A Voice Heard: "Do you know where the old Page homestead is?"

Mrs. ___ with the Bedford Flag, as it was once displayed in the Bedford Free Public Library, and the Page Commission - Courtesy photo — Dorothy Page Miller views the Bedford Flag, as it was once displayed in the Bedford Free Public Library in 1983. She is holding the original Page Commission, signed in 1737. Courtesy photo (c) The Bedford Historical Society

Submitted by Donna Enz Argon

It sounded like an older woman’s voice, “Do you know where the old Page home is?” “No, sorry, I don’t,” answered the busy Town Clerk at her desk. It was a quiet summer morning in 1983 in the Old Town Hall in Bedford, Massachusetts when I heard the query from my office in the Council on Aging across the hall, It was my responsibility to help older folks, and I knew the answer to the question. Thus began a morning that I very much appreciate.

The lady and her nephew were invited into my office where I could show them a map of the town. She was Dorothy Page Miller, a retired professor from California who recalled visiting her Page grandparents at their ancestral home in Bedford when she was a child. It seemed to me that octogenarian ladies (as I am now) do not usually cross a continent to possibly view a house, so I asked her what brought her to Bedford.

*A framed copy of the Page Commission hangs on the mezzanine of the Bedford Free Public Library; the original is safe within the Bedford Flag room. Courtesy image*

“I have a document,” she said. She explained that the document was from Colonial times, a 1737 commission from Governor Belcher of Massachusetts Bay Province commissioning John Page to be the Cornet (flag bearer) of the Tri-county Troop. The office descended through his male descendents; one of them carried the flag, now known as The Bedford Flag, to the fight at the Concord Bridge. Eventually, the commission descended to Dr. Miller’s brother, but he was shot down over the English Channel during World War II. The family saved the commission document.

“Would you like to see it?” she asked. “Oh, yes, I would indeed,” I replied. Her nephew brought it in from the car and laid it on my desk. (I could hardly breath.)

I was stunned when she announced that she had an appointment with the Director of the Concord Museum in the afternoon, as she planned to give them the document.

“Do you realize,” I said, “what this document means to the town of Bedford? Do you know that we have the original flag, and it is the proud symbol of our town?”

My guest had a cup of tea while I called Larry Kimball of the Historical Society. He and Mary Hafer, Bedford Historical Curator, soon came to take them to the Bedford Library to view the original flag in its vault. I couldn’t close my office but I did send my “guests” off to the Library with my little desk-top Bedford flag, a map of the town, a sample of the official town stationary showing the flag on the seal, and an imprint of the seal.

I was certainly in a state that afternoon, not knowing what was happening. Later it was reported that the lady and her nephew were very impressed by the flag and the town’s proud ownership. I was told she offered to give the ancient document to the Town of Bedford if the Historical Society representatives would call the Director of the Concord Museum to tell them she had changed her mind. They were very happy to make that call. The commission was given to Bedford, where one may visit it in the Library’s special room, home at last!

And to think that it resulted from hearing an older lady’s voice!

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the September 2013 Carleton-Willard Village Newsletter, Vol. 31, No.3; it was also reprinted in the April edition of The Preservationist, the newsletter of the Bedford Historical Society.