Posts by Beaman Library

 Do you love dogs? We sure do. Dogs are the best, and humanity’s friendship with dogs extends thousands of years into the past. We were excited to find a full registry of dogs in West Boylston from the 1860s in our historical records! A dog license in 1865 cost $2.00 for a male dog and…

Ezra Beaman’s family stretched back far into Massachusetts’ past; his ancestor Gamaliel Beaman came to the new colony from England in 1635. He originally settled in Dorchester but moved to Lancaster about thirty years later. The family made its mark on the land. Ezra Beaman was born in Bolton on October 16, 1736, to Jabez…

West Boylston is a small town with a lot of history. From Colonial times to the Industrial Revolution to today, the town has seen numerous changes. A little-known West Boylston story is of the Murdock Globe, or the Murdock Orrery Planetarium. David C. Murdock (1815-1886), a West Boylston native, was an influential town figure at…

In the 1950s, West Boylston resident Ruth Edwards made a surprising discovery: a large stone in her front yard bore a hand-carved drawing of two figures among strange, rune-like lines (pictured below). She called in experts to examine this seemingly inane carving, and they dated it to between 3,000 and 5,000 years old. In an…

 When looking through the old newspapers from our Local History Room, we sometimes stumble across the names of our “local celebrities.” In this case, it’s not for a good reason. The notice, pictured below, lists two names we’ve seen before: Jabez Beaman and Ezra Beaman. The notice is from June 1812, one year after town…

The history room at the Beaman Memorial Library houses a range of documents, including a series of letters and a memoir from Sgt. John Emerson Anderson, a West Boylston resident who served in the Civil War. John’s regiment marched to Washington, D.C. in mid-1861. In a letter from September 8, 1861, he hopefully told his…

Arthur Taylor was a West Boylston resident one hundred years ago who escaped death while out of town in December 1917. He was unlucky enough to be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on December 6, 1917, when one of the worst maritime disasters in history occurred: a ship carrying explosives and sailing to Halifax Harbor…

Frederick W. Cheever was a West Boylston resident in the late 1800s/early 1900s who came from a line of military men. He was descended from Revolutionary War Generals Hosmer and Norcross and his father served in the Civil War. Now, Frederick’s turn to serve came in 1898 with the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. The…

 W.J. Burns became West Boylston’s first uniformed policeman in May 1897. Before him, there was a local sheriff, but we aren’t positive what local law enforcement looked like in industrial West Boylston. Burns came into the force in response to increased “tramps” in town—homeless people who came to and stayed in West Boylston because of…

James F. Higgins was an undertaker and amateur photographer who lived in West Boylston around the turn of the 20th century. He ran his embalming business in the Sawyer General Store located on the old town common. He took a lot of photographs during his time in West Boylston. He eventually moved to Athol after…