“Americans are not a narrow tribe,” wrote Herman Melville. “Our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all pouring into one.” We are a nation of immigrants and throughout Canton’s history there have been countless stories that share the tale of coming to America. There is a […]
Is it nostalgia or aging that brings us back to our childhood as we move through the later years of our life? There are these flashbacks to my youth that fire like an electrical synapse in my brain. I have these gauzy images of the large apple tree in our side yard and my great-grandmother […]
The following is an excerpt from “Forgotten Tragedy,” the latest installment of True Tales from Canton’s Past by local historian George T. Comeau. *** As Ida Chippendale locked the door to her apartment at Windsor Gardens in Norwood, she tucked the umbrella under her arm and walked through the light mist to her new Thunderbird. […]
The opening salvo was fired by a local attorney on a Monday morning in May 2008. With the filing of a handful of requests, the attorney, at the direction of his client, was seeking approval for the demolition of the Revere & Son Rolling Mill and the barn built by Joseph Warren Revere that sat […]
The USS Potomac embodied the spirit of a growing nation. The warship was built to establish a naval presence that would span the globe. And her first commander was a Canton-born man by the name of John Downes. As the commander over more than 500 men, a great weight was on the shoulders of this […]
Lemuel Fisher and Benjamin Wentworth had both served in the Revolution together. So it’s fair to say that like all veterans, they shared a common bond. After the war they both returned to Stoughton in that part which is now Canton and began to work the plow and the woodlots. In the spring of 1789 […]
The widow Mary Sullivan had experienced a truly awful year. Just months earlier her husband had died, leaving her with six mouths to feed. Sadly, two of her children also died, leaving her in a filthy tenement building with four small children and a backdrop of desperation. It was June 1914, and Boston was teeming […]
History takes a very long view of conflicts, and as divided as the country is today, this is not the first time that deep divisions split our society. Of course the Civil War is a great example of the kind of rift that divides a nation, but it is crystal clear that our nation, born […]
Every so often a mystery begins simply with a question, a curiosity. So it is no surprise that recently when a slip of paper fell from the leaves of a donated book, a flurry of questions would ensue. At the top of the paper was printed “Lines in Memory of Freddie.” What followed was a […]
On Pleasant Street there is a granite marker that is the dividing line between Canton and Stoughton. At 8 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, August 28, 1948, three Canton selectmen stood in the heat and haze of the morning sun. Selectman Maurice Ronayne shifted as he kicked up dust from the road. Selectman John […]
