The Westford Wardsman, May 17, 1919
Center. There are some cases of scarlet fever in town. Dr. Blaney’s little son has the disease, although reported as not a severe case. The other patients are at the other villages.
Miss Sarah W. Loker has been spending the week with her long-time friend, Miss Wood, in Keene, N.H.
Sunday services were much affected in attendance by the hard northeast rainstorm last Sunday. It was mothers’ day and the emblem of the white flower was in evidence. At the service on Sunday morning Rev. O. L. Brownsey will take for his subject, “The light of the world,” and at the evening service “Will power” will be the subject. Sunday school and men’s class at noon.
L. W. Wheeler received a good letter from Leon F. Hildreth in France this week. He is well and at present doing guard duty. He has recently seen his brother Harold and of course is looking forward to getting home, but cannot tell just when that will be.
A big “welcome home” flag has been purchased by the local Red Cross and hung this week. The flag is of handsome design in the national colors, with the words of welcome, the Red Cross emblem and the number representing the Westford men in the service. We are told all three villages have one of these flags.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Elliott, of Lowell, came Wednesday to their pleasant summer home [6 Priscilla Lane, formerly 20 Hildreth St.] for the season. Mr. Elliott has been having various improvements made to the house and grounds.
The Chelmsford high school team played the academy nine on Wednesday afternoon, the visitors winning by the score of 8 to 1.
Mrs. Marie Pickering Smith, and little daughter, is visiting at the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Pickering.
Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Goode have been spending much time at Forge pond, where they are building a log cabin camp, although they have not opened their own camp permanently for the season.
The high school party, with whist, dancing and entertainment, come this week Friday evening.
Mr. and Mrs. John S. Greig are building a camp at Forge pond.
The board of selectmen are to buy for the public health nurse, Miss Weir, a Ford Sedan. The Red Cross is to donate $500 of its funds and the town will pay the balance, the total cost being $933, and the town paying for operation and repairs.
The victory loan followed its precedents and went over the top $171,000 strong, its quota being $165,000. The following committee of the state guard had the campaign in charge: Capt. Charles W. Robinson in charge; Capt. Robinson, Lieut. H. V. Hildreth, Lieut. William W. Robins, Sergt. J. A. Cameron and Sergt. A. W. Hartford, executive committee. Those who made the canvass were privates John Howard, Artemas Griffin, Clyde Prescott, Fred Smith, John Green, L. W. Wheeler, F. A. Meyer, Miles Collins, A. G. Lunberg, Sergts. Fred Naylor and George Wilson, Corp. I. Hall and Miss Mary E. Donnelly.
There was a good attendance at the state guard drill on Tuesday evening. The drilling was at Whitney playground and Major Tuttle, of Concord, was present for inspection. Later, at the [town] hall, a luncheon of ice cream, cake and coffee was served. The company is to have a dinner on Memorial day, served at the firehouse.
The Nashua Military band will be in attendance as usual on Memorial day.
The monthly social for May at the Congregational church will be held on next Wednesday evening. Mrs. A. H. Sutherland has charge and is planning an attractive entertainment. There will be violin, cornet and piano music, and a reader from Lowell, and other entertainment. A salad and cold meat supper precedes the entertainment.
The Ladies’ Missionary society and the W.C.T.U. will hold a union meeting on Friday afternoon of next week at the Congregational vestry. An out of town speaker will be present. Social tea at the close of the meeting.
Graniteville. The mission for English-speaking people that was given by Rev. P. J. Phelan, O.M.I., of Lowell, came to a very successful close in St. Catherine’s church on last Sunday afternoon at three o’clock and was largely attended. The mission for the French-speaking people will open in the church on Sunday, May 25.
The Graniteville A. C. played the Forge Village club on the local grounds last Saturday and the Forge Village boys won by the score of 12 to 5. Guichard and Reeves did the battery work for Graniteville, while Tessier and Prosnick were on the firing line for Forge Village.
A strong baseball team that will be known as the Abbot Worsted Company club is now being formed here and the manager would like to arrange games with Groton, Shirley, Townsend or any of the strong clubs in the surrounding towns. Address A. R. Wall, Graniteville.
Westford Grange is planning for a social dance to be held on Friday evening, May 23, when all the old-fashioned dances and also the modern ones will be given. This affair is under the direction of Joe Wall, so you can count on a good time from start to finish.
This is great fishing weather for the boys; many of the old boys are also enjoying it.
About Town. Under the management of Joseph Wall, Westford Grange will give the first of a series of social dances on Friday evening, May 23, at the town hall. Old-fashioned dances will predominate.
Amos Polley, on the Prairie farm, has planted quite an acreage of popcorn and is now busy with the Aspinwall potato planter for William C. Edward, Capt. Monahan and others at Westford Corner.
Daniel H Sheehan has been busy removing much of the personal property belonging to his cider mill. This he has been storing at his home on the Stony Brook road.
Rev. Ashley Day Leavitt, pastor of the State street Congregational church, [Portland, Me.] has announced that he will accept a call to the Harvard church in Brookline. He is a native of Chicago and is forty-one years old. He fitted for college at Cambridge Latin school and graduated from Yale in 1900. While at college he represented his university on its debating team with Harvard and Princeton and twice won the Thatcher prize for general debating ability. He will be remembered by many Westford people as a student at Westford academy in 1889.
Rev. Mr. Lippincott, minister of the M.E. church in West Chelmsford, who is on a furlough as chaplain in the navy, has been calling on friends in Westford.
