Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

A little hometown history

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • A little hometown history

    There's a blog item coming tomorrow about an interesting piece of automotive history that is tied to my town, Abington, Ma. I went out to shoot a couple photos related to that item yesterday. I had the two boys with me and amazingly, they fell asleep at the same time in the car. This never happens. My wife was out drinking margaritas with one of her friends and I had nothing else to do, so I let the guys slumber and I cruised around town at took some pictures of some of the more interesting buildings as stuff we have.

    If you dig local history, read on, if not, you'll probably be bored to death.

    A little backstory:

    Abington was settled in 1668 and founded as a town in 1712. Currently there are about 15,000 people living here. I've lived here my whole life, except for college where the majority of four years was spent in Amherst, Ma at UMass (AKA ZooMass). I've always been interested in the history of the town, although I have not joined up on the historical society. I keep thinking about it, but it would totally cement me as a "townie" and that's not a title I am ready for yet.

    The town has a ton of cool history, most of it based in the early industrial era of America. It is now a bedroom community and other than small businesses and retail, there's not much in the way of stuff that gets made here.

    There was, and still are lots of White Oak trees in town. The significance there is that the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned war ship in the world was build primarily of White Oak from Abington. The cannonballs that famously bounced off of "Old Ironsides" were thwarted by trees felled within a mile of so of my house. Kinda neat.

    The first heavyweight boxing champ of the world, John L Sullivan (as shown in the photo below my name) called Abington his home, and his brick farm house is about a 1/2 mile from where I am typing this right now.

    The primary industry of the town during the Civil War era was shoe making and it is documented that more than half the shoes provided to the Union Army came from Abington Factories. The building below is the Moses Arnold shoe factory. It was built in the early 1800's and during the war was turning out something like 10,000 shoes a week, a heady number in those days.



    Next up is the largest building in town and one that gives the fire department cold sweats when thoughts of it catching fire are mentioned. Now it is largely known as the "New England Art" building but it started life as the Crossett shoe factory in the 1880's. This building is of wood construction and for ages had machinery that dripped oil and other stuff into the floors. It is a tinder box, especially now because it is used by a printing company and is full of paper products. Looking past the building in the distance you can see the corner of another building. That was my elementary school, and at on time, the factory went all the way down there. It is about the size of a city block. The towers are kind of weird as well. Notice the one on the right is about a story taller than the one of the left. The town bought a very expensive truck with a six story ladder on it a few years back because of this building. There was lots of teeth gnashing over that one.



    This eight sided house actually sits across the street from the factory and was built in 1850 by a guy named Americus Vespicius. People had cool names back then.



    This was once a one screen movie house, but when it was built in 1894, it was a shop that sold sleighs, horse riding products, and apparently the owner brokered horses out of here as well. Around 1915 it was sold to a theater company and operated as a theater for some time. It later became a card store. When I was a kid the building was abandoned, I think it was abandoned sometime in the 1970's. We never had the guts to go in, but some of the older kids said that there were still seats and a screen in the building and the card company only occupied a portion of the building. It was bought and restored back to life by a local developer. I think it is one of the coolest places in town. The original owner was a man named Henry Crossley, you can see his initials at the top of the building.



    One more if you are still awake.

    This train station was built in 1893 was was witness to one of the most interesting events in the history of the town. It was the site of the "Great Abington Train Riot". Abington has always had a history of railroad service. The factories were supplied by them. The town had a trolley system that they were expanding during the 1890's and they reached a point where they needed to cross the railroad tracks owned by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad company. The town needed to do this to connect the trolley to the neighboring town of Rockland. The RR company voted against allowing the town to cross their tracks. This meant trouble! The town had their work crews start laying the track under protection of the town constabulary, but the workers for the RR company were going to have none of that. I huge melee broke out with the coppers clubbing RR company workers, people whacking each other with tools and whatever else they could get their hands on, and fists flying. Eventually the whole mess was sorted out and the town made amends with the RR company in order to finish their line. In 1993 the town had a neat re-enactment of the events of the day which was well attended. I was 13 at the time and really enjoyed seeing it. Here's the station that was part of the peace offering by the town.



