Follow the links to read stories by Doris Hayden.
Doris Hayden, Remarkable Woman
by Mary Kronholm
If there’s anything you need to know about Blandford, past or present, especially the past, just ask Doris Hayden, locally proclaimed Blandford Historian. She knows, literally, where the skeletons are hidden. And if the information is not at the tip of her tongue, it’s at the tip of her fingers.
The last 50 years or so, Mrs. Hayden has been engulfed with a major project, that of getting all of Blandford’s genealogy down on paper.
The project grew from a Town request in 1937 to have all the early town records typed. The then Town Clerk, Earl Beauregard, felt that the records ought to be available for anyone who wanted to read them. Reading would be easier if the books were typed.
At that time, Mrs. Hayden also set up a card file of births, deaths and marriages for easy reference. This has proved to be a valuable tool for succeeding Town Clerks, and has been kept up to date since that time.
Using that task as a jumping-off spot, Mrs. Hayden then became absorbed with early church records. She found that there was “so much material it really ought to be hooked together.”
Right now, there are sixteen volumes of material on Blandford Families in the Springfield Library, and copies are promised to the Westfield library, and the original will remain in the Porter Memorial Library in Blandford.
Mrs. Hayden refers to this as her “monument.” And it will be a monument as it represents almost a lifetime of work on her part.
When Joseph Carvalho at the Springfield Library was working on a history of area Black Families, he used information she had written tracing Black Family Histories from Blandford.
In order to accomplish this task she set for herself, Mrs. Hayden has tracked through woods to forgotten cemeteries, burial sites of families who were laid to rest on their own land, the Registry of Deeds and dusty probate records.
Weeding things out has been a learning experience for Mrs. Hayden, who obviously thrives on digging in the past. She has answered requests for family histories from “almost every state in the union,” and she has brought together descendants of former Blandford people who now live continents apart.
Requests for genealogical information that come to the Town Clerk or to the library are many times forwarded to Mrs. Hayden and she is always ready to oblige.
Many people who come to Blandford seeking their roots more often than not eventually find their way to her doorstep. She is always ready and willing to assist in these types of quests.
Mrs. Hayden was born in Westfield, March 20, 1902, the daughter of Harry and Cora (Phelps) Wyman. The family, which included her brother Harold, moved to Blandford in April, 1909 in the hope that Mrs. Wyman’s health would be improved with exposure to Blandford’s bracing air, but she died the following year, succumbing to tuberculosis.
The family moved into the house that sits at the corner of Birch Hill Road and Cobble Mountain Road, which is still standing today.
Mrs. Hayden started second grade in Blandford at the Center School. She graduated from Westfield High School, class of 1919, and then worked for H.B. Smith Company in Westfield for three years.
She married Ralph Hayden in 1922. He was born in the house in which Mrs. Hayden still lives on Hayden Road, and she says that that is the only house in Blandford still owned by the same family.
The next twenty years were lived by Mrs. Hayden, as she says, “as the farmer’s wife.” The family raised all they needed, and sold the surplus. She canned, preserved and made butter.
Mrs. Hayden recalls that her husband had an ice route in the summers, having cut ice in the winters from the pond, and that he also inherited a butter route from his father.
The Haydens had three children, the first child, a girl, died at four weeks of age. Jean, a second daughter, lives on Hayden Road near her mother, and son Dana, who lives in Springfield.
Mrs. Hayden was for many years the organist at the First Congregational Church in Blandford. She had taken piano lessons one winter from Bessie Chapin on Glasgow Road. After that, she studied the instrument by herself, and later learned how to play the organ.
She now is still an occasional substitute organist for the Russell Community Church.
Mrs. Hayden was assistant librarian for Frances E.T. deBraal in the mid forties. She became librarian in 1947, a post she held until 1972, when at age 70, Hampden County mandated she must retire.
Retirement has not held her back. She has, as she herself will tell you, “gotten into more things”…especially things for which she has no training. About the only thing she won’t tackle is her car. She can fix just about anything else around the house, though, whether it’s a sewing machine or lawnmower.
As a child, she says she didn’t like to play with dolls, but would “play horse” instead. And, she was, at an early age, fascinated with carpentry and its tools. Consequently, she is unusually self-sufficient and self-reliant.
During the 25 years that Mrs. Hayden was librarian there were many changes in the library facility. The porch was enclosed to become a children’s area. A bathroom was installed, no longer requiring hasty trips to a neighboring household. Heating was put in in 1959, and the library grew.
Mrs. Hayden’s accomplishments also included stencil-work, chair caning, splint seats, and artificial rush seats. She says she’s tapering off on that, but she has done a lot with crafts over the years. She created a Bicentennial afghan of her own design. She also gardens. She dowses, or does divining.
Mrs. Hayden uses her divining not to find water, but to find unmarked graves and old house locations. “I’m reconstructing history, that’s why it appeals to me.”
This year Mrs. Hayden is the Honorary Chairman of the 250th Anniversary Committee and is very active with this venture. She notes that 50 years ago, she was Clerk of the General Committee for the town’s Bicentennial Anniversary.
Wherever the opportunity arises, she is more than willing to share her accumulated knowledge and Blandford history. She has given talks on genealogy to area church groups and on Blandford history and “the olden days” to Blandford school children.
