of her time at the Canton Airport, she soon became an assistant to the dashing, young airport manager. It would not be long before the two became an item. Eventually, the “air-pair” fell in love and began an extended courtship. In October 1938, Joe and Dottie were married and moved to the beautiful stone house at 180 Chapman Street.

Joe and Dottie were a well-suited pair — smart, ambitious and very friendly. In fact, both were described as having magnetic personalities. After ten years of trying to have a child, they turned to a family attorney in Brockton, who arranged for them to adopt a nine-day-old baby girl. Jane Garside said that from the time she was old enough to know, she knew she was adopted. “I was a very fortunate child,” she recalls. “I never desired to hunt for my birth mother, and Joe and Dottie were my mom and dad.” Jane was told from day one that she was special.

Dottie flew until the 1940s, joining the famous Ninety Nines, a women’s pilot organization founded by Amelia Earhart. After Jane was born, Dottie never piloted again. The family did fly together in small private planes, but Dottie exchanged her wings for the caring arms of a mom.

When Jane was 13 years old, her mom and dad divorced. In the mid 1950s, Joe engaged in a particularly public and forbidden love affair with a neighbor’s wife. Dottie asked him to move on by simply stating in rather stoic terms: “You can do whatever you want. I am keeping our house and Janie.” Jane continued to see her dad, but certainly was closest to her mother. The split was amicable even under the circumstances. In later years, Joe would reflect that his divorce was perhaps the biggest mistake he ever made in his life. Dottie remained on benevolent terms with her ex-husband, most likely because they were such close friends. Today we call people like Joe and Dottie soul mates.

Dorothy Shaw Garside in Honolulu, Hawaii, with her daughter
Jane, in 1963 (Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

Dottie’s life in Canton continued to be a proud and lasting tribute to the things she loved. A member of the Garden Club, the Sweet Adelines, and the Canton Historical Society, she remained active her entire life, and was frequently seen volunteering at Norwood Hospital as a “pink lady.” Jane recalls that her mother “had a beautiful voice” and loved organizing community activities, including the 50th anniversary of her Canton High School graduating class. In the winter of 1978, Dottie battled a nasty flu, and soon it was discovered that she was suffering from heart disease, which quickly led to two heart attacks, the second fatal. On January 4, her 68th birthday, Canton’s first female pilot departed this earth.

A Grave Matter

2011-06-05T07:38:00.000-04:00

The Gridley Cemetery, 1764.

After my last story, the one that helped rediscover the Boston milestones around town, I headed out to repaint the ancient relics. I had done this before, about five years ago. This time, my brother Jonathan and I dutifully drove to the stones around Canton and took some time painting in the carving and cleaning up the faces. At one point, Jonathan turned to me and asked, “What else can we paint?” The question was simple, almost asking, “What else has been lost that we can rediscover?”

It seems to me that there are plenty of long-neglected sites in Canton that could use a bit of sprucing up. Case in point: what is historically known as the Gridley Graveyard. Few people realize that it exists, but in fact it is closer than you may think. As you drive toward Cobb’s Corner, and just after the waterfall at Shepard’s Pond, on your left is Kinsley Place, a small street that dips down a hill.

Find a respectable place to park, and on your right is a tiny field hardly bigger than a postage stamp. You will not see any gravestones or markers. A crude sign is erected proclaiming the site as Gridley Cemetery. The weathered sign is slowly deteriorating and time is overtaking this space very slowly. Along the edges of the plot are a lovingly tended grape arbor and plenty of vibrant Hostas. Bearing silent testament to time is a large tree, a maple perhaps, standing at the back corner of this place. Measuring barely 20 by 25 feet, there is not much to see here. A recent mowing caused historian Jim Roache to wryly ponder if a cookout was planned, as this is a perfect picnic spot.

What lies beneath, however, is a part of Canton’s history that is both celebratory and sad. This plot was not planned; rather it was opened by necessity. In 1763, a full-blown epidemic ravaged Boston, and in May 1764, the scourge of smallpox darkened the small town of Stoughton. In the Canton Historical Society, in a lead-lined drawer, there is a small diary written in the hand of the Minister Elijah Dunbar. The entries are indescribably small and equally hard to read. The diary entries for 1764 are dark and forlorn. It would appear that people were falling ill at an alarming rate. The time was known as the “visitation,” and nothing would stop the pox from indiscriminately cutting down young and old in a matter of days.

