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One of his go to pranks was to roll down “Big Hill” in the wheelchair yelling out to his wife as if he had lost control. Family stories portrayed Rev. Nelson as a man with little to no interest in firearms, but nevertheless, have him as the purchaser of the rifle. He was not a trophy hunter, recalled the family. There were no animal heads on the wall. No taxidermy sitting in the corner. So when Rev. Nelson’s Winchester Model 1886 in .45-90 WCF was discovered in the attic of the family home up on “Big Hill” in the 1970s, it was a big shock to his descendants. “He must have gotten a quirk and got it,” became the only logical answer. In ordering a rifle in .45-90 WCF the reverend was certainly not looking to shoot tin cans off a split rail fence. The .45-90 WCF cartridge meant business and was more than capable of stopping even
the most dangerous North American game. In Massachusetts wolves and mountain lions had mostly been eliminated in the state by the mid-1800s and populations of coyotes, black bears, and bobcats roamed the landscape as they continue to do today.
When this rifle was manufactured during the model’s debut year of 1886 the Nelson family was well settled on the farm. Given the rifle’s unbelievable condition it was used very little, if at all; persevered in its original crate with its original accessories and packing paper and tucked away in the attic of
the Nelson home to be completely forgotten for nearly 90 years. The farm passed to two of the reverend’s daughters, Margaret and Dorothea. The two siblings donated 133 acres of the farm to the New England Forestry Foundation and today those acres make up the Nelson Memorial Forest where hikers find adventure on 3 miles of trails and can even discover the remnants of the water pump system that irrigated the Nelson farm. The house and the remaining acres continued to be owned by Nelson family descendants until 1977.
Margaret and Dorothea never married. For a time Margaret lived in Boston where she was the caregiver to her cousin Annie Nelson who lost her mother at birth and her father six years later. After Annie married in 1913, Margaret returned to Marshfield to live with her parents until their deaths and her sister Dorothea. She remained at the family home until her death
in 1945. Dorothea returned to the family estate after her father retired from Trinity Church. Each summer during the post-war years Dorothea hosted the families of her sister Mary and cousin Annie including their grandchildren
at the old home. One of those children was Margaret, daughter to Mary
and Edward Pierce. In time, Margaret and her husband Frederic Milholland inherited the home on “Big Hill.” The couple had a daughter, Jean, who never
forgot the cows on the farm. Jean went on to marry and have a family of her own, and in 1963 went westward as countless Northeasterners had done over a century ago to find fame and fortune. Living in California, the east coast family that had moved west always found the time to travel back to the old Nelson farm each summer to reunite with family. On one of those summer trips, around 1974, Jean’s two sons found something wondrous hiding in the attic.
For young boys nothing could have been better than treasure hunting in Grandma and Grandpa Milholland’s attic. It was a spacious attic with lots
of headroom and crammed with curiosities like beaver skin top hats and
fur muffs that made up their grandfather’s antique business. One of the brothers spied a rather unassuming crate. “What’s in the box?” he asked
his grandparents. They didn’t know. The crate was marked with the name H.W. Nelson, an unmistakable sign that it was family property. The crate
was sealed. To see what was in the crate the boys’ grandfather removed the nails one by one that secured the lid. Heart rates quickened in anticipation with each pull of the nail. They were on the verge of a sensational discovery. Pulling back the lid exposed an untouched time capsule from 1886.
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