Some of the old houses remain. Many new houses are built. The once sandy roads are paved. Our lives are equally or more hectic and considerably less physical. The weather can be a bother, but our lives are not centered around it. We have health facilities within reasonable reach but there is no longer a practicing doctor within the village center.

Many of you know Doug and I work in postal history. A recent offering on eBay caught my attention and we bid on it. Our reward was seventeen letters in a correspondence between Hubert R. Williams in Boston and Grace Allen Hallet in Marstons Mills. The letters are all hand written and date from June 15 through September 23, 1887 and are written from Marstons Mills. They bear the same postmark type, giving date and year. The more difficult to read are written cross-hatched, which is to say, she writes horizontally on the paper, then writes over it with the writing going vertically.

The June letters all refer with anticipation to a visit on the 4th of July. They are addressed care of Suffolk Rubber Company, where Bert Williams works. He is nineteen. She is fifteen. There are no letters from July.

In the June 21 ~ letter Grace tells a tale on Eddie Fores, who was in to paint the kitchen. He caught his trousers on a nail and “split them open much to his horror as Mrs. S. was there. Ma gave him a needle and he came up here and sewed them up.” Would that happen today? I suspect that the pants and the painter would head home nowadays!

In the same letter she reports that Belle Holway returned “bag and baggage.” She had gone for the summer, but only stayed four days. Grace observes, “What a smart girl. One of the peculiarities of the Mills is the more one works the more they think of you.”

June 23 she writes about foul weather. “Today it blows a hurricane. Last night it lightened so and rained drops big enough to fill a quart cup.” It was a wet summer, and by August 24th she reports, “Geo. 0. says he thinks `The Lord has cried enough'.”

Meals are sometimes a packed supper carried to the graveyard, sometimes a more formal affair. Grace writes on June 23, 1887, “I really think the Judge will die eating. Yesterday for dinner he ate a whole bluefish, two quarts of custard and a generous piece of pie.” In August, she writes of a late supper of beefsteak and biscuits. In September, “George 0. was up - and devoured a whole apple pie for Ellie, much to her dismay.”

She writes of a camp meeting on August 7, 1887, saying, “It is very still here today as every body has gone to camp meeting.” She does not indicate where the camp meeting is taking place, so it might be in Falmouth, Yarmouth or the islands. When she goes to the post office to mail this letter, she is unable to send it as the post office is closed, because “Hattie has gone to camp meeting.”

The same letter reports the whereabouts of several individuals. Mr. and Mrs. Davis are at Yarmouth with Charlie and Ruthie. Nan and Mr. Ashley are coming by train for an over night visit. In the fall she reports on Mrs. Scudder's French perfume, which is “oily” but smells sweet.

Grace's letter of August 8th has a humorous caricature of 55 year old Mrs. Wilbur. After inquiring about Grace's Bert, Mrs. Wilbur went on to share tale of her 12 “fellows.” To quote Grace, “it would make you smile to hear her tell of them. One has a business which pays him $60,000 a year. She believes in having a good time out life. She goes to Europe next summer.”

There are frequent mentions of Acushnet, which seems to be where she has a home, and being Anne Swift's “right hand man at private theatricals.”

In her August 17 letter she writes about Nellie Hodge's wedding. “She had four bridesmaids. Was dressed in white silk with a veil and they said she looked very sweet.” She then says, “I want to be married that way. With orange blossoms. For I can't be married but once.”

August 24th she reports that Dr. Pierce's wife is very ill. “They didn't think she would live but I believe she is better now.”

Apparently getting together to make instrumental music was a favorite activity. She had a guitar, George plays fiddle, Ed and Nan also play instruments and Ellie sings. In late August Grace reports, “Its such fun to hear our musical instruments twinges (sic) snap and crash. The guitar is all gone but three and the banjo is fast following its example.”

Going for horse rides, buggy rides, and in the winter, sleighing and skating are all anticipated activities. Some go to the Vineyard and stay in a rented cottage for a week. Trips to the train station, presumably in West Barnstable, and shopping trips to Cotuit abound. In August she reports helping to tie a comforter, probably referring to pulling strands of yarn or thick cotton thread through two layers of fabric with cotton batting in between to make a coverlet for the cold nights to come. Grace also has a good deal of fun sharing a baby picture of Bert, sausage curls and all, to her friends.

Early August finds Grace picking beech plums along with Affie and Ephraim's sister. She brought home six quarts to preserve “and to feed you on this winter.”

September 4 she tells him she is going cranberrying “and earn from $1.00 to $1.50.” She tells him, due to cranberry harvesting, “If you should walk through the Mills now at noon you would find a deserted village.” She is picking for “Mr. Thomas Jones, Ephraim's father.” She catches rides to the bogs with other pickers or rides with Eph and Affie Jones. She returns home around 6, eats her supper and then walks to the post office. A long day, leaving her ready for bed early.

On the day she is working to dig ditches in preparation for the pickers, she tells Bert, “Please don't call the bog a field for it is a swamp.”

She tell us September 9 that “Mr. Makepeace has on his big bog somewhere near 450 pickers and where I am they only have 23.”

The only travel mentioned to the Mills from off Cape is by train. There seems to be a coach to or through the Mills from the train depot. There is frequent mention of trips in an open wagon to the station to pick up friends and family.

“Things are gorgeous in the Mills now. All the fall flowers are in bloom and it's more like Eden than ever.” Some things change; others don't.

The Marstons Mills Historical Society will be holding a business meeting this month, at Bunny and Thomas Zenowich's home, 1210 Race Lane, on Monday, November 17th at 2:00 P. M. You can see the letters referenced in the article above after the business meeting.