Turner's Public Spirit, October 28, 1922
A look back in time to a century ago
By Bob Oliphant
Center. Miss Evelyn Atwood, of Daytona, Fla., has been the guest of her aunts, the Misses Lillian, Carrie and May Atwood, for a few days.
Westford post, A.L., and the Ladies’ Auxiliary enjoyed a Halloween party and oyster supper on Monday evening. The hall was prettily decorated with autumn foliage and the time was pleasantly spent in games and music. There was a good attendance and the affair proved an enjoyable occasion.
The W.C.T.U. held a harvest supper at the Congregational church on Wednesday evening, followed by an entertainment consisting of violin selections by Miss Mildred Precious, of Forge Village; vocal selection with violin accompaniment, Mrs. Edith P. Blaney; readings, Miss Hanson of Graniteville, and Mrs. Elizabeth C. Taylor, and solo by Miss Elva Judd.
The next meeting of the W.C.T.U. will be held at the home of Mrs. George Walker next Wednesday afternoon.
Miss Eleanor Fletcher has purchased the house owned by Emery [sic, Emory] J. Whitney, Main street, and with her aunt, Miss Ida Leighton, will take occupancy of same in the early summer of next year.
Mrs. McDaniels has returned to her home in Cambridge and Mrs. Wood will remain at their Westford home for a long time.
Dwight W. Meade, for many years a well-known and respected citizen of this town, died in Belmont, Vt., on October 15. He lived in Parkerville the greater part of his life, having sold his farm about four years ago and removed to Belmont.
Mrs. Nellie, wife of Charles Griffin, of Parkerville, passed away on Friday of last week after a long and painful illness. Besides her husband she is survived by four sons and four daughters, all residents of this town. She devoted her life to home and family and will be greatly missed. The funeral, which was private, was held from her home on Sunday afternoon with interment in the family lot at Fairview.
The Tadmuck club held their regular meeting in Library hall on Tuesday afternoon, Wentworth Stewart speaking on “current topics.” Mr. Stewart is to be heard at three more meetings. The high school students were invited to attend this meeting and also the three following ones, which will begin at 2:30, instead of at three o’clock. Seven members of the club attended the tenth district conference of Woman’s clubs held in Lowell on October 16.
The home of Mr. and Mrs. Harry L. Nesmith was the scene of a pretty home wedding on Wednesday evening, October 18 when their daughter, Marion M. Woodbury, became the bride of George Maurice Hartwell [paper torn, two lines missing]. Rev. Chester A. Wheeler, of the Littleton Congregational church, was the officiating clergyman. Only the immediate families were present. Following the ceremony refreshments of ice cream and cake were served. They received many beautiful presents, including money, cut glass and silver. The couple left on their honeymoon trip amidst a shower of confetti, and the best wishes of all. Upon their return they will occupy the new house recently built by Mr. Hartwell in Littleton.
Mr. and Mrs. Harry Gumb and Mr. and Mrs. Perry Shupe start on Monday for Florida, where they are to spend the winter.
School Notes. About forty of the pupils attended the Tadmuck club meeting on Tuesday afternoon to hear Mr. Stewart on “Current topics.”
- W. Van Kirk, of Youngstown, Ohio, gave a very inspiring and interesting talk on “World peace” to the academy pupils on Wednesday. The school will be closed on Friday to enable the teachers to attend the Middlesex County Teachers’ convention in Boston.
On Monday evening the school will hold a Halloween party in the town hall. There will be stunts of various kinds, followed by informal dancing. A good time is promised to all who attend.
The girls of the school, under the direction of Miss Dorothy Latham of the faculty, are much interested in basketball.
Church Notes. Congregational—There will be a Friday evening meeting for prayer at eight o’clock at the church this week.
Rev. E. A. Jenkins, of North Chelmsford, will exchange with the pastor on Sunday and perform the ordinance of baptism. His sermon theme will be “The challenge of the new era.” Sunday school at noon. The Young People’s league will meet at 6:30. The pastor will preach at the evening service at 7:15.
At three o’clock this Saturday afternoon the new Junior C. E. will hold their first meeting.
Unitarian—An Alliance meeting for special business will be held at the home of Mrs. H. V. Hildreth on next Thursday afternoon at three o’clock.
