January 23, 2018 — Massachusetts hides the most oddity of any New England state, but the reason’s pretty straightforward. You get enough people together for a long enough time, and you get more and more oddity. The Bay State has gravestones dating back to the 1600s, and it’s in the top three states in the country by population density. So its oddity is sometimes shoulder-to-shoulder. Here, lemme show you in, this, the eighth edition of OTIS Miscellany.
1. Bancroft Tower (Worcester)
Built in 1900 by Stephen Salisbury III, a wealthy railroad scion, the tower is a monument to George Bancroft, a Worcester (pronounced Wuhstah) native who made a name in politics. According to the tower’s plaque, though, it wasn’t for Bancroft’s life of leadership that SSIII memorialized him with a castle. It was because Bancroft was friends with SSII. So, tax dodge, I assume.
But a great one for those of us who like random castle-inspired memorials to men we’ve never heard of.
2. Descendant of Isaac Newton’s Apple Tree (Cambridge)
Since then, Newton’s apple tree has become a holy relic in a field where nothing’s holy. It’s been named one of Britain’s greatest trees and cuttings have been sent all over the world, often to educational and scientific institutions, where they’ve rooted and grown gravity bombs above and memorial plaques below. Like the one at MIT in Cambridge.
It’s a tear-drop-shaped mound in Lowell with a cool name outlined by some dozen boulders on land that used to be a tuberculosis hospital and is now a ball field and a playground. No one knows why it’s there. It’s just always been there. With “always” meaning 1900, as discovered by an archeological dig in the 1980s that found some pavers beneath the stones and connecting them.
But you can walk among the mini-monoliths and ponder the mystery while you dodge foul balls and listen to your kids scream down angled planks of plastic and metal a dozen feet away.
4. Redemption Rock (Princeton)
Upon this rock May 2, 1676 was made the agreement for the ransom of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson of Lancaster between the Indians and John Hoar of Concord. King Philip was with the Indians but refused his consent.
5. Grave of an Arsenic Poisoning Victim (Pelham)
Warren Gibbs
Died by Arsenic Poison
March 23, 1860
Age 36 years 5 mos 23 days
Think my friends when this you see
How my wife has dealt with me
She in some oysters did prepare
Some poison for my lot and share
Then of the same I did partake
And nature yielded to its fate
Before she my wife became
Mary Felton was her name
Erected by his brother
Wm Gibbs
Continue to Part 2 of OTIS Miscellany VIII: Massachusetts Edition.