March 7th, 1975, an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Lester Ball, 187, Acton Road, Chelmsford. Now, we can talk about where you were born. I was born and went to Massachusetts, they say.

And I have, I would like to say that my ancestors came over the Mayflower. But I haven't been able to prove it, but there is great evidence that some of my people lived in Plymouth in the early days. So I think that my people were wise enough to come over to Plymouth after the things had settled down there.

It shows what intelligence would do. Well, that's that. Well, do you want to know the whole story? Sure, yeah, hold me.

Well, I didn't say that I was born at a very early age, did I? No, you didn't mention that. Well, anyway, my mother was born in Renfrew, Massachusetts. And we have a picture on the other side of the wall there of the old farmhouse, my grandfather's farmhouse.

My mother was born in the bedroom downstairs, and upstairs in the left-hand chamber I was born, they tell me. So, well, our story is the short and simple annals of the poor, as I always tell people. But I was endowed with a few brains.

So I went to engineering school, Tufts Engineering School. And then I, two weeks after I, oh, before I was graduated, I got a job at General Electric Company. What year did you graduate? 1915.

From Tufts University? The mighty class of 1915. And I had a job before I got through school. And I was down there in the turbine research department for two years.

And then I went up as a naval architect up in the Air Force with the Navy. Was that during the war? That was just as the war started. And I never had much money, got much salary, but I had a lot of experiences.

It wasn't too long before I was in the mathematical department. And I went on, we were working on submarines, developing them. And I knew every crack and cranny of the submarines.

And I went down to Provincetown with a number of them and took part in the trial trips. And the 200-foot dive, that was the ultimate test. And I was the guy that, they opened up the conning tower hatch.

And I just crawled up alone with a flashlight and see how much was leaking up there. I might say that, I guess that my folks didn't know how dangerous it was. But anyway, there was four of them that I went down with and tested out.

And after I left Portsmouth, I was there six years. After I left Portsmouth, every one of those submarines sank. Really? Yes.

And the one that took my place, I heard about this one. They were down at the bottom. And, of course, there was a, air was a factor to bring up all the air. Well, they were trying to conserve the air down there. And this fellow wrote on the wall about it a little bit. And they just stretched out on the deck, below decks. But the submarine was not on even keel. It was like that. The forward part of the submarine was filled with water.

And so it stuck up like that instead of going. And they did a little figuring and looked at the gauges and so forth and found that the stern was probably about 10 feet out of water. So all they had was just an inch drill.

And they had to do it by hand. And they drilled a hole in the hull, which is, I used to know exactly the size of the plating. It was 716 or something.

It was an inch of steel plate. And they got this hole around there, knocked out, and put up a broom with a flag on it or something to attract attention. And to make a long story short, they did salvage what crew were on board.

And I was glad I wasn't there. Well, I could tell you a lot more about the subs, but maybe we won't. Oh, yes, I'll tell the story of my life.

I won't tell you all the story of my life. I taught at Old Tech for seven years. What did you teach? Well, technical drawing was the main thing.

And then mathematics and all around guy, you know. What was Old Tech like when you were teaching there? And what years approximately were you there? From 1923 to 1930. Well, they didn't have much money or anything like that and so forth.

Maybe I shouldn't say so, but each head of department was at swords points with the other point. So it was a sausage place. But anyway, and then I talked at Wentworth Institute. And then in the Second World War, I came back and worked at the Navy out at Charlestown. And instead of submarines, it was destroyers. And that was interesting.

What were you doing? Mathematical work in the scientific section. And we did everything about that. We worked on the mathematical end of it in launching.

Now, launching does seem personal. People don't know about it. Well, it was very simple. Just a little slide. But we worked months on that because when you have several million dollars in a hull tied up, you can't afford to have anything happen. So we had a lot of interesting things. We've done everything except we developed a, not a machine, but a device for recording speed and going down the waves. That is very important because with this pressure on the waves, I've seen fires started because of much pressure, friction pressure. Well, anyway, in fact, I went down on the, I didn't have anything else to do one time, so I went down on the boat as it was launched.

And I was the custodian of the bottle. You'll know about a lot of the sponsors and so forth. Yes, well, sometimes they don't break the bottle.

So I was up on deck and the bottle neck was with a rope. So if the woman had failed to broke the broken bottle, I was supposed to pull up the rope, pull up the bottle and break it myself, but I never got a chance to. They always did.

They always did. Boy, some of them were really all off and given an off whack. Well, I tell you, they did have a little piece of metal welded on there, sharp, so that if you hit that, you'd be... Well, since then, I was probably short of simple animals of the poor.

Well, let me see. Being a charter member of the Historical Society, the first, one of the presidents. Could you talk a little bit about the organization of the Historical Society? About the organization of the Historical Society.

How did it come to be established? Mr. Charles Bartlett lives down here on Bartlett Street. He was quite a prominent man in town. And around 1930 or before, he decided that we should have a historical society.

Almost every town now has a historical society, but not so many of them. And not so many people were interested in the past. That has developed.

