Kingston (Massachusetts) Public Library
Here’s an especially fun photograph to enjoy. It’s clear from the blurriness that the puppies were on the move—as puppies usually are. Rose (Blair) Delano is holding one of them, while a stoic hound sits by her side.
Source: Image from the Delano Photograph Collection (IC11).
Kingston’s Town Administrator wrote yesterday
As many of you know, the town is awaiting a new Harbormaster Patrol Boat, which is estimated to arrive around July 17th, and perhaps sooner. This purchase was authorized at this year’s special town meeting.
The Board of Selectmen have offered a “contest” to name the boat for the town. The person who submits the name chosen will be given a maiden voyage around Kingston Harbor on the boat, along with family and/or friends to the maximum allowed on the boat.
So, please submit your entries to me with a copy to Laurie, and pass along the info on this contest to others in your department, and/or in the town!
Here are some possibilities from the Local History Room. Submit your own to the Town Administrator’s office (see here for how to)
Chesperus, owned by Chester Fuller (or possibly his talking dog).
Arteola, owned by Charles Drew, in a photo from Old Home Day, 1908.
Matchless owned by Captain James (or John) Drew.
Tiger, the only steamer built in Kingston, built by Edward Ransom in 1898, owned by him, A.J.Hill, C.A. Ransom and Henry S. West.
Kittiwake V, built by George Shiverick for Henry M. Jones.
Herculean, built in 1839 by Joseph and Horace Holmes, owned by Joseph Holmes.
Ship Herculean of Kingston, Benjamin Cook, Master, 1840
The 7 foot figure head weighed in at 800 pounds, heavy enough to cause the ship to leak. It was repurposed as a garden statue, where it stood among the shrubs for many years.
Finally, though there is no painting or photo, Independence, for the very first ship of the U.S. Navy, built in Kingston and seen here on the Town Seal, designed by Helen Foster.
Ah, the tropics! Here Henry M. Jones, author of Ships of Kingston standing at the far left, and four unidentified friends enjoy a refreshing treat under the palms. The woman may be Henry’s wife Abby Bosworth Holmes Jones, though between the hat and the coconut, it’s difficult to tell. The dog is also anonymous.
It was the good ship ‘Chesperus’
That sailed the wintry sea,
And Chesper had taken Herbert W. Cobb
To bear him company.
The poem above is written on the back of the photograph, and while it is a little cryptic (did Herbert W. Cobb take the picture from his own boat? is Chesper the name of Chester Fuller’s dog?), it lends a special air of mystery to another great dog portrait from the Local History Room Collections.
The Old Bay Path
Well before the Pilgrims landed, the Native Americans of southeastern Massachusetts had an extensive network of well-worn trails, among them the Old Bay Path shown in these two lantern slides. By 1637, the colonists had adopted the Bay Path as the main highway through Kingston. Eventually the route became a private road for the Bradfords, then reverted back to a foot path between Stony Brook village (today’s Summer Street neighborhood) and the settlement at Island Creek once the Boston Road (now Summer Street, or Route 3A) was laid out in 1708.
Around 1900, the fields through which the path ran were purchased by private interests, the trees and bushes cut down, and a sand pit opened nearby; soon just a vestige of the old path remained. The lantern slide below shows the handsome Old Shiloh on the path. Old Shiloh lived with his mistress Miss Charlotte Cutts on Brewster Road; the path ran close to their home, from the Stony Brook schoolhouse to Miramar.
Although the Bay Path connected first the numerous Native American villages, then many of today’s South Shore towns, it began in our town, specifically in what was once the village of the Patuxet, near the present Kingston/Plymouth line. From that point, the path divided, with one branch following today’s Main and Crescent Streets and another going along the shore of Rocky Nook via the present Howland’s Lane to the Jones River. Here the water level determined the method of crossing: stepping stones at low tide or skin boat at high tide. As late as 1900, evidence of this branch of the trail was still visible, crossing the Jones River between the Poorhouse and the boat houses on Landing Road , continuing past the Bailey Playground tennis courts and across the ballfields — once a low, wet area now filled in — up the hill to Summer Street , then over to Maple Street, left at Bradford Road, onto Foster’s Lane and finally along Brewster Road. Other paths intersected the Bay Path here, continuing on to Island Creek and other communities. The Bay Path itself continued along Tarkiln Road into Duxbury near the Tree of Knowledge , running past the Twin Schoolhouse and north to other villages.
Little did those Patuxet realize that many years later we would still be using parts of their well worn trail, and even less, perhaps, do today’s travellers realize just how old the roads they follow actually are.
Source: Emily Fuller Drew Manuscript Collection MC- 16 2.1 Early Roads and Trails.
This is one of those pictures that just jumps out at me. I don’t know too much about it, but I really like it. The caption simply reads “Chester Fuller and his dog near Delano’s Wharf, 1890.”
I wish my dog would sit up like that, but she’s knock-kneed and goofy so she just falls over.
