Why Does Local History Stop a Century Ago?

Well, dear reader, my answer to the question in the heading is that I've spent so much time remembering everyone else's stories, I don't remember my own. I've taken a few days off from the blog to prepare a new walking tour of North Easton. It wasn't another homage to the Ames family and H. H. Richardson, but the story of folks that were drawn to North Easton by the opportunities there. Over the last few years the Historical Commission has upgraded its historic house surveys particularly in North Easton. The researchers we have been using are professional historians with a lot of private eye built in so each house gets a history of residents along with a summary of architectural features. We're beginning to learn a lot from these surveys. In big history we now have a better idea of how the shovel company served as an engine of economic development for other smaller entrepreneurs like George DeWitt, Lemuel K. Wilbur, and Josiah Goward. We also have lots of names of people from the 1920s through the 1940s who have stories that need to be told. Unfortunately, the researchers are not "townies" so in many cases all they can do is give us a name and take a guess about things. It's the Eastoners in their 70's and 80's and even 90's who are letting us all down by not writing their stories like so many of the folks from the generation before them.

Take Frank Correia and Manuel Gomes. These men left the island of Madeira in 1911 and moved to Easton. Both left their wives back home and ended up in Ames tenements around the corner from each other. Exactly three years later both men brought their wives to Easton. I wanted to know if these two were men with a plan-come over on the same boat, work hard, and bring the wives over together a few years later. You'd think that both men would have lived into a time where someone now living would remember them.

My research so far consists of asking Portuguese-Americans I find at Li'l Peach if they remember these men. My 7th grade history teacher was there chatting with a friend so I went over and asked my question. The friend was Frank Correia's son-in-law. Only in Easton! I didn't get an answer to my question-neither man could place Manuel Gomes-they think he might not be one of THE Gomes, but I did get some great stories about growing up Portuguese in Easton and a listing of some old time characters.

For example, moonshine. Portuguese Americans brought with them a history of distilling which unlike home wine making has always been illegal unless you pay a huge tax to the federal government. I knew this because when I was at Bridgewater State, my friend Augie Furtado brought in a bottle of 151 proof anisette created by his grandfather in New Bedford. This apparently also happened in Easton where the original brew also had to be watered down in order to be drinkable. The stuff that wasn't watered down was used to douse the hapless (and headless) chicken that was being plucked for dinner. The home brew was lit on fire to singe off the chicken's pin feathers. News that a widow of an old Swede had sold his still drew the comment that "I never knew he had one. It's those quiet ones that surprise you." That drew two comments. First that wherever they mixed in town the Swedes and the Portuguese got along well and second you could always smell the Portuguese stills when things were brewing up along Baldwin St. I told these story-tellers that they should be writing these stories down, but was told that no one wants to read about "renegade" history. What do you think?

More on this tomorrow.