Kingston (Massachusetts) Public Library
Putting together an exhibit for Valentine’s Day, I found this postcard. Cataloging it for our online picture collection (coming soon!), I found this subject heading in the LOC’s TGM: “Courtship. Use for Courting, Flirtation, Wooing.” Yes, I think that just does capture it.
Source: MC11 Joseph Cushman Finney Papers
Many thanks to Joe Colby, Head Custodian at the Recreation Department, for letting us know that today is the birthday of the Reed Community Building! The photograph above appeared in The Civic Progress of Kingston (Memorial Press of Plymouth, 1926) and was accompanied by Sarah DeNormandie Bailey’s text:
And this summer the town is to receive as a wonderful birthday remembrance the crowning gift of a beautiful Community House, given by Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Reed of Worcester. The Playground Committee must feel as if Aladdin’s lamp had been given to them and they had only to name a wish and have it granted. how many times have I heard their plans for a Community House and smiled to myself at the enthusiasm which could even dream of such a building, — and now it is all going to be true, only so much more and better than even the wildest dreams. It is a proud and happy Mother Town which inspires a love in the heart of a son and daughter which lives through many years to blossom at last in a gift like this.
Below is the actual building standing proudly over the ball fields in its first decade. Here’s to many more!
Benjamin Delano (March 31, 1778 – January 19, 1868), having a moment.
Staged to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Pilgrim’s landing, the 1921 Pageant of the Pilgrim Spirit was a sprawling, epic production. Among its stranger elements — ranking alongside William Bradford’s premonition of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and the Prologue and Finale spoken by “The Voice of the Rock” — has to be the appearance of the Norsemen.
The pageant program dates the appearance of these early visitors in Plymouth to about 1000 AD, and describes the performance as “played in pantomime to music.” Only one role is specifically named — Thorwald played by John Delano — but 46 men from Kingston, Duxbury, Plymouth and Marshfield are named as players in this scene, including Kingston’s Town Clerk of many years George Cushman.
Given the Norsemen’s spectacular outfits, it seems a shame that Plymouth Rock got more lines.
The program is online in full here.
Source: Jones River Village Historical Society Collection (photo); Vertical Files: “The Pilgrim Spirit” (program).
This month’s exhibit showcases people from Kingston dressing up like their Pilgrim predecessors. In 1920, the spectacle known as the Tercentenary Pageant featured a number of Kingstonians, new immigrants and Mayflower descendants alike, among its 1,300 actors. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Major John Bradford House served as the setting for dramatic vignettes and an educational film, directed by none other than the auteur responsible for Dating Do’s and Don’ts. Stop by and take a look.
On Saturday, November 3, the Adams Building will be open to the public from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. with a dedication ceremony at 2:00.
Once again, history anonymizes. I don’t know who they were or where they were (or, for that matter, whether they took turns posing with the same fish!), but their pride and satisfaction in the day’s “work” remains clear.
Without a date, it’s hard to know if this train belonged to the Old Colony Rail Road, or the Old Colony and Fall River, or the Old Colony and Newport (you can imagine that Fall River was a little peeved when that happened), or the New York, New Haven and Hartford, or some other corporate conglomerate name for the railroad that ran through Kingston starting in 1845. It is the bridge that crosses the Jones River, so it is at least fixed in place.
Now that fall has arrived, the snow cannot be far behind.