[John Petrella]: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Method Happenings, a show for and about the city of Medford. And I am John Petrella. And the purpose of this program is to give Method citizens facts and information to help you make informed choices and to discover city services and businesses you may not have been aware of. And our guest today is John Anderson, and Liz Amons from the Method Historical Society and Museum And I want to welcome you both to the show. Thank you.
[Ammons]: Did I get your name right?
[John Petrella]: Good enough. Okay. All right. Thank you for joining us. Many people know you through your work with the Historical Society, the both of you. But can you each share a little bit of your background? Who is John Anderson and who is Liz?
[Ammons]: Ammons, and we'll start with you, Liz. Oh, okay. I'm a Medford resident. I've lived here a little more than 45 years. I'm a retired Tufts English Department faculty member, and I'm a pretty new volunteer at the Historical Society, maybe about four years.
[John Petrella]: Very good. So y'all, like me, you're a volunteer. I like that.
[Ammons]: We're all volunteers.
[John Petrella]: Great to volunteer. It's a good thing. John, how about yourself?
[John Anderson]: Well, I was born in Pittsburgh. My family moved around a lot because my dad worked for a big corporation. And these were the days when you got a job and you stuck with it for your whole career. Wow. Those were the days. Those were the days. And so I didn't really have a hometown. I wound up, after I got out of college, wound up in New Hampshire. Then I decided to get into computer programming. and the lure of Route 128 brought me down to the greater Boston area and I've been here ever since, since 1977. And I retired, I retired on the early side and I've been doing volunteer work since, both at the Historical Society and for a while at the Royal House as well.
[John Petrella]: Okay, that's all good stuff. Method appreciates it. We need more people like you, we really do. All right, we're gonna start with you, John. Can you share with our audience, all right, John, can you share with our audience some of the basics about the museum? Where is it located? When's it open? Is there an admission charge? How can a person contact the Historical Society?
[John Anderson]: Well, we have a purpose-built building for the society at 10 Governors Avenue. So that's next to the medical building and kind of across the street from the parking lot near where Colleen's is. And it's been there since 1916. And we're all volunteers, so it's open on Sundays from 1 to 4. or sometimes by appointment, if somebody from out of town needs to come in and do some research. There's no admission charge. It's totally a membership-driven organization. We don't get any support from the city, other than occasionally we'll get a grant for a specific purpose. But we're responsible for maintaining the building and keeping the doors open. The way to contact the Society? Well, you can come in in person on Sunday afternoons, or you can send us an email. That would be to medfordhistorical02155, all one word, at gmail.com. We have a phone, 391-8739. Email or in person is definitely the best way. The best way. Yes. Now, you're there every Sunday? Yes.
[John Petrella]: Same hours every week?
[John Anderson]: Yes. We might not be open if it's Christmas Day on a Sunday. Well, yeah.
[John Petrella]: We'll allow that. Thank you. No problem. All right, Liz, let's get to you. Can you describe the mission? What is the mission of the Medford Historical Society? What is it you do?
[Ammons]: Our mission is to provide, to the best of our ability, an inclusive understanding of Medford's history and its diversity. And we do that through our collection and putting artifacts on display through exhibits in the museum, through programs once a month, usually in the library, free public program, through our newsletter, if you're a member, and through our website. So lots of ways that people can learn about us.
[John Petrella]: Very good. I got to ask this. How do you become a member? I mean, if I wanted to become a member, what is there?
[John Anderson]: Well, you fill out an application form and send in, well, depending on whether it's family or personal, it's as low as $25 for seniors and students and you're in. $25, seniors and students.
[John Petrella]: Wow. That's a great deal. I'll have to become a member, I guess. I'm going to become a member. We're going to get you a lot of members. No, that's good to know, $25. And that's for the year. Wow. And then you just renew it every year. I can swing that. I'll be there every Sunday.
[Ammons]: And everything's free. I have to say, even if you don't join, Come into the museum on Sunday afternoon.
[John Petrella]: Everyone's welcome Okay, that sounds great. It's great to get that get that out to people All right, John Can you briefly share? You know, I guess we're looking for the, you know, we're talking about history. What's the history of the Historical Society? You know.
