USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Milton > History of Milton > Part 15
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The Poor House was operated by a man and wife, sometimes with a hired girl to help. The man almost always doubled in brass as Superintendent of Highways. The buildings were on the forty-acre lot which Gov. William Stoughton left in his will to the Town of Milton "for the use and benefit of the poor of said Town forever". Part of the land was farmed, and some of the produce sold, but most of it was consumed by the inmates.
This general method of caring for the poor, with some at the Town Farm, and others given relief at home, continued for many years and appears to have been relatively successful. The Selectmen made an official visit to the farm at least once a year, and they usually reported that the paupers ap-
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History of Milton
peared to be happy and content with their lot, but we have no record of the paupers' side of the story.
In 1855 a new almshouse was built, and various improvements were made from time to time. By 1873 the poor had ceased to work on the roads, but those that were able continued to putter around at the farm work. I suspect that the Town Farm had started to become what it certainly was in later years, an old folks' home, largely for the infirm who had no place else to go. In 1903 the Town voted to transfer the care of the poor to a board established under a new State law, and the five members were elected the following year and at once took charge. They immediately secured the services of an ex- pert on poor relief, and proceeded to modernize the entire operation of the department. Eventually changing social conditions and vastly increasing State and Federal assistance resulted in the abandonment of the Town Farm in the period just before the Second World War.
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The Highways
I HE first road in Milton was of course the highway over Milton Hill, built while we were still a part of Dorchester. Just prior to Milton's in- corporation as a town the present Canton Avenue was built from its junction with Adams Street to the point where it today joins Brook Road. At about this same time, Churchill's Lane was laid out from Adams Street, where the first Meeting House then stood, to Centre Street at the Cemetery, and it apparently connected with a trail that led into the Blue Hills. In 1669 Pleasant Street was built from Algerine Corner on Adams Street to approxi- mately the point where it today joins Randolph Avenue, but it was then only a cartway and a path for cattle.
An Indian trail is believed to have run along the present line of Ruggles Lane, through the Columbine Road area to Brook Road in the vicinity of St. Mary's of the Hills, and then on to Brush Hill. This became a cartway of sorts about 1670, and some three years later a new road was built along the present line of Thacher Street from Blue Hills Parkway almost to Pine Tree Brook, where it turned sharply to the northeast and continued along the line of today's Lincoln Street until it met Brook Road, the line of which it then followed until the end of Canton Avenue was reached at Turner's Pond.
If this description of the growth of our road system becomes a little in- volved, it may be skipped entirely with small loss to any except those inter- ested in this subject. The several maps showing the growth of Milton will also help to clarify the subject.
In 1673 Vose's Lane was laid out along its present location. Centre Street must by now have been continued from the Cemetery as far as the southern
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History of Milton
end of this new lane, because it was near this latter point that the second Meeting House was built in 1671.
By this period there were several farms in the Brush Hill area, and some sort of cartway had existed over the hill and down to the fresh water mead- ows at Paul's Bridge at least as early as 1672. Two years later a footpath was laid out from the vicinity of Brush Hill Road and today's Robbins Street di- rectly across country to about where Lincoln Street now joins Thacher Street. Within another three years Brush Hill Road was built from the Ne- ponset at Mattapan, where no settlement existed at that time, along the line of today's Blue Hills Parkway, as far as Brook Road, where the old Indian Ponkapoag Trail led it up over Brush Hill and down again to the Neponset meadows.
The Town Records for March of 1671-72 show that a highway was laid out from the southerly end of Vose's Lane along today's Centre Street to the site of the present Library, and then along the general line of Canton Avenue "downe to Balstor's brook", but since Ezra Clapp's land, which was near Lincoln Street, is mentioned, it is probable that the road turned to the northwest along Thacher Street and met Pine Tree Brook at this point rath- er than at its junction with Balstor's Brook near the head of Blue Hills Parkway. The route is defined partly by the "parallel line",1 which Canton Avenue follows from the Library to Atherton Street, but mostly by a "whit oake stumpe", "a run of water", ""a blacke stumpe burned on the south sid", and similar perishable objects. I cannot determine when Canton Avenue was continued on to Pine Tree Brook. Dr. Teele believed that it was laid out in 1680, and there is an entry in the Records for 1683 that shows that the road at Pine Tree Brook at the head of today's Parkway was then practically impassable, if it existed at all. Canton Avenue was, however, continued in 1681 from Pine Tree Brook on to the Dorchester (now Canton) line south- west of Blue Hill, so it is most probable that it did also extend northeast to a junction with Thacher Street.
