Historical Commission’s Monthly Tales of Our Town

November’s story concerns amusements made possible by long wintery months of ice and snow, which have in good measure vanished as West Newbury warms in this era of climate change. In 1924, a commentator in the Newburyport Daily News and Herald recalled long-gone times before the 1870s when as a boy he skated several times across the mouth of the Merrimack between the Newburyport wharves and the Salisbury shore. “Then the one horse sleigh was in its prime and glory,” he wrote. “No matter how cold it was, a fellow did not mind ‘Jack Frost’ if he had a pretty girl alongside of him as his partner, gliding over the crystal path. ‘But they, too, have changed.’”

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