I have a bit of a reputation among the membership of the Millbury Historical Society. Long and short, we would probably get more done if a certain person was not constantly distracted by the newspaper clippings and old books that need to be organized.
I can’t help it, guys. It’s just how I’m wired.
Outside of the old clippings from the Telegram & Gazette, the old Millbury Journals, the not-as-old Millbury-Sutton Chronicles, however, are copies of a very old book published in 1915 after a decade’s worth of work and research. “The Centennial History of the Town of Millbury, Massachusetts” is a many-hundred-paged tome commissioned by the town to cover the history, vital records, and other ephemera of the time from before incorporation through the turn of the century.
I have no idea how many were printed, but the Historical Society has a few, the Millbury Library at least one, the Worcester Historical Society at least one, and a number of people in town still have copies as well. The University of Michigan Library has, or had, one as well, as the version available to peruse on Google Books has one of their bookplates scanned in on their cover.
So yeah, I could read the version online and poke around there, but what’s the fun in that? The Raymonds, after all, converted an entire room into a library, so why wouldn’t we want a copy of this book to go alongside the 70-odd Stephen King hardcovers and the piles of books purchased in college and never sold back? Thankfully, someone came through and was able to acquire a copy for me.
It is a really fun read.
Every so often in this space, I will take some time to highlight some of the fun pieces of history otherwise lost to time outside of the pages of this text. But one thing I love about having a physical copy of this book is how immersed my wife became in reading through it shortly after I brought it home. Between excited retellings of random votes by the Board of Selectmen (including extending the intermission on the sabbath and indefinitely postponing a discussion on the right to vote for women) and dramatic readings of the weather reports recorded in the book, it was great to have her experience the history of a town that she has adopted as her own through this labor of love from our predecessors.
Among her favorite little tidbits as she made her way through the book a few weeks ago:
- The tale of Dexter and Walter Rogers, “two Millbury boys” who “made a remarkable journey across the continent on high wheel bicycles from Plymouth Rock to San Francisco, a distance of about 3900 miles.” What became of them after that, I could not tell you.
- A story of Silas M. Freeman, originally from Sturbridge, who was a stagecoach driver for the town. The book tells us how one day he gave one of his horses a “hard lashing” after it became “balky,” and Freeman was criticized by one of his passengers for “using the whip so freely.” Freeman told the traveller to “shut up” and threatened to whip the passenger as well, since, as the story goes, he knew his horse better than this passenger did. Upon reaching their destination, the other passengers asked Freeman if he knew who he threatened. Freeman responded that he did not, and was promptly told that it was President John Quincy Adams.
The book goes on to describe Freeman “in manner and appearance...rather gruff, but he was one of the best and most kind hearted of men.” As long as they weren’t criticizing his equine disciplinary skills, I suppose… - As someone always interested in libraries, there are numerous accounts of how we came to be a Carnegie Library community. Much of the debate centered around what Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy steel magnate, required of the town to get the grant (often centering around Delia Torrey’s land), but many times the gesture was declined due to an inability (or lack of willingness, perhaps) to raise the funds. As we know today (and as detailed later in the book), the land was eventually granted to Millbury and the library was built with a grant from Carnegie a little over 100 years ago, but it is interesting to see how these debates went as opposed to the common idea that things happened independent of debate or discussion if we can’t see it happening in real time.
The library exterior as seen today from Elm Street, by the way? Still the same as it was when it was built in 1915, with only two expansions since then. If you hop into the reading room on the now-second floor, you are standing where people stood the day the library opened a century earlier. And we figured out how to pay for it then, too: dog licenses, a dollar a pop. Imagine if we paid for Shaw with that!
I love books and history because of how easy it is to trip over information that you never thought of before. Especially when one digs through an old book, it is easy to feel like you are the only person in possession of the information, and you want to share it with the world. In the 600-odd pages of this Millbury History, there is likely as much information forgotten to the sands of time as there is information that has become common knowledge among longtime residents. Whether online, at the library, or at the Historical Society, take some time to get lost in this one, because it will truly make you appreciate the history of your surroundings that much more.
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