[John Anderson]: Well, we were founded in 1896 by people who called themselves concerned citizens of Medford. Wow. And I think what they were concerned about was by that time Medford was starting to change very rapidly. After the Civil War, the population was doubling about every 20 or 30 years. So it was growing really fast. And the sort of old Medford of farms was disappearing, being turned into housing, that sort of thing. And we started out in the house that Sarah Bradley Fulton had lived in at the bottom of Ashland. which the building is still there, but it looks nothing like Sarah Bradley Fulton's house. It's been remodeled so many times. It, for a while, had blue Fuji there. Yes, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[John Petrella]: Okay.
[John Anderson]: So the building's there, but not really. In 1916, we built this building. If you could put the slide up, that would be great. And if you look at the people who are In the picture, the guy in the middle who's holding sort of the plans is Moses Mann. Moses Mann. Who basically paid for the building. Therefore he's in the center of the picture. And if you look at the picture, it's a lot of, there it is. Here's the picture now. Yeah. You notice it's a bunch of white guys in black suits. few women and one black guy in a white suit. And he is the Mason. And he did a lot of work for Moses Mann, who was a real estate developer. Do you remember his name? Herbert Kelly. And you can still find traces of him. Really? He put in driveways, among other things. And there are places in Medford where you'll see a little brass plaque. that says, you know, his name is still on it. And they haven't all been dug up and covered up by now. All these years. All these years. Wow. And it's really interesting that he was a real estate developer and perhaps felt he needed to give a little back because it was really his actions which were changing Medford forever. And things went along nicely. through World War I, these were turbulent times, you know, women's suffrage, prohibition, the end of prohibition, World War II. After World War II, it kind of declined a bit because, well, for one thing, you didn't have to belong to a social club to socialize. You know, there were lots of restaurants, movies, even television. Television came in. I remember that. So when we were renovating the museum, we found a cook stove in the basement. So they must have prepared meals there and also collections of teacups and tea service. So I think the ladies had tea there. So as I say, after World War II, it declined a bit. Then it was revived in 1975. Some of you may remember Dr. Joe Valeriani, the high school social studies, head of the social studies department.
[John Petrella]: I have a book written by him about Medford. Okay. I still have it at my home. Which one is it? It's, I can't give you the title, but it's a read book. Okay. The cover is more like Forrest's. I meant to bring it today, but it's written by Dr. Joseph Valeriano. You're right.
[John Anderson]: Well, and by the way, Moses Mann wrote a lot of books too. Yeah. And contributed to the register. Anyway, Dr. Valeriani retired and then passed away. And then it went through another period of sort of less action. And then in 2006, some new people joined the society and elected a new board. And ever since then, we've been running the kind of programs that Liz is talking about. Okay.
[John Petrella]: It's a great history. Great history, great history of method.
[John Anderson]: And you can be part of it.
[John Petrella]: I'm going to be.
[John Anderson]: I'm serious.
[John Petrella]: I'm going to be a member. And I'm going to get some people to join with me too. I really am. And this show is going to get some people to join. You watch. You watch. It's going to happen. All right, Liz, we know you, the Historical Society presents exhibits at the museum during the year. You know, how do you plan them? How difficult is it to coordinate the presentations and, you know, to get the displays done and everything else? I mean, can you give us a little?