That's a good sign, people are interested in what's happened years ago. It was a heck of a time to get enough members to get the thing started. Well, I don't know how many members. You had to really get down on your knees to have them pay the dues. What was it, the dowry year? And then, I think it was the dowry year. We soon, very soon, we had two meetings a year or something like that.

And we soon ran out of people who were public-spirited enough to come for nothing and speak to us at our meetings. And so the meetings were pretty dull. My assistant-in-law was the secretary.

And she sat up front and was supposed to be taking notes. And what was her name? Ethel Wright. And we didn't have any speakers, so our president undertook to talk. And Ethel, who sat right in the front seat, went sound asleep. Well, so it was rather tough going for a while. But better times came.

And after the war, new people joined. And so things are getting along pretty well now. Excuse me.

We met down there at the library. Oh, yes. We met upstairs at the library.

No, George Hall. Oh, right. Yes.

And then the museum was upstairs. And we had a whole lot of stuff there. What kinds of things were in that museum? Well, it was... I tell you, you better go up and see our Barrett Biome House and look through them all.

Oh, there was spinning wheels and old documents and uniforms and books. And all sorts of things like that. And I can't tell you just offhand.

I tell you what they did have, which I'm particularly interested in, which I won't tell you all because it's all in that envelope up at the Barrett Biome House. But in 1960, as I said, the Captain Bill Fletcher place was taken down. And before it was taken down, they had a couple of photographs taken of it.

And, of course, I don't know whether I should go into this or not. It'd take too long. But to make a long story short, when you read that stuff in the envelope, you'll get this whole story. But anyway, they salvaged the mantel from the fireplace. That's the only thing. And they had it setting up against the wall, back wall, up in the museum at the library.

And they had a picture of the pride of the ship, pride of the Pacific. No, Empress of the Pacific, something like that. And when I became President, I thought, well, wouldn't it be nice if we could have a picture of the old Captain Bill Fletcher place over the mantel that came from there. And so I won't go any further except that we have a whole story to do with that. We went up to the Shaker Colony. And the last woman, she was in her nineties.

She was quite a remarkable woman. She did paintings and so forth. And she painted the Captain Bill Fletcher place from the photographs.

We had a wonderful time going out there when they were in the wintertime. We'd get a letter from them every once in a while. I think I've given that over to Historic Society. But that is a story in itself. Well, of course, it's just personnel that we constructed. Oh, yeah, well, that was part of the story that I... Why don't you tell us a little bit of the story? It'll be okay. Well... If you don't mind. No, it's such a long story that I... Well, anyway, all right, here we go. I thought it'd be a good thing to have this picture taken.

Well, we went up... Oh, a friend of ours in Chelmsford here, her aunt was an inmate up in the Shaker Colony. What was her name? Aunt... Well, I've forgotten what her aunt was named. But anyway, we went up there and she painted the picture.

Where was that? Where was the Shaker community? What? Where was the Shaker community? East Canterbury, New Hampshire. Okay. And... Let me see, where were we now? Where? Oh, we went up there and we went several trips and all that sort of thing, and this woman, who was 89 and I've forgotten what her name was, Sister Sutton, rather, painted it, and we brought it down and hung it up.

But I thought, well, now we have the picture. This may be not in the sequence of things happening, but we'll get them all in, I guess. Well, anyway, I said, we ought to fix up this mantel. Well, one of our friends, Mr. Woodhead, donated, what was it, $15, and had the mantel all painted up and repaired and so forth. And then I said, well, it's too bad we can't have a real fireplace back of the mantel. So I bought some lumber.

Adelaide and I, Adelaide is my helper. I bought some lumber and built a little alcove in the back of the mantel. And then one of the old schoolhouses was being dismantled down on the Mill Road, and we pulled the strings and the town fathers donated enough bricks, so I built a brick fireplace back, a frame, a wooden frame, and a big fireplace in there.

Is this in the library now? Was this at the library that you were doing this? Yes, up there, yes. And then we had some... Oh, yes, you have no idea how heavy those bricks are until you take it up one story. You couldn't take more than half a dozen or more.

Boy, they are really heavy. But I, of course, had Adelaide with me. She's a great help, bricklayer. Well, anyway, we brought them up there, and then there was some old cranes from some building, you know, fireplace cranes. And also, what is that, fire hooks, pot hooks. We got those all in there.

And we had hand irons and everything that went with them, old pots and everything. And so it really, a little ways off, it really did look like a real fireplace. And so, well, that is a little bit of what I might have missed, a few things.

But Adelaide and I did a heck of a lot of work to that. And, of course, the picture of the Captain Bill Fletcher place was at the... Incidentally, I have a couple of slides of that. And while I'm about it, I might say that during that celebration 20 years ago, the 300th anniversary, I went around and took about 200 slides of the historical places in Chelmsford and then gave, I don't know how many lectures, illustrative lectures on the history of Chelmsford.

And we have pictures, slides of the interior of the library and also often the museum that you might be interested in sometime. Could we go back just a little bit? When did you come to Chelmsford? In 1924. So you came to Chelmsford... 51 years ago.

That was just when you went to work at Lowell Tech? No, I went to Lowell Tech in 1923. But you had to live in Lowell at least. Yeah, I lived in Lowell.

