The following is from a letter received from William Bennett's daughter Ellen (Bennett) Demers:
My father lived in Dover with his family from 1917 to 1925 on a farm owned by Mr. Pierce on Centre Street near the Norfolk Hunt Club. The Bennett family lived in the cottage on Twin Oaks Farm and the Pierce House, was, I believe, on Farm Road. Dad referred to it as the "big house". His father was overseer on the farm. Their family is listed on the 1920 census. My grandfather was William Bennett and my grandmother, Ellen Flood Bennett.
My father, William J. Bennett is now 89 years old and when we were growing up, told countless stories about the time he lived in Dover. My grandparents married in 1912, in Concord, and moved to Dover in 1917. They originally lived on Smith Street. And later moved to the "cottage". My grandmother had been an Irish domestic who immigrated in 1902 and grandfather came from a large family in Lincoln. Ellen Flood Bennett sadly, died in 1925 and is buried in Vine Lake Cemetery. After her death, the family moved to Waltham to live with relatives.
Dad claims that the Pierce family later sold the house and farm to Mary Curley, a daughter of John Michael Curley, some time after 1925. Mr. Pierce was a Boston businessman who would bring clients out to the country and my grandparents would send them home with fresh produce, butter and eggs.
Food was often the topic of stories about Dover on the farm. He learned to eat vegetable served yellow with butter. During hunting season, my grandfather would shoot and clean a pheasant to be cooked for Sunday dinner. Other times, there would be a rooster killed and prepared for dinner. His mother also canned vegetables. He recalls the jars sitting in pans of boiling water. He also has a memory of he and his sisters taking the elastics off the jars to shoot at each other, leaving his mother short at canning time. He shared another memory of his father arranging for "Ma" to prepare and sell meals to men working on the Pierce estate, probably chicken or pheasant dinners.
He remembers riding to St. Edward's Catholic Church in Medfield for Sunday Mass in a horse and buggy driven by his father. Mr. Pierce evidently had a collection of carriages which were brought out on Sundays. The driver, on a rainy day, would get wet while passengers stayed dry. After church, they would go to the drugstore for ice-cream.
The barn burned down one night after being struck by lightning. The children were carried to the Pierce house in the pouring rain. He remembers calling out that he was drowning. At the house they were "spoiled and given sweets." In dad's account, the volunteer firemen, although they could see the flames rising after lightning struck the barn, did not not come until someone called in the location because if they'd gone down the wrong "country road" too far, they could have easily been way off target. After the first barn burned down, the cows were simply moved to the remaining barn and the other one was never rebuilt.
He also remembers during the same time, a surgeon being hired to take out the tonsils of all the farm children in the area. This was apparently done at the Pierce House. He remembers being carried home after the operation.
As the only son, dad went everywhere with his father. He remembers trips to the train station to pick up maids for the Pierce house. He also remembers the family attending the Grange Fair where he and his sister got to spend the money they had earned picking blueberries and selling them to local families. He also recalls trips to farm auctions where his father had been instructed to buy any needed equipment.
One particular account of a trip, though, surprised me. He and his father went all the way to Boston in a horse and cart to Mechanics Hall where Mr. Pierce had business connections, to pick up useful lumber and haul it home. "Ma" made them a lunch for that trip.
He particularly remembers the Norfolk Hunt Club. The riders in their red coats would ride across all the open fields. Once a year, to thank the farmers for permitting them to ride over their land, the Hunt Club would put on what dad referred to as a "spread". Tables would be set up outside in a field and all the food was free, much to the delight of the many farm kids in the area. There would be two wooden huts set up and one would say, "hard cider" and the other "sweet cider".
Dad had always said that he went to school in a "beach wagon". But when I showed him the picture of the "motorized barge" on your site, he said that was the vehicle of his memory. He doesn't remember which school he went to but this would have been from 1920 to 1925, so there must have been one grammar school at the time.
I thought that you might find dad's recollections about Dover interesting. I have been busy looking into my family's genealogy and am constantly amazed by my father's memories from his childhood. Dover has always been large in those memories.
Here is some information regarding the location of the house the family lived in
I believe the property is located at 185 Centre Street, at the corner of Hunt Drive, directly south of and abutting the Norfolk Hunt Club, and approximately 175 feet north of the Dover/Medfield town line. The land and buildings were formerly owned by a Charles C. Peirce or Rebecca F. Peirce. In addition to the house, there nown is a small cottage attached to one of the barns located on this parcel, and an apartment on the second story of another barn. The original parcel of land contained approximatcly 48 acres and extended into the town of Medfield where another house may have been located.
Ellen (Bennett) Demers
July 29. 2004