[Ammons]: Sure. Yes. Well, again, we're all volunteer, so the exhibits are put together by volunteers. And either an individual or a small group of volunteers would make a proposal, say we think this would be a good exhibit to mount. and take it to the board, and the board then decides, does this sound good, and goes forward if it does. And we've had, in recent times, so over the years, there have been many exhibits, but in recent time, there's been some wonderful exhibits about the Civil War photographs, a large collection, very precious collection that the society owns. Another big exhibit on wedding gowns, which was very popular. Another on the author and activist Lydia Mariah Child. So those are three in the past. And now I'll transition to the exhibits most recently. And with the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation, the society really wanted to join the national attention to those events. And has had, had created two exhibits. And the first one closed at the end of 2025. And the second one is running right now. So I think I'll tell you a little about, this is about the first one. called Migration, the Ongoing American Revolution. And this was to focus on the fact that Medford, this place that we know as Medford, has always been a place of migration. The indigenous people who lived here migrated from the seacoast in good weather to in the woods in the cold weather. Then, of course, the Puritans migrated from England, enslaved Africans in 17th and 18th century, were subjected to forced migration from Africa. So those three are sort of founding touchstones for the exhibit, which is made up of 14 panels. Each one with information and visuals. And then the additional 10 panels are contemporary. And each one has an interview with someone who lives in Medford now or very recently lived in Medford. And it runs a wide variety of heritages. from Irish and Italian to Haitian, Brazil, Chinese, South Asian, European Jewish, Middle Eastern Muslim. So it really tries to celebrate and foreground the fact at a time migration and immigrants are often denigrated, that we are a city that has always been profoundly marked and benefited from migration. And the current exhibit, and those panels travel, so if they could go to City Hall, they can go to the library, they go to school, they've been in schools. The exhibit that we now have up is called 1776 and Beyond. And like migration, both of them really want to invite visitors to think about how the past connects with the present and can attach to the future that we can create. So this is focused on the Declaration of Independence and very briefly it looks at the Declaration of Independence in Medford in 1776. How was that received? What did people think? And then thinks about the way that it is echoed from then until now in various declarations of independence, various movements for justice, for independence, for self-declaration from Medford. suffrage, to abolition, to the labor movement, and today in civil rights, in LGBTQ, and no kings, which comes literally from the Declaration of Independence, saying we don't want a king.
[John Petrella]: That's what the Revolutionary War was all about. And that's what the Declaration was declaring, saying no. I just want to get back to the, I have to ask this because I'm a I loved history in school. The Civil War photographs, where did we, I mean, you just found them, did we know, I'm very curious, where did they come from?
[John Anderson]: That's a really excellent question because I know the answer. Have you heard of the GAR, the Grand Army of the Republic? That was the veterans organization. of Yankee Civil War veterans. And there was one of them in every city. And Medford had one. Their hall was, I think it's where the Beacon Bank is now. And it closed in the 1940s. because all the Civil War veterans had moved on. And they gave their entire collection to us. And it includes a lot of funny things like bullets. After the Civil War, a number of veterans would go down south to visit battlefields where they had been, and they'd dig bullets out of trees and take them home. All sorts of relics, some of them a bit grisly. But Lawrence, General Lawrence, you know, of Lawrence Estates and first mayor of Medford, et cetera, et cetera. He collected photographs after the war and bought every photograph he could find. And they were at the G.A.R. and forgotten about. And they came over to the society with everything else. They were sort of in a box. Nobody really knew what they were. Because remember now, I told you at this time, the society was not super active. It was just sort of treading in place. And it sat there for decades until somebody opened the box and said, hey, what's this? And they had all curled up sort of like a cigarette. because they were not stored in particularly good conditions. And we found a place that could restore them. So we have these thousands of photographs. I would say it's one of the top three or four collections in the country. And now the public can see them all because they've all been digitized. And they're at Digital Commonwealth. You can Google Digital Commonwealth and get right to it. Or if you go to the Historical Society website, you can also find a link to the photographs. Wow. That's an incredible story. And they're physically at Tufts now. I mean, they're very valuable. I'm sure we didn't want to, you know, keep them at the society and tell everybody, oh, we've got this great stuff here. Tufts has really high quality storage for their own archives. And they let us use the space to store these.
[John Petrella]: So just, I just heard you and I know what you said, but for the audience, where can you actually view them? Can you give that out again?
[John Anderson]: Right on your computer. Okay. Go to the Historical Society website. Right. Click on collections and you'll find a link to Digital Commonwealth. Or you can go directly to Digital Commonwealth. You can just Google Digital Commonwealth. And there are a whole bunch of other pictures there that aren't from the society. From Medford too, for example, I think there's a picture of JFK campaigning in Medford Square when he was running for senator. Way back then. So there's all this stuff you can find online. It's unbelievable.
[John Petrella]: That's great. That really is. That's awesome. Learn something new every day, but this is great to get people involved and let them know what's really going on. That's amazing.
[Ammons]: Yeah, which I just add to that, which these are great digital and online resources, but I'm going to make a pitch for in-person human contact. And so coming on Sunday afternoon between 1 and 4, meeting other people, being able to have conversations about, ask questions about what you're looking at. So it's another wonderful way to think about Medford history.