A truly remarkable woman is Blandford’s Doris Hayden.
From Stone Walls Magazine, Fall, 1985
The last 50 years or so, Mrs. Hayden has been engulfed with a major project, that of getting all of Blandford’s genealogy down on paper.
The project grew from a Town request in 1937 to have all the early town records typed. The then Town Clerk, Earl Beauregard, felt that the records ought to be available for anyone who wanted to read them. Reading would be easier if the books were typed.
At that time, Mrs. Hayden also set up a card file of births, deaths and marriages for easy reference. This has proved to be a valuable tool for succeeding Town Clerks, and has been kept up to date since that time.
Using that task as a jumping-off spot, Mrs. Hayden then became absorbed with early church records. She found that there was “so much material it really ought to be hooked together.”
Right now, there are sixteen volumes of material on Blandford Families in the Springfield Library, and copies are promised to the Westfield library, and the original will remain in the Porter Memorial Library in Blandford.
Mrs. Hayden refers to this as her “monument.” And it will be a monument as it represents almost a lifetime of work on her part.
When Joseph Carvalho at the Springfield Library was working on a history of area Black Families, he used information she had written tracing Black Family Histories from Blandford.
In order to accomplish this task she set for herself, Mrs. Hayden has tracked through woods to forgotten cemeteries, burial sites of families who were laid to rest on their own land, the Registry of Deeds and dusty probate records.
Weeding things out has been a learning experience for Mrs. Hayden, who obviously thrives on digging in the past. She has answered requests for family histories from “almost every state in the union,” and she has brought together descendants of former Blandford people who now live continents apart.
Requests for genealogical information that come to the Town Clerk or to the library are many times forwarded to Mrs. Hayden and she is always ready to oblige.
Many people who come to Blandford seeking their roots more often than not eventually find their way to her doorstep. She is always ready and willing to assist in these types of quests.
Mrs. Hayden was born in Westfield, March 20, 1902, the daughter of Harry and Cora (Phelps) Wyman. The family, which included her brother Harold, moved to Blandford in April, 1909 in the hope that Mrs. Wyman’s health would be improved with exposure to Blandford’s bracing air, but she died the following year, succumbing to tuberculosis.
The family moved into the house that sits at the corner of Birch Hill Road and Cobble Mountain Road, which is still standing today.
Mrs. Hayden started second grade in Blandford at the Center School. She graduated from Westfield High School, class of 1919, and then worked for H.B. Smith Company in Westfield for three years.
She married Ralph Hayden in 1922. He was born in the house in which Mrs. Hayden still lives on Hayden Road, and she says that that is the only house in Blandford still owned by the same family.
The next twenty years were lived by Mrs. Hayden, as she says, “as the farmer’s wife.” The family raised all they needed, and sold the surplus. She canned, preserved and made butter.
Mrs. Hayden recalls that her husband had an ice route in the summers, having cut ice in the winters from the pond, and that he also inherited a butter route from his father.
The Haydens had three children, the first child, a girl, died at four weeks of age. Jean, a second daughter, lives on Hayden Road near her mother, and son Dana, who lives in Springfield.
Mrs. Hayden was for many years the organist at the First Congregational Church in Blandford. She had taken piano lessons one winter from Bessie Chapin on Glasgow Road. After that, she studied the instrument by herself, and later learned how to play the organ.
She now is still an occasional substitute organist for the Russell Community Church.
Mrs. Hayden was assistant librarian for Frances E.T. deBraal in the mid forties. She became librarian in 1947, a post she held until 1972, when at age 70, Hampden County mandated she must retire.
Retirement has not held her back. She has, as she herself will tell you, “gotten into more things”…especially things for which she has no training. About the only thing she won’t tackle is her car. She can fix just about anything else around the house, though, whether it’s a sewing machine or lawnmower.
As a child, she says she didn’t like to play with dolls, but would “play horse” instead. And, she was, at an early age, fascinated with carpentry and its tools. Consequently, she is unusually self-sufficient and self-reliant.
During the 25 years that Mrs. Hayden was librarian there were many changes in the library facility. The porch was enclosed to become a children’s area. A bathroom was installed, no longer requiring hasty trips to a neighboring household. Heating was put in in 1959, and the library grew.
Mrs. Hayden’s accomplishments also included stencil-work, chair caning, splint seats, and artificial rush seats. She says she’s tapering off on that, but she has done a lot with crafts over the years. She created a Bicentennial afghan of her own design. She also gardens. She dowses, or does divining.
Mrs. Hayden uses her divining not to find water, but to find unmarked graves and old house locations. “I’m reconstructing history, that’s why it appeals to me.”
This year Mrs. Hayden is the Honorary Chairman of the 250th Anniversary Committee and is very active with this venture. She notes that 50 years ago, she was Clerk of the General Committee for the town’s Bicentennial Anniversary.
Wherever the opportunity arises, she is more than willing to share her accumulated knowledge and Blandford history. She has given talks on genealogy to area church groups and on Blandford history and “the olden days” to Blandford school children.
A truly remarkable woman is Blandford’s Doris Hayden.
From Stone Walls Magazine, Fall, 1985