Turner's Public Spirit, January 17, 1925

A look back in time to a century ago

By Bob Oliphant

Center. The members of the Laymen’s league of the Unitarian church and Men’s club of the Congregational church held a meeting at the Congregational church on Tuesday evening to discuss matters relative to the annual town meeting.

The academy basketball team played the Groton high team on Monday evening and defeated them by the score of 30 to 19.  On Wednesday evening they played the Townsend high team.

There will be a supper and entertainment at the Congregational church on Thursday evening, January 22. Mrs. Perry Shupe will be in charge of the supper.

The annual church dinner and business meeting of the Congregational church was held on Monday. About sixty answered at roll call. Rev. and Mrs. Carey, of Bradford, were present and the former gave an interesting talk.  The excellent dinner was in charge of Mrs. Houghton Osgood and Mrs. Harry Ingalls.

A son was born to Mr. and Mrs. Austin D. Fletcher on Tuesday.  [Austin Dana Fletcher, Jr., was born Jan. 11, 1925, in Westford.]

The young people of the Congregational church gave an interesting pageant on Friday evening of last week.  The characters were portrayed by Olive Hanscom, Kenneth Wright, Harold Wright, Otis Day, Lawrence Ingalls, Ruth Swenson, Raymond Shea, Herbert Shea, Norman Day, Eric Anderson, Marion Fletcher and Gwendolyn Pitkin.  The young people were assisted by Mrs. Perley Wright as reader.

Mrs. George F. White attended the inaugural exercises of Governor [Alvan T.] Fuller at the state house on last week Thursday.

Notices for the citizens’ caucus for the nomination of town officers to be held in the town hall on Wednesday, January 21, have been posted.

Judge Frederick Fisher, of Lowell, gave a talk at the Laymen’s league meeting at the Unitarian church last Sunday.  His subject was of great interest to the members of the organization.  Mr. Fisher, who is a native of this town, gave stories of many of the men of the older generations.

Recent guests of Mrs. Sidney B. Wright were Mrs. Edward Moore, wife of Sergt. Moore of the Boston police department, and Mrs. Jeremiah Delaney, former leading lady of the Irene Theatre Stock Company of Passaic, N.J.

A number from the Center attended the amateur night performance at Forge Village on Tuesday evening.  The “Toy Town” orchestra was one of the features, the following taking part: William Prescott, director, Vivian Hildreth, Oliver Hanscom, Elizabeth Bosworth, Roger Bosworth, Phyllis Wright, Willard Mann, Priscilla Greig, Charles Lydiard, Rita Edwards and Everett Miller.  [Rita Edwards and Everett Miller, both aged six at this time, would marry in 1942.]  This was the same pleasing number which was given by the pupils of Miss Edith A. Wright’s room of the William E. Frost school at the annual Christmas exercises of the school.  Owing to the fact that some of the original members of grades one and two being unable to attend on Tuesday evening it was found necessary to fill in with children from grade three who helped to make the number a great success.

About Town.  The funeral of Joshua Downs took place on last week Thursday afternoon from the funeral church on Westford street, Lowell, and was largely attended.  Rev. John T. Ullum, minister of the Matthews’ Memorial Primitive Methodist church, conducted the services.  The floral offerings were numerous.  Mrs. F. L. Roberts and Miss Etta B. Thompson of the First Universalist church choir gave several duets.  The bearers were George A. Morris, Henry M. Hutchins, Samuel Lynes and Harold Blades.  Interment was in the family lot in the Hillside cemetery, Westford.

Prof. Reginald A. Dayly [sic, Daly], of Harvard university, in his lecture before the Lowell Institute on “Seismology,” given directly after the recent earthquake [see “The Earthquake” below], said, “It is my opinion that the recent earthquake which shook Eastern New England was somewhere in the Merrimack valley.”  After declaring that he was not an expert, he declared that “the record on the Harvard seismograph showed the earth had received one short, sharp blow.  It was very near Boston and not more than twenty-five miles away.”  The fact that the only working seismograph in New England is that of Harvard, the exact recording [of the location source] of such shocks is very difficult.

Hon. Herbert E. Fletcher and Mrs. Fletcher are planning to start Monday for Florida.

There is no question but what a frolicking, healthy and diversified athletic stimulant and divested of horse-play muscle is essential to a balanced life and where the benefits go to the brain rather than to the muscles which is comparatively a lop-sided balance.  We cannot balance on an exclusive diet of “Hark, from the tomb a doleful sound”[1]—its terminal is hopeless pessimism.  Neither can we balance on muscular dissipation-its terminal is the animal in the saddle, which was our early beginning.  If you must have all of this muscular school athletic exercise for fit efficiency why not walk to school, Miss, Mr. or Mrs., as some of our mothers did in Acton and four miles at that?

