Fire Hydrants - American Iron

Mueller Centurion fire hydrant (left) and "THE COREY (right). Paint color
on the bonnet and outlet caps signifies how much water will come out.

Through the paint, and sometimes through the rust, most of the fire hydrants in Maynard read MUELLER, ALBERTVILLE,  and either ALA or AL (for Alabama), plus a year for when the hydrant was made. Mueller Company was started in 1857, but did not get into the hydrant business until 1933, when it acquired Columbian Iron Works. An informal search found a Mueller hydrant dated 1959. One of the newest - dated 2015 - is next to the former American Legion building, at corner of Summer and Linden Streets. Older Mueller hydrants have CHATT TENN instead of Albertville.

And the oldest hydrant in town? There may be Mueller hydrants that pre-date 1959 (two of those on Nason Street). That's not shockingly old, as with proper maintenance hydrants can be operative past 75 years. Forest Street hosts an antiquated-looking, red-topped hydrant with "THE COREY" across the top. This model, from the Rensselaer Manufacturing Company, was named after the inventor William W. Corey. This individual hydrant may be more than 100 years old, although some versions of that model were still being made into the 1930s. There is an "1895" low on the front, but it seems that refers to the patent year, not the manufacture year.

Click on any photo to enlarge

Maynard appears to use a nationally standardized color coding system on older hydrants to indicate capacity. The main body of each hydrant is painted white. The bonnet and outlet caps are blue, green, yellow or red. Color indicates water output in gallons per minute, with blue meaning excellent, green meaning good, and so on. Route 117 toward Stow has a series of red-topped hydrants. All newer hydrants are entirely red, as the fire department now has computerized information on water volume and water pressure provided by the Department of Public Works, which is responsible for hydrant maintenance.

Mueller Centurion hydrant dated 1959.
Two with this date on Nason Street.

All of Maynard's public hydrants are dry barrel, meaning that the insides of the hydrants are not full of water when not in use. The top nut connects via a long rod to the valve many feet down, at the level of the water pipe. The alternative system - wet barrel - is used in warmer climates, where there is no risk of water in a hydrant freezing solid, which would render the hydrant useless and possibly damaged. Those movie scenes in which a truck or bus hits a hydrant and water spouts high into the air can be true, but not here.  

Maynard in the late 1880s had a population of 2500 and no central water system. Pipes and pumps were installed to bring water three miles north from White Pond, Sudbury. In town, a tank was built on Summer Hill, so that water pumped to the hilltop would provide good water pressure to all homes and businesses. The initial system included just over 7,500 feet of iron pipe and 57 fire hydrants. Subsequent annual reports mention pipe and hydrants being added as the town grew. Settled Maynard was very compact at the time; today's more spread out population is on the order of 10,000 people, serviced by a roughly estimated 400 to 500 fire hydrants.

There are perhaps a dozen hydrant manufacturing companies in the United States, and many more elsewhere, so it is nice to think that Maynard makes a point of buying American iron. Nice, but now also legally required. The American Iron and Steel Act of 2014 requires that any public water system getting federal funds to help pay for waterworks of any type use iron and steel products produced in the United States.  

By the way, you break it you own it, meaning that your insurance company will have to cover the cost of hydrant replacement in addition to the damage to your vehicle. Same applies to any damaged signage, light posts, traffic lights, etc. The newer Mueller Centurion models are designed to break off when hit, minimizing damage to the underground parts.

Sign in Stow, MA

Stow Fire Department
access to Elizabeth Brook

Lest any reader think this column is neglecting Maynard's western neighbor, Stow does not have a public water supply system, and thus no centralized system of hydrants. New housing developments are required to have underground water storage tanks. For everything else, the Stow Fire Department is equipped to pump water from streams, ponds and lakes. This is not as scary as it sounds. First responder trucks carry 500-1000 gallons of water, which is often all it takes to knock down a fire. Even if not extinguished, time is gained for other water-carrying trucks (Stow's and neighboring towns) to arrive. Only rarely would there be a need for the trucks to shuttle back and forth from a water source to the site of the fire.

Winter Moth Caterpillars (April & May)

Maple tree leaves, eaten by winter moth caterpillars

(Published early May) Stand next to your blueberry bushes, your maple trees and birch trees, your cherry and apple trees. Are flower buds turning brown? Are nascent leaves been eaten to the point that they resemble lace? In early morning hours are small green caterpillars dangling from silken threads? Are you thinking - maybe I should spray? Too late. Winter moth eggs hatched in early April. The tiny, tiny hatchlings climbed inside beginning-to-open leaf and flower buds and nibbled them from the inside. By early June the full-sized caterpillars will descend to the ground where they will transform into pupae, not to emerge as adults until late November and early December.

