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You probably won’t find anything terribly shocking or likely heretofore unknown in Dan Dixey’s new book, but what you will find if you are a Header is a tsunami-style wave of nostalgia. If you’re new to town, you’ll wonder why you didn’t move here sooner, and if you are a tourist, you’ll think about staying.
Dixey’s new book, “Marblehead: Facts, History & Old Photos for Headers, Transplants and Tourists,” is his fourth love letter to his hometown.
“It’s literally a book for everyone,” he said.
Dixey is the 10th great-grandson of William Dixey, one of the first landowners in Marblehead. A true Header, he was born in what was then the new Mary Alley Hospital and grew up in town. He said writing the book was sometimes hard for him because much of what’s in it is information he just knows, either from having lived it or having it handed down through generations.
“I assume that everybody, like the Headers and people that are really into history, know most of the stuff that I know, but it’s not really true,” he said.
The first part of the book is laid out alphabetically with brief descriptions of Marblehead lore, facts and history.
“It starts out with some dates of the big fires in Marblehead, and Abbot Hall, the Lee Mansion, Redd’s Pond, different categories like that, with a brief bit of history about the place or person,” he said. “Then the second half is over 200 photos.”
Dixey said it’s the photos that people really seem to like. And he’s been lucky in that area in that with four books he’s not had to repeat any of his photos. But maybe that’s because he has at least 3,000 images of Marblehead to choose from.
When asked how he finds the images, Dixey laughed and said, “They come to me.”
There was a time, Dixey said, when he would search for Marblehead images and memorabilia on sites like eBay. Then there were the “old-timers” who had a lot of photos but no family, and Dixey would buy their collections, he said.
“But now I get notifications almost weekly that somebody has found a box of photos or negatives in the attic,” he said. “A lot of the stuff I get, it’s because people don’t know what to do with it and they’re just going to get rid of it.”
Sometimes the main focus of the photos might not be particularly interesting, but the background is, Dixey said. It might be a photograph of someone’s uncle, but he’s standing in front of a store you don’t have a picture of, or you can see how the houses have changed on the street, he explained.
The photos in “Marblehead: Facts, History & Old Photos” are what he calls fairly new old material, in that they’re new to him and should be to the people who bought his previous books as well.
“They’re not really in a specific order or category,” he said, referring to the book. “They’re just old Marblehead photos with captions and information on them.”
They might be “just old photos,” Dixey said, but he’s already experienced a wave of people telling him how the book has “brought back these memories that they love to talk about.” He said he’s also had some tell him they have, in fact, learned things about the town they didn’t know, and “that’s what you like to see.”
The book is smaller than Dixey’s typically larger hardcover books but is also less expensive. Dixey acknowledges that his three previous books are all hardcovers and “maybe a little expensive for gifts.”
“I’ve always kind of wanted to do a less expensive and a paperback,” he said.
And if you buy a copy locally, it will be signed. Dixey hand signs and hand delivers all his books to the local shops that sell them for him.
If you want your own copy, you can find them at the following retailers:
- Arnould Gallery & Framery, 111 Washington St., Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
- Shubie’s Marketplace, 16 Atlantic Ave., Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
- Marblehead Mercantile, 132 Washington St., Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
- Saltwater Bookstore, 134 Washington St., Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
- Marblehead Museum, 170 Washington St., Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
- Marblehead Flower House, 200 Pleasant St., Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
- Old Town Antiques, 134 Washington St., Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
- Abbot Hall Gift Shop, 188 Washington St., Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
It’s also available for shipping from Dixey at marbleheadimages.com/book.
