1800s

Milestones and Boundaries: Medfield’s Anniversaries and the First Zoning Debate

1700s, 1800s, 1900s, Mitchell /

Sep 1, 2025   In Medfield, we are in a period of significant anniversaries. We are coming up on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the 350th anniversary of the action at Medfield during King Philip’s War, and the 375th anniversary of Medfield’s incorporation. Digging further for anniversaries, we find that exactly 500 years […]

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Ebenezer Granville Babcock: A Soldier’s Letters to His Mother, Part One: 1862-1863

1800s, Civil War /

May 1, 2025   Recently, I was thrilled to view a collection of letters from a Civil War soldier, written in faded pencil on scraps of stained paper. That soldier was Medfield’s Eben Granville Babcock, writing to his mother Mary on Pleasant Street. The letters were generously donated to the Medfield Historical Society in 2015 by

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Superfluous Women

1800s, Women /

Mar 01, 2025   Last year I discovered in our archives, and wrote about in this article, a massive scrapbook of posters and ads printed by J. Stillman Spear of Medfield. One of the more perplexing items in the scrapbook is a poster advertising a lecture to be given in Medfield in November of 1875 by

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Tilden Ancedotes – Working Out the Highway Tax

1800s, Road Work, Tilden /

Sep 1, 2020   William S. Tilden was one of Medfield’s two most important and prolific historians. (The other is, of course, Richard DeSorgher, who grew up here, taught history and social studies here for over thirty years, published four books on Medfield history, and is still Medfield’s official town historian, though he has lived in

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