August 1984
The Board of Selectmen vowed to fight the state-mandated count of Fort Devens personnel in Harvard’s census figures. One board member commented, “I absolutely refuse to admit those people are a part of this town.” He said he thought it was “silly” to gather census information on the estimated 8,000 residents of the fort, military personnel who were “not even residents of Massachusetts.”
September 1983
Three prisoners who escaped from the Franklin County House of Correction, where two were serving time for murder and one for home invasion, were apprehended by two Harvard patrolmen. The fugitives shot their way through Lancaster and made their way to Interstate 495, getting off at Route 111. Harvard officers, alerted by state police, were waiting for them. When the three saw the cruiser awaiting their arrival, the driver turned the getaway car straight toward it, and kept coming even after one of the officers fired his shotgun at the car’s windshield. The car crashed head-on into the cruiser, throwing one of the officers 25 feet. The other officer held the three fugitives at gunpoint until state police arrived to make the arrest.
A homemade bomb that was detonated in front of the post office shattered a corner of a plate glass window and damaged a phone booth in front of the mail building.
—Based on reports in the old Harvard Post
