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Community Corner

Medfield History: Giving Back and Tracing Family History Through the Town's Historical Society

A roundup of news, notes and happenings regarding Medfield's historic houses, landmarks and committees.

Editor's note: This weekly column will keep you up to date minute by minute on the latest happenings concerning Medfield’s rich history, whether it is giving updates or information concerning town institutions like the Peak House, Dwight-Derby House, Lowell Mason House, or Vine Lake Cemetery or whether they are history related events taking place sponsored by the Historical Society, Historical Commission or other town boards. It will keep you informed about any and all historical related events in town.

Our town’s history, historical houses, landscape and open space are what makes Medfield, Medfield; that unique quality we have here that makes Medfield so special. This column will be the one-stop shopping place to keep you informed, whether you are a local history buff or just concerned about our town and its rich history.

Each week the “William Tilden Award” will be given, recognizing an individual who contributes to our town’s history in a positive way, a restored piece of historic property, a contractor who preserves a historic house, an organization whose efforts add to our history, etc.

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Medfield Historical Society: One of the resources available at the Historical Society is assisting people with family genealogies. Throughout the year, numerous people contact the or come to the 6 Pleasant St. Museum and Headquarters from all parts of the country seeking information on ancestors who were from Medfield. Recently, descendents, now living in Oklahoma, of Alexander and Lydia Lovell came to learn more of their early family history. The Lovell family dates back to the very founding of the town. The modern day Lovells were able to see Lydia’s 1661 grave stone, the oldest known marker in Vine Lake Cemetery.

Curators gave them a tour of the town, pointing out different locations of Lovell homesteads, including the Bridge Street site, which was burnt during the Indian attack on Medfield during the King Philip War. Another individual doing research, who recently came to the Historical Society was Peter Margolian, a pianist who was researching Charles Martin Loeffler and his music. Charles Martin Loeffler was the world renown composer and concert master with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He moved to Medfield and later bought a house on South Street and became known as the Farmer of Medfield.

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At his 145 acre South Street home, called Meadowmere, he received a steady stream of famous guests and students. His famous guests included John Singer Sargent, Frank Benson, Pable Casals and much of the “whose-who” of the Boston Social World. The Society was also able to help the grandson of a former State Hospital resident locate his grandmother’s grave at the State Hospital Cemetery off Route 27 near the Sherborn town-line.

Annual Medfield Historical Society memberships are now due. Membership is open to all. For further information visit the Society website at www.medfieldhistoricalsociety.org

The William Tilden Award: The weekly award recognizing an individual who contributes to our town’s history in a positive way, a restored piece of historic property, a contractor who preserves a historic house, an organization whose efforts add to our history, etc., is named after William Tilden, Town Historian, author of the History of Medfield 1650-1886, state representative, one for the founders of the Medfield Historical Society and its first president. He was a life-long Medfield resident from his birth in 1830 until his death in 1912.

This week’s award goes to: Eric “Ricky” Suereth. Ricky, who was born here in Medfield and attended town schools, ties directly into the Kingsbury family through his mother. He recently donated three Amos Clark Kingsbury paintings in the family’s possession to the Historical Society. Amos Clark Kingsbury was born in Medfield on October 13, 1897. He grew up on the family’s 75 acre farm on 145 Spring St., across the street from the pond that gave him much boyhood recreation.

He attended town schools and graduated from Medfield High School with the Class of 1916. Shortly after graduation, the United States entered World War I. With his country calling, Kingsbury enlisted into the United States Marines on February 13, 1918. He served as a private and participated in almost all major U.S. combat missions. Returning home on Aug. 3, 1919, Kingsbury turned to an occupation he had never even dreamed of; painting. He was now determined to become an artist and became a pupil of famed artist F. Mortimer Lamb. Kingsbury then set his mind to painting. 

In 1928 Kingsbury then founded the Medfield School of Art. His goal was to meet a growing need among students of New England and elsewhere for year-round work out-of-doors. The school trained students to recognize their own creative ability, and thus with guidance develop their own individuality. The school stayed open until 1932.

In 1936, Amos used his soldiers’ bonus, took weeks of painstaking labor to rehabilitee the ancient cow barn on the family property and inside the barn opened the Wayside Art Museum that he later called the Medfield Art Gallery. It opened with 500 water colors, pastels and oils by his teacher F. Mortimer Lamb and artist Charles Vermoskie.

Kingsbury had transformed the huge barn, into a skylighted and attractive rough-boarded studio-museum with an elevated gallery for pictures. He then remodeled the old slaughter house nearby as his art studio. Here, following his apprenticeship with Lamb, he worked in earnest upon his paintings. In the art museum’s first year of operation, more than 2,000 visitors signed the guest book. Because of Ricky concern of the future of the paintings and his realizing the important historical tie they have to Medfield, this week's William Tilden Award goes, with appreciation, to Eric “Ricky “ Suereth. The paintings are currently on display at the Historical Society Museum on 6 Pleasant St.

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