𝐁𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒
𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐁𝐞𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐏𝐨𝐧𝐝
February 9, 2024 - Perhaps no other location in Middleborough is as steeped in legend as Nevertouch Pond.
This
small body of fresh water measures about 450 feet by 300 feet, and is shaped roughly like an oval whose surface area covers an area of about two acres. The pond is hemmed in on three sides by trees, with only its northern shore being relatively open and close to residential development on Center Street. A short dirt path leading west of Lane Street brings you to a small sandy shore area, which provides the only proper access to the pond. Dense aquatic vegetation has grown thickly just about all the rest of the way around the pond. Not far from the shore, the bottom drops away into an unfathomable darkness, whose mysterious depths have for long been shrouded in myth.
It seems that the pond has always been known for its depth. The earliest known record of the pond is found on copies of old documents that would have originated around the year 1664. In a hand-drawn interpretation of the Little Lotmen’s Purchase, we find the words “deep pond” over the small oval-shaped body of water lying near the middle of the land in question. In all likelihood, the pond was also known to the Nemasket Indians who once lived here; it is interesting to speculate about what they thought about it.
There are two main legends associated with the pond, which have been told for generations in the West Side neighborhood of Middleborough. The first is that the pond is called Nevertouch because it is either dangerous, or bottomless (or both). It is reported to have an underwater ledge on the west side, which drops off precipitously into an abyss whose true depths remain unknown. It is also said to have a soft, sandy bottom on one side, akin to quicksand, which is very treacherous--it grabs you, and sucks you down to your doom. It’s also said that it’s a spring-fed pond, whose source lies deep beneath its placid surface.
The other main legend imparts that long ago, a horse-drawn carriage, or a buggy, or a team of oxen cutting the ice, fell through the frozen surface one winter. Struggle as they did, they could not be saved, and the team was lost to Nevertouch. One common feature is that they were sucked down into the sand, and disappeared below, never to be found--(presumably, they’re still down there, somewhere.) There is a reference in 1926 to two horses becoming mired in a ditch near the pond, but they were dug out unhurt.
An anecdote from 1854 has survived, telling of two men who sounded the pond with 200 feet of rope and a 56-pound rock. They rowed out in a rowboat and took their measurements. “They were told that a ten foot line would do to sound the pond with, in the deepest place, by someone at work nearby.” The article goes on to report that they came away very disappointed in what they found. This would seem to suggest that, despite everything, the pond is not really very deep at all (less than 10 feet by this account.) On the other hand, this anonymous article perhaps lacks credibility. After all, it offers neither names nor dates nor measurements.
For a long time, the pond was relatively secluded. There are some references to it being used as a watering hole for cattle--which seems entirely possible. We know that it had assumed the name Nevertouch by the year 1795, because it is so labeled on a map of Middleborough. However, nobody lived very close to it at the time. The first house to be built near the pond was that of Isaac Lane, who came and made his home on the north side of the pond. By the 1870s, this property passed to the LeBaron family.
John Baylies LeBaron (1845-1918) lived here, and operated both a saw mill and an ice house on the Lane Street side of the pond, beginning a long phase of industrial work here. LeBaron’s lumber and ice facilities here were considerable, but they were not his only successful ventures. LeBaron also owned and operated two steam-powered passenger craft which operated on the Nemasket River for about twenty years, the Pioneer (1877) and the Assawompsett (1879). It may seem hard to believe, but LeBaron actually built both of these handsome craft here in his workyard alongside Nevertouch Pond. The first of them was built over the summer of 1877. LeBaron had its worthiness tested by floating it there in the pond prior to having it hauled about a mile to the east, where it was deposited in the Nemasket River. It must have been quite a spectacle to see this large vessel lugged through the heart of downtown Middleborough.
There used to be a pleasant grove of trees here, on the Lane Street side of the pond. LeBaron hosted a clam bake here in 1885, which was much celebrated and long remembered in the Odd Fellows community. In 1907, it was written about this place, as it had been fifty years prior--which would have been 1857. “Nevertouch Pond was very nearly surrounded by forest, so that just a drinking place for cattle was visible back of the Lane house. On the east side of the pond was a grove of large pine trees, but which showed evidence of having once been a corn field many years before.”
