Category Archives: LHC
For Veterans’ Day: Melvin Simmons
Naval Constructor Melvin Simmons, born in Kingston on April 19, 1806, served as Master Carpenter for the first steam (or screw) frigate the USS Merrimack. Launched in June 1855 from the Charlestown Navy Yard, she was christened by Simmons’ daughter Mary Elizabeth, then 23.
When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the US Navy burned the Merrimack, then trapped in Norfolk, to prevent her capture. A month later, the Confederates raised the hull, re-built her as the iron-clad ram CSS Virginia, and in 1862, sent her into battle with the Union’s iron-clad, the USS Monitor in Hampton Roads.
Simmons also served at Philadelphia Naval Yard, and ultimately returned to Charlestown as Naval Constructor in the Construction Corps of the Bureau of Construction and Repair. Created in 1866, the Corps gave former civilian employees a formal rank in the US Navy.
Simmons’ son Frederick, then an unmarried clerk, was drafted into the Union Army in 1863. He served in the 35th Infantry, until his death on January 1, 1865 in Salisbury, North Carolina.
Melvin Simmons died in Charlestown on May 13, 1871, of apoplexy. He is buried in the Forest Hills Cemetery beside his wife Mary A. (Chase) Simmons, who lived in Kingston at the time of her death on May 10, 1890.
Source: Glass Plate Negatives IC3, photo ID: peo-09-0747-gpn
Elder’s Spring
“Elder’s Spring was the water supply for the house-holds of Isaac Allerton, the Mayflower Pilgrim, and of other occupants of the farm, until it came into possession of Elder Thomas Cushman, for whom the present name was given. The old spring was a lovely spot, shaded by huge willows, and boiling up from clean, white sand, a strong and steady flow. A generation ago, Mr. John Bagnell, to make a fish or duck pool, dug away the bank, cut down the willows, and so changed the surroundings of the spring, it is quite different from what it used to be.”
Source: Emily Fuller Drew Collection MC16; quote from her notes on place names in Kingston.
New Exhibit: KES Halloween, 1951 and 1952
We only have a few of these, but they’re in the Local History exhbit case for a short time only. Stop by to see if you’re in a photo from the 1951 or 1952 Halloween party at Kingston Elementary School.
A new idea, from 101 years ago.
In 2018, a new farmer’s market opened in Kingston. The Library’s usually there; check us out! It’s a great new venture with some interesting echos of the past.
In 1917, Kingston also had a new community market, this one located at the Point, right where Summer Street splits from Main. The Old Colony Memorial on July 13 that year invited anyone with surplus food to join in.
No matter how small an amount you may have to sell, you are invited to bring it to the market. Products of the garden, dairy, poultry, etc. in fact, anything you are engaged in producing…
Part of the national effort to increase local food production as the nation entered the First World War, Kingston’s market was sponsored by the Grange, the Patriotic Society and the Food Production Committee of the Public Safety Commission. There was no charge for selling: vendors just had to show up with their wares.
Within the first week the market was open, 17-year-old diarist Helen Foster wrote that “things sure were stirring there.”
Source: Newspapers PC19; Mary Hathaway Collection MC21
Indian Pond summer
Source: Emily Fuller Drew Collection MC16
In other spelling news
Gray’s Beach Park is named for Edward Gray, who arrived in Plymoth Colony in the 1642 and eventually became one of the the richest men around. He owned land along what later became Kingston’s shoreline, including as this notable land record, the site of Kingston’s little beach.
And we know it’s Gray’s with an A, because, yes, it’s carved in stone.
This is Old Burial Hill in Plymouth, and Gray’s is one of the oldest marked stones there. The more legible of the two markers is actually a sign pointing to the original stone, which appears to be in some kind of protective frame. The related page on Find-a-Grave has some good modern close ups of the actual stone.
Source: The Jones River Village Historical Society Lantern Slide Collection IC4, series “The Pilgrim Story, Plymouth” 90 slides copyright A. S. Burbank, circa 1920.
Happy Birthday to
Our distinguished and beloved Town Historian!
Source: MC11 Joseph Finney Collection
And the correct spelling is…
Here’s a detail of an early brochure for the summer cottage development called Ah-De-Nah, circa 1930. The name was pitched as a Native American term, but descendants of the developers, Edgar and Waldo Loring, might tell you it was just made up.
Welcome Home!
Why, thank you!
It’s good to be back.
Watering trough at the Point
In 1888, Henry R. Glover, a wealthy manufacturer of mattresses and “curled hair” from
Cambridge, donated the “Henry Glover Watering Trough” to the town for public use at the Point, the triangular plot of land at the intersection of Main and Summer Streets. Glover was the son of Rev. Samuel Glover, a Baptist minister, who raised his family in the Samuel Foster House on Summer Street opposite the Point. The trough was a place for horses and dogs to drink after the town dismantled and covered the Point Well.
Source: Image from the Local History Room Image Collection IC7.