Elijah Dunbar writes: “May 27, terrible time on account of the pox.” In June the entries pick up the pace of the disease: “Vilet died this night, a very terrible time, Leonards folks taken with the small pox, Mrs. Vose dies of the small pox, Old Joseph Fenno dies, Polly Billings dies of the small pox; purple sort, Leonards family in great distress, Sunday Mrs. Davenport dies of the small pox.”

By mid June, the parish began fasting and prayer in the hope of staving off the disease. At this same time, Mary Leonard and her newborn baby die followed three days later by Nurse Howard. Families perished, only to find few willing to bury the dead.

The Gridley Cemetery was opened to bury these dead souls. There are no official records that tell us who are interred in this ground. The markers were standing in 1893, but they are long lost. Folklore suggests that they were taken away and used as stone steps or foundation rubble in some of the homes in the vicinity. We do have a record of a few of the carvings.

They all tell a sad story: “Here lies ye body of Mr. Wally Leonard, who died of small pox, June the 14th, 1764, in the 44th year of his age.” And another: “Here lies ye body of Mrs. Mary Leonard, and her new born babe, the wife and child of Ensign Nathaniel Leonard, who died of small pox,June ye 14th, 1764, in the 39th year of her age.” Even the young were hardly spared: “Here lies the body of Mary Billings, daughter of Mr. William and Mrs. Mary Billings, who died of small pox, June 8, 1764, in the 18th year of her age.”

Eventually the small cemetery was enclosed with two low stone walls and became part of the conveyances when abutting property was sold. Principally, the cemetery was opened as a family burying plot for the Leonard family. You may recall Nathaniel Leonard carved the 1736 milestone, our oldest marker and now at Shepard’s Pond. Perhaps Leonard carved some of the stones that have been long lost. After Leonard died in 1772, his son Jacob conveyed the property to Richard Gridley, Edmund Quincy and others.

Major General Richard Gridley was an impressive man in American history. In fact, Gridley is credited as the founder of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Born in Boston in 1711 to a well-established family, he would become a giant in the American Revolution. Space does not allow a full explanation of his accomplishments, but suffice it to say that Gridley was a patriot in the truest sense of the word. At age 61, Gridley had business interests in Canton and was involved in a venture that purchased Massapoag Pond to mine it for iron ore that would be used to cast cannons for the American Revolution. In the spring of 1772, Gridley purchased a house in Canton from the Leonard family. Gridley named his home “Stoughton Villa.” The house is now gone, but it is rumored that the peonies on the property still bloom from the stock planted by Gridley. Along with the house came the small burying ground.

Alongside the graves of the smallpox victims, the Gridley family is buried. General Gridley’s son, Scarborough, was laid to rest in 1787, and Gridley’s wife, Hannah (Demming), was buried in 1790. There were two daughters, Becky and Polly, who are perhaps buried here as well. It was the general, however, who was buried here to which the name of this place is attached.

In a declining age, Gridley was in financial distress. His business partnership had soured and had caused considerable financial drain. Among Gridley’s creditors was listed John Hancock, Edmund Quincy’s brother-in-law. Gridley’s last public appearance was at the laying of the cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House in 1795. That same year he signed the petition for the Act of Incorporation of the Town of Canton. In late life, at an advanced age, Gridley took great pleasure in tending to his gardens. Cutting dogwood bushes in the summer of 1796, Gridley contracted blood poisoning and died at age 85. On June 23, the old revered general was laid to rest in the quiet spot of this family graveyard.

The final resting place of the remains
of an American Patriot, Major General Richard Gridley,
1711-1796 (Photo by George T. Comeau)

For almost 80 years the grave was neglected. As early as 1874, however, a move was afoot to somehow recognize this great man. Gridley, a Freemason, was celebrated in an early magazine article written by Brother D.T. V. Huntoon, with a closing remark that read: “The school that is situated nearest to where his house stood is called the Gridley school, but the children, as they pass and repass the little graveyard, know not that one of the distinguished men of the Revolution sleeps his last sleep in its quiet precincts. But the Patriot and Mason, as he passes, may pause and ask himself: Is it right that one, who in days gone by defended his country with bravery, and upheld the ancient landmarks with zeal, should thus be forgotten and neglected by his Brethren and countrymen?”

