Tombstone Tuesday 5 Jan 2010
Buried in Central Cemetery, in East Bridgewater, MA is Mr. Nahum Mitchell , author of The History of Bridgewater.
The Bridgewater Public Library owns an original copy of his book which is housed in the Historical Room. It is essential reading for knowing about the early days of the Bridgewaters and the surrounding communities.
Bridgewater was settled in 1656 and is the third after Plymouth and Duxbury for settlements here in southern Massachusetts. Many of the surnames listed in Mitchell's book are the same as the descendants of the Mayflower and later settlers of Massachusetts.
Mitchell's book is in the public domain because no one renewed the copyright. The librarians were very surprised when I showed them that it was all up on the Web. They remembered the man who has transcribed the book asking them about it when he came from where he lives in the South but they didn't know he was going to copy it all for anyone to use. It's a good lesson for those who don't undertand about copyright as this was before Google Books.
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