Ruth Lambert Cheney was a Rowley benefactor and a founding member of the Rowley Historical Society. She is responsible for the English garden at the rear of the the Historical Society’s Platts-Bradstreet House, taken from a plan similar to one she saw in England. She also brought back English pottery from England to be used for used in the Rowley Powley Tea House to raise money for the restoration of the Historical Society’s 1677 Platts-Bradstreet House. (1)
Ruth Lambert Cheney bequeathed the land for the Rowley Public Library in 1948. She willed that a formal garden be established to benefit the people so long as this library occupies these grounds.
1. Rowley. Edward J. Desjardins. Arcadia Publishing. 2012