The Ghost Town of Grafton

By Margaret Joy Tibbetts

The Town of Grafton surrendered its charter in 1919, the year in which I was born. The only buildings in Grafton which I can remember at all belonged to Joe Chapman, who stayed on after the other Grafton citizens moved away. I do remember, however, going through Grafton when I was about five years old and our family accompanied my father (Dr. Raymond R. Tibbetts) on a trip to Upton to see Cedric Judkins. In those days Upton was a substantial journey with a particularly difficult hill just as you approached the town. We stopped for a picnic on the way back before we reached the Notch. The Brown Company had just recently begun the process of reforestation and there were long thick rows of little evergreens, ranging from about three to nine inches high. My father and mother, who had grown up in nineteenth century rural Maine where the forests seemed limitless, could hardly believe that anyone would plant trees, and exclaimed at the Brown Company’s foresightedness. Read more ->