The F. W. Banisters have a new Christmas radio transmitter of sound waves and talk waves and song-singing waves and all other radio waves not here listed.

1. V. Bruce Wetmore, who has just bought the Parker farm on the Concord road, has sold his electrical business in Boston, but still retains his business in automobile accessories.

My back memory informs me, and I have the proof before me as I write, that Lowell, Chelmsford, Tyngsboro and other towns around Lowell felt a distinct shock of an earthquake on August 22, 1910, similar to the recent earthquake, buildings swaying, dishes rattling etc.  The shocks were accompanied by rumblings resembling thunder at some points, while at others it resembled a sharp explosion.  Does anyone suggest a frost crack?  It was on a Sunday afternoon and some of us at the Old Oaken Bucket farm were lying in the hammock in the shady side of a shade tree to reduce our over-het-up constitution.

Judge F. A. Fisher, of Westford and Lowell, spoke before the laymen’s league at the Unitarian church on last Sunday evening on “Reminiscences.”  As he is a native of this town and lived his early life here, attended the public schools and Westford academy, and graduated from Bowdoin college, and has long been associated with the town, he had the goods to deliver.  I was sorry not to be able to attend, as I am as fond of reminiscences as I am of ice cream.

Good authority states that there is more iron in the apple than in any other fruit or vegetable, and the best is contained in the paring, which we throw to the hog, and then eat the hog and take our pay in cancer.

We have been invited and accepted an invitation to write up the “Reminiscences” of the Old Stony Brook school district and Stony Brook valley, where some of us have resided ever since we commenced to reside anywhere.

The annual business meeting of the Congregational church was held in the vestry on Monday.  At noon sixty sat down to a bountiful dinner prepared by some of the ladies of the church.  After the dinner the clerk called the roll.  Next came an excellent address by Rev. George E. Carey, of Bradford.  The clerk’s report showed a net gain of eight in membership during the year.  Other reports of officers and committees were similarly satisfactory.  The election of officers was practically a re-election, except in the case of assistant treasurer.  The principal officers are L. W. Wheeler, clerk; William C. Roudenbush, moderator; Lillie B. Atwood, treas.; Mrs. Eva Wright, asst. treas.; Miss May E. Day, col.; Fred Meyer, auditor; Fred Hanscom, William C. Roudenbush, Fred Myer, L. W. Wheeler, Clarence Hildreth, trustees.

Was much interested in reading under the Harvard news, and read it several times and am still reading the chemical analysis of the taxes in Harvard.  It was well and truthfully written up and Harvard covers about all the state.  But what shall we do about it?  Changed conditions are automatically inevitable unless you wish to wither up and die several years before the pulse ceases to beat, or our automatic breathing is a sure quitter.  Changed conditions have forced the wages of town employees up, whether it’s a school teacher or a culler of hoops and staves, and with the coming of gasoline transportation the old-time road built and repaired by oxen plough and shovel (and lean on your shovel half the time) do not last long.

Under Pelham, N.H., news we read that Sidney F. Powell is moving his steam sawmill to South Chelmsford to a large tract of standing timber at Baptist pond (its true name is Hart pond, of twenty-five acres and is in Westford).  Operation by the Daniel Gage Ice Company for whom his mills have worked, finished here, where they have been occupying the winters for the last six years.  It is estimated that during this time 9,000,000 feet of milled lumber has been removed from this locality, 7,000,000 feet from lots in Pelham, and 1,000,000 each from Hudson and Windham.  This will be likely to let the sun in to do duty as an efficient evaporating agency and do a splendid piece of work in shriveling up our already fast dwindling water supply.

Rev. Everett E. Jackman, a former minister of the M.E. church in West Chelmsford, conducted the services last Sunday.  He was greeted with a large and enthusiastic meeting-house full of listeners.

Advance information from Mr. Dickinson, of Billerica, committee on farmers’ institutes, enables me to announce that the next farmers’ institute will be held with Middlesex-North Pomona Grange, Odd Fellows’ hall, Bridge street, Lowell, on Friday, February 6.  Hon. Edward Fisher, of Westford and Lowell, will give the morning address at eleven o’clock on “The work of the state board of conciliation and efficiency,” of which he is a member.  Let us give him a full house and an open, listening ear.  The afternoon’s program will be broadcasted when ready.  Incidentally Mr. Dickinson in his letter to me referred to the remarks of Selectman Arthur G. Hildreth, of this town, as delivered at the last institute.  “He was surely informed and capable and made an excellent impression.  I liked his words and his attitude very much.”

