USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Acton > History of the town of Acton > Part 35
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Since the water was always shallow in these fords they were ideal places in which to wash a buggy or to fill up water barrels. The farmer who had a loose tire took pains to drive through the ford as frequently as possible and thereby swell the felly tight against it. Needless to say, the local youngsters too small to be allowed to accompany deep water swimmers scampered about ad libitum in the summer months. The old timers who dug out these watering places were public benefactors indeed.
One other result was the impetus given to one of Acton's well known enterprises, namely, the Greenough Construction Company. Mr. George Greenough came to Acton from Nova Scotia and over a series of years established himself in a combination farming and haulage business of modest dimensions. In the meantime he had married Miss Sarah Edwards and they had raised two sons into the teen age. The Nagog water project was his first major contract and was followed by the Acton water works, a similar service for the city of Hartford and installation of the streets and drives for the Loomis Argicultural College at Windsor, Connecticut. Thereafter highway contracts in Maine and Massachusetts became routine. In 1919 Mr. Greenough, with twelve other New England contractors, met in Bos- ton and formed the New England Road Builders Association. In 1922 the elder son, Frank, returned from the war and the Greenough Construction Company was formed. Subsequently, when the younger son, Ernest, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology, he too came into the business. In 1942 the elder Mr. Green- ough retired and the firm became Greenough Brothers Incorporated with Mr. Frank Greenough taking over the direction of the Assabet Sand and Gravel Company, a branch enterprise.
In 1912 a group of less than twenty young mothers of Acton Centre
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formed a club with the objective of providing a forum for the dis- cussion of child rearing. For two years they met at the homes of diverse members. In 1915 other ladies who were not eligible for membership in such an organization put forth the suggestion of forming a women's club. Mrs. Oliver D. Wood, secretary of the original mother's club, and Mrs. Luther Conant 3rd, then a resi- dent of Acton Centre, enthusiastically fostered the project. As a consequence all interested ladies were invited to convene at the Conant homestead. Forty one responded to the invitation and thereupon the present day Acton Centre Women's Club was organized with Miss Charlotte Conant as president.
The club first held its meetings in the vestry of the Congregational church. At the end of four years the home of the late Mrs. John White (now the home of the Misses Torrey and Lincoln) was pur- chased. There the group met for five years at which time the house was sold and the proceeds put into the purchase of the old chapel, which, after being extensively altered emerged as the present com- modious building.
Mrs. John M. Brown contributed greatly to the project and the assembly hall is named for her. The silver urns and the flat silver were donations from Mrs. Isabella Griffin and Mrs. Goward.
With proper ceremonials the mortgage was burned in 1940.
The diverse activities of the club are, as was the case with the analogous club at West Acton, well known as to type and much too extensive for inclusion in this volume.
On July 22, 1913 Acton had reason to be grateful to those men who had fought for and brought about the installation of an adequate water supply. A half century previous the Centre had been all but wiped out and only by sheer luck did the town escape during the intervening years. At about eleven in the morning of the day men- tioned a fire started in the barn on the estate of Luke Blanchard on Windsor Ave. in West Acton. This was entirely destroyed and the two houses on the estate were damaged as well as the fire house next door.
Embers carried by a strong wind ignited the Dr. Hutchins property just across the railroad tracks. Here the barn was destroyed along with the ell of the house and the main house gutted. A row of buildings including an ice house, milk house, and a storehouse in the rear of the depot together with several freight cars were next consumed and only with the greatest effort was the station saved.
A coal shed and contents and the cold storage plant and a portion of the barrel factory also went up in flames while the newly built St. Elizabeth's church, not yet dedicated, was saved after being ignited numerous times.
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The two tenement dwelling next to the schoolhouse lost its roof and was otherwise badly damaged. The barn of W. C. Gardner across from the school was destroyed and the house damaged.
Over and above this many incipient roof fires were extinguished by owners. Outside assistance was called from Concord, Maynard and Fitchburg. A special train from the latter city brought a steamer, hose wagon, two pairs of horses and a number of men. Had it not been for the newly installed water system the whole of the village east of the railroad might well have been eliminated.
In 1914 the town for the first time printed its annual report for the year ending December 31st and thus cleared the way for the introduction of fiscal and political years that coincided with the calendar years.
