Towpath Topics Middlesex Canal Association P.O. Box 333 Billerica, MA 01821 www.middlesexcanal.org Volume 54 No. 1 September 2015 MCA ACTIVITIES Please mark your calendars. Saturday, October 3, 2015: The MCA is sponsoring a bicycle tour of the canal, north from Charlestown. Sunday, October 18, 2015: The MCA/AMC Fall Walk will take place in the Wilmington Town Park. Sunday, October 25, 2015: The MCA Fall meeting will be held at the Middlesex Canal Museum and Visitors’ Center, 71 Faulkner Street, North Billerica, MA. The guest speaker will be James Baldwin, great- great-great-great-great-great grandson of Loammi Baldwin. Sunday, February 14, 2016: The MCA Winter meeting will be held at the Middlesex Canal Museum and Visitor Center, 71 Faulkner Street, North Billerica, MA. The guest speaker will be noted artist, author, and educator, Thomas Dahill. All the events listed above are open to the public. See the Calendar of MCA Events section for more details. Please check the MCA website for lists of National and International canal-related events that are not included in this issue. TABLE OF CONTENTS If we have made any mistakes, done anything irritating, or you have Topic Page articles you want to send us, please contact us at: Editors’ Letter 2 [email protected] or [email protected] President’s Message (J.J. Breen) 3 Baldwin Dry Dock at USS Constitution Museum (J.J. Breen) 4 Please enjoy the issue, Deb Fox and Alec Ingraham Calendar of MCA Events 5 Locks in Lowell (J. J. Breen) 8 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE MCC Billerica Sign Project (Alec Ingraham) 14 J. Jeremiah Breen, President Dahill Square (Betty Bigwood) 16 A Volunteer Remembered (Betty Bigwood) 18 [email protected] Tribute to Nolan Jones (Bill Gerber) 19 John Baldwin, a descendant of the builder of the canal and a propri- Baldwin/Sullivan Members of AMACAD (Howard Winkler) 21 etor of the Middlesex Canal Association, emailed me on February 13, Miscellany 22 2012, to say he had read Howard Winkler’s January, 2012 article, The Editors’ Letter Baldwin Dry Docks, and wondered if the Association would be inter- ested in having the builder’s model of the dry dock for the museum. Dear Readers, Yes! Tom Dahill volunteered to make the Baldwin exhibit, and it was Welcome to the first issue of Towpath Topics under new editorship! We soon advertised in the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s publication, will try our best to live up to the high standards of the previous editors, Archaeology Month, October, 2012. With advertising and Google, the as we put our own stamp on the publication. next year, Harrie Slootbeek of the USS Constitution Museum sought the As we acquaint ourselves with the nuts and bolts of editing, we are Association’s and the Baldwin Family’s approval to borrow the model hoping that we can continue to rely on submissions from the readership, similar to what we have included in this issue. Up first is an account of the MCA directors visit to the USS Constitution, followed by an article on the Baldwin Dry Dock. There is also a report about new historic markers in Billerica, one about Dahill Square in Arlington, research on the connection between the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Middlesex Canal, and sadly two obituaries of Middlesex Canal Association members. The local Calendar of Events is still a big part of this issue, so study it and mark your own calendars! All National and International Events can be found on the website. Over the past months we have received many submissions relating to the Baldwin Family. Our plan is to begin using this information in the next issue, by first reprinting a speech given by George L. Vose in 1885 to the Boston Society of Civil Engineers called “A Sketch of the Life and Works of Loammi Baldwin Civil Engineer. Due to its length, we will run it like a serial, but then add other Baldwin Family genealogical and biographical information along with it. The speech is very informa- tive and flowery as only 19th Century language can be. