The Acton Quilt

The quilt contains thirty squares, each representing and event, a scene, a building or an artifact considered significant in Acton's history. The background and borders, rich in browns, rusts, and other earth tones, were selected because Acton began as a farming community and its citizens derived their livelihood from the soil. While single squares were signed and completed individually, assembling and quilting were group efforts. Quilting bees were held at the Hosmer House, and ideas were exchanged and expertise shared until the Acton Quilt was finished.

Given to the town on permanent loan from the Historical Society, the Acton Quilt will be displayed in a public building as a reminder of our local heritage.

The quilt is on display at the Acton Town Hall
472 Main Street
Acton, MA 01720
(978) 264-9612
Hours: Monday - Friday 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Block 1: The Nagog Inn

The Nagog Inn is only a memory today, but under one name or another, an inn stood on its site across Great Road from Nagog Pond for almost 200 years. Throughout the stage coach and railroad eras, the inn served the public. The Nagog Inn closed in 1929 and was demolished in 1970 to make way for Nagog Woods.

Quilter: Virginia Young

Block 2: Hall Brothers Churn Factory

In 1871, B.F. Taft began the manufacture of wooden tubs, pails, and butter churns by steam power in this two-story frame building on Central Street in West Acton. The mill was acquired in 1873 by Enoch Hall who, with his sons, carried on the business for many years. The Halls added a sawmill, a churn building, and a large storehouse to their property. The products of Enoch Hall and Sons were sent to markets as distant as Australia, South America, and Europe. Eventually the decrease in the churn market and the influx of metal pails brought about the close of the business in the 1940's. Portions of the building remain and are currently used for other business.

Quilter: Gladys Hagen

Block 3: Liberty Tree House

Liberty Street, South Acton

Soon after this house was built, c. 1710, two English Elms were planted nearby, one of which was to give the house its name. "Liberty Street" were planted or designated throughout the colonies to foster the ideal of independence. Certainly the home of Simon Hunt, captain of one of the local militia troops called out on April 19, 1775, was a logical site for such a tree. The Liberty Tree fell to disease and age, but it's twin survived well into this century. In 1915, South Acton schoolchildren marched to the old house on Liberty Street to plant a maple "Peace Tree" to foster the goal of peace throughout the world. It was Reuben L. Reed's idea, and a good one - even thought fully half the children later admitted they thought they had planted a "peach" tree.

Quilter: Albertine Veenstra

Block 4: Ice House Pond Building

Acton had a dozen of these double-walled buildings, which in the last half of the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries, served the extensive ice harvesting and exporting industry. Working for an ice house was heavy work–cutting, hauling, and stacking 200 pound blocks of ice. It was good off-season work for farm hands, and hard enough that one could (almost) ignore the cold.

Quilter: Mabel Grekula

Block 5: Hosmer House

The Hosmer House is home to the Acton Historical Society. The Hosmers were a prominent Acton family. Jonathan was a bricklayer and, as his father before him, served as a deacon in the church. His younger brother Abner was killed at the North Bridge, April 19, 1775. His son Simon also served as deacon and started a music school in Acton. In 1839, the year before his death, Simon sold the homestead to Rufus Holden who split up the land and sold it.

In 1846 Francis Tuttle bought the house. Tuttle had run the Center Store and served Acton as Town Clerk, Selectman, Justice of the Peace, and State legislator. One of his sons, Capt. Daniel Tuttle, led Acton's Company E to the Civil War in April of 1861. Four of his daughters were married in the house: Elizabeth to Elnathan Jones. Martha Etta to Zoeth Taylor, Sarah Jane to Jonathan K.W. Wetherbee, and Sophia to Henry Haynes.

Block 6: Jones Tavern

Main Street, South Acton

Samuel Jones built a four-room house in South Acton for his bride in 1732 when Acton was still the part of Concord known as Concord Village. In 1750 he added to the building in order to open a tavern and a store. His youngest son, Aaron, a Revolutionary War veteran and one of the 13 Jones children, inherited the house in 1802. Aaron enlarged the tavern in 1818 by adding another house on the Main Street side of the building. A further addition was made in 1845 when Elnathan Jones turned over the business to his son-in-law. The property was held by the Jones family until 1946, a total of 214 years.

