Massachusetts

Lake Boon is a beautiful 65-acre lake located west of Boston. Beginning in the 1920s, its accessibility from Boston and western suburbs via two railroads made it a popular vacation spot. Attracted by its natural beauty, a lively and decorous summer community grew and returned year after year to enjoy boating, bathing, fishing, and many other activities. Photographers were also attracted to the lake, and many of their images became postcards used by the lake residents and visitors to send to friends and relatives. Through vintage postcards, Lake Boon is a visual journey around the lake as it looked in the early 1900s.

This New England community has made national headlines for the notorious Sacco and Vanzetti trial; it has hosted Presidents Washington, Jackson and Lincoln, among other leaders; and it played a formative role in the establishment of the Animal Rescue League. In popular culture, Dedham made its mark as the setting for several notable films and works of fiction. Author James L. Parr gives a fresh take on Dedham's famous moments and also weaves in lesser-known stories of its heritage and traditions. This town has accumulated some eccentricities, from the legendary apparitions that haunted the cemetery for most of October 1887 to the still-active, two-centuries-old Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves. Explore the intricate microcosm of American history that belongs to this charming New England town.

Paul St. Germain has been a Rockport resident for 20 years and has developed a revealing record of the men, the quarries, the tools, and the final uses of Cape Ann granite around the nation.

The granite industry began on Cape Ann with the first sale of a piece of Rockport granite, for use as a millstone, to a farmer in Newburyport in 1800. The industry would grow to include more than 60 quarries and operations around the cape, becoming the second-largest economic force in the area behind fishing. Hundreds were employed as quarrymen, stonecutters, paving cutters, and finishers. Cape Ann was particularly well fitted for the pursuit of granite as its rocky hills and shores afforded a comparatively inexhaustible source of supply, and its splendid shipping facilities gave the advantage of quick and economical transportation to market by sea and land. The industry eventually declined, and by 1930, most quarries had gone out of business because of labor strikes and low demand. Today, most of these quarries are filled with rainwater and springwater, and many are used as reservoirs for the surrounding communities.

Lincoln was founded in 1754, when colonists in Concord and parts of Lexington and Weston joined together to form a new town. Judge Chambers Russell, Concord's representative to the General Court, christened the town Lincoln after his beloved family home of Lincolnshire, England. Shown in this pictorial of more than two hundred never-before-published photographs culled from historic archives and family collections, Lincoln evolves from its early days as a thriving agricultural community, through gentrification into country estates owned by wealthy Bostonians, to its present status as a pioneer in open-space preservation and conservation. Lincoln is a treasure trove for longtime residents and visitors alike who want to experience a New England town restore, recycle, and reinvent itself.

This book relates to that quaint Nantucket which existed for two hundred years before the island was discovered by "the summer boarder." The materials from which it has been written comprise the original town and court records, various letters, account books, sea-journals, and other private manuscripts, including the record books of the Quaker Society of Nantucket. None of these valuable materials have been used heretofore for such a purpose. For assistance in procuring them, I am indebted to Mr. Henry B. Worth and to Captain Thomas R. Rodman, of New Bedford; to many friends in Nantucket, and especially to Miss Helen Barnard Winslow Worth, whose kind services have been invaluable.

From the 1890s through the 1920s, the postcard was an extraordinarily popular means of communication, and many of the postcards produced during this "golden age" can today be considered works of art. Postcard photographers traveled the length and breadth of the nation snapping photographs of busy street scenes, documenting local landmarks, and assembling crowds of local children only too happy to pose for a picture. These images, printed as postcards and sold in stores across the country, survive as telling reminders of an important era in America's history. This fascinating new history of Lynn, Massachusetts, showcases more than two hundred of the best vintage postcards available. Drawn largely from the extensive archives of the Lynn Historical Society, the images in this informative volume take the reader on a tour of Lynn's beaches and parks, streets and squares, churches and schools, even into the sky for some intriguing bird's eye views, giving a glimpse of everything an earlier generation loved about Lynn.

