Turner's Public Spirit, September 12, 1925
A look back in time to a century ago
By Bob Oliphant
Center. The Alliance will hold an all-day meeting on Thursday, September 17, at the camp of Mrs. L. H. Buckshorn, Forge Village. Transportation will be furnished for everyone.
A son [Donald Earl Anderson] was born to Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Anderson on Thursday of last week [Sept. 3, 1925].
The fall millinery class will be held on Wednesday, October 7. On Tuesday, September 15, there will be a display and sale of frames and materials at the library. This will be an excellent opportunity for prospective members of the class to purchase materials for their new fall hats.
The next meeting of the A. L. Auxiliary will be held at headquarters on Monday evening. A large attendance is desired.
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Stiles were week-end and holiday guests of Mrs. H. S. Stiles. Other recent guests at Mrs. Stiles’ home have been Mr. and Mrs. Provost and Mr. Bothwick, of Holyoke.
Capt. Sherman H. Fletcher, Alonzo H. Sutherland and Austin D. Fletcher enjoyed an auto trip to Vermont and New York state over the week-end.
Mr. and Mrs. John Sullivan, who were recently married [Aug. 30, 1925], are occupying the house owned by Timothy Sullivan on the Hildreth road.
The schools of the town reopened on Wednesday. The only new teacher at the William E. Frost school is Miss Taylor, who takes the place of Miss Blanche Lawrence. At the academy there are two new teachers.
There will be a “balloon dance” at the town hall on Monday evening. Leo Daley’s orchestra will furnish the music and there will be exhibition dancing by Miss Mildred Bean, of Chelmsford.
Rev. Edward Disbrow, while on his vacation trip to North Dakota, made several stops on the way, and while in Chicago gave a talk before the Kiwanis club.
The following is taken in part from the South Royalton (Vt.) paper of a recent date and will be of interest to the many friends of Mr. Knight, who was for a number of years a resident of this town: Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt S. Knight gave a dinner at their home August 28 in honor of their father, J. E. Knight, of Hudson, N. H., the occasion being the sixty-seventh [sic, 87th] birthday of J. E. Knight. There were thirty-seven relatives and friends gathered around the tables which were set in Knight’s Opera House. A very bountiful and delicious dinner was served at 1:30, to which all did justice. The day was spent in visiting among the different members of the family and friends. A very pleasing feature of the day was the presence of three groups of four generations. Mr. Knight enjoyed the day and received many little tokens of remembrance from his family and a shower of birthday cards from his many friends.
Mr. and Mrs. Frederick L. Meyer, who spent last winter in Florida, and who have been located in New York this summer, are at their home on Flagg road for a short stay. Mrs. Meyer’s father, Anson Griffin, is also in town.
Grange Notes. Neighbors’ night was observed at the meeting of the Grange on last week Thursday evening. Tyngsboro and Bedford Granges neighbored with Westford Grange and furnished the entertainment of the evening, which consisted of a vocal solo by Chester Bancroft, of Tyngsboro; a very amusing pantomime by members of Tyngsboro Grange and a farce by members of Bedford Grange. There were twenty-one visitors from each of the above-named Granges; also, visitors from other Granges. During the evening refreshments were served.
Plans are being completed for the Grange fair to be held in the town hall on September 18. The entertainment committee has secured the following talent: Mrs. F. S. Roberts, Frank Charlton and Master Billy Prescott, soloists; Miss Regina McLenna, reader. Another attraction is also being planned which will be announced later. The entertainment promises to be one of the best of the season and the supper committee has promised an excellent supper.
About Town. The coal strike is reported to result in liberating 10,000 railroad men from employment by the railroad companies. This is not the first time that the labor unions have builded worse than they knew, so we go without coal, railroads go without freight, and railroad labor finds unemployment very abundant, and the miners sneeze a defiant help yourself. According to some labor viewpoints everybody who has anything above hand-to-mouth is the price of dishonesty. All that rightfully belongs to them is their right in the poor farm. Labor is the only rightful, honest stockholder in business. Edison and that bunch are not laborers, “they reap where they have not sown, and gather where they have not strewn.” [Matthew 25:24] Those who hold this view and try to reverse the laws of nature with it ought to apply the emergency brakes long enough to take account of mental stock long enough to memorize and seriously ponder that truthful and serious test of old, “Give us of your oil, for our lamps have gone out.” [Matthew 25:8]
From Our Vanishing Wild Life I quote the following: “The preservation of animal and plant life and of the general beauty of nature is one of the foremost duties of the men and women of today. It is an imperative duty, because it must be performed at once, for otherwise it will be too late. Every possible means of preservation, sentimental, educational and legislative must be employed.” Does everyone catch on to the thought of the author of “Our Vanishing Wild Life”? If you do, catch on, hang on, and act as though all were hanging on.
