USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Somerset > History of the town of Somerset Massachusetts : Shawomet purchase 1677, incorporated 1790 > Part 13
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Julius Hood was followed by his son George who had many interests and who met halfway the age of ma- chines which ended livery stables by having, it is claimed, the first automobile in town.
Jonathan Bowers' ancient house facing a Water Street that no longer existed was exactly two hundred years old when the first cars of the Dighton, Somerset and Swansea Street Railroad rumbled by a block away in 1895.
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The new electric road which, in spite of its name, never ran to Swansea, was promoted with capital from the three towns named, from Fall River, and to some de- gree from elsewhere. Captains Cornelius and Joseph Davis were substantial investors.
Its route within the town from the Dighton line south was along Pleasant, High, Dublin, Riverside, Read and County streets to the Somerset end of Slade's Ferry Bridge. Turnouts were at Buffington's corner, the carbarn, Dublin Bridge, Harrington's at Cusick's Lane, Read's Woods at the future Montaup location-where car crews picked cherries as they waited-and Brayton's at. the western end of the bridge.
James Murphy, afterwards superintendent of the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway, was the first sup- erintendent. Edward Morrissey became superintendent in 1900 and served in that capactiy until 1918, operating the line from the Somerset carbarn built the year the line opened. He was followed by James Shea who filled out the balance of the time until the line merged in 1920 with the Bay State Company later the Eastern Massachusetts.
At the beginning, the line stopped at the Somerset end of the Slade bridge,' with passengers transferred to Main Street in Fall River by horse-drawn vehicles. In the spring of 1907, the rails crossed the bridge to Davol Street at the Mechanics Mill. Later they were extended to Presi- dent Avenue with passengers crossing above the tracks by a foot-bridge that was cold in winter, hot in summer, and a breathless climb always. After several years, the expense and engineering problems necessary for passing President Avenue under the railroad tracks were sur- mounted and Somerset could ride without changing into the center of Fall River.
Dighton Rock Park, the line's picnic and recreation plant, was completed in the fall of 1896 and opened for a few weeks before the close of the season. Its first full season began on May 30, 1897. The park operated for over twenty years, was discontinued in 1920 and sold the fol- lowing year to the Wilbur Amusement Company which
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dismantled it for lumber to construct a dance hall at Wil- bur's on the Taunton, on Riverside Avenue in Pottersville. Workers for the Wilbur Company had about half com- pleted razing the Park when they noted and warned a passing truck that its load of cotton was afire. The driver, who might have gone a hundred feet further, stopped in front of the building to investigate, the wind whipped up the blaze and blew flaming cotton upon the standing sec- tion setting it on fire and destroying it.
The "Snake Line" of the Providence and Fall River Street Railway Company opened in 1901 with its turning and twisting route across Somerset from Slade's Ferry Bridge up Brayton Avenue to Reed Street where it cross- ed the line into Swansea. Capitalized at $165,000 and built at a cost of $420,500 this line had the through service of the "Consolidated" route of the Providence, Warren and Bristol branch of the New Haven Railroad, electrified at about the same time, for competition and for its sub- urban patronage not much more that the Fall River- Swansea traffic. It bore its financial burden and its nick- name for sixteen years until Saturday, September 22. 1917, when the last Providence car was run. Partial pur- chase of the section between Fall River and Swansea by residents and business men of both communities kept that run alive for some years until it succumbed to automobile traffic and became a bus line.
The Spanish-American War, in 1898, calling out only the Regular Army and the several State Militia units, created no new regiments. There were no Somerset mem- bers at the time in "Old Company M" of Fall River, nor of the Naval Brigade Company F, both of which respond- ed. Somerset's veterans of that war, probably the last war this country will fight with a volunteer force, are Alvin Edes and Frederick R. H. Linley.
On October 10, 1908, the Brightman Street Bridge was opened. This structure of three times the capacity and a thousand times the beauty of the Slade Ferry Bridge, is 992 feet long and cost $1,014,000. During its construction an unsuccessful attempt was made to dy-
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namite it, and as there had been recent nation-wide bridge dynamitings the capture of the perpetrators was of more than local interest. Somerset's police chief Patrick Dona- hue trailed a suspected man and confronted him on a Somerset trolley car. The dynamiter, as he later proved to be, drew his revolver but Chief Donahue grappled with him, seized the weapon and plunged with him to the ground where he made the arrest.
