Background on Kenneth G. Garside
Kenneth G. Garside, Duxbury, Mass., 1957
Born in Holyoke, Mass., on Feb. 2, 1905, Kenneth Greenwood Garside was the son of an Overseer of the Lyman Mills, Arnold L. Garside, and his wife Mary. After a brief period in Medford, Mass., Arnold Garside and his family relocated to Taunton in 1917, when Arnold took a position as overseer in the Packing Department of Whittenden Manufacturing Co.
A top student, Kenneth Garside graduated cum laude from Taunton High School in 1923 and won scholarship support to study chemistry at Harvard with the class of 1927. After taking a master's degree in gas and chemical engineering from MIT in 1929, he accepted an offer of employment with Central Hudson Gas and Electric Co., and shortly after moving to Poughkeepsie to begin work, he was reintroduced to a Vassar College student originally from New Bedford, Mass. He and Alice Blake Hawes were married in August 1930 and began to raise two daughters at their home in Kingston, New York: Anne (b. 1932) and Elizabeth (b. 1934). A third daughter, Caroline, followed in 1939.
Sensing limited prospects for advancement within the utility company, Garside and his wife decided on a dramatic change in their life's direction, moving to Duxbury, Mass., in May 1937 to take charge of The Cape Cod Consolidated Cranberry Company (5C bog), also known as South River Bog, which came into ownership through a mortgage default in Alice's family. At the time they assumed control and changed the name to the Duxbury Cranberry Company, the Garsides' operations covered 406 acres, 110 of which were crop-bearing, and included a well-built screenhouse, though with the lingering effects of the Depression, prospects for success were not guaranteed. With no background in agriculture, and no training, Garside sought the advice of other growers and a trove of publications from the USDA and the Massachusetts Cooperative Extension Service to learn the ropes. He became an active, hands-on grower, involved in the day to day work on the bogs, and after some lean years, he became a respected figure in the industry. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Garside served as director of the New England Cranberry Sales Co., a director and board member of the National Cranberry Association, and Secretary/Treasurer of the Cranberry Credit Corporation.
When the Garsides' marriage ended in divorce in 1956, the partnership of the Duxbury Cranberry Company ended too. Ken Garside left cranberry growing for other work in the industry, including serving as the Acting General Manager of Ocean Spray. His time in office coincided with the "cranberry scare" of 1959, when fears that the crop had been contaminated by the herbicide aminotriazole caused the market for berries to collapse just prior to the peak season.
Remarrying in 1956 to Barbara Vaughn Woodward, Garside left the cranberry industry in the early 1960s and worked as a teacher of physics and chemistry at St. Andrews School in Boca Raton, Fla. (1963-1968) and science teacher at the Hebron Academy, in Hebron, Maine (1969). In retirement, he spent time in both Florida and Maine. Ken Garside died in Blue Hill, Maine, in 1987. His ashes were scattered in the sea nearby.
