Group seeks to bring chestnut back from blight

This interests me as my grandmother, who lived in Dunstable, Massachusetts, describes in her memoir, written about 1958, what it was like to watch the chestnut trees all die around 1900
"The hill not far from us on the south was the well-named Chestnut Hill, and in most of my early years the nuts were abundant. Father loved to eat them, and also to gather them, so we had them raw, boiled and roasted. There were about a dozen big branching trees of this kind in the open land in Uncle Dexter’s Fletcher pasture where we went with Alice and Arthur. Also, there were two nice ones in John Parkhurst’s pasture on our way to school. It did seem such a pity to have that European blight destroy practically all of them. Some shoots still do sprout up, but they die soon after. The varieties being tried out in their place are not very successful, so far as I know. There was a great demand for chestnut ties on early railroads because they lasted so well. How sad it has been for me to watch the huge old chestnut trees of Middlesex County slowly die, but even yet there are a few of the crumbling trunks still standing. "