About BC
Blackstone is my adopted home town, but it took five years, from 1981 to 1986 for me to see Blackstone as my home. At first, like many young people here, Blackstone was only a stepping stone, and I spent my days looking for another place that I could call home. My wife, Matilda Powell, grew up here, and this picture (below) captures her deep roots in this soil. But I was known as Matilda’s husband, and I feared that if I died here that would be the only thing on my tombstone. 
It wasn’t until I got a job as feature writer for the Courier-Record that I bonded with Blackstone and stopped looking for what’s next. This is a turning point in anyone’s life when he or she looks at the ground they are standing on and decided to plant their life in this spot. Nothing grows when planted in tomorrow.
I left the courier in 1994 and since then have built a photography business here, but I missed my writing connection with the town. So when I began to transcribe my old Courier features for my website, thinking that 20 years have passed and a lot of history was buried in these old stories, I got the story bug again and decided to launch this website to catch the current wave of Blackstone restoration in the Downtown Blackstone initiative. There is an excitement in the air and there are so many new stories to tell.
This site is an interactive place where Blackstonians can contribute to the preservation of their own history. Our attics are full of family photographs whose names and stories have been lost to time. Grandchildren say when they empty the attic and its trunks of memories for the last yard sale, “Grandma told me who this was but darn if I haven’t forgotten.”
We can restore our old buildings—and fortunately Blackstone has keep its Main Street intact—but without the stories the buildings are just facades with no content. What stores were in this building? Who built it? What was Main Street like when it was new? Who are the people who walked these streets before me? Will I be remembered?
In our modern fast paced society we are starved for continuity. In urban areas the past becomes today’s parking lot and in ten years you can’t recognize where you have been. But in Blackstone, time moves slowly and without interruptions, and that’s what people are looking for today: something to hold onto and a place where people know your name.
So I hope you catch the excitement I have about Blackstone Chronicles and help me collect the pictures and stories that need to be saved and displayed. I’ll be writing features about Main Street and the people of Blackstone, but you are the currators of the town’s past, so email your findings to me, either a picture with its story, or if you don’t know the story maybe someone else does, and your memories of earlier times in Blackstone.
Ed Conley, Editor
To submit content for Blackstone Chronicles attach Word documents and jpeg pictures to: editor@blackstonechronicles.com