Miss Luanna B. Decatur, who has been spending her vacation at home, returned to her teaching in New Rochelle, N.Y., Monday.
Many farmers who planted certified seed potatoes last spring were very much troubled with the seed rotting or coming up feeble and continuing feeble until a feeble yield. This condition may be an exception. Be this as it may I have heard farmers say “The only difference between certified seed potatoes and ordinary grocery stock potatoes was in the price, and that was comparatively prohibitive.” Personally I have no experience with certified—the ordinary appears to fit the cash register the best.
The writer has been told that the Cold Spring postmaster has resigned and the postoffice of that name is shortly to be discontinued. This is the second postoffice in the town to be discontinued in less than a year, Nashoba being the other one. Two postoffices gone; the branch electric railway gone; the town pump gone; the Nashua, Acton and Boston Railroad gone; a good portion of the village people gone to Florida winters; some of the booze gone; the depot blacksmiths gone—we get a gone feeling—let’s go! Oh, no, it’s a good old town yet for some other things have come.
There might be added to the assessors’ statistics of last week that whereas they find property to the amount of $4,232,234, the state officials call $6,106,147 a proper valuation for the town.
- Willard Fletcher has resigned as postmaster of the Cold Spring postoffice at Westford depot, to take effect September 15, and it looks now as though the office would be discontinued. I wish I was eighty years younger and a mile nearer the office —I would like that five or ten cents a day as salary revenue.
Arthur Pitkin, who has been in the army, stationed at Panama, has returned and is now in the employ of Perley E. Wright.
Announcement has been received at the Old Oaken Bucket farm, which reads: “Mr. F. Perry announces the marriage of his daughter, Juanita Evelyn, to Howard Alvin Gilman, on Sunday, September 6, Sharon, Vt.” The bridegroom will be remembered as the son of Mr. and Mrs. Hattie (Polley) Gilman, and grandson of the late Mr. and Mrs. Alvin G. Polley, long-time residents of the Morning Glory farm, and nephew of Amos Polley, the present owner of the aforesaid Morning Glory farm.
There has been a shortage of rainfall thus far this year of twelve inches, compared to normal. While we have not suffered any serious damage to crops it seems to be increasingly evident that our summer’s rainfalls are diminishing. Let us all turn to and chop down the rest of our depleted timber forests, and if it does not actually tend to decrease the rainfall in that it will help check evaporation and that will help the cause along in proportion to the decreased rainfall until we can do better and we ought to be thankful that it does help the cause along this way, for if we can help or hinder moisture conditions by denuding our forests for selfish gain never mind the public welfare.
Mrs. Lucy Cook, of Lowell, an inmate of the Old Ladies’ Home for the past thirty-two years, died there on last week Tuesday evening aged 103 years, 3 months, 27 days. Mrs. Cook was born in Canada on June 5, 1822. Her father was English and she married a man of the same nationality. She came to Lowell while a very young girl and lived there ever since. She was the only one at the Old Ladies’ Home who had crossed the century mark. She had no near relatives. The funeral took place on last week Friday afternoon from the Old Ladies’ Home and was largely attended by friends. The services were conducted by Rev. Leslie C. Bockes, pastor of the Church of All Nations. The floral tributes were appropriately beautiful and numerous. Burial was in the family lot in Edson cemetery, where the committal service was read by the officiating clergyman.
The thunder and lightning accompanying the rain on last week Friday morning seemed faint, harmless and distant, but it was near enough and not so harmless as it appeared, when lightning killed a man in Boston harbor while managing a boat.
Dry weather and frosts have about finished what prospects late planting ever did have this year or any other. How many more disappointing lessons have we got to experiment with in late planting before we shall learn to plant in the spring, when nature is all equipped with special strength and inducement after the winter’s rest to get into planting gear and not wait for the dry sand droughts of summer, when nature has weakened in her spring vitality, waiting, waiting for us to recover from our fright of a spring frost, which never yet has proved as disastrous as an early autumn frost or rather many times a late summer August frost. Remember this one principle that a failure in early spring frost is a setback and a chance to replant, but a late frost is a finality from which there is no appeal or recovery.