With town water an established fact, the West Acton fire freshly in mind, and World War I already in process the public interest turned toward something tangible in the matter of fire protection. At the March meeting of 1915 the selectmen were instructed to organ- ize the fire department, appoint precinct engineers, and establish the pay for the same. In accordance with these instructions William H. Kingsley was appointed Chief. The engineers were as follows; Precinct 1, Dexter L. Spinney ; Arthur F. Harris, Emerick P. Gates; Precinct 2, Nelson J. Cole, Edward C. Page, Warren H. Jones; Precinct 3, Edgar T. Rice, A. B. Parker, W. J. Costello.
An innovation was also made in another direction during the year. Upon motion of Mr. Luther Conant the town voted to support the Misses Susan and Martha Oliver, "in the manner in which they now live". Superficially this has no meaning for the Acton newcomer. The case deserves some special comment since it establishes the fact that Acton was in the vanguard with respect to considerate care of the unfortunate.
These two elderly spinsters lived in the house on Great Road now occupied by Mrs. Alpheus Baxter. Susan, then aged ninety three (she died at ninety six) had been in a wheel chair since her early woman- hood. Some thirty years before her death she slipped from the chair and broke her hip. Nevertheless she was a cheerful and happy person who always looked on the bright side of life. The sister Martha handled the household affairs as long as she was able but eventually she too became bedridden. The brother, Ephraim, the former wage earner for the three, was burned to death in 1887 while attempting to rescue his horses from the burning barn. A nurse cared for the two ladies until their funds were exhausted whereupon Acton voted a rousing YEA upon the motion as put by Mr. Conant.
As evidencee that this was no sporadic move the town voted in 1919 to sell the town farm and apply the sixteen thousand five hundred
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dollars to some other project, in this case the high school fund.
By 1917 the conflict in Europe had become something more than a spectacle to be watched from afar with unconcern. At the annual town meeting on March 5th Allen Brooks Parker, Horace F. Tuttle, and James McGreen were appointed as a committee to draw up a set of resolutions bearing upon the world crisis. Thereafter the town voted unanimously in favor of the following:
Resolved: That we, the citizens of Acton, Mass., in annual town meeting assembled, assure the President of the United States that his efforts to preserve peace and protect the lives and property of our citizens upon the high seas, and to uphold the rights of the nation to conduct its commerce un- molested shall and do have our support, and we assure the President that the spirit prevailing among us today is the same as was manifested by our "Minute Men of '75", and our "Patriots of '61".
Voted that an engrossed copy, bearing the seal of the town be sent to the President by the moderator and the town clerk.
With growth of the fire department there came the inevitable question concerning the purchase of trucks for both building and forest service. An article to this effect did not prevail whereupon Mrs. Gertrude Daniels, through her daughter Mrs. Isabella Griffin, offered her Chalmers touring car to be equipped as a fire truck, together with a driver, provided the truck be stored in her garage at North Acton.
The town immediately and unanimously accepted the gift and ap- propriated three hundred and fifty dollars for the necessary equip- ment.
Mrs. Daniels first became identified with Acton when her brother Dr. Frank Barker began his practice at the Centre. She had formerly lived in Colorado and Pittsfield, Mass. and had come to the town merely as a visitor with her two small children Isabella and Howard. Eventually she moved to Acton, bought the Bellows Farm on Davis Road, and remained an ardent and active citizen until the time of her death.
The year 1917 marks the origin of the movement that shortly became known casually as the Acton Fair. In the spring the town had chosen a committee1 to improve the grounds surrounding the town hall and this move seemed to bring to a head an idea that had been hatching in the minds of certain members of the Grange and other civic minded citizens. The open field lying directly behind the Library and the town hall was an inviting prospect in that it was centrally located and ample in size for any anticipated crowd.
