July's Minute History

To celebrate West Newbury’s Bicentennial, the Historical Commission is highlighting the Town’s history, often with one historical marker each month. This month’s marker, which is located at 868-98 Main Street, notes the birthplace of renowned classics scholar and Harvard President Cornelius Conway Felton, Jr., who spent his first eight years here in West Newbury.

The story behind the marker is one of a famous classicist and educator whose “genial disposition and his fellow-feeling with young life, which never waned, made him a favorite teacher, even with those who profited the least by his instruction”—and whose remarkable West Newbury-born siblings included brother Samuel Morse Felton, who as President of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad helped save President Lincoln and his train from being blown up in an assassination attempt.

Click here to read all about it.