Kingston (Massachusetts) Public Library
Christmas and Santa Claus are meant for children. This Christmas party was held in 1949 at the Beal House on Main Street for the Sunday School of the First Parish Church. Frank Randall served as Santa and Helen Williams, the director of the Sunday School, stands to his right. Some of the excited children have been identified. Do you know any of them?
How times have changed: that is a REAL evergreen tree decorated for the holiday!
The Friends of the Kingston Public Library are offering a lovely set of notecards featuring 12 historic scenes of Kingston from the Local History Room. Some larger prints of these photographs are on display in the lobby. Please stop by, take a look and if you like, pick up a box of cards for the low, low price of $10.
On November 29, 1911, Laura from Island Creek mailed this happy holiday card to Russell Loring here in Kingston.
This year, I’m thankful that my turkey is home in the refrigerator, not gallivanting around town with some hot-rodding kid and a pile of fruit loot!
A joyful Thanksgiving to all!
I don’t know when it was or who they are — proud proprietors would be my best guess — but they’re standing in front of the Rocky Nook Pavilion. Once located on Wharf Lane, this fine establishment offered “dancing every Saturday night.”
From the collection of Jennie Mclauthlen, Kingston’s first Librarian.
1887
Raisin Pie. — One cup chopped raisins, two cups of water, one teaspon mixed spice, one cup cracker-crumbs, two cups sugar, one cup of vinegar, one-half cup butter, one beaten egge. Boil and fill pies; bake three-quarters of an hour.
Cough Syrup.
One oz. flax-seed.
One oz. stick slippery elm.
One oz. thoroughwort.
One oz. hops.
One oz. black licorice.
Two quarts water — boil to a little less than one qt: strain and boil in a little more water, to get strength all out — strain again– ] add 1 pint of molasses. Boil down to thickness of honey about 1 1/2 pints. When done, add 1 Table-spoon of whiskey. Add the licorice after the herbs are boiled and strained.
Mrs. Whittemore.
Add 1/2 lb. loaf sugar
Archivist’s note: Feel free to make the raisin pie, but don’t make your own cough medicine at home from this recipe. That would be foolish.
This photograph just turned up in a recent donation to the Local History Room. It has no date, no place, nothing beyond the image itself. Context and best guesses, however, suggest that it dates to the late 19th century and shows the interior of one of the small boatyards on the Jones River. Further, the vessel under construction very likely belonged to a member of the Holmes family. More research may turn up additional information. In the meantime, enjoy the unusual view.
Who was Martin Parris?
One of Kingston’s first school teachers, Martin Parris was born in Pembroke in 1766. He attended Brown University; in May 1794 the Kingston Selectmen hired him to teach school at an annual salary of seventy pounds. That same year, he married Kingston native Julia Drew; they would eventually have three sons, all of whom predeceased them. Parris taught in Kingston for about eight years, then continued teaching in Plymouth for several more.
In 1817, he was ordained as a minister of the First Congregational Church of Marshfield. Though noted as an excellent teacher of good character, he appears to have been less successful in his second career, perhaps in part due to the deaths of two of his sons during his Marshfield tenure. Parris retired in 1838 and returned to Kingston, where on November 15, 1839, he died of “old age and hiccoughs.” *
In 1792, he was inoculated against smallpox.
Braintree Oct.r 9th 1792
This certifies that Mr. Martin Parris, having received the Small-Pox at my hospital, is properly cleansed from the infection, and has paid the customary fees for inoculation, board and attendance.
Ephraim Wales
And who was Ephraim Wales?
Born on May 9, 1746, in the South Precinct of Braintree (later Randolph ), Ephraim Wales was “an eminent and successful doctor.” After graduating from Harvard College in 1768, he studied with Dr. Amos Putnam of Danvers, then returned to South Braintree to establish his medical practice. He opened a smallpox hospital across South Main Street from his home, where in 1777 he inoculated Continental Army soldiers after General George Washington ordered all troops and recruits who had not had the disease to undergo the treatment.
A year earlier, the disease had struck the Army severely, part of an epidemic that affected the new country between 1775 and 1782 and killed an estimated 125,000 people. Though the first inoculations in North America dated to 1721, town residents opposed Wales’ hospital. The disease had a frightening mortality rate and inoculation, also called variolation or insufflation, meant purposeful infection with a milder form of the disease to create immunity. A true vaccine would not be developed until 1796.
In 1793, Dr. Wales served on the committee that formed the town of Randolph from the South Precinct, and as the first town moderator. He also taught a number of medical students. He died April 7, 1805.
Sources:
* Vital Records of Kingston Massachusetts to the Year 1850. (1911)
In the Pilgrim Way: History of the First Congregational Church, Marshfield, MA. by Linda Ramsey Ashley (2001)
“Old house isn’t as historic as was thought” by Fred Hanson. The Patriot Ledger, May 2, 2005
Contributions to the Annals of Medical Progress and Medical Education in the United States Before and During the War of Independence by Joseph Meredith Toner (1874; reprinted 1970)
Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of the State of Massachusetts. Edited by William Richard Cutter and William Frederick Adams (191 0)
In the 1948 Annual Report of the Town of Kingston, the Board of Health reported:
On October 20th, 1948, a fin-back whale came ashore north of the town pier [today’s town landing] at the foot of River Street. Measuring 42 ft. in length and weighing approximately 30 tons, this would ordinarily have been a human interest story, but it developed into a Board of Health problem when this Board was forced to dispose of the mammal. Our Highway Department with the assistance of power machinery, loaded the whale on a heavy-duty platform trailer and carried it to the Town Dump where it was suitably buried.
After the dump closed a few years later, the Kingston Drive-In was built on the site. Today this location is occupied by Summerhill Plaza, so yes, indeed, there is a whale buried under the Stop-n-Shop!
A beautiful cabinet card recently came into the Local History Room, part of a larger collection. While the contrast in the original is a little faded (and has been adjusted in this scan), the image is otherwise perfect, and the subject — harvesting the cranberry crop — could not be more timely.
This close-up shows men, women and children at work, dressed more formally than we might expect for such manual labor.
But where is this bog? It could be almost anywhere: the blank back of the cabinet card yields no clues. A little sleuthing through the photograph collections however, turns up a second copy, much more worn but bearing a typed caption that tells us that this is indeed a Kingston location.
This week’s study in incongruity comes from the Ruth Forbes Chandler papers. The finding aid for the collection gives the following biographical snippets:
Author of a number of books and short stories for children. Teacher and principal in the New Bedford school system. Moved to Kingston in the 1950s. Lived at at 228 Main Street. Communicant of the Kingston First Parish Church, member and secretary of the Jones River Village Club, and a Friend of the Library.
What it does not tell us is the identities of the these latter-day First Comers, where they were headed, and perhaps most interestingly, what kind of cars did Pilgrims drive?
Update: It’s got to be a Plymouth, right?