Articles from the Portal
The Medfield Historical Society publishes a monthly newsletter, The Portal, containing articles about our events, our collections, and people and places of the distant and not-so-distant past. Below are selected articles from past newsletters. Looking for a specific topic? Use the search function below to search by subject, author or date. Click to sign up for our free monthly newsletter, The Portal.
May 1, 2024 One doesn’t need to be famous to write a memoir, or to engage readers through a journal or diary. In fact, volunteers at the Medfield Historical Society Museum have spent countless hours cataloguing numerous journals found in storage recently – all from average citizens, and with plenty of
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May 1, 2024 Visitors to the Medfield Historical Society during History Weekend had the opportunity to view, for the first time in eleven years, our town’s collection of J.A.S. Monks etchings and paintings. This exhibit included both early and later etchings, an untitled watercolor, and of course, the famous oil painting
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May 1, 2024 I was contacted by the Photo Angel through Ancestry.com. If you’re not familiar with her, she reunites long lost photos with families. She found me on a family tree that I created to work on Medfield families, and inquired if I was a relative of Amy Hewins. I
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May 1, 2024 When William S. Tilden (1830-1912) wrote his History of Medfield 1660-1886, he reported that Francis Hamant, one of Medfield’s original 13 settlers, was granted a house lot on South Street. Hamant had met the qualifications set out in Medfield founder Ralph Wheelock’s Agreement for would-be settlers that he
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Apr 1, 2024 Editor’s note: This story is excerpted from Richard DeSorgher’s “This Old Town: On the Banks of the Charles” (to order book see bottom of page)From 1868 when Oliver and Elizabeth Clifford moved their family to Medfield until the death of their daughter Ellen in 1919, the Clifford name
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Apr 1, 2024 From the earliest days, America’s Puritan settlers prioritized education. Parents were responsible for assuring their children could read (especially so they could read the Bible) and write, and all towns were required towns to set up schools. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635; Harvard in 1636. Dedham
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Apr 1, 2024 Some 60 people turned out on March 4 to hear an entertaining and engaged Johnny Dalton, sound engineer, show and tell about key developments in the 166-year history of sound recording. Dalton graduated from Medfield High School in 2013 and established KungPow! Recording and Mastering in 2017.Johnny introduced
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Mar 1, 2024 It was December 1963, and the most listened to song on AM radio was I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles, a not-yet-famous British rock group. That recording had a lasting effect on American music history. Everyone has their favorite Beatles song, but I Want to
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Mar 1, 2024 Women’s History Month, 2024: At the coffee shop, I see women with beverages, children, friends, notebooks and folders, and I can’t help but imagine them in a billboard-sized group photo of all the Medfield women who have kept this town going for over 300 years. As a volunteer
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Mar 1, 2024 “Enslaved Girl”“To her private lifeOnly a few were privy.A life lost and found.”The next time you pass by or visit a CVS, think of Nanny. Her feet trod upon the Reverend Joseph Baxter’s land as she went about her work as his enslaved servant. Almost two centuries later
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Mar 1, 2024 Medfield native Nathaniel T. Allen established a cutting-edge progressive school in Newton in 1854, and in the next half century he educated some 5,000 boys and girls, rich and poor, from every state in the U.S. and dozens of foreign countries, white and black, including former slaves.Allen’s remarkable
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Mar 1, 2024 On a 70-degree, late-summer day, under fair skies in 1875, Medfield hosted a “Woman Suffragists’ Picnic” in Curtis Grove, which was once a popular day resort located at the north end of Adams Street and current West Mill Street. The picnic served as a convening of suffragettes from
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