The reason for this topic now is to help you to identify which of your trees are in duress. Some of them will have the reserves to produce a replacement set of leaves, but unless you start some moth management going forward your trees may join the standing dead in a few years.

Tree wrapped in plastic wrap and sticky stuff, with male and female winter
moths stuck, dead or dying. The females are climbing up from the ground.
The males are attracted to pheromones (chemical compounds) released
by the females. Males also attracted to light, so can be found around
door frames in the evening and early night if an outside light is on.

Winter moths, native to northern Europe, reached Canada in the 1930s. The introduction was accidental, the problem monumental.  The "winter" part of the name refers to an evolutionary strategy used to avoid predation. Most insect eaters (birds, bats, spiders, wasps and other insects) are active during warmer months.
By not emerging until after November frosts, there perils are avoided.

This plague appeared in eastern Massachusetts around 1990 and to date has slowly spread to affect land within the I-495 arc and down into Cape Cod, but not farther west. Yet.

Winter moths have an interesting dimorphism. Males have strong flight muscles, with an ability to pre-warm these muscles through shivering before cold weather flight. In contrast, females have only vestigial wings. Sacrificing flight capacity allows more than fifty percent of their adult body weight to be given over to eggs. Mating is achieved after the females climb up tree trunks and then release scent pheromones into the air. Males fly to them. Given a choice, males prefer larger females with smaller wings.

Male winter moth, about the
size of a dime.

The non-flying nature of female moths means that individual trees can be treated by putting sticky products such as Tree Tanglefoot around tree trunks in mid-November. Instructions are to wrap the trunk in plastic wrap or some other material and put the sticky stuff on that rather than directly on the tree. This is kept on through mid-December.

Female winter moth.
Click on photos to enlarge.

Help is on the way. Canada successfully introduced parasitic flies and wasps from Europe, both specific to preying on winter moths. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been experimenting with this approach. The net result is a downgrade from chronic traumatic damage to acceptable damage, with occasional bad years. However, until these bio-controls are in widespread use, best advice is to sticky-band trees in the fall as much less expensive than spraying dormant oil or insecticide in early spring.      

Moths in Massachusetts are not a new plague. Town records from decades back show annual expenditures to combat browntail and gypsy moths. The former were introduced accidentally in Somerville, MA in 1897, and spread quickly. Damage was not limited to plants. The browntail moth caterpillar

Winter moths, mating.

is covered with thread-thin, poisonous, barbed spikes which in sensitive individuals elicit a poison ivy like reaction. Worse, the spikes are easily dislodged, often became windblown, and if inhaled, cause moderate to serious respiratory distress. In time, natural predators adapted to browntail moths, so there are only remnant populations along the Maine coastline and parts of Cape Cod.  

Gypsy moths were deliberately brought to Medford, MA in 1869 in an attempt to start silk production from cocoons, escaped, and spread slowly. Despite millions of dollars spent, eradication efforts failed. Suppression efforts have successfully used combinations of insect parasites, fungal and bacterial species toxic to gypsy moth caterpillars and a species-specific deadly virus.

Females resting on birch tree, waiting for evening to climb up and mate.

Winter moths are not the only bad thing happening to your trees. Oriental bittersweet, an invasive plant species from Asia, climbs up trees and kills them by a combination of blocking sunlight and weight. Hemlocks are dying due to wooly adelgid infestation.  Ash are succumbing to Emerald Ash Borer and diseases, fungal infection has killed off most of the flowering dogwoods, and the Asian longhorned beetle will eat almost any type of tree, but is partial to maple, elm and willow.  

Ku Klux Klan in Massachusetts - 1920s

Columnists tend to have a working list of five to fifteen topics in various stages of completion. But sometimes an idea jumps the queue, so to speak, and demands to be written first. In this column, the hijacking of my curiosity was a consequence of a friend who asked a startling question: "David, did you know that the Ku Klux Klan was active in Maynard back in the 1920s?"