In 1696 a footway, later to grow into Gun Hill Street, was opened to con-
1. This was a surveyor's line running more or less northeast-southwest through the center of Milton, and parallel to the Braintree boundary.
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The Highways
nect the Pleasant Street area with the Meeting House. The land to the south of the Blue Hills had gradually been settled, and by the early years of the next century there were several farms in that area. A short portion of today's Hillside Street, a section of road zigzagging along the general line of Ran- dolph Avenue, and Highland Street were established in 1713 to give access to this section.
This completed the basic road net which was to serve the Town for al- most a century, and which in fact, with four major exceptions, is the back- bone of our main roads of today. A few years later Hillside Street was con- tinued a little farther, and then swung first to the southeast and then to the southwest through the saddle of Bear Hill and Glover's Hill, and became the highway connecting Milton with Randolph and Bridgewater.
In recent years we have seen an era of building great turnpikes, but this is only a repetition of what took place a century and a half ago. The turnpike fever hit Milton in 1804 when a group of capitalists petitioned to be allowed to build Blue Hill Avenue. This was vigorously opposed by the Town, but the General Court approved, and the road was built in the next few years. It was operated as a turnpike until 1857, when the franchise was allowed to ex- pire, and it eventually became a county highway. The old tollhouse still stands, used today as a dwelling at 211 Robbins Street. Randolph Avenue was built as another turnpike at this same period, and, unsuccessful, was eventually taken over partly by the Town and partly by the County (later the State). I trust that today's investors in turnpikes will be more fortunate than were their ancestors.
The Granite Avenue bridge over the Neponset was built in 1837, and Granite Avenue connected the growing center at East Milton with Dorches- ter. The last of our major roads, Brook Road, was extended from Canton Avenue to Adams Street in East Milton early in the present century. It re- sulted from the construction of a new Metropolitan District Commission trunk sewer, which was begun in the closing years of the last century, and finally put in operation in 1904. This is a very large trunk sewer, and its construction dried up the wells of many houses in Milton. Fortunately the Milton Water Company was then in existence, and did a thriving business
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History of Milton
taking on new customers, but after a year or two the wells filled up again and the water company lost many of its new accounts. Brook Road was built along the line of the sewer once it was completed.
We have no information as to how the roads were built and maintained in the earliest days of the Town. The first record of Surveyors of Highways is in about 1669,2 when two were elected in addition to the three Selectmen. The office has been continued for almost three centuries, sometimes as a separate one, but more often as an added duty borne by the Selectmen, who today are still elected to the joint office.
We know that, by the time of the Revolutionary period, an annual road tax was assessed, which was either paid in money or in labor. We often hear of people in the country working out their taxes on the roads. This would have been possible in Milton only in the case of the road tax, the regular Town, County, and Provincial, or State, taxes had to be paid in legal tender. The normal annual maintenance work seems to have called for one day's work per year by each man over sixteen years old, or its money equivalent as a minimum. Those who were taxed in addition to the poll tax paid or worked more, but extra credit was allowed for the furnishing of an ox team. The work was carried out under the direction of the Surveyors, who usually di- vided the Town up into districts.3 Construction of a new road was almost certainly carried out in the same way, the total assessment of labor or its money equivalent varying with the amount of construction required.
The roads were mud in the spring, dust in the summer, and not much to boast about at any time in between. The maintenance work probably con- sisted merely of picking up loose stones, filling up the worst mud holes, and a little rough leveling up, as well as keeping the bridges passable. It was not until well into the last century that modern methods of road building came into use here, although McAdam in England was introducing the construc- tion bearing his name by the end of the 1700's.
