Yes, I know that joke. I know them all. Athol makes people giggle like schoolchildren who think they’ve heard a naughty word. After Belchertown, Athol probably ranks as one of Massachusetts’s most unpleasantly named towns. If you’re still not hearing it, touch your tongue to the palate of your mouth and say, “Athol.”
I knew my hometown was named after a village in Scotland called Blair Atholl (two lls is Scottish Atholl, and one l is the Massachusetts Athol). But until this year, I had no idea how beautiful Blair Atholl is or that it has a 700-year-old castle. There is even a Duke of Atholl who commands Europe’s only officially sanctioned private army. Who’s laughing now, Wellesley? Anything to say for yourself, Dover, or Newton? Sure, Athol may be one of the poorest towns in Massachusetts, and our high school ranks 239th out of the state’s 351 public high schools (I am a somewhat proud and semi-literate graduate of Athol Regional High School). But we’re named after a village with Britain’s second tallest tree. So take that, Brookline!
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My visit to Blair Atholl was a happy accident. I was on vacation in April, beginning with a few days in Glasgow. I drove north to Inverness to explore the Highlands and then southwest to Edinburgh. Halfway between Inverness and Edinburgh, I spotted a sign for Atholl on the highway. My husband, Alex, turned to me and said, “We’re stopping, right?” It was a rhetorical question.
The exterior of Blair Castle & Gardens in Blair Atholl, Scotland.Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
Cut to 30 minutes later, and we’re pulling into the parking area of Blair Castle & Estates. We were surrounded by sheep-dotted hills and acres of manicured gardens. I was beginning to think that this Atholl contained an extra “l” to denote that it’s lovelier than Athol, Mass. Because it was April, every inch of grass was over-saturated Technicolor green, and the sheep seemed extra plump. The setting was heavenly.
Before exploring the castle, I headed to the Hercules Garden, which dates back to the 18th century and was carefully restored in the 1980s. Even though few flowers were blooming, and the fruit trees were just beginning to bud, the gardens, sculptures, and duck-filled ponds were charming. In an alternate universe, this is the Atholl where I would have grown up, not the Athol with a lake my sister and I lovingly referred to as Dead Man’s Pond.
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A statue in the Hercules Garden at Blair Castle & Gardens in Blair Atholl, Scotland. The 9-acre walled garden has been restored to its original Georgian design.Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
After an hour, the stop in Blair Atholl became much more than a novelty. It was a place I would enjoy visiting no matter what the village was called. Had I not grown up in Athol, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have stopped here and experienced Blair Castle.
I later discovered that the 9-acre Hercules Garden that I was smitten with was being laid out at the same time that Athol, Mass., was being named. Before British settlers arrived in North America, the Nipmuc Nation Tribe already had a name for the region: Pequoiag. However, when the town was incorporated in 1762, John Murray, a politician and native of Blair Atholl, chose the name Athol because the rolling hills reminded him of his Scottish hometown. Murray was reported to be a distant cousin of the Duke of Atholl. So, a cousin of royalty bestowed Athol with its name. Very classy.
Or so I thought.
As it turns out, Murray was neither noble nor royal. He was given the paperwork to register the town’s name as Paxton, not Athol. He took it upon himself to change it. Why? Because he was a slippery, duplicitous miscreant. Another town in Worcester County got the name Paxton. We got stuck with Athol.
“He was a scoundrel,” said state Representative Susannah Whipps, an independent from Athol whose family has lived in the town for seven generations. “John Murray was a loyalist, and he got chased out of Massachusetts because he sided with the British during the Revolutionary War.”
When news of Murray’s disloyalty to the Colonies and continued love of the Crown became known, a mob of hundreds gathered at his home. According to records in the Loyalist Collection at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, he fled to Boston. All of his property was seized, and he was banished to Canada. In 1780, the Massachusetts General Assembly denounced him as a traitor.
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“He was a shyster, a real shady character. So this might change your entire story,” Whipps said, sensing my disappointment at the news. “I would hate for you to write about Athol with this great sense of nobility. Maybe we’re still paying John Murray’s debt of dishonesty with the name. Also, I don’t want you to give us a better reputation than we actually deserve. I kind of like the scandal of it.”
‘I kind of like the scandal of it’
Massachusetts State Rep. Susannah Whipps on how Athol got its name.
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Murray’s face appears on Athol’s official town seal. A traitor who could be best described as “odious” is Athol’s founding father. That’s one way to look at it.
