Great vintage photo taken c.1910 of a trolley line and an open wire telephone circuit to boot! Freetown, MA was among the towns served by the Southern Massachusetts Telephone Company. It is entirely possible that insulators marked with their name So. Mass. Tel. Co. were in use along this route when this picture was taken. I and a couple other collectors found at least a couple dozen So. Mass. Tel. Co. insulators during 1969-1970 along a several-mile private telephone line. In Freetown, MA. Judging from the assortment of other insulators in use on this line it is quite probable this two-wire side-pin-arrangement line was built in later years with "second-hand" insulators. Most of the So. Mass. Tel. Co. insulators in collectors' hands today came from this private line. All insulators attributable to So. Mass. Tel. Co. so far are known as CD 102 ponies and very likely were made by Brookfield. These are the only known examples of customer-marked telephone company insulators made for a non-Bell company. Slowly but surely, So. Mass. Tel. Co. exchanges were bought by the New England Telephone & Telegraph Company through the years. By about 1938 the company was fully absorbed by NET&T Co. The latter possibly only believed in using CD 104 insulators as "ponies". Here in SE Massachusetts they were yet uncommon on their open-wire lines through the 60s (when all of the old stuff was "upgraded" to paired cable). CD 102s were non-existant as I recall...and it is very likely upon purchasing So. Mass. Tel. Co. overhead plant NET&T also upgraded with more "modern" and "standard" Bell Telephone insulator styles. A Bell System directive dated 1959 also reminds me of that!