June 1, 2022
E.V. Mitchell and his wife Blanche had three sons – Granville, Edwin, and Emlyn, and a daughter Helena, who was my grandmother.
Here are a few things you may not have known about E.V. and his family.
E.V. was very proud of the fact that he could walk to work; he just had to walk across North Street to his company (now the site of the Montrose School) – this, despite the fact that he had a car and a chauffeur.
E.V. never went to a barber shop. Instead, he had a barber’s chair installed in his house. Every morning his barber would come to his house and shave him, and every two weeks the barber would give him a haircut.
E.V. attended the Unitarian church, which was a few hundred feet from his house. Among his gifts to the church was a new, taller steeple – he wanted the tallest steeple in town to be on his church, not the Baptists’. He owned a pew at the church, and he bought another pew and had it installed on the mezzanine landing in his mansion.
To keep his memory alive, E.V. bought a large tract of land in the Dale Street side of the cemetery. He donated much of that land to the town but kept the largest lot (on the highest point) for his family, and at about 20 feet, his monument is the tallest one in the cemetery. E.V. and most of his family are buried there. Many of his servants, factory employees, and a church pastor are buried around the outer rim of the lot.
Once, while E.V. and Blanche were vacationing somewhere in Europe, their cook died. In Medfield, in those pre-Internet days, son Emlyn (one of several hard-drinking Mitchell family members) made a quick, unilateral decision about where to bury the cook, but he unwittingly put her in a gravesite that was intended for Helena, my grandmother. Helena became very upset over this slight that, by law, could not be corrected – one of many slights – and she moved to Worcester. I still live in her house!
E.V. practically owned the town, and he wanted to keep it that way. On election day, officials would keep a running tab on election results, and they would raise or lower the window shade at town hall to signal to E.V. across Janes Avenue. If E.V.’s preferred candidate was behind, E.V. would order some of his employees over to the polls to cast ballots to make sure the “right” candidates won.
E.V. was rich – and he was generous in sharing his wealth. One winter, in a record-breaking cold spell, coal became very scarce and expensive. E.V. used his influence to get a large load of coal delivered to Medfield, and he gave it away: he invited townspeople to bring their shovels and wheelbarrows and help themselves.
Another example of E.V.’s generosity: in his era, Medfield roads were generally unpaved, and dust was everywhere. E.V. bought a tank truck for the town so the roads could be watered down.