Shingling the roof (1938 Hurricane)

New Ipswich Historical Society

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 Friends of Wapack have made these available to the Historical Society. Marion was born on February 8, 1894 in Fitchburg, MA.

Roof and garage repair

So the next morning we took the crosscut saw and axes and we started for Rindge. We were working away trimming out some of the trees that were in the road and 7 men from town came down and pitched in. We got it opened up enough so that Mr. Simmons, who was at the farm, came down with a 2-horse wagon. The truck had come with the shingles and stuff we needed. He went down to the corner and loaded that onto the wagon and went back home with it. While we finished up on the roadwork he got the staging up onto the roof of the house. We went to work on shingling that. We had a young fellow helping us for about 3 weeks. We got the Lodge roof patched up with the shingles we brought home. We went up onto the hill and got that roof back onto the cottage and then we tackled the garage and that was a stickler. To try to get that building up onto something; to slide it upgrade onto the foundation it had come off of. Meanwhile we had been to the farm and shingled the house. The Sunday after the hurricane there were 3 of us on that roof all day. They kept bringing us up something to drink and something to eat but we kept right at shingling and we got it done that day

Photo Archives

Hurricane damage on Turnpike Road (at intersection with Main Street)

James Roger diary entry

29^th January 1913 - a shameful letter

Hard frost; 24 degrees; wind east, and northeast; fine forenoon, cloudy after and snow shower in afternoon. I walked to woods near Lonie’s, where David and Daniel were chopping beech wood for Mrs. Spofford. I walked through the wood near to Walker’s Mill and their home through Mrs. Spofford's fields and got signed view of the Kidder Mountain Range. There was no mail last night owing to a breakdown of a freight train near Ayer. Henry Royce called in the afternoon and talked about moths, road drags, and rural free delivery, also about Ashby and Mrs. Tucker, who had received a shameful letter. Also, that the Ingerson case against the Town was to come up next month.

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