When it was necessary to build or make major repairs to a bridge, the
2. This entry is not dated, but is entered alongside of one of that year.
3. At one time there were as many as seventeen surveyors, each presumably responsible for only a short piece of road. Usually they were fewer in number, perhaps three or thereabouts.
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BLUE HILL AVENUE, ABOUT 1890 Looking south toward junction with Brush Hill Road.
MAN C.E.SNOW MEG
DRUGS
EAST MILTON SQUARE Looking toward Quincy, about 1915.
The Highways
Town customarily appointed a special committee, but all normal mainte- nance work, both roads and bridges, was the responsibility of the Surveyors of Highways. In 1779 it was provided that if a man warned by the Survey- ors that he was due to work on the roads failed to appear, a substitute would be hired and the cost added to the absent citizen's tax.
This basic system continued for many years, but an innovation was finally introduced in 1834, by which time a poorhouse or "workhouse" had been established in the Town. A superintendent was hired for this institution who knew how to make and repair roads, and the able-bodied paupers worked on the highways under his inanagement. This system worked very well for many years, although in practice it was found necessary to hire ad- ditional labor to assist the workhouse inmates. Shortly after the Civil War all the work was done by hired labor, and our present Highway Department had its beginning as a separate tax-supported activity, supervised by the Se- lectmen. For a further period the superintendent was also in charge of what was soon to be known as the "Town Farm". Before many years had passed, new methods of road repair and further growth of the Town called for the full-time services of a trained man, and the Department developed into its present form. Toward the end of the century attention was devoted to im- proved methods of road construction, and soon various experiments were being made. By 1908 the macadamized roads were being oiled, the gravel roads sprinkled with calcium chloride, and tarvia was being applied to some stretches. In this year the practice of sprinkling all the streets with water was discontinued, and the old watering carts were soon retired. Some sprink- ling had been done in the Village area not very long after the Civil War, but it was not practical to do this in other parts of the Town until water pipes were installed after 1889. The watering carts were wooden tanks about one- third the length of today's gasoline tank trucks, and a cross pipe with a ser- ies of nozzles sprayed fine jets of water out from the rear of the cart. They kept the dust down and at least made things seem a little cooler in hot weather.
Today we are interested in getting the snow off the roads at once, but it was far different in the days of the horse-drawn sleigh when a firm hard snow surface furnished the smoothest and pleasantest sort of a road that one
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History of Milton
could wish. Snow rollers were used to compact and harden the snow, merely great wooden rollers some six feet in diameter by ten in length pulled along behind a pair or more of horses, or in the earlier days by an ox team.
I have no knowledge as to when the Village and East Milton were first lighted at night, but general street lighting in some parts of Milton was started in 1869. Five years later the Dorchester Gas Company put a pipe in Randolph Avenue, and two gas street lights were installed. In 1879 the Se- lectmen reported that there were "about one hundred and ten street lamps" erected by private subscription and lighted by naphtha and kerosene at the expense of the Town. By 1891 some of the street lights were electric, and this new method entirely replaced the old by 1904. Until electricity came in- to use there were lamplighters who went around lighting the lamps each night and putting them out again the next morning.
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THE POLICE FORCE, ABOUT 1905
V
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The Police
F JOR almost two centuries the keeping of the peace has been the duty of the constables, assisted in some phases by the tithingmen. This lat- ter office disappeared with the disestablishment of the Church, and the last tithingmen were elected in 1835. For the next generation only the constables acted as police, and that only upon call. This was in addition to their other duties, the most onerous of which, collection of the Town's taxes, had now been taken over by the Collector of Taxes. Serving of writs and no- tifying the inhabitants of town meetings were about their only remaining duties, unless some disturbance or crime required them to make an arrest.
