Ryan W. Owen, Writer and Photographer
How you know Lowell’s Rialto Building is largely determined by when you grew up. To the oldest among us, the Victorian-era building that has dominated Towers Corner for 140 years is the Rialto Theatre – famous for first trips to the movies, to movies that have long since become classics.
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In the Lowell of our parents and grandparents, a yellow horse-drawn wagon coming down a city street in high summer meant an approaching escape from the summer heat. City children knew each ice man driving the yellow wagons, and often relished jumping aboard for a piece of ice and a ride down the road, or […]
Read MoreGenealogists spend a lot of time immersed in old records – especially really old ones, from decades and centuries past. These records yield valuable information in building family trees. And, as any genealogist will tell you, every tree ends at its treetop, with the names of its brick wall ancestors, those whose parentage is unknown and […]
Read MoreOne 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 […]
Read MoreAny 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 […]
Read MoreIf 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 […]
Read MoreSometimes, 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 […]
Read MoreHappy New Year, readers! And best wishes for a successful and prosperous 2012! While I’ve been browsing through old family photographs and correspondence, I came across some old postcards, mostly from the 1911-1914 period. One of the first I found was this one, wishing a happy 1911. As we approach a new year, it’s common […]
Read MoreIf you were to walk . . . Boston’s Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market 125 years ago, on the afternoon before Thanksgiving, you would encounter a large assortment of the city’s vegetable and meat merchants, selling their wares from the many wagons crowding the scene. Today, although these merchants have long since moved on to […]
Read MoreDo you commute to work using public transportation? There’s a certain etiquette, a set of norms, that is easily observable when you are on the bus, the train, the subway, or even a plane. There’s a prevailing thought out there that civility is a “thing of the past”. But, was it? Did our ancestors live […]
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Forgotten New England 