USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Melrose > Melrose, Massachusetts, 1900-1950; commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the town of Melrose and the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the city of Melrose > Part 11
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of Massachusetts. Their business increasing, they took over a building at the rear of 12, 14 and 16 Essex Street, and then a sec- ond one. When Walter E. Smith died, Rufus W. Smith took in his son, Rufus W. Smith, Jr., as a partner, and in 1910 built the pres- ent building at 467-469 Main Street, with a fifty-car capacity, and gave up the shoe repair business. An additional building for fifty more cars became necessary and was built in the rear of the first building. In 1920 Rufus W. Smith, Sr. died, and in 1938 Edwin C. Gill, a partner, who had worked for the firm since a boy, also died. The present business in automobile sales and service is carried on with G. F. Tebbetts as president and Rufus W. Smith as treasurer.
The Benson Coal Company began as S. E. Benson and Com- pany, founded by Seth E. Benson in 1871 when no coal yard existed in Melrose, coal being brought from Malden and Charlestown. In 1878 the yard was located on Tremont Street north of the rail- road station at a time when the boardwalk on Tremont Street sometimes floated. In 1891 George M. Hall, a former employee, returned to assist in the business, became a partner, and after Mr. Benson's death in 1903, acquired the business. Upon his death in 1942 the property and business went into the hands of the Old Colony Trust Company as trustees for the Hall estate. The business was then purchased by Richard Hoyt, who sold it in 1943 to Frank E. Keniston and associates and incorporated the company as the Benson Coal Company.
In 1943 Mr. Keniston purchased the Goss Fuels, Inc., a fuel firm originally established by C. B. and F. H. Goss on Essex Street south of the Melrose station and which had been acquired by Chester McGuire. On July 1, 1949, the Goss and Benson com- panies were reincorporated as the BENSON-Goss FUELS, INC., deal- ing in coal and oil fuels, with Mr. Keniston as president and treasurer.
John Larrabee, first a clerk with Dr. E. R. Knight, became a pharmacist in 1867 and continued until 1890, when he took into partnership a former clerk and established the drug firm of Larrabee and Stearns at 505 Main Street. In 1913 he retired and the firm name was changed to STEARNS AND HILL. On April 4, 1949, the concern was purchased by Raymond J. Abel, owner of the Hunter Drug Store in Malden, and his father, Elwood S. Abel became manager of the Melrose store, continuing the name of Stearns and Hill and a prescription business of ninety-two years.
The PIONEER GROCERY at 44 Sanford Street was established
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in 1893 by Dennis and Jeremiah Lucey on Tappan Street. It was later moved back of Bowes Market on Cleveland Street, and then to the present location at the corner of Tappan and Sanford Streets. Upon the death of Jeremiah Lucey in 1930, ownership and man- agement were retained by Dennis Lucey.
Although Pearsons Perfect Pictures were shown in Melrose in 1906 by Lyman H. Howe, first in the old Franklin Hall on Essex Street and then in the City Hall, it was not until November 11, 1912, that the Melrose Theater was opened in the old Lewis Building at 443 Main Street, with Benjamin Harrison Green as owner and C. W. Woodbury as manager. In 1915 the theater was taken over by the Ramsdell Brothers of Malden with Harry Norton as manager. Because of fire on November 2, 1917, the theater was closed and on August 12, 1918, the new owner, William Bradstreet, Jr., also operator of the Auditorium Theater in Malden, took over, until the Globe Theater management under Powers and Woodhess, Inc., became the new owners. In 1924 a $15,000 Robert Morton organ was installed, later sold in 1948 to the Most Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenwood, Wakefield. On September 1, 1929, the theater was renovated and opened for sound film, and the management was changed, Edward M. Dangel retiring, and the MELROSE THEATRE COMPANY taking over, with Irving I. Green as owner and Robert B. Wenner as manager. On March 12, 1931, the theater suffered another fire, and was closed until June 1931, when it reopened with Irving I. Green still the owner and George A. Haley as manager. In 1932 Mr. Haley was transferred to the Coolidge Theater in Watertown, and Harold C. Ward became manager, and has so remained.
