Kingston’s highway barn closed after a chemical spill exposed two Streets, Trees and Parks employees and forced the town to relocate resident sticker sales for a few days, with officials awaiting air-quality results they hope will clear the building for reoccupation by week’s end. Town Administrator Scott Lambiase and Superintendent Shawn Turner offered only a limited public account, citing the potential for litigation.
The spill at the highway department building dominated the practical concerns of the June 23 meeting even as officials kept details deliberately sparse. Lambiase told the Board the town was “being a little careful on exactly what we’re putting out there, because this does have potential for some litigation, depending on how it goes down,” and directed selectmen to a written briefing distributed just before the meeting rather than a full public discussion.
Turner said the department was awaiting air-quality testing, with results expected “Wednesday afternoon at the earliest, Thursday morning at the latest.” If the air tests come back clean, he said, employees could return to the building. In the meantime, the department has continued limited operations, with Turner acknowledging it lacks “all the equipment we usually would to complete the job” for road work and thanking residents for their patience.
Turner credited a wide circle of town personnel for the response, singling out the fire department for ensuring two employees who were “somewhat exposed” received proper medical testing, the health agent for keeping people out of the building, and police for guarding the site around the clock since the incident. Chair Kimberley Emberg and Lambiase, in turn, praised Turner for managing the situation at all hours. “The biggest thing is making sure the employees are safe,” Turner said.
In the meeting’s most substantive debate, selectmen voted not to continue the process of accepting Nobadeer Circle as a public way, halting a resident petition after town staff estimated it would cost roughly $218,000 to bring the private road into acceptable condition.
Town Planner Valerie Massard walked the Board through a memo prepared after staff inspected the roughly 30-unit development, which was approved and endorsed in 2008 as a 40B project with roads designated private and maintained by homeowners. Massard reported 14 catch basins and 11 drain manholes, about 85% of which need reconstruction; four stormwater wetland areas; and two ponds connected by a 190-foot culvert running beneath the road. Staff estimated repaving alone could reach $200,000 at prevailing wage, on top of catch-basin reconstruction and crack-sealing, and recommended spending up to $1,500 on an engineer to produce a true cost estimate. Massard stressed that the prevailing-wage figures are higher than what private homeowners would pay for comparable work.
Selectman Carl Pike, who said he served on the Zoning Board when the development was approved, argued that a project built to be private should remain private. “I, as one selectman, am not interested in talking about converting it from a private road to a public road with all of the associated costs involved,” he said. Emberg pressed a different point, saying she could not identify the public benefit the road-acceptance policy requires. “I don’t know the public benefit. I just can’t see it,” she said, noting the circle functions as a dead-end neighborhood street.
Other members agreed. Pike moved that the selectmen not continue reviewing the road for public acceptance at this time, and the motion carried. Turner said the town would keep plowing Nobadeer Circle “just because we have,” but cautioned that once inspections begin, failing catch basins or overgrown trees would have to be addressed or plowing could stop.
The Board approved transferring $19,500 in opioid settlement funds to Plymouth County Outreach, an addiction-recovery and overdose-follow-up program housed on Main Street near the Plymouth line. Police Chief Brian Holmes said the program’s grant funding is “coming to a screeching halt in September,” prompting the organization to invoice every police department in Plymouth County to keep it running for at least another year. Holmes said he and department staff work closely with Executive Director Vicky Butler and are pursuing more sustainable funding with state officials. Under the town’s arrangement, the police department must seek the Board’s permission each time it draws on opioid settlement money.
In a quarterly update, Holmes reported that two new hires began the 22-week Municipal Police Training Academy in Plymouth, bringing the department to 28 sworn officers. He said a pending U.S. Department of Justice COPS Hiring Program grant, if awarded, would cover 75% of a new hire’s salary, with an application deadline in mid-July and a decision expected in early fall.
Holmes delivered a candid update on the long-discussed new police station. A plan to build near the Pembroke Street fire station collapsed after Eversource, which owns an abutting power-station property, indicated it has future expansion plans and could not grant an easement large enough for the town’s needs. Officials are now weighing an alternative town-owned lot, a purchase, or a creative reworking of the existing 244 Main Street site — an approach the department’s architect has called difficult while the current station remains occupied.
