RANDOLPH â July 7 was a red-letter day for Al and Judy Hudson. The couple, who live Pelham, Mass., and spend summers in this small town, donated a completed transcription of the diary entries penned by Francis âFrankâ C. Wood of Randolph s Broadacres Farm in 14 notebooks over 29 years â from Oct. 1, 1882, when he was 18, to March 31, 1912 â to the Randolph Public Library.
Al, an anthropologist who taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for most of his career, began transcribing the 10,000 entries in Sept. 2015 and finished in Nov. 2017. The retired professor, aided by his wife, also worked on value-added materials: genealogies of key players, identifications of nearly everyone who Frank named, and finding illustrative photos.