This is supplemental information for the article on 48 Rockview Street and the Fisher Bang Family: 

The Fisher Ancestors and Mansfield, MA

Joy Fisher’s paternal family arrived in the New World in 1620 when ancestor Peter Browne was a passenger in the Mayflower. Browne was born in Dorking, Surrey, England on January 26, 1594. It is assumed that he heard about the proposed Mayflower voyage from his association with the Mullins family, who also sailed in the Mayflower. Browne was one of the forty-one signers of the Mayflower Compact.

Browne’s name also appears on the list of Plymouth parcel locations that was created in 1620 by William Bradford, the Governor of the Plymouth Colony. Browne’s home site is marked by a wooden plaque on Leyden Street in Plymouth: “Site of one of the houses built in 1621. Seven dwelling houses were built the first year in addition to the one occupied by the governor. This lot was assigned to Peter Brown.” An oak-and-birch tankard that is believed to be Browne’s is also on display at the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth.

Joy’s more recent heritage derives from the prominent Fisher-Richardson family of Mansfield, Massachusetts. They were one of the founding families of the town, and remained active members of the community through the 20th century. 

The Fisher-Richardson house, located at 354 Willow Street, Mansfield, is the family’s ancestral home and is known to be one of the oldest houses in Mansfield (figures 31 and 32). The pre-Revolutionary War farmhouse house was built sometime between 1743 and 1751 by Ebenezer Wellman, with an addition added in 1800.  Fisher family ancestors assumed ownership of the Willow Street home in 1763 when Mary White, the daughter of Mansfield’s (or Norton North Precinct, at the time) first minister, Reverend Ebenezer White, inherited the house and moved in with her husband, Lemuel Fisher.

The Richardson name of the house comes from Ira Richardson, who married Evelina B. Fisher, the granddaughter of Mary and Lemuel Fisher, in 1833. Ira and Evelina moved into the Willow Street house shortly after their marriage. The house was continuously owned and occupied by the Fisher-Richardson family until 1922, when Martha Richardson (a daughter of Ira and Evelina), who had lived in the house her entire life, suffered a stroke, and moved into her cousin Maude Fisher Brooks’ home around the corner. It was at that time that the house was closed. In 1929, after Martha died, the house was bequeathed to her niece (Ira and Evelina’s Granddaughter), Emma (Richardson) Frost.  By 1930, the unoccupied house was in disrepair. The owner of the house, Emma Frost, met with William Sumner Appleton, the founder of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England) and Eugene Dow of the Society, and together they inspected the house. The organization felt the house was worth restoring and offered to purchase and maintain the home if Miss Frost would restore it first. 

Ultimately, Miss Frost deeded the Fisher-Richardson House to the Town of Mansfield which would assume the cost of restoration. The town restored the dilapidated house and turned it into a museum, which today is operated by the Mansfield Historical Society. The house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. Joy Fisher visited the Fisher-Richardson House frequently as a child when she stayed with her grandmother in Mansfield. Joy’s bedroom furniture comes from the Fisher-Richardson House. She inherited it from her Uncle Malcom Fisher, who inherited it from Emma Frost’s brother. 

Adjacent to the house museum is Fisher Lane. The former cow path was named Fisher Lane when houses were built on it in the 1950s or ‘60s, houses that joined the existing old Fisher family houses on the street. When Joy was a child, there were three houses on the street: her grandparents’ house at 25 Fisher Lane (which her great-grandfather built around 1871 and where her uncle Malcolm and aunt Dee Dee Fisher later lived), the Horton family’s house, and cousin Maude Fisher Brooks’s home at 16 Judy Lane, which sits at the edge of the Great Woods, after Fisher Lane curves into Judy Lane. 

Lying half in Norton and half in Mansfield, the Great Woods is a forest that was owned by private individuals for over 200 years. Around 150 acres of the Great Woods was owned by the Fisher family. A 1968 inventory of real estate for Joy’s grandmother, Edith G. (Tweedy) Fisher, indicates that she owned one-half interest in undeveloped woodland and abandoned meadows situated off the southerly side of Willow Street, containing approximately 97 acres. Part of the Fishers’ Great Woods land was known in old deeds as “Cobbler’s Corner.” As the story goes, a member of Captain Miles Standish’s land surveying party cobbled his shoes there in 1640.