Agricultural Fairs. The advent of the fall fair season brings to mind the agricultural fair which has been held by the people of the Congregational church for about forty years. This year it will be held on September 30. In searching for the age of this fair the writer found that a church fair was held in 1847, but the regular annual holdings began somewhere in the eighteen eighties, the writer being unable now to find the exact date. At first it was a two-day affair and the proceeds were banked against the expense of remodeling the meeting-house in 1896. In those years commercial ice cream was undreamed of, and the writer’s most vivid recollection of the preparations is of cranking out ice cream all the afternoon in the town hall cellar. No one who has done that will wonder that later I was able to crank a Ford. The writer is one of a very few left in town who participated in the first of these fairs and at every one. In looking for some record pertaining to these fairs I found that the present Ladies’ Missionary society is a successor, though not a direct descendant, of the Female Charitable society, or, as part of the time written, Charitable Female society, which was in existence in 181[? last number illegible]. W. [Leonard W. Wheeler?]
Taxation of Corporations. The Prescott mill, owned by the Massachusetts Cotton Mills of Lowell, has been sold to Edwin A. and John A. Simpson, of Lowell, who are contemplating making extensive improvements. This is the mill property of Lowell changing ownership. Several years ago the corporation sold off most of their corporation boarding houses in the interest of economy mostly, as it relates to reducing taxes. As Lowell is headed towards a $40 tax rate there will have to be more sales unless there is more efficient management. With truth does a local paper say in substance: “We still continue to elect men to manage city affairs where millions are expended that no wise businessman would for a moment think of employing to manage his private business.” Keep right on with this thriftless management that leads to excessive taxation of the real property which is the foundation for the business life of the city and we shall see some inevitable changes.
The mills recently protested against the supplementary budget on account of increased taxation. Well, why did they not protest against the law of gravitation? It would be as effective, for they do not appear to have any more influence than paupers (which they will be if putting on taxes continues or else they will vacate for elsewhere) and you can tax the space they occupied. There is something about corporations that makes them sinners for a class set apart for a special target for special anathema and taxes, for they represent condensed capital and as such pile it on and keep at it. Of course, individual capital is wicked enough.
There is something wrong with everybody’s head who has anything. If we were what we ought to be we would all be penniless paupers, but when you come to condense these several “what not ought to be” into a corporation why it is just unsomething—oh, there is not a word in the English language that expresses the tyrannical wickedness of corporations, wealth and management.
Church Notes. First church (Unitarian)—Sunday service at 4 p.m. Preacher, Rev. Frank B. Crandall, the minister. Subject, “The meeting-house.”
Services will be resumed on Sunday following the vacation period. It is hoped by the minister that the occasion may be marked by a good attendance.
The church school will reopen on the first Sunday in October.
On Sunday the preacher will deal with the place of the church in the life of the individual and of the community, indicating how both may better avail themselves of the service.
Graniteville. The Abbot Worsted soccer team, that is a member of the National Soccer league, will play its first league game at Forge Village on Saturday, September 12, with the Hub team of Boston as opponents. The Abbots have a good team this year and the game on Saturday promises to be a good one.
All the town schools opened for the fall term on Wednesday with a large attendance. The following teachers will have charge of the different grades at the Sargent school: James H. Fitzgibbons, principal, grades seven and eight; Miss Lillian G. Wright, grade six; Miss Toolan, grade five; Mrs. Blodgett, grade four; Miss Reynolds, grade three; Miss Winters, grade two; Miss Gertrude Provost, grade one.
Mr. and Mrs. T. A. Riney and family, of Moore, Pa., have been spending a few days with relatives here.
Misses Irene Reeves and Elizabeth Prinn are members of the student nurses’ class at St. John’s hospital, Lowell.
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. LeDuc and family, of Salem, were holiday visitors here.
Miss Mary C. Wall is attending the Kimball Commercial school in Lowell.
Harold Henry and Edward Harrington are on an automobile trip through New York and Connecticut.
Mr. and Mrs. H. J. Healy and Mr. and Mrs. P. Henry Harrington recently returned from a trip to the White Mountains.
Rev. John Connally has recently been appointed curate of St. Catherine’s church as assistant to the pastor, Rev. A. S. Malone. Mr. Connally assumed his new duties on last Sunday.
