George Draper Osgood

George Draper Osgood
Brilliant Man, Tragic Life

George Draper Osgood is a bit of a mystery. He was a Harvard honor student and graduate, butit appears that he never worked. In the street listing books, he was always given as “at home.”When his mother and sister were living at The Larches, he was there also. Later, he was at his brother Dana’s home, Lawlah, which by the mid-twentieth century was well known in town as The Harel House. It seems that he was living there alone for many years. His name is in the street listing books through 1952, and then disappears.

I couldn’t find any more about Osgood until an obituary for him turned up. Also, I ran across his picture in an album done by Dorothy Draper Gannett, mother of Bill Gannett. It says “deaf and dumb from birth.” Consider that, along with the obituary that states that he graduated from Harvard with honors, and there must be quite a story about his life, but all I’ve ever found is what you see here. According to the obituary, “…he had been a patient for a prolonged period at the Wiswall Hospital in Wellesley.” I haven’t been able to learn much about Wiswall in an online search, other than that it was a psychiatric hospital where lobotomies were performed and electric shock was used.

George’s mother, Hannah Draper Osgood, sister of General William F. Draper, Governor Eben S. Draper, George Albert Draper and Frances Draper Colburn, lived with her husband and children in the house that had been her parents’ home at the corner of Draper and Hopedale streets. In 1909, she purchased The Larches on Williams Street from her nephew, George Otis Draper. The home burned down about a month after the purchase, and the house that’s there now is what she had built after the fire. Her son, George Draper Osgood and her daughter, Fannie Osgood, resided there also. In 1929, both Hannah and Fannie died.

The Dana and Laird Osgood house was built in the woods off of Greene Street in 1911. They lived there until they moved south in 1929. ” By 1933, and possibly earlier (books for 1931 and 1932 not available), Austin Osgood, 21, student, (son of Dana and Laird Osgood) and George Draper Osgood, 45, at home, were both living at 50 Greene Street, the former Dana Osgood home and the future Harel House. By 1940, George was still at that address according to the street listing book; the only Osgood in Hopedale by that time. As mentioned above, the last year his name was in the street listing book was 1952.

The story became even more puzzling when I looked again at some Milford News clippings I had copied at the Bancroft Library a few years ago. In December 1938, the Osgood home was sold to a company described as a real estate promoter. Two months later it was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Louis McVitty.. Their plan, according to the article, was to use it as a rest home. That may have happened, although I’ve never run across anything else about it being used for that purpose. The McVitty couple never moved into the Osgood house. They lived nearby at 36 Greene Street.

The next complication in the story is that in 1946 the McVitty couple sold the home to Mr. and Mrs. Harry Lacy. They named it the Harel House and used it as their home and their business; mainly a furniture store. George Osgood’s name continued to be at that address until 1952. Was he really there, or was the only part of him in Hopedale by that time his name in the street listing book?

With that question in mind, I called Harel Lacey, daughter of the couple who established the Harel House. She was totally unfamiliar with the name, George Draper Osgood. Somehow his name remained in the street listing books at 50 Greene Street for years after Harel and her parents were living there.

Louis McVitty developed the land that had been part of the Dana and Laird Osgood estate – McVitty Road, Dana Park, and Catherine Street , George was out of there at least by 1946, and probably sooner. He was at Wiswall for “…a prolonged period…” according to his obituary. Does that mean that he was there for the two decades from the time he left Hopedale until his death in 1972? We’ll probably never know.