So you came to Lowell, to the area, because of Lowell Tech? That's right. I see, that brought you here. That's right, yeah.

And how did you meet your wife? She chased me around the... Oh, go on now. Put that down. Well, I lived... She lived here and I lived in the next house down there.

And her father had two cows. And the cows gave milk. And the Ball family needed milk. And so I bought her milk up here. Yes, and I should have done it. But anyway, I came up here and I don't know how it happened.

I must have been in a daze or something. Well, we were married two years later. Two years later.

In 1926. So, next year we would have been married 50 years. That's right. And this year I would have been out of touch for 60 years. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that? I can't. Do you still feel as good as you did then? What? Do you still feel as good as you did then? Well, I tell you, I don't know.

Some people take life seriously and so forth, and I did. And when you look up ahead, you don't know exactly whether you're going to, just how you're going to make out. And life is rather precarious.

You have a health hazard. Of course, I had an old uncle who said there was nothing in luck, but to be in the right place at the right time is really a help. I think probably if I hadn't come to Chelmsford and lived in the city all my life, I wouldn't have been into many of these interesting situations.

Why did you move from Lowell to Chelmsford? Well, of course, I was just a boarding man. Well, my mother and father were, I don't know just exactly what to say. They never seemed to worry about having some place to anchor, and so I was anxious to have some permanent home for myself and my people, so I bought this place down here.

We were down there for over 20 years. We've been here for 20, more than 20 years. So, well, why don't you tell about part of your past life that you want to publicize? You could tell us about your ancestors, the Barretts and the Wrights, and then where you were born.

Yes, over at the old place. That's right, across the street. I think the address is 200 Acton Road. Something like that, yes. And my father, see, I was born a Wright. And as we told you before, I am descended from Thomas Barrett, Thomas Chamberlain, who was one of the men that signed the petition to have Chelmsford set aside as a town.

And then, as Lester has told you before, I descended from the man. And I grew up here in town, went to the town school. You might tell them about the town schools.

That would be very interesting. Well, I started, but the line between Chelmsford and Chelmsford Center is right along the fire road. I don't know just exactly.

That is a picture of my brother when he was in school at Chelmsford Academy. Now, where was that? That's where the fire station is. That was Chelmsford Academy, the name of it? They tore down the school.

Oh, Chelmsford Academy, I'll take that all back. I was staying in the high school. Where the Baptist Parsonage is, was Chelmsford Academy.

That was torn down. It was too bad. Ralph Waldo Emerson, you know, taught in that academy. You probably know that. And his brother, who wasn't all there. I have a brother feeling for that one.

That worked around here while Ralph Waldo was teaching. What schools did you go to? There was a little school. By the fire.

Yes, where the fire station is now. So I started up there. There were three of us. My sister Ethel, my brother Clarence. We must have just barely started there. But anyway, Ethel got to the place where she would have to go to the center.

Because there was nothing more for her up in Chelmsford. Do you mean no more grades? She got as far as she could? She seemed to have. And so my father said that he couldn't be running all over Chelmsford to pick up his children.

So Ethel had to go. Clarence and I had to go too. So Ethel went down. I don't think that she went into high school then. What is it that stands? Is it the firehouse? Yes, it's the firehouse. The schoolhouse.

And I think Adelaide has told me that the two back rooms they added on was the high school. Isn't that true? No. No.

So that was the four room building at the time. What year was that? Do you recall? Oh. Before the turn of the century.

It was. Oh yes, because I was graduating from high school in 1993. And four years back from that.

1899. Incidentally, her sister was the first girl to graduate a four year course in Chelmsford High School. Really? What year was she? She was graduating in 1901.

And that was the first girl. They had at that time had had three year courses. Of course, the high school, we had very few members.

And that was in the front part of the main building. And I went down, she went into the, well I don't know whether it was high school or not, but it doesn't make any difference. I went into the sixth grade, down at Miss McFarland's room.

And I stayed there through the fifth grade. I didn't know, and neither did my father know, whether I'd be able to keep up. Because this had been a number of different years, you know, and it hadn't been very well graded.

But anyway. That's the one in the south trench where you talked about. Yeah. Down there, of course, they had the grades. So I went to Miss McFarland for the fifth grade. And then they took a number of us, I don't know how many, and skipped us over into the sixth grade.

And then, by that time, they had built on four rooms at the back of the main school. So the whole thing, eight rooms. And so I had Miss McFarland for the seventh grade, Miss Francis Trott, who later taught the eighth general school in Lowell.

And Miss Fulton, Miss Fulton. What kind of teacher was Miss McFarland? Ah. She was a fine teacher.

When my brother went to her, he said, of course, Miss McFarland, I shouldn't say this. I'm mad all the time, but she, if you couldn't learn anything, she taught you, and you learned. And then, from there, I just went into high school.

Incidentally, the curricula, is that the word? It was different. She studied four years of Latin, and three years of Greek. Well, three years of Greek, that makes sense.