Twenty-fifth Anniversary. The home of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Reeves, River street, was the scene of a merry gathering on last Sunday afternoon and evening, the occasion being a celebration in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Reeves’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. A dinner was served at which over sixty relatives and friends were present from Haverhill, Newburyport, Lowell, North Chelmsford and Providence, R.I. A Forge Village orchestra furnished excellent music during the dinner. A reception was held at eight o’clock that was largely attended by townspeople who extended their best wishes to Mr. and Mrs. Reeves on their quarter century of married life. The orchestra also furnished music during the reception.
The evening was passed pleasantly, and an excellent musical program was given which proved most enjoyable. All present united in singing the old songs and many of the new ones. A buffet luncheon was served during the evening.
Mr. and Mrs. Reeves were the recipients of many beautiful presents of silver and cut glass, and before the guests departed were given a taste of the beautiful wedding cake as a memento of the happy occasion.
Taxation. We read with equal parts of interest and delight the statement of the board of assessors as it appeared in last week’s issue. They are to be thanked for “coming to their own” and explaining to the public the reasons for assessing some property so heavily in town. My experience several years ago on the board of assessors only confirms the judgment that every year there should be more time spent in “field work.” The tendency is to over-rely on the present valuation, and too much remains unchanged. We had an experience in making one of the ten-year valuations in locating the bounds at Forge pond, between Westford and Groton. The northwest end of the town, where Westford, Littleton and Groton converge, is located in the water near the Stony Brook railroad. Not having looked at the map of Westford for more than forty years we assumed that the line went directly across the pond to the south shore on the Littleton side, and we were gleefully claiming everything in sight “across the pond,” but not finding any bound there we bounded in the direction of Spectacle pond and came near claiming the earth. Then we reversed our findings and started for Forge Village, where we found the Westford-Littleton boundary at the southeast shore of the pond and several camp cottages. Thus does the town line on Forge pond between Westford and Littleton run from northwest to southeast diagonally across Forge pond as a result of our diagnosis of this diagonal line, instead of straight across the pond. We lost much of our supposed belongings in making the new valuation, but many think the present board of assessors have come the “recovery act” to portions of it.
Just where the recovery sets in and stops off I cannot seem to locate any more than I could locate direct south across the pond from the Stony Brook railroad. The southwest territory follows the Beaver Brook to the Marshall Brown place, seventy-five acres of which was assessed in Westford in 1915, as per the new valuation of that year. Whether any of it has since been annexed to the north pole has not been discovered as yet. Just where these newly surveyed in five cottages are located we can guess on apprehension that they are located on the Beaver Brook road.
Just a word on the raise in the tax rate. The survey of it guesses more of a financial shock than the paying of it, and the increased county and state taxes of $2670.22 made part of this $2.20 rate raise necessary. Let us brace ourselves cheerfully in the thought that the tax rate in Concord is $38 on a thousand and on a high valuation, and $35 in Tyngsboro, and if this does not stimulate your cheer apparatus then read the short essay entitled, “The tax rate in Revere will be 84$.”
School District System. The Rural New Yorker is het up to the boiling point in defense of the old-fashioned school district system, which is having assault and battery committed on it by powers too far removed from the people. It is much more active against any national educational bill than a hungry crow in a cornfield getting breakfast, and for less justifiable sense. The old school district system was a one-man power; he hired the teacher and you take your medicine, until the supreme court couldn’t touch the medicine being administered or fetch agent or teacher by a writ of habeas corpus. Here is a testimony of a country scholar and teacher in comparing the old school district system with present consolidated schools:
“We are now living in a country of consolidated schools, which means nice, large, comfortably equipped buildings, and the scholars are transported to and from school in comfortable trucks. How great a difference from the time when I, now fifty-four, attended school, and some few years later taught the district school. Our little one-room schoolhouse was colder than Greenland in winter, and many a morning the scholars were compelled to crowd around the big box-shaped wood-burning stove (not anthracite) to prepare their morning lessons, and hardly a minute went by without some little shaver crying with the cold. Their lunches were nearly always frozen by the time we went to school, and as there was no place to set our lunches excepting on the floor they remained frozen all day.
When we moved to the homestead county of Western Nebraska, we found ourselves even worse, for there were not many schoolhouses, and most schools were held in some absentee bachelor’s little sod shack. The one I attended was made of about twenty-four scholars ranging in age from five to seventeen years, in a little 10×12 shed roof sod house; no floor, but mother earth; one small half window, no blackboard or desks, and only long, home-made benches for seats. The schools were not graded and each scholar seemed to be judge as to when he or she graduated, although the majority ‘quit-uated.’
