history

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.

Editor’s note: Dana Robbat is a founding member and current president of the Friends of Modern Architecture in Lincoln. She provided this summary of her June 12, 2012 talk titled “As the Twig is Bent, So Goes the Tree… A Shared Philosophy: New England Transcendentalism and European Modernism,” which highlighted the age-old social ideals of New England’s Puritan and Transcendental philosophical heritage that provided fertile ground for the philosophically aligned European Modernists, who arrived at Harvard and MIT in the late 1930s and subsequently had a profound effect on Lincoln’s built and natural environments. Click here to watch a video of the talk.

By Dana Robbat

Lincoln is distinguished as one of America’s most prominent small communities for Modern architecture. Its inventory has a breadth, depth, and character unique in the country. The collection includes the iconic residences of Bauhaus masters Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, as well as those of Harvard and MIT professors and their associates, students, and acolytes who saw Modernism as a force for bringing scientific and economic progress and social justice to the world. But why the town of Lincoln? The answer lies in New England’s social ideals, including a philosophy shared with New England Transcendentalism.

New England’s defining Transcendental heritage was imbued with individual conscience and belief in the importance of a broadly defined community, but leery of overbearing authority. As described by the Transcendentalist Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894), “Transcendentalism belongs to no sect of religion, and no social party. It is the common ground to which all sects may rise and be purified of their narrowness, for it consists of seeking spiritual ground of all manifestations.” Bent on reform, the Transcendentalists helped instigate a change in American thought at a time when the sovereignty of the individual began to eclipse concerns for community.

A similar philosophy gave birth to the Bauhaus, the heartwood of the Modern movement, where a community of artists led by classically educated intellectuals, artists, and architects sought to establish a universal system of values — independent of political, geographical, or social boundaries — to reclaim man’s humanity in an increasingly mechanized, detached, and impersonal world.

Emerson and Gropius epitomized their respective movements. Both leaders were broad-minded, deeply and widely read, and progressive thinkers — qualities woven into the very fabric of each movement. They were inspired by the writings of the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), an important philosophical muse to both movements, who emphasized that nothing was trifling, that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only for the faint-hearted. Goethe charged artists to take courage because it was they who would inspire and redirect society to enlightened moral and truthful ends. His dying words, “Light, more light,” metaphorically represents the Transcendentalist’s divine light within and the Modernist’s belief that the “light” shining within each soul directs one through the darkness and mysteries of human life.

Modernist houses in Lincoln include (top to bottom) the Bogner House designed by Walter Bogner (1939), the Ford house designed by Walter Gropius (1939), and the Gaskell house designed by Quincy Adams (1940).

Light-producing glass became the poetic and symbolic material of the Modern building. Affordable light and space — “immaterial” material — in gravity-defying buildings of uplifting volumes, filled with light and air, proclaiming a new form of architecture, were meant to elevate and inspire people to better action. Transparency was seen as a symbol of truth, and Modern architecture a symbol that would unite people to come together to build a new humane world from the ruins of the old.

European Modernism infused a spirit of renewal and purpose into architectural education in New England in the 1930s. During the Depression, after a soul-searching period, academia opened its doors to international leaders of the Modern movement, to instill scientific and technological knowledge and a sense of purpose and social awareness in the fields of architecture and architectural education.

Over a 30-year period, Lincoln residents participated in a renaissance as architecture professors in Cambridge, Massachusetts, embraced Modernism under the spiritual leadership of Gropius at Harvard and the inspiring leadership of Lincoln resident Lawrence B. Anderson at MIT. Local, regional, and international architects would design over 300 Modern houses in Lincoln, most of which are extant and represent a significant portion of Lincoln’s housing stock.

The Depression was a period of significant social change and constrained resources, and affordable, efficiently designed houses became a hallmark in Lincoln. In this residential, farming, and academic community, Modernism reinvigorated the older Transcendentalism, reflecting renewed vitality and civic commitment in a long list of new structures: Modern houses; unique model neighborhoods; town buildings, including schools and civic and cultural buildings; a commercial center; a low- to moderately priced housing complex; a nationally recognized land conservation program; and a community-centered contemporary art museum.

Alive to New England values, the Lincoln community welcomed the Movement’s idealistic visions reflected in its architecture and town planning policies. Architects from Germany, Hungary, Austria, Russia, and various regions of America designed houses in Lincoln. They were uncommon spirits who believed that Modern design could best address the changed and pressing needs of their times.

“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column from the Lincoln Historical Society.

This Saturday, Lincoln will officially recognize Juneteenth, the annual occasion celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. Federal troops arrived in Texas on June 19, 1865 to announce the end of the Civil War and slavery, and that day is now a state holiday in 45 states including Massachusetts.

