Thank you, readers, who answered my call for information about Mary N. Chase, when she lived in Andover, from 1899 to 1942.

Thanks, too, to Luan Clark, curator of the Andover Historical Society, and other helpful members of the AHS. She introduced me to a local history treasure trove stored in the J. C. Emmons Store at Potter Place, namely, weekly news about Andover in the Franklin Journal Transcript.

The reports happened because a team of women in the towns surrounding Franklin sent their local news to the Franklin paper. For many years Andover’s reporter was Mrs. Elaine E. Eastman. As I understand the story, her husband, Wesley Eastman, died in 1919 in the influenza epidemic. She lived with her mother, Clara D. Currier, and taught Latin, chemistry, and mathematics at Proctor Academy and Andover High School. 

Her columns document the relatively slow rhythm of our town’s life “back in the day.” The details, moreover, are evidence for what I judge to have been the town’s sense of community. For her reporting over many years, I count her among the town’s worthies of the past century. 

She seems to have been close to the heart of the town’s life. She loved the willingness of townsfolk to give her news for the Franklin paper. She also had a sense of preserving the historical record. 

Each week she clipped her reports for Franklin, as well as those for East Andover, and pasted them in school exercise books. They form the collection at Potter Place. Microfilm copies are also in the Franklin Public Library. Both sources had been invaluable for my essay on Mary N. Chase.