💯 STORY CHALLENGE
There was a Social Group in the Town Which Tended to Give the Entire Community an Unsavory Reputation (Day 63)
At least according to a thesis written by a student at the Massachusetts Agricultural College
“By people living outside the town, Shutesbury is considered a typically depraved community. Whenever an example of decadence is sought, among the first names mentioned is the name of this town. The sentiment prevails that the people of the community are idle, ignorant and licentious.”
So reads a paragraph in the thesis of RF Lund from 1916, at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was on the rise and the racist pseudoscience of eugenics was finding a foothold in the United States.
“There was a social group in the town which tended to give the entire community an unsavory reputation. The Pratt group composed of 8 families descended from Ephraim Pratt who lived to be 116 years of age.”
On his tombstone one can read ‘He was remarkably cheerful in his disposition and temperate in his habits. He swung a scythe one hundred and one consecutive years, and mounted a horse without assistance at the age of one hundred and ten years.’
