Submitted by the 5th grade Community Problem Solving Team

Will Paul Revere’s Barn and Rolling Mill be torn down? Will the David Tilden House at Pequitside Farm continue to deteriorate?  These are the questions that motivated the 5th grade Community Problem Solving (CmPS) Team from the John F. Kennedy Elementary School to get involved in helping to preserve the heritage of Canton and its historical sites.  If you have attended a Canton event in the past few months, you have probably encountered our CmPS team handing out surveys, asking for signatures on a petition to list Paul Revere’s Barn and Rolling Mill on America’s Eleven Most Endangered Places in the United States, and distributing information about Canton’s history as well as membership applications to the Canton Historical Society and the Friends of the Little Red House. Our team is composed of Theo Bollenbach, Ben Cohen, Bryan Healey and Aidas Jakubenas.

Our 5th grade CmPS team is planning many activities to focus attention on Canton’s history and historical sites.  We are in the midst of planning several author nights at the Canton Public Library featuring local Canton historical authors.  Our first author night, in the Community Room at the Canton Public Library, is on Thursday, March 3 at 7:00 p.m. It features George Comeau, Canton historian and author. He will be discussing his book titled Postcard History Series: Canton. Please join us for an entertaining evening of pictures and stories about Canton’s history.

We are also creating a Canton historical trail map which will include the David Tilden House, the Revere Barn and Rolling Mill as well as the Canton Viaduct, the Blue Hills Weather Observatory, the Canton Historical Society, the Bradley Estate, and the Gridley School to name a few.  This trail map will be available in hard copy and as an interactive web version.  A town wide Amazing Race style scavenger hunt is planned for the spring, where teams of up to four people each will visit each of Canton’s historic sites and perform tasks related to each site’s history.  Many other activities are also in the planning stages.

The ultimate goal of our team is to get people excited about preserving Canton’s history for future generations. Historical sites that are lost today can never be replaced tomorrow. For more information about our project, please email us at 5gcantoncmps@gmail.com.