On May 11, 1856, the Atlantic Telephone and Telegraph Company, later the Western Union, was granted the right to run their lines through Melrose. Later, in 1881, the NEW ENGLAND TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY served Melrose telephone subscribers from the Malden exchange. In 1893 a separate Mel- rose exchange was established at 514 Main Street on the second floor. In 1903 an improved type of exchange was established at 496 Main Street, which was moved on March 23, 1907, to a build- ing on West Foster Street. When the dial system was installed on June 1, 1948, the central exchange was moved to Malden, and the building sold to the City of Melrose for use as a police station. The business office at 417 Main Street was established on October 1, 1929, and handled about eight thousand subscribers in 1949.
The MALDEN AND MELROSE GAS LIGHT COMPANY first fur-
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nished gas, mainly for lighting, to Melrose in 1860, and in Octo- ber 1886 the MALDEN ELECTRIC COMPANY installed electric street lighting in Melrose and in 1887 incandescent house and store lighting. On July 18, 1931, both companies came under control by the New England Power Company, later changed to the New England Electric System, on January 1, 1948, but retaining their names and separate identity. Their joint business office and sales- room in Melrose is at 499 Main Street.
The first modern apartment house in Melrose, the Colonial, situated at the corner of Main Street and West Wyoming Avenue, containing six six-room apartments, was built by R. H. and F. U. Sircom and was opened January 4, 1902.
In 1781 Joseph Barrett bought the estate of John Gould on the north side of Porter Street, then called Barrett Lane. The old Gould house was enlarged and here he passed the remainder of his days. The property of thirty-one acres was later bought by Charles Porter, who sold it to Albert M. Smith. Following his death the property was sold in 1928 to the late Chester S. Patten, who subdivided it into house lots, and put through Lincoln Street from Porter Street to the Lynn Fells Parkway. The area is now all built up in attractive residences and the old Gould house is gone.
The most recent building project is Upham Park on the Kiley Farm property on Upham Street east of Ardsmoor Road. Some one hundred twenty-four large house lots are included in the plan, with a good class of residences being built by the Robert Stone Company.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE CEMETERIES
In 1828 the inhabitants of Malden bought an acre and a half of land on the east, side of Main Street, near Upham Street, as a burying ground for North Malden, as Melrose was then known. As this cemetery became too small for the increasing population, a tract of about twenty-one acres was bought of Joseph Lynde in 1856, south of Boston Rock and northeast of Pine Banks Park, and in 1857 was dedicated as the Wyoming Cemetery. On April 9, 1887, it was voted to purchase the farm of Charles Pratt, covering an adjoining twenty-eight acres, for $10,000, making a total of forty-nine acres. A house and three acres were reserved for the use of Mr. Pratt during his lifetime. Following his death, as the whole area was not then needed, the Pratt farmhouse, with a part of the land, was used for the support of the town indigent until 1918, when the Overseers of the Poor decided it was cheaper to board out the members in private families than to maintain the farm.
Later, twelve additional acres were purchased, making the present total area of sixty-one acres, of which all but a few acres are improved. Total interments to January 1, 1949, numbered fourteen thousand six hundred ninety-five, with one thousand seven hundred thirty-four lots and two thousand five hundred sixty-five single graves under perpetual care.
In 1889 the Town voted to consider the removal of bodies from the Old Burying Ground on Main Street to the new Wyo- ming Cemetery. No action was taken, however, until June 22, 1891, when the Town voted to exchange lots for those who desired them in the new cemetery. Of the four hundred thirty- two bodies in the Old Burying Ground, seventy-nine were with- out known relatives, and were removed by the Town, and the land reserved for public use. It is now the site of the Calvin Coolidge School.