The ballroom inside Blair Castle, in Blair Atholl, Scottland. The ballroom was commissioned by the seventh Duke of Atholl and designed by David Bryce.Christopher Muther/Globe Staff
But I prefer to think of Athol and its direct connection to the beauty of Scotland. In 1703, Queen Anne created the title Duke of Atholl, and in 1844, Queen Victoria granted the duke permission to raise Europe’s only legal private army (the unit had previously disbanded). The army, called the Atholl Highlanders, is still active today, although it’s purely ceremonial and is best known for its bagpipers. The Highlanders have marched in Athol twice and are coming back in April 2025 to celebrate Athol’s famed River Rat parade, along with traveling to perform in New York City and Washington, D.C.
The current Duke of Atholl doesn’t reside in Blair Castle; he lives in South Africa, but the 30-room castle is open for viewing. You can tour the ornate structure (tickets to tour the castle and gardens are $22) or take a whiskey tour to learn about Blair Castle’s illicit distilling past and sample some hooch (tickets are $75). If you fall in love with the castle and surrounding area the way I did, you can even stay at the Atholl Estates. There are lodges, cabins, and huts available. You can also camp there.
The dining room in Blair Castle, located in Blair Atholl, Scotland.Christopher Muther/Boston Globe
The walls of the 755-year-old castle are filled with portraits of past dukes, earls, viscounts, lords, ladies, and marquesses. An audio tour, which you can download before visiting, explains hundreds of years of history and rooms of well-curated artifacts. I’m not a descendant of the Duke of Atholl, but I felt a kinship walking through the castle.
This is where it all began for humble Athol. All giggling aside, if my hometown was going to be named after a location on Earth, I’m glad it was this beautiful place.
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Christopher Muther can be reached at christopher.muther@globe.com. Follow him @Chris_Muther and Instagram @chris_muther.
A Holbrook, Massachusetts man who fell critically ill while sailing through the South Pacific has died, his family told WBZ-TV Tuesday evening.
Scott Winslow was in intensive care at a hospital in Fiji for weeks, as his family fought to get him back home so he could be treated for septic shock and a serious infection.
Winslow’s wife and two daughters had made the 8,000-mile trip to be with him and fight for his care when he died.
“We are at the hospital and just said goodbye to our father,” his daughters told WBZ-TV. “We are heartbroken.”
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Winslow was traveling on his nephew’s sailboat in the South Pacific on what was supposed to be a three-month voyage when he noticed what appeared to be a bug bite.
His family isn’t sure exactly what the cause of the illness was, but his condition quickly deteriorated, and he could no longer walk once they diverted the boat to Fiji.
The family provided WBZ medical documents from doctors in Fiji, who said he needed to be evacuated to another hospital.
The family said his insurance company, Aetna, denied the transport and the medical flight to get Winslow home would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Winslow’s family said they had secured medical services with the Mass General Brigham group if he got back to Massachusetts.
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“I don’t understand. My problem is, my parents pay for insurance, this is what insurance is for,” Lisa Babbin, Scott’s daughter told WBZ-TV earlier on Tuesday.
Before Winslow died, WBZ-TV reached out to Aetna. In a statement, a spokesperson said they were continuing to work with Winslow’s family “and his providers in Fiji to identify the best way to get him back safely to the United States for continued treatment.”
The Winslow family had also reached out the U.S. Embassy in Fiji for help securing an emergency loan.
The past month in Massachusetts has been synonymous with World Cup fan festivals, cheering crowds and tourists from Scotland crowning statues with traffic cones.
Amid concerns that the Trump administrations would ramp up immigration enforcement during the tournament, international soccer fans have posted on social media that they’ve felt welcome in the United States. The World Cup has even served as a distraction for many immigrants who’ve spent the past year and half in fear of the Trump administration’s deportation push.
And yet beneath the surface, immigration lawyers and advocates say detentions have not only continued across Massachusetts since the World Cup started in early June — they’ve increased in frequency.
“It’s supposed to be a joyous time for families, for children, and we’re still seeing an increase of arrests,” Eloa Celedon, an immigration attorney based in Marlborough, said. “Prior to the World Cup, it had settled down a bit — but since the World Cup started, it has been very sad to see arrests happening.”
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During May and early June, Celedon said her office received one or two calls a week about potential clients who’ve been recently detained. Over the last month, those calls have increased to four to five a day.
Celedon’s experiences track with a reported nationwide surge in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Over a recent five-day period, agents across the nation detained more than 10,000 people. The arrests have occurred during routine check-ins with ICE agents as well as during traffic stops.
Todd Pomerleau, an immigration attorney and the president of Mass Deportation Defense Project, called the spike in arrests a “remarkable” contrast to the international goodwill that’s been on display during the World Cup. He pointed to a recent game he was at in California between Belgium and Iran, recounting the way players and fans cordially listened to both teams’ national anthems played before the match.