We are informed by what appears to be competent authority that while the rainfall in 1924 was seven inches below normal it will be duplicated in 1925 (and perhaps with compound interest).  So, brother farmers, do not plant on a sand bank in June and expect to lame your back lifting the autumn harvest.  Some of us are taking our own medicine about the advantages of early planting and have already got potatoes planted.  So come on, you 1925 dry drought.  Shall we ever learn the drought-escaping effects of early planting, or shall we continue to lag along in the middle of nowhere and land nowhere?

Here is a conundrum of vital importance: “Why is the appointment of a man as assistant manager of a financially tottering railroad, whose watered endowment has eminently equipped him and connected him with the Associated Press in New England, like sending a gold watch to a blacksmith to have it repaired?”  I cannot answer it, Mister.  I certainly cannot.  All I can say is it hath been said as of old, “Great is the mystery of Godliness,” [1 Timothy 3:16] but this railroad mystery is not so easy to “comprestand” as Godliness.

The inaugural address of Governor Alvan T. Fuller we have not been able to get a glimpse of, but we have “hearn [sic] tell out.”  He is clearly within the right of common sense, business common sense and all other sense when he advocates biennial sessions of the legislature.  It is a twin to biennial elections and should have been born at the same time.  A more rigid enforcement of present legislation, which would either popularize it to efficiency or unpopularize it to a repeal is needed more than new legislation.  There is considerable legislation which is of a “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel” [Matthew 23:24] variety.  You can drive at a highly reckless, dangerous rate of speed with your auto, a peril to life, and get by and repeat it and continue to repeat it with or without an encore, and still continue these risks to life, but if you do not have your corn stubble plowed in before December first you are liable to a fine of $500, and there is no life at risk if you do not plough it in.

Senator Walter Perham, of Chelmsford, of the eighth Middlesex district, filed his first bill in the legislature on Friday of last week.  It was a bill petitioned by the selectmen of Chelmsford for permission to borrow not more than $100,000 for the acquisition of land and the construction of a new schoolhouse at Chelmsford Center, said loan to be paid within five years.

The Earthquake.  The fifth earthquake[2] in the three centuries of the recorded history of New England earth disturbances rocked houses and caused panic among thousands, occurred on last week Wednesday morning about 8:09 as per observating [sic] seismographs.  Lowell felt the shock which lasted about fifteen seconds.  Varying degrees of severity were felt by the towns surrounding Lowell, as reported.

Westford hardly knew there had been an earth tremor but Dracut, Tyngsboro, Dunstable and Pelham, N.H., sensed it, and Andover got it the worst.  There two distinct shocks were felt.  Marblehead and Nahant bore the brunt of the tremor, for the coast inhabitants rushed out of their homes and offices into the streets.  Pictures rattled down the walls and dishes were piled up together in the closets.  The center of the disturbance is believed to have been at sea, and Pelham, N.H., is believed to have been the northernmost and Westford the westernmost point that felt it.

In reporting for the Stony Brook valley part of Westford we have yet to find anyone who felt it except the W. R. Taylor residence, where it was visible to the naked eye and ear, as twigs were shaken from the maple tree that the writer helped to set out forty years ago.  Dishes played music and the house rocked an encore.  The Taylor residence, that felt the shock so visibly, while not in the Stony Brook valley, is close by on the higher levels of Frances hill, and this may explain the rocking shocking, for the water that supplies the close-by Old Oaken Bucket farm is located on Frances hill, which has been running idle for three months, and started up running full time soon after the earthquake.  We never had an affectionate love for earthquakes but we have a thirsty love for the eighteenth amendment constitutional water act which supplies the Old Oaken Bucket farm buildings, and incidentally we have got to include the earthquake that jarred the water into the well.

The cause of the earthquake, according to Prof. Reginald A. Daly, professor of geology at Harvard university was the sudden cracking of a great stratum of rock about fifteen miles below the surface of the earth some miles north of Boston, which for millions of years has been bearing the burden of the billions of tons of earth and rock above it.  He also said that the shock could not be caused by “frost cracks,” which are purely surface manifestations, and this disturbance was fully fifteen miles below the surface of the earth.  An earthquake in this part of the country, he said, is unusual in view of the age of the mountains, which are millions of years old and too firmly settled to permit earthquakes.

