Great Guns!

Fourth of July Fireworks in downtown Springfield are a treasured part of people’s holiday celebrations. But you may be surprised to learn that they have a history dating back to the years of the American Revolution - and not just in July. Fireworks, cannons, and rockets marked celebrations then as well and were important in a time before modern media and WiFi as a way to let people in surrounding areas know there was news to be shared.

An aged Reverend Stephen Williams of Longmeadow recorded many details of life in the greater Springfield area during the war years. Its location on the Connecticut River made the area a busy place for military recruiting, deployments, and weapons storage and repair. It was during this time that the Springfield Arsenal - the precursor to the Springfield Armory - was a hub of military activity.

On the night of October 17, 1781, Reverend Williams sat to record in his diary, “this day the Great Guns were fired at the Town, & in the Evening Sky rockets were played off & other fire works. This in remembrance of General Burgoyne’s surrender. I am sorry such measures were gone into…”  In Williams’ diary any mention of “Town” means Springfield - not Longmeadow - as Longmeadow was a precinct of Springfield and not an independent town until 1783. From his parsonage located next door to the meetinghouse on the green, it was easy to hear the “great guns” firing just a few miles up the road in what we know now as the Court Square area of Springfield.  

In a turning point of the American Revolution, British General John Burgoyne surrendered to American General Horatio Gates near Saratoga, New York that October day back in 1777, and clearly it was a day worth remembering in Springfield. As for why Reverend Williams was “sorry such measures were gone into,” that had less to do with any supposed Tory leanings on his part and more to do with the fact that celebrations inevitably wound up in taverns, and drunken revelry and taverns went hand in hand. Few things upset the pious religious in New England more than drunkeness because one sin so easily begat another.

Less than a month later on November 6, 1781 more news of victory caught Reverend Williams’ attention: “this day was kept at Town as a day of rejoicing upon account of Earl Cornwallis’ being taken. The Great Guns fired (Bells at Town and here were rung) in that Evening the rockets played off the Court House, and the Taverns illuminated -”

It’s exciting to imagine what those guns, rockets, and fireworks might have sounded like across the border in Longmeadow, and how curious residents likely stepped forth from their homes to try to figure out what the guns were signifying. The news was just as likely to be spread by word of mouth by a passerby on foot or horseback as it was by letter or print. How many children were sent out as messengers by their parents to run along and spread the word to neighbors and cousins up and down Longmeadow Street?

Sadly, Reverend Williams passed away in June 1782 before decisive victory was ever declared in the war that set the colonies free from Great Britain. If anyone knows what THAT celebration looked like in 1783 after the signing of the Treaty of Paris please let us know!  

-Contributed by Melissa M. Cybulski, Longmeadow Historical Society

Sources:

King, Moses, ed. King’s Handbook of Springfield, Massachusetts. Springfield, MA: James D. Gill, 1884. 

Williams, Stephen. Diary Vol. 10.  (Manuscript) accessed at https://www.longmeadowlibrary.org/stephen-williams-diary-online/

Detecting Racist Deeds with AI: The Story of DRAINS

There is no substitute for old-fashioned detective work in the area of historical research. Historians spend long hours in libraries and archives combing through boxes filled with documents in search of clues. Technology is already helping by allowing organizations to digitize their holdings so people can do genealogy work and other research from anywhere as long as they have a computer and WiFi. But technology can always do better, right?

During the week of March 11th, I was fortunate enough to participate in a program sponsored by my employer, MassMutual, called “Data Days for Good.” The program is a partnership between Boston University (BU) Spark Innovation Lab and MassMutual where MassMutual employees mentor BU undergraduate and graduate computer and data science students as they attempt to solve a real-life problem for a local nonprofit. 

The original DRAINS team from left to right: Naman Bagaria, Sindhuja Kumar, Sahir Doshi, Vajay Fish, Valentina Haddad, Alé Lanz, and Cindy Zhang. Credit BU Spark

During this event, I mentored a group of students where I tasked them with answering the following question for the benefit of the Historical Society: is it possible to use Generative AI (also known as GenAI and ChatGPT) to identify the location of deeds with racist restrictions within the Registry of Deeds database?  

To understand why I was asking the students this question, I think it helps to go back to the History Note my fellow board member Beth Hoff and I wrote entitled “…lot shall not be re-sold to a colored person, an Italian or a Polander.”  In that post, there was a map where all of the lots in the Brookline plan that were subject to racist deed restrictions were highlighted. This map took many hours to produce because finding and sorting through the deeds for those with these restrictions was a highly manual process. As I began to gain exposure to GenAI as part of my job, I started to wonder if it was possible to create a solution to this problem with this new technology. 

On our first day of working together, I shared with the students the problem I and my fellow historical researchers were facing and they eagerly began working. They showed great enthusiasm, asked great questions, and were very open to the feedback I had for them. In just three short days, they had built a prototype that would hopefully make the onerous task of fishing for deeds with racist restrictions a thing of the past. We decided to call it DRAINS which stands for Deed Restriction Artificial Intelligence Notification System. 

