Letter from Call Field
Recently, a fellow researcher discovered and alerted me to a letter in our archives from Berkeley Taylor to his friend, James D. Booth of...
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Lenny Shaker
Mar 22 min read
Mary Ann Booth: Photomicroscopist
Mary Ann Allard Booth was born on September 8, 1843 to Rhoda and Samuel Colton Booth of Longmeadow. She was a direct descendant of the...
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Betsy McKee
Feb 162 min read
Who is the Mysterious Lady in the Portrait
The portrait, an oil on poplar board, is of an older lady with glasses, identified as "Harriet Ford Bull Lawton, 1700." Seems pretty...
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Al McKee
Oct 26, 20234 min read
William Holland, Longmeadow's First Stone Carver
When people ask what the oldest gravestone in the Longmeadow Cemetery is, the answer is the stone for Mary Drake Colton. She died in...
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Betsy McKee
Oct 5, 20232 min read
"Instantly Killed by a Bull" The Death of Young Gaius Bliss
Have you ever noticed this gravestone in the Longmeadow Cemetery? While not common, causes of death were sometimes included on...
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Beth Hoff
Sep 14, 20234 min read
The Wallace Children
Census records are wonderful tools that offer researchers all sorts of clues into a person's life within a household or community. But...
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Lenny Shaker
Aug 31, 20232 min read
William C. Pease
I found these photographs in the Emerson file on Digital Commonwealth and it stirred my curiosity to learn more about the subject. The...
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Betsy McKee
Aug 17, 20234 min read
Longmeadow Go West! Persis and John Burt
Faithful readers of this blog may recall an article written by Beth Hoff on March 25, 2021 titled "Westward Bound," about the adventurous...
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Lenny Shaker
Jun 29, 20233 min read
Gettysburg 1913: A 50th Anniversary Reunion
One hundred and sixty years ago, Union and Confederate armies fought The Battle of Gettysburg from July 1-3, 1863. The Union victory is...
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Beth Hoff
Mar 9, 20237 min read
“… poor & unprovided for…” – The Indentured Simonds Children
In the early days of the Commonwealth, children of parents who, for one reason or another, were unable to care for them became public...
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Al McKee
Feb 16, 20236 min read
Charles Backus Storrs: Abolitionist
Charles Backus Storrs stood before his audience and gave his inauguration address on February 9th, 1831 in Hudson, Ohio. At age...
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Al McKee
Jan 26, 20238 min read
A Longmeadow Boy and the Gold Rush in 1851
Gold rush stories are great places to find drama and intrigue. The History Room at the Chicopee Library holds a series of letters that...
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Lenny Shaker
Jan 19, 20232 min read
A Funeral, 1909
Longmeadow Historical Society's Emerson Photographic Collection is a treasure trove of photographs documenting Longmeadow in the early...
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Beth Hoff
Jan 12, 20235 min read
Berkeley Taylor and the Barn Fire
On June 9, 1933, brothers Joseph C. and Eugene L. Marcure of Springfield confessed to burning a 300-foot barn in the Longmeadow meadows...
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Melissa M. Cybulski
Jan 5, 20236 min read
"Prepare- for follow me you must"
A simple gravestone in Longmeadow Cemetery from 1720, with a classic inscription, warns passersby to consider their own fates. It marks...
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Melissa M. Cybulski
Dec 21, 20223 min read
Sarah A. Coomes Colton's Paintings
Two charming folk art paintings in the collection of the Longmeadow Historical Society bear the hallmarks of the kind of work educated...
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Melissa M. Cybulski
Dec 8, 20222 min read
"Be a good boy and learn..."
Samuel C. Booth's Penmanship Book, 1820 From the Collection of the Longmeadow Historical Society Penmanship copybooks like this one used...
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Beth Hoff
Nov 22, 20225 min read
The Mystery of the Seaman's Journal
Front Piece of a Seaman's Journal The Mystery of the Seaman's Journal Recently rediscovered in the archives of the Storrs House Museum is...
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Beth Hoff
Nov 22, 20224 min read
Dairy Farming in Longmeadow
Jarius R. Kibbe and oxen of Frank B. Allen. Image courtesy of Stephen Forbes. Until the turn of the century, most Longmeadow families...
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Betsy McKee
Nov 21, 20226 min read
"I am like a lost sheep in the world:": The Letters of Jeannette Cooley
Last week's History Note told the story behind the inscription on James Cooley's cenotaph in Longmeadow Cemetery. A cenotaph is a...
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