The Unitarian junior conference of the North Middlesex section will be held at the parish house of All Souls church, Lowell, on next Saturday. The exercises will begin at 10:30 in the morning, when two interesting speakers will be on the program. Lunch will be served at noon, and in the afternoon a social time will be enjoyed by all those present. It is hoped that a number of young people from this town will be in attendance.
A parish supper is being planned to be held some time in November.
Sunday service at four o’clock; preacher, Rev. Frank B. Crandall; subject, “The great doctrine.”
About Town. Mark Jenkins has bought all the standing and fallen apples on the Boynton farm at Chamberlin’s Corner.
Last week we referred to batters being up for a new building on the abandoned canal at Westford Corner, Brookside road. This building is to be a store, owned and operated by William Gilson, of Graniteville, who has lately been in the employ of Conant, Houghton & Co., of Littleton. He is the son of George Gilson, Graniteville.
We were glad to learn under Westford news last week of the progressive spirit that has set in at the new Nabnassett school [now “Old Nab”] at Brookside and that was so hopefully and helpfully exemplified last week Tuesday afternoon by Miss French at a gathering of teachers from the several towns, representing this superintendent district. Let this new building stand for something more than the inspiration of a new, modern building and new environments. Let it take to itself in freedom and fullness the new progressive spirit, well balanced and seasoned with daily workable old-fashioned common sense which was the foundation of the little red school house.
Last Saturday morning was the coldest thus far at the approaching of winter. It got on the chill tone at the Old Oaken Bucket farm at twenty above zero sometime after sunrise. At other places it chilled off at twelve and fourteen above.
At the meeting of the Grange last week a large attendance was present at the initiation exercises, there being a large delegation from Lowell, Concord and several from West Chelmsford Grange, and one representative from Easton, Me. Altogether it was encouraging enthusiasm to be inspired by the come together spirit with the added power and charm of the new individuality. The third degree was exemplified in a most delightful and entertaining manner by the ladies’ degree team. The fourth degree was worked in a faultless-like manner by the regular officers of the Grange. At the close of the initiation, the Grange sociability and fellowship reigned at glee whistle height, with the supper as a foundation to hurrah forth the cheers of sociability with the added stimulus of new friendship.
The Lowell road has been undergoing several kinds of repairs. The long standing long brush has been hewn down and chopped down, and like a person who has undergone repairs on his long neglected hair and whiskers, you would never know that it was the same without a special introduction. Then the ditches to convey the national beverage [i.e., water] have been cleared of obstruction, the eighteenth amendment [establishing Prohibition] having the right of way. The road has been widened in the valley of the Tadmuck river. Taken altogether, it is a heap of efficiently planned road improvement.
The next meeting of the Grange will be held in the town hall on Thursday evening, November 2. We have lost our yearly program in the overstocked and foolish accumulation of materialistic literature. But come with the enthusiasm and promptness displayed in your make-up and get-up to a movie show.
Mr. Frederick, of North Chelmsford, fell by natural law from an apple tree while picking apples at the Read-Drew farm [164 Main St.]. He was taken to the Lowell General hospital, where it was found that he had a fractured skull and other physical smash-ups. His skull went to knitting and continued at that industry for about two weeks, when he was placed on the cured list and listed for home, the rest of his other smash-up jars having become harmonized.
The Stony Brook road is having its hair cut—we mean brush cut. This road looks 100 years younger for this fresh scythe-barber trimming. We have found out that there is a wall beside the road and that it has been there for more than forty years. Of course the brush is very aged, but the tree warden is not to blame because the brush is so aged. How can he barber 200 miles of brush with a sort of dollar appropriation and how can we be expected to swell up financially to the size and age of our brush responsibility? One thing we can do, and that is to stop expecting miracles on the road any larger and oftener than the appropriations.
Dane & Nutting are shingling the Methodist church in Graniteville as per recent conversational expectations.
[torn paper, line and a half missing] welcome reminder that summer has not forgotten us yet, but still lingers in the lap of some coming snow squall.