And that's a lot different from what they do now. But they didn't insist on what we took. So after the first year, and we took up Latin that year, along with English and Algebra. Then the next year, we got to French Geometry. And from then on, I took French, and I studied Greek. So that I did pretty well in the languages.

But the sciences were missing. So later on, years later, after I really grew up, I got all the other, when I went to what they call normal schools. I went down to Hyannis and spent a year and a half.

And I got my sciences down there, so I did pretty well. Did you like school? Oh, yes. I loved it. Was it, were the teachers mostly women? Yes. Of course, it was usually down at the center, a man who was the principal. And we had two good principals.

Incidentally, if I may interpolate further on Miss McFarlane. Miss McFarlane resigned after teaching 50 years. And they, Adelaide was in on this, she was the treasurer and something like that.

They tried to contact every pupil she'd had for 50 years. And they, I don't know how much money they collected, but they gave her quite a purse of money. Do you recall what year that was that she retired? See, the school is named after her.

Somewhere around 1930, I would guess. I don't know. Charlie Nichols was the prime mover in that movement.

He wasn't a star pupil, I understand, when he went to school. He was bright enough. I wondered why the teacher had him sitting beside me in school.

I wouldn't talk to him. Well, you wouldn't. I wouldn't.

He got along all right. He was the, I don't know just what his official title was. He was head of the Republican State Committee for years.

I've forgotten just a gaggle. I didn't know that. Oh, yes.

Do you remember any other people that went to school with you? Oh, yes. Not so many, I think. I had some of my classmates.

One of the Greenleaf girls, Kate, you know her better. And their cousin, Fred Bartlett. The doctor's son, Levi Howard.

And this Charles Nichols. Oh, yes. Jessie Stewart wasn't in my class.

She's still around, yeah. But Jess is still going strong. She was, went to the Normal High School in Boston.

Yeah, Top Drawings. Back in those days, it was when I was in high school that we actually had a director of music. Oh, we didn't have all the different people that they have in schools nowadays to come in.

And so we had no actor director. But Miss McFarlane could draw. And I had, when I had Gertrude Fulton, she knew that I liked art, and so she encouraged me.

Not that I ever did anything much, but you know, I enjoyed it, and I always have enjoyed it. Such things. And then, of course, I went to teaching school.

I went down to Hyannis Normal. What made you decide to go to Hyannis Normal and not Lowell Normal? Well, Lowell Normal hadn't... Not too good a reputation, I guess, even then. It, um, although they had some good teachers there.

Hazel Stevens, you know her down there? She taught in high school in Lowell for years. I guess, anyway, she said that it was a waste of time going to Lowell Normal. She was disgusted. But, um... Evidently, Hyannis was sort of a nice, small place, and you really got individual attention. And I had the experience of living in the dormitory for the rest of the group. And incidentally, that alumni association still has meetings down in Hyannis.

Yeah. We've been down there for several times. What was dormitory life like? It was wild. How do you know? He wasn't there, and he never had to eat anything. Well, there were two of us. Two girls, no room.

It was coeducational, and the boys that were going to school there, if they didn't live there in the town, lived on the lower floor of the dormitory. And, of course, besides those bedrooms were, well, reception rooms and the matron. I think she lived there.

Well, of course, you know what going to school was like. I had a young girl live with me. I think they only had a fine principal in the school at the time.

I think that he put Theresa and me together because I was older, and she, it seemed, had never been to the regular school. I didn't know. I think he wanted me to act sort of the older sister to him.

Well, she and I went to different churches. She was a Catholic, and I was a humanitarian. But we had no trouble over religion, and we had time after supper at night.

Of course, we had our meals there in the dormitory, down in the dining room. And when we went to our rooms, the lights were out at ten. It must be an exciting time.

I think we went up to our rooms perhaps at eight o'clock, anyway. At half-past nine, the bells rang, and all the people were running around through the halls. It was just the last thing before they went to sleep.

So much so that if Theresa and I wanted to sleep, we went to bed and got as possible into a deep sleep so we wouldn't have a commotion. And one night, I don't know, one of the boys on the lower floor must have been of an inquiring mind. And there were two wires somehow that must have fascinated him because he wanted to see what would happen if he put them together or something like that.

And it rang the bell. And some of the girls were fainting away. The fire bell, you know. But that was just a short intermission. Did you have to all evacuate the building? We didn't evacuate the building, no. I don't know.

I don't want to steal your thunder. We looked her up a number of years ago and went down there and took her over to the reunions and so forth. But the story, I was telling this to somebody else just a short time ago, that Theresa was telling us on the buffet in the dining room, there was a couple of little vases.

I don't think they were too much of works of art. But she told us that they came from the sandwich glassworks. And that made it quite interesting.

Well, then she said that years and years before, an old lady came to visit her. And she saw those vases. She said, that's sandwich glass.

She went up and looked at them. I painted those. I thought that was quite a story. She used to work at the factory? She used to work at the place. That's very interesting. When the sand gave out and the wood, that's one thing that, why they say that the cape is so denuded, the lower cape is denuded from the forest, because in making glass they needed a lot of wood to burn.

