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New Ipswich Historical Society

Name the Alumnus

Marion Davis Audio-Tape Transcriptions

Sometime before her death in 1986, Marion Davis recorded her memories at the encouragement of her brother, Walter Buck. The recordings were transcribed by a secretary. The original cassettes are in the possession of Marion's niece, Walter's daughter, Constance Hall, of Fitchburg, MA.

The Friends of Wapack have made these available to the Historical Society. Marion was born on February 8, 1894 in Fitchburg, MA. The first tapes describe her early life, but we will begin when she left home when she was 18 after some conflict with her mother.

The Fire

There was more or less friction between Mother and and I was saucy to her one time; she gave me 3 days to apologize or to move out. Meanwhile I'd had quite a talk with the doctor and he advised me to write to the Uncle and aunt at the farm to see if they would accept me there. They said that I could come. So I left home November 19, 1912 to go to the farm. I had a good nervous breakdown.

The farm was where Mother grew up. Grandma and Grandpa Robbins had no children of their own. They adopted all told 7 children, 5 boys and 2 girls. The time I went to the farm was with Mother soon after Grandma Robbins had died. In October Frank had gone down with cattle (that's the time we generally do--October 20th) and on his way home Martha Perry stopped him and said, "I have some bad news for you. The farmhouse has burnt to the ground". The barns they had saved and that fire was fought with the bucket brigade. How it happened:

Grandpa and Grandma had gone down to breakfast and he had built up quite a fire and it set the chimney --the soot from the chimney--and the sparks from that fell on the shingles on the top of the house. Mr. Keyes down at the foot of the hill saw the flames and he hitched up a horse and went to different neighbors to tell them Robbins house was on fire. Grandpa and Grandma went down to the Woodard house. That's where Mr. Keyes was uncle to Dora Woodard and they stayed there a while but Grandma caught cold and came down with pneumonia so they took her to Leominster to her sister, Martha Curtis, where she died. When the news came out in the paper that she had died and that the Robbins house had burned Mother hadn't heard about it and it upset her a good deal. So towards spring when she thought it would be a goodtime to go up and try to see what had been done she hired a buggy from the livery stable. There was very little snow on the ground then, only in patches, so we went with the buggy. When we got up toWilker (?) road there was so much snow that it was almost all a horse could do to pull an empty buggy so we turned off a little bit and went up to what was Sam Stone's--a farmhouse not far from that corner and he hitched the horse into a sleigh and we went on to the farm.

They had built an ell; Frank had had the sawmill going down in the pasture and had sawed out his lumber and had built an ell, a big kitchen downstairs and 2 bedrooms upstairs. Meanwhile he had married Mable Woodard and they were living in one of the bedrooms and Grandpa had the other. So Mother had quite a visit with them;

I don't remember too much about that. I do remember the trip because when we got back to Sam Stone' we had to hitch back into the buggy again and go home.

James Roger diary entry

28th November 1912 (Thursday) - Jolly Five Dance

Frost with snow squalls during the day wind north & east. David and I brought in the flower vases from the cemetery, and Dan and him put on the cover on Preston’s fountain. David also painted the guide boards for the Peterboro, Jaffrey & Smithville. Hamish telephoned today about 1 pm from Springfield. E. Preston and friend called today. I got hall ready for Jolly Five dance tonight. David gave Dan his wedding present of silver sauce spoons. Received invitation to party at Miss Taylor’s on 6th Dec. Got letter from May last night. Dance well attended. E. Wheeler ticket seller, party from Ashby. I was not up as David was there and put out the lights.

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