The next meeting of Middlesex-North Pomona Grange will be held on Friday, November 3, at Odd Fellows’ Hall, Bridge street, Lowell. The following program will be given: “Safety first as it relates to the home, the school, the farm and the roads.” As this is a broad question and so closely related to daily life we deem it important to give it this publicity and hope that many will attend from Middlesex-Worcester Pomona Grange and other Pomonas. The lecturer, Mrs. Grace Naylor, of West Chelmsford Grange, has engaged four good speakers to open the discussion. It promises to be a valuable education. Let everyone come prepared to enlighten for a little time, if not more than half an hour each.
There was ice frost Wednesday morning, but not so skating a frost as last week, which froze apples on the tree clear to the core, even the Benjamin Davis apples, which are supposed to resist everything, even to being good, were softened clear down to punk pain, while those on the ground remained untouched by frost or goodness. As a matter of safety first we have always maintained that the ground was buffer for man and apple.
Among other good things the Middlesex-North Agricultural society voted at its recent annual meeting was a free musical concert, time and place to be left with Edward F. Dickinson, of Billerica, committee on farmers’ institutes. It will be at the new Auditorium in Lowell.
Miss Ella T. Wright, who has been spending the summer at “The Elms” [120 Lowell Rd.] Brookside, returned to her home in Cleveland, Ohio, Wednesday. We shall miss her cheerful and cultured personality. Miss Helen A. Whittier, who has been her companion, has returned to her winter home in Boston.
Misses Susan T. Hannaford and Bessie A. Dame were visitors at the Old Oaken Bucket farm last Sunday. Miss Hannaford is a nurse at the Lowell hospital, and Miss Dame is a teacher at the Oaklands, Lowell.
Henry O’Brien shot a very large fox last week Wednesday in the hen yard at his home on Pigeon hill, Stony Brook road. This is one of the largest foxes ever captured in this vicinity and promises fur coats for the inhabitants on said hill.
The Morning Glory farm has evolved a new apple, or else it was evolved before it got there, called the Zebra. It claims many advantages—it is striped, so is a state prison suit; it will stand any weather away down below zero, weather never heard of before, without losing its hold on its prospective spring blossoms, and will stand up against winter ice-storms without limbs breaking. Well we don’t want it, for its virtues are its weakness along this line, for we had half of the apple tree limbs broken off, and half of the blossoms killed on some varieties, and with all these thinning outs and reducing down of the prospective crop, where, oh, where is the market to pay your thirty-five-dollar taxes with? It is said that this Zebra will keep several years. Well, that seems to be an appealing virtue—it might relieve us of raising a crop oftener than once in five or six years.
If “one swallow doesn’t make a summer” [a common proverb, source unknown] neither does one snow squall make a winter. We tried it last week Wednesday, and since have had a summer thunder shower.
Guy R. Decatur had a cow badly choked with a number one apple last week. He saved the cow but lost the apple.
Rails are being distributed along the Stony Brook railroad preparatory to laying new rails. How short a time it seems since new rails were laid. We recall the old-fashioned small, light rails that were laid when the road was first built, each rail independent of any other rail, the end resting in an iron chair, and half the work or more of the section men was in crowding the rails together and keeping them on the iron chairs. As the Old Oaken Bucket farm is bounded on the north by the Stony Brook railroad we have spent many spare hours watching and learning track repairing. The days of the light and disconnected rail were before the Hoosac tunnel was built and only one light freight a day from Lowell to Ayer and return was run, and mostly short or half cars that were bobbed and tilted on the track as though they were about to leave the rail. Hand brakes, wood fuel and “flying switches” all kept the men busy, and it was dangerous work between the cars, coupling and uncoupling. All of this has given place to “safety first” as well as economy first. The Hoosac tunnel now being the direct line to the west from Maine and Eastern Massachusetts has increased the traffic on the old Stony Brook road with its new improvements, which makes it appropriate to call it the new old Stony Brook road.
The hunting season opened on last week Friday and it is now legal to amuse yourself by causing the needless pain to the defenseless birds, and some harmless.