The Jones Tavern is now the property of the Iron Work Farm of Acton, Inc, a non-profit organization, which is restoring both the pre-Revolutionary Tavern and the Faulkner House.

Quilter: Julia Flynn

Block 7: Acton Center Schoolhouse

Meetinghouse Hill, Main Street

Sited on the "knowl" where the first meetinghouse stood, the Center Schoolhouse is remembered fondly by many in Acton today. It was considered an innovative and modern example of school architecture when it was built in 1871 at a cost of $7175. Classes were held in the building until 1957, and the structure was demolished in 1962.

The scene shown in the square is based on the watercolor painting by Arthur F. Davis, an Acton artist who was the librarian of the Acton Memorial Library from 1903 to 1945. The original picture now hangs in the library.

Quilter: Anita Dodson

Block 8: Blacksmith Shop

Main Street, Acton Center

The blacksmith shop was more than a place to get horses shod, farm wagon wheels bound with iron, or get andirons mended. It was a social center for the farmer, a male club in a small town. In West Acton, it was even the lock-up for the occasional guest. This square depicts the Acton Center blacksmith shop of Emereck Gates, one of the last smiths in town. He bought his shop in 1907 and plied his trade until 1959. Through those years he saw the horse superseded by the tractor, the tractor by the automobile as Acton changed from rural to suburban.

Quilter: Virginia Gates

Block 9: Exchange Hall

Main and School Streets

Exchange Hall was erected in 1860 at the corner of Main and school Streets, South Acton (Quimby Square) for James Tuttle and Company which needed to expand its business because of prosperity brought by the railroad through South Acton. The company was said to be the largest mercantile establishment on the railroad line between Fitchburg and Waltham and was a forerunner of the department store. It enjoyed its heyday from 1870-1900, fading with the rise of the automobile.

Business continues in Exchange Hall. The third floor was used over the years, for lectures and dances. It was especially appropriate for the latter since it had a spring floor unequalled in New England. From 1860-1878, the building, also served as the meetinghouse for the South Acton Universalist Church. Architecturally, this building is one of the best examples of bracketed Italianate style in Middlesex County.

Quilter: Joanne Connell

Block 10: The 1893 Acton Fire Truck

This marvelous engine, now the property of the Acton Historical Society, was one of three engines bought in 1893 for a cost of $539.00. Prior to that time, the three villages of Acton (Center, West, and South) had depended on bucket brigades or hand-operated pumps. On windless, above-freezing days, when a large supply of water was available nearby, these methods occasionally worked. They were not effective for the West Acton Baptist Church in 1853 or when an unknown incendiary burned most of the Center (the meetinghouse, a shoe factory, a store, and the hotel) in 1862. But nothing was done about the situation until another fire threatened the Center in 1892. At the next Town Meeting, the unheard of sum of $1500.00 was appropriated for firefighting. For that amount, Acton got four firehouses, three engines with suction hoses, three hand-drawn ladder trucks, and 300 feet of hoses of various kinds.

Quilter: Dorothy Harding

Block 11: Acton Memorial Library

486 Main Street (Rte. 27)

The Acton Memorial Library was a gift to his native town in 1889 by William Allen Wilde, a Boston publisher. It is also the Town's Civil War Memorial–the names of the soldiers and the battles in which they participated being inscribed on the slate tables under the arch of the forme main entrance.

Hartwell and Richardson were the architects of the original building which is in the Romanesque style of dark red brick and sandstone carved in low relief with a slate roof. It is reputed to be the firm's most successful small library. The modern addition in the rear, carried our in materials matching the original section and containing the present main entrance was designed in 1965 by Joseph Shiffer. Another major expansion and renovation was completed in 1999.

Quilter: Barbara Kangas

Block 12: Town Seal

The town seal was used for the first time on the town report of 1880. Among the expenditures of that year were two amounts for John Fletcher: seventy-five cents for work on the monument and five dollars for the town seal. Did John Fletcher design the seal? We don't know. John Fletcher was in the butter and eggs business, was a representative to the General Court, a chorister for twenty years, and superintendent of the cemeteries. None of which explains whether he designed the Seal or was just instrumental in getting it designed. However, the Isaac Davis Monument, located on the Common in the center of town, is an appropriate symbol for Acton.

