Sanborn insurance map, 1892. Click here to see more. Hopedale
    is shown on maps 8 and 9. The others are of Milford. More
    Sanborn maps can be seen on microfilm at the Milford Library.

Hopedale in March


Ezine for March 1 - 1918, Part 5   

Ezine for March `5 - Office at 70 Hopedale Street   

Hopedale in March 2017   

Hopedale in February 2018   

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    Fanny Osgood, who was famous in Hopedale and Milford in the first third of the twentieth century,
    is on the tablet with some more widely famous suffragettes. Click here to read more about her.

    Build a better fly trap and the world will beat a path to
    your door. Or something like that. I hope Bristow Draper
    wasn't too upset when the world arrived at his door
    looking for Mr. Jefferies.

    Thanks to the miracle of the Internet it only took a minute
    or two to find Mr. Jefferis patent application. Here's the
    first paragraph.

    To all whom it may concern Be it known that I, SAMUEL
    T. Jefferies, a subject of the King of Great Britain,
    residing at Hopedale, in the county of Worcester and
    State of Massachusetts, have invented certain new and
    useful Improvements in Fly-Traps, of which the following
    is a specification.

    Not to leave out Mr. Bailey, here's one of
    the drawings for his picker stick patent.

    The Hopedale Quartzites. Sounds like it could be a name for a rock
    band. Many of the Draper houses have foundations built from the
    Hopedale quartzite from the Inman Street area. Click here for more on it.

    Garage at the intersection of Inman and Beech streets. There used
    to be many of them around town. Click here to see more of them.

    Here's the little river that made the Draper and Dutcher
    businesses possible in the nineteenth century. It's
    just been flowing along without doing any work since it
    was replaced by steam power, and later electricity.
    Click here to see more about the Mill River.

    On the corner of Adin and Dutcher streets, this was
    the home of the first Dutchers in Hopedale, Warren
    and Malinda. Click here for more about the family.

    The little rise in the middle of the picture is where the trolley tracks once
    ran. Click here to see more about the Milford & Uxbridge Street Railway.

Hopedale yard of the G&U Railroad.

A little snow fell on the night of the 7th-8th.

    Oh well, I wasn't looking for work anyway. i can just about
    find enough hours in the day to keep up with this website.

    The windy weather at the end of February brought
    down some trees around town, including several
    at Hopedale Village Cemetery.

    Pictures taken around 1980 when we had
    a ride around Hopedale Airport in Marty
    Harris's plane.. Where are you now, Marty?

Snowmen on Progress Street - March 9.

    March 11 - These day lilies in my back yard started coming up during the warm
    weather a couple of weeks ago. Then they got buried in about a foot of snow.
    That melted but it looks like they're going to get buried again tomorrow night.

    I think this little skim of ice was the result of the snow
    that fell on the 7th-8th. It melted very quickly.

    Above - My back yard on March 13.

    Below - The mail gets through. I measured 11 inches of
    snow in the middle of my front yard at 11 am. As you can
    see, it was still coming down when I took this picture a
    couple of minutes later.

    In the late afternoon I measured about 22 inches. More fell
    after that. There were reports of 26 inches in Milford and
    Uxbridge, so we must have had about the same.

March 15

    Click here to see a few more photos
    of the snow left by the March 13 storm.

    On the 13th we got 26 inches of snow. The picture here was
    taken on the 17th. I'm wondering if all that snow is gone
    because of the water that is always seeping down from the hill
    behind us, or if there's something radioactive buried there.

    Looking out a front window on March 18,
    we see the moon and Venus.

March 19 - Tennis season is here, but the high school team has to use shovels before rackets.

    A little skim of ice formed on Hopedale Pond on
    March 19 (above) and was still there surrounding the
    swan (right) on the 20th, but was gone by the 21st.

Fill 'er up.

    At the Forge Park commuter rail station in Franklin they're making sure no one
    will slip on the ice. This blue ice-melt stuff was put down several days after the
    last snow fell. Maybe it's to prevent ice from forming after the snow melts.