December, 2008

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Maynard Historical Society Podcast #5

Friday, December 26th, 2008
Ralph Sheridan   Ralph Sheridan

This week’s podcast is a series of stories by Ralph Sheridan, recorded in 1994.  The original interview was about 2 hours long and we hope to get at least another podcast episode or two out of that interview.   Ralph Sheridan was Maynard’s Town Historian from 1984 to 1996.  He was also instrumental in the formation of the Maynard Historical Society in the 1960′s.    Despite being in his 90′s when this was recorded, he’s as sharp as a tack and vividly recalls life in Maynard in the early part of the 20th century.

The interview comes from a WAVM video recording where Ralph was interviewed by Dr. Donald Kennedy, then Superintendent of Schools (and a rather avid history buff).  In this podcast Ralph shares stories on a wide variety of topics including the Harriman Laundry, why the fire whistle blows every day at 12:10 and not noon,  how snow was cleared from the streets before there were snowplows, playing baseball at Crowe park, some of the origins of the Mill and Lake Boon, the protocol for using a sauna, and a bit about a few of the social groups in town like the Finnish Temperance Society.

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Here are a few of the pictures Ralph refers to in his stories:

 

Harriman Laundry

Harriman Laundry

20042-345-8109

 

Mill Overseers

Mill Overseers

Bertha Lawton’s First Grade Class Photo – 1894

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Bruce McGarry recently donated two chairs and a photograph to the Society.  Being a bit of a photography person, I was most excited by the photograph.  Considering its age, it was in pretty good condition – but the best part was that the reverse side listed all of the names.  I can’t stress enough how important information like this is.   We will soon begin the process of identifying the thousands of photographs in the collection and only a small percentage come with any sort of identification or date.  Bruce’s donation is as close to ideal as you can get.

I just took a snapshot of the photo – we haven’t scanned and cataloged it yet.  I transcribed the reverse side the best I could.  There are plenty of long-time Maynard family names on this list:

2008c-491-09171

 

Top Row – Left to Right

Louis Parmenter, Jack Carey, Clarence Styvert, Albert Whitney, Albert Priest, ???, Wilfred Talon, Nealy Callahan, Chester Sawyer

Second Row

Ethel Butterworth, Ada Rand, Agnes Greenhalge, Mabel McAuslin, Bertha Lawton, Lillian Brooks, Myrtle Sims, Chris Lynch, Sadie Garlick

Third Row

Mary Moore, Mary Hanson, Mildred Walker, Garry Gove, Lillian Usher, Minnie Casey, Margie Farrell, Clem Wagner, Margeret Driscoll, Leander King, Ed Riley?

Forth Row

Archie Harding?, ??? Glenes, Clemie Sullivan, Eva Lemaine, Agnes Mahoney, Addie McWilliams, Nellie Coughlan, Elsie Himery, Ida Moore, Gertie Randall

Bottom Row

Herb Usher, Alvin Smith, Eddie Coughlan, Emmet Riley, Bert Mallison, Leo Comeau, Walter Comeau, Archie Livingston, Pat Hanson, Wallace Locke

Maynard Historical Society Podcast now available on iTunes

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

If you use Apple’s iTunes software on your Mac or PC, you can now subscribe to the Maynard Historical Society Podcast.  When you do this new episodes will automatically be downloaded to your computer, iPod, or AppleTV — so you don’t have to check here all the time (although we certainly have other news here that is worth coming back for once in a while).

You can find the podcast on iTunes by just searching for “Maynard” (there aren’t too many podcasts with that word in them) or you can click here and subscribe.

You can go to Apple’s iTunes page for more information about that program.  It’s free and works on both Mac and Windows PC computers.

Maynard Historical Society Podcast #4

Monday, December 8th, 2008

 

This week we have a short podcast on the Annual Christmas Parade, which happened yesterday.

(I was hoping to have a little bit of audio from the parade, but I managed to mess that up.)

Happy Holidays!

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The podcast mentions “Leapin’ Lena” – a modified 1927 Model T that was a fixture at Maynard parades for nearly 70 years.

 

Leapin' Lena

Leapin Lena

 

Leapin Lena leaping

Leapin Lena leaping

 

 

Here  are some scenes from the 2008 parade – you can click on the photos to see larger versions of them.   A full gallery of photos from this year’s parade can be found here.

 

Progress Report – Dec 3, 2008

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

We continue to make excellent progress with our initial organization of the collection.

We’ve now looked into just about every box and have marked them accordingly with their contents.  All the boxes are in the correct rooms.   This is important because we found a lot of boxes containing items that the Society has for sale, file folders, and other items that aren’t part of the collection.  Getting them into their own room gives one a much better sense of what lies ahead.

We found 5 more boxes of town reports and perhaps a box worth of Screech Owls.   Next week we’ll likely go through the umpteen boxes of these that we have and sort them by date and condition.  Then we can put the unneeded duplicates aside and we’ll figure out what to do with them later.

My thanks to Peg Brown, Ellen Duggan, and Jack MacKeen for putting in some time these past few weeks.  It’s really remarkable to see how much progress we make by chipping away at this by dedicating just a few hours each week.

As always, if you would like to join us — we’re there pretty much every Wednesday morning from about 9am to 11 (or noon at the latest) — please stop by.  If you send me your email address I typically send out reminders and, more importantly, cancellations or tardy notes.