By By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

在我上两篇文章中(第一部分 和 第二部分), I shared the story of Mary Breed, as told in an 自传手稿 她在1933年被送到MHS. I can’t in good conscience conclude her story without discussing some particularly interesting passages which relate less to the specific circumstances of her life 和 more to the history of Lynn, 质量.

玛丽出生于1869年. When she wrote to the MHS, she was 64 years old 和 had lived in Lynn her whole life. 值得庆幸的是我们, she devoted the last two pages of her manuscript to describing the dramatic changes she’d seen in the city. She included details of daily life in a 19th-century industrial center, 和 I think it’s worth excerpting these passages at length.

Many of the Old Houses in Lynn 质量 have been razed or destroyed by fire. One of the Oldest houses at the corner of Hesper 和 Boston Streets No 799 was razed within this year. It was two hundred 和 seventy eight years old. It was told that our First President George Washington Stopped there for Tea one time, as he was passing through Lynn on his way to Boston. This House was built by one of the oldest of Lynn’s Residents A Mr. Raddin. […]

I could write of many changes in West Lynn 质量, That I know of where acres of l和 was nothing but fields, 和山, where I used to play when a little girl, 都被做成了街道, 和 houses are built there on Summer St. I rode in the Horse Cars, 和 the old barges to my work before the Electric Cars were started. 现在一切都变了. And when my father was a boy, He said that Lynn Common was nothing but a Swamp 和 cow pasture. That was 1823 because he was 9 years of age at that time. […]

My father used to walk from Lynn to Boston over the road. So did my Gr和father 和 my mother when she was only 8 years of age, also to Stoneham to visit her Aunt Ellen. People didn’t mind a ten or twenty mile walk in the days when there wasn’t any cars. Everybody had to walk, except those who could afford to keep a horse 和 carriage. 那是在我出生之前.

The MHS holds a number of historical postcards of Lynn, including these:

I also found in our collections a book called 林恩:百年城市, 在1950年出版, which contains a number of “then 和 now” photographs that give us an idea of the changes Mary was talking about.

While all this local history is of course interesting to us as archivists 和 historians, 这是玛丽的私事. As a child, she had lived on Tower Hill, formerly known as Willis’s Hill according to a 县历史. 威利斯山可以在 1829年的地图 由·刘易斯, which means Mary grew up not far from the Raddin home built in 1655 和 demolished in 1933.

It wasn’t just the Raddin family that stretched far back into Lynn history. Mary’s birth name, Newhall, was also an old one in the city. In Lewis’s map, you’ll see that someone named J. Newhall managed a tavern not far from the Raddin home. Mary’s married name, Breed, was apparently even older. The map shows an Allen Breed living on Mill Street in 1650. Other searches for Breeds in Lynn turn up a Breed Square, a Breed Pond, 和 a Breed Wharf. I wasn’t able to confirm whether Mary 和 her husb和 were related to these other Newhalls 和 Breeds, 但看起来很有可能.

Mary may have felt nostalgic about the Lynn of her childhood, but she was certainly right when she said “everything is changed.” The city had undergone tremendous growth during her lifetime. I checked census data, 和 the population of Lynn in 1870 was about 28,000. By 1930, it had almost quadrupled to over 102,000, its peak. It has taken almost 100 years for the population to inch up close to that number again.

I was especially interested in Mary’s description of how modes of transportation had changed. 根据我的研究, horse cars operated in Lynn from 1860 to 1888, with the first electric car appearing in 1887. 至于到外地旅游, 许多人, 即使是孩子, 定期步行去波士顿, which Google Maps tells me is over 11 miles 和 would take almost 4 hours.

我让玛丽做最后的决定. Here’s an excerpt from the final paragraph of her reminiscences.

Well I would like to have been a writer if I could of had a chance to go around to places 和 see the Country. I have been to Maine as far as New Sharon 和 Belgrade Lakes 和 to Wilton, 和北杰, 缅因州和法. And To Farmington, Milton, 和 Union, N.H. Alton Bay on the Lakes, where I have spent my vacations. But now I cannot go anywhere, but stay at home 和 sew to take up my time. I read a lot of magazines 和 books.