The little country town had needed police only upon rare occasions, but as wealth increased and new residents moved out from Boston a require- ment arose for a more complete police protection than had existed in the older, less troubled days. In 1865 there is the first mention of an actual po- lice patrol, and three men were employed to some extent as night police. Sometimes the constables were used for this duty, but others also served who had not been elected to that office. Police badges were bought at least as early as 1870, but I do not believe that the men were uniformed at this period. In 1872 there was night police duty carried out for twenty-eight weeks and also some Sunday work. At this time and for many years to come, the Town suffered from three major annoyances, over-exuberant quarry workers staggering back to East Milton and Quincy from Hotel Milton, tramps, and excursionists from Boston who felt that front lawns were excel- lent places upon which to picnic and throw their trash.
The first full-time policeman, Samuel C. Hebard, appeared in 1874, but
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History of Milton
he had been a part-time night patrolman at intervals for the previous eight years. Two years later he was assisted by four part-time officers, one of whom was Maurice Pierce, before long to become Milton's first Chief. In 1880 there were three constables available in the Village, two at East Milton, and four in other parts of the Town. There were also three special policemen. Most of the actual patrolling was done at night only, but three years later we find a policeman covering Adams Street by day. Hitherto Milton had shared a small "lockup" with Dorchester, located in the rear of Walter Baker's pres- ent office building, but in 1884 a new brick Police Station was built at the Town Landing in the Village, where the building still stands, used today as a clubhouse. A number of police call boxes were soon installed by the Tele- phone Company, but they failed to give satisfaction. In 1890 the Police De- partment was reorganized with Maurice Pierce as Superintendent, a depu- ty, nine uniformed night patrolmen, and a keeper of the "lockup". At this time there were thirteen police boxes connected to a new private police sig- nal system. The department operated under the control of the Selectmen exactly as it does today.
In August of 1899 the Milton News reported that two automobiles had been seen to go down Adams Street over Milton Hill. At that period the speed limit for going with "any beast" was eight miles per hour, and those first two motor cars must either have observed that regulation or have been fortunate enough to escape the eagle eye of Chief Maurice Pierce. The year 1900 brings the report of the first arrest for speeding that I have found, and there could not have been much trouble with motorists, because it was not until 1907 that the Police Department obtained a motorcycle.1 A Stanley "Steamer" was bought next year for $ 1039.99, and Patrolman "Bill" Fallon installed behind its wheel. That year he drove the car 10,300 miles and took ninety-three speeders into Quincy Court. The Stanley would go like the wind as long as the steam in its boiler lasted, but this was not very long at high speed, and Fallon either had to catch his man quickly or not at all. Next year the car was traded in for a more powerful one, presumably with a
1. I have found a record of a Milton policeman chasing a speeding motorist with a horse and buggy, and catching him too!
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POLICE STATO
A
.....
POLICE DEPARTMENT STANLEY STEAMER, 1912 Chief Maurice Pierce is being chauffeured by Officer Fallon.
The Police
larger boiler. That season Fallon made a hundred and forty-three arrests, and the Town raked in some two thousand dollars in fines. This was too good to last, however, for 1909 was the last year that the State allowed the towns to retain the fines. "Bill" Fallon normally dressed in ordinary clothes and there were whispers that he sometimes egged motorists into a little race before flashing his badge on them.
When Maurice Pierce retired in 1923 after forty-three years of service he left a solid achievement behind him, a modern police force. His service cov- ered the entire transition of a small suburban town, troubled only by petty annoyances, into a bustling community, plagued by four major motor arter- ies through its midst and traffic problems beyond the wildest imagination of only a relatively few years before.
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The Firemen
D R. TEELE says that the first fire-fighting organization in the Town was privately organized by citizens of Neponset Village in 1793. A hand engine was secured of the old type that required filling by buck- ets. A line of men would be formed between the engine and the nearest source of water, and the leather buckets would be filled and passed from hand to hand, dumped into the engine's tub, and the water finally squirted onto the fire by the force pump. Unless the fire happened to be near the river or a brook, the buckets would probably have to be filled from a well, a most slow and unsatisfactory source. That is all that we know about Milton's first fire com- pany, but fortunately we have quite a little information at a slightly later date.
