Lucius Marsh

One of the books I reference frequently in my cemetery hunts and other historical endeavors is a book written by the late Lucius Marsh. He actually wrote three books on the subject; a short history in 1939, one in the early 50's and another updated in the late 60's. The first was just a short history of the town, the second two are quite a bit more detailed. In each, he follows each street in the town of Douglas, and writes about each house on the street. One by one, he follows all the homes, businesses, and other places of interest and describes the history of each one. He pays special attention to any events resulting in a death that happened on these locations. Specifically mentioning a person who may have died in a fire, and two people who died by falling on a railroad track.
His second history was never bound, published or copyrighted. Rather, this old typed document is kept in a binder in the Douglas library. My family and one other have complete photocopies of this document. The second was bound and published and also sits on the shelves in the Douglas Public Library.
Marsh focused on local history because he lived a very local life in Douglas. According to the "About the Author" section of his second book, Marsh graduated from Douglas High School in 1906, held a job in Worcester and served in the army, and then returned to Douglas to serve as the Town Clerk and retired to become the town assessor. He had even worked as an assessor in the 1930's, a job which he found interesting. You could name anyone in the town of Douglas and Marsh would be able to tell you where that person lived.