On an autumn day in 1876, a small committee of men gathered at the Gridley Cemetery with the intent to remove the moldering remains of the deceased patriot. After a false start, the men located the grave, and seven feet below the surface the coffin was reached. A trowel was used to clear the grave, and the skull of Gridley was lifted from the earth. A quantity of grey hair attached helped identify the remains, to which a small braided ponytail, his queue, was pocketed by Elijah Morse. The contents of the grave were placed in a box and reinterred at a suitable monument at the Canton Corner Cemetery.

Today, you can visit Gridley’s final resting place, impressive in size and topped with a cannon in the imitation of a “Hancock” or “Adams,” which served Gridley so well at Bunker Hill. On the other hand, you can visit his wife and family more than two miles away to the south on Kinsley Place, in a long forgotten graveyard that tells a story that should be memorialized and respected for the souls buried therein. On this 215^th anniversary of Gridley’s death, plan a pilgrimage to both spots and pay homage to the man and his family, a true son of Canton and of America.

Mile by Mile

2011-05-24T07:01:00.000-04:00

You probably drive by them all the time without noticing. They sit by the side of the road, silent necessities of our Colonial era that are no longer needed in a modern age. The small stone mile markers, milestones, have been marking the distance from Boston since the early 1700s.

Today, with our satellite-guided navigation systems and global positioning devices, we are hard-pressed to get lost in our modern age. Our milestones are wonderful reminders of a distant age; they require no winding or batteries, and their warranties have long run out, but they still tell the distance to Boston and can be counted on in all types of weather.

The milestones in Canton are part of a network of stones that all lead the way to Boston. Five roads connected Boston with neighboring towns and were collectively called the Bay Roads, since they ultimately led to the Massachusetts Bay at Boston Harbor. Likely these began as Native American paths to the shore, and over time became developed cart paths and ultimately roads and highways. Our “bay road,” the Old Bay Road from Boston Bay to Taunton, extended from the earliest of settlements at Providence, Rhode Island, and the Narragansett Bay. This path was used for more than a century prior to the American Revolution and for more than 50 years thereafter. It would be the “turnpike” systems that would replace this road in the mid 1800s, but until then Bay Road was the route most preferred.

What began as a bridle path and then a cart path would become our main thoroughfare. Laid out by the selectmen of Dorchester in 1700 and again in 1712, it has had many names. In 1703 it was called the road leading to Billings’ in Sharon. In 1707 this was called the road leading to Rehoboth. Other names over the years included “Road to Rhode Island,” “The King’s Highway,” and “the great road from Boston to Taunton.” In 1840, that portion that travels through Canton between Milton and Sharon became known as Washington Street.

As the early colonists began building and improving roads, they erected mile markers to measure the distances between taverns, churches, meetinghouses, schoolhouses and blacksmiths. It was Paul Dudley, a Roxbury native educated at Harvard (class of 1690), who left an enduring legacy of milestones throughout greater Boston. From 1729 onward, Dudley erected stones measuring the distance to the then Boston Town House, now the Old State House. All of the distances on the stones, including Canton, assume a route along Washington Street in Roxbury to Eliot Square. In reality, the distances between each stone are wonderfully accurate.

At Roxbury, the town center was located at John Eliot Square, where a meetinghouse had been built in 1632. And at the fork of Roxbury and Centre streets can be found the “Parting Stone,” the terminus between the roads that lead to Boston.

For our purposes, let’s start our journey at the Milton line as we cross in front of the Blue Hills. It is here, just slightly over the Canton and Milton boundary line, that milestone 12 sits. Actually, as I began writing this story, it occurred to me that I had never actually seen this milestone. A quick detour away from the computer and out across Canton was in order.

The missing 12th milestone that was
removed from Route 138 sometime
in the early 1970s
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

Milestone 12 was last recorded in 1950 when 22 milestone markers were carefully located and mapped after 200 years with the hope that “these milestones may still so repose after 200 more.” Locating these markers was a passion of Channing Howard, a founder of the Boston engineering firm of Whitman & Howard and an avid historian. Mr. Howard lived in Winthrop and meticulously plotted the routes and locations of the stones leading to Boston. Several letters on the topic of milestones can be found in the Canton Historical Society between Charlotte Endicott Wilde, an avid local historian, and Mr. Howard. Included in the society file are several maps showing the locations as they were found in the 1950s.