Wyoming Cemetery came under the control of the City of Melrose in 1900, and R. A. Leavitt was made superintendent, serving until his death on April 26, 1937. His son Linwood A. Leavitt followed as superintendent until his retirement in March 1942. He was followed by the present superintendent, Howard O. Milton. In 1947 the small pond near the office building was filled
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in, as the drainage was poor and it became stagnant and noisome in late summer.
In the extreme southeastern corner of the City, adjoining the Newbury Turnpike, are five small Jewish cemeteries, owned by the Agun Das Achim Congregation of Malden, the Israel Hadrath of Boston, the Cemetery Association of Omikchty, the Inde- pendent Wilkomin and the Workman's Circle. The Netherlands Cemetery Association of Dorchester also owns a small cemetery on Linwood Avenue.
WYOMING CEMETERY
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE EVENTS
In a community of homes such as Melrose, dramatic events are not to be expected. The most startling event in the history of Melrose occurred in 1904 when a street car struck a box contain- ing fifty pounds of dynamite, and the shock was felt for a radius of ten miles.
On the evening of September 21, the box-vestibuled street car No. 14 of the Boston and Northern Street Railway left Scollay Square with Winfield Rowe of Howard Street, Saugus, as motor- man and Edward Bates Blanchard of Grove Street, Melrose, as conductor. When they arrived at Main Street and Wyoming Ave- nue at 7.53 P.M., the car struck the dynamite, which exploded. Russell's lunchroom in the Masonic building was wrecked, and Irving Russell knocked unconscious. Nearly every window in the near-by Colonial apartment house was broken, and the residences of Charles L. Parker and George H. Dearborn both badly dam- aged. The Masonic Temple suffered one thousand dollars' worth of damage.
The car was demolished and six persons were killed instantly. From the offices of Dr. Martin T. Sullivan and Dr. E. C. Fish, and the residences of George H. Dearborn, R. H. Sircom and Fred Buttrick, the sufferers were carried to the hospital or their homes, while the undertaking parlor of F. T. Churchill on Main Street became a temporary morgue.
Nine persons were killed : Mr. and Mrs. Edward Haynes and their three-year-old daughter Marian of Fairmount Street, Mel- rose; Winfield F. Rowe, the motorman, of Howard Street; Miss Ethel Merrill of 27 Sargent Street, Melrose; Mrs. Ada Crouch of Stoneham; Edwin A. Stowe of South Boston; Dr. Frederick Marshall of Boston; and Dr. Malcolm S. Mclellan of Melrose Highlands. In addition forty-seven persons were injured.
Later investigation showed that two hundred pounds of dynamite Grade 75 had been ordered by the Public Works Depart- ment of the City of Melrose from the Perry Seamans Company of Boston, and had been brought from the storage hulks in the har- bor to Commercial Wharf by the firm of Edward G. Tutein and Company, in four boxes of fifty pounds each. The sticks were laid in the boxes with little packing. Roy Fenton, a driver of the East-
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man Express Company, owned by J. T. Fitzgerald, placed them on the top of other goods on his wagon and started for Melrose. He stopped at Malden Bridge and borrowed a rope to bind the dynamite boxes onto the wagon for greater security, and stopped againat Malden Square to investigate the lashings, which seemed secure. Evidently he was mistaken, for one of the boxes fell off at Wyoming Avenue, without the driver noticing. Neither did the motorman, apparently, notice the obstruction on the track. The street lights were off because it was a moonlight night, but there were deep shadows at that corner.
The coroner's inquest found Percy C. Hawkins, the foreman for the Eastman Express Company, and Roy E. Fenton, the driver, criminally negligent, but the Grand Jury failed to find any indict- ment against either one. Suits were entered in the Superior Civil Court in Cambridge against the Boston and Northern Railway for neglect in keeping the car tracks clear and against the City of Melrose for poor lighting, but at the trial in June 1909 Judge Brown rendered a verdict in a test case in favor of the Street Rail- way Company, which otherwise might have lost some two mil- lion dollars in damages. This judgment was later confirmed in July 1911 by the full bench of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. At least one advantage came from the event, in the signing by Governor Douglas in April 1905 of a law providing for greater security in handling the transportation of dynamite and other explosives.
