Then and Now: Another quiet day in Freedom Village

It was a pleasant afternoon in the 1890s when a photographer propped his camera in the middle of the Cushing Corner Road to capture the rustic peace of Freedom Village. Although he probably did not know it, he was choosing a period of slow but certain transition for the town’s center of business activity.

Everything within range of his lens served a commercial purpose in the late ’90s. At the extreme left stood the latest version of Elias Towle’s store. Elias Towle the elder, who lived in a big house at the terminus of Moulton Road, had established a general store beside the house at least by the 1850s, and he rented space in it to Charles Moulton for a harness shop. Elias died in 1881, leaving the entire complex to his son, Elias I. Towle, who had probably already renovated or rebuilt the building with the mansard roof so popular in the 1870s. In the 1890s, the store was also the location of Freedom’s post office.