A Massachusetts town turns 100 and writes it all down
An illustrated 1878 history of Lee, Massachusetts, issued by vote of the town after its centennial celebration.
The story
When the town of Lee, Massachusetts, reached its hundredth year, it held a celebration and then voted to put the occasion into print; the book appeared in 1878. It does more than record the festivities. Its compilers, the Rev. Charles McEwen Hyde and Alexander Hyde, used the centennial to tell the town’s whole story: how it was first settled, the institutions it built, the people who led it and the way its civic life grew.
It was printed in Springfield by Clark W. Bryan & Company and illustrated with views that let a reader see the town of the time: the First Church, built in 1780, Memorial Hall, the houses of Elizur Smith and Wellington Smith, and a portrait of Alvan Hyde. For anyone tracing a family or a building in Berkshire County, it remains a working source of local history and genealogy.
This copy is in maroon cloth with the title stamped in gilt on the cover. The boards are rubbed, the corners and spine ends worn, and the spine lettering has faded; the leaves are toned, with spotting heaviest near the frontispiece and title. The pages and plates have not been fully collated.
Details
- Date
- 1878
- Publisher
- Clark W. Bryan & Company, Printers, Springfield, Mass
- Binding
- cloth: Maroon cloth boards with gilt-stamped cover title; spine lettering faded; worn extremities.
- Condition
- Maroon cloth hardcover with rubbing to boards, worn/frayed corners and spine ends, and faded spine lettering; age-toned leaves with some scattered spotting/foxing, visible especially at frontispiece and title area. Blue-ink manuscript name on a preliminary leaf (possibly 'Frank Savage') and a penciled '50-' marking. Several engraved illustrations photographed. Full page/plate collation and structural examination have not been completed; completeness remains unverified.
- Inscription
- Frank Savage [?]