The chief also reported that the department’s Family Services Unit, operational since mid-January, now serves five partner communities — Kingston, Plymouth, Halifax, Hanson and Carver — and has completed 76 full evaluations, 56 non-traditional evaluations and four post-arrest evaluations, diverting people toward substance-abuse and mental-health services. That program has been funded for only one quarter of the fiscal year, through September, pending the state budget. Holmes added that Kingston officers assisted at Gillette Stadium during the FIFA World Cup and that the town is hosting this year’s Plymouth County DA’s DARE camp, with graduation set for July 31.

Plympton residents should expect a Proposition 2½ override question next spring, committee member Jason Fraser told the School Committee on June 15, after the town spent roughly $800,000 of its stabilization reserves to balance this year’s budget and left itself with less than $600,000 in the fund to fall back on.
Fraser, the committee’s legislative agent, delivered the warning during his legislative report, framing it not as a school problem but as a town-wide one. He said town leadership — the Selectmen, the Finance Committee and the Town Administrator — had sent a unified message that an override is the likely path back to balance when budget talks resume next spring.
The math, as Fraser laid it out, leaves little room to maneuver. “Even if we wanted to next year, it would be nearly impossible to go back to the well the same way,” he said. The strain already reached Dennett Elementary this year, which absorbed cuts and reductions in staff hours.
Fraser urged the committee and the town to think bigger than a one-year patch. “My advice would not be a Band-Aid override that would just whip us through one fiscal year, but look at an override that could replenish some of our stabilization funds so it could be sustainable over a three- to five-year period,” he said. He added that the pressure extends beyond the elementary school: “We could see serious erosion in all departments next year if we don’t do something to address that issue.” The squeeze, he noted, will hit all three Silver Lake member towns — Plympton, Halifax and Kingston — along with the regional district.
Fraser tempered the outlook with a run of good news on the revenue side. He reported that the committee secured roughly $59,000 in state earmarks for Dennett: $10,000 from Sen. Dylan Fernandes to replace the school’s voice-over-IP phone system, a $14,000 earmark from Rep. Kathleen LaNatra for emergency roof repairs, and $35,000 from Fernandes, with LaNatra’s support, for a building architectural and engineering report. Because Town Meeting separately authorized a $35,000 warrant article for that same report, Fraser said the state money may cover the work and leave the town’s appropriation largely untouched. He also reported that a retroactive $4 million statewide supplemental for rural aid should send about $18,000 to Plympton, with the statewide fund expected to climb from $12 million toward the $16–20 million range next year.
The committee opened the meeting by completing its reorganization for 2026, with Robert Montgomery presiding as chair. Fraser, who had chaired the committee, remains a member, and was thanked by colleagues for his service in the role.
The reorganization was paired with a vacancy. Montgomery announced that member Jon Wilhelmsen has resigned, leaving an open seat. Fraser explained the process: the committee will put out a public call for candidates, vet applicants as a full body, and recommend an appointment to the Board of Selectmen. Because of the summer schedule, members expect the work to carry into September. The appointee would serve a one-year term, running only until the next town election. The committee set a target application deadline of July 15 and agreed to publicize the opening through the school, the town clerk and local channels. No formal vote was required.
Principal Peter Veneto and K-6 Curriculum Coordinator Brian DeSantes presented end-of-year assessment data for Dennett, which will close the year with 251 students enrolled. The school’s DIBELS early-literacy score finished at 77 percent, up from 64 percent at the start of the year after a midyear dip to 59 percent that prompted an action plan re-allocating reading support. DeSantes told the committee the dip was an outlier, partly tied to a kindergarten staffing transition, and credited grade-level data meetings held three times a year for catching the problem early.
The presenters flagged a consistent weak point: third grade, K-2 DIBELS scores sit above 80 percent, DeSantes said, but third-grade foundational results lag district-wide as instruction shifts toward comprehension and writing. The school plans additional phonics training for third-grade teachers next year. STAR reading for grades one through six held roughly flat at 59 percent, while STAR math edged up to 63 percent in the second year of the HMH math program. DeSantes set a clear marker: “We’re not going to quit until we get to 70.”