The Marion Art Center was founded in 1957 by a group of amateur actors and members of St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church in Marion. The minister, John Albert, was very interested in the theater, and he organized and directed several plays put on by young members of his church who called themselves the Hornblowers. The group performed multiple plays as fundraisers for the church before they began renting the Universalist church in Marion in 1957. Today the art center owns the church building and continues, among other things, to produce plays and sponsor art exhibits in its Cecil Clark Davis Gallery. Marion Art Center documents the rich history of the center that became an active and vital part of the community.

The established neighborhoods of Hingham make up a seashore community that has retained much of its historic charm. The Old Derby Academy, Old Ordinary Tavern, and the Old Ship Meetinghouse church are all local treasures. A trip down Main Street affords extraordinary views of fine Victorian homes and Colonial farmhouses. Hingham was also home to the U.S. armed forces buildup during World Wars I and II. This Colonial settlement truly remains a celebrated all-American town.

Originally part of Springfield's outward commons, Hampden was called Wilbraham and then South Wilbraham until it was incorporated as Hampden in 1878. Its main street parallels the peaceful Scantic River, surrounded by mountains that lend a sense of mystery to this lovely New England village. By harnessing the Scantic's energy, this farming community became a booming mill town in the 1800s. When plans to build a railroad for transporting products from mills and quarries failed, industry collapsed. The town reverted back to farming and later became a bedroom community.

Hampden brings readers back to the days when world-renowned Thornton W. Burgess wrote his Peter Rabbit books beside Laughing Brook and when Maude Tait, pioneer aviatrix whose speed record beat Amelia Earhart's, taught school in Hampden. The book tells the exciting stories of the people and places that formed the town, such as the early workers, businessmen, preachers, and teachers. Included in Hampden are early photographs of parades and plays, picnics and personalities, and the way of life before the advent of modern transportation, communication, and manner of business.

Referred to as ""one of the prettiest and pleasantest places of all New England towns,"" Georgetown grew rapidly, and by the mid-nineteenth century the population had risen dramatically.

This town, ""a pleasant and flourishing place,"" saw the Boston & Maine Railroad laid out in 1854, with depots at Pentucket Square and at Baldpate, and two street railways in 1896-the Haverhill, Georgetown & Danvers Line and the Georgetown, Rowley & Ipswich Line, both of which greatly facilitated the ease of transportation. Join the author in Georgetown as he takes you on a tour through the town's early years. Visit the schools and churches, the Old Home Week in 1909, the Georgetown Peabody Library, and the Baldpate Inn and Hospital. Experience the natural features, including Pentucket and Rock Ponds, and Bald Pate Hill, the highest elevation in Essex County. See the local tanneries during the pre-Civil War years, which produced enough leather for 32,300 pairs of boots and over 300,000 pairs of shoes.

Before the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the nineteenth century's cultural renaissance, a serious rebellion was brewing in the taverns of Boston. Look back to a time when riots raged through the streets of Boston, when Beacon Hill was a neighborhood of beggars and vagabonds, and papal effigies burned on the Boston Common. Meet William Blackstone, the first Bostonian, and John Singleton Copley, portrait artist of the elite. In this compilation by historian William Marchione, discover Boston as it once was—when customs officials were dragged through the sewers and drinking tea was a highly political act. Even the city's largest and most controversial funeral, held for the infamous Sacco and Vanzetti, ended in a street brawl with police. And yet, with the sprawl of the first American railroads, the dawning of the abolitionist movement and the cultural flourishing in art and architecture, Boston emerged as the nation's first cultural, economic, and political hub.

Peabody was settled in 1626 as Brooksby Village and was originally a part of the town of Salem. In 1752, citizens joined in the area of town known as Salem Village to form the town of Danvers. The separation of the two towns into Danvers and South Danvers took place in 1855. In 1868, the name of South Danvers was changed to Peabody to honor its native son George Peabody.

In Peabody, vivid postcards offer a contrasting view of what it was like to live and work in a community having two distinct characters: the town center, with its bustling tanning industries, which soon earned Peabody the sobriquet of "Leather Capital of the World," and the pastoral farming villages of Brookdale, Locustdale, Brooksby, and West Peabody, which portray a sense of life in rural America during this same era.