“At seventeen I obtained a teacher’s certificate and taught my first term of school in a district sixteen miles from home among perfect strangers. The school building was a one-room soddy with two windows, a small blackboard, but no floor and no equipment besides the blackboard, not even a piece of chalk. There was a small coal heater, but not a speck of fuel. Each family was expected to furnish the necessary books for their children, but there were only three books for the fourteen scholars — a piece of a speller, a fourth reader and Ray’s third arithmetic. I complained to the woman where I boarded of the scarcity of books, and she exclaimed, ‘Why, we ‘lowed you’d furnish the books!’ Teachers used to have a saying that ‘A good boarding place is half the battle,’ and I think I must tell you a little about mine.
“The head of the family was a shrewd old-fashioned, ‘hardshell’ Baptist preacher, who spent most of his time traveling over the country selling windmills which two or three of his grown sons erected for the purchaser. His wife had the idea that money spent for clothes, food or comforts, even bare necessities, was worse than thrown away, so the food mostly consisted of corn bread, molasses and squash boiled in water served very ‘soupy.’ There were not nearly enough knives, forks, spoons or plates to accommodate the people at meal time, and as I was a light eater I soon finished, and as soon as I had finished someone would call, ‘Teacher, if you’re done let me take your things,’ which they used without washing. There was neither boiler nor wash tub in the house.
“But to come to the school again. I finally persuaded the children’s parents to buy a few books and the district bought a box of chalk, and I was in ‘clover,’ although the dust became so thick at times that I had to keep the children in their seats while reciting.”
How do you like the picture, Mr. Rural New Yorker, as it appears in your paper? Would it be possible to educate from the national capital by a national bill and hew quite so close to primitive, crude nature? The old school district system was a twin to the old road district system with the oxen, plow and shovel mending and building roads with worn leaves and several times washed in sand and several times washed over silt with high bars across the road every few rods that would pitch you up in the direction of Mars. Wonder is that more folks did not get pitched into those canals on Mars and drowned. Both the school and road systems answered at that time – but not now. There was more up-to-date life and inspiration in the outing of consolidated schools on Whitney playground last autumn than ever happened in forty-seven years with the old school district system, which I am despising or under-valuing. But why continue to tether so close to early evolution when we are invited by all the aspirations and inspirations and discoveries of this new day to rise to the opportunities of the ideal and “hitch your wagon to a star.” Hurrah for the depth and breadth of our opportunities left at the gift of evolution.
New Advertisements
For Sale—800 R.I. Red Pullets, stock of Otis Day of Westford, pullets are 6 months old and laying now; also 50 cockerels for breeding. Apply to R. H. Wales, Apple Acres, Pepperell, Mass. Tel. 138-15.
Ayer
Real Estate Transfers. The following real estate transfers have been recorded from this vicinity recently: …
Westford, Claude L. Allen to George G. Wilbur, land on Littleton road; Claude L. Allen to Alice E. Powell, land on Sand Beach road, Claude L. Allen to Cecilia E Knight, land on Sand Beach road.
District Court. On last Friday morning the continued cases against Joseph Mailhot and others arising from the raid at Westford when John M. Mulcahy was shot, were before the court. Since their first appearance before the court Mulcahy, who was a federal prohibition agent, had died at St. John’s hospital in Lowell, and as a result of this a charge of murder was made against Joseph Mailhot. This and the other charges against him were continued until September 18 in order to give the grand jury a chance to act and it is understood that since the court session on Friday Mailhot has been indicted by the grand jury. Louise Savignac of Westford was found guilty of exposing and keeping liquor for sale in that town and was fined $100. Other complaints against her and complaints against Elizabeth Mailhot and Bernadette Bergeron were also continued to September 18. The cases of Edward Montague, John McNulty and Frank Moniz, all soldiers from Camp Devens, who had pleaded guilty to adultery, were also continued to September 18. On Friday morning Donahue and Donahue of Lowell appeared for Joseph Mailhot.
Pepperell
About Town. Last week Thursday evening was observed by Westford Grange as neighbors’ night, Bedford and Tyngsboro Granges neighboring. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Smith, Mrs. Starr, Miss Marion Starr and Miss Florence Clement, of Fitchburg, attended the meeting.