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Abington (MA) (Images of America)
by Sharon Orcutt Peters

Throughout Abington's history, its central location between Boston and Plymouth has been a vantage point that has been reflected in both work and play. It is Abington that provided the white-oak planks for the USS Constitution, and the town's Island Grove Park had national significance during the abolitionist movement. Abington was founded and built around the mills and then grew with the times to become a focal point for the thriving shoe industry. Many wealthy industrialists and capitalists have left their mark with brick and mortar. Their mansions still line the streets, and their lives shaped Abington forever. Abington presents an illustrated portrait of what it was like to live and work in the town during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It presents vivid images of the townsfolk, the shoe factories, and the old roads through Abington. The book includes images of John L. Sullivan, heavyweight boxing champion, and of the Buffum automobile, built on Centre Avenue. With photographs from the Abington Historical Commission, the Dyer Memorial Library, the Historical Society of Old Abington, Inc., and personal collections, Abington is sure to evoke memories of a bygone era.

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Abington (MA) (Postcard History Series)

Once known to native inhabitants as Manamooskeagin, or "the land of many beavers," Abington became an important manufacturing and financial center in Plymouth County by the early twentieth century. Postcard photographers and publishers caught every stage of the community's growth and broadcast it to the world through images of workmen at shoe factories, parades celebrating the town's 1912 bicentennial, and the dedication of the Island Grove Soldiers and Sailors Monument, a nineteenth-century gathering site for abolitionists that is today one of America's newest districts in the National Register of Historic Places. Abington captures the nostalgia of this town during the postcard era.

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Remembering Old Abington: The Collected Writings of Martha Campbell

During the early 1800s, Abington's Smith and Shaw boys brawled their way to area fame. Legendary bare-knuckle boxer John L. Sullivan settled in Abington in the early 1900s. And on August 16, 1893, the community's combative reputation was permanently cemented when over two thousand men fought in a pitched battle, the infamous Railroad Riot, over a railroad's disputed right of way through downtown. In Remembering Old Abington, editors Donald Cann and John J. Galluzzo have painstakingly sifted through the best of Abington historical columnist Martha Campbell's body of work to brilliantly recreate dramatic and colorful times in Abington, Rockland and Whitman. From shoemaking entrepreneurs to banking magnates, from historic properties and devastating fires to heated political controversies, each chapter delivers a full and lively depiction of colonial and nineteenth-century life.

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Rockland (MA) (Images of America)

by Donald Cann, John Galluzzo (HSOA, Inc.)

Rockland's roots run deeply into American history. Originally a village of Abington, Rockland broke away in 1874 to form its own economically strong and enterprising shoe-manufacturing community. This book transports the reader back in time to meet six-year-old George Rockland Hunt, the "first citizen of Rockland"; Hulda Barker Loud, the irrepressible editor of the Rockland Independent; and Judge George Kelley leading his parade through the center of town. Rockland captures the lives of the merchants of Union Street, the heyday of the local shoe industry, and the stories of Rockland's past as told through the eyes of the camera.

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Rockland (MA) (Postcard History Series)

by Donald Cann, John Galluzzo

A century ago, the words Rockland and shoes were synonymous. On any side road off Union Street, the town's main thoroughfare, were some of the most important shoe-manufacturing facilities in America, among them Emerson Shoe, Wright Shoe, and the Hurley Brothers Shoe Company. As the industrial revolution reigned, Rockland peaked, but Rockland had another side to it. Postals sent from Rockland exported the innate beauty of Reed's Pond, Cushing's Pond, and Whiting's Woods. These images proved to those folks who had never been to the town that even among the brick-and-mortar giants of the shoe industry, Rockland's natural side thrived.

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Whitman (MA) (Images of America)

by David Hickey (HSOA, Inc.)

Most commonly known as the home of the world-famous Toll House cookie, Whitman has a rich history that goes well beyond the cookie jar. Centrally located between Boston and Cape Cod, the town played a significant role in the formative years of the country. Early industries included various mills, foundries, and tack factories; later industry was defined by prosperous shoe manufacturing, as Whitman was home to many of the country's largest shoe factories. Whitman takes the reader on a trolley ride through the quaint center, which still evokes that small-town feeling, and the town park, which was designed by legendary architect Frederick L. Olmstead. Through more than two hundred photographs, this nostalgic tour shows the schools, churches, commerce, and the lives of Whitman residents, all of which bring back memories of a simpler time.

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Squantum and South Weymouth Naval Air Stations (MA) (Images of America)

by Donald Cann, John Galluzzo

The eyes of the United States Navy first focused on Quincy's Squantum peninsula in 1909, when daring young pilots from around the world gathered for the Harvard Air Meet. By the 1930s, the Victory Plant a destroyer plant that set production records had come and gone and the navy had set up the nation's first naval reserve aviation training center on the site. When air traffic over Boston Harbor thickened in the 1930s, the navy moved its aerial operations inland to the South Weymouth Naval Air Station. That base and its ubiquitous hangar became South Shore landmarks for more than a half-century. Squantum and South Weymouth Naval Air Stations brings back to life the early age of naval aviation on the South Shore, from biplanes to blimps to bombers and beyond.

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An Historical Sketch of Abington, Plymouth County, Massachusetts: With an Appendix

by Aaron Hobart (HSOA, Inc.)

Facsimile
Originally Published: 1839, Boston: Printed by S.N. Dickinson.
(Hardcover) 176+15 pgs. Reprinted by Higginson Books. This volume is reprinted on Class A archival quality paper.

Aaron Hobart's, An Historical Sketch of Abington, is a record of Old Abington's controversies from 1650 - 1750 primarily, and up through the Revolutionary War. Hobart relates stories about nearly all of the first settlers of Old Abington, when the town separated from Bridgewater, and describes the Indian hostilites. This volume contains a 15 page index of names.

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History of the town of Abington, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, from Its First Settlement

by Benjamin Hobart (HSOA, Inc.)

Facsimile
Originally Published: 1866, Boston: Printed by T.H. Carter and Son.
(Hardcover) 452 pgs. Reprinted by Higginson Books. This volume is reprinted on Class A archival quality paper.

Benjamin Hobart provides a detailed history of the founding of the Town of Abington in 1712 up to the Civil War, focusing on events between 1750 - 1850. This history was written before Rockland and Whitman separated from the Old Town. It includes the names and ages of every student in every school as well as residents' family histories and genealogies. It includes 27 etchings of churches, shoe and tack factories, and residences. The Appendix lists many, but not all, of the family names in Abington.

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