They kept cutting down the forest and then the sand began to spread and so forth. Okay, excuse me Adelaide, ladies. Well, oh, I taught over in Dresden at one time. That was after you graduated from normal school? No, I did not. Before I graduated. Oh, well I taught up in New Hampshire.

Yes. And you taught over at Carlisle too? Yes, first it was London there. That was right after high school, wasn't it? Yes, about a year or so.

It must have been. And, oh, that was a very hard school. And they, in those days, didn't have any sessions in the wintertime at all.

And so, I don't know, I didn't stay there too long. It was very out of my nerves, although I enjoyed the people that I met. And some of the children were wonderful, and others weren't so wonderful.

Then I went to Canberra, and I loved that school. It was only a small school, but the children came from the farms around the world, and they were nice. And then, I wanted to get nearer home.

So then I came down here to Carlisle, and I stayed there a number of years. And then I went to Drayken. In Canberra, the superintendent of the school was the last one I had. In Drayken? No, in Carolina. Evidently, he didn't stay very long. He had been a principal of a school, and then he died as a superintendent.

Well, he respected everybody. If you took us to 7th grade, he seemed to think that you should... All the people in that grade in the town should do the same thing. You know, teach the same thing, and so forth.

Did you more or less have a lot of freedom, though, in other schools? You taught the way that you want, and the things that you wanted to? Oh, no, no. There were certain things that you wanted to teach, of course, in each school. But you did have quite a lot of freedom. Incidentally, when you went to Marblehead, that was more... Then I went to Marblehead from Drayken. I left Drayken and went to normal school and got my diploma. And then I went down to Marblehead, and I stayed there for 13 years.

And then I married this gentleman and gave up school to teach. You stopped teaching as soon as you were married? Yes. Did most people stop teaching or stop the profession when they married? I think in some schools they had to.

It was a long... They had to. In normal times now, there seems to be enough work for most everybody. For a great many people in the old days, just getting a job was it. They were lucky to get just a job. Did people seem to object to that at all? Did women who had been teachers object? Oh, I don't think they did. Then, my sister became a librarian down here. At Adams? Adams Library, Ethel White. Ethel White? And she only worked there three years, I think it was, and she died. And I had gone in and just helped out a little down there. But I didn't seem to know more about the library than anybody else, and so I just took over. And so I stayed there 11 years. So that was into the 30s, the late 20s and into the 30s? It must have been in... Oh, no, it was in the... Near the 50s.

Oh, it was. Well, late 40s. So you didn't work from 1925 until the 40s, I see. And not away from home. Well, that's what I meant. Yes.

What was Chelmsford like in the early part of the century? Oh. I'll say, I'll add one thing. When I came here in 1924, they were just hot-topping the last end of Acton Road on the Acton Line. And I remember when South Chelmsford was isolated by snow for two or three days. Really? Yeah. You see, they were just beginning to plow the roads.

And they just had the ordinary town trucks to plow the road and the big snowstorm. There wasn't any town truck that hadn't broken down. So we were there.

So it was, I'd say about 5,000 when I came here. Yes, the population. And we had town characters.

I suppose we still have town characters, but the larger a place, the less visible they are, obviously. Who were some of them? I'm curious. I would not want to even stick my neck out too much on some of them.

I don't know. Their descendants might... Maybe you could just describe them without mentioning names, if you like. Well, I would tell you... Well, some of them have gone. When we... Incidentally, I was on the... I think I was the father of the town planning. Because I... It was around 1930, somewhere in there, that we began to hear of zoning and building code and so forth. And so I... I was the president of the BIA at that time.

So I thought I'd look into it. I went down and talked to them down at the state house and got a speaker up here. I talked before the garden club and so forth.

And so town fathers appointed some of us to look into the matter and bring home recommendations to the town meeting. So we got all the information we could from other towns and so forth. And we drew up a building code and drew up a zoning and all that sort of thing and presented it to the town meeting.

And there was a... You'd think that there would be no objections. Oh, boy, what a furore. The town meeting, the cop had to come in and settle some down.

What was the problem? Well, I think that the objections were by people who were one of the highest IQ. But they were afraid that they couldn't build on their own a shed or something like that. I don't know.

Through the years, I've found that no matter how good an idea you have or want to push through, that usually it's a small group that's against it. Now, just why they're against it, I don't know. Psychology just has to come in there somewhere.

Because we that were on this committee, we received more insults and so forth. Gosh, pretty rugged, but it got through and I'm glad that we did because I don't know what would happen. It's like anything else, it isn't perfect.

The town planning and zoning and all that sort of thing, it's not... As long as you have people that are not perfect running things, you'll never get anything perfect. No thing to do to have all that thing. South Chelsea would be all shacks that didn't have the building code and all that sort of thing.

So that was put through in the 30s? Somewhere in the 30s, I don't remember just exactly what. Could you talk a little bit about the Village Improvement Association? If you know anything of the history of it. The story is all in what I have in this, right in here somewhere. Well, just a thumbnail or so. It was formed, as the name implies, to improve the town in around 1874 or something like that. One of the projects was sidewalks in Chelmsford. That hasn't been fully completed. But that was one thing around the center, that was one of their projects. Another project, let me see.

