Lincoln Town History
Civil War - 1900
In 1860, the town strongly endorsed the candidacy of Abraham Lincoln. In contrast to the War of Independence, the Civil War had relatively little effect on the town. Required to provide a specific quota of manpower to the war, the town of Lincoln sent seventy-one men off to battle, paying a bounty of $200 to each volunteer.
Far-reaching social/cultural and technical events marked the period between the Civil War and the turn of the century. Eliza Farrar gave her private book collection to the town in 1870, launching Lincoln’s public library system. Town resident George Tarbell donated the distinctive red-brick library building in 1884, designed by prestigious Boston architect William G. Preston.
Kerosene-filled lamps first illuminated Lincoln’s gravel streets in 1893, with electrification arriving twenty years later (a convenience not welcomed by all). Lincoln’s first fire department was formed in 1893 with two new hose carriages. In 1898, Lincoln would inaugurate telephone service.
Progress brought struggles and setbacks. By the 1880s, Lincoln was absorbing students from several nationalities, the children of immigrant laborers who came to work Lincoln’s farms. Soon the town could no longer handle a growing number of high schoolers, so it sent them off to high schools in Concord and Weston. Cambridge dug its enormous Hobbs Brook Reservoir, displacing large amounts of east Lincoln property.
Images from the Archives
Drawing of Lincoln Center, 1879
Kerry Glass History of Lincoln Ways: a map of Lincoln from 1875
1884 photograph of Lincoln school children taken in front of the Stone Church
Donaldson House c. 1875
Lincoln Center c. 1892, after the Old Town Hall was moved down the hill nearer to the White Church by James Chapin and Bemis Hall (The New Town Hall) was built.
The Lincoln Public Library 1884 - Given to the Town by George Grosvenor Tarbell
in 1891, James Chapin bought the Old Town Hall and moved it down the hill (from where the Bemis Hall sits today) to a site just north of where the White Church sits today and put it use as a general store, post office, and gathering place.
Charolotte H. Donaldson
Sarah and Alice Codman in 1870. Sarah was 78 when she and her daughters Alice and Dorothy first registered to vote in August 1920.
Mary E. Dana DeCordova, one of the first Lincoln women to register to vote in 1884.
The Lincoln Public Library, the Chapin Store/Old Town Hall, and the White Church c. 1892
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