Lincoln Street, 101, North Easton Water Company, 101 Lincoln Street, North Easton, MA, info, Easton Historical Society

More information on this image is available at the Easton Historical Society in North Easton, MA
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The development by Oliver Ames and Sons Corporation of the factory and village land use in a rather organic manner with a mix work-related classes created an integrated geographic network. The housing on perimeter edge with factories and business affairs in the center creating the village concept in North Easton. Other important concepts were the Furnace Village Cemetery, Furnace Village Grammar School and the Furnace Village Store, which explains Furnace Village and other sections of Easton.
source: Massachusetts Historical Commission
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Lincoln Street Area
In 1815, Easton Manufacturing Company, a cotton cloth manufacturer, owned a six-acre parcel of land on the north side of Lincoln Street. In 1850, the area on the north of Lincoln Street was woodland owned by the Ames family. The house of Oliver Ames Jr., (1807-1877), located northeast of this area was fronting Main Street. From the years ranging from 1860 to 1930, Ames Shovel and Tool Company at 28 Main Street owned the two buildings on the north side of Lincoln Street between Day Street and Reardon Way. These buildings provided housing for shovel workers at the shovel shops, shoe shop workers, and worker and domestic helpers for the Ames family. Around 1871, the properties #55, #59, #63, #71 and #73 Lincoln Street were built the same in construction and style. There were four properties #45. #49. #85 and #89 that were moved from the shovel shop area of operation. The last three houses #41, #79 and #81 were built on or moved onto properties on Lincoln Street. In 1839, the dissolution of the Easton Manufacturing Company saw David Macomber who obtain ownership of the parcel followed by a sale to Howard Lothrop. Lothrop sold the same parcel to Oakes Ames (1804-1873), the son of company founder of the Oliver Ames and Sons Corporation, Oliver Ames, Sr., (1779-1863). In 1845, Oakes Ames, (1804-1873), transferred ownership of the six-acre parcel to his father, Oliver Ames, Sr., (1779-1863). Later, Oliver Ames, Sr. moved ownership of the parcel to his company, Oliver Ames and Sons. In 1875, the six-acre property and other properties were deeded to Frederick Lothrop Ames (1876-1921), followed by moving ownership back to the company. In 1901, the Oliver Ames and Sons Corporation transferred all of its real estate to Ames Shovel and Tool Company. In 1886, in his book, History of Easton, William L. Chaffin wrote, - forty-five Roman Catholics, virtually all born in Ireland, lived in Easton in 1849, 150 by 1852, and 400 by 1860. In 1850, at least thirty-five of ninety-seven Irish-born males in the Easton workforce, or 36 percent, worked at the shovel shops; another seven were furnace men, either at the Ames shops or at other forges. - In his history of the Ames company, historian Gregory J. Galer noted by the late 1820s, the company’s need for labor had begun to exceed what the region could supply. By the late 1840s, Irish immigrant men began to satisfy that demand. In the 1820s, Oakes Ames, Sr. started to build housing for his employees. In 1820, the first of two houses Oakes built was for the manager of his plant in Braintree. The second a house for workers at his shops, now, War Memorial Park on River Street in West Bridgewater in 1832. In 1836, Oakes Ames built a boardinghouse big enough for twenty workers. In 1845, Oliver Ames and Sons owned twenty houses for workers, by 1861, thirty houses, and by 1884, ninety houses for workers. Occupancy of these houses were short-term, and some tenants stayed long enough to be listed in one or more census years. In 1901, as previously mentioned, Oliver Ames and Sons Corporation transferred all of its real estate to Ames Shovel and Tool Company. The action was taken as a result of a merger of the Ames company with other shovel and handle companies. In June of 1930, looking toward the future of selling their tenement houses, the Ames Shovel and Tool Company registered two sets of plans outlining lot boundaries for sixty-two properties. The large set of plans including the twelve parcels 34 to 45 Lincoln Street and parcels on Pond, Mechanic, Day, Barrows, Main, Canton, Elm, and Oliver Streets and Picker Lane off Canton Street. In 1933, Ames Shovel and Tool Company transferred properties to John F. Neal, a lawyer from Malden as the company owners may simply have wanted to pass the burden of individual transfers to an attorney.