In 1830 "The Fountain No. 1 Fire Company" was officially recognized by the Selectmen of Milton and Dorchester. This company may have existed earlier, for there is a record of the engine being repaired and converted to a suction type, and there is also a record of a new engine being received at this time. Be that as it may, by 1830 Neponset Village was covered by the "Fountain Company", manned jointly by Milton and Dorchester men. This engine did not have to be filled by buckets, but was able to suck its water from any convenient source.
East Milton Village grew rapidly with the granite business, and in the summer of 1827 a group of inhabitants subscribed money to provide an en- gine house. Just where and when the "Danube No. 2 Engine" was acquired we do not know, but in 1833 shafts and a harness were provided for it. Two years later the Town voted to furnish this fire company with $200 worth of equipment.
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History of Milton
At this same time the "Alert" engine company was covering the Upper Mills at Mattapan. This company was established as early as 1809. Although located on the Milton side of the Neponset and including one or two Milton citizens this was largely a Dorchester company. Nevertheless our Town contributed to its maintenance, and in 1839 provided a bell for the engine house.
Thus by 1830 we have three fire companies covering the town, the "Foun- tain" in the Village area, the "Alert" at the Upper Mills, and the "Danube" at East Milton. Just how large an area the first two engines attempted to cov- er is something which I cannot determine, but the "Danube" was ambitious. Its normal field of operations included the area from Mattapan to Milton Village, along Adams Street to the center of Quincy, then to West Quincy and back to Mattapan, quite a bit of countryside for a hand-drawn tub. For more distant fires a horse was obtained if possible, but this could not always be depended upon, as the animal was sometimes returned to its owner in considerably less than perfect condition. In 1854 the company had to dig down into its pockets for $37.50 for a horse killed on the way to a fire.
If one thinks of a fire company of this period as being essentially a social organization with some fire-fighting obligations as a side issue, he would not be far wrong. Even today with all our competing thrills and spectacles a fire has a tremendous appeal to all. In those more placid days the opportunity to belong to a congenial group of friends with a clubhouse provided free, and the ever-present hope of a good lively fire to dash to and perhaps to try to fight presented a great appeal to many a man.
While these were essentially private companies they were officially recog- nized by the Town, which built or paid the rent of their firehouse, a small salary to a steward, and from time to time provided new equipment. Mem- bers of the original companies had their poll taxes abated, and later they were paid some $5 a year, eventually increased to $10. After a local fire was over refreshments were usually supplied by the Town, hot chocolate, crack- ers and cheese, but nothing stronger, at least according to the official rec- ord. Regular meetings and drills were held, with fines for absences and for not appearing at fires within the areas assigned to the various members.
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The Firemen
We have a few brief records about the social activities. On 18 June 1835 the "Fountain" Company went down the harbor on a fishing trip, probably only one of many similar but unrecorded outings. The big event in the his- tory of this company, however, is the great chowder party which it gave in August of 1844 to all the fire companies of the vicinity, No. 6, No. 4, the Milton Hook and Ladder, Engine Company No. 1, and Neponset Company's No. 2 and No. 3. These companies are not otherwise identified, but No. 6 was probably the Roxbury company, an old rival of the "Fountains". The party was held at the Lower Mills, presumably at Vose's Grove, near where Butler Station of the MTA is today, the usual picnic grounds of the period. Some six hundred chowder eaters were present and a fine time was being had by all when some miscreant sneaked in a barrel of hard cider, and things began to get out of hand. The record is discreetly silent beyond the fact that the committee apologized for the resulting fracas and emphatically stated that the hard cider was distinctly not of their providing.
Despite their name, the "Alerts" of Mattapan in midwinter of 1848 suf- fered the greatest humiliation that was possible for a fire company-their own firehouse and equipment went up in smoke! I imagine that it was many a year before the members of the company heard the end of that. The group remained inactive for a while, for in the following year the "Fountains" in- vited the ex-"Alerts" to help pull the Village engine at some parade or mus- ter. By 1858 the "Alert" Company was again in operation from a firehouse at the old location, and with three Milton members.
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