Chief Donahue deserved the national note which this feat gave him. He was the ideal town police officer, with a rare mixture of fearlessness and tact. He was a member of the Somerset police force for thirty-five years, its chief for the latter half of that period and a resident of the town for fifty years, dying in 1927 some years after retire- ment.
Somerset opened its first public library in 1897, with quarters on Main Street. For a while the then active Village Improvement Association had good hopes of procuring the Jerathmel Bowers mansion as the town's library building, and made plans for combining, with library facilities, a series of rooms furnished in the several Som- erset periods. Mrs. William P. Hood, half-owner of the house, offered to donate her share of the building if the rest could be purchased. When this plan failed, Alfred H. Hood announced the gift of a library for the town in memory of his father, William P. Hood.
The Hood Library was dedicated on October 1, 1910, at exercises held in the Baptist church. Dr. Frank A. Shurtleff presided; Alfred H. Hood made the presentation and high school principal Evan W. D. Merrill received the keys on behalf of the Town. The address of the day was made by Reverend Father George F. Maguire.
In the year 1939, the Hood Library was enlarged by the addition of an extended reading room, and a new stack room, and an air conditioning heating plan install- ed from a bequest by former town clerk D. Borden Davis, the new reading room now being designated in honor of the donor and his wife. There are branch libraries at Somerset Centre and South Somerset. The book circula- tion in 1940 was 15,123 volumes.
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In 1911, Somerset acquired its first hotel built for hotel purposes: the Somerset Auto and Yacht Inn, famil- iarly known as Somerset Inn. This was promoted by re- ceivers of the Somerset Pottery Company, headed by John B. Hadaway and John Brighty of Boston who formed the Somerset Hotel corporation with a capital of $25,000. The Inn was located on the Somerset Pottery dock with an unsurpassed view up and down and across the Taunton River and was admirably planned and equipped.
The day of automobile patronage had not dawned, however, and after some years as a losing venture the Inn was sold to Adam W. Gifford who adapted it as his residence. It was later sold to Paul Galeno who operated it with profits sufficient to build himself the Highway Casino in Westport. The third of a series of fires destroyed the Inn.
The motto and arms of the Somerset Inn were those of the Duke of Somerset, the legend being Foy Pour De- voir-Faith for Duty. This is the motto also of the Somer- set Hotel of Boston.
Reckoned in the industrial scene of these years must be the astounding growth which was taking place in Fall River. Somerset money and ability had a prominent part in this, and Fall River's cotton mill boom is a part of this town's history.
In the two years 1871 and 1872, Fall River built fif- teen new mills, eleven of them in the single year 1872. Nine million dollars was added to its taxable valuation in one year. New jobs created by the fifteen mills num- bered 6000. Between 1870 and 1874 the population in- creased 15,000 to a total 43,000. Three brick schoolhouses were built in a single year. Flint Village and Border City grew up over night. A railroad was built to New Bedford. Daily steamers ran to Providence, Newport, Block Island and New York. Sixteen more mills were built before 1893: a total of thirty-one mills in twenty-one years. In the decade 1880 to 1890, valuations increased twenty millions; in the next decade, twenty millions more.
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Somerset's Slade and Brayton families became indus- trial and financial leaders in the incredibly growing city.
For well on to two centuries, the Brayton's had devel- oped their steadily expanding acres until the Point was largely theirs in fact as well as in name. Since its build- ing in 1714, the Brayton homestead, with its successor built in 1796, has had unbroken occupation by Brayton's. From the first Preserved, who early presided at the Pur- chasers' meetings, through each succeeding generation, Brayton's held positions of responsibility and trust in the town. Their family line included the Winslow's, Perry's, Bowers', Gray's, Read's, Anthony's, Chace's, Slade's, Eddy's and others prominent in Somerset and elsewhere.
