Is Massachusetts getting warmer? Wetter? There has been a lot of talk about global warming, climate change, its causes and its implications for our future. But, how has climate change affected Massachusetts? To really identify climate change, one needs a consistent set of data, taken reliably, continuously, and consistently at the same location over a…Read more Climate Change: Is Massachusetts getting warmer and wetter?
If you were to travel Bedford's North Road in, say, 1908, you would see, as you progress into the town's northern reaches, a road named Sweetwater Avenue. Sweetwater Avenue led to Dr. William Richardson Hayden's Sweetwater Hotel, built in 1897 near Fawn Lake, itself well-known for its 'restorative properties' that were said to cure many…Read more Bedford’s Fawn Lake – and its Sweetwater Hotel
High school entrance exams during the Civil War era were hard, really. For arithmetic, 14-year-olds in Lowell, Massachusetts were asked to calculate the diameter of a cannon ball weighing 250 pounds, if the diameter of a 128-pound ball was 8 inches. In grammar, they were asked for the plurals of Mr. Smith, Miss Smith, and…Read more Lowell High’s Entrance Exam in 1865 – Difficult Questions and High Expectations
Moore, Andrews, Whipple, Meadowcroft: If you spent a good span of your childhood years in Lowell, Massachusetts attending school or church at Sacred Heart, all of these names will be familiar to you. The streets closest to Sacred Heart carry those names, which date back to the decades before Sacred Heart's founding when the area…Read more The First Years of Sacred Heart Parish: Lowell, Massachusetts, 1880’s
Once located on Lowell's Gorham Street, St. Peter's Church was founded in Lowell in 1841, ten years after the founding of St. Patrick's, the city's first Catholic church. Many readers will remember the impressive edifice that once stood at 323 Gorham, across from Lowell's courthouse building; however, this was actually the church's third building. St.…Read more The Construction of St. Peter’s Church – Lowell, Massachusetts, 1892
Late on a Thursday afternoon on June 3, 1926, every available firefighting resource raced to Pollard's Department Store on Merrimack Street in Downtown Lowell. All of Lowell's fire department was joined by men and equipment sent from Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut and Lawrence in the fight to save Pollard's from a raging fire. Pollard's, also known…Read more Pollard’s Department Store – Lowell Born . . . Lowell Owned . . . Lowell Managed
Eastern Massachusetts has its own way of saying things. Whether you're drinking a tonic, or slurping a frappe, or quenching your thirst with water from a bubbler, you know you're near Boston when the letter "r" starts migrating within sentences (think 'supah idear'). To linguists, New England breaks into two dialect regions: Eastern New England…Read more If Ancestors Could Talk: The Words of Nineteenth-Century New England