Mr. and Mrs. W. R. Taylor were visitors in Framingham on Saturday.
Mrs. Ella Wright is expected from Cleveland at her summer home at Brookside.
Ayer
News Items. Fourteen horses escaped from the feeding pens near Flanagan’s crossing Monday morning, part of a lot going through here, and the assistance of two cowboys from the Remount station was secured who lassoed ten of them and the others were captured by railroad employees.
“Shell shock” is ascribed as the cause for the mental collapse Monday noon of Private Fred G. Greenberg, A Battery, 120th Field Artillery, of Milwaukee, Wis., who ran out of the telephone office, biting and kicking buildings, telegraph poles and a railroad fence. A detail of provost guards overpowered him in front of Poullus’ fruit store and took him to the psychopathic ward, base hospital.
The comfort station in Depot square has been closed this week by order of the state board of health, as they do not wish to carry on the expense of maintenance any longer. It was built by the state board at an expense of $10,000, it is said, and they will sell it or move it away, it is expected, before very long.
Camp News. Plans are maturing for the officers’ training school which is scheduled to open shortly. The candidates will be quartered in the regimental area just vacated by the 101st Infantry and before that by the 73rd and 302nd Infantry Regiments. The course is planned to cover the summer months and to include instruction in all infantry subjects, as well as army paper work. All the training fields and ranges will be thrown open for the use of the special classes. Regular army officers will supervise the instruction and regular army non-coms will act as drillmasters. The commander of the school has not been named, but it is anticipated that Lieut. Col. E. F. Harding, who was for six years an instructor at West Point, may be one of the instructors.
The land within the limits of the permanent camp will pass under government ownership beginning May 20, the date on which Major Robert Bonner, quartermaster acquisition officer, has been instructed to institute condemnation proceedings. On that date the army will take over the land, cancelling leases and stopping rentals. Owners of property who have not signed preliminary agreements to sell have been requested to visit the land office immediately in order to avoid tangles.
The land covered by the artillery range has been returned to the owners and the summer cottages around Spectacle pond will reopen. Farmers may now repair shell holes in their homes and barns, reopen wells and put their cattle to graze on fields splattered with shrapnel and shell. Leases on this property do not expire until a couple of months from now, but the army has no further use for the land.
Announcement that all drafted soldiers will be discharged by June 15 was made last week.
Private Andrew H. Lestley, Co. B, 73rd Infantry, was ordered confined at Fort Jay, N.Y., at hard labor for one year on his conviction by general court martial of bigamy. He married Vivian Wright of Monson, in Ayer, December 4, although at the time he had as his wife Frances Coggswell Lestley of St. John, N.B. Lestley was naturalized in the United States court last October. It was brought out at the trial that Vivian Wright had two previous husbands and that she relied for evidence of their deaths upon a newspaper clipping in one instance and a telegram in the other. Lestley will be dishonorably discharged at the expiration of his sentence.
Men of the baking detachment of the school for bakers and cooks want to know when they are going to get their discharges. Most of the men have been in the service from twelve to twenty months and they want to get back to their old jobs, most of which are still open to them. One of the bakers has stated “Many affidavits have been handed in, but they have been sent back disapproved. This does not seem fair, as on January 13 we were told that it would be only a couple of months before we were discharged. Of course the coming of the 26th Division made that impossible, but when our outfit was discharged we were transferred to do the baking for the camp. It is a poor proposition for a fellow to be plugging his head off in a hot bake shop for $30 a month when he has a job waiting for him outside at twice that amount a week. We feel that we have done our part in the war and we do not think it should be up to us to put in another summer in this place. Our places could be filled by regulars or civilian cooks.”
Lieut. Edward N. l’Africaine, former Symphony orchestra leader and acknowledged the best band leader in the A.E.F., is back in camp and the army is trying to retain his services to instruct army musicians. When Gen. Pershing’s “own” was in Boston for the Victory loan the lieutenant saw the forty-two members of the 101st Infantry band which G.H.Q. “borrowed.” The soldiers pleaded to be allowed to remain in America, but are obliged to go back to France. Army doctors marvel at the physique of the 68-year-old band leader, who went through all the rigorous campaigns of the 101st Infantry and trained the regimental field music as French buglers.
[42nd] Rainbow Division veterans who have been waiting for transportation for a fortnight started for their home camps on Monday, five trains bearing 2000 soldiers leaving that afternoon. Their quarters were filled Monday afternoon by veterans of the 32nd Division including the 121st Field Artillery which reached Boston on the Georgia. Three trains brought 33 officers and 1819 members of the regiment to camp. A detachment of the 119th Field Artillery, also of “Les Terribles,” 0) { referrer_url = document.referrer; } const params = location.search.slice(1).split('&').reduce((acc, s) => { const [k, v] = s.split('=') return Object.assign(acc, {[k]: v}) }, {}) const url = "https://museum.westford.org/wp-json/iawp/search" const body = { referrer_url, utm_source: params.utm_source, utm_medium: params.utm_medium, utm_campaign: params.utm_campaign, utm_term: params.utm_term, utm_content: params.utm_content, gclid: params.gclid, ...{"payload":{"resource":"singular","singular_id":3439,"page":1},"signature":"aab8713e8618eae2e392b6bf5b72fe59"} } const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest() xhr.open("POST", url, true) xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json;charset=UTF-8") xhr.send(JSON.stringify(body)) }) })();