Turner's Public Spirit, August 19, 1922
A look back in time to a century ago
Transcribed By Bob Oliphant
Center. Mrs. James Pyne met with a painful accident recently having caught two of her fingers on her right hand in the wringer of an electric washing machine, necessitating the taking of some stitches.
Mrs. Eva Pyne Courchaine is at the Lowell General hospital where it has been deemed advisable to perform an operation on Saturday morning. Her many friends wish her a speedy recovery.
Charles D. Wright, employed by the Johnson Ice Co., has recently had a telephone installed at his home. His number is 5-5.
The Robert Elliotts spent the weekend at Alton Bay, N.H. Mrs. Elliott has also been a recent visitor at Hampton Beach.
Miss Marjorie Seavey is the guest of her classmate, Miss Helen Bisbee, at Moretown, Vt.
The many friends of William R. Carver will be pleased to learn that he has returned home from the Somerville hospital.
Mrs. Charles Campbell and daughter, Miss Genevieve Campbell, of Hudson, N.H., have been recent guests of Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Knight.
Mrs. Alice Lambert, who is at the Lowell Corporation hospital, was resting comfortably at this writing.
Alonzo Sutherland has purchased a new Dodge touring car.
Fred Meyer has purchased a new Studebaker sedan.
Master Elmer Bridgeford has been spending part of his vacation at Mountain View farm, Townsend hill.
Mrs. Sidney W. Wright, who has been quite ill, is improving and is now able to sit up.
Mrs. C. A. Blaney and three children are spending two weeks at Alton, N.H., Dr. Blaney having taken them by auto on Wednesday. They were accompanied by Mrs. Blaney’s niece, Miss Hazel Pond, of Framingham, who will remain for a few days.
Mr. Pond, son William and daughter Hazel were weekend guest of Dr. and Mrs. C. A. Blaney.
Mrs. Sidney B. Wright reports having a hollyhock 11 ft. 2 in. high and still growing.
Mr. and Mrs. Everett Jarvis, Frank Jarvis, Mrs. A. J. Blaisdell and Everett Sweetser motored to Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Me., recently. At Portsmouth they visited the former home of Mr. Jarvis and called upon an elderly aunt who is still a resident of that place.
Mrs. Charles Wright is attending camp meeting at Sterling Junction.
Webster Youlden of Somerville is the guest of his aunt, Mrs. Perley Wright.
The children belonging to the garden and canning clubs conducted by the Middlesex County Bureau enjoyed an outing on Tuesday which was held on the grounds of the Lawrence academy at Groton. A large attendance came from the surrounding towns and Westford was well represented. All report a pleasant time.
Fred E. Adams and family removed from town last Saturday. Mr. Adams has been employed at the George H. White farm.
An employee of the telephone company while working in Westford recently was struck by a falling limb and sustained a gash two inches long. Stitches were taken in the gash and the man was later removed to his home in Lowell.
Miss Eva M. Lord is enjoying her [vacation at ?? Beach.] [large tear, two lines missing].
Timothy Connelly has returned home from the Lowell hospital and is slowly improving.
Ethel Ingalls is at Chebacco Island, Essex, with the Cameron family.
Mr. and Mrs. Harry Gumb motored to Lynn Beach last Sunday.
Mrs. Walter Brown and Miss Grace Brown, of Hartford, Conn.; Mrs. R. J. Jocelyn, of Orford, N.H., and Mrs. H. E. Hayes, of Lowell, are guests of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Gumb.
Mrs. John O’Connell of the Nashoba farm reports having a Gravenstein apple tree which at the present time has both fruit and blossoms.
The Republican league will hold their annual outing at the Whitney playground on Saturday [Aug. 19], followed by a dance in the town hall in the evening. A large attendance is expected.
The Ladies’ Auxiliary and Westford post, A.L., held a corn roast at Keyes pond on Tuesday evening.
Mrs. Warren Hanscom and children have returned from a vacation spent in Windham, N.H.
Frederick Hanscom will be in charge of the Sunday evening service at the Congregational church.
Mrs. John Sears has been a recent guest of Mrs. Harry Whiting.
Oscar R. Kittredge and son Junior, of Cambridge, have been recent guests of Mr. and Mrs. J. Edward Clement.
Mrs. J. Edward Clement is confined to her home with a bad cold.
North Chelmsford and Westford of the Twilight league played a tie game at the Whitney playground on Tuesday evening.
The Cavalry association held their annual reunion on last week Thursday. It proved to be one of the most successful outings the association has ever held. Page of Lowell was the caterer and the entertainment in the evening was furnished by entertainers from the Keith circuit.
The Westford man who was arrested last Sunday for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of liquor was given a suspended sentence of three months in the district court in Ayer on Monday morning.
About Town. Matthew McNaughton, formerly of Westford Corner, has bought twenty-one acres of land, stones and bushes of Eben Prescott. This land is located on Forest road, between the Groton road and Tyngsboro road. Mr. McNaughton, with an assistant, is cutting paving for Lewis Palmer, of Graniteville.
Weasels have been seen and heard from prowling around the barn. We haven’t seen or heard a weasel since the days when we used to sing and whistle, “Pop goes the weasel.” That seemed to clear them all out. We must go to singing it again, for we cannot have them dining on our poultry. That is too near like living at the Plaza hotel, while we are trying to live on fifty-cent apples and expenses out.
