USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Somerset > History of the town of Somerset Massachusetts : Shawomet purchase 1677, incorporated 1790 > Part 15
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At his death, at the age of forty-one, Clifford Hol- land was referred to as "the most noted tunnel builder
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in the world." He was Somerset-born and Somerset bred being, like Russell H. Leonard, Preston H. Hood and Al- fred W. Tallman, a grandson of William P. Hood and a great grandson of Deacon Nathan Davis. He is buried in Palmer Street Cemetery.
In this period of growth in every direction Somerset acquired its first hospital, the Medico-Chi building of Dr. J. W. Bowker, on County Street. Until the close of the Civil War medical help for the community came from Fall River in the horse and buggy of the general prac- titioner. In 1865, Dr. Frank A. Shurtleff became the town's first resident physician and, as his avocation, the founder of the town's modern education system, for many years the school board chairman, and the initiator of Scmerset's high school. He died in 1910.
Second of Somerset's own physicians was Dr. Frank A. Morrill, who settled here in 1876 and although retired is still living here in 1940. Dr. John W. Bowker is the town's third resident physician and the first to maintain a clinic. On County Street is also the office of Dr. Arthur I.a Salle, a member of the Union Hospital staff in Fall River, who chose Somerset as his residence in 1933. Dr. G. Richard Moore of Riverside Avenue is on the staff of St. Anne's hospital.
Somerset's first bank dates also from this period, in the Somerset Community Credit Union founded in 1936 with its own building on County Street, occupied in 1937. Allen L. Donovan is treasurer and manager of the Union and its officers are John A. Grandfield, president and Charles W. McClellan, vice president, with fifteen direc- tors.
The year 1932 saw Somerset for the first time with its own newspaper, the "Spectator", founded by Sidney L. Hathaway, Jr., and now published from its own plant, a building of Colonial architecture on County Street, fol- lowing destruction of the first plant on Riverside Avenue by the hurricane of 1938. A previous weekly published by Samuel E. Fiske of Fall River from 1885 to 1898 as the "Somerset Times" was a paper issued for ten sur-
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rounding towns under various titles but with the same news items in all.
In church institutions the town in this period grew rapidly, with the Catholic Church of St. John of God, started in 1928 under Father Augusto L. Furtado; the Catholic Chapel of St. Thomas More; as recounted in another chapter ; and the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour.
The Church of Our Saviour was founded in 1905 by Reverend Edward Benedict, rector of Christ Church in Swansea, as a mission of that church. The first meeting was held on Sunday afternoon, May 14, of that year in the barn of Valentine Lawton transformed by burlapped floors and walls draped with white cloth. Among the con- gregation were the families of John Ratcliffe, Joseph Bridge, John Brighty, Reuben Ramsay, George Butcher, and Valentine Lawton.
Subsequently, the site on Pratt Avenue, Somerset Centre, was secured and the present chapel built and opened on Sunday, March 3, 1907. The Reverend Bene- dict's benediction at the close of the dedication ceremonies conducted that day by visiting rectors was his first and last priestly act in the new building he had inspired as his death occurred the following Friday.
Reverend Linden H. White, rector of St. James' in Fall River, served as minister in charge until 1909, when Reverend J. Wynne Jones took charge of the Swansea parent church.
Father Jones' pastorate extended through twenty- nine years until his death in 1938 when the chapel organized with Edward Chatterton, Sr., warden; Harold Shannon, clerk; Samuel J. Marsh, treasurer; and John R. Yungblut, theological student, as temporary pastor until the Reverend Sherrill B. Smith as rector of Christ Church assumed charge.
The Church was incorporated in 1940, released its property from the original trust, and transferred it to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Arthur L. Clegg is warden, Harold Shannon, clerk.
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On April 1, 1928, the late Bishop of Fall River, Dan- iel F. Feehan, established the parish of St. John of God to provide for the spiritual needs of the Catholic people of the South Somerset section. At the same time, the Rev- erend Augusto L. Furtado, who had been for several years assistant at St. Michael's Church in Fall River, was ap- pointed Pastor of the newly formed parish.
Construction of the Church on Brayton Avenue was begun on August 13th, 1929 and in the meanwhile Mass was celebrated in the old town hall. The Church which is in the Renaissance style is composed of two parts; the upper Church proper and a basement where parish socials are held. The first religious services were held in the new church on November 25, 1929. Shortly thereafter a residence across from the Church on Brayton Avenue was purchased and was renovated to serve as a rectory.
