A slice of life in 1930s Newtown, shared by 90-year-old Harriet Lockwood Gray:
“My father, Leslie Clyde Lockwood, was born in Newtown Square and then moved to a farm managed by his father and lived there until he went into the Navy and got married. He worked very hard on the farm during the week and after school, and his social life consisted of the many friends and relatives they saw, especially on Sundays after church. The mode of transportation when he was young was horse and buggy or horseback riding.
Our family spent many hours with our cousins in Newtown Square, most Sunday afternoons, with picnics beside a creek so that we could take a swim when the weather was nice. When at church, and we would meet some new acquaintances, we would caution them to be very careful not to talk against anyone because they could be a relative of ours!
Newtown Square was very rural. My cousins went to school in a building quite like ours, but stayed there until at least 7th grade before they moved to another building where their desks were double with two pupils to a desk. My cousin Eleanor says that when she visited my school, she remembered we had physical ed class and home economics and she envied me. In 1939, there were 33 that graduated in her class.
However, even though Newtown Square consisted of mostly farms and small industry, it did have trolley service that went through the town and continued to Philadelphia. The trolley took passengers but also carried mail. The motorman would throw a big bag of mail at certain stops to be picked up at different small towns. The stores in the early years consisted of a hardware store, a meat market, a drug store and a hotel.
Everything is different now. The trolley cars are now gone. The hotel was ripped down years ago. The two-lane road going from our home to Newtown Square has been a four-lane highway for many years. We used to drive to our church [from Llanerch – ed.] in about 10 minutes when we were young. Now, I have counted 25 traffic lights and the trip is very slow and time-consuming. Where my cousin graduated with only 33, her daughter had nearly 700 that graduated from her class less than 25 years later.
Our cousins are now scattered from Florida to Canada. Where we had such a good time growing up with them. Our children do not even know their relatives. A whole different world and who is to say, which is better?”
For more history on Newtown Square, Delaware County, and membership information, please visit our website at: https://nshistory.org/