Hometown History #107: Stanley Chilson: The People’s Paparazzi

Above, 1917 WPI Yearbook photo of Stanley Chilson

The term Paparazzi was just coming into existence toward the end of Stanley Chilson’s career as a photographer chronicling Franklin, his home town, as well as other towns in the region. The credit or blame for the term goes to Federico Fellini who’s La Dolce Vita included an obsessive photographer of that surname.

And while Chilson might have objected to the pejorative associations of the term, the general idea of an ever-ready photographer continually catching life as it was being lived fits him perfectly.

And who was Stanley Grant Chilson? For a man with a definite public persona, not much is apparent about him other than his early and consistent passion for photography, a passion only rivaled by his interest in the fire service, a topic he chronicled exhaustively.... there are literally hundreds of photographs of fire and rescue activities in the town in the years he was active.

Born in Franklin on June 30, 1891, Chilson’s family operated a grocery store on Depot Street, near the current location of the Dean Bank. Notably, when his father died at age 92 in 1951, he had run the market for some 55 years and had been in the grocery business for a total of 70 years! His mother became well known as an expert on Sandwich Glass.

Stanley attended Franklin's Horace Mann High School, graduated from Dean Academy, and went on to earn an engineering degree at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

A brief profile in the WPI yearbook puts some life into the name: 

“If the future bears out the truth of the old adage, “Patience has its reward,” not a few of us will live to be envious of what Opportunity has in store for “Chilly.” From the day that Stanley became one of us here at Tech, his ever-faithful attendance to college duties, scholastic or otherwise, regardless of circumstances, has made him a shining example of loyalty to Alma Mater. 

"It has been the pleasure of but a few of us to really “get back to Nature” with “Chilly,” and really understand him in his hobbies of life, for he has a more or less retiring manner. Those who have broken in on all the formalities find in Stanley a most sincere and interesting personality. no one but “Chilly” could have the patience and interest to carry with him at all times for three school years a pocket kodak with the hopes of some day getting a snapshot of three of Worcester’s magnificent white fire horses in action, but he did it, and obtained his coveted prize.

“Stanley’s quarter-hour schedule for every day in the school week, his triple-indexed library, his complete genealogical record of the Chilson family, and numerous other records of interest which do fill a large note-book are but a few examples of the fact that “Chilly” is indeed a master of details. That “Chilly” is a lover of nature has been brought home to us by his stories of life at Lake Pearl, when his summer experiences seem to breathe of all that is big and wholesome in the great out-of-doors.

“When `17 passes out of Tech into history, many of its members will be better engineers and truer men for the lesson they have learned through having known Stanley Grant Chilson.

And a further bit of versification followed:

“In Chilson, a sphinx do we see

As quiet as quiet can be;

But he has some gray matter

May get mad as a hatter,

And has other human qualities has he.”

In 1918, with the First World War raging, Chilson found himself drafted with a group of other young men from town and sent to Fort Upton on Long Island. However, there his eyesight was deemed to be too poor for the Army, so he was rejected and sent home.

Professionally, according to one source, Chilson worked as an engineer at Golding Press in Franklin until it was purchased. What he did professionally after that is hard to say but it may have been just photography, presumably sometimes for money rather than just the love of the technology.

By the 1930s, Chilson had become the official Fire Department photographer for Franklin, and eventually for Norfolk, Millis, Medway, Foxboro and Medfield. Stanley's love for photography probably led him to take up a movie camera as well – an expensive hobby for those days given the cost of film and processing chemicals. Before long he was regularly filming scenes of everyday life in Franklin from 1934 to 1963, as well as other neighboring towns.

While many of his photographs are of big public events, he also caught moments of people at work and at play, as well as local athletic contests. His Franklin films can be accessed through the Franklin Library website.

Chilson’s work seems to have been much appreciated in his own time. A Woonsocket Call article from the 1950s, noted that Chilson would be showing his films after the meeting of the Franklin Businessman’s Association. “Mr. Chilson is constantly adding to his motion pictures, and the whole list will be shown on this occasion...A real treat in the way of entertainment awaits the members.”

Stanley Grant Chilson died in Wrentham at the age of 81.