My grandmother, Delia (Presho) Merrill was born in 1903. I think her family, the Preshos, bought Elmhurst farm around the turn of the century. In 1926, the state straightened out the road by the farm. It’s now called Route 140, but it wasn’t then. When they straightened the road, they went right in the middle of my great-grandmother’s land. I think my great-grandfather had died by then. To pay for that, they gave her the choice of a cash payment or the house the town of Hopedale owned at the time, which was known as the Pest House. She decided to take the house for income. My parents were married in 1944 and lived in Mendon for a while. Then they moved into what had been the Elmhurst Farm house.
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