Assistant Superintendent Tricia Clifford reported that the district has selected Wonders, a McGraw-Hill program, as its new K-5 English language arts curriculum, chosen by a teacher-led curriculum council over the other finalist, CKLA, after roughly six months of field testing. Both programs meet the state’s definition of high-quality instructional materials. Wonders will be paired with Orton-Gillingham foundational instruction, with professional development planned through the summer. Clifford said the work was funded largely by a state PRISM grant and that she is awaiting word on whether year-two funding will come through.
Superintendent Jill Proulx kept her report brief, thanking those who participated in her annual evaluation, which the Administrative Review Subcommittee completed in early June and which will shape her goals and the district’s improvement strategy.
On the building report, Fraser said the committee can move to bid the engineering and architectural work as early as July 1, with the $35,000 already in hand. Because Dennett is a town-owned building, he agreed to coordinate the procurement with the Selectmen and possibly the Town Properties Committee — complicated by the fact that Plympton is operating under an Interim Town Manager.

As the smoke clears from this year’s 4th of July fireworks and the parade floats are tucked away, it is the perfect time to look back at one of our own hometown heroes. Centuries before the legendary Chinese warrior Hua Mulan became a household name for taking her ailing father’s place in the imperial army, Plympton produced its very own patriot in disguise. Donning a man’s coat and shouldering a musket, Deborah Sampson stepped out of the rigid confines of 18th-century New England and into the brutal theater of the American Revolution.
Born right in Plympton on December 17, 1760, Deborah Sampson’s roots run deep in Southeastern Massachusetts. She was the eldest of seven children, possessing an illustrious Mayflower pedigree. Her mother was the great-granddaughter of Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford, and her father descended from Myles Standish, John Alden, and Isaac Sampson, one of Plympton’s first settlers. Despite this blue-blood lineage, her youth was marred by extreme poverty and family tragedy. Her father abandoned the family—ultimately moving to Maine to start a new family, though Sampson’s mother was told he had died in a shipwreck—leaving the household completely destitute.
Unable to provide for her children, Sampson’s mother scattered them among relatives and neighbors. By age ten, Deborah was sent to Middleborough as an indentured servant for the prosperous family of Jeremiah Thomas. There, she grew unusually tall for the era, standing nearly five feet, eight inches, and developed formidable physical strength from rigorous agricultural labor. Though the Thomas family didn’t believe in educating women, the fiercely intelligent Sampson taught herself to read and write using the Thomas sons’ schoolwork.
When her indenture ended at age eighteen, she worked as a weaver and a summer schoolteacher in Middleborough. She often wove at Sproats Tavern, a local hub where men gathered to swap tales of military glory. Listening to these stories, Deborah hungered for travel and independence in a society where an unmarried woman traveling alone risked being branded a person of “ill repute”. In early 1782, she secretly acquired men’s clothes, bound her chest, and attempted to enlist in the army at a Middleborough recruitment center under the alias “Timothy Thayer”. Her disguise was quickly foiled when a local woman recognized her awkward way of holding a quill—the result of a childhood finger injury. The scandal rocked the community, leading the First Baptist Church of Middleborough to formally excommunicate her for her “unchristian like” behavior of dressing in men’s clothing.
Undeterred, Sampson traveled to Bellingham in May 1782, far enough away that her face was unknown, and successfully enlisted under the alias “Robert Shurtliff”. To her surprise, her towering height, strength, and marksmanship earned her a spot in Captain George Webb’s elite Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment. The light infantry specialized in dangerous flanking maneuvers and rapid skirmishing. Ironically, the grueling physical demands of this elite unit protected her secret, as no one suspected a woman could endure such extreme hardship. Because she lacked facial hair, her comrades simply nicknamed her “Molly,” assuming she was a beardless, under-aged boy.
For over a year, Sampson served in the perilous “Neutral Ground” of New York’s Lower Hudson River Valley, clashing with loyalist guerrilla bands known as “cowboys”. For many years, romanticized legends—and Sampson herself during later lecture tours—claimed she fought at the pivotal Siege of Yorktown in 1781. However, a fascinating piece of local history recently corrected the record: a diary kept by Abner Weston, a Middleborough militiaman and Sampson’s neighbor, was rediscovered in 2019. Weston’s diary entries confirm her botched “Timothy Thayer” enlistment occurred around January 1782, months after the British surrendered at Yorktown, proving definitively that she joined the active front in the spring of 1782.
