Turner's Public Spirit, August 27, 1921

A look back in time to a century ago
By Bob Oliphant

“Center. Mrs. Phonsie Isles [Westford’s telephone operator] is a patient at the Lowell
General hospital, where she underwent a throat operation earlier in the week. Her many friends
sincerely wish her a good recovery.
“A new book, ‘The women who came over in the Mayflower,’ by Mrs. Annie Russell Marble,
has been added to the J. V. Fletcher library. Mrs. Marble will be remembered here as one of the
speakers before the Tadmuck club last winter.
“About Town. Mr. and Mrs. F. S. Snow very delightfully entertained a coterie of Mrs.
Snow’s classmates in honor of [newlyweds] Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Taylor last Saturday evening.
“Mrs. George Howard was the guest of Mrs. Daniel Lothrop at the Colonial Inn, Concord, last
Tuesday. Mrs. Lothrop has made a reputation far and wide under the name of Margaret Sidney as
a writer of stories for children, the best known being Five Little Peppers. Mrs. Lothrop owns the
Wayside in Concord, where Hawthorne lived. She is the founder of the society, Children of the
American Revolution.
“The railroad stations at Graniteville and Westford were entered contrary to law last Sunday
evening. As Westford station has been broken into with so much regularity not enough cash
collection was found to pay the breakers for their breakage.
“On last Saturday morning, about eight o’clock, a freight train from Lowell to Ayer, before
reaching West Chelmsford crossing, sounded the usual whistle, but from some cause the engineer
was unable to shut it off, and the whistle and engine kept up one continuous whistle from West
Chelmsford to Westford station, a distance of about three miles, where it still continued to whistle
for quite a while. It was finally pounded out of sounding, at any rate we could hear it being
doctored a mile off….
“Matthew F. Downs, on the Groton road, the oldest person in town [born August 29, 1825],
being close to the century mark, was presented at the ball game in Graniteville last Saturday
afternoon.
“The Farm Bureau held an alfalfa demonstration on Monday at the farm of Gilbert F. Wright,
Chelmsford. He has had remarkable success with this new dairy feed….
“Tuesday, the 23 rd , was skidoo day for Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Taylor, who left the Taylor
homestead that morning in their Studebaker car on the ‘long, long trail’ for North Dakota. They
were going to motor to Buffalo and take the boat Octorara for a four-days’ sail on the Great Lakes
to Duluth, Minn. From there it would be only a day’s run to Grand Forks, N.D., where Mr.
Taylor is associate professor of English and public speaking.
“Wesley O. Hawkes, of Graniteville, who does some successful gardening for home table use,
had his first peas on Bunker Hill day, June 17. Replanting on the same ground he had the second

crop of peas on August 23. We have been stopping on a farm seventy-five years and several
hours, yet for this time we have never been able to feed ourselves with August peas…. We
congratulate Mr. Hawkes, veteran of the civil war, on his having the know how to come the flank
movement on Nature.
“The auto trucks are numerous and fast on the Lowell road transporting stone chips from the
H. E. Fletcher stone quarry on Oak hill to the state road near Lake Nagog in Acton and Littleton.
This road is undergoing extensive resurfacing from Nagog to Groton, hence the stone chips, and
hence look out for the autos.
“Amos Polley, on the Prairie farm, is digging his early planted potatoes and shipping them to
Boston. On the basis of present digging the yield will be 200 bushels per acre. This is a great
yield for a rainless June, and a bushel box can be filled without moving it. The variety planted
was Green Mountain, raised in Northern New York….
“Graniteville. The Abbot Worsted Company team met and defeated Kelly’s South Boston
All Stars at Abbot park on last Saturday afternoon by the score of 8 to 1. The visiting team came
here with a record of twenty victories and three defeats for the season, but they found the going
too rough for them when they met the Abbots….
“The mills of the Abbot Worsted Company will be closed from Saturday, August 27, to
September 6, in order to give the employees their annual week’s vacation.”

Built in 1910 by Detroit Ship Building Co. and operated by the Great Lakes Transit Co., the
small luxury liner “Octorara” (Iroquoian for "long remembered") ran the 2,952-mile Great Lakes
run from Buffalo to Duluth, a trip costing under $100 in the 1930's. Courtesy Photo / Historical
Collections of the Great Lakes, Bowling Green State University.