Main Street in the Eighteen Seventies and Eighties & A Businessman's Reminiscences of Fifty Years

Thomas R. Burrell was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, on September 18, 1861, the third of the seven children of John Bates Burrell (1826-1883), a harness-maker, and the former Elizabeth Fales Richmond (1828-1919). In time, Thomas would interact with many of Fall River's leading industrialists and other key players in the business and civic communities on a near-daily basis, gaining a unique personal insight into the prodigious business acumen possessed by some of the city's grandees, as well as their personalities, peculiarities, and, in some cases, their peccadillos. So, too, did he know and interact with the shopkeeper, the politician, the clergy, and the common man-on-the-street.Perhaps unknowingly, much of this interaction was seared into his extraordinary memory, allowing him decades later to conjure up "out of the distant past" a "flood of memories ... grasping one here and there as they whirled through his] mind." As these scenes played out in thought, as they once had in reality, and "slowly ... approached and passed from his] vision," they flowed, ink-like, to his descriptive pen as he put thought to paper.Burrell left a legacy of both family and history, the latter of which he documented in compelling prose; clearly, he wrote as he spoke. Despite the fact that he once stated, "Yesterday is gone, tomorrow never was, today is today," he nevertheless had the foresight to document vivid accounts of his collective yesterdays. These reminiscences, presented in two essays, transport us back to a Fall River of another time.