Driving over Route 128, and to your left, heading towards Blue Hill, is Milestone 13. In the cloverleaf between the exits there is a “Welcome to Canton” sign, and just next to it is the 13^th mile marker placed by John Spare in 1786. Exactly one mile to the north on Route 138 should be the 12^th milestone. I pulled off the road at a safe spot and walked in both directions north and south. No stone to be found. The 12^th marker should be on the westerly side of the road, just at the line. Plenty of poison ivy can be found, and two private driveways. The marker is lost. Even a “trespass” behind a high stockade fence failed to yield the whereabouts of the marker. Placed here by Lemuel Davenport, this granite monument read “12 miles to Boston, 1774, L.D.” Stoughton historian Howard Hansen recalls seeing the milestone in the early 1960s; by the early 1970s the road was leveled, a hill removed and the stone disappeared. Likely this relic adorns a garden or has become a backyard conversation piece.

Turning south and continuing back into Canton, just over the bridge that crosses Route 128 (now I-93), you will again pass the John Spare milestone. Spare was the son of Samuel Spare, an early settler, who came to Stoughton in 1738. The marker was placed quite near the family home on what was known as Cherry Hill. John Spare was a member of the Stoughton Minutemen and served in the Revolutionary War.

Another mile south should yield milestone 14, and the odometer places this spot directly at the Old English Burying Ground. In front of the burying ground are two large stones with historical inscriptions detailing this site. In 1952, Mrs. Wilde, in a letter to Mr. Howard, writes, “I could not help wondering if the opposite side of [these] stones, which is wholly covered by banking and turf, might not have been the old 14 mile stone.” It may be the case that the milestone was reused in this wall, for in 1843, after many years of complaint and controversy, a new wall was erected. Granite posts, which had adorned the mansion of Gardiner Greene in Boston, were reset and iron gates were installed. Alas, the gates and any trace of milestone 14 are lost.

Further south we come to milestone 15, simply marked “B 15 M” and leaning into Washington Street in front of the earliest section of St. Mary’s Cemetery. This grey ghost is easy to find and almost as easy to hit with an ill intentioned driver. Milestone 16 is reported to have been approximately where the old Endicott house stands, just before the high school. It has long been believed that this stone may very well be buried in one of the old walls that grace this section of Washington Street.

The 17th Mile Stone. Relocated from the original
location (shown here) and now at the waterfall on
Pond & Washington Streets. (Courtesy of the
Canton Historical Society.)

Measuring another mile, the final stone along Washington Street should by all accounts be located near the present-day Dockray and Thomas Funeral Home. Many residents, however, know that the 17^th milestone is located near the falls at Shepard’s Pond in the “Hardware” section of Canton. This is our oldest stone, set here in 1736 by Nathaniel Leonard. Leonard, born in 1717, was active in the early iron business. This stone originally sat across the street and had been saved after being buried in the roadway, reset in place, and in more modern times moved by the town of Canton across the street in the small park near Pond Street. Interestingly enough, this milestone is more than three-eighthsof a mile away from where a measured mile should place it. At 275 years old, it can sit wherever it wants, even if it no longer accurately measures the distance to the Old State House.

A youthful Ed Galvin, member of the
Canton Historical Society, repaints the 17th milestone
on Pleasant Street on Memorial Day 1965.
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

One final note to share on Canton milestones: There are three more stones that are quite curious. There is a stone at Canton Center railroad crossing measuring the distance to Providence, Rhode Island. And on Pleasant Street there are two more Boston milestones marked “B 17 M – 1773” and “B 16 M – 1773.” So, curious reader, you may be thinking, “Ah, these are the missing stones on Washington Street. Not the case, the 17^th stone is Nathaniel Leonard’s near Pond Street, and no explanation has surfaced as to why the markers that follow the “Bay Road” depart up through Pleasant Street.

Channing Howard wrote in 1939 that it was his work to “rescue from threatened oblivion and preserve the story of this noble road — great in both history and romance — for those who come after. May its glory not grow dim.” To this end, every few years I go out and repaint the letters and dates on these markers. If you are so inclined to join me, I’ll have a brush and paint ready. We can all preserve our town’s history, mile by mile.

The author plans on visiting each stone on Memorial Day weekend and repainting these relics. If you would like to come along, drop an email to geocomeau@gmail.com.