Hopedale History Ezine for August 2025

Hopedale History
August 2025
No. 442
Augustus Describes Milford

Hopedale in August  

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Twenty-five years ago – August 2000– The US Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor.

The Russian submarine Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea during one of the largest Russian naval exercises since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, resulting in the deaths of all 118 men on board.

Tsar Nicholas II and his family are canonized by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Fifty years ago –  August 1975 –  The Helsinki Accords, which officially recognize Europe’s national borders and respect for human rights, are signed in Finland.

The Banqiao Dam, in China’s Henan Province, fails after Typhoon Nina; over 200,000 people perish.

NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.

One-hundred years ago – August 1925 – The Ku Klux Klan, the largest fraternal racist organization in the United States, demonstrates its popularity by holding a parade with an estimated 30,000-35,000 marchers in Washington, D.C.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead lands in American Samoa to begin nine months of field work that will culminate in her 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa. The bestselling book will become the first popular anthropological study and will change many attitudes towards tribal peoples.

News items above are from Wikipedia. For Hopedale news from 25, 50 and 100 years ago, see below this textbox.

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Augustus Describes Milford

By Adin Augustus Ballou
August 11, 1847

I thought last month’s article by Adin Augustus Ballou should be followed by his words on Milford, the main part of the town of which Hopedale at that time was just a small part. Here’s Augustus.

We gave a sketch of Hopedale in our last. We must now give one of Milford. As Hopedale was not reckoned equal to Boston and some other places, neither should Milford be ranked with the great city and empire of New York. The territory is smaller by some acres, and the capital less populous. Still, it is a place of no small consequence. Its importance will be better conceived of when we state that Hopedale is only a fraction of its contents-being included within it, as one of our States is in the Federal Union.

Milford has grown in distinction from a very insignificant beginning. Tradition informs us that it was anciently called Broomshire, by the people of the neighboring communities,-probably in contempt of the broom manufacture carried on by our ancestors after the Indian fashion, as one of their articles of export and exchange. This, however, is a nice point which must be left to the curiosity of the antiquaries. But contempt has been lived down, and Milford now laughs at the children of those who scorned her former littleness. She has illustrated that remarkable saying in the clasics, “Tall oaks from little acorns grow.” Surrounding places, possessing grater natural advantages, have lagged in the career of improvement, and are now obliged to do homage to once despised Broomshire. Some churlish historians attribute this result to a smart quarrel which spring up among the inhabitants many years ago, about building a new meeting-house. They say that two mighty parties were thus created in the Republic, one called the “Town Party,” and the other the “Parish Party.” These parties have become pretty much extinct, and the present generation seems to have lost the thread of the old contention. But the public records show that the partizans on both sides were real Anglo-Saxons and stuck it out till they had amply gratified their wills; when, behold, their rival cities, each with church and public edifices of ample capacity, actually met together near the Tombs, and blended into one. And now look at the dwellings, stores and shops. Read the splendid sign-boards, which tell who manufacture boots, and who sell all kinds of notions. Look at the bevies of ladies and gentlemen, often in full dress, who promenade the streets. Hear the shouts of the children that teem along the avenues and commons. Take notice of all these, and a thousand other indications of prosperity, in and out of the capital, and you will not need to be told that Milford is a place of some importance. Indeed, for all we can say of it, if the Queen of Sheba should come from the uttermost parts of the earth to visit this place, she would certainly exclaim, “The half has not been told me.”

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