Attleboro Thurber Farm Burial Plot Mystery
BY DON DOUCETTE
Excerpt from the OLD FARM HOMESTEAD by Charles S. Thurber.
March 11, 1888
“Well, I ought now to begin to close,
But how I love to think of the old farm house nobody knows,
And if I ever get a chance again to go there for awhile,
There’s a place I want to go, up the road for about one half mile,
Where there’s a spot I long to see, yes, some lay there that are dear to me.
Oh, reader, is your soul prepared to go where they be?”
Well…I got to know that old farm house later on during a few years of my childhood.
And one day after retiring from his *New Bedford mariner ministry, Charlie unexpectedly knocked at our door in Attleboro and politely asked to tour the old house once again before his passing, a tug of nostalgia on his part.
My grandmother, Pelletier, was owner-host and with dignity led Charlie Thurber through every room in the house as he recalled his extended family connections to each room.
I believe there exists an unknown Thurber family burial plot in close proximity to the farm and Twin Village Brook as a local contractor unearthed a burial stone fragment while doing drainage work some decades ago following my own departure from the farm.
Charlie’s grandparents owned the farm during his childhood.
My grandparents owned and homesteaded the same farm during my childhood. They had obtained the derelict property prior to World War Two and brought the old place back once again to productive life.
Charles S. Thurber is buried with other family members in Taunton, Massachusetts.
He was a childhood native of the Weirs Section of Taunton during its days as a functioning seaport.
And now you know part of the story. I know the rest of the story and someday would love to do a public reading of Charlie’s Attleboro homestead poem before my own passing – a tug of nostalgia on my part.
Regards,
Don Doucette
“Ten Mile River Rambles”
Friends of the Ten Mile and Bucklin Brook
* Charles S. Thurber retired as Chaplain of the Seamen’s Bethel and Mariner Home located in New Bedford