Reenactors Add Life to 'Trolley Tour' [VIDEO]

Mary Bryne Branagan stood at the headstone of her two stepsons, who died during the Civil War. Michael died in the notorious Andersonville Prison, of dysentery, Branagan told Woburn Patch in a heavy Irish brogue; John Jr., in Salisbury Prison, near the end of the war, of starvation.

Fellow Irish immigrant Private Timothy Shehen stood nearby in Calvary Cemetery in his Civil War uniform. The carpenter from south Woburn enlisted, at age 44, in the 79th Regiment, Massachusetts, Infantry, Co. K, the Woburn National Rangers. He came to America, to Woburn, in 1851, he told Woburn Patch, with his wife and son, because of the potato famine in his native country.

Farther into the cemetery, Rev. John Quealy talked about —when it was new.

Down the road from the cemetery, at the , Charles Goodyear greeted guests outside his “factory,” where he was working, he told visitors, on making rubber more useable:  both stable and pliable.

Welcome to Woburn in the mid-1800s, live, up-close and personal.

Passengers on the third annual met Branagan, in the person of Clare Hurley, who works at an area university; Shehen—Jim Major, a realtor at ;  Fr. Quealy—photographer Joe Brown; and Goodyear—Christopher Hurley, a programmer and analyst for a medical software company and Clare Hurley’s spouse, on the tour.

Adding to the emotion at the graves of Mary Branagan’s stepsons, Clare Hurley told Woburn Patch she was sad at the passing this past week of , city solicitor and a member of the historical society.

Character reenactors at the cemetery boarded the trolleys to share their stories with passengers.

Goodyear invited passengers to enter his “factory”—the for a tour of the first floor.

Tour-goers also visited the old pumping station at and the to see its exhibit of Civil War artifacts.

The reenactors at the cemetery were “dramatic,” their stories “moving,” according to tour-goer Terrie Taranto.

Like Taranto, Nancy Flaherty took the tour last year for the first time and returned this year. Flaherty has lived in Woburn “all my life,” she said, and there’s “always something” on the tours “I haven’t seen before.”

Civil War artifacts at the library, interjected Flaherty’s husband, Joe.  He was surprised, he said, at the library’s Civil War collection.

Jeanne Tropea was particularly interested in the Goodyear School stop.

“I went here,” she said, for sixth grade, before sixth grade moved to middle school. At the Goodyear stop, tour-goers toured the first floor of the school:  the gym, a kindergarten classroom, the art room, cafeteria and music room. Many pointed to the kindergarten-sized bathroom fixtures. When Tropea attended the “old” Goodyear, the bathrooms were in the basement, she said.

As Tropea left the new school, she told Mr. Goodyear that she had written an essay about him for a contest—and came in in second place.

Jacquelyn Cooney loved seeing the pump house, particularly its architecture as well as its mechanics. A resident of Burlington, near the Burlington-Woburn line, for about three years, she took the tour for the second year. Cooney is interested in history, she said, and getting to know the area. “It’s all new to me,” she said.

Dan Sullivan, a member of the historical society and life-long city resident and his wife, Deborah, also took the tour this year. They found it “pretty interesting.”

The tour nearly sold out, according to historical society member and program director Kathy Lucero, who selected the tour stops and researched and wrote the scripts for the reenactors. Usually, she said, a group of tickets would have been snapped up by John McElhiney.

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