Casting About in Lancaster, Mass.

From Dave "Least Heat" Brigham:

Any town with a house friendly to hobby horses is a nice town.

Lancaster, Mass., was incorporated in 1653, thereby making it the oldest town in Worcester County. A quiet town with many lovely old homes and a now-vacant college campus (see August 26, 2018, "You Have Been Un-Matriculated"), Lancaster has a population of around 8,000. I visited one recent day and here's what I found around the town center.

As I said, Lancaster is lousy with beautifully restored old houses. This is the Abby Carter Lane House on Main Street. Built around 1870, the house was occupied by Mrs. Lane for some time, before becoming a funeral home called Queen Chapel, according to Digital Commonwealth. It is a private home now, and likely has been for quite some time.

This place, known as the Dr. J.L.S. Thompson house, was built in the late 1840's and was damaged by a fire several years ago, according to the 2011 Annual Report of Officers and Committees, Town of Lancaster.

A short distance away sits the Mary Whitney House, circa, 1851, named for a lifelong Lancaster resident and former town librarian.

I love the stories old houses like these have to tell. There are of course the family histories in each of them, but also tales of former lives. The house above that was formerly a funeral home. The doctor's house that surely saw its share of patients. And the one below, which, if you are able to zoom in on the sign by the front door, was in a previous life Matthew Woods Store.

Directly across from this place is a barn.

Did Matthew Woods maintain this as a warehouse for his store? Or for equipment, animals and products from what must have been a fair amount of farmland? Both? The location is perfect, as both the store and the barn are adjacent to railroad tracks.

Both the Boston & Maine and Worcester, Nashua & Rochester railroads sent trains through Lancaster back in the day, connecting the town to Worcester to the south and Portland, Maine, to the north.

Lancaster's quaint town center is anchored by a complex that includes the town hall, a community center, the Thayer Memorial Library and the First Church of Christ, Unitarian.

Built in 1816, the church is the fifth meeting house to stand in or near the town center. The first two were destroyed during Indian raids in 1676 and 1704, according to the First Church's web site. The third church -- Massachusetts law in the 17th century decreed that a town could not be established without a church and a minister -- went up in 1706, and a fourth replaced it in 1743, per the church web site. The current house of worship was designed by well-known architect Charles Bulfinch (the Massachusetts State House, the Old Connecticut State House, remodel and enlargement of Boston's Faneuil Hall).

Behind the church sits this beautiful carriage barn:

I've been unable to find out when it was built. These days it's used for storage.

This monument on the town green to horticulturist, scientist, humanitarian and native son Luther Burbank has just the right amount of patina, I think. "He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career," per Wikipedia. "Burbank's varied creations included fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. Burbank's most successful strains and varieties include the Shasta daisy....the 'July Elberta' peach, the 'Santa Rosa' plum, the 'Flaming Gold' nectarine, the 'Wickson' plum (named after the agronomist Edward J. Wickson), the freestone peach, and the white blackberry."

Last, certainly not least, and arguably the most well-known aspect of Lancaster, is the former Rowlandson property.

From Wikipedia:

"Mary Rowlandson....was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after her ordeal, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was published. This text is considered a seminal American work in the literary genre of captivity narratives. It went through four printings in 1682 and garnered readership both in the New England colonies and in England, leading it to be considered by some the first American 'bestseller'."

I walked just a few yards up the dirt road. While it is private property, history buffs and others are welcome to walk on the land. Metal detectors, littering and motorized vehicles, however, are not allowed.

So there you have just a little bit of Lancaster, Mass. I've compiled profiles of other towns in this general area of Massachusetts -- between highways 190, 290 and 495. Here's a list:

From November 8, 2015, a feature about Maynard, "This Town Ain't Big Enough...."

From November 30, 2015, a post about Sudbury, "Walking Dead Tracks."

From December 9, 2015, a look at Hudson, "Scenes From An Old Shoe Town."

From December 17, 2015, a peek at a cemetery in Harvard, "Bring Out Your Dead."

From December 29, 2015, a short piece about a former church in Stow with an uplifting name but a confusing pedigree, "Gravity Can Lift You Up."

From January 27, 2016, a review of Clinton, "Finding Hope, But Losing a Mainstay, in Clinton."

February 17, 2016, a fascinating trek to a former ammunition bunker complex in Sudbury, "Bunker Buster."

March 30, 2016, a post about Littleton, "Big Walk in Littleton."