Westford Water Department

Westford Water Department Municipal Water Report Info
The Hyams Foundation has deep roots in Boston, founded by Godfrey Hyams, a Harvard-educated metallurgist and entrepreneur who developed the Anaconda Mining Company and Virginia Railway. Godfrey lived in Dorchester with his sisters Sarah and Isabel, who were actively involved in Boston's social welfare initiatives. None of the siblings married.

In 1927, Godfrey established a charitable trust that received most of his estate, while smaller grant-making trusts were created in his sisters' names. For decades, the Godfrey M. Hyams Trust and Sarah A. Hyams Fund operated with identical trustees and grant-making purposes until merging in 1993 as the Hyams Foundation, Inc. The Isabel F. Hyams Fund supported East Boston Social Centers for many years before all three funds consolidated in 1996.

Today, the foundation's mission centers on "increasing economic and social justice and power within low income individuals in Boston and Chelsea, Massachusetts." Its grant-making focuses on four community priorities: increased metro engagement (especially for immigrant communities), affordable housing for very low-income families, family economic self-sufficiency, and improved opportunities for low-income teens. The foundation distributes over $5 million annually across various programs including after-school activities, voter engagement, housing development, diversity initiatives, job preparation, and ESL classes.

In the 1930s, when tuberculosis severely affected East Boston, Isabel and Sarah Hyams sought to help urban children by creating a "Fresh Air Camp" in the countryside. In 1937, after extensive property searches, they purchased 16 land parcels between Stony Brook and Keyes Brook in Westford, including the pristine 25-acre Burge's Pond. The land was acquired from multiple local owners including Oscar Spalding, Allister MacDougall, Charles Hildreth, and others.

The sisters quickly cleared land and constructed cabins using lumber harvested from the property itself. Remarkably, the camp opened that same year (1937). When the devastating 1938 storm felled numerous trees on the property, two sawmills were established onsite to process the lumber. Since then, selective tree harvesting has occurred approximately every ten years, with the most recent cutting in the 1980s.

The East Boston Social Centers, established in 1918, has operated the camp continuously since 1937. This multi-service organization provides childcare, after-school programs, services for at-risk teens, summer camps, nutritional support for seniors, and community meeting spaces. Their programs reach over 1,000 children annually under the motto "When All Give, All Gain."