The Roundabout Club was established in 1882 as a monthly discussion group that covered a wide variety of subjects. It lasted at least up to 1955, when a Milford News article about it reported that the 757th meeting had just been held.
Hopedale History
October 2023
No. 420
The Roundabout Club, Part 2
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Twenty-five years ago – October 1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, is beaten and left for dead outside of Laramie, Wyoming. The subsequent media coverage, followed by his death on October 12, opens a larger conversation on homophobia in the United States.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet: General Augusto Pinochet, Chilean dictator from 1973 to 1990, is indicted for human rights violations he committed in Chile by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón.
Former astronaut John Glenn returns to space, as a payload specialist.
Fifty years ago – October 1973 – Yom Kippur War begins: The fourth and largest Arab–Israeli conflict begins, as Egyptian and Syrian forces attack Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights on Yom Kippur.
An OPEC oil embargo against several countries supporting Israel triggers the 1973 energy crisis.
The Saturday Night Massacre: U.S. President Richard Nixon orders Attorney General Elliot Richardson to dismiss Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refuses and resigns, along with Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Solicitor General Robert Bork, third in line at the Department of Justice, then fires Cox. The event prompts calls for Nixon’s impeachment.
The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus Strait for the first time in history.
One-hundred years ago – October 1923 – The Occupation of Constantinople ends when the great powers of World War I withdraw.
Ankara replaces Istanbul (Constantinople), as the capital of Turkey.
Turkey becomes a republic, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire; Kemal Atatürk is elected as first president.
News items above are from Wikipedia. For Hopedale news from 25, 50 and 100 years ago, see below this text box.
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The Roundabout Club, Part 2
By Rachel Day
The Patricks were a couple only to be found, I truly believe, in New England. They too, like the Dutchers & Bancrofts had a true love for the finest things in life, and did their best for their community. But Mr. P was a Yankee businessman, keen, grasping, tenacious. His wholesale houses hated to see him appear as a buyer – they knew they’d lose money. I’ve heard his wife tell how she never ate an unspecked apple or peach all the early years of his grocery business. When my mother, his classmate and life-time friend, was told by the town that she must dig a ditch through her property to carry off the highway water, denied its natural outlet by the raising of the road, H. P. came to her. His property was opposite hers and much lower. He told her he would dig the ditch for her at his own expense exactly as if he were doing it for himself. He kept his promise to the letter – he dug a ditch wide enough for the governor’s coach, and took out enough sand and gravel to fill in his property to the level of the high road, as he’d been ordered by the town. But there wasn’t much left of Mother’s field.
Now put alongside this that no boy worth his salt in Hopedale could come to H.P. and not get help for his education. No good cause ever failed to draw a generous contribution from him. His church depended largely on him. Could you find such a man outside N.E.?
One more tale I just have to tell you. As I’ve said, the Patricks broke with the Drapers. They were Democrats. They were fiery independents. So when the proposal to establish the town park came up in town meeting, Henry was agin it. He said it was too far out of town for the women to wheel their baby carriages to it. (He stuttered). “You’re not making a park for the poor, but a boulevard for the rich!”
Henry’s wife was a tall, handsome woman, very forceful in her way, too. Like the Bancrofts & Mrs. D. she headed every valuable institution in the two towns, but unlike them, she also worked hard for Woman’s Suffrage. She worked hard at everything she did – her daughter once said “If you want to get rid of an enemy without being hung for it, just send her on a trip with my mother.” Just so, she delved in her lovely garden, just so she formed her hour-glass figure, just so she planned the lavish meals we all enjoyed.
Now how could the R. help being unique with three such founding families?
Just as an end piece, I can’t help trying to give you an idea of two spinsters who were charter members of the R. but didn’t remain long. Georgiana Bailey was from one of the town’s oldest families, and as such was given charge of the town library in its earliest days. I deeply disliked her because she wouldn’t let me, at the age of ten, take out “At heart a rake.” “Would your mother let you read such a book?” I promptly assured her my mother let me read everything, but couldn’t soften G’s heart. To this day, I have no idea what that rake’s heart was like. Then too, when the [Ban?] came in gaily laughing and chatting, G’s pencil lay quiet on her desk, but when we started giggling & whispering, out came that potent weapon, and we were sternly tapped to silence. Later she went to preside over Patrick’s notion counter, and Brother Paul remarked, “Now she’s tapping her pencil at the spools and thimbles.”
As for Mary O. Sumner – she was the last of the aristocrats. How she mourned the dear departed days when Grandpa was gov. of Mass! You might see at her home his brocaded vests, and Grandma’s cranberry velvet dress for the Prince of Wales’ ball. All the fighting energy of her ancestors flashed from Mary O.’s snapping dark eyes. It was spent mainly in promoting good music for the five towns and anti-suffrage. Her high buttoned boots, at $25. per, when the rest of us paid $3.50 for laced oxfords, bore her restlessly upon any prospective contributor to her causes. Later in her life, she wrote for the Daily News and when I saw therein the recent biography of her dearly loved Princess Boncompagni I felt sure Mary O. had been called up in the Ouija board to pen it. The Roundabout lost color( ?) when she resigned.
Henry’s sisters Miss Lucy and Miss Ellen were both as the Mil. Hist. said of Miss Lucy, an estimable teacher when in health. Jointly they, too, were in every good work in town. Our village girls, innocent when asked who her S.S. teacher was said “Sometimes Lucy sometimes Ellen.”
Hopedale News – October 1998
Hopedale News – October 1973
As for the point made in the next to last paragraph, it certainly wasn’t Bristow Draper who purchased the asbestos shingles. They were put on the Draper houses in the early 1950s, shortly before they were sold. Bristow died in 1944.
Hopedale News – October 1923