Of less tragic character, but an event that aroused the keen interest of most Melrosians in 1909, was the arrival in April of a man who claimed he was Daniel Blake Russell, the long absent son of Daniel Russell, who had died in 1906, leaving an estate of some $500,000 to his two sons, William E. Russell, living in Mel- rose, and Daniel Blake Russell, should the latter be found. His whereabouts had been unknown for twenty-five years. The claim- ant, immediately given the popular title of "Dakota Dan," was accompanied by Charles J. Traxler of Minneapolis and said he owned extensive ranches in Dickinson, North Dakota.
As he was suffering from a cold, he left, but returned in September accompanied by Senator L. R. Simpson of Dickinson as counsel, and presented thirty witnesses who claimed to have known him as Daniel Russell in his youth. William Russell refused to recognize him as a brother.
The case was then complicated by the appearance of another claimant from Fresno, California, popularly named "Fresno Dan"
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to distinguish him from the first claimant. The case opened in the East Cambridge Probate Court on September 20, 1909, with Senator Simpson and Judge Sheldon of Boston for the plaintiff, and the firms of Nason and Potter with Berry and Upton for the estate. William Russell refused to appear. On September 30 the plaintiff's counsel rested their case, and the estate then produced the ex-chief of Massena, New York, who declared "Dakota Dan" to be James Delbert Rousseau of Massena, born in Bombay, New York.
The trial lasted one hundred eighty-four days, covered twenty-five thousand pages of testimony from more than two hundred witnesses, and on April 15, 1910, Judge Lawton declared that "Dakota Dan's" claim was false and that "Fresno Dan" was the true heir. William Russell also accepted "Fresno Dan" as his true and long lost brother. He stated that "Dakota Dan" had the wrong physique and facial contours. The property under suit was mainly Boston real estate. Ferdinand B. Almy was executor.
In October 1929 a letter was received by the Boston American from "Dakota Dan," then living in Harlowton, Montana, stat- ing that he hoped to live long enough to return to Melrose to prove his claim to the Russell estate.
The Melrose Home Sector of February 18, 1932, published a second letter from "Dakota Dan" received by James Cassell, stating that he was seventy years of age, had had two legs broken in an automobile accident, and was then living in Gig Harbor, Washington. He recalled their days as boys together in Melrose, and sent regards to other friends.
Edward J. Lord, clerk of the criminal section of the Boston Municipal Court and chairman of the Memorial Hall Trustees in Melrose, also received a letter from "Dakota Dan" in June 1932, saying his eyesight was poor and that two years earlier he had broken two legs in an automobile accident.
A B-25 twin engine bomber from Grenier Field, Manchester, New Hampshire, on a routine flight to Boston, developed engine trouble and crashed on the eighth fairway of Mt. Hood Golf Course on September 24, 1945. Only the pilot, Major Doak A. Weston, was killed, the remainder of the crew having bailed out. Major Weston was given the Distinguished Flying Cross post- humously, delivered to his widow in California, for having saved the other members of the crew at fatal risk to himself.
A second plane crash occurred June 28, 1949, in the heavily
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wooded Penny Hill Road area on the Malden-Melrose line, in which two Malden men, the pilot Eugene W. McDonald and passenger John A. Sheridan, were badly hurt. They were flying a two-seater Aeronica plane rented from the Revere Airways, Inc., Muller Airport, Revere. The Melrose police and firemen from Malden, Everett and Revere responded to the alarm and aided in recovering the men from the wreckage and spraying water on the gasoline soaked ground. The injured men were taken to the Malden Hospital.