Quilter: Nanette LaFors

Block 13: Acton Minutemen

April 19, 1775 Isaac Davis, Captain of Acton's Minutemen, was killed in the advance on the North Bridge in Concord in April 19, 1775. As the first officer to fall in the first battle of the American Revolution he became not only Acton's hero, but a hero to the emerging nation. In 1902, Moses Emory Taylor, owner of the Center Store, commissioned Arthur F. Davis to paint a scene commemorating the April date. Arthur Davis, painter and historian, chose to depict the departure of the Minuteman from the Captain Davis Homestead, with the soon-to-be widowed Hannah Davis in the doorway. The original painting hangs in the Memorial Library. This square is adapted from that painting.

Quilter: Ann Guba

Block 14: Seal of the Acton Historical Society

The seal of the Acton Historical Society was designed by Miss Florence Merriam, a charter member, in 1970. It features a house, situated under a large oak tree, representing that of Captain Isaac Davis. His plow stands in the field as it did the morning of April 19, 1775, when he and his company of Minutemen left for the North Bridge.

Quilter: Jean Schmelzer

Block 15: Lowell, Acton and Maynard Street Railway Car

1901 - 1923

The initial trip over the Maynard-Acton line of the Street Railway was made on September 18, 1903. An extension to West Acton, terminating at Kinsley Road and Mass Avenue was later constructed and by 1911 the Lowell, Acton and Maynard Street Railway Company reported ownership of 3.6 miles of main track. Hourly service between Maynard and West Acton was given and while the West Acton branch was never heavily patronized, the line was considered an important one by the Maynard townspeople because of South Acton connections. The fare between Maynard and West Acton was established at 5 cents. By 1917 this was increased to 8 cents. Popularity of private automobiles caused the demise of the railway. However, it performed a vital transportation service for Acton for two decades.

Block 16: South Acton Railroad Station

1901 - 1923

The initial trip over the Maynard-Acton line of the Street Railway was made on September 18, 1903. An extension to West Acton, terminating at Kinsley Road and Mass Avenue was later constructed and by 1911 the Lowell, Acton and Maynard Street Railway Company reported ownership of 3.6 miles of main track. Hourly service between Maynard and West Acton was given and while the West Acton branch was never heavily patronized, the line was considered an important one by the Maynard townspeople because of South Acton connections. The fare between Maynard and West Acton was established at 5 cents. By 1917 this was increased to 8 cents. Popularity of private automobiles caused the demise of the railway. However, it performed a vital transportation service for Acton for two decades.

Block 17: Faulkner House

High Street, South Acton

The Faulkner House was built in 1707 for Ephraim Jones, who, in partnership with his brothers and Jonathan Knight, established the mills that were the nucleus for the settlement of South Acton. It is the only documented garrison house within the town of Acton. From 1738-1940, the house was occupied by the Faulkner family. On April 19, 1775, members of Colonel Francis Faulkner's Militia Company gathered here after responding to the alarm and prior to marching to the North Bridge in Concord.

Quilter: Janet Glidden

Block 18: Town Hall

482 Main Street

The Acton Town Hall was built in 1863 on the lot purchased by the Town in 1806 for the Second Meeting House (built in 1806, burned in 1862.) It is a bracketed Italianate structure of two stories with an arched piazza and a cupola with clock and bell on the roof. The exterior is virtually unchanged from its original appearance, although for a time In late Victorian era the clapboards were buff, the trim brown and the blinds green. This has been the official center of Acton since 1806 and although the present building is now too small for town meetings, it is still a meeting place for the Selectmen and the location of several governmental boards.

Quilter: Donna Stefano

Block 19: Acton Quilting Bee

For three centuries, women of Acton have gathered to engage in sewing and craft work. Church and neighborhood groups produced quilts and other items for the needy or for special projects. The Ladies Benevolent Society of West Acton organized in 1847 "ado good wherever and whenever they could and to earn with their needles, sums that seem to us pitifully small." Prior to that time, women met to socialize and to sew friendship quilts.

Today there has been a resurgence in needlework and crafts. Acton women continue to combine their artistic ideas and efforts into projects such as the Acton Town Quilt.

