To live in Scituate is to live hand in hand with the past. Over three hundred and fifty years of recorded history makes this small coastal town one of the oldest in the United States. Its miles of coastline, ocean breezes, quiet byways, historic sites, and friendly people deem it one of the country's most peaceful and special places to visit. Then and Now: Scituate connects Scituate's past and present in a way that no book has before. Nineteenth-century photographs lead to historic Front Street in Scituate Harbor, where shipping entrepreneur George F. Welch helped rebuild the town after the once prosperous North River shipbuilding era came to an end. In Then and Now: Scituate, Abigail and Rebecca Bates are commended for saving the town from a ransacking by the British during the War of 1812, and the grounds of Dreamwold are opened for a tour of the country's best-stocked Victorian-era farm.