history

By Rick Wiggin

Contrary to popular Lincoln myth, the town’s Minute Men did not muster in the field at the corner of Sandy Pond and Baker Bridge Roads. The mistaken identity of that field as the “Muster Field” came about from a misreading of Lincoln’s history and from the politics of the town’s acquisition of that field in 1983.

In the early hours of April 19, 1775, Lincoln’s Minute Men and militia company mustered on the Town Common near to the meetinghouse, where the town stored its gunpowder and military supplies. From there, the soldiers began their march to Concord along what is now Sandy Pond Road. When they reached the junction with modern Baker Bridge Road, they were joined by members of the Baker and Billing families, who lived along the western border of town. Amos Baker, age 19 at the time, wrote many years later that, “When I went to Concord in the morning, I joined the Lincoln company at the brook, by Flint’s pond, near the house then of Zachary Smith …”

The historically accurate marker at the “muster field” (click to enlarge).

In the early 1980s, Sumner Smith, who then owned much of the land around Flint’s Pond, offered to sell several large tracts to the town before offering them to a developer. A Special Town Meeting in November 1983 hotly debated the financial cost against the value of preserving the land as open space. In the debate, it was asserted the land was of incalculable historical importance because it was the place where the Minute Men mustered on April 19. But this was a misreading of Amos Baker, who only stated that he and his family joined up with the Minute Men at the site, not that all the town’s soldiers had mustered there. One of the town’s modern Minute Men even promised to erect a commemorative marker on the “Muster Field” if the town purchased it. The town responded enthusiastically and voted to buy the land, and a large stone was soon moved to the site.

The myth of the Muster Field began to unravel shortly after the purchase, and the large stone sat un‑engraved for 17 years. But the name stuck. In the year 2000 — the 225th anniversary of April 19, 1775 — engraved markers were finally placed on both the Town Common and the mis-named Muster Field, commemorating the march of Lincoln’s soldiers to Concord. Together, the two stone markers erected in 2000 tell the correct story. But old names — even incorrect ones — die hard.

For more about this history, see “Recognition of a Proud Legacy” by Rick Wiggin (The Lincoln Review, January/February 2000).

“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.

By Donald Hafner

In 1730, Samuel Dakin with his brothers and three other investors had high ambitions. They formed a partnership for “searching after, digging, and improving all such mines or ores as may be found in or upon the land of” Samuel Dakin. Iron ores were highly valued, and bog iron ore — which forms in iron-rich, swampy water — had been found around Iron Mine Brook near Beaver Pond in Lincoln. The partners hoped a lode of bog iron ore might lie buried beneath Dakin’s land. His mining ambitions, however, were a bust. If the partners ever found “such mines or ores,” they were meager.

Fortunately for Dakin, his father had bequeathed to him a limestone quarry and a kiln for roasting limestone at high heat, converting it into powdery, white lime. The quarry and the lime kiln were located on Dakin land bounded by modern Sandy Pond and Baker Bridge roads. For his neighbors, it might well have been cursed as “Lime Kiln Field.” The heat needed to roast limestone into lime required large amounts of wood and produced acrid smoke and toxic fumes. The lime kiln cannot have been a good neighbor.

Lime had many uses in 18th-century Lincoln. Weaver Joshua Child used “two pounds of the best rock lime” in his recipe for dyeing cloth. Joshua Brooks used lime at his tannery on the North Road to remove hair from the hides before tanning. And in March 1767, the town paid Joshua Brooks for “eight bushels and half of hair to mix with lime for the meeting house.” The town had built a new gallery in the meeting house, and lime bought from Amos Dakin was mixed with sand and the hair from Brooks’ tannery “to plaster under the galleries in the meeting house.” (The animal hair helped bind the plaster together.) Over the years, the town treasurer’s records are sprinkled with payments for lime to be used in whitewashing the walls of the town’s schoolhouses.

It is not clear when the lime kiln in Samuel Dakin’s field ceased belching smoke and fumes. In 1788, Dakin sold his land to a Lincoln newcomer, Zachariah Smith. Whatever became of Dakin’s lime kiln, clearly it had not transformed Lincoln into a mining town. Yet perhaps scattered in that field there still can be found a scorched stone or two that once were part of Lincoln’s ancient lime kiln.

This account of the Dakin lime kiln is indebted to Jack MacLean’s A Rich Harvest, which can be purchased from the Lincoln Historical Society. Illustration from “Pre-Industrial Lime Kilns” (Historic England, 2018).

“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.

Film on slave trade

The First Parish Racial Justice Advocates will screen “Traces of the Trade: a Story from the Deep North” via Zoom on Thursday, Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. The film is about a Rhode Island family that follows the route of the  triangle slave trade through Ghana, Cuba, and Rhode Island and see a family reacting to the past and the present. Click here for details and the Zoom link.

Two from Lincoln are National Merit Scholarship semifinalists

Amanda Pillar

Sonali Das

Lincoln residents Sonali Das and Amelia Pillar are among the seven Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School students who have been named semifinalists in the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Competition. The other honorees are Nicola Donlan, Madison Johnson, Spencer Reith, Joy Ren, and Jeffrey Zhang. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarships that will be offered next spring.

Free flu clinic on October 23

The town will offer a public flu vaccination clinic on Saturday, Oct. 23 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the newly renovated Brooks School gymnasium for residents age 3 and up. High-dose vaccines will be available for those over age 65. To sign up:

1. Click here to register for a time.
2. Download and complete the Vaccination Consent Form (one per person) and bring it with you.
3. Download the Vaccine Information Statement for your records.

