Recently I was able to buy the "Old Homes of South Hadley" book from an online bookseller. This book was published in 1976 by the South Hadley Historical Society and I'm sure it's out of print. It features text and black and white photographs (printed onto cream toned paper)of most if not all of the homes of South Hadley, including addresses and original owners.

I live in California and won't be going to South Hadley again any time soon. The book shows the Samuel Preston house at 129 College Street. Does anyone know if that house is still there? I tried to find it on Google Maps, but it looks like it isn't there.

The Heman Downing house at 135 College Street is also pictured. It looks like this house is still there, or was when Google Maps drove by. Does anyone know anything more about the Heman Downing house?

Heman Downing couldn't have owned it long. He was born in 1810 and left for Illinois (Bureau County first, then Carroll County) in 1835. The text in the book states that Jonathan Dwight sold it to Heman Downing in 1832, and Heman bought a small strip of land to the north side from Samuel Preston, who was his uncle (it doesn't say that). DOes anyone know anything about Heman Downing's adult life in South Hadley? I don't show him marrying until he married Rachel Holbrook in Princeton, Bureau County around 1836. But if he brought property in 1832, at the age of 22, I have to wonder if he was also married.

This book doesn't have an index, and I have only skimmed through it, but I couldn't find any photos that look like Abner Downing's home. This house was still standing in 1916, and probably in the early 1950s. We were by it in the early 1950s and maybe even the mid-50s. I have a photo of it somewhere which I can try to dredge up. I don't have an address and only remember it being on a main street of South Hadley. But I was a child at the time.

I am a direct descendant of Samuel Preston (born 1790), who also left South Hadley for Bureau County, Illinois in 1835 and moved to Carroll County, Illinois in 1836. His son Samuel Preston (born in 1818) married Sarah Ann Garrett and one of their daughters was Ellen Eliza Preston. Samuel Preston's sister, Emerancia Preston, married Abner Downing; they were the parents of Heman and Sumner Downing, among others. Sumner Downing's son Harvey Loomer Downing married Ellen Eliza Preston in Carroll County, Illinois. Harvey Loomer Downing and Ellen Eliza Preston were my great-grandparents.

Alice Horner