The Little Girls of Locust Lawn

 

Note: I'm reposting this now (April 2025 -- sixteen years after the original publication in the Danvers Herald/Wicked Local), since the link on Wicked Local (dated April 3, 2009) no longer works.

I'm posting an easier-to-read text version, below.

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The little girls of Locust Lawn

By Sandy Nichols Ward

    April 3, 2009

A treasured children's book in my childhood opened with this dedication: TO ALL THE LITTLE GIRLS WHO PLAYED AT LOCUST LAWN. "That's us!" I would exclaim happily. My mother, who was reading the book aloud to us, would nod and smile. My sister and I often played on the property called Locust Lawn, which was right across Nichols Street from our home. 

The book, Going-On-Nine by Amy Wentworth Stone, was published in 1939, but described a much earlier period when ladies wore high-buttoned shoes and long flounced skirts with bustles.  Colorful illustrations by Eloise Wilkin gave us delightful glimpses of that earlier era and the big house that had once stood "on the slope of a hill, called Locust Lawn." Abby, the little girl in the center of the story, loved to run in the woods, climb trees, play in the fields and catch turtles in the pond.  She did NOT want to grow up and have to dress in the fashion of her older sisters. She was eight years old, going on nine.  In the book we followed Abby through that year of her life.

It was exciting to hear the adventures of a young girl who lived and played at Locust Lawn long before us. Was she real? Is this story true? Real or not, our family loved the story and passed the book from household to household so that each child who turned eight could experience the "going-on-nine" year along with Abby.  Not all of our cousins lived in Danvers, but if they had visited us, they certainly knew of Locust Lawn and the pond by our house. An informal map  or sketch printed inside the book cover showed the pond and other features we could recognize, such as the Barn and the Back Avenue.  

If you consult Charles S. Tapley's book, Country Estates of Old Danvers, you will find a description of Locust Lawn on page 43 and learn that the owner in the 1870's and 1880's  was "Philip H. Wentworth of Boston, who improved the grounds by laying out more avenues through the wooded places …"  My mother guessed that the book author Amy Wentworth Stone grew up at Locust Lawn and wrote Abby Wingate's story based on her own experiences. It is likely that Amy even knew my grandfather, William S. Nichols, and played with his sister Margaret. In the storybook Abby's best friend is "Little Peg", with brother "Little Will." Peg's house is shown on the map in the general area where my great-grandfather's family lived.  So this story seemed true to us -- a bit of local history, even though the location was disguised  as "Crandall" Massachusetts.

The real Locust Lawn in Danvers was enjoyed by many generations of children, boys as well as girls.  We did many of the same activities described in this book. For instance, I remember riding a toboggan with friends on a crusty winter day down the front "lawn" --the long sloping pastureland with locust trees-- and scraping all the buckles off my galoshes as I dragged my feet to slow down. Here is a passage from Going on Nine:

"So Abby and Little Peg took their sleds to the brink of the lawn and lay down on them on their stomachs. Their rubber boots stuck out behind… They counted one-two-three; then each gave a push with a rubber boot, and away they went down over the crust, slipping and sliding. They whizzed by the big clump of locusts and under the elms…"

How easily I could relate to those girls of an earlier time!