Solemn dedication of the Church and blessing of the corner stone took place on Sunday, August 14, 1930, by the Most Reverend James E. Cassidy, D.D., L.L.D. Bishop of Fall River, in the presence of a large congregation, numerous members of the clergy and Town Selectmen.
Today the parish numbers about nine hundred and fifty people; and there are several religious sodalities connected with the church, such as the Holy Name Society and the Holy Rosary Confraternity. In addition to the religious organizations, there is a Catholic Women's Club which interests itself in all church and civic matters con- cerning the welfare of the parish. And recently there has been formed a Boy's Scout Troop in the parish.
November of 1918 brought news of a final chapter in Somerset's long story of the seas when it became known that the whaling bark Alice Knowles, owned by Captain William Hegarty of Somerset, had sunk in a hurricane off Brazil with the Captain, his son Clinton, and all on board but two, lost. The Alice Knowles was well known along Somerset waterfront where she had been accus- tomed to berth between voyages at the Nail Mill wharf at the foot of School Street. Interest in the enterprise of Captain Hegarty and in the romantic aspects of his
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revival of the ancient trade of whaling was strong and his success with a former vessel, the brig Sullivan, had justified him.
He set forth in his final voyage in the Alice Knowles, bought from owners in New Bedford and fitted there, on April 20, 1915; and had taken 3200 barrels of oil, wortlı $45,000, when a hurricane struck him on April 3, three years later. According to the story of two Cape Verde crew members who were picked up after three days of clinging to a stove boat, the Alice Knowles careened under the force of the hurricane and foundered.
On June 6, 1936, the schooner La Forest L. Simmons, which was built in 1909 by Charles D. Luther, Simmons and a group of other Somerset men who are listed in the vessel registrations at the end of this history, towed down the river from Taunton where she had lately been owned by Joseph E. Warner, paused a few days for a coat of paint at the Crowinshield yard, and sailed away for Vir- ginia under a new owner, Captain D. B. Wessels. She was the last commercial sailing vessel owned along the Taun- ton.
Until September 21, 1938, the hail storm of September 13, 1920 was Somerset's most severe storm in living mem- ory. This struck the Village at about eleven o'clock in the morning and in a few minutes ruined all standing crops, demolished hothouses and broke more than a thousand panes of glass in the vicinity-sixty in the car barn, seventeen in the Davis Parish House, twenty-two in the Dr. Bowker residence, and in other homes in like pro- portion including schoolrooms where teachers and pupils were injured by flying glass. Hailstones were shovelled up to fill icechests.
The hurricane and tidal wave of 1938 cost Somerset seven lives by drowning and $40,000 of taxable property, besides incalculable loss of household furniture and treas- ures, crops, shrubbery and boats and waterfront equip-
A southerly wind beginning about noon rose steadily to cyclone velocity which by late afternoon reached 120 miles an hour and drove before it up the bay and river with incredible rapidity a tidal wave at a level some
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twenty feet above normal high water. Houses were floated away or smashed to kindling wood. Trees by thousands were twisted apart or uprooted. Complete darkness from cut-off power and a stinging wind full of salt spray added to the confusion.
Amid wholesale destruction of all pleasure craft two large steam vessels, the freighter New Haven and the oil tanker Phoenix were driven on Somerset shores. The New Haven, torn from the Fall River Line docks, landed on Brayton Point too high to float and was sold to wreckers who dismantled and burned it for its metal. The Phoenix, driven across the river from the Shell Company dock, drove at the Fernald Hanson house with whistle shrieking warning, veered, and went ashore on Riverside Avenue so close to the residence of Adam W. Gifford that its dragging anchor chain demolished the front porch. The stranded vessel, with its prow towering above the road, was the subject of nation-wide newsreels and pictures and was visited by thousands until a salvage company floated it successfully. The salvagers subsequently sold it into commission again.
Characterized by insurance authorities as the most costly and fatal single disaster the country has ever sus- tained, the hurricane visited its full fury on Somerset, with the added damage of a tidal wave driven to greater height than elsewhere by the narrowing shores of the bay.
After conducting Fourth of July programs of grow- ing proportions for several years, the Somerset Fire De- partment in 1930 initiated the annual Horse Show which in the four years following grew in size and quality until it became a fixture of importance in the mind of the public and horse owners and demonstrated once more the ability of Somerset to do anything it undertakes.