The Bemis Lecture Series and the Lincoln Historical Society will host “Slavery in Lincoln, Massachusetts: Reckoning with Our Past, Planning for a More Honest and Inclusive Future” on Saturday, June 19 from 4–5 p.m. The speaker will be Professor Elise Lemire, author of Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts (2009; 2019 with a new preface)

Lemire grew up in Lincoln on land once tended and tilled by men and women enslaved by Lincoln’s wealthiest land owner. She credits Lincoln’s history for sparking her interest in how Lincoln and its neighboring town of Concord were indelibly shaped by slavery. Lemire will recount the history of slavery in Lincoln and Concord and discuss how Lincoln might make this history more visible in the local landscape as a means of beginning to address the complicated truths of our colonial past.

Lemire is professor of literature at Purchase College, the State University of New York, and a two-time fellowship recipient from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also the author of the just-released Battle Green Vietnam: The 1971 March on Concord, Lexington, and Boston.

Click here to register in advance. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. A limited number of the 2019 edition of Black Walden signed by the author will be available through the Lincoln Historical Society following the event. For more information, email bemislectures@gmail.com or president@lincolnhistoricalsociety.org.

The Select Board also recently signed a proclamation officially marking Lincoln’s Juneteenth recognition on June 19 of each year, “to be celebrated at 4:00 p.m. by vigorous ringing of bells throughout the community.”

By Kerry Glass

One way to keep out traffic: Don’t tell travelers where the roads are.

For the first 75 years after Lincoln was founded, the town felt no need for an official road map. The roads ran where Lincoln residents needed them, and new roads were created and old ones were closed by debate and decision in Lincoln’s town meetings. The road “maps” were scrawled descriptions by the town clerk in town records: “beginning at Lexington line, so running southerly over John Headley’s land and through Joseph Brooks’ land, the said Brooks to have liberty to hang a gate on the said way at his southerly bounds.”

Then in 1794, the Great and General Court required all towns to submit “accurate plans” of their borders, rivers, bridges, and roads. But only county roads had to be shown on these maps. So that is all that Samuel Hoar, the town surveyor, included when he drew up the town’s official map—just four county roads, one in north Lincoln and three in south Lincoln. It was not until 1830 that the Commonwealth required towns to submit maps showing all town roads. Lincoln had no choice and finally produced a complete road map. Yet even on this map, no names were shown for the roads (that’s a story for another time!).

Part of an 1830 map of Lincoln by John G. Hales. showing the town center — and the lack of road names. Source: Digital Commonwealth.

The town felt strongly that even these county roads mainly benefited other towns but not Lincoln. And so the town resisted. The Concord/Cambridge Turnpike (now Route 2) was a good example. The path of the turnpike was laid out in 1803, and it plowed through hills and wetlands in Lincoln, just so travelers between Cambridge and Concord would have the shortest and straightest route possible. Lincoln fought unsuccessfully against the turnpike, and later the town also resisted straightening the paths of two other roads through town—the Middle Road (now Trapelo Road) and the North Road (now Route 2A).

Lincoln had more success in preventing a major highway from running north and south through the heart of town. To this day, in contrast to neighboring towns, Lincoln does not have a numbered highway running through its town center.

For more on the history of Lincoln’s roads, see Tracing the History of Lincoln’s Ways, a 2019 manuscript by Kerry Glass, accessible by contacting the Lincoln Historical Society.

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

By Don Hafner

The names of Lincoln’s schools are not what you probably think.

The Lincoln school buildings — Smith, Hartwell, and Brooks — are named after Lincoln’s Revolutionary War soldiers, right? William Smith, captain of the Lincoln Minute Men. Samuel Hartwell, sergeant in the Minute Men. Eleazer Brooks, colonel in the Massachusetts Provincial Army.

Well, no. Smith school is named after Charles Sumner Smith (1857–1927), a wealthy Lincoln businessman and investor who gifted $50,000 to the town for the construction of a new school. In his will, Charles Smith “suggested” that the new school be named after himself. The school was finally built in 1949 and was named after Smith during the town’s bicentennial anniversary in 1954.

In August 1950, Architectural Forum magazine spotlighted the Smith School and its advanced design. Click image to download a PDF of the full article (photocopy courtesy of Andrew Glass).

The Hartwell school is named after William Hartwell (1637–1690), who was mistakenly believed to be the first European settler in the part of Concord that became Lincoln in 1754. Hartwell owned land in Lincoln, but he dwelt in Concord and never built a home here. The Hartwell school was built in 1958.

The Brooks school is named after Joseph Brooks (1681–1759), a generous donor who gave the town £388 in 1761 to establish a “Grammar School Fund” for paying Lincoln’s teachers. Among those paid from this fund was young William Smith, soon after he moved to Lincoln and before he became captain of the Lincoln Minute Men. In 1759, the first women teachers paid by the town were also supported by the Fund. (Women were paid, we might note, at exactly one-half the salary paid to the male teachers.) Brooks’ £388 gift was equal to about $110,000 today. The Brooks school was built in 1964. The Lincoln Historical Society proposed that the new school be named after Joseph Brooks, and so it was.

For more on Lincoln’s schools through the centuries, there is no better source than John C. MacLean’s A Rich Harvest, available from the Lincoln Historical Society.

“Lincoln’s History” is a biweekly column about aspects of Lincoln’s past by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.