To the Honorable Board of Selectmen and the Inhabitants of the Town of North Attleborough,

The Annual Report of the Town of North Attleborough Historical Commission for the year ending December 31, 2009 is hereby respectfully submitted.

The seven members and two alternate members of the Historical Commission are appointed by the Board of Selectmen and serve overlapping terms. They are governed under Town Bylaw, Article VIII, Section 3 and Chapter 40, Section 8D of the Massachusetts General Laws, which establishes local historical commissions for the identification, preservation and protection of historical and archaeological assets within the town.

Member and archaeologist Margo Muhl Davis resigned from the commission as her work with the National Park Service transferred her to Denver. New members appointed to the commission this year were William Whalen and alternate, John (Jack) Byrnes.

Our office assistant Doris Neil retired at the end of June after working with us for ten years. This position was funded by a grant at no cost to the town. Our office remains unstaffed. Anyone wishing to contact the Historical Commission office may do so by leaving a message at 508-699-0152 and someone will get back to them.

Holmes School and Holmes Memorial Hall: Repair to stabilize and add steel supports to the bob-tailed chimney in this one room schoolhouse was completed. Additional bracing to the structure of the building pulled the back wall in line. It had bulged outward due to the stress of the chimney brickwork. Additionally ceiling furring was added to form a level structure to install the ceiling plaster. This work was funded by a private benefactor and town meeting funds.

We hope to continue with the restoration of the Holmes School as funding permits with the goal to restore the interior to the era when it closed in the early 1950’s. Upon the completion of the restoration we hope to add this site to the list of buildings visited by the third grade students. Although the exterior will look similar to the Adamsdale School the interior will depict interior changes approximately one hundred years later when one room school houses closed in North Attleborough.

This year we received donations of several student desks and chairs, a teacher’s desk and a piano as well as an interesting game circa the 1950’s.

We had several out of town visitors to the school this year, former students and others from the neighborhood. Anyone wanting to see the interior can contact us to make an appointment.

We again added the architect’s drawings and specifications for the renovation of the Holmes Memorial Hall to the CIP list which was not funded. Volunteer Ian Plath of Tri County and his father took down most of the old ceiling tiles as a community service project and removed them from the building. We hired a carpenter to replace the clapboards where the birds had pecked holes and made nests between the walls. We are grateful to the neighbors for mowing the grass, raking the leaves and reporting anything unusual to us. We did have to ask the Fire Dept. to pump water from the crawl space under the school only once in the spring.

Codding Farm: The National Register Nomination for the Codding Farm prepared by a professional research historian and funded by the Massachusetts Historical Commission in 2008 was approved by the National Park Service this year. This honorary designation will allow the town to apply for matching grants for the preservation of this site when funding is available.

We held a work session with Attorney Stephen Clapp who is the representative for the Friends of the Codding Farm, who are renovating the barn and two members of the Board of Selectmen to discuss simple maintenance and security issues that neighbors felt needed to be completed at this town owned property as soon as possible. We are extremely concerned that there is no plan for the future use of these historic buildings.

Mann Burial Ground: The concrete floor between the headstones and footstones of this old family burial ground off Draper Avenue was removed by Erico Construction of North Attleborough. All work was supervised by a professional archaeologist permitted by the Massachusetts Historical Commission. We are grateful to the RTM for funding this project at last October’s town meeting. Much work still needs to be done at this site to bring it to a respectful condition. We are thankful to the Dept. of Public Works for clearing the 20 foot wide town right of way to this site so that work vehicles could get closer to it.

Demolition Applications: We voted to approve the demolition of two houses and one garage. We were glad to see a developer renovate an historic house which was moved last year on Freeman Street .

Web Site: We met with a volunteer who gave us a lot of direction with developing a new web site. We feel that we need to embrace the media of the present to communicate the story of the past, our mission and respond to the needs of town residents and out of town developers .

Archaeology: We have communicated with concerned citizens regarding archaeological sites discovered in town. The location of these sites is protected by State and Federal laws. We continue to learn as much as possible about the value of these sites and what can be done to protect them.

Historic District Study Committee: We are grateful to the Board of Selectmen for appointing three members to this committee. We are sharing the information in our files with them.

House Markers: Several house markers were installed on homes located within the Attleboro Falls National Register Districts. We encourage homeowners to apply to our commission for a housemarker which shows the name of the original or most prominent owner and the original date of construction of their home. We are willing to direct them to the research resources to document the history of their house.

Historic Site and District Signs: We worked with the Dept. of Public Works to design, fabricate and install historic signs to replace some of the deteriorated or missing signs that were installed in 1976 at the Woodcock Burial Ground, the Paine Cemetery, the Carpenter Cemetery, Powder House and the Angle Tree Stone. Additional historical signs were installed to mark the boundaries of the Old Town District on Old Post Rd and to mark the Codding Farm.

Senior Tax Credit Volunteer: We wish to thank the Senior Tax Credit program for placing a volunteer in our office at the town hall to organize our files.

Developers and Project Proponents/ MHC:Cell Tower 346 Allen Ave. No known historic sites were found to be in the project area. We made this known to the Massachusetts Historical Commission per their request, as well as, to the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Our meetings are held at 7pm at the town hall on the second and fourth Tuesday’s of each month unless otherwise posted with the Town Clerk. These meetings are open to the public. We welcome and encourage anyone interested to get involved with the town either as a volunteer or prospective member of our commission to attend our meetings. Knowledge of the history of the town is not necessary.

Respectfully Submitted,

Ann J. Chapdelaine, Chairperson
Thomas F. Simms Sr.
Suzanne Holmes
Dean Yeaton
Myles Day
E. Gregory Roberts
William J. Whalen
Donald B. Hussey Jr, Alternate
John Byrnes, Alternate