Many of the ideas for these articles come from newspaper clippings in the museum archives. Unfortunately, more than 2/3rds of them are missing their dates. However, with a certain amount of research, it is sometimes possible to come up with an approximate time frame. For this article I determined that J.C. Albert Langevin was Acushnet’s police chief in the 1940’s and passed away in 1952. Also, when I went to take a picture for this article, I saw that the current bridge was built in 1959. All of this gave me an approximate time period in which the story took place.
That said, the events in the newspaper article probably took place one early morning in the mid to late 1940’s at the Old Town Bridge as it crosses Main St. just past the New Bedford/Acushnet line. The bridge at that time had a stonewall railing on each side. The railing height began at 11 inches, rose to 3 feet and then went down to 11 inches. (today’s bridge has heavy concrete railings that go straight across and are at least 5 feet high).
So very early one morning, two young men, Robert Doane and Paul Gibbs, both from Marion Rd. in Rochester were returning from a dance in New Bedford. Robert had borrowed a car, a cabriolet, from Frederick H. Wood, who also lived on Marion Rd. As Robert was driving east on Main St. and approaching the bridge, the front tire blew out. The car swerved to the right and started to go up the south railing. As the newspaper article says, “the car continued its mad plunge” until it hit a telephone pole cable which caused the front of the car to swerve around. This prevented the car from plunging 25 ft. into the shallow river below. The heavy car then came to a stop resting “dead center” on the bridge railing with all four of its tires off the pavement.
As Robert Doane sat behind the wheel, no doubt stunned that they were still upright, his passenger, Paul Gibbs, who had been asleep, woke up and unaware of what had just happened opened his door to exit the car. He stopped “paralyzed” by the 25 ft. drop that confronted him. As Police Chief Langevin said it was nothing short of a miracle that neither young man was injured.
Unfortunately, Wood’s car was not so fortunate. Both the front end and undercarriage were severely damaged. After daybreak, a tow truck from a local garage was sent to the scene, but it too was damaged trying to get the car down off the railing. A second tow truck had to be sent for before the crash scene could be cleared.
On another note, I noticed an historic marker while taking a picture of the bridge. It marks a Revolutionary war engagement from Sept.5, 1778, in which Lieutenant Jonathan Metcalf became the only American officer to lose his life in the British invasion of New Bedford. He was part of a Massachusetts State Artillery Company defending the area against invading British soldiers. This was part of the same campaign in which our Abraham Holmes of Rochester was involved. It just goes to show that you don’t have to go far in our area to find connections to our colonial and revolutionary history.
By Connie Eshbach