They now turned the abilities of this long heritage upon the opportunities of the new Fall River and soon became one of its most extensive mill-owning groups, and ultimately the city's leading bankers, with the First National Bank and the B. M. C. Durfee Trust Company, now merged. Notable gifts to their new community in the form of the B. M. C. Durfee High School, and the First Congregational Church on Rock Street, together with support to other churches, institutions and move- ments, have done much to build Fall River.
William Lawton Slade, possibly Somerset's richest individual at that period, owner of Slade's Ferry, chief owner of a fleet of vessels, and early investor in the mills; Jonathan Slade, also with wide and wealthy interests: and John P. Slade, grown from orphan to leading lawyer and a large insurance business in the new city; were representatives of the line of Somerset's William Slade of 1780 who centered their interests now in Fall River.
Slade resources almost without other contributors built the Slade Mill. Their participation in other mills was extensive. The financial interests of William Slade lay in the Fall River National Bank; those of Jonathan in the Metacomet.
Both of these families remained in a real sense Som- erset families, many members retaining residences for
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year-round or summer homes. Other of the town's busi- ness leaders, as well as of its professinoal and salaried classes, shared interests between the two communities. William P. Hood built a home on High Street where may be seen at the entrance some of the former red sandstone retaining wall of the Jerathmel Bowers house, which he then owned. Job M. Leonard, after residence in the Colonel Richard Borden house, built the house now occupied by the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River.
Farming has never ceased to be a major industry of the town. The wagons which began before the Revolu- tion to carry Somerset produce to Providence and Boston have become trucks but they still roll on, leaving local farms regularly through most of the year in time to secure good stands before the city markets open in the morning.
Bristol County is the second county in the state in value of farm products. Somerset contributes substantial- ly to this leadership. Much of the truck farming is now done by Portuguese families which began during this period to take up the old farms of the town, and now con- stitute a large proportion of its agricultural population.
The industrial scene included Somerset's first high school, built in 1885 on the bluffs between the bay and South Street. This was a two-story wooden building, the largest town building up to that time, of which the upper floor was designed as a school and the lower as a town hall.
The town hall of the previous era had been located near the town's geographical center in Pottersville, the town office in a small bulding on the property of Elisha Slade owned by him and rented to the town. This town office was superseded by the rental of the Mt. Hope's brick office, when that company closed and was so used until the construction of the present Town Office build- ing in 1927 when the former Mt. Hope building became the Water Works office.
The high school at the outset offered only the first two years of high school courses, the balance being paid
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for by the town at Fall River or Taunton high school as the pupil might elect. Closing of the Iron Works, with resulting diminution of pupils, and several contributing circumstances, determined the town to discontinue main- tenance of a high school and all high school pupils were, during the years 1907 and 1908, transported to the neigh- boring cities for their entire four years' course. In 1909, however, the expense of this plan led to the reopening of a two year course in the South Street building, followed in a few years by the full four-class course.
By 1928 the school had outgrown the building. Two rooms were added. The school still grew in numbers until in 1933 it was forced to go on a two-shift basis. This was the situation when the school year of 1934-1935 closed. Forty-eight hours later, on June 30, 1935, the building, with an even fifty years of service completed, took fire and was totally destroyed with all its contents, including a library of two thousand books.
Crowded out of the South Street building by the grow- ing school, town meetings were transferred to Riverside Hall on Riverside Avenue. When they grew too large for this the Town rented Wilbur's dance hall for the purpose. The burning of Wilbur's added itself to the high school's destruction as an agent of progress. Town meeting, like the high school sessions, was transferred for the year 1936 to the Village School building, with the 1937 March Meeting opening the present town auditorium at the new high school.
WORLD WAR MEMORIAL - WITH SOMERSET POTTERY CO. OFFICE IN BACKGROUND
THE WORLD WAR
THE United States entered the World War on April 6, 1917,
and Congress, after declaring for weeks that there would be no compulsory military service, on May 10 passed the universal draft law which provided that every man in the country of ages twenty-one to thirty must register in what President Wilson called selective volunteering.
Registration day was set for June 5, the registration offices opening at six in the morning. Before midnight 9,649,938, according to figures published two weeks later, had enrolled.