[John Petrella]: Very nice. John, I know you mentioned it before, but how can people get involved in the Method Historical Society?
[John Anderson]: Well, you could drop by on Sunday afternoons. You can attend one of our lectures. Most of them are done at the library now because it's such a beautiful new space. And they have those great projectors and sound systems. Most of them are there now. And it's always free. You can stop by there and meet people who are in the society and other like-minded people. You can go to the website. And it'll give you instructions as to how to join. You can pick up a form at the Society or you can join online. What we're really looking for, though, is people who want to get involved and do things. And I think I don't recall ever turning down a project that was presented to the board. Okay, that's interesting. Basically, if you want to do something, and it fits with our mission, and isn't going to cost an arm and a leg, it's going to get done. If you do it. If you do it. What we don't need is people who come to us and say, you know, what you really ought to do is... What you ought to do, but then they don't do it, they don't get involved.
[John Petrella]: There's a lot of them around.
[Ammons]: We should say we've also had success, particularly with these two contemporary exhibits, of getting grants from Freedom's Way, which is through the National Park Service, And that, I think, is a distinction that's good for the society. It's an endorsement saying what we're doing is worthwhile.
[John Petrella]: Well, our audience is learning a lot today. I'm learning a lot today. I mean, the Civil War photos and John Kennedy in Medford Square, that's pretty cool. All right, Linz. So among the challenges you face at the Historical Society, It's the challenge we all face. It's getting the word out, you know, that you are a destination, you're a resource for residents. And, you know, I ask you because I'm very interested too. How do you address that? How do you guys get the word out? You know, the society's outreach you know, your goals, your programs. Are there certain ways you do it, certain things you work on? It just seems to be, to me, that seems to be the toughest thing, is getting the outreach.
[Ammons]: Well, I think it always is a challenge to make sure that people know we're there, what we're doing. But I think it's really improving and strengthening over the last couple of years. We, again, if you join, if you're a member, You'll get periodic online announcements of events coming up that are really interesting. We do outreach through tabling events at city, you know, city events will show up with a table, through the website, like John is talking about, through, we have signage on Sunday that we roll a sign down to the corner of High Street and Governor's Ave, which has really brought people in because, with a big arrow pointing up there, that we're there. And people come in, and I can't tell you the number of people who come in on Sunday and say, I've lived in Medford all my life and I've never been in here. I'm thinking of you, John. I was one of them. So that does catch people's eye. The programs at the library, the library helps us out because in their monthly calendar they include our program, which brings people in. And also, in terms of outreach, we really would like to do more outreach into the community. And we, in the last couple of years, have had good success outreaching the schools. We, in Medford High School, a couple of us have gone and taught a couple of classes in the history department. And for one of these, for the migration exhibit, we had eight Medford High School interns work on the exhibits. And we did that deliberately to bring the community in. The entire third grade of the Roberts Elementary School comes. They'll be coming this coming week. There's a hundred of them who come, so they come in two batches. You can hear them before you can see them. Fifty at a time! Yes. So they come in, and then they carry off. We always have a handout they take home, and that goes into people's homes. We would love to have all the elementary schools come, but the others can't walk. Roberts can walk to our location. But we would love to have the money, the sponsorship. to have buses to bring them from Brooks and from Missittook and from, who am I forgetting? And the McGlynn. Yeah, yeah.
[John Petrella]: That would be a great thing.
[Ammons]: It is great, it is great. Many of these kids, I'd say the majority, have never, many have never been in a museum of any kind. Right. And many have never been in a history museum. Right, yeah. So we do an activity called museum hunt instead of a treasure hunt and they have a little thing and they go around and can you find, right now we'll say, can you find one cannonball from the Revolutionary War?" And they'd check that off. So it's fun for them, and it's good for us to spread the word.
[John Petrella]: Yeah, so basically, you're looking at getting a bus. You're going to tie up a bus for what, a couple of hours? Yeah, max. Back and forth? Yeah, I'm sure that can be done. Yeah, well, we'd love your help. We'll start making some phone calls.
[Ammons]: Let's do it. It'd be great. Because the schools, those schools, and then I'll just add this, all four elementary schools have welcomed the migration exhibit coming in, the panels, because they're transportable. And they've been brought to each of those schools, and they were happy to have them.