Someone has inquired as to who was the original and responsible person for gathering of teachers and demonstration at the Nabnassett school last week Tuesday. We are informed that it came from the fertility of Herman C. Knight, superintendent of schools. We admire an occasional new departure from the ordinary dull joy of school life. The playing for development for those mind qualities too rarely get into action. We play too much to the dollar side of the child mind. The three R’s are all on that side and it is time that someone raised the cry as is sometimes done in revivals, “Who will be on the Lord’s side?”—interpreted in terms of modern life, “Who will develop the latent and too oft unused qualities of mind and character for high service to mankind?” We take this unauthorized liberty on behalf of the town to thank the superintendent for his vision.
Deaths. Word has been received of the death of Dwight H. Meade in Belmont, Vt. For many years he lived on a small farm in the Parkerville section of Westford on the Concord road. He was a genial, jolly, good-natured man to meet and a well known figure at town meetings. We have had many a friendly jolly chat with him. He was related by marriage to the Newhall family of Littleton, his wife being a sister of Mrs. Newhall. She alone survives him.
Mrs. Nellie M. (Collins) Griffin died at her home on the Griffin road, Parkerville, last week Friday at the age of 52 years 10 months, 23 days. She had been ill for several months. She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Phineas G. Collins, also former well-known residents of Parkerville, coming to this town from Ayer. She was the mother of eight children, and to them she was a true home mother, and this had more charms for her than the showy glitter of society. But for all the loving exactions of home duties she frequently appeared at lectures and entertainments and the social life of the town hall. Besides her husband, Charles M. Griffin, she leaves four sons and four daughters. The funeral was held from her late home last Sunday afternoon, Rev. John H. Blair officiating. Mrs. F. L. Roberts, of Lowell, sang “Sometime we’ll understand” and “Jesus Savior, pilot me.” The bearers were the [paper torn, line or two missing] son-in-law William Taylor. Burial was in the family lot in Fairview cemetery, where the committal service was conducted by the officiating minister.
John Porter, for many years a well-known resident of this town, and a tall figure on our streets and roads, died at the Lowell General hospital last week Friday at the age of fifty-seven years. He had been a resident of Lowell for over twenty-five years, going there from this town. He was generally known for his association in labor with the sheriffs of Middlesex county, residing in Lowell. He is survived by a sister. The funeral took place last Sunday afternoon, the services conducted by Rev. Nathaniel W. Matthews, minister of the First Primitive Methodist church. Several appropriate selections were sung by Mrs. George E. Burns and Mrs. Lawrence R. Jordan. The bearers were Cummings G. Titcomb, Albert E. Sully, Daniel E. Foye, Harry McPhee, Arthur Kelley and Mayer Wright. The funeral arrangements were in charge of George F. Stiles, deputy sheriff.
Graniteville. The Abbot Worsted soccer club defeated the Methuen team at Forge Village in a state cup contest on last Saturday 5 goals to 2. On this Saturday the Abbots will again play the Methuen club at Methuen in an Industrial league game. On Saturday, November 4, the Abbots will play the Shawsheen club at Forge Village in the second round of the national cup series.
The M. E. church cottage prayer meeting will be held this week at the home or Mrs. Lucy Blood on Friday evening at seven o’clock.
Both masses in St. Catherine’s church Sunday morning were celebrated by the pastor, Rev. E. S. Malone, who gave interesting sermons appropriate to the month of October. The usual October devotions were held in the church on Wednesday and Friday evenings. Choir rehearsal on Thursday evening.
Joseph E. Wall of Cambridge has been a recent visitor at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Wall.
The Graniteville soccer club was defeated by the Abbot third team here on last Sunday by a 1 to 0 score. The local club is showing signs of improvement and by next season ought to give a good account of itself.
Many people from this vicinity attended the Harvard-Centre football game at the Harvard stadium on last Saturday. [Harvard won 24-0.]
Dance at Shirley, Wednesday, November 1. Crist’s orchestra.
Ayer
News Items. The following real estate transfers have been recorded recently from this vicinity: … Westford—Flora M. Edwards to Mary C. Alexander, land on Brookside road; Austin D. Fletcher to J. Willard Fletcher, land on Depot road; J. Willard Fletcher to Austin D. Fletcher et ux., land on Depot road. …
District Court. Harold Connell of Westford, before the court for driving an automobile at an unreasonable rate of speed in Westford, was found guilty and fined twenty dollars. He appealed, furnishing $200 bonds for his appearance before the superior court. Attorney John M. Maloney appeared for him.