May 2022
Iron Rails and Tough Men
by Bob Corrette
In 1840 the town of Fitchburg, Massachusetts talked about a railroad line to Boston. The question became where to find the labor needed for such an undertaking. Who would lay the ties and rails and drive the spikes? The local workmen wanted no part in such low paying labor.
Alvah Crocker, a strong advocate for the project and industrialist from Fitchburg, believed he might have the answer to this question. He would go to Boston as there were a large number of Irish immigrants needing work there who had fled Ireland because of “the great potato famine.”
Crocker offered a dollar a day for 10 hours of work and soon found he had enough workers for the task.
Now came a new problem, where to house all this workforce?
A parcel of land known as “Burbank Flats” became the solution to this issue. The hired Irishmen called it “The Patch.”
With no further delays, work on the project began. The men worked from sunup to sundown. Meanwhile the workmen’s wives worked as domestics for 75 cents a week.
The 49 miles of track, which had begun construction in 1843, finally connected to South Ashburnham, Mass. on March 5, 1845.
The Cheshire Railroad, which was started in Keene New Hampshire in 1844, wanted to build a line to connect with the Fitchburg railroad at South Ashburnham, Mass. Contracts were drawn up. The Irish agreed to continue the work to Keene.
By December of 1847 work on the railroad was completed to Winchendon, Mass. and then on through to Fitzwilliam and Troy and then finally to Keene, New Hampshire. The “Iron Road” was open for business and travel in May of 1848; it was a railroad laid in record time
We can say thank you to these Irish workmen for a job well done!
April 2022
Fire History Notes, 1872
by Bob Corrette
In the 1872 Firewards report it was noted that the Fitzwilliam Engine Company’s motto was “Our best day is ever ready but never wanted”. The company had listed 22 men on its muster roll.
Its fire engine was an 1807 Ephraim Thayer Hand pumper – considered one of the best in that time-period. Carter’s Carriage shops made a ski shoe which could be put on the fire engine’s wheels for winter use.
The engine was kept at the old Armory Hall next to the Town Hall.
The largest fire in 1872 was the Joel Whittemore house in the village on Upper Troy Road. On February 2nd, 1872, the alarm bell rang at Town Hall, and all firemen reported for the call.
The winter weather in 1872 was bitter cold from December through February. The lack of a water supply was a major factor in the loss of the structures.
Joel Whittemore was a merchant who ran Whittemore’s store in the village and wrote the genealogy section of the 1888 town history of Fitzwilliam.
It might be noted that most fire companies had rules for firemen of that time period. If one missed a meeting a fine of 25 cents was imposed. If one missed a fire call the fine could be a day’s pay of 60 cents to 75 cents.
Joel Whittemore’s house was located on Upper Troy on a lot above where Sally Sue Davis lives today.
March 2022
The Town Craftsman - The Sound of the Anvil
by Bob Corrette
The blacksmith’s work goes back in time to around the year 1500 B.C., at the beginning of the Iron Age. With the progress of time, it was passed down to the Roman Empire who improved the art of blacksmithing to a higher degree. The Roman Emperor Nero had solid silver horseshoes on his horse, and solid gold shoes on his wife’s horse.
With the colonization of America in the 1600s and the expansion of villages and towns in the 1700s, the blacksmith was to become a treasured asset, who was greatly respected in his trade. There was hardly a facet of life that his work didn’t affect.
In many towns, the smith had so much work shoeing horses and doctoring animals that they almost became exclusively farriers.
By the mid-1800s with the Industrial Revolution, machine made items, which could be bought in stores, saw the blacksmith trade start to decline.
The Buren Iron Works in Troy, N.Y., by 1862 had machines which could make horseshoes at the rate of sixty shoes a minute, along with horseshoe nails. It was said, “that the Union Army rode to war on Burden horseshoes.”
Solomon Alexander had a blacksmith shop in 1810 next to the Fitzwilliam Town Hall. The average wage in 1810 was $.05 per hour. Prices charged at that time were $.06 for mending a pitchfork, shoeing a horse ranged from $.40 to $.60, mending chains $.40.
By 1840, Benjamin Davis took over his shop and, by 1847, he had several men working for him, as the Cheshire Railroad kept him busy making tools as they lay tracks through town. The average wage was now $.10 per hour. Making a gate latch cost $.20, a crank for a grindstone $.75, a frying pan handle $.25.
By the 1870s there were some half dozen blacksmiths in Fitzwilliam. By the 1890s a number of farmers did their own horseshoeing. In 1915. Sears and Roebuck sold a horseshoeing outfit for $3.75.
Fitzwilliam’s last blacksmith and farrier was Lee “Bucko” Sprague at the Depot. He had a shop which he ran from WWI to about 1950.
The town blacksmith has disappeared into the past, and now belongs to history. The farrier, however, will continue as long as horses will need shoes.