[John Petrella]: So when I become a member, I know some people. I'll make some phone calls. I'm not going to be one of those guys you talked about. I'm going to be the other kind of guy. I'm going to help out. And I'm not just talking, John. I'm just warning you. This ain't just talk.
[Unidentified]: We'll hold you to it.
[John Petrella]: And I, you know, it's that time again. I just want to thank you both, really. This has been a... been a lot of fun for me. I was, in school, my favorite subject, history. And Dr. Valeriani was the guy that got me interested. He really got me interested. And there was also Mr. Knox, do you remember? History teacher, Fred Knox. MR. KNOX.
[John Anderson]: Well I didn't go to high school here.
[John Petrella]: MR. TAUBENBERGER. Well that's right too, you were in Pittsburgh.
[John Anderson]: Way old for high school when he was teaching, I imagine.
[John Petrella]: Yeah, yeah. So you used to root for the Steelers, right? Pittsburgh Steelers, Penguins, all that stuff. Well, thank you both. The Pirates. The Pirates, that's right. Yeah, the Pittsburgh Pirates. They were big back in the day. Beat the Yankees one year. Yes, they did. They beat everybody a couple of years there. Yeah, they were a good baseball team. All right, so I want to thank Liz. Ammons, I think I got it right this time. I apologize if I butchered it earlier. Great. Ammons, I want to thank Liz Ammons and Mr. Johnny Anderson for joining us. Honestly, this has been a lot of fun for me. It's been a great show and I think it's good for Method Happenings and it's good for the Method Historical Society. I think we got the word out and I'm happy about that. So before I get into the closing, there is one thing I got to mention. I grew up in South Method, okay? And there used to be a horse track, speaking about history. You guys, I mean, what happened to the horse track? How come I don't have a horse track in South Method?
[John Anderson]: But I mean, when you were alive, there was a horse track there? Yeah, not when you were alive.
[John Petrella]: Not when I was alive. But I grew up with people telling me that. This street was named after this horse. This street, so it's true. There were two tracks.
[Ammons]: No, I knew of one, so there were two tracks. And we should add, you can come in on Sunday, because in addition to the exhibit space, there's a research space upstairs with other volunteers, and they're really happy to help people with questions like, what was the racetrack and what happened to it in South Medford?
[John Petrella]: We have pictures. No kidding. Because I was told they were over by Mystic Ave in South Medford. Is that the area they were at?
[John Anderson]: There was public transportation, so people could
[John Petrella]: How did we let the racetracks go? That's what I want to know.
[Ammons]: Well, we let the movie houses go. We let the bowling alleys. Now that you mention it. We let a lot go. We let a lot go. The opera house.
[John Petrella]: At least we still have a library. Yes. A beautiful library, too, if I say so myself. That's quite a facility. And we have a historical society, too. We have not gone anywhere.
[Unidentified]: We're still here.
[John Petrella]: We're not going anywhere. All right, that does it for Method Happenings. Thank you both, really, for joining us. Seriously, it's been a great time. Thanks for inviting us. Yeah, we're very glad. I appreciate it. And maybe, you know, I'd like to have you guys come back on a year from now, see how things are going. Sure, great. It'll be another fun show. All right, so I want to take a minute. to thank everyone who has been watching the show, and I want to thank you for your feedback. If you would like to appear on the show, you can contact us at methodhappenings02155 at gmail.com. You will also be able to watch replays of this program on Medford Community Media Access Channel, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It's usually 6 or 7 p.m. You can see this program on our website. You've got to check out our website. Everyone else is, so you might as well join in. MedfordHappenings.com. And you can now either view or listen to the podcast of this program, which is a great thing. You can find all of our shows on YouTube. Just go to YouTube.com, type in Method Happenings, boom, we come up. And we'd like for you to subscribe and enjoy watching our channel and videos. You can also find us on Facebook. at Method Happenings, and we also have, I am told, a subreddit, which you can find us at reddit.com slash R slash Method Happenings. A lot of places you can visit us at and watch all the shows. So for the Method Happenings team, Paul, Marco, Bruce, Joe, of course James, I'm John Petrella and remember Method, stay informed. Thank you for watching. Ta-da!
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