    There's some info on my little corner of the world. Hope you enjoyed it, if you're still awake. Stay tuned to the blog to see some cool automotive history tomorrow!

    Brian
    That which you manifest is before you.

  • #2
    Re: A little hometown history

    part of last summer's trip to boston included staying in salem..was a real cool place..we stayed at a B&B.We ate well and slept very well.had a great time.went to the aquarium too...only thing was digesting the 35$$ parking cuz we got there 10 minutes past...oh well..still had fun.

    hey Bruab,

    when is /was the ISCA carshow??last time i went was in like 98 or so...



    al
    "IGNORANCE SHOULD BE EFFIN PAINFUL"

    522 cubes on One Gun,doin' it on W's at full weight baby!

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: A little hometown history

      March 12-14, 2010 they finally moved it to a weekend were it shouldn't be like 50 below. :D

      Brian
      That which you manifest is before you.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: A little hometown history


        damn.same weekend as SpeedoRama in toronto. >
        "IGNORANCE SHOULD BE EFFIN PAINFUL"

        522 cubes on One Gun,doin' it on W's at full weight baby!

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: A little hometown history

          you missed the grove..
          the national park
          and a pic. of Abingtons dragstrip.. you know a picture shot at the base of your street (139 end) and showing the straight long road..
          or Abington high. dragstrip, tho now there are speed bumps..
          the party center.. aka, the woods behind the vfw/frolio/and whatever the old Abington campus of southshore vo tec is now..

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: A little hometown history

            Mass. is such a cool state. All different kinds of history and things to see. I have three aunts that live there. One in Taunton one in Easton and one on the Cape. I love to go out there and visit. Seems like all of the buildings are unique.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: A little hometown history

              Taunton has lots of cool Victorian houses. It was a hub of silver processing and jewelery making way back and there was lots of money there.

              That which you manifest is before you.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: A little hometown history

                Brian, thanks for the very cool pictures and history lesson. I love history! By the way, there's a huge brick octagonal mansion down in Natchez, Mississippi built in 1860, and it was equipped with something novel at the time - walk in closets.

                edit: found a link:
                This website is for sale! southernbyways.com is your first and best source for all of the information you’re looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, southernbyways.com has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for!
                President, Wicked Rides Poland

                http://www.bangshift.com/forum/showt...eau-Club-Wagon

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: A little hometown history

                  I love Geeks,'specially History Geeks ;D! ~J/W.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: A little hometown history

                    That is so cool Brian.

                    The town where I grew up in South Carolina could easily be named "All Of This Stuff Didn't Used To Be Here."

                    No history, just explosive growth in the entire Charlotte region. Glad to be away from there.
                    Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: A little hometown history

                      Local history is fascinating. My mom is a crazy geaneology buff, and while that disease hasn't got me yet I can understand the fascination with it.

                      There's a ton of history in PA and especially in Berks County. Daniel Boone was born here; asphalt pavement got the nickname "macadam" when Mac Adam was governor and pushed to have roads paved; there's a lot of large stone mansions and "plantations" in my immediate neighborhood that just ooze centuries of history from the houses, barns, summer kitchens, blacksmith shops, etc.

                      Bruab- join the history thing, sometime.
                      The official Bangshift garage door guru. Just about anything can be built using garage door parts, trust me.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: A little hometown history

                        zzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzzzZZZzzzzzZZZZZzzzzzz
                        Cognizant Dissident

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: A little hometown history

                          One of life's bummers is that most of us are in to big of a hurry to take a minute and talk to a "Townie" to find out the really cool stuff about a local area....

                          maybe that will be one of my objectives this year... to try and find the local historical society of a few local towns...

                          Thanks for the Tour Buckwheat.... that was fun....

                          K

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: A little hometown history

                            I'm a history pervert myself which has a lot to do with us moving to Wilmington. It's a very old town too, though not quite as old as yours. Lots of cool old stuff to see. Thanks for posting these.

                            Dan

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: A little hometown history

                              I never liked history until I got older. Now I look at all the old stuff I see. The history behind buildings is always interesting.

                              I wish I knew more of my local history
                              Cognizant Dissident

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X