Time is flying by, but we have not been idle.
First, I want to make good on what I said I would do last post. Our visit with my in-laws.
Sean's Mom was born in nearby Fitchburg, though her family soon moved back to Florida after she was born. She knew the address of the maternity hospital where she was born, their house, and the church where she was baptized. So we mapped them all and visited them, some with more success than others.
Their family had moved up there for work. At one point while living there, his grandfather had been offered an opportunity to move to Argentina to run a related mill there, but his Nana said "No." So he kept on at the mill there for a while longer. They had originally lived closer to Boston, I can't remember the exact town, but the owner of the mill in Fitchburg was the same as the one nearer to Boston. I can't recall the name of the mill to save my life, but I believe there is still a company there of the same name, but I'm not sure if it's the still with the same family or not.
The first place we stopped was actually where the maternity hospital she was born at used to be. The Lucy Helen Hospital. (Here's an
article in a pdf about it, it's on page 6.)
Here's a blurb from the article:
If you were born in Fitchburg between 1922-1954, more than likely, you came into the world at the Lucy Helen Hospital. The three-story brick mansion at 879 Main Street was originally built about 1870 by a wool manufacturer named Abial Towne. His daughter, Sarah Towne married Charles Billings, treasurer of Fitchburg Savings Bank, and they made their home there for many years. The Billings would eventually sell it to John Sherriff, owner of Sherriff Woolen Mills. In 1921, Sherriff sold it to Mrs. Fay Crocker for a sum of $12,550.00.
A year later, in 1922, Mrs. Crocker opened the home as a private maternity hospital. She named it after her mother, Lucy Bigelow and her husband Charles T. Crocker’s mother, Helen. The Lucy Helen Hospital operated privately and successfully for five years until Mrs. Crocker generously donated its buildings and grounds to Burbank Hospital under the conditions that it would only be used as a hospital and it would serve the women of Fitchburg.
It later closed as technology changed, and was even later razed in 1968. In its place now is a federal building which houses the same Post Office Sean works at most Sundays doing Amazon deliveries. All this time, he'd been working there, he had no idea of the family history that spot held.
His mom had trouble finding the street she grew up on via her phone map, so while we were in the back area of the Post Office (the front was closed, it being Sunday), we asked them to help. Fitchburg and Leominster are called the "Twins" around here, as when the two cities grew in size, they sort of merged at certain points, and it's confusing about which streets are in which town. Certain postal routes are equally confusing because of this because both cities carry mail for the other when it makes more sense for routes. I do want to note that the only reason we were allowed in the back area is because the parcels were already out in the trucks. If they were still sorting and loading, only Sean would have been allowed in there.
Her street wasn't on their list, which we all thought meant it was actually now considered in the Leominster delivery area. One of the fellows there checked on google maps, and found it (listed as within Fitchburg via google), giving us rough directions. (We didn't know this right then, but the reason she couldn't find it, but he could is the street isn't really there anymore. You'll see what I mean after the next paragraph.) So after taking some pictures of the park across the street and ourselves, off we went to the next stop.
I do want to note that as we wended our way towards this supposed street, which now seemed to have vanished, we passed by some sort of support event for Puerto Rico at a nearby business. You could see pallets of water and food supplies, and there was lively music playing. Several of the homes we passed on our search had Puerto Rico flags hanging from their porches. It was nice to see, but seemed a private event, so we didn't stop.
The house she was born in, which was barracks that had been converted to housing, was gone. The lot had some remnants of torn down buildings, but was all fenced off and we could only see most of it by going across the street where the commercial property was higher and getting a view that way. She took some pictures, but it's, well, a lot that's overgrown with building debris. At one point, the VA center was there, but later was moved. To the Federal Building I mentioned above that also houses the Main Street Post Office. Here's pictures we took, plus some images from street view. You'll note there were still some buildings standing as late as 2007. The satellite image (I think from 2012) shows that Kilroy Street didn't go all the way through then either. Not sure why.
The church where she was baptized was still there--St. Anthony of Padua. I don't know why we didn't take a picture of the entire church, but we didn't.
So that was our trip down history lane, since Mom actually moved from that area when she was an infant, so she doen't remember any of it, though some of her siblings do.
The other thing I wanted to mention is the completely unexpected gift from them. A Home Depot card that covered what we were short for insulating at least the attic floor in case we don't get the discount. (We worried the product is too new, and so they won't allow it, and I've not been able to get an answer from their site.) If we do get the discount, we'll just use it to buy more insulation for the attic overall. I've been looking into how best to insulate that sort of space where the roof slopes down into the 1/2 floor. So it will be well spent. Even one layer of Rocksul will save us about a $1000 in oil per winter from what the free estimate guy told me from our local oil provider.
We have our MASS Save assessment tomorrow, so I'll see what they have to say. I did warn them about our narrow hatch to the attic. Not sure if they will do more than poke a head in or not.
Speaking of....I still have some uncluttering to do where we threw stuff last minute so we'd have some sitting space in the parlor. The inspectors need to be able to get around more than they can right now.
I'll report back either tomorrow or soon after with what we find out from them.