Strangely enough the name of Pompey Lovejoy has through all these years been associated with the near-by pond, though few who speak familiarly of “Pomps” realize how it came by its name.
More than a hundred and eighty years ago in a little cabin close to the road which now leads past Spring Grove cemetery to Camp Maude Eaton and the community swimming beach lived Pompey Lovejoy and his wife, Rose. In those days, and until about 1868, a dense pine forest covered the hills surrounding the pond. Pompey was a former servant of Captain William Lovejoy while Rose was the servant of John Foster. In their cabin by the pond, they made election cake and root beer for the voters on town-meeting days. In 1824 Pompey was still alive and was said to be over a hundred years old.
Through the Andover Townsman, a subscription list was started during the summer of 1923 and within a short time the sum of $931.06 was raised which made possible the clearing of a part of the shore, a raft for diving, two tents for shelter, and the employing of two lifeguards. A committee of ten public-spirited citizens was able to open the beach on August 1. The venture was an immediate success, sometimes as many as one hundred persons enjoying the privileges of the swimming beach in one day.
The advantages of a community swimming beach had made themselves so evident that an article inserted in the Town warrant the following year, asking for an appropriation of $2,000, was passed without opposition and ever since that time the beach has been maintained by an appropriation raised by taxation. During 1924 a bathhouse was built.
In 1925, the beach was lengthened; a springboard was added to the float, and the laying of town water to the bathhouse made toilets, bubble fountains and shower baths possible. Real progress was made that year in instructing the swimmers, forty-two completing a mile swim during August.
Improvements in 1926 included a fourteen-foot diving tower on the float. An exhibition was held during the latter part of the season and emblems were presented to more than a dozen boys and girls who had passed the junior and senior American Red Cross life-saving tests.
Source: The Townswoman’s Andover by Bessie Goldsmith, 1964