Quilter: Judi Knowlton

Block 20: Brooks-Noyes House

Main Street

Originally the house of Alpheus Witt, a local trader, this hi[pp-roof house facing the Acton Center Common was built in two sections the eastern third of it with central chimney in 1821 and the remainder about 1824.The real ells were added about 1876. The front of the house has been altered at least twice, its present appearance dating from a restoration in about 1938 when the existing doorway was installed, several of the windows rearranged to mace the facade more symmetrical, and a piazza added to the east end. From 1845 to the 1930's, this house was occupied by the Brooks family and descendants, one of whom was Rev. Frederick Brooks Noyes, author of several articles on aspects of Acton's history. It is currently owned by the Acton Congregational Church for use as a parsonage.

Quilter: Erla Schwarm

Block 21: Robbins House

Great Road

The John Robbins House, built in 1799, is the Town's most fully developed example of Georgian style. It is a four square house with hip roof and two chimneys. It is also one of Acton's four "Lottery Houses" so called from their having been built with the winnings of a single ticket purchased by four neighbors in the 17904 Harvard College Lottery. All four houses remain, although the Robbins House is the most elaborate and unchanged. A description written in 1875 says of it, "When built, it was by far the best house in Acton, and is excelled by very few even now." John Robbins, Esq., for whom the house was built, was a prominent figure in acton. His record of public service began at age 13 when he was the messenger who carried the alarm of the British march to Concord, April 19, 1775, to the Captain of Acton's Minute Company.

Quilted by: Barbara Nylander

Block 22: The First Meeting House

Meetinghouse Hill

On October 13, 1735, Acton's first town warrant had four articles. The first and third concerned, inevitably, taxes and the raising of money. The second article was "to se if the Town will Begin to Build a meeting house this year and what way they will do it in." Article 4 read "To se if the Town will Pitch upon a place to set sd meeting house on" It was decided to "Set thir meeting house in the Sentre."

It was 1738 before the first service was held in the partially completed Meeting House. By then it had been established that the "Sentre" was at what is not he junction of Main Street and Nagog Hill Road. The building was 46' long, 36' wide and 21' tall. Sixteen pews were installed adjacent to0 the side walls, with body seats on either side of the wide center aisle. Selling of the pews helped defray the cost of the building which was not competed for another nine years. Pew owners had several privileges, one of which was to sit with their families (the body seats were segregated by gender.) A later privilege, in 1744, was to cut windows for their pews, provided the windows were kept in repair. This explains the three small windows shown in this square.

Quilter: Jane Litchfield

Block 23: Hosmer House Fireplace

300 Main Street

This large brick fireplace located in the keeping room of the Hosmer House, was designed and constructed by Jonathan Hosmer, a stonemason, when he built his house in 17600. It contains two ovens for baking and a compartment for wood. The hearth is large enough for the placement of many cooking utensils.

This is considered one of the finest examples of an early fireplace in Eastern Massachusetts.

Quilter: Mary Gagne

Block 24: Apple Orchard

Seeing the few remaining apple orchards in Acton today, one cannot easily imagine the numbers of apples shipped from Acton in the late 1800s and early 1900s. To quote Harold Phelan's History of the Town of Acton, "it was not unusual bushels to the load, to be on hand at the Faneuil Hall market at daybreak." Added to these were the apples raised for export to Europe (Luke Blanchard alone shipped 600,000 barrels one season) and the culls for the cider mills. Most of the cider, incidentally, was intended for vinegar factories, rather than for local consumption.

Even the Town was indirectly in the apple business. For many years, space in the cellar of the Town Hall was sectioned off for apple storage, many thousands of apples being stored there annually.

Quilter: Dru Hammond

Block 25: North Acton Pencil Factory

Nashoba Brook

This mill was built along Nashoba Brook (at the rear of 713-725 Main Street) sometime between between 1811 and 1821 by Jeremiah Hosmer and Phineas Wheeler. It was evidently the mill where the Thoreaus and the Munroes of Concord, pencil makers, had their plumbago ground beginning in the 1830s. In 1872, Mr. Cash, a resident of Acton was assessed for a "Pencil Shop and wheel, old mill and water power." The 1875 atlas notes that the building on the dam was a slate pencil manufacturey. In 1926, the description of the property was "land and water power mill."

