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.
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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Feb 1, 2024 A little over a year ago, Globe Magazine featured an in-depth article by award-winning author Dick Lehr about Jane Bosfield, a Black woman sporadically employed between 1915 to 1917 at the former Medfield State Hospital, and the media storm that resulted from her discrimination case. Lehr took some
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Feb 1, 2024 When they came back from their service in the Revolutionary War, you might have found Warwick Green and Newport Green in their own nailer shop along the Dedham road in Medfield, Massachusetts just south of the eastern end of today’s Vine Lake Cemetery (Callendar). They had finally been
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Dec 1, 2023 There used to be a sign at the shack at the old Medfield town dump listing a few rules and regulations. At the bottom it said, “Per Order of Honey Bear Babcock, Dump Commissioner.”Fifty years ago, Medfield’s town dump was located off Grove Street. The site of that
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Dec 1, 2023 The Boyden Homestead at 120 High Street (Rt. 27), near Plain Street, heading towards Walpole, has a long and varied history. It has significant historical ties to both national and local events starting with the great migration to America, the King Philip War, the French and Indian War,
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