Yet, her actual combat record is astounding enough without the Yorktown embellishments. During a close-quarters skirmish with Tory raiders near Tarrytown, New York, in the summer of 1782, Sampson suffered a sword slash to her forehead and was shot in the upper left thigh by a musket ball. Terrified that a medical examination would expose her sex, she begged her fellow soldiers to leave her to die on the battlefield. They refused, taking her to a field hospital where her head wound was stitched. Before the doctor could examine her leg, Sampson slipped out of the hospital and performed battlefield surgery on herself. Using only a pocket penknife, a sewing needle, and thread, she dug into her own thigh and extracted the musket ball entirely without anesthetic. A second musket ball was lodged too deep, remaining embedded in her leg for the rest of her life and causing a chronic wound.
Sampson’s disguise eventually collapsed not in combat, but in a hospital ward. In the summer of 1783, her unit was deployed to Philadelphia, where she contracted a severe, malignant fever and lost consciousness. The attending physician, Dr. Barnabas Binney, discovered the tight linen bandages compressing her chest. Recognizing the immense danger she faced, Dr. Binney made a compassionate ethical choice: he kept her secret, transferring her to his private residence where his family nursed her back to health. Upon her recovery, Binney gave her a sealed letter to deliver to General John Paterson. Fearing a punitive discharge, Sampson was instead met with profound respect by Paterson, General Henry Knox, and General George Washington. On October 25, 1783, she was granted an honorable discharge at West Point, having successfully completed 17 months of service.
Returning to a rigidly gendered society, Sampson married Benjamin Gannett, a struggling farmer from Sharon, Massachusetts, in 1785. The couple lived in persistent poverty, raising three children and an adopted orphan on an overworked farm. Sampson’s unhealed war injuries severely limited her ability to perform the heavy physical labor expected of a farm wife. To survive, she turned her wartime exploits into a strategic public relations campaign, becoming the first American woman to embark on a professional, paid lecture tour in 1802. Traveling across New England and New York, she captivated audiences by delivering patriotic speeches before donning her full infantry uniform to perform complex weapon drills on stage. Her personal diary from the tour survives today, documenting the grueling reality of 19th-century travel, filled with fevers, toothaches, and exhaustion.
Despite her fame, she struggled to secure the federal military pension afforded to male veterans. It took the intervention of fellow revolutionary Paul Revere, who owned a foundry in neighboring Canton, to sway the government. After visiting her Sharon farm in 1804, Revere wrote a powerful advocacy letter to Congress. Knowing he had to ease the conservative gender anxieties of the era, Revere noted that he had expected to meet a “tall, masculine female” but was pleasantly surprised to find a “small, effeminate, and conversable Woman” who was a dutiful wife and mother. His strategy worked; in 1805, Congress placed Sampson on the federal invalid pension list, making her the first woman to receive a federal pension for military combat service.
Deborah Sampson died on April 29, 1827, at the age of 66. Her revolutionary trailblazing didn’t stop at her death; in 1837, Congress awarded spousal survivor benefits to her heirs, making her husband the first male widower in U.S. history to receive a pension based on his wife’s military service.
Today, Sampson’s legacy is permanently woven into the fabric of the nation and Southeastern Massachusetts. In 2020, the United States government passed the landmark Deborah Sampson Act, a sweeping piece of legislation designed to eliminate gender gaps in healthcare at the Department of Veterans Affairs. In 1983, she was declared the “Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts”.
But nowhere is her memory more deeply rooted than in the Plympton-Halifax area. Her likeness proudly adorns the Plympton town flag, the Board of Selectmen meet in the Deborah Sampson room in the Town House, and a monument stands in her honor on the Plympton Town Green along Route 58. As we celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, let us remember Plympton’s own revolutionary hero. Deborah Sampson took up arms when the nation needed her, proving that the spirit of American liberty knows no gender.