I went to the rock located in the Leach Property in Attleboro. Shame to see that a beautiful green lawn extends to the rock. I noticed signs of a big fire. Is that something you remember? — Ben Cote
Ben, thank you for the photo.
THE ROCK BY DON DOUCETTE
No memory of the fire, but my Dad once buried a dead horse near that location. It died in Rick Bauer’s barn.
I have known all my life about the existence of that boulder, but never visited. It is a glacial erratic deposited there by the last Wisconsin ice sheet and it’s located within the head water of what I refer to as Twin Village Brook.
Slightly north is the former Rick Bauer Dairy Farm on Locust Street situated across from the former Locust Valley Dairy and Jack Gaffney Dairy i.e. collectively, Locust Valley Golf Course.
Further along Locust Street near the curve is located the headwater of Locust Valley Brook within the former Joe Mello Dairy Farm. Within that same quadrant, what I refer to as Oak Hill Brook gathers and flows past Poncin-Hewwitt Field parallel to Oak Hill Avenue to the Ten Mile River in North Seekonk. The former Oak Hill Dairy was located slightly east and is presently being built upon.
My father once housed large Belgian horses at the Bauer and Mello farms and it was Rick Bauer who once owned the property consisting of Poncin-Hewwitt Field Rick built the house at the park entry after selling his dairy farm. He ran a sawmill in the woods and the present athletic field was once a beautiful wet meadow with a deer herd.
The wetlands toward the rear of Poncin-Hewwitt Field gather and flow into Bliss Brook, a tributary to the Palmer River – West Branch.
I often rode aboard horse drawn wagon along Locust Street, Oak Hill Avenue, Thurber Avenue, Thacher Street and sometimes along South Main Street through Gilbert-Perry Square in Attleboro. (Joe Gilbert was killed during WW2 and was much loved by the Attleboro community. Amen.)
Regards,
Don Doucette
“Ten Mile River Rambles”
Friends of the Ten Mile and Bucklin Brook
Citizen of the Narragansett Basin
Hi Don,
THE FIRE BY TED LEACH
Hope you guys are holding up with Seven Stars closed!
I can tell you about the fire on the Phil and Ginny Leach Nature Preserve of the Attleboro Land Trust. Betsy Whitfield called Debby and me about smoke and we went out in the woods with her and found a fire which clearly had spread from a small campfire that must’ve been set the night before.
This was about 10 years ago.
We called the fire department who sent a fire truck, but the hose wouldn’t reach from the nearest hydrant to the fire and they refused to send the pump truck into the woods for fear of scratching it. We all watched as wind blew the fire out of control, until it came within 10 feet of a house on the far side of the field beyond Big Rock.
The fire also spread through an old wood lot that the Bauer’s kept when my mother bought the farm from Rick Bauer. We also kept horses together with the Garner family in that barn for several years when I was young.
I’d love to have you show me where your dad buried that draft horse some time, as Debby and I now live on the old Bauer farm.
PHIL AND GINNY LEACH NATURE PRESERVE FROG: PHOTO BY CHARLES ADLER
Very Best Regards, and Stay Well!
Ted