1908 Southern Mass Phonebook & Blue Bell Gazette

[Fabius]

I look for phone books with interesting graphics. Not only is the cover of this phonebook attractive but notice in red it says it contains a Blue Bell Bulletin. The Gazette is directed to the subscribers and basically says how wonderful telephone service is. It also shows the telephone sets that were available at the time.

[War Horse]

Man, I've got the previous release issue!  Unfortunately mine doesn't include anything cool like that. It's odd that mine is New England and yours is Southern Massachusetts.

[Fabius]

Notice both books are copyrighted by NET&T. Sargeguy may be able to comment.

[Sargeguy]

Southern Mass Telephone was a partially owned subsidiary of the New England Telephone Co. that served the South Coast of Massachusetts and Newport County in RI.  This is probably one of the last phone books they produced since they were fully absorbed by NET&T about 1908.  When this book was produced they were most likely already fully owned by NET&T.  From about 1900 on their equipment, signs and other material were clones of NET&T stuff.