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Back Row: Bill Gerber, Traci Jansen, Fred Lawson, J Breen, Howard Winkler, Betty Bigwood Front Row: Tom Dahill, Jean Potter, Marlies Henderson, Anneloes Henderson 2 3 and exhibit it at the Charlestown Navy Yard since the USS Constitution the dry dock. Mention that the engineer of the dry dock was the son of was to be put into the Baldwin Dry Dock in 2015. Loammi Baldwin, builder of the Middlesex Canal, “uniting the waters Baldwin Dry Dock at USS Constitution Museum of [the Merrimack river] with the harbor of Boston . the greatest The Directors of the Middlesex Canal Museum were guests of the USS work of the kind which has been completed in the United States”, not Constitution Museum at the June 3, 2015 party after Old Ironsides was surpassed until the Erie Canal, would have also gratified the museum’s again placed in the Baldwin Dry Dock. On June 24, 1833, it had been particular guests. the first ship to enter it, and President Andrew Jackson came to Boston In any event, the directors of the association present at the party had a to celebrate the opening. At the party in 2015, Betty Bigwood would very pleasant time, manifest in the group photo. Missing from the photo have liked for the president of the USS Constitution Museum in her are Len Harmon, honorary director, and wife Diane. Another honor- speech to the guests to mention the 4,000 piles transported from New ary director who went to to the party was Fred Lawson, an incorpora- Hampshire down the Middlesex Canal to support the tons of granite of tor of the association in 1963. Marlies Henderson, with her daughter Anneloes, is not a director. She is a proprietor of the association and the Commonwealth’s newest Middlesex Canal commissioner. At the party the executive officer of the USS Constitution offered to guide a tour of the dry dock and ship the following Friday. The tourists were welcome to clamber up the granite ledges of the dock, run their hands over the copper cladding of the ship bottom, and in the ship, step into the starboard quarter gallery, a sort of Florida room for the captain built onto the side of the ship, away from the sound of four hundred sailors. A sort of reading room with a padded seatback and lid to the captain’s one-hole outhouse. None of the sailors on watch objected to the tourists clambering, feeling, and sitting about the dry dock and ship. —————————— We need volunteers. If you can say Welcome!, you can be a volunteer at the museum. Simply come to the museum prepared to greet visitors at the reception desk. Even an hour on one of the hundred days a year we are open will allow the experienced docent to do other necessary work. J. J. Breen, MCA President CALENDAR OF EVENTS Bicycle Tour: Saturday, October 3, 2015 – We will meet at 9:00am. at the Middlesex Canal plaque, Sullivan Square MBTA Station (1 Cambridge Street, Charlestown, MA 02129), follow the canal route 38 miles to Lowell. There will be a stop for a snack at Kiwanis Park across from Baldwin Mansion (2 Alfred Street, Woburn, MA 01801 ~ 12:30pm), stop for visit at the Canal Museum (71 Faulkner Street, Baldwin Dry Dock Model North Billerica, MA 01862 ~ 3pm), and arrive in Lowell in time for 4 5 the 5 P.M. train back to Boston. Google “canal ride cue sheet”. Riders For those planning to attend the James Baldwin’s October 25, 2015 lecture can choose their own time to join or leave the group by using the on the Baldwin Family, additional background information can be found in Lowell Line which parallels the Canal. (i.e. An abbreviated ride can the following issues of Towpath Topics: be done by parking at the Sichuan Garden, just off Route 128 at Route Volume 37; #2, March 1999: “The Baldwin Family” by Thomas Raphael 38, cycling with the group to the museum and returning by train to Volume 49; #2, January, 2011: “Biographies of James Sullivan and Loammi Anderson/Woburn at 3:19pm, three miles from the Sichuan Garden.) Baldwin” Transcribed by Howard Winkler The ride will be an easy one for most cyclists. The route is pretty flat, Volume 50; #3, March 2012: “The Middlesex Canal - It was a Family Thing” and we will average 5 miles per hour. Along the way we will stop by Bill Gerber and Susan Williams at several canal remnants and restored sections. Steady rain cancels. MCA Winter Meeting: Sunday, February 14, 2016 – At 1:30 P.M. Helmets required. For more information: www.middlesexcanal.org. the Middlesex Canal Association will hold a public meeting at the MCA Fall Walk: Sunday, October 18, 2015 – The Appalachian Moun- Middlesex Canal Museum and Visitors’ Center, 71 Faulkner Street, tain Club and the MCA will host a walk along a 0.8 mile section of North Billerica, MA. The featured speaker will be noted artist, author, the Canal situated within a 14 acre tract in Wilmington. In 1983 this and educator, Tom Dahill, Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts at Emerson parcel was gifted by Stanley Weber and his daughter, Julia Ann Field- College. The topic of his talk will be the two watercolors of the Mid- ing, to the MCA. Although the fall foliage, the fresh air, and the cama- dlesex Canal Summit Pond (circa 1822) in North Billerica.