The Memorial Hall and Public Library of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1893

February 22, 2012.Reading time 6 minutes.

Today, Downtown Lowell’s Memorial Hall is mostly known for the Pollard Memorial Library it houses, named for the city’s late mayor Samuel S. Pollard. For its first 90 years, until its renaming in 1981, Lowell residents and visitors knew it as the Lowell City Library. The library’s building, Memorial Hall, was built to remember the […]

Dating Old Photographs – The Clues that Tintypes Hold, 1890

February 16, 2012.Reading time 11 minutes.

Most family historians have THAT box. The box always looks roughly the same. It’s the box that belonged to the toaster your mother had three toasters ago. Or, maybe it’s a shoebox for a pair of long-lost boat shoes from Thom McAn or a gift box from Anderson Little (remember them?). Maybe it’s a bag […]

Fires of Lowell, Massachusetts – Sacred Heart School, 1967

February 12, 2012.Reading time 13 minutes.

On a cool, cloudy Saturday afternoon in early May 1967, two men simultaneously spotted the billowing smoke escaping from the first-story windows of Sacred Heart School’s “new building” on its Moore Street campus in Lowell, Massachusetts. John J. McWilliams, an off-duty police officer, ran and activated the fire alarm at a nearby fire-box. John Sickles, […]

1918: Spanish Flu, Attitudes toward Housekeeping, and a Little Bit about Linguistic History

February 8, 2012.Reading time 8 minutes.

One of the more interesting aspects of writing a blog is seeing which topics attract the most interest. In mid-December, I wrote a post about the Spanish flu (link below) and its spread across Massachusetts in 1918 and 1919. Since then, it’s been one of my most popular posts (placing fourth most popular of the […]

The Great White Hurricane – New England’s Blizzard of 1888

February 5, 2012.Reading time 9 minutes.

During New England‘s Blizzard of 1888, also known as the Great White Hurricane, over four feet of snow fell in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The storm dumped as much as 40 inches of snow in New York and New Jersey. In a world before road salt and snowblowers, the Great White Hurricane suspended communication and travel […]

If you were to walk . . . Boston’s North Union Station, 1895

January 31, 2012.Reading time 11 minutes.

Any discussion on “Lost Boston” has to include Boston’s North Union Station, which once stood on Causeway Street, on the current site of the TD Garden (better known locally as “the Boston Garden” and by some as the “Fleet Center”). North Union Station, which consolidated the operations of four different railroads into one building, was […]

The Ebbing Excitement Surrounding the Opening of Boston’s Tremont Street Subway, 1897

January 28, 2012.Reading time 7 minutes.

Have you visited Boston? Do you have ancestors who lived or visited here? Since you’re reading a blog called Forgotten New England, chances are good that you, or someone on a branch of your family tree, has ridden Boston’s subway. Boston’s subway, or ‘the T’ as its locally known, makes a very walkable city even […]

Understanding Crime in Edwardian-Era Massachusetts – Arrests in Lowell, 1904

January 26, 2012.Reading time 4 minutes.

So, say you’re writing a scene about Edwardian-era police officers in New England, or researching the life and times of a police officer ancestor. Or, perhaps you’re trying to get an idea of how people got into trouble with the law in the first years of the twentieth century. You’ll need to know why Edwardian-era […]

Abraham Lincoln’s Visit to Lowell, 1848

January 22, 2012.Reading time 7 minutes.

If you spend a considerable amount of time reading turn-of-the-(twentieth)-century editions of the local papers of Lowell, Massachusetts, you’ll soon come across the name of Samuel P. Hadley, who presided as a Justice for the Lowell Police Court for close to three decades. In fact, I think a few of the people I’ve researched for […]

Unexpected Family Tree Finds – Western Electric’s Merrimack Valley Works

January 18, 2012.Reading time 3 minutes.

Sometimes, you need to work really hard to land the latest find in your family tree discoveries. Sometimes, family history finds just fall in your lap. Before going to work yesterday morning, I stopped at the barber shop, and checked Facebook while waiting for my turn in the chair. And I found – quite a […]