Irene Meaney of Avon, Massachusetts, found a time capsule during renovations to her 1850 home: an original September 10, 1897 issue of the Brockton Daily Enterprise. She donated the newspaper to the Mayflower Descendants Museum, preserving a remarkable glimpse into a single day of life in regional Massachusetts more than 125 years ago.

A Day in Massachusetts, Preserved

The newspaper was published in Brockton, Massachusetts, in Plymouth County—approximately 24 driving miles south of Boston and about 28 driving miles northwest of Plymouth. Its location places Brockton within a region deeply connected to the continuing history of southeastern Massachusetts.

By 1897, Brockton was a growing industrial city, particularly associated with shoe manufacturing. A surviving newspaper provides a view beyond broad historical narratives and into the details of daily life: local businesses and advertisements, community events, politics, entertainment, sales, employment, deaths, public notices, and national news as it reached local readers.

This is what people in and around Brockton were actually reading on September 10, 1897.

The Fuller Family and the Enterprise

The history of the newspaper itself adds another layer to the story.

Albert H. Fuller (1848–1926) and S. Heath Rich established the Brockton Enterprise in 1879. The weekly Enterprise first appeared that July, and in January 1880 it became Brockton’s first daily newspaper. Fuller managed the publishing and business side of the paper, while Rich directed its news and editorial operations. Their association with the newspaper continued for more than four decades.

The beginnings were remarkably modest. A later history of the region records that during the newspaper’s earliest months, its type was set by hand on the second floor of a small building on Centre Street and the completed forms were carried by wheelbarrow to another newspaper’s press for printing. The Enterprise eventually acquired its own press and grew alongside the city.

By the time this Museum copy was printed in 1897, the Enterprise was no longer an experiment. It was an established daily newspaper serving a rapidly developing Massachusetts community.

A Direct Paternal Line to the Mayflower

Albert H. Fuller also carried a much older Massachusetts family history.

The Mayflower Descendants Museum’s genealogical research identifies Fuller as a direct paternal-line descendant of Mayflower passenger Dr. Samuel Fuller, meaning the line descends from father to son through successive generations of the Fuller family.

Dr. Samuel Fuller arrived aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and became the physician and surgeon of Plymouth Colony. William Bradford later remembered Fuller for providing medical assistance during the devastating 1633 epidemic before Fuller himself died that year.

Nearly three centuries later, another Fuller was helping shape civic life in the same region—not through medicine, but through journalism.

A Newspaper Becomes a Family Legacy

The Fuller association with the Enterprise did not end with Albert H. Fuller. His son Charles L. Fuller succeeded him in the business, extending the family’s involvement into another generation.

That connection continued again. When Albert Walker Fuller died in 1969, the Congressional Record described him as the newspaper’s co-publisher and editor-in-chief and identified him as the third generation of Fuller publishers, following the tradition begun by his grandfather Albert H. Fuller.

For the Mayflower Descendants Museum, Irene Meaney’s time capsule preserves two histories at once: a snapshot of Massachusetts life on September 10, 1897, and evidence of how one Mayflower family continued to participate in the civic and cultural life of Massachusetts generations after Plymouth Colony.

Holdings of the Mayflower Descendants Museum. Donated by Irene Meaney of Avon, Massachusetts.

Sources and Further Reading

History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable Counties, Massachusetts, Vol. III (1928)
Details the establishment of the Enterprise, the Fuller–Rich partnership, their respective roles, and Charles L. Fuller’s succession.
Read the historical account

History of Plymouth County, Massachusetts (1884)
A nineteenth-century history recording Albert H. Fuller’s establishment of the Brockton Weekly Enterprise in 1879 and the creation of the daily paper in 1880.
Read the historical account

History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable Counties — Albert H. Fuller Biography
Includes the account of the early Enterprise being typeset by hand and its forms transported by wheelbarrow for printing.
Read more about Albert H. Fuller and the early Enterprise

New England Historic Genealogical Society / American Ancestors — Samuel Fuller Biography
Background on Mayflower passenger Dr. Samuel Fuller and his role as physician and surgeon in Plymouth Colony.
Read the Samuel Fuller biography

General Society of Mayflower Descendants — Passenger Profiles
Resources concerning Mayflower passengers and their descendants.
Explore the Mayflower passenger profiles

United States Congressional Record, February 17, 1969
Includes the tribute to Albert Walker Fuller identifying him as the third generation of Fuller publishers associated with the Enterprise.
Read the Congressional Record