The number registering from Somerset was 226. Som- erset was part of the Bristol County suburban registration district comprising Dighton, Easton, Mansfield, Norton, Raynham, Rehoboth, Seekonk, Somerset and Swansea, with Chairman Franklin S. Simmons the local representative. Each registrant was given a card certifying his registration, and a number by which he was thereafter known in the national records.
On July 20, the drawing of numbers for the first and second drafts took place and the number 258 became for some weeks famous as the first to be drawn. Four hundred numbers were chosen on this date for a first contingent, to be immediately called, and four hundred as a second con- tingent for later summons.
Somerset numbers pulled from the wheel of fate at Washington were five in the first four hundred: Lawrence Ryan, Frederick J. Johnson, Ernest A. Simcock, Thomas L. Smith and Frederick J. Wall. Eight Somerset men were in the second quota: Ernest L. Peirce, Joseph E. Gallagher, Matthew Hoole, Jr., Emile Mendoza, William Parsons, Harold J. Regan, August Pacheco and John T. Griffin.
A fourth month elapsed before the first draft was called for the examination which took place on August 8 at
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Mansfield. Rejections for physical unfitness were many. The principle was established that a married man with dependents who might lack adequate support in his absence should be exempted. Appeals were allowed, and citizens were directed to appeal on behalf of draftees who should have asked exemption for family reasons and failed to. A civilian, referred to in military circles as a "citizen liaison," was selected in each community with the duty of making such appeals and of otherwise maintaining contact between the army and the home.
It was five and a half months after the declaration of war when, on September 21, 1917, the first draft unit left for the training camps. Fifteen men of Somerset were in this contingent, boarding the train already filled with Fall River draftees, going to Mansfield for checking by the county board there, and thence to Camp Devens at Ayer where they slept that night in the long, wooden, steam- heated barracks in which they spent the bitter cold winter of 1917.
Meanwhile, by the end of June two contingents of United States Regulars and Marines had landed in France ; and the First Liberty Loan of three billion dollars had been oversubscribed by three hundred million. The second, for five billion, was announced to begin its campaign October first, the "Y Service Drive" for war camp social centers was opened, and the Four Minute Men speakers at theatres and other gatherings had been organized
In September, at a meeting held at the Hood Library on the night of September 28, the Somerset Soldiers' Aid Committee was formed to raise funds for the aid of soldiers, with a goal of $250. On October 5, the second draft entrained for Camp Devens.
By then, the masts of the great schooner Luther Little were towering above the shores of Brayton Point and there was an estimate that Somerset's first war launching would take place on Thanksgiving Day.
This was the second Luther Little. The world's need of war shipping had brought to Reed Brothers in early 1916
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a contract for a 415 ton schooner to be named for one of the partners of the Boston firm which had ordered it. The vessel was well advanced when it caught fire in February of 1917 and was destroyed. Shortly thereafter, the new- formed firm of Crowninshield Shipbuilding Corporation bought the Reed yard, built additional buildings, installed much machinery, fenced the plant with high barbed wire and started to reconstruct the Luther Little.
After two postponements the Luther Little II, as she was called at the yard, went down the ways on December 20, christened by Barbara Hoyt, daughter of Luther Little's partner. The Crowninshield's started at once to build a sister ship, the Hesper.
August 30 of 1917 saw the last of the Davis Brothers' large ship holdings sold when Captain Cornelius S. Davis transferred three schooners of the Atlantic Shipping Com- pany, of which he was treasurer and manager, to a New York firm. The vessels were the schooners Fannie Prescott, 404 tons; the Hope Sherwood, 686 tons; and the Florence Howard, 863 tons. The Davis' schooner Clara Davis, 680 tons, had already been sold to a French firm. A foreign news note in October reported the Fannie Prescott torpedoed in British waters.
Taxes were increased, three-cent postage was decreed, coal conservation administrators were appointed, in Somer- set Fernald L. Hanson ; and sugar rations established, with Adam W. Gifford the local authority.