1 Edwin A. Phalen, Luther Conant, 3rd, Horace F. Tuttle.
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Consequently the Acton Agricultural Association was formed and started with Mr. James B. Tuttle as president for the years 1917-18- 19. From the outset the project suceeded far beyond the anticipations of the sponsors. On this account, after operating with hired tents for a time, the Association incorporated, sold stock, and erected permanent buildings. A list of the presidents with the years of service is given herewith
Clarence N. Goward
1920-21-28-31-32
George A. Richardson
1922-23-29-33-34-36
W. Stuart Allen
1924-25
Frank A. Merriam 1926-27
Murray Brown
1930
Major Charles S. Coulter
1935
Carl A. Johnson 1936-37
In its hey-day the Acton Fair was known throughout the whole countryside and was rated by the State Grange and the Agricultural bureaus as equal to any for towns of comparable size. Eventually the prime movers no longer had the energy to cope with the prodigious labors involved and retired from the scene. With their passing, however, the spirit seemed to be gone and within a few years the project languished and expired.
In due course the town needed housing facilities for its highway department and Mr. Stuart Allen, being then on the finance committee, interested influential persons in the idea that the land behind the town hall should belong to the town. He then persuaded the largest stock- holders in the Agricultural Association to return to the town such checks as they might get from the sale of the assets of the Association. In 1941 the town passed the necessary legislation to buy the land under the given conditions for the use of the highway department. In this way Acton procured at a very reasonable figure the land in question and the Association was able to close its books at a hundred cents on the dollar. In the process the town obtained in 1944 a playground now known as the Goward Playground. It was fenced in 1946.
Considerable time has been spent in foregoing pages with respect to the details of the town's participation in the various wars of the country's history. World War I initiated a completely new era in armed conflict and the attitude toward it. Heretofore wars have been regarded as unusual deviations from the standard pattern of life. The number actually engaged was a minor percentage of the population. During World War I, however, and certainly ever since, the soldiers of the United States have been on foreign soil for one reason or another. The volunteer system is a thing of the past; thousands of women are in the services and in the industries, and the whole national psychology has altered beyond recognition. Some few wistfully expect
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matters to change but forces have been let loose in Asia that bode no peace in any predictable future. The colonial systems of Spain, France, England and other European countries sowed the wind cen- turies ago and it has been the misfortune of this generattion to be around to reap the whirlwind.
Any discussion of Acton's war activities in modern times with detail comparable to that accorded the Revolutionary or the Civil wars is a task too extensive for a single volume such as this. Thirty years of military record would be of encyclopedic dimensions.
The list of the town's citizens who served in World War I appears in Appendix XXI and on the memorial tablet on Acton Common. Of the one hundred and eleven on that list two were women, namely, Mary E. Coughlin and Edith E. Frost. Howard Quimby, for whom Quimby Square in South Acton is named, was the only fatality. He died of tubercular pleurisy while awaiting transportation home. He was a graduate of the Concord High School of the class of 1911 and of Brown University in 1915. Previous to his enlistment in the armed forces he had worked as a civil engineer for the Pennsylvania Rail- road. His military affiliation was Battery A, 304th Field Artillery, 77th Division.
At a special town meeting held June 29, 1919 the following commit- tee, consisting of five persons from each precinct, was chosen to make proper arrangements for welcoming the Acton contingent upon its return: William H. Kingsley, Warren H. Jones, Charles J. Holton, Gertrude C. Daniels, Clara Sawyer, Albert R. Beach, Charlotte Conant, Lulu M. Clark, Helen A. Knowlton, James B. Tuttle, Fred L. Burke, Rachel A. Haynes, Horace F. Tuttle, Frank W. Hoit, Bertram D. Hall.
In March of 1920 the town voted a sum of money for the purpose of paying a director for demonstration work in agriculture and home economics and for the supervision of boys' and girls' club work.
Simultaneously it was decided by the town to accept the fund hitherto known as the West Acton Firemen's Relief Fund and choose a board of three to administer the same.
On August 26, 1920 the nineteenth amendment to the constitution, known as the Women's Sufferage Law became operative. In Acton it had the following results. In the election four years previous Hughes and Fairbanks (Republican) polled 316 votes; Wilson and Marshall (Democrat) 105, with 12 scattering. Under the new sufferage law of 1920 the presidential vote was Harding and Coolidge (Republican) 704; Cox and Roosevelt (Democrat) 88; Debs and Stedman (Social- ist) 2, with fifteen blanks.
The Cox and Roosevelt vote was considerably out of line percent- agewise for the town in general. As a usual thing the Republican vote
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is between seventy and seventy five per cent of the total. Conclusive evidence of this is that in three elections held in 1940, 1944, 1948 out of a total vote of 4458 for president the Republican total was 3310 and the Democratic total 1048.