ChatGPT Logo: Credit Wikipedia

So how does DRAINS work? The user first uploads an image of a deed to the application. The image then undergoes a process called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that converts the image to text. Then the text from the deed is fed into ChatGPT.  It is asked if there is a racist restriction on the deed, when the deed was received at the registry, and what book and page the deed was recorded in. If the deed has a race-based restriction on it, it will notify the user and provide the date received, book, and page. Simultaneously, a backup system works using a preset set of terms to try to catch any racist restrictions ChatGPT might have missed. 

The results of our testing were promising. DRAINS had over an 86% accuracy rate and was able to complete its analysis in a fraction of the time that it would take a human. While it is still very much a prototype, and it needs some refinement from both a modeling and a software engineering standpoint, these results are very promising. 

This summer, I have been fortunate to continue this partnership with BU and Public Interest Technology - New England (PIT-NE) to further develop the system. A new group of students from the PIT-NE university consortium, Grace Chong, Hannah Choe, Reginae Echols, and Arnav Sodhani, picked up where the previous students left off.

Their focus was to work on automating the process of matching a racist deed to a current plot of land on a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) map. When this map is ready, the hope is to have an interactive web-based tool that will enable users to visualize the duration of these restrictions and the ethnic/racial groups they impacted. We hope that this will be a tool for raising awareness of the impact that these restrictions had on Longmeadow and eventually communities all over the country. 

Screenshot of the map that is currently being created by the students 

(Credit BU)

I look forward to continuing this journey and hope to share it with you as the students learn and build more. 

Longmeadow High School Reunion Group 1957-1960

Happy Graduation Season!  Last week, on the first Thursday in June, I had the opportunity to sit down with a very special group of people, members of the first four graduating classes of Longmeadow High School. They gather at the Longmeadow Adult Center on the first Thursday of every month at 9 am. Most people grab a coffee and a pastry before taking a seat around the table to enjoy conversation and visit with people they’ve known nearly all their lives.

Longmeadow did not have a public high school in town until the 1955-56 school year.  Before that students attended the Junior High on the green, now the annex of Center School, through 9th grade and then chose one of several high schools in Springfield: High School of Commerce, Classical, Tech, or Trade. Each school catered to a particular work or higher education focus.  As always, some families opted for private high schools like Cathedral or MacDuffie.

Students of the very first graduating class of Longmeadow High School were the last ones to attend a Springfield public high school after Junior High. Carole Anas Mezzetti ‘57 attended the High School of Commerce for 10th Grade and remembers taking the school bus to and from Longmeadow. Apparently, you had to be quick at the end of the school day to catch the bus back. The bus, which picked students up from the nearby Classical High School, waited for no one. If you missed the bus, “tough luck,” Carole remembers. You’d have to walk to the public bus stop.

I expected that these folks would have been very excited to be the first students in a brand-new school. I was surprised to hear Peter Dow ‘57, who spent 10th Grade at Classical High School say: “Those who were in high school in Springfield didn’t WANT to go to the new high school.  They HAD to go. We had made new friends and relationships in high school. We were on sports teams.”  Classical was number one in sports. An unexpected benefit to the new school switch, though?  Longmeadow High School had great brand new uniforms as opposed to the “ratty” uniforms they were given in Springfield that had been worn by many previous years’ players.

Speaking of uniforms, it was that first class year that selected everything from the Lancers name and mascot to the school colors.  Why black and white?  Because all the good colors were taken by other schools in the area! 

Recently, a lot of attention in town has been turned towards plans for developing a new middle school to replace Williams and Glenbrook.  I asked the group if their parents were interested or involved in the planning of Longmeadow High School, Pat Vecchiarelli Downes ‘58, one of eleven Vecciarelli children, asserted that their parents were not like today’s “helicopter” parents, “our parents were just trying to work.”

Regarding the names for the yearbook, “Masacksic” and the newspaper, “Jet Jotter” it was these first class years that decided those as well.  Ed Mazer ‘59 suggested “Grassy Gutter Gazette” and “Gutter Gossip’ were thrown around as possible names for the paper.” Ultimately, inspired by the jet in jet black they settled on the Jet Jotter.

Jet black also inspired one of the team names in the annual girls’ Sports Night event which pinned the “Jets” team against the “Whites” team. Sports Night was a night of sport and performance that the young women always enjoyed and spent a lot of time planning. Teachers sent home a costume pattern for mothers to make for their daughters for the elaborate opening dance number.

Sandy Albano MacFadyen '60

Similarly to conversations with current LHS students and parents, sports dominated a lot of the conversation time around the table. One benefit to the smaller class sizes of the new high school was that everyone who tried out for a team made the team, as opposed to the Springfield high schools who had to make cuts to keep team sizes reasonable. Sports built character and confidence, one participant remembered. Several alums remembered a hockey rink right on school grounds in the depression in the grass between Grassy Gutter Rd and Williams Street. Tom Ewing ‘59 noted his surprise at the size of student-athletes he sees today. “The biggest kid on the football team was 180 lbs. Most were more like 140.” There were no weight rooms, plus kids remembered the impact of the rations of WWII.  

