Book from Art’s Alive sale gives insight to another Florence

So I am browsing the used book sale at Art’s Alive the other day. What do I find but a history of Florence, Mass.?
I had never heard of Florence, Mass., so having a history of another Florence I’d not known of landing in my hands was sufficient inspiration to buy the book.
I learned quickly that one reason I had never heard of the place was that it is not exactly its own municipality like our Florence. Since Massachusetts is Yankee country, of course it’s pretty weird. Apparently they have villages there that are part of larger municipalities. Florence, Mass., is a village that is part of the municipality of Northampton. It is on the west side of the Connecticut River, a little closer to Connecticut than Vermont. You drive through Northampton on I-91.
Way back, it was called Broughton’s Meadow Plain. In 1810 it became Warner School District, in 1842 The Community, in 1848 Bensonville and in 1850 Greenville.
In 1852, a Dr. Munde suggested they call the place Florence. No, it was not named after Florence Harllee as was Florence, S.C. It was named after Florence, Italy. Dr. Munde went further, suggesting that the locality’s Mill River be renamed the Arno as in the Italian Florence. They did not do that. It’s still Mill River.
(This gives me an idea. We could rename Jeffries Creek the Arno, then fancy up the creek bridge on James Jones Avenue and rename it the Neo-Ponte Vecchio.)
There is more logic to naming Florence, Mass., after Florence, Italy, than one might think. The history says that in the first half of the 19th century, a silk manufacturing company set up shop in that Florence and many mulberry trees were planted around town to accommodate silkworms.
Florence, Mass., it turns out, is pretty heavily into art. They say the Ninja turtles stuff started out there, and there are many arts shops. Arts are plentiful in Firenze, as the Italians call their Florence, and they did silk.
One thing that makes me a little jealous of Massachusetts’ Florence is the Miss Florence Diner, or Miss Flo’s. Its roots are about the time of World War II when a serviceman borrowed $5,000 from his father and opened the place. His brother and wife ran it until he got home, and it has been very successful.
Wikipedia says it is the “social center” of the community and “Florence wouldn’t be the same without Miss Flo’s.” You can get a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, which they say is a favorite of the diner’s customers.
I guess a measure of where the place stands in the community is the experience of Rita Pruzynski who spent decades there as a popular waitress. When she marked her 40th anniversary at the diner, customers raised more than $1,000 for a special “tip” for her.
The diner’s motto is “Ain’t No Finer Diner.” Their grammar could be improved, but they get their point across. In the past, we have had some downtown places in the S.C. Florence a little like Miss Flo’s, but they are gone.
In the 1840s, there was an experiment that would probably cause great gnashing of teeth in a town as far to the right politically as Florence, S.C. A group established a community in which everything was shared, including food, shelter and work, pretty equally. It’s not clear whether they knew about Karl Marx.
They were extremely religious, but opposed “religious authoritarianism,” so everybody was apparently guided by his own conscience where religious matters were concerned.
There were a few blacks among The Community’s members, and Sojourner Truth, who was sort of a conductor on the Underground Railroad, lived in Florence, Mass., for years.
Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist, visited The Community and said, “The place struck me as the most democratic I had ever met.”
Still, The Community didn’t last long, and when it collapsed, the Florence name was just a few years away, and some members of The Community stuck around and helped the newly named Florence progress.
A neat postscript for me: After I bought it, I looked inside and found the book had belonged to Florence, S.C., historian Dr. G. Wayne King who died about a year ago. I felt that validated my interest in the book.

— Thom Anderson is a retired journalist who has 40 years experience with South Carolina newspapers, including the Morning News. He can be reached at .