Fowler Street
From Worcester Activist wiki
“Along the western boundary of the town, extends a chain of rounded highlands, the seat of Indian villages of yore, called by the natives “Tatesset,’ and now known as Tatnuck..”
So writes Lincoln in his “History of Worcester.”
The hills vary in height and reach their rise of 1011 feet on, or Parker Hill, at the Leicester border.
On this peak now crisscross the modern runways of Worcester Municipal Airport.
The exact site of Worcester’s second largest tribe of Nipmuck Indians has never been established. It probably was on this hill.
The tribe was smaller than that on Pakachoag Hill, which numbered about 100. The leader was Sagamore Solomon, alias Woonaskochu. He was converted to Christianity by Rev. John John Eliot, apostle of the Indians. Fowler street, named in 1851, which winds up sharply to the crest of the hill from Mill street, unquestionably was once and Indian path. When the white men came, Ezekiel Fowler laid out a farm.
He is listed as residing on the street in 1765 on Caleb A. Wall’s map of Worcester, showing oldest roads and location of the earliest settlers. Of Ezekiel little is known. When he died, the Massachusetts Spy on Sept. 22, 1841, took note: “In this town (near Leicester), Sept. 10, Ezekiel Fowler, a member of the Society of Friends, aged 86 years and 9 months.” Time passed. The hill was blanched by the sun in Summer-frozen to its ledges in Winter. When Battery B was first organized in May 1869 with two guns and a first lieutenant as part of the militia, it began to use the height for practice and occasional encampment.
The hill became known as Battery B farm. It was purchased from the state with adjoining land owned by the heirs of Horace S. Pike and Parker S. Young for the airport.
Before the planes came down, the contractors took out more than a million and a quarter yards of earth and eighty thousand yards of ledge; toppled hemlocks and ancient elms where they stood. Now the teletypes chatter, the wind sock veers and aluminum twin engine transports fly seemingly straight until the height appears under the landing gear.
Passengers step out with a surprised look on their faces, one hour from New York.
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