What was that? I just hit it on my time stand. Oh yes, tree planting. That was another one of their projects.

And there was, I probably forgot a lot of it. But they kept going until around in the 1930s. When we had more new people come in and so many organizations.

There wasn't quite the esprit de corps as they were when the Village Improvement Association was started. But what I can, one of the things that I was interested in. Maybe I spoke about this before, about the Christmas party.

No, you didn't. One of their projects was at Christmas time. They had, after Christmas, they'd have a get-together for the public in the town hall.

And the one I remember was, it was when the Works Progress Administration, WPA was in its prime. They had what was known as a dramatic group. It was sort of a vaudeville variety show that they gave.

So the VIA sponsored that and we had that. Whether that was the date or around that date, we had some very cold weather. And Adelaide and her sister and I, we walked down. We didn't, it was too cold to run the car, we walked down to the center with a lot of snow on the ground. And I know when we started, it was 12 below zero, so you see we were rather hot. Well, they gave the show and there was a magician there and so forth.

But there was, they had sort of a, well I don't know, they're supposed to be chorus girls or something. They were pretty bad. And afterwards, we gave, they had refreshments and all that sort of thing.

What I was going to say was, there was sort of a district director around here that looked after this dramatic club, as they called it. And he finally called it off. He said they didn't have any dramatic ability.

I should have told him that before he found that out. But, let's see, what was I, what is the other things that the VIA, oh, the Christmas. That was after the, but this was Christmas Eve. And it had been the custom, and we followed it, to have Christmas carols sung around the tree in the center on Christmas Eve. So I was the goat that year, in other words the president. So we did quite a little work and we sent around notices to the different churches to ask for shut-ins. And incidentally we got 42 names. And we had trumpeters in the church belfry playing Christmas carols. And we sat, oh, it was a beautiful Christmas night.

It was a crescent moon, I remember, clear, cold. And there was a crescent moon right side of the church spire. I always remember that part of it.

And I think the tree was decorated right at that corner there. And believe it or not, we all went out, and we were in two groups, and we sang to every non-shut-in, 42 of them. And then we went back to the town hall and they served us chocolate and so forth, and boy were we glad to. I always remember that. We'd say, which is the next one? Get the address, stop at the front door, get out, say two verses or something on the carol, and then shoot into the car. Go to the next one.

The Nucleus, that was the different choir singers. But the soloists refused to come with us to spoil their voices. But I included, and the others had no golden voice to hurt.

But boy, we were that cold, you know how it was. An experience. Was the Village Improvement Association a town-wide association, or did it spring from a certain section of the town? It was the center.

It was the center. In the old days, there was tremendous rivalry between the north and south, and north and center. Oh, really? Oh, yes.

So much rivalry that they ordinated town meetings in north and in south. And when we were, I remember that they ordinated the high school graduations, one in north and the next year in south. Very bitter rivalry.

What was it based on, do you know? Anything particular? Well, we didn't have anything against the north, I don't know, just... They said, well, the communication between the two sections was practically, you know... It could be that at the center there was more of the old families, and maybe more of the... Maybe they had just a little bit more money than they had on the average up north, I don't know. I don't know why they should be. You can't explain jealousy too much. The north was more industrialized? More industrialized. There was nothing in the center. The only thing at the center, well, there was a grain store and a blacksmith shop in the old days. And the ginger ale, that was the... And that came. Yeah, that was about it. Did the north have its own set of town authorities, or was it just... No, no, no.

It didn't? No, no. But I wasn't in on that much, in those quarrels, or if they were quarrels, but... I think there's more or less pulling a haul in between the north and the center. They were the two big... At first, Lowell grew from East Jemson.

But the Lowell was incorporated when? In 1826 or something like that. Of course, you know that all Lowell was part of Jemson at one time. What do you recall about the poor farm? You mentioned... Well, it was built... The poor farm was built in 1818 by one of the ancestors of Adelaide.

And later, one of her uncles, was it Lance? Were caretakers of the poor farm. And that poor farm was on Turnpike Road, was it? Or Mill Road? Well, that's the big house there at the intersection of... It sets up on Bill Rigger Street and... So that big white house was built in 1818? 1818. I don't understand that.

But, there were... Since the earliest times, there was an inn there anyway. Even before that. And that was the main road between... On the Turnpike, between Boston and Amherst, New Hampshire, I think.

And they went up north and then they went over the ferry. There was a ferry that went across the Merrimack River there, somewhere in the Middle Six Village. Now, you said that some of your ancestors operated the town farm? No.

Not the town farm. It was a dwelling house. Well, what was the town farm? We'll put it that way. Yes, one of her ancestors... The relatives did run the town farm later. But in 1818, one of her ancestors built the town farm. Yes, Jonathan Manning.

Built the building? Jonathan Manning built it? I think it was Jonathan Manning. Anyway, he lived there. I used to have all this on my fingertips, but I kind of forgot.

I thought it was 1798, the same as the fist house. Oh, no, no. I know it was 1880, because I... I don't know.

