Pittsfield's eccentric character Oh Be Joyful suffered many hardships in his life, but found joy in reconnecting in later years with the children he lost. He died at Northampton State Hospital in 1961 at age 89.
Conversations with family and friends of Albert Franklin Tyler, better known Oh Be Joyful, shed new light on the eccentric and unkempt philosopher known as the "first hippie."
Eagle columnist Jim Shulman takes readers on a trip down memory lane with his recollections of the former Professional Drug Store on North Street in Pittsfield.
We baby boomers appear to be the last of today’s generations to be major collectors. Whether it is family heirlooms, antiques or even smaller hobby collections, for most of us, even the smallest collections create an emotional attachment very difficult to give up.
I was a high school student when Dunkin' Donuts opened locally. I fell in love with their doughnut holes.
Many of Pittsfield’s young people had considerable music experience from performing in one of the city’s six junior drum corps. As they became high schoolers, these teens formed rock bands emulating the British groups. Soon, they transitioned into the latest hip sounds of the West Coast.
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Today in History
Today is Wednesday, Nov. 24, the 328th day of 2021. There are 37 days left in the year.
Today is Tuesday, Nov. 23, the 327th day of 2021. There are 38 days left in the year.
Today is Monday, Nov. 22, the 326th day of 2021. There are 39 days left in the year.
This Story in History
From the Eagle Archives
The balloon, “Pittsfield, in the Heart of the Berkshires,” landed at Walpole, N.H., 70 miles air line from here at 1:30 o’clock yesterday afternoon after a 90-minute flight — one of the fastest on record out of this city.
Almost every year two or three grown men attend Pittsfield High School.
"There's nothing in the world like show business," say show folks, and that goes double for the exhibitors, says theatre manager William T. Powell. Their lives are full of surprises. The biggest and most recent surprise has been the blossoming of the movie theatre candy concessions into big …
Mysteries from the Morgue
Only a few things could separate the Pierce twins — a broken shoulder, a marriage and death. Mary Abbe and Martha Anne, who held the title of "oldest twins in New England" from January 1929 until August 1934, spent the majority of their 90 years together, living in the house in which they we…
Mysteries From the Morgue: Against the vote? The Anti-Susan B. Anthony also came from the Berkshires
On Saturday, Nov. 5, 1932, just days before the presidential election, Anna Laurens Dawes, 81, known as the "grand lady of Pittsfield," took to the airwaves to urge every Republican to head to the polls that Tuesday.
Being from the Berkshires, birthplace of the most famous suffragette, Susan B. Anthony, Dawes' ardent push for voters to head to the polls doesn't seem out of place — until you consider she, just a dozen years prior, was the leading anti-suffragette of Western Massachusetts, if not the state.
Nor'easter expected? Blizzard in the forecast? Either prediction is a sure sign that media outlets will dig up photos and facts from historic storms of years past. Sure to be included are the Blizzard of 1888 and the Blizzard of 1978. But were those the worst storms to hit the Berkshires? To find out, we hit The Eagle's archives.
Lucretia Williams, hearing the ax sing, rushed from her nearby home into the center of town and thrust herself between the axeman and the tree, declaring, “You will have to cut through me first.”
NORTH ADAMS — Anna Helen (Crofts) McCuen lived a secret literary life.
ADAMS — On Oct. 18, 1918, 700 workers of the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Co. were out sick with "the grippe," silencing a third of the Berkshire Mills' 6,500 looms.
The crowd gathered at the Hinsdale Mining Co. on Oct. 7, 1899, held its breath as the hammer fell upon the clay crucible in the center of the room. It cracked, splinters flying into the air, as a …
SAVOY — Bent and twisted trees are not an unusual site in Berkshire County, thanks to Natalie Jeremijenko's "Tree Logic" at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The art installation's …
SAVOY — "She must have been beautiful once, for weatherbeaten as she is, she is very fine looking, and her straight nose and black bright eyes bear evidence of better days ... She is amazingly …
During the summer of 1933, Otis was invaded by a nudist cult.At least that's how a headline in the Boston Globe on May 24, 1933, described the pending establishment of a nudist colony in the township …
ADAMS — When an MTV logo was painted across the front of the Wellspeak's home in August 1988, it wasn't part of some elaborate prank. The graffiti-style logo, in various shades of green and …
ADAMS — It was on Sunday, Nov. 2, 1851, the elephant Columbus — injured days earlier when he plunged through the wooden Center Street bridge in Adams — took his last breath and died …
Did the first written account of maple sugar being made in this country come from the Berkshires? "It Happened First in Berkshire," a column of The Berkshire Eagle, declared it as so April 3, 1940: …
The best of the best of Berkshire County, chosen by Berkshire Eagle readers.
1Berkshire presents the official guide to the 65th Annual Fall Foliage Parade.
News, information and resources geared towards senior citizens and their caregivers, in the Berkshires and beyond
The Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires presents the 2021 Berkshire Nonprofit Awards
The Berkshire Eagle's annual business feature puts a spotlight on downtown renaissances in Berkshire County.
