Category Archives: history

Wellesley Conservation Council program: The Baker Estate – “Fairyland of the Beautiful and Bizarre”

By bbrown | Published: April 23, 2011

The Wellesley Conservation Council on Thursday April 28 at 7:30pm will host a powerpoint lecture The Baker Estate – “Fairyland of the Beautiful and Bizarre” by Gloria Polizzotti Greis, Executive Director of the Needham Historical Society.  Gloria will talk about the history of the Baker Estate and illustrate her lecture with the extensive collection of [...]

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Wellesley history prof doing smallpox book rounds

By bbrown | Published: April 5, 2011

Michael Willrich, a Brandeis University associate professor of history who lives in Wellesley, is making the rounds to promote his new book, titled Pox: An American History. On Tuesday, he’ll be a guest on NPR’s Fresh Air program and on Wednesday, he’ll be at Wellesley Books to discuss the story of  how America’s Progressive-era war [...]

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Wellesley story of biblical proportions

By bbrown | Published: March 19, 2011

The Utica Observer-Dispatch reports on a 150-year-old bible unearthed in Wellesley and returned to its home in Lyons Falls, N.Y., a community named for the original bible owner’s family. The bible, inscribed on the second page for that original bible owner, was rescued from a local waste disposal facility (not clear if the Wellesley RDF) [...]

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A brief history of Wellesley and U.S. Presidents

By bbrown | Published: February 18, 2011

Wellesley has a long and storied association with Presidents of the United States, starting with George Washington himself. * As you may know, Washington Street running through the center of town is named after old George, who visited town in in November of 1789 on his Presidential Tour of New England. A plaque mounted on [...]

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First kidney donor’s death recalls Wellesley doctor’s historic operation

By bbrown | Published: December 30, 2010

Joseph Murray, the Wellesley resident who was lead surgeon for the world’s first successful human-to-human organ transplant back in 1954, this week recalled the man who donated that historic kidney. Richard Herrick, who donated a kidney to his identical twin brother Ronald, died this week in Maine at the age of 79. “If he could [...]

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Wellesley Historical Society thinking expansion

By bbrown | Published: December 20, 2010

The Wellesley Historical Society, tucked away at the 1824 Dadmun-McNamara House along Rte. 16 near Rte. 9 next to the Wellesley Community Center, has maxed out its space and is plotting an expansion of some sort or another. George Roman, former president of the society as well as an architect, is overseeing a complete site [...]

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Longtime Wellesley resident’s first book combines romance, mystery & Native American history

By bbrown | Published: December 6, 2010

Graham Griffith, a Wellesleyite since 1979, has just had his first book published — what he calls an historical romance mystery novel with a serious message about the “idealized mythology of America’s beginnings.” What’s more, Niantic Jewel features a super-intuitive Wellesley heroine and droll insights about Wellesley College, where the former Boston Globe editor Graham  [...]

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Wellesley prof’s findings result in U.S. apologizing to Guatemala for 1940s STD study

By bbrown | Published: October 1, 2010

Wellesley College professor and researcher Susan Reverby‘s discovery of an unethical U.S. study from the 1940s on sexually transmitted diseases resulted in an apology to Guatemala Friday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebeliu. Reverby came across information on the National Institutes of Health experiment, which involved giving [...]

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Wellesley Grossman’s sign: What would Alexander Graham Bell think?

By bbrown | Published: August 4, 2010

Overlooked in all the excitement over the Grossman’s sign going down in Wellesley yesterday and the orange-and-white building on its way to being demolished at 27 Washington St. is the fact that Alexander Graham Bell used to live in a house on this property back in the 1870s, the same time during which he invented [...]

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MACRIS: How to really house hunt in Wellesley

By bbrown | Published: June 10, 2010

The Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS) is a really swell website for looking up the way back history of your home or a home you might be thinking of buying in town. The system also has historical info on neighborhoods and other structures in Wellesley. My introduction to MACRIS came while researching town sites [...]

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Wellesley gets its very own obelisk

By bbrown | Published: October 27, 2009

Wellesley is right up there with Rome, Egypt and Washington, D.C., now, having dedicated its very own 6-foot-high granite obelisk last week at the site of the town’s birthplace at what is now the Wellesley Country Club. The Townsman reported on the ceremony that took place Friday.

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Wellesley wayback machine

By bbrown | Published: October 16, 2009

Dorset Tea & Coffee co-owner and longtime Wellesley resident Sally Khudairi takes a stroll down memory lane, recalling some of her favorite things from the Wellesley of the past in this Boston Globe column. She misses Hathaway Book Shop, eating clams at Howard Johnson’s and buying records at the Music Box, laments the infiltration of [...]

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