This story was reprinted in the February 28, 2019 edition of the Canton Citizen. Canton sounds different — historically speaking. For one thing, no longer can one hear the sound of factory whistles, or a neighbor’s cow, or even the clinking sound of the milkman’s bottles. So much of our daily lives have changed over […]
The editor of this paper once asked me if I ever thought I might run out of subjects to write about in this column. The question really never occurred to me, owing to the fact that our history dates back more than 350 years. Add to that the pre-contact period of our native culture, and […]
What makes for great television is great storytelling. And currently running on our local access channel is a terrific story that brings to life the passionate and unrelenting personality of Deborah Samson. And although
In his mind’s eye he is a small child standing on the sidewalk in 1939 as the Memorial Day parade passes by. Looking out over the crowd from a small boy’s height, he sees his neighbors, friends, and all the people that make up this small, tight-knit community. Anthony presses against the skirt of his […]
This story was reprinted in the October 15, 2020 edition of the Citizen. The voice was human. Deep within the woods of the Fowl Meadow, the cries could be heard — melancholy crying that was supernatural and from another world. Indeed, the sounds that came from the Packeen Plain in 1770 were far beyond the […]
There is a wonderful little booklet published in the fall of 1909 that was printed by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company. The purpose of the pamphlet was to illustrate the advantages of developing commerce in the cities and towns adjacent to Boston. Largely, however, it was an economic publicity campaign to encourage the use of […]
On a snowy December morning in 1784, a few days shy of Christmas, Naomi Downes labored as her husband, Jesse, waited outside for the news of the birth of their child. Naomi pushed and during her last contraction, she uttered to her midwife, “I am ready.” The Downes were not wealthy, and the small house […]
On a very hot July morning, Johnny Jorgensen gets up early and fills the back of his Chevy S10 pickup truck with pails, scrub brushes, and a large plastic pump bottle filled with water. Heading up Washington Street toward Ponkapoag, Jorgy, as everyone around town knows him, realizes that he has probably been in every […]
She probably wrote dozens if not tens of dozens of letters to her husband throughout the war. Her florid handwriting curves beautifully, with an assured hand of a well educated woman. The beginning of the end was in sight, the winds of the War of the Rebellion had shifted, and as Caroline Tucker McKendry writes to her husband, her pain and suffering burns through the paper. William McKendry Jr. was born in Canton in 1825 on the farm that had been in the family since the first settlement of Dorchester.
Editor’s note: The following is the second in a two-part series on WWI hero Helen Homans. Click here to read part one. On her coffin is engraved “MORTE POUR LA FRANCE.” Her medical colleagues had fought to keep her alive, and she herself had struggled valiantly. In the end, it was said, “She had given […]