Jeffrey Gibson exhibition opens at deCordova

Jeffrey Gibson, INFINITE INDIGENOUS QUEER LOVE, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, glass beads and artificial sinew inset into wood frame. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins and Co. Image: Jason Wyche (click to enlarge)

The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum announces the exhibition Jeffrey Gibson: INFINITE INDIGENOUS QUEER LOVE opening Friday, Oct. 15 and on view through March 12, 2022. The two outer terms suggest boundless spaces and generative, tender relationships, while the interior words convey markers of identity that Gibson disassembles and reconstructs through his artistic practice as a queer Choctaw-Cherokee man. The exhibition comprises a series of collages, an immersive display featuring three hanging fringe sculptures, and recent videos created with collaborators, musicians, and performers. It complements Gibson’s large-scale outdoor installation Because Once You Enter My House, It Becomes Our House (an homage to pre-Columbian architecture) on the sculpture park’s front lawn. A series of related programs will take place throughout the fall and spring; visit thetrustees.org/jeffreygibson for more information.

By Sara Mattes

The letters from Gov Dukakis and Gov. Dever (click to enlarge).

To be honored as a Century Farm, a farm must be owned by the same family for at least 100 consecutive years, and a family member must be living on the premises. For the Flint family and their Matlock Farm, these were easy qualifications to meet. The land was acquired by Thomas Flint in the 1640s and has been farmed by Flint family members continuously since the early 1700s. 

When the Flints received their Century Farm Award in 1990, Gov. Michael Dukakis wrote to express his “warmest congratulations.” As he said in his letter, “You and your forebears worked the good land of Massachusetts and you have personified the ideals of hard work, self-sufficiency, and dedication which we all hold so dear.”

The Flints’ farm had been honored earlier by Gov. Paul Dever in 1949, when Warren F. Flint was inducted into the Green Pasture Club in recognition of “production of pasture feed in order to conserve grain, reduce feed cost, and maintain the dairy industry.”

The Flints and Matlock Farm are no longer in the dairy business, but the family continues in other agricultural endeavors and continue to personify “the ingenuity and perseverance of successive generations of the family that has owned this Massachusetts farm for more than one hundred years.”

“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.

By Craig Donaldson

Did you know… that one of Lincoln’s foremost builders started with house plans from a Sears Roebuck catalog?

Robert Douglass Donaldson was born in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, in 1870. He migrated to Boston in 1888. Like many immigrants, he came without formal schooling past the eighth grade, but with farming and building experience, family and community values, and motivation.

In the banner year of 1900, he married Charlotte Alcock, daughter of Irish immigrants, and became a U.S. citizen. In 1902, the couple acquired the house at 7 Old Lexington Rd., the original part of which was completed by the town in 1786 as the poorhouse. At the time, Lincoln was a farm town with a scattering of rural estates and summer homes, sufficiently close to Boston for farmers to take their produce to market and for Bostonians to escape via road or railroad for fresh air.

The Donaldsons quickly got busy raising a family (four boys and two girls), expanding a contracting business, farming, and engaging in civic activities. To his kids and grandkids as well as employees, R.D. Donaldson was well known as “the boss.” The well-kept secret was that his bride, Charlotte, was at least the co-boss, with her bookkeeping and communication skills. Other Nova Scotians from his home community migrated to Lincoln for work with Donaldson, including his brother James and the Langilles, Isaac and Claire.

R.D. Donaldson at the age of about 40 (ca. 1910).

Donaldson served as a Selectman from 1913-1939 and on the Board of Health and the Cemetery Commission. The Lincoln chestnut tree on Lincoln Common, included on the town seal, was salvaged by Donaldson after it succumbed to the chestnut blight. He milled and stored the boards, some of which now line the conference room at Town Office Building. By 1942, he was a leader of the Congregational Stone Church on Bedford Road when it merged with the Unitarian Church to form the consolidated First Parish, sealing the deal by handshake with Dr. Robert L. DeNormandie. The Donaldsons’ Glendale Dairy of Guernsey cows functioned until 1947 on land at 16 Weston Rd. acquired from John H. Pierce.

Donaldson constructed his first house in Lincoln in 1895 at 27 Tower Rd., using plans bought from the Sears Roebuck catalogue. His later projects included moving the Old Town Hall from its adopted site beside the Unitarian white church to its current location on Lincoln Road across from the Town Office Building. Because it was in use as a general store and post office, the Old Town Hall was kept open during its ride on rollers to the new site. The Center School (now the Town Office Building) was completed by Donaldson in 1908.

Scattered along the south side of Trapelo Road are many houses displaying Donaldson’s craft, including one that was cut off from a piece of a house on Weston Road and rolled across the field. More than 90 Lincoln buildings were constructed or altered by Donaldson, including the Farrington Memorial, the current Massachusetts Audubon headquarters, and the Storrow/Carroll School.

An image from a 1912 Sears Roebuck catalog of a complete home via mail order. This model resembles one of the R.D. Donaldson houses still standing in Lincoln. Sears sold this house — blueprints and all building materials delivered to the site — for $753.

R.D. Donaldson placed a distinctive mark on the town’s architecture. Rob Loud has described the style as “vernacular.” A unique feature of the style is a sleeping porch, examples of which are evident at 3 Pierce Hill, 1 Old Lexington Rd., and 27 Lexington Rd.

Robert and Charlotte’s kids also placed their mark on the town. Three of the four Donaldson boys played baseball in school and college and were members of the Lincoln Mohawks, coached at one time by Robert. All six offspring were put through college in pursuit of careers in business, law, medicine, hospital care, and resort hospitality. During the 1950s and ’60s, they all lived at one time or another in Lincoln Center’s “Fertile Valley” neighborhood with families totaling 11 grandchildren. The original Donaldson house in Lincoln is now occupied by one such grandson, with another grandson and three great-grandchildren still currently in town.

Robert Douglass Donaldson, builder of Lincoln, died in 1964.

“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.