Harold and Adeline Cabot
111 Ripley Hill Road
Both age 77
Interviewed November 15, 1977
Concord Oral History Program
Renee Garrelick, Interviewer.
Click here for audio in .mp3 format
In the early 1900s much of the recreational activities in
Concord occurred on the rivers. That was when the Concord Canoe Club
was founded, which was just down the river opposite the Minuteman
Statue. There was a boathouse there with a float going out into the
river, and on the 4th of July picnics and parties were held. Members
of the club gathered to watch the aquatic sports, such as swim meets
and canoe jousting, where two men, each one standing in a canoe
holding long poles, tried to push the other into the river. Usually
they both fell into the river to the spectators delight. The Canoe
Club building burned down and that ended these activities.
The river was used for swimming until the Maynard mills started
polluting the river making it impossible for that use. We still swam
near Fairhaven Bay on the Sudbury River. That had a yellow tinge to
it but that wasn't pollution that was just from the bottom of the
river. But the Concord River was polluted by the Assabet and the
Assabet was polluted by the Maynard mills.
Skating was also a big sport on the frozen Nashawtuc meadows
beside the river. After the river flooded over, the meadows would
freeze, and we would have pick-up hockey games there. It was very
dangerous to skate on the river especially under the bridges. Some
families didn't allow their boys and girls to skate on the river
because of the air holes that come under a flowing stream, and they
were quite right. Even when the meadows were emptying out into the
river, there were instances of open water. I (Harold) can remember
skating one time right into open water and ended up in water up to my
waist.
Nashawtuc Hill, of course, was used for coasting and skiing. We
used to coast more than ski. I (Adeline) can remember coasting all
the way down Nashawtuc Hill from the top to the bridge at the bottom
perfectly safely without a car in sight.
Also in the winter there was punging. A great many of the
grocery stores had pungs for deliveries. One in particular was Towle
& Kent's which always smelled so beautifully of coffee. The drivers
were very patient with all the kids, who jumped on and off. It's a
wonder we weren't killed.
Baseball was a popular sport in the good weather. I (Adeline)
remember it especially at Polly Pratt's house, now Polly Kussin,
because she had a big back yard and all the boys used to go there to
play baseball. So all the girls went to Polly's house to watch the
boys play which included my husband.
When I was about ten years old, I (Adeline) lived in the house
on Main Street where the head of Concord Academy lives now. When I
would go to bed and lie in the dark and listen to the night sounds,
which there were very few night sounds, perhaps a car occasionally or
footsteps on the sidewalk, I would especially hear the clanking and
banging down on the Milldam and along would come the streetcar going
down Sudbury Road.
The streetcars also took many Concord people to Lexington Park.
There would sometimes be so many people going to or coming from the
park, they would be hanging on the sides of the cars. This would be
before World War I.
When we were young, we either walked or rode a bicycle to
wherever we were going. There were very few cars.
The ladies of the Ladies Tuesday Club would work for months on
the entertainment they would have. They had charades and plays. I
(Harold) remember the charades because they would have guests or an
audience, and if they could fool Mrs. Russell Robb that would make
the evening fun.
The Concord Players were very active back then. I (Adeline)
don't think they were as professional as they are now. Everyone
enjoyed being in it or going to see it.
When we were children, we had dancing school in the top floor of
the Town Hall, and everyone went.
Our physician at that time in Concord was Dr. Titcomb, who lived
on Sudbury Road. You would see him going through the Milldam leaning
way out over the dashboard whipping his horse to get to a patient
quickly. He took out my (Harold) appendix on the kitchen table.
There was a custom of indicating certain diseases by a card
outside the front door of the house of the sick person, particularly
scarlet fever, diphtheria, or measles. Then when someone died there
would be a wreath or flower arrangement beside the front door.
As a child we just automatically went to Sunday school and
church. We all had a mite box, and I (Adeline) had an allowance of
10 cents a week and 5 cents always went into the mite box. Being
involved in church wasn't something we decided about, we just went
ahead and did it.
Smith Owen Dexter was our minister at Trinity Episcopal Church
here. He was very active in helping young people in Boy Scouts, and
so forth. I (Harold) think he was the nearest man to what Jesus
Christ might have been that I know of. He was a patient, helpful
sort of person. Later on the adults of the church didn't like him
because he preached against the mill owners over in Lowell and all
around. He joined a strike against the management of the mill in
Lowell, and some of the members of the parish who were contributors
wanted him fired. He was a very fine man, and his wife was also very
active in town affairs.
I (Adeline) attended Miss White's Home School, and it was a
remarkable school. I came up from Lincoln, which was where I was
born and lived as a little girl, on the train and went to Miss
White's Home School. I had the most wonderful grounding in English
literature that anyone could possibly have had. We read poetry and
had Latin and math. These were taught by a lovely lady named Miss
Emma Smith, who did all the translations for us so that I really
didn't learn that much about Latin and math but had a wonderful
grounding in English literature. Mr. Allen French gave us a course
in art in the early Italian painters with pictures which was also
very good. The school was on Belknap Street very near the corner of
Thoreau Street. It was a big white house with a school building in
back, the house is still there.
I (Harold) was a trustee for several years of Concord Academy
and later became chairman of the Board of Trustees for about four or
five years. I understand the reason for the founding of Concord
Academy was that many of the families in Concord didn't want to send
their daughters away to boarding school in some other city and never
see them. So they decided to start a boarding school here that would
be both a day school and a boarding school. To get top teachers on
the faculty, they attracted girls from other cities to come as
boarders and the Concord girls would be day students. That worked
very well from everybody's point of view. Of course, it cost much
less for a day student than for a boarding student.
There was never any interaction with the boys of Middlesex
School. Mr. Winsor didn't want his boys coming down to Concord and
fraternizing with Academy girls. The boys would come down to have a
soda at Richardson's, but they only had so much money to spend and
had to be back. For the most part they had to get back to Middlesex
on their two feet, on a bicycle or be picked up, so many of them
thumbed their way back.