Sensible Legislation Required.  Here is Governor Fuller on automobile regulations: “Criminal carelessness and drunken drivers must be swiftly and severely dealt with.  Speed in congested areas and at intersecting streets must be regulated, even though at great inconvenience to motorists.  It would be well to consider a more complete examination of applicants for drivers’ licenses.”  These suggestions are so packed with common sense and justice and safety that there is not even room to wedge in a harmless minority report.  We have come to the pass where we must either reduce the speed limit in congested areas where pedestrian travel is congested or continue to increase the annual death rate.  The speed should be reduced to the average old-time “hoss speed.”  If you are in more of a rush than this speed comes to go by, a radio or a live electric wire will get you somewhere quickly and make a mile-a-minute auto seem like an old-time ox cart speed.  Drunken drivers are too uncertain a risk to be carried and the “trade mark” should be “once drunk always drunk” and their license revoked without a possibility of a renewal.

Governor Fuller also recommended a gasoline tax for the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges.  Increase of the penalty for carrying concealed weapons and enforced to the limit; ditto for forcibly resisting a police officer.  Enforcement of national prohibition in Massachusetts to the limit of justice, to all of which we take off our hat and vote for.

It is clearly evident that we have got to do something to check the wave of crime other than the senseless performance of selling jails and the love pats of probation.  There is as much sense in it as trying to put out a fire with kerosene oil that has already got beyond control.  Our electric chair should be tenanted more often than it is, if for nothing else than to reduce the number of performers.

Automobile Statistics.  Here are some solemn facts for serious meditation as to the remedy to apply: “We read that 709 persons were killed by automobiles in 1924, compared with 578 in 1923, and 19,578 were injured in 1924 and 16,212 in 1923.  Of the 709 killed 260 were children, as compared with 233 in 1923.  Of the 19,579 injured, 5548 were children, as against 4037 in 1923.”  What is the remedy, or rather what is the cause?  This must be ascertained before the remedy.  It need not take a very deep set of brains to spell the cause in one word—speed.  The automobile being a substitute for the horse, we have got to compare the dead, wounded and dying under horse motor power, as compared with gasoline motor power.  In assigning increased speed as the cause I am millions of miles from laying all of the blame onto automobile drivers, for there is defiant carelessness and off-your-guard carelessness and blind carelessness on the part of adults.

As a sample of defiant carelessness I have seen pedestrians warned by the traffic officer to remain on the sidewalk rush right in front of a close approaching auto and nothing but the quick application of the emergency brakes prevented instant death or its equivalent.  All these defiants act as though they owned the universe and were on the way to take possession.  If they were I would want to move out.  Too many of us cross the streets and walk the road as though we were heavy stockholders in the universe and automobiles were second bondholders and had only that right on the highways.

On the other hand there is a whole heap of automobile drivers who act by their defiant crowding of the pedestrian into the ditch and a dangerous rate of speed that “if you are so poor that you cannot afford an automobile you had better stay off the roads with your poverty.”  All such ought to be deprived of their license until they learn less speed and more manners.  Come to think it over, though, I would set an example of justice on some poor old hayseed and fine him $500 for not having his corn stubble ploughed in before December first, even if he was only a minute late in doing it, and I would let the reckless driver go—the most he can do is to kill a lot of people, and they have got to die sometime and this will shorten the trip.

But for all this excusing there is too much speed everywhere—in the city and town—even by the average careful driver, as compared with horse speed, which landed more and healthier business than gasoline, which on the whole has developed a whole heap of new get-away crimes.  What is all this mile a minute rush about in business or social life?  We got [line illegible].  Like space, it never had beginning or end.  With all of this time on our hands how come this rush except in special emergencies like the Stony Brook school recess bell ringing, which connected up with a flogging if we did not speed up.

Nearly all of the automobile collisions where pedestrianism is not involved is reckless driving in defiance of common sense on the part of an auto or telephone pole.

Too Much Athletics.  To the question, “Do we have too much athletics in schools and colleges or not enough?” we answer thusly: As a sort of enforced stay-at-home from church I answer this question most emphatically in the affirmative, and in case you do not know what affirmative means, with me it means “Yes.  We have altogether too much athletics in our schools.”  And if this is not plainly emphatic enough I will add far, far too much.  Our schools stand for the development of brains, not muscle.  The mule and the donkey are well equipped with muscle and can exemplify it at any time without warning with a kick, and in so far as our schools stand for muscle they stand in and on a level with mules and donkeys.  Let us have more individuality and less donkey, mules, etc.  The one distinguishing trait of mankind above animal kind is individuality which is yet so little developed that it yet, for the most part, is in its microscopic stages.