J.B. LeBaron made a lot of money harvesting ice from Nevertouch Pond for many years. In 1895, the Gazette reported that he was harvesting excellent-quality ice from here. At the same time, he was also harvesting ice from a place called Clark’s Spring, which was once located not far from the present-day location of McDonald’s, near the highway. John and his crew would cut and harvest the ice in the dead of winter, when it was cold enough for it to freeze solid and thick enough to allow for the passage of heavy horses and equipment. The ice would then be stored in the adjacent ice house all throughout the year, where it was well insulated. In this way, it would keep frozen, even in the height of summer, allowing the people of Middleborough to enjoy the benefits of frozen ice all year round. Even after a catastrophic fire at the ice house in 1908, LeBaron rebuilt, and carried on with his business. In fact, he went on to report during the winter of 1912 that the ice was the best he had seen and harvested in thirty years. The Gazette reported a thickness of 12 inches, and an excellent, crystal-clear quality. Some years, he harvested between 2,000 and 3,000 tons of ice between Nevertouch Pond and Clark’s Springs.
LeBaron died in 1918, though for a time the ice business was continued at Nevertouch by other parties. However, it ultimately ceased because the quality of the ice came to be compromised. It seems that the cesspools of a number of local houses began running off into the pond, tainting what had once been a relatively clean, and somewhat clear, body of water.
The neighborhood around Nevertouch Pond grew up a lot in the last decades of the 1800s. Correspondingly, it came to be accessed more regularly by the people who came to live close by, and especially so by the young pupils who attended school at the aptly named West Side School. Nevertouch provided the growing population with a splendid source of recreation any time of the year. Ice skating was very popular in the cold seasons, (when it wasn’t prevented by the industrial-scale harvesting of the ice by J.B. LeBaron, that is.) In the warmer seasons, it was fished and canoed by young and old alike. However, in association with his name, swimming seems to have always been discouraged. As far back as extant human memory goes, locals recall being told as children, never swim in Nevertouch Pond!
In the winter of 1906, young Fred Wholey, of West Street, very nearly lost his life while skating after school with some of his friends. The middle of the pond was hollow, and he slid into the frigid waters at the center. However, quick thinking by his friends saved his life, and he was quickly pulled out. He survived. So did the next boy who fell through the ice two years later. They were lucky. Not everybody who suffered an accident there would fare as well.
The first known modern recorded tragedy at Nevertouch Pond did not involve ice--or even the pond itself, directly. During the spring of 1912, 8 year-old Gladys Benns was killed in an industrial accident at LeBaron’s saw mill on her way home from school. Her clothes became entangled in the workings of the machinery, and she lost her life as a result. Once aware of the incident, the men at work immediately stopped the machinery, but not in time to do Gladys much good.
The next tragedy came in 1918, when two young boys drowned in the pond. They had been on their way home from school one Friday afternoon, when they fell through some thin ice near the shore. Despite frantic efforts by numerous parties, neither boy survived.
There were further close-calls in 1924 and 1927. Then, later in the fall of 1927, came another drowning of a different nature--this one apparently a suicide. The story was rather sensational at the time, and made for front page news in the Middleborough Gazette for two consecutive weeks. A 31-year-old man named Charles Giovanetti had become enamored with a married woman, Mrs. Agnes Beal. He sent her love letters, in one of which he threatened to attack her, and then do away with himself, if she didn’t run away with him. That September, he apparently intended to make good on his claim. He went to her home, about 9:ooam that morning, but first came upon her 14 year-old daughter, who was outside on her way to school, who he attacked with a knife. The girl’s screams called the attention of her grandmother, who came out of the house to assist, and who was also stabbed. After this heinous attack, Charles took off on foot and disappeared into the woods. Fortunately, neither injured party was mortally wounded, and both made a full recovery. Giovanetti became the subject of a major search effort over the following several days. Units of both state and local police combed the area for Giovanetti, but never found him. For a time it was thought that he might have escaped to Rhode Island. Despite all their efforts, it was actually two local 15 year-old boys who found Giovanetti--floating in Nevertouch Pond, the following Sunday night. It was ascertained that the body had been in the water for several days prior to being found, and so the police determined that he had deliberately taken his own life right after the stabbing incident. They further hypothesized that he had done so by jumping from an ice chute into “fifty feet of water.”