“Juxtapose that with what I’ve seen as an immigration attorney,” Pomerleau said. ”The government seems like it goes out of its way to basically arrest people without justification a lot and then just throw them in detention facilities.”
No attorneys have heard of any cases of immigrants being detained around the World Cup matches at Gillette Stadium, temporarily renamed Boston Stadium.
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A closer look at recent enforcement numbers
ICE didn’t respond to questions about how many people it has detained in Massachusetts since the start of the World Cup — the agency usually doesn’t provide time-specific enforcement figures.
Still, there are other ways to get rough estimates. Attorneys often file habeas petitions in federal court, asking judges to intervene in alleged unlawful detentions and keep immigrants from being sent to detention centers in other states.
There have been nearly 190 habeas filings in Massachusetts federal district court since the beginning of the World Cup matches, according to Habeas Dockets, a tracker run by the nonprofit Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative. Cases rose by 21% in June overall from the month before, going from 183 in May to 222.
One of those filings was for Malton Lacerda, who was detained June 28 by ICE agents after shopping at a Walmart in Halifax with his son Victor Lacerda, a Navy vet. The elder Lacerda wore a T-shirt saying “Navy Dad” as he put groceries in the car.
“Then we get rushed by a bunch of different ICE agents with guns drawn and threatening us. And we were confused,” Victor Lacerda, the son, said. “I looked back to see what was going on, because at first I couldn’t even believe it was happening to us, because we were just getting groceries. We hadn’t done anything wrong. And that’s when I saw them putting hands on my father and detaining him. But they were still asking me questions about my citizenship and my father’s citizenship.”
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Victor Lacerda, who was born in the United States, served in the Navy after high school and lives in Kingston, Massachusetts. His father, who’s undocumented, is originally from Brazil and has lived in the United States for at least 25 years. He’s currently being held at Plymouth County’s ICE detention facility.
Pomerleau, the Lacerdas’ attorney, says the father was in the process of securing a green card when he was detained. He’s eligible for permanent residency in the United States through a special process for veteran family members.
Pomerleau called the father an exemplary member of his community, noting that he works as a horse trainer and provides horse therapy for disabled veterans. He and his son also march in local parades, and planned on doing so again for the Fourth of July.
“He’s done a lot of work for the community for years. He marched in the 400th Thanksgiving Parade down in Plymouth, Memorial Day parades,” Pomerleau said.
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Malton Laceda in a Massachusetts parade last year.
Courtesy of Victor Laceda
Lacerda has two 20-year-old cases of driving without a license and paying fines, and a misdemeanor assault and battery charge from 2008 that was dismissed, involving his ex-partner who’s now raising funds for his legal expenses. ICE didn’t return requests for comment on the case.
Local immigration advocates say the recent spike in arrests is one more way the Trump administration has cherry-picked which foreigners and immigrants can enjoy the world’s biggest sporting event.
Celedon noted that the federal immigration crackdown has also made it impossible, or very difficult, for people from countries on full or partial travel ban lists to visit the United States to attend World Cup games. Those countries include Haiti and others in Africa.
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“It feels like almost like racial profiling people of certain countries that are allowed to come and those that are not allowed to come and not allowed to stay,” Celedon said.
Carson Erick, Jake Mrva, and Patrick Kilcoyne took a big first step Monday toward reaching match play by sharing the lead at 3-under 68 in the 118th Massachusetts Amateur at Winchester Country Club.
Kilcoyne was the runner-up last year at GreatHorse to Ryan Downes.
Max McColgan posted the only bogey-free round of the day, with a 69. He birdied two of the par 5s, Nos. 2 and 13. He is part of a group of four at 2 under that also includes 2024 champion Matthew Naumec.
Among the six members of the host club in the 144-player field, Joey Monahan led the way with a 70. His cousin, Aidan Monahan, won the club championship on Sunday and turned in a 72. They are nephews of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.
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Lucas Dascoli recorded a hole-in-one on the 127-yard ninth hole with a 50-degree wedge. The ace had him make the turn at 1 over, but he dropped five shots over the final four holes and settled for a 77 and is in a tie for 71st.
The average score was 76.83, playing 2.67 over par on the front and 3.15 over on the back. Ten players managed to post a red figure while eight turned in a 71.
The top 32 players following Tuesday’s second round of qualifying will reach match play that begins Wednesday. The 36-hole final is scheduled for Friday.
Keith Pearson can be reached at keith.pearson@globe.com.
