More information on this image is available at the Easton Historical Society in North Easton, MA.
www.flickr.com/photos/historicalimagesofeastonma/albums
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Ames Shovel and Tool Company Tenement #45, 64 Pond Street, Easton, MA, I. Miller, Mason Card, 1868, info, Easton Historical Society
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The development by Oliver Ames and Sons Corporation of the factory and village land use in a rather organic manner with a mix work-related classes created an integrated geographic network. The housing on perimeter edge with factories and business affairs in the center creating the village concept in North Easton. Other important concepts were the Furnace Village Cemetery, Furnace Village Grammar School and the Furnace Village Store, which explains Furnace Village and other sections of Easton.
source: Massachusetts Historical Commission
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Ames Shovel and Tool Company
Around 1825, Oliver Ames Sr., built a house for the manager of his operations in Braintree, which was the start of building and rent space in the private boarding house for the company’s workers and other workers in the villages. In 1832, the company, O. Ames, as it was called from 1803-1844, built a house for the workers in his shops in location, now known as the War Memorial Park in West Bridgewater. In 1836, Oakes built the company’s first big boarding house, with enough living space for twenty workers. By 1845, the company owned twenty houses not occupied by family, six dwellings have names, and fourteen dwellings averaging sixty-five dollars each in the inventory of that year. In 1845, the company owned twenty houses for employees, owning thirty dwellings by 1861, and more than ninety dwellings by 1884. In 1901, Oliver Ames and Sons Corporation transferred all of its real estate to Ames Shovel and Tool Company. The reorganization was the result of a merger of the Ames company with other shovel and handle companies. In 1930, with the focus toward selling some of its holdings, the company registered two sets of plans delineating lot boundaries for sixty-two properties including the twelve on Lincoln Street (parcels 34 to 45) and others on Pond, Mechanic, Day, Barrows, Main, Canton, Elm, and Oliver Streets and Picker Lane off Canton Street. The company enlisted the services of the Boston and Philadelphia auction house, Samuel T. Freeman and Company to auction forty-one of its properties in Easton, including eighteen of them with cottages, sixteen with two-family houses, three with four-family dwellings, two stores, and two parcels. In 1930, records show Mary S. Ames Frothingham purchased all the tenements houses across from the Old Colony Railroad Station on Mechanic Street at the auction and had them torn down. In 1933, records show the Ames Shovel and Tool transferred properties to John F. Neal, a lawyer from Malden as the company owners may have simply wanted to pass the burden of individual transfers to an attorney.
source; Massachusetts Historical Commission
source: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
source: Easton’s Neighborhoods, Edmund C. Hands, 1995
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History of Pond Street below
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64 Pond Street
By 1860, the Ames Shovel and Tool Company Tenement #45 at 64 Pond Street was used for worker’s housing for employees of Oliver Ames and Sons, owners of the property. It is quite possible rentals began before 1860 as the initial tenants were not listed in the Company’s tenement ledger. In 1850, renting at 64 Pond Street were Alfred, works on shovels, and his wife, Mary William Randall Pratt, with their two-year son, Alfred Franklin Pratt. On January 20, 1845, Alfred Pratt married Mary William Randall in Easton, daughter of Martin and Experience Harvey Randall. In 1855, renting at 64 Pond Street were Alfred, a shovel maker, and his wife, Mary William Randall Pratt, with their son, Alfred Franklin Pratt. In 1860, renting at 64 Pond Street were Alfred, a shovel worker, and his wife, Mary William Randall Pratt, with their son, Alfred Franklin, and their three-year-old son, George C. Pratt. in 1850, Esther J. Buck was residing at 120 Washington Street with her parents, Seneca, a boot maker, and Jane Warren Buck with her three brothers, Ephraim, John Warren, J., and Marshall D. J. Buck, and her three sisters, Ferdinand, Sarah and Levina Buck. By 1860, Isaac Lewis Miller married Esther J. Buck in Easton, daughter of Seneca and Jane Warren Buck. In 1865, renting at 64 Pond Street were widow Seneca Buck, with his son, Marshall D. J. Buck, and his two daughters, Livina, and Esther J. Buck Miller, and her husband, Isaac Lewis Miller, a house carpenter. In 1870, renting at 64 Pond Street were Isaac Lewis Miller, works as carpenter, and his wife, Esther J. Buck Miller, with their son, Dement Miller. In 1880, renting at 64 Pond Street were Robert, a shovel shop worker, and Mary A. Wood, with their son, Robert M. Wood, and Robert’s father, Robert Wood, a farm laborer. In 1860, Patrick F. Derby was residing with his parents, Samuel, a shovel maker, and Catherine M. Derby, and his two brothers, Thomas Derby, and William Derby, and his sister, Susan Derby, and a boarder, Margaret Haring. In April of 1849, Patrick F. Derby was born to Samuel and Catherine Mohegan in Blarney, Cork, Ireland followed by his family’s arrival in the United States on June 24, 1849. In the 1850s, Patrick F. Derby’s father, Samuel Derby worked for the Kingsley Iron and Machine Company and the Ames family were in the shovel making business in Canton. According to the Massachusetts Historical Commission documentations, – In 1847 the Ames Shovel Shop began operating at 160 Bolivar Street in Canton, Massachusetts at a location between Bolivar Street and Forge Pond. In 1792 a corn mill was built followed by a cotton factory in 1812. In 1841 the Bolivar Mill burned to the ground. In 1845, the property was purchased by Lyman Kinsley for the purpose of operating an iron