The area around the pond was also, for a time, the scene of some social activity. In the 1920s, a number of local West Side men founded the Nevertouch Club, which operated on West End Avenue. They received a charter on April 25, 1924, and got together on occasion for conversation and dinner. It is known to have included at least about twenty men, and was established enough to have a president, vice president, secretary, treasure, and a board of directors. Oyster suppers were especially popular here.
The last known life claimed by Nevertouch Pond was lost in 1941. Two young boys, it is said, skipped school to go fishing that spring. They seem to have cobbled together a 4-foot-long skiff for this purpose. Tragically, the craft turned over, spilling the two of them into the pond. 7 year-old George Conant drowned, but his 9 year-old friend Nicholas Martin was pulled alive from the water and resuscitated by the fire department’s inhalator.
In 1973, Lyman Butler reflected in a short piece for the Middleborough Gazette, on the origins of the name Nevertouch Pond. “The name Nevertouch didn’t have anything to do with not touching the ice or water. The pond got its name for the deepness of the water (and of mud) which was said to be bottomless. The story has been told that a team of oxen were working on the ice one winter when they broke through the ice and could never be located. Many have claimed to have probed with long poles and could never touch bottom. Hence, the name Nevertouch.” This story with the oxen could be at the heart of the ‘horse-and-buggy’ legend that many of us have heard of over the years.
There was a major conflagration nearby on Sumner Avenue a year later, in 1974. A very large abandoned building, the former George E. Keith shoe factory, lit up the night-time sky for miles around, causing quite a memorable sensation for those who lived nearby. In their response, the Middleborough Fire Department wound up feeding their hoses directly from Nevertouch Pond--in the process, draining so much water that the level dropped 8 inches overnight.
In modern times, Nevertouch Pond continues to anchor the middle of the West Side area downtown. All traces of its former shipbuilding, lumber processing and ice-harvesting days are long gone, however. Who can say how long it's been since we’ve had a winter cold enough for the ice to freeze to a foot thick, anyway. But the pond is still there, across the street from Central Cemetery. You might miss it, unless you know where to look for it. Its waters--perhaps still polluted--remain dark and murky. Despite this, there is still fishing to be had there.
It goes without saying that no body of water on the planet can literally be bottomless.
And so the question persists--how deep is Nevertouch Pond?
The fact is, nobody really knows. Various writings suggest a range from between 8 to 50 feet, but local legend extends that number from as far as 250 feet to---well, bottomless. We have no real statistics, no official measurements to refer to--no hard data. As such, whatever secrets lie deep in its murky depths are likely going to continue being shrouded in mystery for at least the foreseeable future.
B.C.
[GREAT THANKS TO MIKE MADDIGAN, HARRY GRISWOLD, AND STEPHANIE MICHAELS, FOR THEIR HELP IN WRITING THIS ARTICLE]
[PLEASE FOLLOW THE MHA ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE HISTORICAL MIDDLEBOROUGH CONTENT]
“Exploring Party,” The Middleborough Gazette (Middleborough), March 3, 1854, 2
“Near Drowning,” The Middleborough Gazette (Middleborough), January 14, 1927, 3
“Giovanetti a Suicide,” The Middleborough Gazette (Middleborough), September 16, 1927, 5
“Rickety Craft Spills Boy to Death in Pond,” Th
e Middleborough Gazette (Middleborough), May 2, 1941, 1
“Down Memory Lane,” Butler, Lyman. The Middleborough Gazette (Middleborough), March 29, 1973, 2
. Accessed 31 January 2024.