The Show in its first year was staged under the lead- ership of a Fire Department committee with Adam W. Gifford, chairman; George R. Smith, treasurer; and William F. Lynch, secretary. This central committee was assisted by virtually every men's organization in the town, who devoted months of time to the details of preparation
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and presented before a gathering of thousands of specta- tors from near and far a Horse Show which it seemed incredible that a volunteer organization or a town of Somerset's size could produce.
In the final show of 1935, the personnel of the com- mittees, which totalled in all 87 members, was:
Organization: Adam W. Gifford, chairman; Harold J. Regan, treasurer; Paul E. Buffington, assistant treas- urer; William F. Lynch, secretary. Executive: Fernald L. Hanson, Paul E. Buffington, W. Seymour Gray, J. Wil- liam Nolan, Herbert Bridge, Arthur H. Plant. Horse Show: Daniel J. Sullivan, chairman; Rene J. Herbert, Honorary vice chairman; Preston H. Hood, vice chairman; Earl P. Chase, chairman ring committee; Harold J. Regan, treas- urer; Ernest L. Peirce, secretary.
Other committees were: Program: Frederick E. Bab- bitt, chairman; James C. Butterworth, associate chairman. Parking: Herbert L. Hall and Jesse Correa. Concessions: Arthur H. Plant, John Cross and Earl Chase. Traffic: Ed- ward Simmons and William J. Ashton. Tickets: Harry W. Hale, chairman; W. Seymour Gray, associate chairman; L. Boyle, James Clifton, F. R. H. Linley, E. L. Mathew- son. Fireworks: Albert Berard, chairman; Arthur Emery, John Sullivan, Charles Riley. Aiding in these and other activities of preparation and administration was a gen- eral committee of fifty-five members.
In 1939, the Post Office Department approved the name of Somerset Centre to replace Pottersville as a post office address to facilitate the delivery of mail in the central section of the town by letter carriers from the Fall River post office. Growth of Somerset population to the figure required for the establishment of a central carrier office with its own building in the town is con- fidently expected. In the meantime, "Somerset Centre" carries the name of the town to the world while "Potters- ville" remains the name of local choice and old associa- tions.
SELECTMEN IN THE SESQUICENTENNIAL YEAR
FERNALD L. HANSON, Chairman
ADAM W. GIFFORD
ISRAEL T. ALMY
SOMERSET IN 1940
SOMERSET in 1940 has a population of 6216 and an as- sessed valuation of $12,934,000. It has 1368 homes, 42 miles of streets and 32 miles of water mains.
Its schools number six, including the high school, with 836 pupils of elementary grade and 265 of high school grade: a total of 1101; and 47 teachers including supervisors of music, drawing and manual training. There is also a school physician, a school nurse and a free school dental clinic. Investment in school buildings and equip- ment is approximately $479,500. The school budget for the present year is $107,283.
The fire department has five pieces of apparatus con- sisting of three automobile pumpers and two service trucks. Two pumpers are located in a central fire station on Riverside Avenue belonging to the town, and one at Plant's garage at South Street and Riverside Avenue. The central station in addition to garage and service space has a meeting room for members of the department. The alarm system is electrically operated with a siren located on Riverside Avenue. The department has four drivers on duty at all times in shifts, and 75 volunteer members list- ed.
Officers of the Somerset Fire Department are: Adam W. Gifford, chief, who has served the town in that office for 30 years; Herbert C. Bridge, Arthur H. Plant, James B. Clifton, Donald R. Calder and Robert Parsons, deputy chiefs; Leroy E. Brown, captain; John F. Parsons, Ernest R. Sanborn, George D. Packard, lieutenants. Ernest E. Sanborn is clerk.
The police department has three officers: William H. Thompson, William J. Ashton and J. William Nolan; ten constables, and a chief who, in accordance with the statutes, is the chairman of the Board of Selectmen,
195
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HISTORY OF SOMERSET
Fernald L. Hanson. Police quarters are located in the town office building on Wood Street. All officers are provided with patrol cars which in 1940 are being equipped with radio receivers to be operated temporarily in conjunction with the Fall River police radio system, with probably later a complete town unit. The police department is also equipped with a pulmotor located at police headquarters.
In addition to school buildings, town office building and central fire station, the town owns and operates the water pumping station and watchman's residence at the South Dighton well field, two reservoir standpipes; the water department office, formerly the Mt. Hope Iron Works office, on Main Street; G. A. R. Hall on Avon Street, Legion Hall on Roosevelt Avenue; the old town hall on County Street, which houses the W.P.A. sewing project, the town farm and buildings on Read Street, and the South Somerset Improvement Club building on Wil- bur Avenue, which was the old Wilbur School.