Joy states: “I can remember going to the Great Woods. This was even before we thought of it as the Great Woods. We would go for a walk in the woods after Thanksgiving dinner, or something. You would go down this narrow path, and there was this spring and there was this was this rickety bridge across it. [We didn’t think of it as “our” land], we just thought of it as a walk in the woods.”

Between 1978 and 1984, the town of Mansfield purchased most of the Fisher family’s Great Woods land from Joy and other members of her family. This included a portion of the Rumford River as well as the historic Cobbler’s Corner. The family wanted to sell the property to Mansfield to ensure that it would be conserved rather than be developed. An editorial from August 4, 1983, in the Mansfield News, stated that the Fisher land was “an invaluable sanctuary for birds, mammals, fish and plants” and that “It is a preservation of undeveloped open space so abundant in wildlife some of the trees have gone unscathed for more than 200 years.” The article stated that “new trails will eventually be cut and marked and the banks of the river, beautified, thus making it more accessible to residents” (Mansfield News, 1983). Today, one trail is named the “Fisher Trail.” Another article indicated that plans were being made in all the schools in the town to incorporate the Great Woods into science and social studies curriculums; the town envisioned school children visiting the woods to study the environment.  Within the town is also the Fisher Richardson Burial Ground on Geneva Street, where Joy’s ancestors are buried. As stated on the sign at the site, “This is the resting place of many of those who lived in the family’s home on Willow Street.” The cemetery is now owned by the town of Mansfield. Joy Fisher passed away on January 5, 2023. Joy was the last living member of the Fisher family. 

Dana Walker Fisher, Sr. and Edith George (Tweedy) Fisher

Joy Fisher’s paternal grandfather, Dana Walker Fisher, Sr., was born on June 15, 1871, in Mansfield, Massachusetts to David Fisher, a farmer, and Deborah White (Walker) Fisher (figure 33). Dana Sr. was the youngest of three children; his siblings were Harry Russell and George Belmont. 

The 1880 U.S. Census shows that at age eight, Dana Sr. lived in Mansfield next door to his extended family, who resided in at least five adjacent houses. In those adjacent houses lived George, Lucy, and Helen Fisher; Mary Fisher; Ira Richardson and his daughter Martha Richardson (at the Fisher-Richardson House); George, Clara B., Clara A., George, and William Fiske; and Fanny, Fanny R., Sanford, and Avis Morse. The occupations of the neighboring family members were farmers, a miller at a grist mill, workers at a straw shop, a jeweler, workers in a jewelry shop, and wives and daughters who were keeping house.  Dana Sr. graduated from Mansfield High School in 1887 where he served on the graduating committee.

Dana Sr. married Edith George Tweedy (figure 34) in Mansfield on October 5, 1898. Both were working as hatters at the time, possibly in jobs affiliated with the straw shop where Dana Sr.’s extended family worked. The 1900 U.S. Census states that Dana Sr. and Edith were working at a hat factory, Dana as a clerk and Edith as an “overseer.” The National Register nomination for the Fisher-Richardson House puts the family’s business at the time into historical context: “During the early nineteenth century, the town was a center for the production of straw braid hats, an endeavor that continued as an important component of the town's economy into the early years of the twentieth century” (National Register of Historic Place Nomination, Section 8, Page 1). 

By 1899, Dana Sr. was also serving as constable for Mansfield, as indicated in a Boston Globe article that year. Joy’s paternal grandmother, Edith George (Tweedy) Fisher, was born on September 21, 1874, in Mansfield, to Oliver J. Tweedy and Hannah Louisa (Grover) Tweedy. She was one of four children. Her siblings were Eliza Ophelia (Tweedy) Day, Charles Albert Tweedy, and Helen Irene Tweedy.  Dana Sr. and Edith lived in Mansfield until 1900, at which time they moved to 17 Akron Street in Boston.