The Trivium School, a small independent Catholic preparatory school, was founded in 1979 by Mr. and Mrs. John Schmitt. Offering an integrated program of studies and activities, the school takes its name from the classical curriculum in the liberal arts: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Shown here is the courtyard entrance. The facility, located on Back (Langen) Road, was originally called Crownledge and was the country home of Eugene van Rensselaer Thayer II.
Posing in front of their house are members of the Turner family. The house (no longer standing) was located on the south corner of Sterling Road and Sawyer Street. From left to right are the following: an unidentified blacksmith, J.H. Turner, Fanny (Turner) Wallace, Sarah (Carter) Turner, Nathan Turner, Sarah (Turner) Sampson, Charlie or Joseph Sampson, Fred Turner, and Walter Turner. The Turners, blacksmiths by trade, settled in South Lancaster in 1832.
Located on the west side of Main Street near the Nashua River, this home was built in 1785 for Judge John Sprague, who served the town 10 years as a representative, 2 years as a senator, and 3 years as a sheriff. His grandson S.J. Sprague Vose was the last of the family to live in the house. Later, it was purchased and given as a parsonage "fully furnished and equipped" by Col. John E. Thayer, who maintained it for 25 years. In 1933, the year Thayer died, it was bequeathed to the church.
This is an early view of the Victorian villa that Nathaniel Thayer II (the banker) built on the site of his father's parsonage, probably very shortly after his mother's death in 1857. Sentimentally called the Homestead, the dwelling was later greatly enlarged by his son Nathaniel Thayer III after the death of his mother, Cornelia van Rensselaer Thayer, in 1897.
Located near the South Lancaster Fire Station and the intersection of Main Street and Bolton Road is the Ward Park School (no longer standing). It was used for public elementary education in the late 19th century until the Narrow Lane School was opened in 1897.
The oldest dwelling in Lancaster is the White-Hawkins House, on Neck Road. It dates from c. 1684, when the town was being resettled after the Indian Massacre during the winter of 1675-1676. It was built by John White, brother to Mary Rowlandson.
In earlier times, Lancaster had a variety of minstrel shows, which were held as early as the 1880s. Posing here with fiddles, guitars, and banjo are the Yonder Hill Boys. They are, from left to right, Leon Valley, John Rouleau, Duncan McDonald, Wilbert Locke, and John Gosselin. The group performed country-western music in the mid-1930s. Minstrel shows were discontinued in the early 1950s.
Written in stone in the Old Settler's Burial Field is a copy of the 1701 deed for the grant of land from the Native Americans to the town clerk, John Houghton. It increased Lancaster's size from 80 to 112 square miles. Out of this territory later came Leominster, Sterling, and a large part of Boylston and West Boylston.
E.E. Miles took a deep interest in his student employees. Emphasizing character education in addition to learning manual skills, he began each work week with a lecture or sermon to which employees were paid to listen. Once he began, no one was allowed to punch in on the time clock until he was finished. Many former students employees have expressed positive memories of their days in the Miles Bindery "family."
None of Lancaster's early meetinghouses remain. The first two built c. 1654 and 1684, were located near the Old Settler's Burial Field and were burned by the Native Americans. The third meetinghouse, located on the Old Common, was built in 1706 and taken down in 1743. The fourth, located near 634 Main Street and built in 1743, was used for worship until the fifth meetinghouse was erected in 1816. After that, it was used for a town hall until it was replaced in 1823. Shown is an artist's conception of what the earliest meetinghouses may have looked like.
The end-of-harvest task of clearing and gathering the stalks is shown here in one of the many cornfields planted on the fertile plains in the "neck" area of town.
Shown here is an early boys' dormitory fire drill team. With large wooden structures, fire was a very real danger in the early days. The Academy building did, in fact, have a fire on December 4, 1907. It damaged about half a dozen rooms and half of the library's collection. The estimated damage was $2,700.