While not occurring in Melrose, it might be mentioned that Thomas T. Prentis, American Consul in St. Pierre, Martinique, was killed with his wife and two daughters when Mont Pelée erupted on May 8, 1902. Born in Michigan in 1844, he came to Melrose in 1894 and lived here for six years before being appointed to the post at St. Pierre in 1900.
Except for a few criminal cases and fires elsewhere noted, and two or three minor earthquakes, such as those reported on Janu- ary 7 and February 28, 1925, doing no damage and only rattling dishes and doors, there is little more of interest to note other then some freaks of weather.
The winter of 1933-1934 produced some very low tempera- tures, such as twenty below zero Fahrenheit on December 30, 1933, and again at the Wyoming station on February 18, 1934, with twenty-five below on the East Side, seventeen below at Melrose Center and ten below at noontime, with the schools closed on account of the temperature. On February 20 of the same year a heavy blizzard struck the City, worse than the blizzards of 1898 and 1926.
On September 18, 1936, the worst tropical storm in forty years tore down trees and wires on Boardman Avenue, and dis- turbed the electric service. This was outdone by the hurricane that struck Melrose on September 21, 1938, when hundreds of trees were uprooted, roofs of small buildings blown away, porches damaged and electric and telephone wires brought down. There was no school the following day. Members of Headquarters Company, 3d Battalion, 182d Infantry, were called out for patrol duty, with all reserve police. The American Legion Post fur- nished seventy-five men as traffic officers to detour automobiles from roads blocked by falling trees. The only fire alarm was due to a spark from wires fallen on trees in East Foster Street. The Department of Public Works was kept busy clearing away the debris, and at the following meeting of the Aldermen Mayor
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Perkins called for an allotment of $50,000 to cover the extra cost.
On September 14, 1944, Melrose was lashed by a ninety- mile-an-hour gale with torrential rain, but escaped a hurricane. Damage was confined to broken wires, trees and roofs to a much less degree than in the storm of 1938. Some twenty-three trees were blown down, but by 6.00 A.M. the following day the streets were again open and accessible. No deaths or personal injuries were reported.
On September 2, 1947, a freak lightning, wind and rain storm swept through the Laurel Street section with considerable damage to houses, trees and wires, but the damage was limited to that area.
While the winter of 1947-1948 did not produce the excep- tional low temperatures, it made up for it by a snowfall that broke records for over fifty years. There was an exceptionally heavy snowfall on December 26, 1947, requiring two bulldozers, seventeen plows and a tractor working two days and a night continuously, and on December 31 another heavy storm occurred. The total snowfall for the winter was reported as 92.5 inches. The extra cost to the City was $40,000 plus $15,600 for new equipment.
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THE MOUNT HOOD TOWER
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE PERSONALITIES
It has been difficult to choose from the many persons who have contributed to the growth and development of Melrose those worthy of special mention, and the following list is based mainly upon the availability of the information given.
CHARLES H. ADAMS was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, in 1859 and came to Melrose in 1887, where he makes his home on Rowe Street. He represented Melrose in the State Legislature from 1899 until his retirement July 19, 1903. He was Mayor of Melrose from 1915 to 1921, a member of the School Committee for twenty-one years and chairman of the Park Department in 1895. He was a member of the Republican State Committee; on the State Board of Charities for fifteen years; a member of the State Commission on the Necessities of Life for five years, and chairman for three years; a member of the committee that erected the North Reading, Westfield and two other State Sanitaria; publisher of the Melrose Journal from 1890 to 1905; business man- ager of the Boston Daily Advertiser and Evening Record; trustee and later vice-president of the Melrose Savings Bank; a director of the Melrose Hospital since 1907; a director of the Melrose Trust Company since 1892; and he is also a Mason.