Glenn "Snip" Snyder '60

Girls participated in sports as well. Apparently, there was a strict rule as far as the Girls’ Basketball Team went: two dribbles and you had to pass the ball. School yearbooks from 1957-60 show teams in all the classics: baseball, track, football, soccer, golf, basketball, hockey, and tennis. These sports were the domain of male students, however.  Girls’ sports teams in volleyball, basketball, and field hockey seemed to be more geared toward intramural play after school. The Drill Team with its precision marching was a different story altogether.  Dressed neatly in blazers, the girls performed at all football and basketball games.

Drill Team with Pat Vecchiarelli Downes '58

Athletic Director, Bob D’ Agostino, was a hero to these young adults. His name invoked a feeling of reverence among many alumni gathered around the table. Not only did he guide them on the field, but he helped many of the young men out of a bind if they forgot their school-mandated neckties. For just a nickel, you could borrow one from Coach Dags’ locker full of ties. Ties were required by dress code from October through May.

Glenn "Snip" Snyder ‘60 was a great all-around athlete, excelling in several sports. He joined the Navy a year after graduating high school, but it was the fact that he was a “life-long friend to Bob D’Agostino and his wife … best friend” that Pete Dow ‘57 seemed intent on having me record. (Side note, Glenn is very proud of his high school nickname “Snip” which he earned after cutting off a classmate’s ponytail in 4th grade.)

Tom Ewing

Sports were not for everyone though, and there was plenty of opportunity to join clubs like the Red Cross Club, the French and Latin Clubs, Student Council, the Debating Club, the Business Club, and the Traffic Squad.  Music was a huge part of school life as well. More than just band and orchestra, LHS of 1957-1960 also offered a dance band and several vocal groups.  One student, Phillip Vecchiarelli ‘59 liked his music experience so much that he considered being a drummer in a band. Instead, he went to UMass for Engineering.

Phillip Vecchiarelli on drums

This was a time of transistor radios and 45 records. The memory that the Junior Prom was held in the cafeteria evoked a passionate discussion about their shared memory of Mr. Ryland’s dance classes and the white gloves they were made to wear. It was a peaceful time in American culture and an exciting time in American music. It was the time of Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. Peter Dow ‘57 fondly remembers driving with his friends down to rock and roll shows in Hartford where he saw Little Richard and Bill Haley. “My parents didn’t love that,” he says. But Pete had his own car, a ‘52 Ford Convertible that he paid $250 for. 

He wasn’t the only one with wheels. Students with cars parked them along Grassy Gutter.  Linda Swanson Abrams ‘58 had a car and would pick up her friends in it, and Bob Newell ‘59 fondly remembers his rusty four-door Ford that he got in an alley down in the South End of Springfield for $125.  Cars then, like now, offered freedom and independence for teenagers. Didn’t have your license?  No problem!  You could take driving lessons during the school day! Carole Anas Mezzetti ‘57 remembers driving lessons with two classmates and getting her driving license in the parking lot of LHS. Only then would she be eligible for the driving class the school provided that offered parents a discount on their insurance rates. 

Students held after-school jobs at places like the Community Market, Popular Market, caddying at the Country Club, and Smith’s Pharmacy. But above all, it was important to leave time for homework and studying. Just like today, academic standards were very high at the new school. Some parents worried that the new school wouldn’t be accredited and that their kids would risk not getting into college so they put them in private schools. Ed Mazar ‘59, who went on to attend Dartmouth, said that Principal Macfarland was hired to make LHS a premier feeder school for colleges. More than 60 years later, students remember the two days of Iowa tests and blue book finals. Many students did attend college after graduation, but not all.

Linda Swanson Abrams ‘58 joined the Air Force after graduation and headed out to California. She says she wasn’t ready for college. She spent four years in active service and another four in the reserves. How did Linda like the experience though? “I loved every minute of it,” she proclaimed without a moment’s hesitation. She shared that in those days women in the military could marry, but couldn’t be pregnant or have children. She did marry and get pregnant, having to knit bigger and bigger cardigans to try to hide her pregnancy until it was found out. Ultimately, Linda became a Forensic Genealogist working on identifying the remains of Civil War soldiers killed on the submarine the H.L. Hunley.

It is clear that this special group of Longmeadow High School graduates looks fondly upon their years. They felt a strong sense of unity then which carries over to today. Several have attended Longmeadow High School graduations for their own children and grandchildren. Asked if they had any advice for this year’s graduates, Phillip Vecchiarelli ‘59, offered these timeless words, “Your success will come from your efforts. Hard work almost always is worth it.”

-Special thanks to the following LHS Alumni 1957-1960 for contributing to this article::