source: Easton Historical Society
source; Massachusetts Historical Commission
source: Ancestry
source: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
source: Easton’s Neighborhoods, Edmund C. Hands, 1995
source: Forging Ahead: The Ames Family of Easton, Massachusetts, Gregory J. Galer, 2002
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History of Lincoln Street below
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Lincoln Springs
One of the reasons these trout could survive in Queset Brook even in the heat of the summer is a tiny brook that comes from the Easton Town Pool, which is built on top of a number of large natural springs that begin on Lincoln Street next to the Easton Lutheran Church and are called, collectively, - Lincoln Springs. - The pond behind the Easton Town Pool is fed by spring water as is the Town Pool. This is why the original Easton Water Works was built at the site of the Easton Town Pool. Visitors to the town pool in the 1970s will remember the odd, 20-foot high, shingled - pyramid - in the center of the parking lot. Underneath this pyramid was the well head. Lincoln Spring and its spring brook are still there behind the pond above the Town Pool and the entire – bowl - of land behind the Lutheran Church and the DeCouto's house is a natural spring water seep that funnels into the dug-out basin that is now the Easton Town Pool. All of the water from these springs and seeps is channeled into an old, narrow channel lined with granite blocks which crosses Parker's field and enters Queset Brook at the inlet of Mr. Parker's Pond. If you go to Parker's field you can still see the overgrown, long and straight ditches cut into the meadow to drain it. In the 1970s, during the heat of the summer, the trout that Mr. Parker stocked would crowd into the tiny slot of the drainage channel from the Town Pool to keep cool. These were also prime frog catching sites for kids. Some of the ditches may have been made to enhance the growth of native cranberries, which are still found in the stretch of meadow between the Town Pool and Parker's field. If you go to the Easton Town Pool in the late fall, after the pool has been drained, and walk around on its bottom, you will see natural springs bubbling up from its bottom that all flow into a central drain beneath the far dock. As kids we used to see tiny hornpout in the drain. How these hornpouts and, downstream, the trout, survived the boatloads of swimming pool chemicals dumped into the pool every few weeks every summer to keep kids from getting ringworm is a mystery.
source: Tispaquin's Revenge, Doug Watts, 2006
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101 Lincoln Street
Prior to 1887, the North Easton Water Company was created to initiate the process of the distribution of water in the North Easton Village District of Easton, Massachusetts. Some of the leaders of the day in Easton served as incorporators of the North Easton Water Company included Frederick Lothrop Ames, Oakes A. Ames, John H. Swain, George B. Cogswell, George W. Kennedy, George K. Davis, Cyrus Lothrop and Pardon A. Gifford. On April 14, 1887, they successfully petitioned Massachusetts Legislature with the passage of an Act to Incorporate the North Easton Water Company. The Act allowed the District to create the North Easton Water Works located at 101 Lincoln Street. The source of the water supply is a well near the Queset River west of the North Easton Village. In 2006, Doug Watts wrote, in his article, -Tispaquin's Revenge, - about the source of the water supply being a series of springs commonly named – Lincoln Springs. – The Act of Chapter 169 in 1887 allowed the corporation to distribute water for residents, businesses and fire extinguishment. They could take land, make dams, construct buildings, dig up land, fix and collect water rates. The corporation was restricted to holding no more than twenty thousand dollars in real estate and capital stock not to go over seventy-five thousand dollars. The Act authorize the district or town to establish` a three-person board of water commissioners, in one, two, and three-year increments and elected at each annual meeting. Thereafter, a water commissioner served three-year terms. The meeting may adopt By-Laws outlining by whom and how meetings may be called and notified. The Act stipulated meeting shall be called upon application of seven or more legal voters in the district. In 1885, the population of the district was 3,948 inhabitants. According to a report from the Massachusetts State Board of Health, the well was twenty-seven feet around, and twenty-eight feet deep. Pumps forced the water to a covered iron tank twenty feet round and one hundred and three feet high. Water is delivered near the top of the tank and drawn out at the bottom. Distributing mains are of cast iron and service pipes of enameled iron. A similar but smaller system was used by Oakes and Blanche Ames when they built – Borderland. – At Borderland, the tall tank was near the parking lot at the path going down to The Lodge. The water was gravity fed to the cellar of the Mansion and pumped up to the tank where its gravity fed the water throughout the Mansion. The Act of Chapter 169 contained a provision that the Town of Easton, or the incorporated district known as the North Easton Village District, should have the right to take, by purchase or franchise, property of the water company. The Town or incorporated district may operate the works, under the powers of a fire district, and the works which were owned and operated by the North Easton Village District. This district as established occupies a nearly rectangular area in a northwesterly and southeasterly direction and located near the extreme northeastern corner of the Town. The northwesterly limits of the district are approximately parallel to the northwesterly boundary of the town and only an average distance of about one-quarter of a mile. The extreme easterly limits of