Occasionally there is an Emerson which took six generations to produce an oasis—a refreshing oasis in the Great Sahara Desert of individuals.  Without the orbit of individuality to quote Emerson’s words in substance, “Let us quit our borrowing and begin and go straight to affairs.  God is the ocean of truth and we are all inlets into the same.”  Count me out on donkey and mule education.  We need a divorce.

Church Notes.  First church (Unitarian)—Sunday service at 4 p.m.  Preacher, Rev. Frank B. Crandall, the minister.  Subject, “Better than miracles.”  Church school at 3.

The Westford chapter of the Laymen’s League met Sunday evening at the vestry.  Following a supper served by the hosts, Judge Frederick Fisher of Lowell, formerly a resident of this town, gave most interesting reminiscences of former days.

On Sunday the preacher will deal with the question of the value of miracles in religion, raising the question whether it was not the holy teachings and life of sacrifice and service of Jesus which prove his divine quality rather than his alleged facility in performing physical, magical feats.

Graniteville. The Abbot Worsted soccer team will play the Fore River club of Quincy in the third round of the national cup series, in Quincy this Saturday afternoon at 2:30. This game will depend a great deal on weather conditions, but will be played if possible.

The Ladies’ Aid society of the M.E. church met with Mrs. Lucy Blood on last Thursday evening when plans were formulated for a calendar bazaar that will be held the latter part of the month. Mrs. A. L. O’Brien is the chairman of the committee.

Many from here attended the basketball game in Westford on Monday evening, when the Westford academy team defeated West Groton by the score of 24 to 7.

Many from here attended the meeting of the Tadmuck club in Westford on Tuesday afternoon.

See “America” first with D. W. Griffith at Strand, Ayer, Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 19 and 20. His greatest production since “Birth of a nation.” Scenes filmed at Lexington, Concord and along Paul Revere’s ride. Prices—Matinee, adults 35¢, children 10¢. Evening, adults 50¢, children 15¢.

Ayer

Pending Hearing.  The bill in equity brought by Mrs. Elizabeth de Roehen [sic, Roehn] of 1301 Commonwealth avenue, Boston, against her mother-in-law, Mary A. Girard of 138 Central avenue, Ayer, to enjoin the latter from claiming the body of the husband of the plaintiff, a soldier in the United States army who died at Spokane on January 7, came before Judge Sisk Wednesday in the Equity Motion Division of Superior Court.  It was agreed between the parties that, pending a hearing of the merits of the controversy the body of de Roehen should remain in a vault in Westford and that funeral services be held there.[3]

The burial of Emerson A. de Roehen, aged thirty, took place in Westford last Thursday.  He was a veteran of the world war and a delegation of Westford post, A.L., attended.  Mr. de Roehen, after his service in the war, went to Spokane, Wash., where he was employed by the United States government in electrical work.  His death was the result of shock.  He leaves his wife, a resident of Boston; his mother Mrs. Calixte H. Girard of this town, and two brothers, one in Worcester and one in Portland, Me.

 

[1] “Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound” is the title of a Methodist hymn written by Isaac Watts (1674-1748).

[2] This is certainly not true. “Over 400 earthquakes centered in Massachusetts are known from the earliest reported event on December 19, 1668 in northeastern Massachusetts through 2016.” And that’s just Massachusetts, not all of New England. See “Massachusetts Earthquakes” at https://nesec.org/massachusetts-earthquakes/.

[3] Fort Soldier is Electrocuted

Private Emerson A. DeRoehn, Age 30, Meets Instant Death While Working on High Power Electric Line.

Private Emerson A. DeRoehn, age 30, F company, Fourth United States infantry, Fort George Wright, was electrocuted with 2300 volts at the post this afternoon.

Death apparently was instantaneous, although post physicians worked over the body for hours in a vain hope of reviving life.

Private DeRoehn, an electrician, was repairing power lines in front of the post exchange and went to the top of a 35-foot pole at 1:30 o’clock this afternoon.

When the current passed through his body he fell across the arms of the pole and remained there until rescuers climbed the pole.

Remove Body With Ropes.

Under the directions of Captain F. B. Martin, of Headquarters company, Corporal William Maclean and Private Charles E. Boblitz rigged a carrier with pulleys attached to the cross arm and lowered the body to the ground. An ambulance removed it at once to the post hospital.

Private DeRoehn had an exceptionally fine record in the army, having been in service for 10 years.

During the World war he served as a second lieutenant of engineers, and was for two years overseas during 1918 and 1919.

He is survived by his mother, Mrs. Mary A. Girard, 128 Central avenue, Ayer, Mass.

The body will be held at the post awaiting word from her.

Spokane Chronicle, Spokane, Wash., Tuesday, January 6, 1925, p. 1.