Hog wild in Swampscott

SWAMPSCOTT – Louis Gallo calls them “blurbs” – little bits of local historical knowledge which capture his attention but have little larger context.”I put them on these little index cards and they get filed away by decade,” Gallo said Monday. “Those kinds of things, where do you put them?”But when putting together the annual Swampscott Historical Society calendar, those blurbs can help explain a herd of pigs walking down Humphrey Street in 1890.”Isn’t that the greatest? It’s traffic on Humphrey Street in 1890,” Gallo said.Gallo explained that a local bylaw allowed residents to tie up a horse or a cow on Humphrey Street – but excluded pigs.”They’re probably going to go either to or from a field to eat,” Gallo said. “We figured out they are going toward St. John’s Church, Black Will Cliff is on the left and those houses are all gone now. In the 1890s, once you got past Burrill Street there were open fields up there.”Gallo said he has not been able to find any references to a pig farm in town at the time. He remembered his parents talking about a pig farm on Forest Avenue many years later than the 1890s; apparently blueberries in the area attracted both human and swine.But Gallo said owning pigs was fairly common at the time the photograph was taken. Indeed, the people in the picture don’t seem too perturbed by the traffic. Gallo said it wasn’t until the 1940s when the town passed an ordinance against farm animals…whether tied up on Humphrey Street or not.The Swampscott Historical Society 2015 Calendar is available for sale at the Town Hall for $10. All proceeds benefit the John Humphrey House and Historical Society collection.