I did not. A spate of diligent verging on obsessive research on the topic turned up enough evidence to make a story. First clue came from the centennial-celebrating book on the history of Maynard: "The year 1925 saw unusual and unexpected happenings in our fair town, when from May through November, Maynard had some Ku Klux Klan activity in its midst. During this period meetings held in neighboring towns were attended by a number of our local citizens. On at least two occasions crosses were burned on top of Summer Hill. Fortunately for everybody, this idea has a short life locally."  

What I learned was that the second era Klan had its birth in 1915. One catalyst was the popular movie "The Birth of a Nation," which romanticized the post Civil War Klan. The driving force, however, especially outside what had been the Confederate states of the south, was a sense of displacement - loss of political and economic stability - of the white, Protestant population by immigrants, primarily Catholics and Jews from Europe.

In the hearts of those who joined or sympathized, America had been great when America was a rural, agricultural society of land-owning, church-going, alcohol-abstaining families (Prohibition had begun in 1919). All that was being challenged by an ever more urban, industrial society peopled by strangers who did not necessarily speak English, drank alcohol, went to movies, and were clearly 'not like us.' In a time of change, the Klan captured perfectly a simultaneous sense of being entitled and endangered.

Internet download of Klan march in Washington, DC, either 1925 or 1926.
Note display of American flags, which was standard for the Klan in that era.

Many joined. By its peak, around 1925, membership in the Ku Klux Klan numbered an estimated four to six million, or roughly one in ten adults. In Indiana and other states membership approached one-third, including many state legislators. Across the country, county and state fairs would have "Klan Days." Annual parades down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, drew 50,000 white-garbed marchers, men and women, thousands carrying American (not Confederate) flags in addition to wearing white robes.    

In eastern Massachusetts there had been a large influx of Irish and French-Canadian Catholics in the mid- to late-1800s, followed by Italian and Polish Catholics after the turn of the century. Locally, Klan activities were mostly anti-Catholic, which triggered strong anti-Klan responses. One newspaper described it as the Knights of Columbus against the Knights of the Invisible Empire. On July 2, 1924 anti-Klan protesters threw rocks at and broke up an initiation ceremony in Stow. Long-time Maynard residents can recount stories told by their older relatives of seeing burning crosses atop Summer Hill (a treeless cow pasture at the time) back in 1925.

That same summer of 1925 saw several Klan rallies in Sudbury, on the farm property of one family that had land on the Sudbury/Framingham border. This was to culminate in a major gathering of some 150-200 men - members and new initiates - on August 9th. Anti-Klan activists attacked cars with rocks and clubs. Some Klan members responded with gunfire, resulting in five men being injured, one seriously. Sudbury and Framingham police responded by rounding up 75 Klan members (including the Sudbury police chief's son!). Guns were confiscated. Sixteen men were required to post $200 bail, paid for by the state Klan organization, but in the end there was not sufficient evidence to bring anyone to trial.

Nationally, the second era Klan abruptly collapsed in the late 1920s after numerous scandals including fiscal misbehavior by leadership, evidence of bribing government officials, and a notorious kidnapping, rape and murder case in Indiana. By 1930, national membership was estimated at under 30,000 and declining.

A third era Klan arose in the 1960s as very loosely connected chapters, primarily in the southern states, symbolized by association with the Confederate flag, in opposition to civil rights and voting rights for African-Americans. The Klan exists presently as white supremacy organizations in many states but without any semblance of national coordination, estimated at 10,000 individuals.      

RESEARCH ON THE SECOND ERA KU KLUX KLAN

A lengthy scholarly discourse on the rise of the second era Ku Klux Klan as a quasi-fascist organization is posted at http://www1.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html.

An account of the Worcester event, 1924: http://massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=302.

An account of the Sudbury event, 1925: https://sudbury.ma.us/services/news_story.asp?id=259.

Kathleen M Blee authored a book: Women of the Klan. An excerpt is posted at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/blues/klan3.html.

Maynard Founders' Day

Starting in 2016, the Town of Maynard has decided to celebrate "Founder's Day" with events to acknowledge and celebrate the formation of Maynard on April 19, 1871. Events took place April 16 and 17. Saturday's program included a talk "How Maynard Became Maynard" by David Mark, local historian. It was taped by WAVM. The complete program was on the town's website and in the 4/14/16 Beacon-Villager.

No Maynard Founders' Day event in 2017. For 2018, there will be a lecture at the Maynard Public Library "How Maynard Became Maynard" by David Mark, evening of 4/19/2018, 7:00-8:30 PM.

