Everett T. McQuillan Square. [2017, Dunlap]
Text last updated on 22 August 2016 | Twenty-one-year-old Everett Thomas McQuillan, a first class seaman in the U.S. Naval Reserve, was “the first of our Provincetown lads to die in the service of our common country in this time of general world war,” the Advocate reported on 14 March 1918. But he was not much more than 50 miles away from the home of his parents, Thomas and Sarah H. McQuillan, at 23 Court Street. His death at the Chelsea Naval Hospital was due to pneumonia. Still, as the Advocate noted: “He died while in the service of his country. No more glorious epitaph could be inscribed above one’s last resting place!” Seven other men followed Seaman McQuillan. Two decades after the Armistice, with another war looming in Europe, five were memorialized in the renaming of five principal intersections: Seaman McQuillan here at Depot Square, Manuel Lopes at Railroad Square, Norman Cook at Town Hall Square, Louis Ferreira at Kelley’s Corner, and Frank Fratus at Bradford and West Vine.
¶ Republished on 23 September 2023.