Mr. Adams was tendered a testimonial reception and dinner on June 24, 1947, by the trustees, directors and officers of the organizations with which he had been identified. Claude L. Allen, the toastmaster, represented the Melrose Trust Company; Carl A. Raymond, the City Government; Herbert T. C. Wilson, the Melrose Savings Bank; Benning L. Wentworth, the School Committee; Victor A. Friend, the Melrose Hospital; Wallace R. Lovett, the Melrose Cooperative Bank; Willis C. Goss and Dr. Ralph D. Leonard, friends and public. Mr. Adams was presented with an engrossed testimonial.
On April 21, 1949, on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, Mr. Adams was given a party by the Melrose Hospital Staff, and also by the Melrose Trust Company, at the Bear Hill Country Club in Stoneham, where Claude L. Allen presented him with an ebony cane.
CLAUDE L. ALLEN was born in South Thomaston, Maine, and came to Melrose in 1899. He obtained an LL.B. from Boston
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University Law School and was attorney for the Boston Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Boston City Club and various Bar Associations. He was elected Alderman for Ward Six in Melrose in 1906, but resigned to be City Solicitor in 1911, representing the City in a suit brought by Admiral Dyer for exemption from city taxes as a federal officer. The case went to the Federal Supreme Court in Washington, where the City was upheld.
He was elected State Senator for two terms to represent the Fourth District; served as Grand Master of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, and was a member of the Active 33d Degree, Scottish Rite; a director of the Melrose National Bank and helped to change it to the Melrose Trust Company in 1906, of which he became president; a director of the Melrose Coop- erative Bank and of the Somerville National Bank; president of the Melrose Hospital Association; chairman of the Court of Honor of the Boy Scouts; and chairman of the Selective Draft Board in World War I.
JUSTIN BROOKS ATKINSON Was born in Melrose November 28, 1894, the son of Jonathan H. and Garafilia (Taylor) Atkinson, and on August 18, 1926 married Oriana Torrey MacIlveen. He graduated from the Melrose High School in 1913, and from Har- vard in 1917. He was a reporter on the Springfield Daily News in 1917; instructor in English at Dartmouth 1917-1918; assistant dramatic critic on the Boston Evening Transcript 1919-1922; asso- ciate editor of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin 1920-1922; editor of the Book Section of the New York Times 1922-1925; dramatic critic 1925-1942; and since 1946 a foreign correspondent, having covered the Burma Road and Russia. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner in May 1947. His office is in New York.
MRS. MALCOLM DANA BARROWS, born Mary Livermore Norris in Melrose in 1877, a granddaughter of Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, married in 1901 the Head of the English Department in the Bos- ton English High School, who died in 1945. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1898 and was elected the first and so far only woman member of the Melrose Board of Aldermen, for two terms, from 1926 to 1928. She resigned to run for Angier Goodwin's place in the Legislature when he became a Senator and served for ten years, resigning on January 1, 1939. During this period she was appointed chairman of the House Pensions Committee, which she held until her resignation, putting through the pension system for State employees. She was then appointed, by Governor Saltonstall, a Civil Service Commissioner, a position she held for
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six years. She lives in the old Livermore residence on West Emerson Street.
CHARLES COPELAND BARRY died December 27, 1911, from heart failure while talking to a friend on the 8.20 A.M. train to Boston. The body was taken off at Malden and carried to his home on Hillside Avenue. Mr. Barry was born in Melrose July 11, 1848, graduated from the Melrose High School in 1864 and then was employed by a firm of iron merchants on State Street, Boston. In 1876 he became a clerk in the office of a firm of real estate and trust attorneys on State Street. He was very active in the Baptist Church, both locally and nationally, a superintendent of Sunday School for twenty-one years, a deacon and the organizer of the Barry Class, which has continued long after his death. He was also active in secular affairs, serving as trustee and director of the Young Men's Christian Association, president of the Amphion Club, a trustee of the Melrose Savings Bank, a member of the Hospital Association, a trustee of the Public Library, and after his death was the subject of many memorials by the organiza- tions of which he had been a member.
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