What kind of place was it? Did you ever hear anything about it? There was a... Mr. Perra... Mr... What was his name? Edith Perra's husband. Carl Perra was a select man. That was 40 years ago or more.

And he... was dead set about having the town run a poor farm. So he finally... They sold that, and all the... Indigenous, is that the word? Went over to the Tewkesbury, all the poor people. What was his objection? Did he ever state it? It's quite... Of course, they had to hire someone to run it.

It might have been financial. In the old days, the people, poor people particularly, years and years ago, they had it pretty rough. This isn't... Well, I don't have to go into the early history, but there is a story about you had to take care of the poor that were born in the place. There was some question of where you were born, and there was a poor girl that was not all there. And she was in Shelton, and they took her over, left her over in, I believe it was Kyle Isle, and said she belonged there, and they brought her back. It's a sad, sad thing.

The only thing is, a lot of these people that are not too intelligent, I don't believe they feel the sadness and so forth. That's almost my... That's a good question. Do you know what kinds of people stayed in the farm? I guess I would mean more age-wise.

Well, they were unfortunate. Some people, a dog was unfortunate, misfortunate. Health, and then maybe not too intelligent.

And then, financial troubles, you know. And then there were some nice old people that lived all their lives, all that, and their relatives and friends have all gone. And until lately, there's nothing but the poor farmers who took after them.

It isn't an easy world now, but it was pretty darn tough years ago. My... I don't want to hear myself talk, but... This isn't Shelton District, but my grandfather, he can remember a long time ago, he was a teacher in his younger days, and he boarded around, do you remember? That story? Well, they stayed at these different houses, depending on the time, depending on how many children they had there. So my grandfather went up, I guess it was one Friday night to a new place, and they had several children.

And I said, I don't know, it didn't seem to be much more than a one-room house, probably was. There was a bed in the corner. And he didn't see any of the children, he was talking to the wife. And... It got along towards supper time, and she said, well, let's give the children some supper. I don't know whether you remember these old milk pans, where they settled the milk to have the cream. That's another story, but anyway, they had these milk pans, they used to put milk in it, and the cream would come to top, and they'd skim it off with the butter.

Well, she brought out one of those, and brought out the jug of molasses, and poured in, oh, I don't know, about a quarter of an inch in the bottom. Then she brought out a whole plate of bread, and she says, come children. I don't know, four or five children come out from under the bed and start eating on the floor.

That was too much my grandfather, he didn't stay there. But that gives you an idea of the poverty that was around. Was poverty prevalent in Chelmsford in the latter part of the last century? Was it all part of this one? I would say no, but I don't know.

Well, none of us were poor. No, none of us had much money, but we never got... There was no extreme poverty? I tell you, when I came here, at least South Chelmsford was mostly a farming district. And farming has never been... Very few farmers ever got rich in New England. So it was... They got along, but they had to work long hours. It was a tough setting. So we ought to be thankful that we were born about when we were... Were there any provisions for health care, like doctors or hospitals or clinics or anything, in the area? Well, we had a doctor, and the doctors in those days would come to our house.

Come to your house, if you want. Nowadays, you go to them. And the dentists didn't need too much education to be dentists.

My father and mother both had dentures, false teeth in those days. Long before I knew them, when I came to town. And my father paid five dollars for his complete set of teeth. And, of course, they were toothbrushes and all that, so they were known a hundred years ago. I've heard a few of them. So the teeth weren't cared for.

And my father tells about the way they pulled teeth. I guess the doctor pulled the teeth. They had some sort of a thing that... They'd turn and come out and wedge the tooth out without any thing to tend the pain.

So all I ever knew about my father and mother's teeth problems, they suffered, just suffered, that's all. Oh, this isn't Chelsea, either. My father came up from New Brunswick. And he and his brother, they did have relatives up here. But they were young. Their dad was 17 or something like that.

And they went around and they had a job in the country. And all they had to do was go out there. They didn't have enough trade fare to make it.

They sat in the old Providence Station, now in Park Square, what to do. And they looked over and they saw a pocketbook over there. They went, oh, it was five dollars in it. And they had enough car fare to take them to their work. And where my father went was my grandfather's father, where he met my mother. What about politics in town? Well, they had a town meeting, if I remember, Adelaide remembers, down in the daytime.

And most people had to work on the job, so there weren't too many people there. And so things usually went through about as planned. There wasn't too much argument. But I know that there was some of the old settlers, they were always, when I first came here, we wouldn't call us too modern, but the old, old settlers were against anything modern like improving roads or anything like that. Against spending money. They've gone to the other extreme now, but a lot of them weren't spendthrifts by any means.

I know, was it Captain Monaghan? He was a good conservative citizen, level-headed. What are we going to do spending all this money on our roads? And they didn't know what spending was in those days, because the automobile was, very few automobiles were. So, along here, we didn't have very few automobiles pass us.

We used to back out from the other house, out into the road. Imagine doing that now. You wouldn't live more than an hour and a half.

