Massachusetts History

Photograph of Fairbanks Memorial Hall (Town Hall) in Ashburnham Ma.

Late 1950′s

Love the old Ford out front.

From the 1837 New England Gazette

 
In 1821 NH was hit by a tornado- Massachusetts was visited by a similar desolation, at the same time, more than 40 miles distant. A Worcester paper thus describes it :

About 6 o’clock, Sunday evening, September 9th, a black and terrific cloud appeared a little south of the centre of Northfield, Franklin county, nearly in the form of a pyramid reversed, moving very rapidly and with a terrible noise. In its progress it swept away or prostrated all the trees, fences, stone walls, and buildings which came within its vortex, which in some places was not more than 20 rods and in others 40 or 50.

 It passed from Northfield through Warwick and Orange, to the southwesterly part of Royalston, where its force was broken by Tully Mountain. Its path was strewed for the distance of 25 miles, through the towns of Royalston, Winchendon, Ashburnham and Fitchburg, with fragments of buildings, sheaves of grain, bundles of corn stalks, clothing, etc.

 Several persons were killed and wounded, numerous houses, barns,  demolished, and many domestic animals, in the track of the tornado, were destroyed. Large trees were taken 200 feet into the air, and logs which would require 4 oxen to remove them were swept out of the bed of Tully river where they had lain for more than half a century.

 The ground was torn up from the river to the mountain. about 40 rods, from 1 foot to 6 feet deep. The surface of the earth was broken throughout the whole course of the whirlwind, as with the ploughshare of destruction. Stones of many hundred pounds weight, were rolled from their bads. Lots of wood were whirled into promiscuous heaps, with roots and tops, and tops and roots.

 The appearance presented by the track of the whirlwind, indicated, as near as the writer can judge from actual inspection, that the form of the cloud. and the body of air in motion, was that of an inverted pyramid, drawing whatever came within its influence towards the centre of motion.