Riverside Hall, former Pottersville fire station, is also town property and provides a public meeting hall on the ground floor and quarters recently renovated and furnish- ed on the second floor as the Pottersville branch of the public library. The Wilbur branch library is located in the Wilbur Avenue school.
The Hood Memorial Library and D. Borden Davis memorial reading room on High Street in the Village is a completely modern building of attractive and well- lighted interior and air-conditioned heating. Its books in 1940 number 8,861 volumes.
The highway department, housed at the old engine house at the foot of School Street, owns and operates a truck, a steam roller, a tractor and four snowplows with which it consistently maintains a high reputation among surrounding towns for early and complete snow removal.
Recreational facilities, in addition to the ample play- grounds surrounding each schoolhouse, include public bathing beaches at the Village and at Somerset Centre, the Pottersville playground at the corner of Wood and County Streets, the Read Street playground, the high
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SOMERSET IN 1940
school athletic field, and the Peirce's Field playground, off South Street.
The Pottersville playground, often called the Horse Show Grounds, is equipped with tennis courts, a baseball and football field, and grandstand seating 1200. The Read Street playground has tennis courts, a baseball dia- mond and a skating pool. Plans for baseball diamond, tennis courts and a bathing beach are in preparation for Peirce's Field, which was purchased by the town in 1940 for development as the town's central playground.
The high school athletic field, lying west of the school building, comprises separate baseball diamond and foot- ball gridiron with sloping embankments on which 1940 may see the first unit of a grandstand installed. The field plan provides also for tennis courts.
Of the five elementary school buildings, four: the Village, Pottersville, South and Wilbur, house eight grades; the West Hill school has five. Concentration of pupils for the benefits of group administration and stim- ulation, begun actively in 1914, was complete in 1930 when the last one-room school buildings, the Sherman and the Elm Street schools, were discontinued. The primary edu- cation system of Somerset is now housed in modern build- ings, with the best and the newest in educational equip- ment and books and directed by a teaching staff who are universally graduates of higher educational institutions.
The high school, a building of three floors, contains seven class rooms, study hall, library, drawing and sew- ing room, sound-proof typewriting room, gas and electri- cally equipped cooking and domestic science room, cafe- teria kitchen and dining room, men and women's teachers' rooms, athletic instructor's office, boys' and girls' shower and dressing rooms, visiting team's dressing and shower room, administrative office, mechanic arts room, equipped with power woodworking machinery, chemical and phy- sical laboratory, and combination gymnasium and auditor- ium. The auditorium is provided with stage, scenery, stage curtains, footlights, disappearing silvered motion picture screen, fixed seating for 300 and movable seating on the
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playing and dance floor for 350 more; and a complete equipment of entrances, coatrooms and public rooms in- dependent of the school.
The building is heated by the vacuum steam system and equipped with intercommunicating telephone and loud-speaker systems, and electric signal clock. An elec- tric clock on the front pediment of the building, presented to the town by William S. Hathaway in memory of his father Ira A. Hathaway, is self-regulating and lighted dur- ing hours of darkness by automatic switch control.
The school system is in charge of a school board of three members elected for three years; and administered by a superintendent of schools who since 1922 has been H. Freeman Bates. Superintendent Bates' years of ad- ministration have seen the Somerset school system's greatest era of growth in plant, equipment and method.
The town officers of Somerset in its sesquicentennial year are:
Selectmen: Fernald L. Hanson, chairman; Adam W. Gifford, Israel T. Almy.
Assessors: Daniel P. Shove, chairman; C. Seward Simmons, Paul E. Buffington.
Town Clerk and Treasurer: Harold J. Regan.
Tax Collector: Frederick S. Clarner.
Auditor: Lloyd A. Davis.
School Committee: Preston H. Hood, Charles P. King, Annie D. Gardner.
Finance Committee: Edward Synan, chairman; Cornelius D. Sullivan, secretary; Ernest E. Bence, Wil- liam Parsons, Louis P. Gamache, Harrison W. George, Frederick L. Barlow, Joseph F. Foley, W. Seymour Gray.
Moderator: William F. Lynch.
Superintendent of Schools: H. Freeman Bates.
Superintendent of Streets: Charles Riley.
Sealer of Standards: Daniel J. Sullivan.
Inspector of Animals: Edward J. Welch. Inspector of Slaughtering: John J. Reagan.