No, a couple of minutes, I guess. And of course the roads in those days, they weren't as nice as they are now. So you couldn't go over 25 miles an hour if you wanted to, because you'd either

shake yourself to death, or your car would shake it. And they didn't know just about how to build roads, or didn't build roads as good as they do now. So they didn't hold up too long. In a few years, they'd be potholes. Oh yes, we did springtime, in one way, because the roads didn't really follow. Oh, and we'd just not ride the wheels of our wagons. We didn't have an auto back in the old days. And the wheels would go way down. Oh, we were so thankful when the muddy times were over. And that was an enchancement, I remember this.

The country roads in the old days were, when the frost was coming out of the ground, some of them practically impassable. So we have so many things that, now that, when I was in school for six summers, I went down to New Brunswick, and helped my, in the summertime, helped my great uncle on the farm. And they churned their own butter, and he cut his wood with a saw, a buck saw, and everything was just as primitive as could be.

And such a revolutionist, how now, they had one paper a week. Oh. What did you do for entertainment and recreation? Well, when we were in school, old enough, of course, we had parties, we had sleigh rides.

Oh, and the church supper, that was the high point. Yes, every month, church supper. It was a good feed? Oh, yes.

And it was not only just one group, they'd come in from all the churches, you know, people that you might not see too often, and also in our church, after the supper, they'd give a little entertainment. And you are now looking at the two of the veterans of the entertainment. We'd give a one-act play, most every, after supper, and Adelaide and I, I don't know what was the matter with us, but we were in most of these.

And one of the things, this is, I wasn't in this one, but Adelaide and my sister-in-law were in it, I don't know, it was all a woman cast. And as the curtain went up, my sister-in-law was sitting there, reading something. And someone had one of these old-fashioned music boxes, I don't know what these symphonies are, little... The medals? Medals, yes.

Well, somebody had one of those and thought that would be a good thing to, when the curtain went up, to have Ethel listening to this music box. So they made the mistake in not rehearsing with that. So I was there, I was sitting in the back of the hall, and the curtain went up, and there was Ethel.

And there was a music box playing this tune. Well, it got through the tune, and Ethel started to talk, and then the music box started with the second verse. And that surprised Ethel like, hey, well, it finally started, finished up, and Ethel started again.

And then the music box started with the third verse. And let's see, wasn't it, Mrs. North had went in and grabbed the music box and took it off the stage. I never had so much fun in my life, and all the audience, I thought they would fall into the aisles.

And we had a lot of fun, too, but yes, the, I don't know which, well, the, oh, yes, the, and we'd have about the same audience every month, and they would see plenty of the same actors every month. So I was in a one-night play, and I was on the stage when the curtain went up. And I was reading or something, and one of my friends in the back of the house started applause, and they wouldn't let me go on until I got up and bowed, recognition. That shows what, what a family affair it was. Yes, we had some fun, all right. Oh, yes, and Percy, Percy Walder said that he thought at the end of the season, if there's any money left over, we ought to divide up with the actors and make fools of themselves.

Did you ever travel into Lowell? What? Did you ever travel into Lowell? For what? For entertainment or shopping or anything at all? Oh, yes. Well, I gave some talks on the history of Chelmsford and Lowell. And... Oh, good.

Oh, yes. You are now looking at the father of the Chelmsford Dramatic Club. Somewhere around the 1930s, there was a family here.

What was their names? Well, it doesn't make much sense, I forgot now. But he, I think he graduated from Oxford. He was a smart, a smart family.

Anyway, he came up the house one night and said, I've written a play. A two-act play. I'd like to have you be in it.

Gosh, I'd never been in anything but a one-act play. S

o, we read it over. Well, we put it on and we gave one, we went over to Bill Ricker and gave that too. But that was the start of the Chelmsford, whatever they call themselves now. Oh, Chelmsford Players. And I was the guy that, we wanted to know, well, we want to sell tickets, what shall we call it? Well, I said, let's call it Unitarian Players.

That's the way the tickets came up, Unitarian Players. And then when it broadened out, there came Chelmsford Players. So a lot of the activity was to come in. So what are your general feelings toward the town of Chelmsford? Well, we think that it's too large. I guess everybody feels that way. And of course they have, we think that they've, at least I think that they've overbuilt the schools.

I think they have too many facilities too much. What I do think, this isn't Chelmsford or the state or the country alone. All the government units are going into bankruptcy.

They're spending too much money. And they'll never be able to pay it back. Now what's going to happen, I don't know, but the next generation has got to look at it very, very tightly. And I don't know. The federal government, what is it, 300 billion or something like that? Well, they'll be fortunate in the near future to pay the interest on that. It isn't because I'm growing old, you know, to say, well, these old people, they get that way.

But I felt that things haven't been going as well as they could for 40 years. Things are never perfect, of course. You can't expect them to be perfect.

But you can't keep giving away and not having some limit. I'd like to say a thing, be optimistic about it, but I don't see how they're going to pay the bills. I'm glad that we're glad that we're as old as they are, so we won't have to come to that crisis.

And also we as a nation I don't know where our friends are. And of course the communists want to destroy us and we have people in the country that would like to destroy us. So we are in a precarious position all over the lot.

But paying your bills is I'd say number one problem that everybody has got to pull in their belt whether they like it or not