Another very minor event took place in 1920 that then seemed wholly incapable of influencing the life of the town but time has proved otherwise. During that year there arrived upon the scene John Pederson and his wife from Wisconsin whither they had migrated from Norway some dozen years or more previously. For a time the new arrival worked for Mr. Arthur Blanchard in the apple business. Eventually he purchased a second hand truck and set out for himself in a modest fashion. Before long he was hauling paper for the Pep- perell Paper Company. In 1934 he purchased the little cottage on Newtown Road and with expanding success as the result of integrity and acumen began to build up the business to what it has now become. Mr. Pederson died in 1939. After his death the widow and her large family carried on the business and entered into new contracts with other paper companies and occasionally took on a furniture moving job. Today, with five huge trailers, four tractors, and two standard sized trucks the name Pederson is seen on all the roads of New Eng- land. Along with success in business the family has grown to maturity, married, and taken an important place in the local affairs.
The mention of the apple industry brings to mind the fact that at the turn of the century and the decade preceding, Acton and the adjacent portions of Middlesex County were prodigious producers. From Westford, Littleton, Boxborough, Harvard, Bolton, Stow, Con- cord and Sudbury went a steady stream to the docks of Boston for shipment to Europe. In one season Mr. Luke Blanchard shipped sixty thousand barrels. Added to this was the immense mass of fruit that was absorbed locally. It was not unusual for fifteen hundred bushels to leave Acton in the evening by horse drawn wagons, some- times bearing a hundred and twenty five bushels to a load, to be on hand at the Faneuil Hall market at daybreak. On top of this were the tons of culls that went to the cider mills.
Aside from the mass production each homestead had in those days, before the present insect pests had established themselves, a kitchen orchard of a couple of dozen trees, augmented by grapes, currants, and diverse berries. Therein one could find brands no longer familiar; Porter and Gravenstein for superb jelly and pie; August Sweet and American Beauty for baking; Astrachan, Williams, and River for early season munching; Russet for apple juice and home made cider; Bellefleur, Northern Spy, Winesap, Hubbardston, and of course the basic Baldwin for autumn and winter use.
The great body of the export crop was the Baldwin - with one
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wierd exception. Far down on the list in point of excellence was a nondescript, reddish, bastard offshoot from certain wild strains known as the Ben Davis. In fact its excellence was non-existent. It looked attractive but was corky and tasteless. No country boy would eat one. Even the faces of the cider mill operators took on a grim look when a load of juiceless Ben Davis hauled up to the door. The breed did have, however, one paramount virtue from the standpoint of the shipper - it was well nigh rot proof. It merely shrank and eventually sublimated into invisibility.
For some unfathomable cause it appealed to the British market in preferance to an attractive fruit such as the Pippin or the Rhode Island Greening. The Britons were convinced that to be good an apple had to be on the red side. So - with a knowing smirk, and a sort of feeling that here was a chance to continue the fight at Concord Bridge, and get paid for it, the Middlesex farmers raised the indestructable and sorry Ben Davis to gratify the perverted whims of the export trade.
Needless to say, the tremendous apple industry, seasonal though it was, merely served to augment the already heavy activity of the two major railway offices of the town. Mr. Clarence D. Cram, who for forty years was associated with the West Acton station as telegrapher and station agent had frequently, in addition to the general freight occasioned by the stores and markets, the grain mill, the cider mills, the pail factory, and the milk car that was loaded each morning, the possibility of from fourteen to twenty carloads of apples each night.
Simultaneously Miss Clara Sawyer at South Acton, who was associ- ated with the railway business for forty five years, almost all of them in the capacity of freight agent, saw some twenty five or thirty thous- and bushels a year shipped to the local markets along with the numerous mill products ever pouring out of the village during its days as an industrial center.
During approximately an equal period Mr. Will Warren served as the station agent.
While on the subject of freight East and North Acton deserve a word. They could offer no competition in the tonnage on the apple trade but they did handle a tremendous amount of three items probably only rarely appearing on the way-bills at the West and South, namely, quarried stone, cucumbers, and hoops.
