In addition to being a member of the Rochester Historical Society, I am also a member of the Rochester Historical Commission not to be confused with the Rochester Historic District Commission. While we at the Historical Society focus on preserving historical papers and items that have a direct connection to the town, we also work to share that history with the public.
The Historical Commission is focused more on the town’s historical buildings and that is done in part through our historic plaque program. The mission also includes sharing town history with 3rd graders at RMS and providing them with Rochester history coloring books.
It’s not surprising that at times the activities of the Commission and Society overlap. Recently, a plaque request came to the Commission for an historic home on Neck Rd. The homeowners wanted the plaque to give the year in which the house was built along with the name of the Fuller family.
While we understood their desire to honor the Fuller family members who lived in the house for more than 100 yrs. and have long been associated with “Scraggy Neck” which was the local name given to a stretch of Neck Rd., our policy has been to use the date that the structure was built and the name of the family who lived there at that time. Fortunately, the files at the Rochester Historical Society provided us with a very proper solution.
According to the research in the books compiled by the Massachusetts Historical Commission and Archives, the house at 340 Neck Rd. is an example of a Federal-style residential building that was built in the early 19th century, and it shows up on the 1856 Walling map that we have at the Museum. It was built in and lived in by L. Snow.
During the time when we were considering the plaque inscription, I found a letter written to L.C. Humphrey from Minnie Fuller in 1946. In the letter, she mentions that she had been looking over old deeds at his suggestion, because as he said she was ” the only one left who would remember the old places” which she acknowledged gave her a “funny feeling”.
Now back to the letter and how it influenced the plaque. In her letter, she writes that her grandmother on the Crapo side who was born in1826, remembered watching the house being built by Linus Snow, son of Nicholas Snow. She was 5 or 6 yrs. old at the time, but she remembered Mr. Snow building and living in the house that later became her daughter’s home. The first Fuller to occupy the house was Allen F. Fuller, a farmer, who purchased the home in 1910.
With such a connection between Snow and the Fuller family, it was easy to decide that the plaque would read Snow/Fuller Home.
Anyone with an older home interested in a plaque can go to the Historical Commission section of the town website where all the plaque information is available.
A small correction: Wish of a Lifetime, the charity mentioned in last week’s article is a charity affiliate of AARP, but it is a separate non-profit entity. Hope everyone is checking out old pianos.
By Connie Eshbach
