During the early 1800s, Abington's Smith and Shaw boys brawled their way to area fame. Legendary bare-knuckle boxer John L. Sullivan settled in Abington in the early 1900s. And on August 16, 1893, the community's combative reputation was permanently cemented when over two thousand men fought in a pitched battle, the infamous "Railroad Riot," over a railroad's disputed right of way through downtown.
In Remembering Old Abington, editors Donald Cann and John J. Galluzzo have painstakingly sifted through the best of Abington historical columnist Martha Campbell's body of work to brilliantly recreate dramatic and colorful times in Abington, Rockland and Whitman. From shoemaking entrepreneurs to banking magnates, from historic properties and devastating fires to heated political controversies, each chapter delivers a full and lively depiction of colonial and nineteenth-century life.