Winter passed with record cold. The phrases Liberty Motor, Dollar a Year Man, War Camp Community became familiar. Salvation Army and Knights of Columbus tents and "huts" for social service to enlisted men were added to those of the Y.M.C.A. in camps and in public squares of cities frequented by soldiers and sailors on leave. Week-end contingents of boys in khaki or blue, home from Devens, Newport or elsewhere, were a part of the scene. Churches acted as agencies for securing Sunday dinner or week-end invitations for sailors from Newport. Service flags appeared in stores and shops and in home windows. The jitney-bus plagued the trolley lines and puzzled the lawmakers. Every- body knitted.
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On Easter Sunday, March 31, the country set its clocks ahead for the first Daylight Saving Time. The next day, April first, word came that American soldiers, this country's first great volunteer force at the front, were moving towards the Somme River. The total American army in this country and Europe was 1,500,000. It was planned that this number should be in France by the end of the year, with another million ready or in training on this side.
To mark the first anniversary of our entrance into the war, the Third Liberty Loan drive was announced to begin on April 6. This was for three billions, making the total of war loans to that date eight billions. The United States had loaned $4,900,000,000 to European allies during the year. The third loan "went over the top" in less than a month. The newly formed Massachusetts State Guard, with numerous Somerset men in the three Fall River companies, paraded in a Liberty Loan demonstration at Boston.
In May, the movement for war gardens to increase the food supply was under way, with Somerset assigned a quota of 250 acres which volunteers were asked to add to the area of vegetable gardens normally cultivated in the town. Red Cross chapters were active, and the month saw the first national Red Cross drive.
May also saw a substantial decrease in the number of men home for furloughs and post cards began to arrive with army post office cancellations saying that the writers were en route to undesignated ports in Europe, or had safely arrived. On May 24, the War Department announced that we had 650,000 men in France.
On June 11, the number was announced as 700,000; on June 15, 800,000; on June 22, 900,000. June saw Amer- icans moving up towards Chateau Thierry. On July 8, it was reported that we had landed 300,000 men in France during June and had 260,000 on the battle line.
At home, June found sugar rationed at three pounds per month per person; War Savings Stamps were put on sale ; three ships were torpedoed off New York harbor by a German submarine and the naval authorities at Newport
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forbade ships to leave Narragansett Bay. A large sign was put at the Crowinshield yard telling that it was the Presi- dent's desire to launch the Hesper by July 4 and every employe was asked to cooperate towards that end.
At Washington on June 27 Secretary of War Newton D. Baker drew twelve hundred numbers rolled up in capsules from a glass bowl in a Senate Building committee room, each number being expected to draft a thousand men or a total of 1,200,000. This draft he called "America's Class of 1918."
The launching of the Hesper was set for July 4. The crowds on both shores and the yachts and observation craft in the bay off Brayton's Point resembled a regatta day. The bottle of champagne was broken, the Hesper moved a few feet down the ways and stopped, and nothing would move it further. On July 11, a lesser crowd saw the second attempt at launching. The Hesper moved until about twenty feet of her length was in the water and stopped again. Tugs pulled and hauled for forty-one days following, without result. At eight o'clock on the morning of August 22, with nobody to see, the Hesper of her own accord launched herself. No damage or strain from the efforts to drag her free was apparent.
Following the two schooners, the Crowninshield Com- pany received a contract from the United States Shipping Board for the construction of six wooden seagoing tugs of 150-foot length, and later a second contract for six more of the same size and type. After the war the yard was active for a while building the propeller Annabelle S. for the Singer Sewing Machine Company of New York; then, on a dozen small sailing boats of the knockabout class, a two- masted schooner christened the Fame, a yawl, and a few other craft, along with repairs to various vessels including the Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Line steamboats until finally the quiet of the age of great steamers settled over this cradle of wooden ships. The plant at the present time is virtually idle, but contains a large amount of equipment in good condition for use.
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In July of 1918, an additional 300,000 soldiers sailed for France. The Chateau Thierry battle was on. A German U-boat sank three barges and battered a tug off the shore of Orleans on the Cape. Summer residents bought the kitchenware of the tug for souvenirs at a sale for the benefit of the Red Cross. The Government took over the railroads, under supervision of the Treasury Department ; and on July 30 the Post Office Department took over the telephone and telegraph lines. The monthly sugar allowance was cut to two pounds per person. On July 28, the war was four years old.
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