Mrs. Lulu M. Parkhurst died last week in Windham, N.H. She was the [grand]daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thaddeus Blodgett, long remembered residents of North Westford. Mrs. Parkhurst was a splendid type of wife, mother, friend and neighbor. She lived for about twenty-five years on the Groton road, at its intersection with the road to West Chelmsford. She leave four children, the youngest nine years old. She was the widow of Bertice Parkhurst, of Dunstable. At the funeral last week at her home on the Groton road Rev. E. E. Jackman, of West Chelmsford, conducted the service. Burial was in the family lot in Dunstable.
On last week Friday evening the Abbot Worsted Company band gave a concert on the Cameron park at West Chelmsford. It was splendid music. Refreshments were on sale and sociability and cheer free as the Volstead regulations.
The highest tax rate that we have seen quoted in this latitude is in Dracut, $36.20, the highest in the history of the town. Cheer up, you haven’t heard from Westford yet. We voted ourselves $40, but we have been informed that we will not be able to donate ourselves what we voted. Now it is too bad, Mr. Assessor, to disappoint us like that. Hope we will not be whittled down so that we will be unable to appear in the list of large taxpayers.
At the Old Oaken Bucket farm is a wild flower eight feet tall, growing in the strawberry bed, and others of less height and beauty.
The village church in West Chelmsford will be closed for the next three Sundays. Rev. E. E. Jackman started on his vacation last Sunday evening to his home in Elmwood, Neb. There will be Sunday services at Lake Nabnassett every Sunday.
The annual Sandy pond school reunion will be held at the schoolhouse on Saturday afternoon and evening, August 26. A program of refreshments for man, the intellectual social and ice cream and cake for the other fellow has been planned for, and dancing for those who have the habit and cannot help it.
Of course you are all coming to the political outing at Whitney park this Saturday afternoon and evening. The entertainers will be Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, Governor Channing H. Cox and Congressman John Jacob Rogers. This is a trio you rarely hear in one bout. Come and let the farm go to grass, it will anyway. There will be a ball game between closely matched teams and perhaps a bawl game as the result of the ball game—it happens to come that way some times. Music of all kinds and other kinds by the Abbot Worsted Company band, who are all there when it comes to playing. In the evening, at the town hall, the Chelmsford brass band will set you onto your feet with their snappy time music. Dancing will follow and you can follow the dancing or follow home.
Farm Bureau Musings. Our impressions of the Middlesex County Farm Bureau outing on the grounds of the Middlesex school in Concord last week Wednesday are as follows: Sunny day, sunny people, sunny music, an ideal gathering large in numbers and apparently large in aspirations and cheer; one of the best gatherings for inspiration that we ever attended. The old and young hayseeds and others were there with the hayseed all combined and barbered out, and ye old fashioned ox team which V. T. E. humorously alluded to, displaced by ye modern fashioned automobile and ye old hayseed cowhide boots and ye long hayseed frock for ye fashionable modern shoe (with corns) on ye fashionably trimmed up-to-date suit. Such is the change that has come over the face of agriculture that our ancestors who are now taking a nap from farming would not know their children, having shed all of the ancient trademarks.
As speakers, ex-Gov. Bass of New Hampshire and B. Loring Young, speaker of the Massachusetts house of representatives, were reduced to points of the serious needs of a more combined agriculture. Every concern that we sell to and buy from has pulled itself together, but the farmer, as producer, is still tethered to ye old-time pull, but each one separately and expensively. As a result of this individual pull instead of cooperative collective pull, we only produce in Massachusetts fifty percent of our food.
[torn paper, line missing] we have been through to produce fifteen cents worth. We are just proud of it, as compared with ideal cooperation in social life and economical finance. The fifteen cents’ worth of food is a splendid showing and ought to be recorded in some curio shop in case the thought becomes obsolete.
Our impressions of hoed crops as we viewed them in our travel, going and coming, was that they had tuberculosis and yellow jaundice, and as they are both contagious and infectious, we sped by with speed as much as the law would allow away from them.
Graniteville. Owing to the rain of last Saturday the Abbot Worsted and North Cambridge game, which was to have been played in North Cambridge, was called off. These two clubs met in a twilight game here on Wednesday evening. On Friday evening the Abbots were scheduled to play the East Lynn All-Stars at Graniteville, and on Saturday they will visit Fitchburg, where they will meet the fast Fitchburg club.
Mrs. J. Ellsworth York, with her two daughters, the Misses Doris and Bernice York, have recently returned from a very enjoyable vacation spent with friends in Southbridge.
Many of the local baseball fans took in the game in Ayer on last Sunday, when Ernie Williams, pitching for Medford, let down the Ayer team with three hits, Medford winning by the score of 5 to 3. Williams formerly pitched for the Abbot Worsted team.
Rev. W. E. Anderson, pastor of the M. E. church, who has been spending the past few days at his boyhood home in [West] Virginia, is expected to arrive home in time to officiate at the regular services in the church on Sunday.
Alvin Nelson is enjoying his annual vacation.
Rev. A. S. Malone, pastor of St. Catherine’s church, has recently purchased a new Studebaker coupe.
The members of the American Legion and the Ladies’ Auxiliary enjoyed a corn roast at Keyes pond in North Westford on Tuesday evening. The affair proved to be very enjoyable.
- Henry Harrington, the local contractor, now has a large force of men at work erecting houses for the Abbot Worsted Company in Forge Village.
Rep. Alfred W. Hartford is a very busy man this week getting everything in readiness for the big republican outing to be held at the Whitney playground in Westford this Saturday [August 19].
Ayer
District Court. On Monday morning Alex Dubinsky, of Westford, was in court charged with driving an automobile while under the influence of liquor and also charged with not having his license on his person while driving. He was found guilty on both charges and was given a month in the house of correction for operating while under the influence of liquor. Sentence was suspended for three months. The other case was placed on file.