Access to these mills was by a road, now abandoned, which nearly parallels the railroad tracks from Davis Road to the dam, where it turns at a right angle and crosses the brook on the top of the dam. Today on the west side of the dam are the abutments and foundations of the mil buildings, northernmost of which contain the remains of gears and shafting apparently belonging to a tub wheel.

Quilter: Irene Berg

Block 26: Isaac Davis Monument

Acton Common

In the middle of the Acton Common stands the Isaac Davis Monument Erected in 1851 in honor of Captain Isaac Davis, Abner Hosmer, and James Hayward who died in the battle on April 19, 1775, the monument is 75' in height from foundation to capstone, built of Acton granite, and serves as tombstone to the remains of the three heroes.

The idea for the monument was that of Rev. James Trask Woodbury, the winning design was that of a Mr. Parker of Boston, the funds, those of the Town of Acton ($500) and of the Commonwealth ($2000). Five thousand people attended the dedication, including the governor, Included in the activities of the day was the privilege of viewing the seventy-six year old remains of the three minutemen which had been disinterred so as to be buried within the obelisk. Their original tombstones are mounted in the mound on which the monument stands.

Quilters: Barbara Nyberg and Jane Litchfield

Block 27: Citizens' Library

Windsor Avenue, West Acton

The Citizen's Library of West Acton celebrated its centennial in 1983 at its home at 21 Windsor Avenue, a hundred years to the day after forty subscribers had met to form a library "for the intellectual and moral improvement of the community and promotion of social intercourse." Said library was to be "Controlled... by the people, for the people."

In its early years the Library was supported by subscriptions, dues of a dollar, and suppers with entertainment. This building, its third home, was bequeathed to the library by one of the original corporators, Phineas Wetherbee, in 1894. The Library moved to the north side of the Wetherbee house in 1900, "letting" the reminder of the house for income. The "letting" continues to this day.

From 1938, the West Acton Citizen's Library worked with the Acton Memorial Library on differing bases. In 1962, after agreeing to repair the building thoroughly, the Directors of the Citizen's Library offered their building, books and all, as a gift to the Town, provided the Town would operate the library according to the rules set forth in the offer. The offer was, of course, accepted.

Quilter: Cynthia Donaldson

Block 28: Bradley-Stone House

Massachusetts Avenue, West Acton

This fine Georgian-style home in West Acton was built by Bradley Stone in the 18300s. Incorporated in the brick building is the first wooden schoolhouse (1772) of West Acton Village. Bradley Stone was a blacksmith who became a merchant and was largely responsible for the railroad coming to West Acton.

Once the social center of West Acton, in the 20th century the building became a social hub of all Acton. For years it housed the telephone exchange. Until dial phones came to town in the late 1940s, the operators of the exchange certainly knew more (and mercifully said less) about what went on in Acton than anyone before or since.

Quilter: Peggy Richter

Block 29: The Chapel: Acton Womens' Club

Main Street

The chapel was built by Trustees representing the orthodox members of the old Congregational Church when more liberal Unitarian ideas were being introduced by Rev. Marshall Shedd, the third minister. Under Rev. James T. Woodbury, this orthodox group was organized as the Evangelical Society who worshipped in this building until 1833 when they built their own meeting house on the site of the present Congregational Church on Concord Road.

The Chapel, with brick front and back and clapboard sides, is a modest but stylish Federal period structure built in 1829. Typical of vestry buildings of the era, it was entered by two doors at the outer edges of the front wall. In 1924 it was remodeled for the Acton Women's Club, when original doorways were bricked up to become windows. This is Acton's only surviving Federal Period public building and one of only two brick-ended houses in Town.

Quilter: Anne Becklean

Block 30: Isaac Davis Plow

In 1951 the Isaac Davis plow was returned to Acton, rescued from an Ayer barn by Allister MacDougals. All the correct documentation came with it, of course, but perhaps it was the idea of the plow rather than the plow itself which was important.

Captain Davis has been called a gunsmith, but that was a sideline. In the tradition of Washington (and of the Roman Cincinnatus), he left the farm when his country needed him and intended to return to his plow when the crisis passed. It is the ideal of the civilian military that the plow symbolizes.