the district are seven-tenths of a mile from the boundary of the city of Brockton. In 1915, the State Department of Health of Massachusetts received during the year 224 applications for water supply, sewerage, and sewage disposal. These applications included fifty-four for public water supplies, ninety for wells and springs, four for stream pollution, twenty-two for water for ice supply, thirty-five for sewerage, drainage and sewage disposal, and nineteen for unknown problems. In the same year, a new water district was authorized in the Town of Easton for water in the villages of South Easton and Eastondale. Water was pumped through the extending of pipes from the water works in the City of Brockton. The combined villages water supplier was known as the South Easton and Eastondale Water and Fire District. The arrangement of the two southeastern districts left the extreme northeasterly corner of the Town of Easton cut off from the remaining portions of the town. The Unionville area was about ninety families. In 1915, a group of residents petitioned the State Department of Health to investigate the condition of the water supply in Unionville. The investigation found that many of the wells were badly polluted and not healthy for the residents. The Department was informed that many of them have failed during the dry seasons. A determination could not be made of the best plan of supplying this neighborhood with water without an engineering investigation. The Unionville Improvement Society had several means to obtain water following the creation of the Unionville Water and Fire District in 1916. Some of the choices considered were with the works of the North Easton Village District, the works of the city of Brockton, the South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District. Connection to the North Easton Village District was viewed as the most economical due to the distance of the districts in South Easton and Eastondale. In 1916, an Act of the Massachusetts Legislature enabled the Unionville Improvement Society to create their own water and fire district. An article in the Brockton Daily Enterprise or the Brockton Times, prior to the merger of the two papers, describes the process of creating water and fire districts with the first meeting of the Unionville Water and Fire District in 1916.
source: Easton Historical Society
source; Massachusetts Historical Commission
source: Ancestry
source: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
source: Massachusetts State Board of Health, 1887
source: Annual Report of the State Department of Health of Massachusetts, 1916
source: Easton’s Neighborhoods, Edmund C. Hands, 1995
source: Tispaquin's Revenge, Doug Watts, 2006
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Lincoln Street
Lincoln Street was laid out in February, 1757. It began at a grate Rock By the side of the Rhode, a little west of Samuel Randall's Dwelling house. This rock is still in sight on the south side of Main Street, just west of the railroad bridge. The road kept nearly on its present course, past Lincoln Spring, nere (near) six feet Northerly from the head of the mane spring so as to leave the spring for a convenient watering place. Many of our older citizens remember that before the present road bed was raised in the hollow, the main spring was upon the south side of the road as above described. It was a springy swamp there, abounding in iron ore, all of which found in the roadway was to belong to Israel Woodward, who owned the land. The road ran nearly west from here for some distance past the site of Flyaway Pond, when it diverged to the northwest, and came out on the Bay road near the Gilbert places. This end of the road is now discontinued, but it may be followed even with a team at the present day, and its roughness gives us a good sample of many of our roads in the olden time. When this part of the road was given up in March, 1772, Lincoln Street was continued westerly to the Bay road by the Shepherd place. Complaint of this discontinuance was made to the Court of Sessions, and in 1773 the town was required to relay this part of the road to the Gilberts, thirty feet wide ; and it was in use as a road for many years afterward. In 1853 Lincoln Street was made forty feet wide from the Bay road to Woodward's Spring, so called.
copied from: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
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Lincoln Street
According to nineteenth-century local historian William Chaffin, Lincoln Street in North Easton was platted in February, of 1757. Lincoln Street started at a point just west of the later railroad bridge on Main Street on the east to Bay Road. Bay Road was the oldest highway in this east end of Easton, originally Taunton North Purchase on the west. Chaffin does not note the origin of its name, at least three members of North Easton’s extended Lincoln family lived on the street. In 1855, Paul Lincoln, who settled in Easton in 1771, and for whom Lincoln Street appears to have been named. Nathaniel Bradford, born about 1818, was Apollo’s son and Jemima Lincoln Gilman, was Apollos’s daughter. On the south side of Lincoln Street, no buildings are shown on the 1855 H. F. Walling map between Jemima Gilman’s house on the west and the school opposite the Rockery, on the east. The north side was undeveloped between the home of John M. Mills on the west and Patrick Murphy at 17 Lincoln Street on the east. The undeveloped north side was owned by shovel manufacturer Oliver Ames and Sons, which built on site or moved to the street the tenements occupying 41 to 89 Lincoln Street. The lots on the south side were for the most part owned by residents.
source: Massachusetts Historical Commission

Taken on: November 24, 2015

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Sets appears in: • Historical Images of Easton, MA, 247 Elm Street - 28 Linden Street

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