Stop by the Library and take a look at this month’s exhibit, which highlights Kingston graduates and graduations from 1862 on.
Kingston High School Class of 1911
This photograph was donated by the daughter of one of the graduates pictured. The inscription on the back reads “Vesta Porter. Mamma first girl on left, next to her (front) Susan Quinn & Margaret Holmes. Others are Freda Tobey, Abbie & Adaline Harrub, Philip Smith, Ralph Drew, Stanley Skakle.” Vest Porter wrote the Class Prophecy, which peered into the future lives of her classmates.
In 1938 and 1939, the author Henry Beston wrote three letters to Kingston resident Mrs. Alexander Holmes. The two had met at a retreat on Star Island, N.H. Beston is perhaps best know for his 1928 work Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. Included with the letters is an autographed first edition inscribed by the author for Mrs. Holmes.
Inscription from Henry Beston to Mrs. Alexander Holmes, circa 1938
There is a wealth of online information available on Henry Beston. The Henry Beston Society focuses on Beston, his wife, the poet and novelist Elizabeth Coatesworth, while the Friends of Henry Beston place more emphasis on the Outermost House and Beston’s philosophy. To complement the photographs of Beston available on these sites, here is one you won’t see anywhere else — Mrs. Alexander Holmes at Star Island.
Mary Russell Adams Holmes at Star Island, no date
Please stop by and have a look at this unique sample of a great writer’s work.
Ah, the tropics! Here Henry M. Jones, author of Ships of Kingston standing at the far left, and four unidentified friends enjoy a refreshing treat under the palms. The woman may be Henry’s wife Abby Bosworth Holmes Jones, though between the hat and the coconut, it’s difficult to tell. The dog is also anonymous.
From the always entertaining Joseph Finney Collection.
A rosy-cheeked couple merrily skip along, both dressed in green. She wears a large bonnet, a green empire-waisted gown and dainty black boots. He sports a traditional leprechaun outfit with a green jacket, bow tie and top hat, accessorized with a walking stick and high spats.
A new exhibit is now in the display case. “Taking Stock — Kingston Investments in the 19th Century” shows a century of local and national stock certificates and related business ephemera.
One of the local items is particularly intriguing.
Plymouth and Kingston Oil Company stock certificate, 1865
Little can be found about this early corporation.
The named individuals can be identified. The owner of the shares was George T. Adams, brother of Kingston’s library benefactor Frederic C. Adams. The president of the company was Benjamin F. Ames, listed in vital records as a Kingston merchant in 1848. Secretary William H. Burges was a well known Kingston shopkeeper (first at Burges & Bailey, then Burges & Keith and finally under his own name alone), Town official (treasurer, tax collector, and town clerk) and state representative. The company, however, remains shrouded in some mystery.
The derricks and refineries in the engravings point to petroleum, rather than the whale oil that dominated southeastern Massachusetts in the 19th century. The date 1865 fixes the company at the very beginning of the modern oil industry. The processes of distilling kerosene — first from coal, then from “seep oil” — had been discovered in the late 1840s . The first oil well had been drilled in Titusville, PA, in 1859, and John D. Rockefeller had entered the oil business in 1863 with a refinery in Cleveland.
Beyond these clues drawn from the face of the document, there are more questions than answers, as often happens with historical ephemera. How long did the company last? What exactly did they do? Is there any way to find out more? Inquiring minds always want to know.
All the recent snow reminded me of this photograph taken from Green Street. It dates after 1883, because the Soldier’s Monument is there, but before 1928, when the trolley stopped running.
Training Green and First Parish Church in the snow, no date
Once I found this one, I walked a little ways down Green Street to see if the view was the same.
Training Green and First Parish Church in the snow, 2010
In 1928, the first and second grade students in Elspeth Hardy’s class wrote a holiday story about a little dog named Laddie saving Christmas for his family. As Mrs. Hardy described the process, “The children worked collectively; one child started with an opening sentence, the others took the thought and followed on until the tale was finished.” Illustrated by Kingston High graduate Marion Cobb Dries, the book was published in November 1928.
Laddie will be featured at Storytime in the Children’s Room on Monday, Dec. 21 at 6:30 in a special reading by archivist Susan Aprill.