The clockface should have shown 12:10 rather than 1:00 as the former was
the time of the official sounding of the fire station fire horn for more than
100 years - until the horn broke in 2012 and was not fixed. Click on
the town medal (below) to see the image that became the town Seal.

The inaugural celebrations marking the founding of Maynard, April 19, 1871, are described in great detail in the 1921 book "A Brief History of Maynard." Drawing on newspaper accounts of the time, the first town meeting, on April 27th, just eight days after the Commonwealth had granted the petition to create the town, met for the purpose of electing key officials, and then ended early, to turn to the celebrations.

The celebratory parade included the Eagle Cornet Band, IOGT (International Order of Good Templars), mill representatives, the Amateur Brass Band, St. Bridget Temperance and Benevolent Society, students, and town officials. A Revolutionary War cannon was borrowed from Concord. The Treasurer's Report recorded $14 spent on gunpowder.    

David Griffin (L) and Paul Boothroyd (R), members of the Maynard Historical
Society, hold the original of the 1870 petition to create a new town from
parts of Acton, Concord, Stow and Sudbury. Click on photo to enlarge.

A note here on the 'founders' of Maynard. Histories of the town list as founders the 71 men who signed a petition dated January 26, 1871. There is more history behind this history. Months earlier there had been a petition with 68 signees to create a town, name not yet selected, to encompass small parts of Acton and Concord in addition to larger portions of Sudbury and Stow. This was never submitted to the state legislature. The second petition gave up annexing the gunpowder mill land from the first two towns. Subsequent to this official petition there were three additional supporting petitions. All tallied, the count came to 209 men who favored the creation of a new town. (Women not achieving a right to vote until 1920.)

Stow and Sudbury were against the idea, as the proposed new town would take roughly 50 percent of their populations. Stow residents circulated petitions which garnered about 140 signatures. Sudbury held a vote at Town Meeting, 183 against and 88 for. In disregard of this opposition (and perhaps influenced by some undocumented lobbying), the request to form a new town was granted. Some people who petitioned for the new town ended up not in it, as the final map was smaller than what had been proposed.   

Amory Maynard was not among the signees although he was perhaps the largest landowner and also part owner and manager of the woolen mill. His sons Lorenzo and William signed, and Lorenzo became the town's first Treasurer and Tax Collector. An account of the day, in the Hudson newspaper, had this comment on how the town came to be named: "Mr. Maynard is the chief founder of the community now incorporated in his name. He is a taking man withal, and his personal christening of the new town is a popular acknowledgement of his agency in its birth and breeding."

Milestone anniversaries have been celebrated in various ways. There is no mention in the Town's Annual Report of 1896 about any events to mark the 25th anniversary. Nationally, there was a recession going on, and the mill would go bankrupt in 1898, so perhaps everyone was distracted.

The 50th anniversary was a huge event. According to the program, church observances on Sunday, April 17th, school observances on Monday, and on Tuesday morning a 50-gun salute and a parade of an estimated 1,000 people down Main, Nason and Summer Streets. Speeches by Governor Cox and Senator Gibbs followed. Local veterans of the Civil War (!), Spanish-American War and the Great War participated. Afternoon activities included Glee Club and choir singing, a band concert and ball game - Maynard versus Concord - at Crowe Park.

Medal struck to celebrate the 100th
anniversary in 1971. Image later
chosen to become the Town Seal.

Amory Maynard on the centennial

medal. Designed by Gerard D'Errico.

 Likewise, the 100th anniversary was a huge event. Really huge! Celebration was pushed to June - perhaps in hope of better weather? Ten days of celebrations included picnics, concerts and performances, capped by a parade and fireworks on July 4th.

The 125th anniversary celebration, in 1996, appears to have been a subdued affair. The Maynard Historical Committee published a collection of essays on town history. One puzzle: there are photos of the Olympic Torch being carried through Maynard by a young runner. It turns out that the torch was in Massachusetts on June 15th to be relayed along the entire route of the Boston Marathon, and whilst in the state, visited many other towns, including Maynard and Stow.

This year, Maynard celebrated its 145th anniversary as first annual "Founder's Day" via various events held April 16 and 17, throughout the town. Much of the organizing was accomplished by Maynard High School student Haley Fritz as part of her Girl Scout Gold Award project, in collaboration with the Board of Selectmen, Maynard Business Alliance, and Maynard Historical Commission.