The activities connected with the Harris quarries have already been covered. The huge greenhouses of Mr. Henry M. Smith, located on both sides of the track near the present residence of Mr. Woodbine were a real institution at the turn of the century and thereafter. There Mr. Smith and his sons Charles and Albert labored with finesse and success and shipped thousands of boxes of cucumbers and other winter
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raised products to the Boston market via the East Acton depot.
The hoop business will need clarification for the modern resident. It has nothing to do with feminine apparel nor with the days of the crinoline. It has to do with incipient lumbering and with machinery and sawdust and by means of it Acton was in the citrus trade in a vicarious fashion.
Each year thousands of poles of the prolific young birch (properly pronounced hoop poles but colloquially mentioned as hoopoles) about two or three inches in diameter and ten or twelve feet long were cut from the Acton pastures and forests. From these were sawed narrow slabs having the bark intact which were bound in bundles of a hundred and shipped to Florida to be soaked to limpness in water and nailed about the citrus fruit crates bound for points all over the country. Wherever the Florida crop was sent a part of Acton went with it.
An hermaphroditic little scoot train consisting of freight cars, flat cars, and one passenger coach bringing up the rear, used to pick up the hoops and carry them to the larger assembling points for shipment south. One Acton resident well recalls spending four hours between Nashua and Concord Junction because of the delays along the route to load on hoops.
For years the Brooks brothers, Bert, Charlie, and George turned out thousands of hoops at the old Brooks place at the corner of Great Road and Strawberry Hill Road. Subsequently the farm was bought by Mr. and Mrs. John Brown and the hoop business moved to the Thomas Thorp place now occupied by Mr. Carl Schontag.
By this time the elder brother George had become well nigh blind but he could still manipulate a razor sharp trimming hatchet and even upon occasion pull the pole away from the buzzing saw while the inexperienced observer suffered with goose pimples and high blood pressure.
The trimmed cores were sold to the townspeople for bean poles or were cut up for firewood, and amazing firewood they made, as any one acquainted with birch will well know.
Mr. Allen Smith was likewise engaged in the same industry for many years but eventually moved to Littleton in pursuit of new areas for cutting and continued operations there.
Despite the fact that Acton almost without exception voted on the dry side of the liquor question there is but one recorded instance where it publicly endeavored to influence the state authorities in the matter. At the March meeting of 1921, upon a motion by Mrs. Lily Case, who had seen long service in the Baptist missions in Burma, the town passed a resolution urging the legislature to enact laws in harmony with the Volstead Act for the enforcement of the eighteenth
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amendment and had copies sent to the chairman of the committee on Legal Affairs and to the senator and representative of the local district.
In 1922 Acton moved one more notch urbanward by naming its streets. A committee of three from each precinct embraced the following: J. Sidney White, Horace F. Tuttle, Charlotte Conant, Anson C. Piper, Lewis Hastings, Alice Stiles, Allen Brooks Parker, Waldo E. Whitcomb, Alice M. Carlisle. The street signs were erected in 1925.
On May 5, 1922 West Acton nearly had another holocaust. The Davis-King Garage, which had burned out eight years previously with a loss of twelve automobiles and trucks together with the Holton barber shop, caught fire again on the above date and before the "all out" signal could be sounded the garage, the Windsor Hotel, the storage shed in the rear and a tenement house belonging to Hobart Mead had vanished in smoke Bad as was the result the answer again was ample water supply. Otherwise the whole village might have gone; certainly would have a generation previous.
In a small town such as Acton it is most unusual for a body to be found that cannot be identified. There have been two such cases ac- cording to the police record. A man about forty was found in 1922 beside the railway track and about five years later another man was found drowned in Fort Pond Brook.
In the latter part of the year, November 13th, Mr. Luther Conant died. He was the last surviving member of the corporate board named by Mr. Wilde at the time of the building of the Memorial Library, and had served as its president since that time in addition to his innumerable other services. In commenting upon his demise in the town report Mr. Horace F. Tuttle, writing on behalf of the Library Trustees, observes that Mr. Conant spent his whole life on the ancestral farm, that for forty years he presided as moderator of Acton town meetings. He was twice chosen as representative to the State Legislature and that he was an ardent lover of his native place, proud of its patriotic history, and always sought to maintain its best traditions as a citizen.
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