What was it like to live in Harvard during the tumultuous years of the first part of the 20th century? Thursday, May 18, at 7 p.m. the Harvard Historical Society will welcome several contributors to a recently published book from that time period who will tell stories of important events and everyday activities during their lives. Attendees will have the opportunity to purchase the book from which these stories have been excerpted.
Frank Abbot will describe the changes that made obsolete the gnarled and sprawling apple trees from the orchards of the previous century. David Watt will talk about the dairy industry when there were more cows than people in Harvard, and cans with milk from Clara Endicott Sears’ prize-winning herd were put on the train to Boston at the Still River Depot. Others will relate how most of the town’s young men were drafted from farms and jobs such as chauffeur into the Army to fight in World War I, and how another kind of war was waged between those for and against voting rights for women. They will detail the rigorous study that occurred at Mrs. Baker’s Tuesday Club, the patriotic work of the Canning and Evaporating Club, the lively entertainment at the Town Hall, how the opening of the Oak Ridge Observatory brought to town 200 of the world’s leading astronomers, and the closing of the Poor Farm that marked the end of a long-established town service.
These stories and more exist because of the work of a small group of people. In April 1939 the Historical Society’s board of directors formed a committee of five members. The chairman was Ida Harris, who lived at 15 Old Littleton Road and was 70 when the work was completed. The committee’s purpose was to write down the history of Harvard from the point where Henry Nourse left off in 1894 up to 1940. They would research documents and gather stories from the town’s oldest residents who remembered those early years of the new century. Many different members of the community contributed factual or personal accounts, and Mrs. Harris herself seems to have done a significant portion of the writing. Committee member Gertrude Whitney Sawyer would type everything into one manuscript. The vital records would be copied from records kept in the town vault and included in the book, where they would be more accessible. The bound manuscript, dated 1945, was called “History of Harvard 1880 to 1940: Enter the New Century” by Ida Harris.
The Ida Harris manuscript
For some reason the manuscript was never published. Perhaps there had been no money set aside for the project. A copy of the bound manuscript has been at the society and another at the public library. But their existence has not been widely known, and the book has been mostly used by those doing research.
That changed in 2022. Joe Theriault, a past president of the society, former member of the Historical Commission, and creator of the online “Forum for Historic Harvard,” approached the board of directors with a proposal. He wanted to take the Ida Harris manuscript and digitize it to allow word processing and formatting for publishing. (This process would prove quite challenging, as the original manuscript had been typed on an old turn-of-the-century manual typewriter, with, as Theriault said, “many smudgy keys.”) He would edit only for typographical errors, keeping the language and punctuation of the original. He would have it printed, in both hardcover and softcover, through Amazon. The Historical Society would be the publisher, with all proceeds going to the society.
Theriault, who has published a two-volume work about the genealogy and history of his Acadian ancestors and a second two-volume book, the “Mills of Madawaska,” explained his interest in the work of Harris and her committee. He said he had long admired this group of dedicated citizens and felt they had produced a wealth of information that should be accessible to the public. He wrote a biography of Ida Harris and a foreword to the book. He also reproduced the 1831 Silas Holman map of the town in an effort to locate some of the places mentioned in the book. There were no house numbers then, and all the homes have most likely had a few different owners since the ones mentioned as living there in the early 20th century.
The Ladies Picnic Club on an outing on Wood Island, Bare Hill Pond, photographed between 1910 and 1916. (Photo courtesy Harvard Historical Society)
The board wanted to launch the book at the society before it was widely publicized. The living history program, “Harvard in the First Half of the 20th Century” on May 18 is intended as a sort of snapshot of some of the contents of the book. Theriault will be on hand to describe more about his process of digitizing the book and to sign
copies—“On behalf of Ida.”
Since the manuscript was for so long—literally a “hidden treasure”—it seemed fitting to the programs committee that it be the subject of the society’s 2023 program for Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area Hidden Treasures month. During the month of May, historical societies from the region are scheduled on a specific day to invite the public to visit something unique to their organization.
Editor’s note: Carlene Phillips is secretary on the Harvard Historical Society’s board of directors and wrote the living history script for the May 18 event.