forge followed by Oliver Ames and Sons taking over operations in 1848. In 1847, Lucius Buck in the hammer shop helped in the expansion of the shovel shops in North Easton. In 1844, the expansion happened under the ownership of Oakes and Oliver Ames, Jr., operatives under their father, Oliver Ames. In 1845, the Stoughton Branch Railroad allowed the Ames Shovel Shop to ship stamped shovels for finishing from Canton to Easton. In 1852 a fire destroyed the Ames factory in North Easton and the shop in Canton was in heavy use until the factories were rebuilt with stone in 1853. – In 1864, Patrick F. Derby’s father, Samuel Derby passed away in Canton. By 1870, Patrick F. Derby moved and resided in Easton with his widowed mother, Catherine M, Derby and his two brothers, Thomas, and William Derby. In 1871, the map of North Easton Village shows the parcel at 64 Pond Street as noted with the name, – O. Ames & Sons. – In 1880, residing in Easton was widow Catherin M. Derby, with her two sons, Patrick, a shovel shop foreman, and William Derby, a shovel shop worker. In 1886, the map of North Easton Village shows the parcel at 64 Pond Street as noted with a common notation, – A. – On May 27, 1886, Patrick F. Derby married Mary A. Lyons in Easton, daughter of Jeremiah and Ann Callaghan Lyons. In 1890, renting at 64 Pond Street were Patrick F., a shovel shop worker, and his wife, Mary A. Lyons Derby, with their daughter, Susan Derby. In 1895, the map of North Easton Village shows the parcel at 64 Pond Street as noted with the name, – Oliver Ames & Sons Corp. – In 1900, residing at 64 Pond Street were Patrick F., a shipping clerk, and his wife, Mary A. Lyons Derby, with their three daughters, Annie, Mary, and Susan Derby, and their two sons, Samuel Francis, and Joseph Patrick Derby. On October 18, 1908, Patrick F. Derby passed away in Easton at the age of sixty, with his burial in the Immaculate Conception Cemetery. `In 1910, renting at 64 Pond Street was widow Mary A. Lyons Derby, with her three daughters, Annie, a lawyer office stenographer, Mary, and Susan Derby, a lawyer office stenographer, and her two sons, Samuel Francis, a odd jobs laborer, and Joseph Patrick Derby. In 1917, the Easton Massachusetts City Directory listed Mary A. Lyons Derby as the widow of Patrick F. Derby residing on Pond Street, and working as a millinery in the Howard Building on Main Street. In 1920, renting at 64 Pond Street was widow Mary A. Lyons Derby, with her two daughters, Helen, a hat shop worker, and Mary Derby, a hat shop worker, and her two sons, Samuel Francis, a construction manager, and Joseph Patrick Derby, a medical doctor. In 1922, Mary A. Lyons Derby’s unit had a bathroom installed resulting in her rent increasing from nine dollars and eighty-five cents to ten dollars and thirty-five cents a month. In 1930, renting at 64 Pond Street was widow Mary A. Lyons Derby, with her daughter, Helen Derby, a public-school teacher, and her son, Samuel Francis Derby, a trucking company manager. In 1930, Mary A. Lyons Derby was paying for rent at twelve dollars a month. In 1940, renting at 64 Pond Street was widow Mary A. Lyons Derby, with her daughter, Helen Derby, a public-school teacher. The property at 64 Pond Street was noted as parcel 14 on the plans describing the properties owned by Ames Shovel and Tool Company in 1930. In July of 1930, Ames Shovel and Tool Company sold the property at 64 Pond Street to Patrick and Mary Derby’s son Joseph, and his wife, Alberta Derby, who had been residing in Springfield.
source: Easton Historical Society
source; Massachusetts Historical Commission
source: Ancestry
source: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
source: Easton’s Neighborhoods, Edmund C. Hands, 1995
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Pond Street
Though it did not become an official street in North Easton until 1881, Pond Street was used as one probably from the last decade of the eighteenth century. One 1850 deed refers to it as the road leading to Ames’s Finishing Shop, while deeds in the1870’s and 1880’s sometimes call it the coal road, probably because coal supplies were carried from Main Street along it to the forges and iron- working factories of Oliver Ames and Sons, shovel manufacturers, and E. W. Gilmore, hinge and hardware manufacturer. The earliest house on the road was 46 Pond Street, the birthplace of Oakes Ames in 1804 was built in 1792, as were the forge or nailer shop that became the shovel works’ first building in 1804. This shop and a trip hammer were sited on what was called the Island, a spit of land between Shovel Shop Pond and its dam on the west and Langwater Pond on the east. The Ames, both corporately and individually, owned all of the land around Shovel Shop Pond and probably most if not all of the land in the rough rectangle created by Pond and Main Streets except for the commercial and residential lots on the north side of Main Street. The 1855 village map shows the shovel manufactory at the northeast corner of Pond and what was then Island Street, four buildings north of the factory on Island Street, and seven buildings on Pond Street south of Shovel Shop Pond. One of the seven, and the only one of them on the north side of Pond Street, was the Catholic chapel, built in 1851 on land given to the local congregation by the Ames company in 1850.3 Also in 1850 the company sold Irish immigrant shovel worker Henry McArdle a little more than an acre of land on the south side of Pond Street, just east of the factory, and it was probably McArdle who built the first single-family dwelling on the street. For decades the residences on Pond Street housed the families predominantly of shovel and hinge workers and of many who worked as coachmen, gardeners, and domestics for the various Ames households.
source: Massachusetts Historical Commission
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Pond Street
Mechanic Street and Andrews Street were voted in 1873, Jenny Lind Street in 1875, and extended in 1883. Pond
Street in 1881, and Bridge Street in 1884.
source: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