Looking into the future, the Maynard Historical Commission is beginning to make plans for the sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary celebration, April 2021.

Fifty of David Mark’s 2012-2014 columns were published in book "Hidden History of Maynard" available at The Paper Store, on-line, and as an e-book. It includes a chapter on how Maynard became Maynard. 

Mill Buildings Demolished at Clocktower

CORRECTION: End of third paragraph states that older, wooden buildings no longer exist. Historical Society says that one building was moved to Main Street, between Quarterdeck and RiverRock Grill, where it is now an apartment building. 

Mill & Main has begun in earnest its plan to enlarge and make more inviting access to the mill complex from Main Street, by tearing down Buildings 2A and 10. The intent is to create an easy flow for foot traffic from the street into the open spaces, which will include (hopefully) a variety of retail stores and eateries. A description, map, images and a video are all posted at  http://mill-and-main.com/#overview. Marketing descriptions include "Where heritage has a heartbeat," and "All work. And all play."

Building 10 of Maynard mill complex, in front of Building 12

If the plan succeeds, the net effect will be to more than double the number of retail businesses on Main Street west of the river. Given that there are currently more than a dozen empty retail spaces on Nason and Main Streets east of the river, this does raise concerns about supply in excess of demand. The expectation is that the very large remainder of Mill & Main will be renting out to office and light industry businesses, and that this increase in the work-related population of Maynard will supply the demand to match the supply.  

Building 10 almost completely gone, mid-March 2016. Across back is 
Building 2, the oldest still standing. Click on any photo to enlarge.

What was lost in the recent tear-down? Historical Society records date both ex-buildings to 1887, during the era when Lorenzo Maynard was Agent at the mill, having succeeding his father in 1885. However, there is contradictory information. An image commemorating the 40th anniversary of the mill, 1846-1886, appears to show both buildings already in place. A few years earlier, the well-known aerial view image from 1879 shows what looks like Building 2A, but not Building 10. The oldest buildings still standing, now collectively referred to as Building 2, date back as early as 1859. (Older buildings, dating back to 1846, were wood construction and no longer exist.)    

Brickwork on Building 2A. Note headers every 8th row.

Both 2A and 10 were of brick and timber construction, two stories tall, size roughly 15x40 yards. Each building had about 10,000 square feet of floor space, and materials included roughly 100,000 bricks. (Estimates for the entire complex are five to ten million bricks.) Sharp-eyed observers can tell whether a brick-walled building is structurally supported by the brick wall versus the brick serving only as a facade. In this instance, walls of the destroyed buildings were structural in nature, three bricks thick. Outer- and inner-facing bricks consisted of rows of lengthwise bricks - stretchers - but tellingly, every seventh or eighth row had bricks end on - headers. The pattern is known as American bond. This practice attached the surfaces of the wall to the brick and mortar core.    

An example of brick as facade is the four story apartment building on Main Street, next to McDonald's restaurant. This is actually a wood-frame building; the brick facade making no structural contribution. Instead, the brick serves as a waterproof, low maintenance, outer surface, and also stylistically blends into Maynard's downtown core of brick buildings.

Removal of yellow brick chimney in October 1956.
There was a ladder up the outside. Men climbed to
the top to hammer pieces loose. Because of the
dangerous commute, they brought their lunches
with them. The entire process took 17 days.

The tear-downs of Buildings 2A and 10 were not the first time that significant structures have been removed from the mill complex. Up until 1956 the mill was graced by twin chimneys of near-equal height. One was removed in October of that year by extremely hazardous means: men stood on scaffolding affixed to the outside of the chimney and used sledgehammers to knock bricks inward. A large hole made at the base allowed bricks and mortar to be hauled away. The Historical Society has a series of photos taken over a two week period showing the chimney getting progressively shorter and shorter.

At an undetermined date the remaining chimney, no longer functioning as such, was shortened a bit and capped. It now functions as a cell phone tower.  

The aforementioned aerial image from 1879 shows two shorter chimneys elsewhere on the property - both gone by 1915. The mill also had its own coal gasification facility, to make gas for gaslight, now the site of the east end of Building 5, but more on that another time.

Working title for this column was "And the walls come tumbling down."  That is a line from the chorus of the gospel classic "The Battle of Jericho."  A near match is "When the walls come tumblin' down," which is from the 1983 John Cougar Mellencamp song "Crumblin' Down." Which is not the same as "When the walls came tumbling down," by Def Leppard.