Board of Registrars: Harold J. Regan, clerk, Edward M. Synan, Jesse Correa, Albert J. Berard.
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Trustees of Public Library : Preston H. Hood, chair- man; Annie T. Costello, Jennie A. Sprague, Patrick Mc- Mahon, Clara E. Padlford, Alice Abbe Smith.
Water Commissioners: Charles H. Tompkins, chair- man; Francis J. McCarty, Albert E. Brown.
Playground and Recreation Commissioners: John Cross, Sr., Francis X. Lynch, Harold Blackledge, James J. Harrington, Jr., William B. Clifton.
The present year marks the twenty-seventh conse- cutive year of service to the town by Fernald L. Hanson and Adam W. Gifford as selectmen, Mr. Hanson having also served two one-year terms on the school committee previous to his first year as selectman. These terms of twenty-seven years cover more than one-sixth the total years since Somerset was incorporated, a period identical with Somerset's Golden Age of growth as a modern town.
Second in present term of service to the town is Daniel P. Shove as assessor, who was elected to that office first in 1921, and has been continuously reelected since that time, a total of nineteen years.
Frederick S. Clarner, tax collector for the twelve years since 1928, had a previous term of three years as selectman, and three one-year terms on the school board, giving him a total of eighteen years.
Harold J. Regan, in the fourteenth year of service as town clerk and treasurer since his first election in 1927, is in the tradition not only Somerset's modern sta- bility of town government, but of the town's history throughout its one hundred and fifty years. He is the seventh town clerk to serve the town for ten years or more, and only the seventeenth to hold the office in a century and a half. The list of Somerset's town clerks is a roster of names distinguished in its history. They have been :
Jonathan Bowers, 1790-1814; Nathan Weaver, 1814- 1815; James Peirce 1815-1816; Clark Purington, 1816- 1817; Nathan Weaver, 1817-1823; Wheaton Luther, 1823- 1828; Asa Peirce, 1828-1831; Wheaton Luther, 1831-1832; Samuel Gibbs, 1832-1833; John D. Cartwright, 1833-1861;
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Leonard C. Pierce, 1861-1865; Elbridge G. Paull, 1865-re- signed; Jonathan B. Slade, 1865-1869; John D. Cart- wright, 1869-1871 (thirty years in all) ; John G. Tinkham, 1871-1875; Chester R. Field, 1875-1888; Elisha Slade, Jr., 1888-1899; D. Borden Davis, 1899-1914; G. Walter Sim- mons, 1914-1927; Harold J. Regan, 1927 -.
The high record for service to the town throughout its history appears to belong to Charles Riley, now super- intendent of streets, who was appointed tree warden in 1903 and in the present year completes thirty-seven con- secutive years in that and his later highway department positions.
Somerset in 1940 looks back 319 years to the coming of the first White man in its territory; 263 years to the Purchase, and 260 to its first settler; 150 years to its incorporation. And it looks ahead. Three eras in its his- tory have been praised as its "great days." Statistics and a glance over its New England community of hillside and shore testify that the present is the best era of all. An even greater future seems assured on the foundations of so great a past and so continuing a vigor.
THE CHURCHES
SOUTH SOMERSET METHODIST EPISCOPAL
IN its issue of the first week of April, 1889, the Fall River
Record published a Somerset story which is worth preserving for its editorial frankness as well as an ex- ample of the leisurely and informative journalism of the times: -
"We prepared an article for last week's Record in regard to the destruction by fire of the M. E. Church, in South Somerset, but the copy became mislaid and did not appear," the editor confesses with apparent faith that readers will know how things go in weekly newspaper offices. And he continues with sympathy and good cheer:
"While the fire is much to be regretted-as is the case with most such disasters-the church people have the consolation to know that, in putting up another edi- fice, they can accomodate themselves with conveniences they have long felt the need of. The building just burned was erected forty years ago. Its predecessor was built in 1804. John Brayton, of South Somerset, and Caleb Chase, of Swansea, living in Two-Mile Purchase, were mainly instrumental in putting up the first building, furnishing most of the timber. The material was mostly hauled to the locality by Joseph Gray. We are ignorant of the name of the designer and builder.
"In the early history of the old meeting-house, people came from long distances to attend the services. There was much sociability and hospitality in those times, and friends coming from Rehoboth, Seekonk, North Swansea, Somerset Village and other places, were in the habit of attending the morning meeting and dining with acquaint- ances, and then going to church in the afternoon and re- turning home in the evening.
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