Built in 1809, this large Federal-style house with brick ends was located on North Main Street. The original owner maintained a store and icehouse nearby. In 1817, he sold his home and store to Levi Lewis, who continued to run the business. The store and icehouse have since been razed.
This c. 1750 home is located on Main Street at Carleton Place, south of the town hall. Benjamin Tidd was a baker with a huge fireplace and kitchen ovens, which still remain in the house. When Rev. Nathaniel Thayer first came to Lancaster in 1793, he stayed here until other accommodations were arranged.
This 350th anniversary parade entry brings to mind the puppet theater of the late Herbert Hosmer. Paul L'Ecuyer of Drawbridge Productions has carried on Hosmer's work, and John Schumacher-Hardy hopes to hold puppet shows in Hosmer's old theater building again one day.
To provide housing for married ex-servicemen enrolling as students, the college purchased 61 trailers from the federal government in 1946. They were placed in rows in the field north of the present-day Thayer Music Conservatory. The trailer village, which had a common bathhouse rather than individual facilities in the units lasted about five years. Shown here is trailer No. 56, still owned by Frank Ponte.
This is the blacksmith shop of S.H. Turner & Son, which was on a triangle of land between Mill Street and Sterling Road. After this building burned in 1909, a new shop (no longer standing) was built very near the same site.
Sanford B. Wilder and his granddaughter Marion Burrage, dressed as Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty, are ready for a Fourth of July festivity as they head out on the vehicle Wilder used on his rounds as lamplighter on the streets of Lancaster in the 1890s. Lancaster did not use electricity for streetlights until c. 1905.
This building was originally constructed in 1878 and has had many additions. The last was a fellowship hall on the north end, added in 1978. This view of the church is from the mid-1960s.
Guests arrive at the Lancaster depot for a Thayer wedding. When Cornelia Thayer married, a special train made up of Pullmans was 30 minutes late pulling into the station. So as not to disappoint her guests, who would want to witness the ceremony, the bride graciously insisted upon waiting in her boudoir until she saw the carriages turning into the Homestead.