Born in East Bridgewater in 1831, James Sidney Allen, at the age of 17, began to learn the shoemaking trade. He started a business of his own in East Bridgewater, then moved to Brockton. He lived in West Bridgewater and Brockton, then returned to East Bridgewater in 1855, where this house was built in 1854. The street number is now ...

In 1879, a group of citizens in Whitman, then known as South Abington, lobbied to establish a free public library for the town. At Town Meeting that year, voters approved an appropriation of $500 to establish the library and appointed five citizens to spearhead the project. The First Library The first Whitman Public Library consisted of a room in the ...

The first electric trolley line in Brockton was the East Side Street Railway, which opened in November 1888, with great success. In 1896, a line ran from Brockton to West Bridgewater, Bridgewater and Taunton. The following year, the line ran to East Bridgewater. On July 4, 1897, amid a blaring band, cheering crowds and speeches from the company and town ...

  The building to the left of the picture is Hooper and Clark, Bridgewater’s General Store. This store was opened in 1775, replacing a smaller one on the site and ran until the 1920’s. We recently came across some ledgers of the store and were amazed to see the record of items sold to patrons. They had supplies of everything from ...